The 3DO Experience - Episode 44: Psychic Detective: FMV Adventure Mysteries!

[00:00:00] Have you experienced the awesome power of the Panasonic Real 3DO System? Obviously. Presenting 3DO. The most advanced home gaming system in the universe. It's time to put away your toys. 3DO from Panasonic Gold Star and Creative Labs. A new low price and free games.

[00:00:23] Enjoying graphics of Panasonic Real 3DO. 3DO. Hello friends, welcome back to the 3DO Experience. The one true stop for all things 3DO and other things gaming related as well. This is Thrak taking over today because co-host Bill is sick over there. So Bill, you're not dead are you?

[00:00:53] No, I'm not dead. But I got one of those wonderful summer colds because you only ever get colds in the middle of like 90 degree heat. So. Exactly. It's for me it's absolutely hot as fuck.

[00:01:06] It's been in the 90s for the last handful of days and also last handful of days. I've been outside having to do things which hasn't been great. For Sunday for our Father's Day dinner, we left the house at a quarter after five

[00:01:21] and didn't get back home until 830 because it took that long to get there, get seated, actually get served, eat the food and then leave. It was a nightmare. But other than that, you know, things are okay.

[00:01:36] We're in I think both of us are sitting in air conditioned rooms right now. So we're doing okay. I guess before we get into the topic for today just to let all the listeners know

[00:01:49] that the day this comes out, that later that day we are recording potentially live streaming the first Super Pod Network special where we will be going over the Nintendo Direct that just happened on the 18th, which is the day that we're recording this.

[00:02:07] So please stick in to listen to that since we are on the Super Pod Network. It should be a fun time. So that should be good. And I guess before we get into the game for this week, I guess I can do the traditional podcast thing.

[00:02:23] Bill, what you been playing? Not a whole lot because I'm trying to catch up on my reading lately. So I haven't gaming's been kind of in the back background for a bit. I started playing the Paper Mario Thousand Year Door remake. It is excellent.

[00:02:41] I'm enjoying every moment of that. It is very excellent. It is like a perfect blast of the past. I also I'm still playing South Park, The Fractured But Whole. I'm like getting close to like the third night. I think we're on stuff starts happening. Still a good game.

[00:02:58] I'm enjoying every replaying that for like the fourth time now. Other than that though, I'm mostly just trying to catch up on other forms of media. I got really big into CD collecting again recently because I have no self-control sometimes.

[00:03:12] So I've been buying a lot of CDs because they're cheap and they're on the way out. They are very cheap. I suspect sometime in our lifetime CDs will have their big resurgence like vinyl.

[00:03:25] Speaking of that, we had a garage sale last week made like almost 600 bucks on it. We sold a lot of stuff and actually I had like a decent sized box of records and most of them sold like they were a big hit.

[00:03:42] And I sold a couple of CDs as well and whatever's left. We just kind of gave away to Goodwill. We did get a couple of CRTs in there.

[00:03:51] I ended up keeping the one that we didn't sell, which was the very is a very nice like VCR DVD combo one. So I decided to keep that. So when I eventually get my own place, I will be setting that up to play old shit on.

[00:04:06] But I've been playing Mafia Definitive Edition. You can see it right there. I don't know why the other day I was thinking about Mafia probably because I have a physical copy of three over there. And I was like, oh yeah, they did do that remake of one.

[00:04:22] And I looked on the store and it was like 20 bucks for the entire trilogy. So that seemed like a no brainer to me. So in the trilogy is you get the remake of one, a remaster of two with all of its DLC

[00:04:36] and then three slightly tweaked with all of its DLC. And so I've put a good amount of hours into Mafia Definitive Edition. I haven't beaten it yet, but it is a genuinely fantastic game.

[00:04:48] It's been a while since I played like a really heavy story based game like this and actually been paying attention to the story. It's your kind of basic mob story, but it does some interesting things.

[00:05:00] And what I like is it's you would think it's a GTA clone, but it's like kind of not. It's much more focused on like linear story missions because you have your story mode, which is just, you know, it's chapter based where you do all the main missions.

[00:05:17] And then later on, you unlock a free ride mode where you can sort of drive around in the open world and find other little things to do. So you kind of get the best of both worlds depending on how you want to play the game.

[00:05:29] Yeah, and I've been really enjoying it. It's pretty good. I did beat Doom 2016 before I played this, and that was a fun game. But I know when I finished it, I was like, God damn, I think I like Titanfall 2 better.

[00:05:43] Although, Doom 2016 was fantastic, and I will be playing Eternal when I finish Mafia. That's probably the next game I'm going to jump right into is Doom Eternal, and we'll end up playing through the Mafia trilogy as well. So that's all really I've been doing.

[00:05:59] I want to get back into reading here. One second. I want to get back into my reading, but it's just I haven't had a huge amount of time to do other things.

[00:06:08] So that when I get a little bit of free time, it's just trying to stay up with this stuff. Nice. I did actually play one other game. I completely forgot about this.

[00:06:18] We had a conversation over on the Super Pod server recently and one of our buddies over there, Jeff, made a comment about how he hated LA Noir and for some reason it sparked because he wanted to play it again. So I was playing a little LA Noir recently.

[00:06:33] Yeah, to be fair, LA Noir is a divisive game. Oh, it's not a great, like a hot perfect game by any means, but I just I like how goofy it is. I like it.

[00:06:43] I think it's I really wish it was either that team or somebody else would tackle this LA Noir idea. Like being a detective reading facial expressions and this like heavily focused on solving cases the proper way kind of. It's such a really, really cool concept.

[00:07:03] But I think it is let down in some ways by like this really fancy technology that maybe hasn't aged the best trying too hard to kind of fit into some sort of like rock star idea,

[00:07:16] ID ideologies when it doesn't really need that and some other like story issue things like like your main guy, your main guy Cole is kind of an asshole.

[00:07:28] He takes a nosedive as a character towards the end of the game, which is very bizarre because it completely comes out of nowhere.

[00:07:35] Yeah. And then and an issue that a friend of mine brought up many years ago was that he wish he wished there was a way that like you could genuinely fail, say, like asking the questions,

[00:07:49] like say when you're going through asking people the stuff, if there was a way you could genuinely mess up the cases, you know, like that's an interesting idea. That might be a little too much for a game.

[00:07:59] Yeah, but like maybe making it a little bit more open ended where it's like you can totally like fuck up a case, but you still keep going or something.

[00:08:08] My favorite is like at the end of every case where you get your damage bill for all the pedestrians and traffic. Yeah, because it's weird that game is presented as an open world and I think you can kind of drive around in the world if you want.

[00:08:21] But there's just there's there's really no reason for it. So there's little like things to find, like the film reels and like secret cars and stuff. But like there's no point in really doing it. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, I'm hoping the Mafia definitive edition.

[00:08:34] There is more stuff to do when free ride. But you know, I'll let you guys know. The good thing is it's a separate mode. So even if you don't want to do it, you don't have to. So which is nice.

[00:08:44] And it it does retain a lot of the crazy realism that the original Mafia has where it's like you have to follow traffic laws. And if you reload, you lose like all the bullets you have.

[00:08:55] If it's like a half filled clip or whatever, but it's all in like a difficulty mode. So you can just switch to like a more modern easier kind of difficulty mode if you want. So it's really neat.

[00:09:07] So and apparently there is a fourth Mafia game in the works. So and it'll be interesting to see if they go further than Mafia three because Mafia three is in 1968 in Louisiana. Or if they go even further back because the original Mafia is in the 30s.

[00:09:22] So they could potentially I was thinking go back to like when the Italians first immigrated to the United States and kind of, you know, the formation of the Mafia in general, you know, or they could say maybe go further into like Mafia activity,

[00:09:40] like a say in the 70s or the 80s, you know, when kind of perception on like gang violence and all that was kind of changing. Like the Reagan years or whatever. But who knows? Who knows? Mafia three is a very interesting game though,

[00:09:53] because I don't know if you ever played it. It's a series that I've dabbled in, but I've never really gotten super deep into. Okay. Yeah, because Mafia three is you are a black military vet coming home from Vietnam.

[00:10:04] And I guess you were kind of raised by the Mafia down there. And then you come back and find out that they've like the cops have like disbanded and like murdered them or whatever. And so the game is you rebuilding them up. Okay.

[00:10:18] And it tackles a lot of like the hard issues of the 60s, you know, like racism and civil rights and all that stuff. And I'm told it's done really well. Like these games, I think do a good job of portraying a more realistic side to organized crime.

[00:10:33] You know what I mean? Like it like nobody feels really like caricatures. Everybody feels like the genuine article. You know what I mean? Like it's presented closer to say like maybe how like a Coppola movie presents this stuff like a little bit more on the realistic side.

[00:10:48] So yeah, it's not like Scarface where it's just goofy as fuck. No, it is not. It is not. So anyways, so we're here to talk about a different game, a game that maybe is related to LA Noire and that there is a detective thing involved.

[00:11:06] And this in a way. Yeah. Yeah. And this was a game I was really, really looking forward to playing because when I saw the cover and looked at it all the stuff I saw is like, oh, this game looks like it might be right up my alley.

[00:11:20] And that is hold up your long box psychic detective. Now for some reason on 3DO. This is super cheap. But on PS one, it's really fucking expensive. Yeah, I noticed that it was bizarre. Yeah, I'm not sure why either. But but yeah, psychic.

[00:11:38] I'm gonna like flat out say just from the start. I both loved and despise this game at the same time. I could see that. I could see that. Let's see. The I'll read a little bit of the back of the box.

[00:11:52] It says mine surf the black diamond with Eric Fox enter the mind altering life of psychic Eric Fox in this first thriller of a case black diamond you head trip into a sinister extra sensory enhanced world trying to solve the mystery behind the

[00:12:06] creep around in the lives and minds of the people you meet to discover their bizarre relationships and evil agendas interpret the clues you find in the retro retro cognitive flashes you receive throw your psychic weight around to get what you want.

[00:12:21] But be careful hop into the wrong heads and you could wind up a shambling idiot. That's how I felt playing this game. Yeah, yeah. And it's it's an ESRB game. So it's a little bit later and it's EA.

[00:12:36] Weirdly enough sort of it's the development of this game is interesting as I could not figure out exactly how much involvement EA had apparently they were involved slightly, but the majority of the games development was handled by a studio named Colossal pictures.

[00:12:53] Yes, they were like an entertainment media company that did like television programming and that kind of stuff.

[00:12:59] My guess is Colossal pictures probably did all of the like the the filming and at like say the digital picture side where they would film everything and then maybe EA came in say on the game development side to kind of piece together the UI and all the controls and that kind of stuff.

[00:13:16] And then they ended up producing it under the Electronic Arts Studios name, which is the first time I've ever heard Electronic Arts Studios. It was on one other game we played earlier, but I cannot remember for the life of me which one it was. Yeah, me either.

[00:13:35] So this game comes on three discs. I was on shockwave. Shockwave. Okay. So yeah, so this game comes on three discs and it has two manuals about the movie and playing the movie.

[00:13:49] So as you could guess this is an FMV style game where there is actors and acting happening and there is some form of interaction on the screen for the player to feel like they've immersed themselves in the movie without really doing so. It's

[00:14:06] It's you know, I wanted to like this game and I think you could probably tell because you know me. I love the FMV games right?

[00:14:16] And this is so close to falling into that area of like say a night trap or a sewer shark where it's like I'm having a good time with it. But I overall my time with it wasn't very high.

[00:14:31] So the way I found this game was it started off really good. Like I was like super interested. I mean, I love the cheese like the complete cheeseball acting like that.

[00:14:42] The acting is the one thing I really like about this game just because it has a great intro. It does and it is so absurd in like almost every way. I like that aspect of it.

[00:14:53] It kept me interested but the plot by the time you get to disc two just completely goes off the rails and I was so lost what was supposed to be going on like I was I'm still not even really sure at this point.

[00:15:06] Yeah, and I tried to find like a plot synopsis online and couldn't really find one like Wikipedia doesn't have one. So it's definitely one of those games that if you were taking very extensive notes, you could probably piece it all together.

[00:15:22] So basically the plot of the game is you play as a guy named Eric Fox who looks like Evan res. He looks like fuck what's his name? Jamie Kennedy.

[00:15:34] He looks like him a little bit and so he's a psychic and like one of like the actual psychics where he can like genuinely read people's minds and like actually view life through their their vantage points. But it also works at like a rec center or something.

[00:15:51] Yeah, like he's like one of those like almost like those Carnival acts that like guesses your weight or something like that's kind of what he's doing. He's like a magician showman entertainer type type of guy. Right.

[00:16:05] But yet every time he goes into somebody's brain, there's like the weird psychedelic trippy NIST that like 90s commercial surrealism thing, you know, get ready to hear a lot of screams. A lot of that. Yeah, it's like being in a nursery.

[00:16:24] Also, I have to point out that like one of the best like lines he has the start of the game is he makes a he makes makes this point about like one of his favorite parts about working at the places that he gets all these groupies.

[00:16:36] But then like a few seconds before that, he makes a point of also stating that the majority of his audience is old people. So he's just fucking old ladies. I was like, wait a minute. Good for him. You know what? Why not? They need love to you, right?

[00:16:50] It was like one of those things where I think they wrote that and they didn't think about it for like beyond like the actual line. No, I think there was a lack of thought kind of present throughout this whole game.

[00:17:01] So anyways, he's doing his act and then this lady named Lena. Am I saying that right? Lena? Yeah, she shows up and she's I think she's Russian. I think she's Russian. I think so. She's played by the OZ. Neac who the Polish.

[00:17:22] Holy egg close enough and she she you know, I don't know how she finds him necessarily, but I love how she starts her first conversation with them. She's like my father died. Yeah, it's like yeah, you started.

[00:17:38] Yeah, we get no context for her really at all other than she just shows up in like a leather jacket. It just somehow is allowed backstage where Eric is and then just basically tells him that like hey my father died.

[00:17:54] The circumstances are mysterious and since you're a psychic I would like you to try to help me figure out who who done it basically and he's just like sure. Why the hell not? This would be cute, right? Pay me and maybe we can get it on later.

[00:18:10] Basically, that's basically how he phrases it. Yeah, just total 90 sleazeball. And so you do and then the game starts. It's so is it weird to you that when there's like cutscenes they increase the size of the FMV to where it fills the whole screen.

[00:18:28] But then when the game starts it turns into like just this little small square in the center of the screen. It's like you need this much border. Do I really need to see the guy's eyeball in the corner that much?

[00:18:41] I think it has to do with the way the 3DO streams the video like because there's other stuff going on in the background. It can only have so much video on screen at once but there's not that much going on in the background. Anyway, it's just a border.

[00:18:55] I think it has to do with like the gameplay mechanics and stuff. I'm not a tech guy like a programming wizard by any means.

[00:19:01] So like I don't know exactly but I think there's reasons for why it has to do that because I think like when it's just playing a cutscene, it's literally just streaming the cutscene.

[00:19:10] But when it's doing gameplay and there's actually multiple video clips loaded at once and the way it switches behind. I think it's a memory issue. Honestly, that's probably why it's just it's just very strange to me.

[00:19:25] I will say one thing I really like that this game does from a presentation standpoint is obviously the main gimmick of this game is you're essentially it's kind of like Night Trap only instead of clicking on cameras. You're literally putting your brain in other people's heads.

[00:19:43] Yes, like the gameplay functions exactly like Night Trap where it's a constant continuous video. I mean you can pause it if you need to but yeah, it's just like long and continuous.

[00:19:54] And yeah, instead of clicking through the additional cameras just to find the vampires to kill them, right? Yeah, you're implanting yourself in the brains of other people so you can try to see all these different vantage points to try to

[00:20:07] figure out what exactly is going on because there are some characters who are more suspicious than others. But the idea of the game is that you play it multiple times so you can see all of these different vantage points and try to like

[00:20:20] piece it together for the best run in a sense, you know, so what has sort of a yeah, so it's similar to say like a Night Trap.

[00:20:29] But I think Night Trap works better as like say a solo play rather than a constantly repeating play because you don't have to replay it multiple times to get everything. You know what I mean?

[00:20:42] Like if you're just trying to beat Night Trap, if you find a walkthrough of where to go, whatever time, you beat the game in like 20 minutes, right? And this game kind of in theory, you could do the same thing.

[00:20:54] Beat the game in about like 30 ish minutes if you know where to go specifically. But the thing is like conceptually, I think this game is stronger than Night Trap because I love the idea of this game. Oh yeah. Absolutely love it.

[00:21:07] And as far as I know, it's never really been attempted again where it's like, oh, you're a detective, but you're also like a genuine psychic. And so you could use those abilities to help solve crimes, right?

[00:21:19] Like it's such a really interesting idea and presenting it in the sort of FMV way, I think allows them to have some more weird trippy visuals and make it come off as like almost like a weird surreal TV show. Like it's very David Lynch, you know. Yeah.

[00:21:34] I've mentioned it before, but like Twin Peaks was such a huge influence on a lot of 90s media that was trying to be experimental and Psycho Detective, I think fits perfectly into that. Like they watched Twin Peaks and went, oh, we should try something like that.

[00:21:51] Like one thing I think is really cool is the way that they handled the filming of this game is they actually because you can go into literally anybody's head on the screen at like different times.

[00:22:03] They actually film every single the same scene from every person's perspective and they all stream simultaneously. So say you're in a conversation with one character and then they're having a conversation with another character.

[00:22:16] If you switch between their two heads, the scene is like seamlessly switches, but then you can switch over to say like Chadster over in the corner and he's doing something else over there. But then what's I was going to say, but then what's really funny is your character.

[00:22:34] He because you're not in your body at the time, you always wonder what he's doing. He literally just wanders around. So like when you like go back to him, sometimes he'll just be staring at a wall or just like a cigarette on the

[00:22:47] counter or like a cat or something. Yeah, he's kind of Blair Witched in the corner. And yeah, the transitions are I think as seamless as the 3DO could make it.

[00:22:57] Because there were some times I would switch between a scene and it felt like a good vital couple seconds went by the stuff that's like, I probably could have used that, you know, because in these kind of games, you feel like every moment counts every word counts.

[00:23:11] So you're trying to keep track of everything. But but it's I think it could work better. But I feel like this type of idea is meant more for say, like a point and click adventure game or if you

[00:23:27] want to get a little bit more modern, like say like a Life is Strange kind of thing because I was thinking that I'm like this could work as like if they wanted to do like a Life is Strange sort of in this idea where it's like

[00:23:39] you're a detective or say like, you know, Max Caulfield, which the new one is starring her. But like say she becomes like part of like she becomes a detective because she wants to try to use her powers for the betterment of other people.

[00:23:54] And you play it almost in that kind of sense. But here I just don't think the concept and the execution gel as well as they could be. And I don't know if that's limited by the technology, like the game developers themselves, like the game

[00:24:10] design being flawed or maybe it's a combination of them. I'm not too sure. But for me, it never really comes together. You know, like that first disc when you're kind of going through that mansion and you're looking all the different

[00:24:25] people and then there's like the specific items because if you click on an item, you get like a very weird like psychic like flashback or something. Right? Like to me, like the one that got me the most was when you're talking to Chad, who's like a one of

[00:24:42] those like snake oil salesman. He's always trying to sell you something. Yeah, a lot of chest hair flowing out of there. Yeah, the Chadster as our main character likes to call him.

[00:24:51] He has like this like cat paw thing and like you stare at it and then it just like cuts to this like cat jump scare. And I was like, what the fuck? Yeah, very, very, very weird.

[00:25:04] But yeah, I think you agree that that mansion section, like that first part is probably handled the best. It's the most comprehensible. Yeah, because you kind of figure out like, oh, you know, like say like Sylvia. She's kind of like a she's very she's very sauce, right?

[00:25:21] She also had the ability to kick you out of her head, which was interesting. That was and I don't know if they ever really go further with that. No, because she like dies pretty soon after that or like in the next disc, I believe. She does.

[00:25:35] I don't remember, but but another issue I think the game has is that like the transitions from the discs are basically the exact same no matter what you do. Yeah, which really hurts the game and this sort of idea of choice because not to get

[00:25:53] too far ahead of ourselves. There's 14 endings. Yeah, and I saw like three of them. And they were I don't know, man. Like I did two on here and then on YouTube. I watched was considered the best ending. Yeah, so and they're whatever.

[00:26:17] This game is like I think the definition of the concept of like true art is incomprehensible at times. Yeah, it can be very abstract and I do like abstract art. But but this game, it's like having a game be abstract art, especially with

[00:26:34] something like this, which is trying to be like a like a story based thing, you know, like leaving it open to interpretation. I mean can kind of work. But again, it's just I don't think it's executed strong enough to have that sort of effect to it.

[00:26:50] You know what I mean? Yeah, especially because they're very much trying to tell a serious story here. But this is 90s FMV game levels of acting. So like a lot of the acting comes off way more hilarious than it should.

[00:27:06] I do think the quality of acting is for this era FMV games, I think is decently high. I think it's not as it's not as good as say the Gabriel Knight games social Gabriel Knight to like the acting in that game is fantastic or even

[00:27:24] what is how was it called like the black Dahlia, which is which I think was like in like 98 like the acting in that one is pretty strong. Even even Phantasmagoria 2 to a certain extent has some like

[00:27:38] decent acting in it, but it's also kind of cheesy in its own way. Yeah, the X-Files games another pretty good one. Yeah, yeah, like there are some like definitely really strongly acted FMV games from this time.

[00:27:49] Like I don't even want to bring up the modern ones because earlier this year I played through immortality and that's like the Sam Barlow game and that's probably the best game I've played this year and that is incredibly unfair to compare that game with this.

[00:28:02] So I'm not going to do that. But even for its era, I think the acting isn't bad. Like there's some kind of there is some kind of cheesy corny corny actors, but it feels like it's more specific to that character.

[00:28:17] I think honestly like the main villain is kind of hammy, but I feel like he was meant to be kind of hammy. Yeah, I like him. I think honestly by week the weakest actor in this game is arguably the main character in a lot of ways. Yes.

[00:28:31] I cannot stand Mr. Eric's smarmy ass Fox who has to make everything a joke. My favorite line like another great like Nathan Drake without the charisma. Yeah, another great line is like when you first arrive at the Mansion Party and what's her name? Lena Lena.

[00:28:52] She's like that's where he fell from my father and he and he literally just goes ouch. Just like what it's so weird man. Like this game is just very very unique. But unfortunately being unique doesn't make it good. Yeah, like it especially in disc 2 like there's another great

[00:29:18] scene where you're leaving from the party and you drop off. You're essentially going your separate ways and then you decide you have to tail her and Monica Monica who is Lena's sister. Yeah, and you're just right up her ass with your headlights

[00:29:32] on and it's like how does she not see you like like I don't know if you've ever seen I think it's like Joel Haver or whatever where he does those like rotoscope videos and there's the one where it's like, oh when you're tailing

[00:29:46] the NPC and they're like, oh is that car that's weirdly suspiciously 20 feet behind us like following us. They're like the whole time is like God no, you know, like when you tail people in video games, it's always

[00:29:57] like you have to be this far from the car and it's like that's not weird at all. Right? But but yeah in this game, you're just right up on her ass and then you think she was just in the car.

[00:30:07] Like you don't get to expect that and then when she gets out of her car, she walks right towards the car looks at it and then walks away and it's like. Like okay, yeah, she was probably like, oh, he has plot armor.

[00:30:20] I have to keep moving on, you know, and that's like yeah, she goes to the bar. I think and then like Sylvia is at the bar looking at like secret government shit or something. I'm not quite sure because she's looking at like a picture of the White House.

[00:30:35] Like a fucking TV monitor and then there's like that other guy that comes up to the car and he's like, hey, you need to like, hey, I need to get in the car. Like he's trying to like he's trying to sales

[00:30:46] menu on something and you have the choice to either let him get in or tell him to fuck off, you know, which is interesting. The game gives you quite a bit of freedom of choice for an FMV game and that you can there's

[00:31:00] so many different people you can sort of as we said, like get in their mind and some of them you can stay in there for like a good long fucking time and then, you know, say like you can tail Monica or not tail Monica.

[00:31:13] You can tell that dude to get in or not to get in, you know, like it's trying its best to have the variation within the FMVs itself. But until you get to the very end of the game, it just it never really changes that much,

[00:31:29] you know, because you can also do nothing like you can just put the controller down, just follow Eric the whole time never go anywhere or do anything differently. But the swapping from each disk remains the same. You know, and I think that's what hurts the

[00:31:47] game more than anything is that it's an illusion of choice rather than actually being a choice kind of Stanley parable in that way. Yeah. And like I said earlier, the this game's biggest issue is just the fact that like the plot literally loses.

[00:32:04] It's basically loses all sense of where it is by the time you get to this too. Yeah, because because there's like that one guy who gets murdered at the mansion, right? And then sheds the Chadster Chadster and then people just like leave that party and then

[00:32:20] you start getting visions of this like other dude getting murdered and then it's like you get there right in time to see him get murdered or not and then the cops take you in for that but not but like the cops never go with like the mansion murder.

[00:32:33] And so I think it's like disc 3 opens with you in jail and then and then Lena comes and sees you in jail and then you just are let go, you know, like I'm assuming she probably like paid your bail or something.

[00:32:46] But if you're a murder suspect, my guess is you don't have a bail and if you do, it's probably not enough for her to pay it like that didn't make any fucking sense. And then and then yeah, you meet like sort of

[00:32:59] the main guy who like he like he's like a like a corporation business guy or whatever and he's and he's doing this ad campaign about like war the war on depression, which is such like an American way to tackle anything just make it a fucking war then people

[00:33:15] will care about it for some reason. And then and yeah, there's like the game completely goes off the fucking rails like the idea is he's meant to help figure out these murders, but then like murders are happening and you're not quite sure what the hell is going on.

[00:33:31] It almost feels like you're following Eric losing his mind the whole time, but the game isn't going for that, you know, yeah, it's like the the scene like one of my favorite scenes is when he is in jail and he's being interrogated

[00:33:45] by the two officers like his reasoning and what he's explaining is perfectly reasonable to him. But like just the way he says it makes him sound like he's straight up like a method. Yeah, yeah, it makes him sound very fucking guilty and they're just like what the hell

[00:33:59] is this guy on and then they just let you go. Yeah, there's like someone here really likes you and then Lena just picks you up and then you just go on as if nothing fucking happened and you never see those cops again.

[00:34:13] Yeah, well like it's a shame when like fucking night trap has more consistency than this. This feels like they were trying to be really ambitious and they like wrote themselves completely into like it was like they were to take it's kind of like the

[00:34:27] Spider-Man clone saga where they just kept adding shit to it and it got more and more convoluted as it went on to the point where yeah, it gets really muddied. The water gets really muddied like there's point A and point B like

[00:34:39] beginning to end and then like the everything in the middle is such a jumbled mess that like just getting to point B isn't almost impossible. Yeah, yeah, like if this game had a much better script, I think it would have been able to deal with all this

[00:34:54] other really like really weird shit and like and yeah, as far as like gameplay goes there is really isn't much gameplay beyond this stuff except for the very end which is referenced a little bit because you start in disc one then you go to this two then

[00:35:09] you go to disc three and then you go back to disc one. Yeah, which is weird and then disc one has sort of the finale sort of where it's referenced earlier in the game that there's like this weird like board game. It's like weird colored board game

[00:35:24] thing and then you end up playing it with these like weird like I don't know like the souls of these people or like or something and then if you do them in certain specific ways, that's how you trigger the different endings and

[00:35:40] I don't know about you, but I didn't know what the fuck I was doing this at this point and like how to like it's like how and why I was moving things to where they were because like the representations for things were incredibly vague and at this point

[00:35:55] the game had kind of lost me. So I was just kind of moving random shit around until I got something resembling an ending. I kind of fudged my way through it until I got to got an ending. I was like, I have no idea what I'm doing here.

[00:36:08] Yeah. And even if you look up say the the best ending it's not even really that good. It's just kind of like it's almost like a what-you-expect kind of ending from something like this. Yeah. And it's just it just it's so underwhelming and like kind of

[00:36:24] disappointing because I thought this could have been something really cool and I think it has potential to be something kind of cool, but it just it never really meets that expectation and I don't know maybe it's just because the people were making this. This was probably their first

[00:36:38] attempt at something like this and maybe they just weren't sure of what to do with this and as far as I know they never made another game. So I actually did look that up. They only made four games in their entire existence and so

[00:36:55] this wasn't their first game. Their first game was a. Educational looking game called roughs bone. Oh, it's a living books. It's a living books game. That's okay. That's so that's that's educational. Hide your kids the books alive. They also made Play-Doh creations. I mean who hasn't who hasn't

[00:37:17] made Play-Doh creations and their fight. What the fuck is this? Their final game is koala lump or journey to the Edge and the game art is only hell. Yes koala that got run over like what the fuck is this hell yet now we're talking fucking brought broader bun.

[00:37:38] This is like a PC thing. I guarantee you. This is on my band and where I guarantee it. It's an adventure game puzzle elements. Let's see. There it is, baby. What did I tell you? It's got a four out of five at it from two votes

[00:37:58] and I'm seeing the screenshots of it. It looks like point and click adventure game in the 90s on the PC. Yeah, that's what it looks like that cover art though. Oh yeah, but and the thing is seeing it as more of like your typical point click

[00:38:13] adventure game makes me go. Well, that's probably what they should have done with Psych Detective. Honestly, yeah, which which is a shame because you know it I feel like this game could have been something special. You know what I mean? I feel like if it was made

[00:38:27] nowadays like this idea like by a studio that's like Taylor made for doing stuff like this and they had a better writing team to actually make the story make sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Sam yeah, Sam Barlow. If you're listening to this remake such a detective God damn it.

[00:38:42] You can make it work or make a game with a similar or make like a game with like a similar concept. Yeah, this whole like like yeah, taking over people's brains and trying to use it to solve like a murder case and then just getting involved

[00:38:58] in all this weird fucking shit you know, like because in a lot of ways immortality is kind of that where it's it's set up to where it's like hey, this person went missing forever ago and we're trying to figure out what happened. So here's like all these clips

[00:39:13] from that we could find of her from like the three film project she did and some other stuff kind of surrounding it, you know, and like watch these and try to you know, piece together what happened kind of thing and then there's interesting twists and turns that happen

[00:39:27] as well. And there's hidden clips within the clips and and to be fair immortality probably its biggest issue is that the story it tells is very nonlinear. So probably when you finish the game and get everything, you'll probably be like me and type in like immortality story

[00:39:47] explained like what the fuck was that right? And then you read it and go. Oh, OK. Then it all kind of figures out. Whereas this I'm sure there probably is a story synopsis out there somewhere that kind of puts it all into perspective and maybe that helps but

[00:40:05] but I feel like the game should do a better job of that. You know what I mean? Because at least with them because at least with the mortality like the game is just acted so much better and it's so fucking intriguing and interesting the entire way.

[00:40:21] And then there's a lot of things you pick up on as you play the game that, you know, if anything the synopsis is meant to help piece to piece it all together for you. So it can be like, oh, OK, that's why I'm excited. The same thing

[00:40:33] with her story where I had a rough idea. But then when I looked it up later, I went, oh, OK, that's what it all meant. You know, yeah, I did read apparently this game like the creators actually took it and they like removed the game aspect

[00:40:49] and like edited together as like a as like a short film. And I guess they actually presented it at film festivals for a while. Yeah, I would like to watch that. As far as I know, it's not available. There are YouTube recreations of it. Yeah.

[00:41:06] At least from their idea of what it could have been Yeah. So that's that's something I'm actually kind of interested in. It's probably lost media at this point, but that would be my guess as well. Because when you look up Sighted Detective on YouTube, you get say

[00:41:24] like, oh, the best ending of The Grand Slam where it's all put together. There's like an hour and a half long like long play of it. And you know, there's people like talking about it for sure because it is a game that is rather interesting,

[00:41:38] but it just never again. It just it never comes together. And that's and to me that's a shame because I really wanted to like this one. Like I thought this would have been fucking cool as hell. But unfortunately, it just wasn't. You know what I mean?

[00:41:54] Yeah, I mean, it's a good idea. It just was not executed well. Yeah, like this is in my fucking wheelhouse, but it just man. This is probably the saddest one for me, unfortunately, because I was I was hyped to play this one man. I mean, it's sad

[00:42:12] because I did really like like playing it, but my God, it was so fucking frustrating like there. Yeah. Yeah, because there's just so much random shit going on and maybe I'm just too much of a modern gamer like I'm so used to having subtitles on all the time.

[00:42:28] Yeah, when old games don't have them at all, it makes it harder for me to like keep track of everything. You know, I was trying my best. To me, like my favorite part of this game was just how absurd and out of left field it could get

[00:42:42] at times because there was so yeah, where like the character would just say something and I'd be like what like where did that come from? Yeah, it's it's style over substance with this guy. So yeah, like a genuine shame. I'm just this this episode made me sad.

[00:43:05] So reception wise, this game was mixed for the most part. I a lot of people liked its presentation but found the story confusing, which is seems to be the general it has a consensus like it has a solid presentation and I feel like the production value

[00:43:21] in the the film part of itself is like decently strong. Even it like it's probably. Like somewhere between like a made for TV movie or like or like a low budget theatrical movie in terms of the production value, but it's not bad at all.

[00:43:38] And again, I think the acting quality is like solid. I think it's shot decently well and it feels like it was a professionally made product. You know, it didn't feel like plumbers don't wear ties this fucking amateur, you know, ramshackle production. But yeah, that that unfortunately is more

[00:43:57] memorable than this. Is it sad that I would rather play that? No, I feel the same way like I mean, this like is entertaining, but like that's plumbers. Plumbers is entertaining for an entirely different reason. Exactly. This is more like it's entertaining, but you just kind of

[00:44:16] feel empty after playing it. Yeah. Yeah. Where it's like, oh, that was interesting. And then you're like, but but what was that? Like why did we do that? Like it starts off so strong and then just falls off a cliff like yeah, by the second disc.

[00:44:33] And it's sad, man. It's sad. Yeah, I mean, other than that, like. Obviously there's like no menus really in this game. It's pretty much you starting up and the game goes from there. I will say an important little fun fact about this game. The music was composed

[00:44:52] by a man named Patrick Gleason. And if you know your your jazz history, Patrick Gleason for a short time worked with Mr. Herbie Hancock during his one dishy avant-garde period. And for funsies, since I have it right here, he first appeared on Herbie Hancock's Crossings record from

[00:45:10] 1972, which this album is fucking amazing. It is complete off-the- wall avant-garde jazz music very like a Bitches Brew inspired like experimental stuff, but it is really, really fucking cool. Patrick Gleason does a bunch of electronic synthesizer stuff all over it in almost like a post-production sense.

[00:45:34] And then he ended up joining the band and even performed on their follow-up album Sex Tant. But when the Muandishi band was disbanded for being too big and not really financially viable, Patrick Gleason unfortunately left and never worked with Herbie again. But later on he went to do

[00:45:55] a bunch of soundtracks like and other things as well. Like he was a producer and engineer on Devo's first record. For a long time I had an album of his called Patrick Gleason's Star Wars, which is him doing like a weird synthy version of like

[00:46:11] the Star Wars music. It's not like the famous like disco version of the Star Wars theme. This is much more like out there experimental Star Wars stuff, but it's kind of neat for what it is. And yeah, he was involved in like a lot of film soundtracks

[00:46:26] like Apocalypse Now and The Bedroom Window, things like that. I mean, I like the music in this game. Like it's not anything amazing. Like, but like for what it was, it was, it worked perfectly for the environment and what was going on. Exactly, exactly. Like you can tell

[00:46:42] Patrick Gleason, he's very much like a synthesizer kind of guy. And, you know, kind of in a weird way was a early pioneer of synthesizers and what they could do, you know. Like he might not be as famous as say Wendy Carlos is for pioneering what synthesizers

[00:46:59] could do in music. But I think is a bit of a lost-to-time name that should get a little bit more recognition. So that's a little fun fact I threw at you and a little jazz history for you. So, nice. One other fun fact too I discovered was,

[00:47:14] so I was going through the actors in this game and most of them are pretty much unknowns. The only one that has a Wikipedia page I could find was actually Bieta Posniak and I was curious if she'd done any other video game stuff and she actually, ironically,

[00:47:29] she didn't do anything after this game for almost like two decades and then she came out of nowhere came back and she was the voice of Scarlett in Mortal Kombat 11. Well good for her. Like just randomly out of nowhere. So, well maybe she

[00:47:43] hey maybe she needed the money. You never know. I just think it's funny like I looked at her video gameography and it literally goes from 1995 to 2019. I'm like oh, which is pretty fucking cool. So, shouts out to her. Yeah. So now, must play okay, stay away.

[00:48:03] I'm just going to Man. Fucking man. This is cheating but I'm literally just going to say just look up look up the cutscenes on YouTube. That's really the best recommendation if you watch a lot of play watch a lot of play of it. Like watching it

[00:48:21] and playing it are basically the same experience. Yeah. So, yeah, you're better off just doing that. If you're interested enough just go to YouTube look up a long play or look up the one of like the best ending. Just watch that like the best ending once like 36 minutes.

[00:48:39] So, you're kind of in and out. So, just go ahead and watch that and probably go huh that was weird and then move on with your life. Yeah. Like what you should do. Because honestly like if you don't own a 3DO I wouldn't recommend

[00:48:53] getting one to play this. And obviously the PlayStation version is weirdly expensive. Yeah. I'm pretty sure this game is easy to find on PC but it's on my abandonware if you're curious enough. Yeah. For summary on price charting the 3DO version loose is $19.99 complete is $40.51 and new is $94.

[00:49:19] Whereas on the PlayStation 1 loose is $89 complete is $136 and new is $355. And I have no idea why. My guess is it must have had a much shorter print run on PS1 or maybe people just think the PS1 version is the better version but from what I gathered

[00:49:40] there's virtually no differences between either of them. So, I don't know. Yeah. Like this one's just disappointing. I think that's this has been probably the most disappointing game I think we've covered so far. Yeah. Because I think we both thought this would have been a gem.

[00:49:59] This would have been something kind of neat. See, I thought it the worst it was going to be so bad it's good. And it doesn't even do that. It's not Sewer Shark. Like Sewer Shark is so dog shit that it's kind of amazing. Like but this

[00:50:13] yeah, it doesn't come even close to that unfortunately. See, this is like you see the potential and it just lets you down and I feel like that's worse. Yeah. I would agree. I think that is the worst way to handle it. So so so you broke my heart

[00:50:28] Eric Fox. You broke my heart. I'm curious when we do the ranking where this one's going to go because me too. Me too. There are we've we've played some shit and I want to know where it ranks with among that. Yeah, we're getting close to that aren't we?

[00:50:44] Yeah, this is episode 44. Oh, we got we got to do at least a handful more games before we get there. Yeah, and we're coming up on the year anniversary since we restarted the show, which is can you believe it folks? Can you believe it? I can't.

[00:51:02] I don't know where the years been. We've gotten dozens of followers since then. Thank you guys. You're great. We actually have burger was saying that we got mentioned on a server completely unrelated. So that's that's something. Do you think he showed off his clout going?

[00:51:16] Oh, I know those guys knowing burger problem. Probably not. Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if he if he was just like, oh yeah, I know. I know those guys. They're assholes. Yeah, fuck that. Fuck that. The typical burger response. Love you burger. Yeah. So

[00:51:38] do we have an idea what we want to play next? See the other day I was looking I went through my collection and I I kind of sorted it between what we've played and what we've not played and my discs of what we've not played

[00:51:52] hold on a second. Just the discs, not the long boxes is like this. These are the games we have I have that we haven't played and the ones we have is probably about this high. So yeah, we're starting to at least on my side

[00:52:10] we're starting to get a bit low but you know is it do you want to start doing the golf games or you're not ready for that yet? Because I know you wanted to do all of them in one go. Um I think we could start preparing for that.

[00:52:27] I know Aaron said Aaron started to finally play Tripp's so that's going to be coming eventually. Okay. I still want to do Captain Quasar but I know that's a pricey one. Yeah, it worst comes to worst. I'll emulate it. Okay. I do have a

[00:52:43] a game that I think I bought randomly called Starblade. Do you have Starblade? I don't but I can look into it. It's a cheap one. I'll have to look into that. It's a it's this guy and it has it has Namco on it. Yeah. So

[00:53:03] could be something interesting. I don't know. I know you don't have it yet but we also have Zadnos the People's Party which is a Oh yeah, yeah I haven't I haven't looked into that yet. It's the third and final game in the Twisted Trilogy as they call it.

[00:53:20] Yeah. Maybe maybe not do that one next but I could I could probably order that one to do later on. You know, they're not that in-depth. Let's let's do the golf games next. Yeah, let's do it. There's how many of them? That was like six. So we have

[00:53:40] we're going to cover five of them. I believe it's we're going to do the EA one. There's that fancy one and then there's the three like the three that are basically the same game just with different clubs. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we'll be each we Laylay and Wicked 18.

[00:54:02] I believe I believe so. Yes. So we can we can yeah, that'll probably be a two-weeker so we can you know, play them all and kind of put them all together. So and then maybe after that we'll do a Zadnos People's Party because looking at it

[00:54:18] the prices for it not terrible. Yeah, the jewel case is pretty cheap and that's probably what I'll just end up getting. Yeah. All right. So yeah, we'll plan for that but in the meantime guys so we had it we announced at the start of the show tonight.

[00:54:36] We're going to be streaming the over on the for a super pod Network. We're going to be streaming our thoughts on the recent Nintendo Direct. So if anyone's interested be sure to check that out and other than that

[00:54:52] do you have anything else to shut up before we close us up or nothing really at the moment. Of course, we are part of the super pod Network. So if any of you listening don't listen to Super Pod Saga Ghost Radio and novel console

[00:55:07] all those boys make sure you check those all out go to the website super pod Network. There is a growing blogging scene in there where people write like little articles about things. I have a couple in there Bill. I don't know if you have any in there yet.

[00:55:22] I'm working on and top five Atlas Games project with Aaron and Adam right now. So and I Dre yeah, that should be coming out eventually and I have some ideas for blogs. I want to do down the down in the future as well.

[00:55:37] So we'll keep those up and and the and the Network specials. Well, we'll probably start doing a few more of them for more like bigger events or to kind of wrap up the game Club as well. We'll probably do that probably probably near the end of the year.

[00:55:50] So yeah, make sure make sure you follow along in the whole super pod Network and then eventually we'll probably be throwing in like little ads or whatever bullshit in there. Whatever Aaron wants to do. I don't know. Yeah, once we figure all that fun stuff out.

[00:56:05] And yeah, and shout out to herbie Hancock. Listen to more jazz people. It's good for your brain. Also listen to budgie. I've been listening to a lot of it. Listen to Welsh Geddy Lee. Yeah. Red fan people. It was early heavy metal David. What that Metallica song?

[00:56:28] And the Megadeth song melt the ice away. Yeah, they did get some Roger Dean covers so good on them. True. All right. But anyways guys once again, thanks for joining us on the 3DO experience. You could find the 3DO experience on all the major podcasting platforms.

[00:56:43] Pick the Apple podcast Spotify. You can find all of our links at Linktree slash the barber who games and you can join us either at the GNC podcast studios discord server or the super pod Network discord server where you'll find all of us

[00:56:57] and all of our nonsense over there. And since some wild stuff happens over in the super pod server, that's all I saw an argument with Barack Obama and a fucking owl. As it should be. But anyways guys once again, thank you

[00:57:16] for joining us and we'll see you all next time. Bye bye. If you're not playing on a 3DO system playing with.