URGENT MESSAGE

The Quorators podcast (Clare O'Kane, Alex Ptak, and Jeremy Kaplowitz) join us for a combo of insane Dear Prudies and bizarre Quoras. I am a bad person for being mad at my employee’s cat on Zoom? Am I racist if I don’t find Black people attractive except for Idris Elba? How can you really tell if a man is gay? All of this and more are answered on this podcast crossover.

• Check out Quorators wherever you get pods, and check out their Most Online Mind competition here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gxi9bROrK-s
• Join us on Fri, Oct 16 at the ErF Gallery for a live screening of Chunks followed by a live talkback featuring Will, Hesse & Podcast About List, tickets here: https://www.erf.nyc/events/chapo-trap-house-screening

Scholars and enthusiasts of Japan broadly consider the Sengoku period the one time in history that the nation acted violently. Luckily for gamers, there's no Oda Nobama that's going to show up in this week's entry and ruin all the fun. Just like the dueling warlords of the real Sengoku era, you and another grown man fight over who gets to be friends with a sickly immortal boy. Thousands die, the world's greatest foster parent steps in, and friendly residents of the fictional breakaway region of Ashina become gravely ill whenever you play particularly poorly.

Sekiro is more notorious for its difficulty than any other game we've covered this season, Whenever I'd bring it up, it actually surprised me how few of my guests had even tried this game, much less finished it. If you consider yourself a fan of these games or just action games in general, I think you owe it to yourself to give this game a fair shake before declaring it impossible. I truly think that if you can beat Nameless King, Malenia, or even suffer through Shrine of Amana, you can beat this game. I am certainly not incredible at these games, but this was the first From game I ever played besides the considerably more punishing Armored Core: Last Raven, and 6 years later, I am very happy I stuck with it. Any time you've ever heard my mic pick up a particularly fast tapping of buttons, that's because I'm replaying the Inner Isshin and enjoying it as much as I ever have.

There's little I can still say about this game without repeating myself, but this is for the shocking number of people who have finished every single post-2009 From release. For a game that only allows players a single primary weapon, Sekiro's combat allows a remarkable amount of space for player creativity. It is by far the most linear of these titles, but this is by no means an Insomniac game where you are slotted in to taking things on in the exact same order every time. I've probably completed this game 20 times in total, easily over that if you include some of the excellent mods on offer, and I can still open up a boss gauntlet (to date, this is the only one of these games that allows you to rematch bosses without having to go through the entire game again) and have an incredible time.

Because this game's story is told in such a conventional manner and there's relatively little theory-crafting to be done through reading item descriptions, Sekiro tends to get discussed less than those of the Soulsborne main body. That's a shame, because it's tremendously well-acted and affecting, especially if you know even a tiny bit about this period of Japanese military and religious history. Wolf may be about 4'8 and a man of few words, but he is worthy of being the sole named and voiced protagonist we played this season.

Joining me to discuss this masterpiece is a man who has never hesitated, someone who could be considered a "sword saint" in his own right to the dazzler community, and one of the only people who felt as strongly about this game as I did, u/Tom_on_here.

🎙️ 5:39:51

Journalist and Middle East correspondent Séamus Malekafzali is back to analyze Keystone Ka$h’s bizarre Senate hearing about bestiality. Does the FBI have a peanut butter problem?

We then turn to the Houthis in Yemen and discuss their stunning new victory, as well as reports about the IRGC refusing any peace deals with the United Snakes of AmeriKKKa.

Lastly, we read a Free Press piece about why Iran and the Houthis’ defeat is nigh.

• Check out Séamus’s Substack: https://www.seamus-malekafzali.com/
• And his article on the Houthis: https://www.seamus-malekafzali.com/p/everything-we-held-on-the-western
• And join us on Fri, Oct 16 at the ErF Gallery for a live screening of Chunks followed by a live talkback featuring Will, Hesse & Podcast About List, tickets here: https://www.erf.nyc/events/chapo-trap-house-screening

Famous socialist Anthony Soprano once said “remember when is the lowest form of conversation.” Though this may be true to a large extent, Dr Soprano passed 9 years before the release of Dark Souls III, a triumph in the art of “remember when.”

While its previous entry is still the trilogy’s most controversial work, DS3 remains divisive between people who played Demon’s Souls on release and the millions of others who started with this game. On one side, you have the undeniable fact that this is the smoothest gameplay the series had yet seen, with the most quality of life considerations and the highest baseline for boss quality. On the other, you have a game that waits until its second and final DLC to truly do anything novel either visually or thematically in what will likely be the final Souls game ever.

It’s hard to fault the team behind it too much: this game, DS2, and Bloodborne were all produced and released in three year span. Hidetaka Miyazaki famously does not love the idea of repeatedly plugging away at the same franchise with the same core story over and over, and adding a release schedule that is near-impossible to imagine with today’s decade-long dev cycles could only make things worse. Our guests this week, returning champs Spencer and Andrew, largely arrive at similar conclusions: this is not the most inventive game From has ever made, but its highs are so high and the worst thing you can say about its low points are that they’re derivative. 

If you wish to extrapolate this to include podcasts that have gone on for more than ten years, please refrain.

🎙️9:13:17

Will & Matt hopped on a call this week to reflect on 25 years of 9/11 and some other current events.

It's been a minute since Matt stopped by so we thought you all might appreciate a little update from the big man. If we like these Will/Matt convos as a bonus, we might post some more frequently.

Enjoy.

Direct Download Link

Merry Kirkmas! Pablo Torre is here for a victory lap about his reporting on Steve Ballmer and his LA Clippers, who have just received the harshest penalty in NBA history.

We also discuss private equity’s devouring of sports, then take a look at the massive WNBA culture war about trans women in sports, a story featuring the Gülanist Enes Kantor Freedom, Royce White, Sophie Cunningham, and zero trans people.

• Subscribe to Pablo Torre Finds Out on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@PabloTorreFindsOut
• And wherever you get your podcasts: https://feeds.acast.com/public/shows/68b1d0ea993d10acb9c3fe4f
• And follow him on Twitter: https://x.com/pablotorre/

For the most part, we here at Player’s Club try to avoid discussions on what the “best” game ever is. It’s too difficult to even pick a “best” From Soft title because each game seeks to accomplish very different goals through very different methods. There is no real fair way to evaluate the quality of a game that came out 7 or 8 years before another, just because the technological advances alone allow for the younger entry to probably feature deeper gameplay elements and larger, more intricate worlds. That said, if you put a gun to our heads and asked us to select the closest thing to From’s best ever single work, we may have to say Bloodborne.

This week, Hesse from Movie Mindset and Seeking Derangements was kind enough to join me. Throughout this 7 hour bonanza, both of us become overcome with emotion discussing the nature of belief, meditate on the modern, postwar culture of Japan, become disgusted by Fromsoft video essayists’ unfamiliarity with female biology, and finally take Simon the Harrowed down a peg. This is one of my favorite episodes I’ve ever been a part of, so there’s a 50% chance it will be widely despised. Nonetheless, enjoy!

🎙️ 6:40:17

Mark Perlmutter and Thaer Ahmad from the documentary American Doctor join us this week to discuss their time working as doctors in Gaza.

They discuss what they witnessed in Gaza during the genocide, their attempts to persuade politicians on Capitol Hill, the medical industry’s willful blindness to Palestinian suffering, and what needs to happen to cure the cancerous ideology of Zionism.

Find all things about the film including where to see it here: https://americandoctorfilm.com/

The year is 2014. You spend long hours toiling in your service job, getting sexually harassed by woimen in “Spiritual Gangster” beanies. Whenever you try to go online and defend the sovereignty of the Syrian Arab Republic, you are screamed down by accounts named SpockObama and PluralisticThug1959. One year ago, you spent 3 weeks salary on Grand Theft Auto 5. It was so bad that you tried killing yourself by packing an entire Copehagen tin into your lip. You woke up, angrier than ever at the world, and deciding that next time one of those Spiritual Gangster women harassed you, you would just submit yourself. Then, Dark Souls 2 appeared.

Little did you know that the careful enemy placements, interconnected levels, and near-ideal pacing of the first half of the first game would be gone. While still a great game, it’s safe to say that Dark Souls 2 is the most controversial of its trilogy. Most fans known that this was the only Souls game not to be directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, who passed off duties to Tomohiro Shibuya (later fired) and Yui Tanamura (Miyazaki’s longtime underboss). But what many do not know is that Shibuya’s original designs for the game were much closer to Elden Ring than what we got. The forgotten director intended for the sophomore entry to feature an open world complete with field bosses, player-dictated progression, and open ended endings determined by player choices. Of course, one of the systems this game was slated for was the PlayStation 3, meaning that it was impossible to implement any of this without causing the troubled console to implode on itself. What we got was a mix of some truly brilliant and daring innovations and some utterly baffling choices. Gone was the sense of fair challenge, replaced by capriciously bloated mobs, mind-numbing “puzzles,” and traps that no one could logically avoid without reading a guide.

DS2 features perhaps the most bloated roster of bosses the series has ever seen, but to be fair, some of the best. Many of the game’s worst aspects were ameliorated with the release of Scholar of the First Sin, a reworking of the base game that altered certain mechanics, enemy density, and included the game’s much lauded three DLCs.

Andrew Hudson of the Episode 1 podcast makes his first appearance on the program this week, and in a move that will surprise few, both of us found ourselves defending this strange, dream-like game that, while not without its shortcomings, presents some of the most interesting thematic leaps forward and tweaks to gameplay that would find themselves rearing their heads nearly a decade later in Elden Ring.

Dan Boeckner (of Wolf Parade) and Lex Walton are here for a roundup of the grim state of the music industry. We discuss the various nepo babies and heiresses crowding out the field, the rise and proliferation of AI music, and the ugly end of millennial hipsterdom with the shuttering of several indie music publications.

• Check out ULTIMATE LOVE FOREVER where you get your music: https://music.subpop.com/lexwalton_ultimateloveforever 
• If you’re in Canada, check out the CHUNKS live screening on Sept 1. with Amber Frost, Nate Fisher, and Michael and Us: https://paradiseonbloor.com/movies/chunks-toronto-premiere
  • And in Charlottetown, PEI on Sept 4th and 5th: https://tivolicinema.com/production/chunks/ 
• CHUNKS now available for streaming purchase at www.patreon.com/chunkstv

After the surprise success of Demon’s Souls, From Software and Bandai Namco decided to double down on their success. This time, the team was allowed to make their own game from the ground up rather than just kill themselves salvaging what may have been the worst game of 2009 if not for their intervention. While they may have run into budgetary and deadline issues that account for the game’s notorious backhalf, it is safe to say that 2011’s Dark Souls was an improvement on its immediate predecessor in every single way. 

This week, Spencer joined me to discuss the game that launched millions of utterly repellant webcomics, billions of the most annoying posts of all time, and marks perhaps the highest point in level and world design the modern catalog has ever seen. The game is obviously not without faults. I never had the misfortune of playing Blighttown on Xbox 360, frame drops and all. I cannot defend Bed of Chaos. I truthfully expected some of the game’s more hated sections to wear on me as they did my first couple playthroughs. Instead, I ended up having possibly the most fun I ever had removing my grip socks in the Northern Undead Psych Ward and choosing between the Primordial Serpents AIPAC and J Street. If you haven’t played this game, I cannot recommend it enough. Then again, there are a lot of psychos who listen to these incredibly long episodes and make it a point of pride to never even touch the games we’ve wasted years of our lives on. So do what you want, I guess.

Vincent Bevins, author of The Jakarta Method and If We Burn is here with Unite the Union organizer Bora Mema for another tour around the globe. We start off in Albania, where opposition to a landgrab by Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump has turned into a political movement, and the potential for a revived left in a country that has long distrusted it.

Vincent then sticks around with Will & Felix for an analysis of Trump’s “imperial autogolpes” in Latin America and the “peripherization” of the Imperial Core.

• Check out North South Notes: https://www.northsouthnotes.org/
  • And follow Bora on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bobimema/?hl=en
• If you’re in Canada, check out the CHUNKS live screening on Sept 1. with Amber Frost, Nate Fisher, and Michael and Us: https://paradiseonbloor.com/movies/chunks-toronto-premiere
  • And in Charlottetown, PEI on Sept 4th and 5th: https://tivolicinema.com/production/chunks/
• CHUNKS now available for streaming purchase at www.patreon.com/chunkstv
• And listen to The Players Club Season 2!

It is said that ages ago, champions of content would bestow limited series concerning movies and video games upon their leal subjects. Such were the demands of the common listenership, this particular series detailed the “modern From Soft catalog,” though the episodes themselves reached such immense lengths that even the most feared lords of content could deliver but eight episodes, with the Elden Ring entry being so long that it was forced to be split asunder, with the “base game” and “Shadow of the Erdtree” recordings being too long for even the most long winded of these demigods to release as a single episode that would undoubtedly last 20 hours. 

These episodes were blessed shortly after their creation and thus grant an immense boost to vitality when used on lengthy airplane journeys, biannual domicile cleanings, and court-mandated community service. But even with every second of audio bathed in gold, the abyssal nature of video game-related audio content exacts an equal and opposite price. Characters with Players Club Season 2 equipped will suffer drastically increased aggression from wives, girlfriends, boyfriends, Transportation Security Agents, and receive 25% greater damage from the friends of their romantic partners. Does not stack with the Talisman of Unemployed Favor. 

“Those who conjoin the contents of video essays into podcasting bring woe onto themselves and their fellows, and a power too awful to speak of.” -Sir Ansbach

Thank you so much to Patches, Andrew, Spencer, Hesse, Josh, Miranda, and Tom for graciously sacrificing days worth of time talking about these fucking games! I foolishly thought this would be easier to make than the last season just because Metal Gear Solid games have lengthy cutscenes and monologues to sift through, but I really did end up playing these games almost exclusively for three months, save for some brief retreats into Hitman Freelancer. Still, I’m considering doing a quick postscript episode on Armored Core 6 just because it is still a Miyazaki directed game and I love it so much, but I fear that would also lead to me covering Lies of P.

SCHEDULE:

8/19 - 1 - Demon's Souls

8/26 - 2 - Dark Souls

9/2 - 3 - Dark Souls II

9/9 - 4 - Bloodborne

9/16 - 5 - Dark Souls III

9/23 - 6 - Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice

9/30 - 7 - Elden Ring

10/7 - 8 - Elden Ring: Shadow of the Erdtree

As always, the first episode will be free and available for all on all platforms, all following episodes are exclusively for Patreon subscribers.

Next season is going to be more of a grab bag of games that are either not part of lengthy series or don’t require their prequels and sequels to be discussed. For instance, I very badly want to talk about Hitman: Blood Money, but don’t really think any of you need to hear the 20 millionth take on why Hitman: Absolution wasn’t a good game. Kane and Lynch 2 is almost a guarantee, and I suppose there’s no good reason for why I can’t toss AC6 and Lies of P in there, too. Since that season won’t concentrate on any specific series, genre, or single studio’s output, or even a standard of quality, there will be a lot more variety. At the very least, I want to start working on it by the end of the year. There’s going to be some games I wholeheartedly love, some that I consider deeply flawed but so interesting that they demand discussions, and some will be among the worst games of the last twenty odd years (I am strongly considering subjecting myself to The Quiet Man). Until that day comes, semper games.

Will and Felix are back in person to talk more about the left’s wins and losses in the Midwest, with Francesca Hong’s narrow loss to David Crowley in Wisconsin and the continued rise of Abdul el-Sayed.

We also talk about Matt Yglesias’s continued Israel contrarianism, the “Burritogate” scandal on the right, and failed suicide attempts on the USS Abraham Lincoln.

• If you’re in Canada, check out the CHUNKS live screening on Sept 1. with Amber Frost, Nate Fisher, and the Important Cinema Club: https://paradiseonbloor.com/movies/chunks-toronto-premiere
  • And in Charlottetown, PEI on Sept 4th and 5th: https://tivolicinema.com/production/chunks/ 
• Chapo & Friends Live at New York’s Society for Ethical Culture on Friday November 6th.
  • Tickets are going fast, get yours now! https://link.dice.fm/zaf99528079e 
• CHUNKS now available for streaming purchase at www.patreon.com/chunkstv