I'm Doc Issues from Capes on the Couch, a show that examines the mental health issues of comic book characters. Part of the Gunna Geek Network. Just like the show you're checking out now, shows on the network are individually owned and opinions expressed may not reflect others. Find other amazing geeky shows@gunnageeknetwork.com and welcome to Play Comics, where once again, we are here looking at a video game based on a comic property and how well it represents that source material. And today I think we might be. We're on a mission. It might be a Mission Impossible, I'm not quite sure. But we have Rob Dwayneus here to help figure that out. And Rob, you were just here. But how are you doing today in what feels like five minutes later?
Well, as soon as you let me leave the basement, you know, I can get back home, get back to work. No, I'm doing good, man. And this is. This is a little apropos. Mission Impossible. Final Reckoning comes out soon. And I don't know if you know this, I don't know if you know this, but since 1996, I have seen every Mission Impossible movie in the theater the same amount of times as the number of film. So I saw the first one, the first time, second one twice, third one, three times, and now I'm up for eight times. Eight times. So we're ready for it. I was all ready to. This game, got me primed and ready to go.
Okay, we're taking a giant detour here because I have to know about this. Is this something you did on purpose?
No, it's on purpose with the third one. It's just the second one. I was stationed in Germany in the army, and I was like, I watch it, I'm like, it's got its moments, you know, Kind of reminds me of Perfect Dark. You know, the game inside the movie, in some ways had a little bit of that going on. Saw it twice because I was bored. I was like, you know what? I'll go over, it's fine. And then when the third one came out, I'm like, wouldn't it be funny to go see it three times? And then I liked it, no problem. So the fourth one four times and then five, and here we are. Right? Like, here we are.
And now you're just doomed in a world where maybe you don't remember any of this, which works out really well because we're looking at 13 and dude doesn't remember a thing.
No, no. Most people don't even remember the game ever. Came out. And let's try to forget the remake, shall we?
We'll bring up the remake later because we have to at least mention that it exists for one reason, which we will get to later. But 13 is a one of those Franco Belgian comics from Europe because that's where France and Belgium are. It has been coming out longer than I have been alive. And at this point I think we can still safely say it's current and still going because the way it publishes isn't like the monthly issues we get over here. It's a volume at a time. So the last one was 2023. That's not that long ago, right?
And they're like 44, 48 pages each.
Somewhere around I can knock one out during lunch unless the bartender won't leave me alone.
Fair enough, fair enough. I'd like to give top, top, top of the. The conversation. I'd like to give props to the logo design for using just Roman numerals. Very, very iconic, the logo for this series.
It was very fun for me watching people both completely, seriously and completely jokingly call this game xiii. But Rob, what was it for you that when you looked at this list said, oh snap, I need to come back and talk about 13?
Well, for me, the early 2000s, there was this period of time between the, the mid-90s to 2008 or 10 or so when Ubisoft used to make pretty creative, artistic driven games. Ubisoft Paris, you know, Rayman Raising, you know, the Rabbids, Splinter Cell was actually pretty good. There was just a lot of these little games that they would make beyond good and evil. And this was one of those things where I go, okay, Ubisoft announced that they're making a first person shooter based off this French comic, which already sparks my interest. They're going to do the character cel shaded and I know the whole, they say the whole game Cell shaded, but they do painted textures. They just do them very almost gradient style. And to me, when I first saw the initial footage back in 2001 or two, somewhere around there I was like, man, this feels like a French take on goldeneye, you know, like with comic book sound effects and stuff. Like the level design had a little goldeneye kind of feel to it and that's kind of how I came into it. And it just, I'm an artist, so I'm always attracted to like very strongly art directed games, movies, anything. And it just felt complete, like art. From an art standpoint, it felt like a complete game as opposed to any first person shooter coming out that time, which was just like, hey, It's World War II, you know, and there's blood. So, you know, I was never into that, but I would put this in the same category as of quality in terms of art direction as Time Splitters, Goldeneye, Perfect Dark, Half Life, kind of like in that area. Just. Just. It's. But it's. It's definitely has a French feel to it. I mean, in every sense of the execution. French artists, to me, are the best artists in the world. You know, like Monet, you know, just. I'm always in awe of what French creatively put together.
And before getting ready for this episode, how much experience had you had looking at 13 as the comic?
Never. Oh, wait, the comic for this episode or before the game? Before the episode, for the episode. I've seen it. You know, it's one of those things where it's tasteful. I love the logo and the covers, the painted covers, But I think the game does a better job with that sort of flatter art style than the actual comics. I did give the first volume a read once there was a translation. I don't know if it was fan or not. Read it online, the first five volumes, because that's what the game was based off of. And I was like, yeah, this game pretty much, you know, got the majority of it down.
For me, looking at the comic, like, I hadn't looked at it at all until I was getting ready for this episode. And, I mean, it looks like a really good 80s comic, which, you know, it pretty much is. And I don't have a ton of experience with the European stuff outside of Asterix and Tintin. And I know that those are like, those are their own thing. And that's just. I mean, they are what they are. So seeing something here that was more realistically done than those two are in some ways, and looking at this, that doesn't have a bunch of this, like, fantastical things going on with it, I think was really interesting for me to look at because my 80s comics knowledge, that's just a giant hole in my comics knowledge anyway.
Well, it's so random, the 80s too, right? I mean, so you have the indie comic boom, like Turtles and Flaming Carrot, that kind of thing. You have the Marvel Secret wars kind of, you know, then eventually new universe, which is totally weird. Then you have the D.C. explosion in the late 80s, right, with the grim and gritty, grim, dark stuff. So it's. The 80s really was kind of a weird time for comics in general. The closest I ever came to European comics in the 80s was. Every now and then I go to the store and my dad just left me there. I'd flip their heavy metal, take a little peek in the heavy metal and I'd see some frado or something like that.
Somehow it doesn't surprise me that you would go and look through heavy metal great covers. Like, I'm sure that didn't influence any of your professional workings at all in your entire life.
You know, honestly, I wasn't like, I gotta own this. I think if I had to choose between a copy of Heavy Metal or Cracked, I probably would have picked Crack, you know, Cause it would make me laugh. But there would be like cartoon like this mixture. So every now and then you get something like Frazado was one that stuck out to me. Richard Corbin had some interesting paint painting going on, but you, you would get this. You could see every now and then a blend of realism and cartooning, you know, with serious subject material. I wasn't as into like the, the hot chicks and stuff because I was. It's a long story, but I grew up, I grew up around a strip club, so I wasn't that into that. But I did appreciate that people out there were painting stories in which you did not see in mainstream comps, the hand painted stuff. When I look at 13, those hand painted covers feel right from that cut from the cloth of the heavy metal stuff that I did see at that time.
It's really weird, I think, how everything here is connected and it doesn't matter when something came out or where something came out outside of the bounds of time and the control that that has over things. Everything just seems to have its influence radiating out and you can't escape anything that exists because like, even if I don't know Ninja Turtles, which is a lie, it's just the first thing I could think of because it's Ninja Turtles and I'm alive, so I know who they are. But like, if you can imagine that I don't know who they are, I'm looking at other things that have been influenced by Ninja Turtles. So like, I can't get away from anything. And I feel like this is one of those things where even though I hadn't directly seen anything about 13, I know that people who are making things now that I've looked at or made things in the past that I've looked at, they've looked at it or they've looked at other things that were influenced by it. And eventually all those influences just come together and then we have the hickman X Men era.
Do you say that? As in that's when you stop?
No, I definitely not. Because I am a sucker for peach Momoko. So, like, I don't care. Every episode or every issue, every cover of Ultimate X Men, like, no question. But it was. Honestly, it was just something really iconic that I thought of. And it's like that it's really weird and does lots of really weird things, but pulling influences from so much of the. Everything that has existed in comics.
I see. Yeah, I am interested. Moving forward, what will influence the newest things? I mean, on a side note, we just had the Minecraft movie and everyone was, you know, all the young Gen Z kids were flipping their lids over a meme reference. Right. So it's like, I wonder what the influence. Will memes directly influence the next Citizen Kane one day? Right. Will that be the conversations to be had in the next 10, 15. 15 years?
So for anybody who is like me of like a week or two ago and doesn't know what 13 is, 13 is. It's a really basic story. You have a spy guy who gets found on a beach by an old man who takes him back to his house with the help of a nurse who. Wow, I take that back with the help of a doctor who lost her license because of alcoholism. Gets this guy back to life, except the guy can't remember who he is and everybody that he gets close to ends up dying because some other spy organization who may or may not be working with him in the past is coming to kill him. And like, I just, I really love the way that the fact that he has like 28 different names in the first five volumes doesn't feel like contrived or anything. It's just, it's a really well written thing where the character doesn't know anything and we get to learn everything along with him. And I think they just do a really good job with that.
Yeah, I believe though, I mean, it kind of follows in the vein of the Bourne books, which came out even before this, if you can believe that. So this sort of amnesia protagonist was definitely in the creative sphere at the time. Right. I mean, it works great for a video game because, you know, in a tutorial sense, you always want someone talking to you to tell you what's going on, you know, and if your character knows everything, then you just seem like you're a moron. Right. Like, how can I be the top assassin? Everyone has to tell me to do my job. But you know, if you, if you're, if you don't Know what's going on, who's going, and everyone's attacking me. That's a great place to start a game for certain.
It's also a great place for me to have a giant mental breakdown. So we're going to try to calm me down a little bit, maybe get me to learn some things while I drop some promos for a few other shows.
Hey there. This is Mike Gibson. I'm a comic book writer. Do you like westerns but secretly wish they had more knife throwing and giant apes? Well, you're in luck because my new book, I Brought a Gorilla to a Gunfight, which is on Kickstarter right now, has all of that and more. I Brought a Gorilla to a Gunfight is about a bounty hunter in the Old west named Penny who throws knives instead of shooting guns and rides a giant gorilla named Moki instead of a horse. It's a 30 page, oversized, super fun, action packed book with a lot of cool rewards available to go with it. So check out I Brought a Gorilla to a Gunfight on Kickstarter today. Thanks.
Hey, welcome to the Last Comic Shop Podcast.
A comic book podcast that actually talks about comics. Yep.
Each week we open the shop up.
And read and discuss a comic. Sometimes we pair that up with comic book movies or TV shows or not. Lots of times it's just comic books and sound effects.
Oh yes, definitely. Lots of sound effects.
So tune in on all the major podcasts and platforms. The Last Comic Shop Podcast, or check out our library of evergreen shows@www.lastcomic shop podcast.com. those are some great things to check out. But first let's finish up here. So Rob, I want to get one thing out of the way up front before we even talk about who made this game or anything. I tried to play this and I am really, really bad at first person shooters and I never got away from that opening beachside level.
You didn't, you didn't. You didn't get past the beach.
I tried. I could get to the boardwalk and the dock and like that. That was it. I would die every time.
PC or console emulated PS2. Emulated PS2, yeah. I find with first person shooters, if you are not good at them, try them with mouse and keyboard because do. Because analog controls on first person shooters can be wonky. They add another level of complexity you kind of don't need.
I will probably go back and try that because I also after I just accepted the fact that I suck and I'm an old man who just can't play this game and I say that as somebody who I'm pretty sure is younger than you and you can play it. So being old is not an excuse, but I'm using it anyway. But.
And I'm not great at games. I'm not. I'm not like, you know, I play them, but I'm not like, watch me, you know, Like, I'm not. I'm not that great at them, but. But this is not a complicated. I do agree with you, though. Even to this day. I have a group of friends I get together with in Fortnite and I use a mouse and keyboard, you know, because the controller, I'm like, nah, I'm not for this. For Mario, sure, But first person, third person shooters, it makes things easier.
I went and looked at a bunch of, like, people playing the game videos and a few of them of just all the cutscenes and stuff. Because this game, like, pretty, pretty accurately is looking, like you said, at those first five volumes of the comic. And it's not like a super straight from the pages thing, but thematically and the feel of it, it's basically straight from the pages. It's a lifeguard that finds you instead of an old man and his dog. That kind of change. Not huge changes at all. Just nice and easy way to condense it for the game.
Yeah, I mean, they did a good job of adapting what they needed in terms of level design. I mean, I couldn't imagine, you know, every now and then, like, even, like, if you think about goldeneye, like, that game doesn't follow the movie, you know, you still have to make a game out of it, you know, to a different extent. Super Star wars, right? Super Price Rex back. Need to take liberties to make a game out of it. And this does the same. But even then you is you're still getting, you know, the essence of all that when the game's 10 hours long. So you're getting a pretty good chunk of it.
God, I probably spent like three or four just trying to get off the dock, Brighton Beach.
Well, then, what'd you think of the music? Because I really like the soundtrack of the game too. I mean, he probably did listen.
The music was great. Like, what I could see from the game was great. I might actually go back and try it. Mouse and keyboard now. Because you've shamed me into it. Because, like everything else about this game, like, I wasn't super annoyed and I know we're getting into the gameplay a little more than usual, but, like, I didn't feel horrible while I was playing it. I'M just annoyed that I didn't get to see any more of it. And part of that is because it sticks to that comic plot really well.
I'll say this about. There's one major fault with this game, and it's the saving system. As I remember it, right? The saving system was like checkpoints. And the checkpoints, if I remember right, they're like random, you know, so, like, when you say the game, you saves from the last checkpoint so you can still lose stuff, you know, doesn't save. It is automatically saved when you go to a checkpoint either. So that. That is the one thing where at the time I was like, what do we do? This is almost as. As weird as like the Resident Evil saving system where people don't remember the original Resident Evil. They had these typewriters and you. To get these ribbons, and you literally could run out of ribbons, and you could just not be able to save the game if you saved too much. So. So, you know, it's not as bad as that, but it's definitely. It was just weird at the time. It was like 2003. I'm like, we, We. They had. We could. Can we just save at a checkpoint and just save it? You know, so, yeah, that's my one real complaint. Other than that. I mean, the presentation, the. What was the Le Mans, right? The movie Le Mans with featured the Le Mans racing. It's like F1, and they would do like multiple cameras at the same time. This game does multiple comet panels showing things from different viewpoints at the same time. You know, which was just awesome. You know, if you shoot a guy off a ledge at the top, comet panel pops up. And then in that comic panel while you're playing the game, you can see them falling from a different angle. Very creative.
I love the way that if you're playing this one not knowing it's a comic, then it basically pounds it over your head in a way that you cannot miss, right?
You look at this and you're like, this. Either this was a comic or it should be one. I mean, even the transitions in the game, like a book kind of comes out, right? And you see the comic panels, and then it goes into the panels and.
You'Ve got the dialogue boxes there where, okay, maybe that shows up in anything. That's fine. But you also get those onomatopoeias popping up when guns go off or things fall and make a noise or something. You've got the tap, tap, tappy sound when you're just listening for people using your. Not superhero Hearing, but really, really, really good hearing because they also pound it into your head that this guy, he doesn't have special powers. He's just trained really, really well.
Yeah. And the combat animations are very smooth. Like they hold up. I think there's sometimes you see people do mean videos or TikTok videos of. Of NPCs doing weird, you know, video games doing weird behavior. Right. But this for the time, I mean it's all, it's all hand animated. You know, there's. There's a lot of smooth transitions. The hand gun animations and the character animations. I remember too with those sound effects popping up, thinking, I think you could do a 1966 Batman style game like this. You know, I think you could get away with it. You know, the cel shade, punch a guy, bam, zoom.
You know, I mean, there's something else though, I think that really made me think you could do a 1966 Batman game with this. And that's the fact that you get Adam west in the voice cast.
I set you up for that one.
Yes. That was beautiful. Just on t.
Glad you. Glad you took the bait, old chum.
I love when Adam west pops up in things and it's really just a matter of which character am I going to think of when I hear the voice to be like, who is that? Oh, yeah, yeah.
Adam west is. What is. It's just. He is just has an iconic calmness to how he speaks. You know, it's a shame he didn't do like more counter programming. You know. Would have been funny to see Adam west appear like in Grand Theft Auto, you know, three or San Andreas.
But you've also got David Duchovny being 13, so you know, not a big stretch.
Evolutions David Duchovny.
Like, I mean, I'm always going to think X Files.
Oh, that's. Oh, that's right. He was in X Files. Okay.
Yeah, that little show that you might have heard of. And not a stretch for him to be a government agent because you know, X Files.
Yeah, I mean he's definitely typecast, I think. Remember at the time it was a play magazine because that was the magazine I was. I mostly read. I eventually worked for them, which was kind of wild. But I remember the time they're like, oh, they're bringing some Hollywood flair to this. I'm like, that's exact. You know, like I like David Duchovny and Adam west and in a. In another world that would have been an interesting Batman, Commissioner Gordon combo. Like in a reboot Right. But he's. It's funny. He's. He's a voice. You don't really remember his voice. I think you remember his face. David Duchovny.
Yeah, that one I definitely didn't pick up on as quick as Adam west. But I think a good job in the role.
Yeah. Yeah. All the voice acting is pretty good.
So like we alluded to earlier, this game was developed and published by different branches of Ubisoft. What they have listed on the Wikipedia page is that Ubisoft Paris did the development and just regular adjective list. Ubisoft did the publishing.
Yeah, Ubisoft Paris is still going. You know they're still. I think they most recently did the Rabbids games and one of my Internet friends works on that. We sort of met up when I was working on Crash. So he's, he's always able to throw out some Rayman or some Rabbids art. But I mean if you look at. I mean, I don't know like I still look at this game and it's just one of the most well art, most well art directed games of this time. I, I don't think I see a first person shooter or anything that at this time that moves it forward until Half Life 2 and then Mirror's Edge for me might be the next.
That's what's so frustrating for me about being so horrible at this one because I want to see so much more of the world. I want to see more of what they did. Like the fact that they're using one of the Unreal engines to make this means that they don't have to completely remake it for every single different console that it's on. So like I want to see if that also means that they could keep it pretty consistent between the consoles.
Yeah, I have no idea how easy or difficult it was porting Unreal Engine 2 to PlayStation 2. I imagine that took a little bit of effort just because the way PlayStation 2 allocates memories and co processors and stuff. But between GameCube and Xbox, I mean. Well, the GameCube is PowerPC, but there's still a pretty easy allocation of memory, GPU separation. The PS2 things were still like you like sync everything up and I imagine that one probably still took a number of effort to deal with.
I wonder if maybe the fact that I tried to do it on PS2 kind of is part of my problem that might be worth me checking out.
Yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I don't know. I just, I just Think mouse and keyboard might make things a little easier?
Well, yeah, but I'll check it out on a different console for science and one of them for science and you know, definitely mouse and keyboard on top of that because I mean it's science. You just have to check more things.
I'd also like to give a big shout out to the snowy mountain level. That was the most goldeneye of the game to me. And snow at this time was not usually pretty. When they would do snow levels in games, it was usually dark or white, but they did a lot of hand painted textures here. The snow that would fly, the atmospheric fog, the pink purple hue skies. And especially fun when you're using the grappling hook. There's a grappling hook in this game, although it's a little weird because when you use a grappling hook there's like a. You see the grappling hook on one side and then you, you, you have a control on the other. So it's a little weird, but it's got some physics to it. You can swing around, you know, and, and you really, really give a chance for the weapons to be used. They don't just keep throwing out crazy weapons like in a Turok game where eventually maybe you get like a nuclear missile to blow everything up. You know, they do some really interesting things with, with, with all the various weapons. But yeah, the snow level would be the one that I'd point to if I had to kind of jump back to it. You know, Log Cabin might be a second one.
And from my understanding of everything, like once you get a weapon, it's not like you have it for the rest of the game. So I think that's a nice little touch too, just knowing that yes, you have this really cool weapon and then you kind of got to start over on the next level.
Right, Right. Yeah. You're not just like traveling the world with an armory attached to you.
I'm jumping to these ending questions early because I feel like this is the best way to really look at this one. But what is it? Do you think that like are the big highlights for what this one gets right about the comic of 13?
The cast of characters, right? The, the Mother Jones, the, the, the Adam west guy, all that stuff. As I remember it, that, that he had this kind of like. Because like admission impossible. It's a team based thing. But the movies are more of a singular character, at least the first three. And so this is kind of a similar situation. It gets that, it gets the idea of a page turner like, here's a chapter, here's, you know, a splash page, here's. It actually somehow manages to do that very well. And not for nothing, it gets this sort of relaxed atmosphere about it. Like because of the art style of the European comic, a little bit of that Mobius kind of like art style. I think the soundtrack keeps things pretty chill. You know, you're not, you're not, you're not hearing Limp Bizkit blaring during this one, you know, I mean, maybe you.
Weren'T, but I was kind of playing that alongside it. That's my own problem.
Yeah, you did it all for the nookie. I get it. The comic itself is a little, it's a little confused, confusing, but it doesn't, it doesn't really resolve, you know, like, I think the end of the first five, or if I remember right, he. He like discovers his original identity at the end, you know, that's the one piece of the puzzle. So for better or for worse, the game sort of does the same thing. It leaves you with like, okay, we're going to do more. However, we did not get more, which.
Is a shame because you've got like 20 more volumes somewhere in there that you could make a game straight out of. And this one, like, I don't want to say that you should play it instead of reading the comic because playing something, reading something are just way too different. But getting this one like this might be if it's not like the new best. Like, this is a representation of the comic game that I've looked at here. It's easily top three.
I know. I just, I think my, my, my thoughts at the time and, and I think they are this way now, is that this game was hindered on the fact that this comic is relatively unknown in America, North America specifically. And given that this game came out around 2003, Bourne Identity had already been out and I'm like, had this been a the Bourne Identity game, like if they had, you know, made a Bourne Identity video game Instead of at 13, we probably would have had two or three of these things, you know, with the same team. But marketing probably should have been like, there's a way you, if you like the Born and you like goldeneye, here's your game, right? But at the time, Xbox fans were dealing with Halo 2, you know, so like, you know, like, it's like, it's just marketing, I think didn't quite put in the same category. Also, maybe if there had been more like a Tarantino style dialogue, you know, the cursing and you know, that might have interested western gamers a little bit more, but it's all very good, it holds up over time. But I'm just saying at that time that, that that might have gotten in the way of sales.
So looking specifically at the original release of the game, what is it that this one gets wrong looking at 13?
Well, first off, the name. It's the first game in a new series, but it's called 13. Gamers are easily confused by stuff like this. So a lot of them called it X3. You know, like, and mind you, we had just had X Men 2, you know, so like just the name alone, it was confusing at the time. Gameplay wise. I told you, the save system no good. Also because of its art style, Xbox just wasn't the system to launch on really. Had this been a GameCube exclusive, you know, and they'd work with Nintendo a bit more, I think this could have done better. Right, But I know it sounds weird. If it was on less systems, it may have sold more. But I think a cel shaded alternative stealth based first person shooter was something that GameCube was needing more than the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox.
And I like that you brought up the cel shadedness in there because I mean it pains me to say this, but that cel shadedness is probably the biggest thing that I noticed that this gets wrong comparing it to the comic. And I don't think that's a problem or anything like you're putting it into a new medium. Make what changes you need to make to have it work. If they had tried to make this look like the comic, I don't think it would have done very well at all in them actually pulling it off because the graphics just weren't there to be able to do that too. Realistically.
They also, yeah, they weren't using shaders at that time as we know them. So now you could have a realistic looking city with flat gorod shaded style graphics. You know, like the comic has a sort of flatter art style, but it also has a lot of detail in the comic. The game doesn't have quite that. It has the big chunkiness kind of. I would love to know exactly how they got around some of that because some of it's texture driven or lambert. There's a way you. If I remember right on Unreal you can clamp shaders or lighting nodes to give you a cel shade effect. So technically it looks like a gradient but you clamp it down. So it only shows like two. Two styles of. Of Shade or tone or three, however you want it to do. But the comic actually has more of a slightly soft painted look to it the way the background's doing this game. So if. If you're going to pull that off. There is a game that recently came out like a science fiction style indie game. I can't remember it on, you know, it's on PC Switch that has that sort of Mobius style rendering to it. You know, the whole game. And now you could do that. But you look at this and it's definitely more chunkier, blockier. So it looks great, but it looks closer to the box art to Grant Grand Theft Auto 43 than it does to the comic.
And friend of the show, Chris Baker, who I know is going to listen to this because he listens to basically all of them. Please pop up somewhere and tell me how they could have possibly pulled off the graphics in this one the way that they did, because I know that you know. And don't tell me that you don't, because then you're a liar. I also want to really emphasize the fact, once again, I love the graphics in this game. And the fact that they look different is just because I have to pick something that's wrong. That's just the nature of what we're doing on the show.
And you didn't get far enough to know about the Checkpoint system?
Yes, that's. Well, I mean, I heard about it and that's enough.
Be honest. That's really. I just think it was wrong for that platform. I mean, remember I bought my Xbox for Psychonauts and I waited five years. You know, Come on, Psychonauts, Come on. So like, you know, Xbox gamers were into dead or alive basketball at this time, right? Like they're into the WWF or WWE video games. At the time Xbox gamers were into Halo 2. This was not up. This was very. This is very artsy for an Xbox gamer. In 2003, you know, trapped was the lead band associated with Xbox at this time. Right. Headstrong.
Now, we've alluded to this a little bit before, but there was a remake of this that came out. 2022, if I remember my timeline. Right? Yeah, it exists. And trust me, that's all you need to know.
It's crazy because you might see a screen right where you go, but that looks pretty good. You know, it does. That one screenshot looks pretty good. Until you play the thing, it's really.
Easy to make a still image look really good.
This is the one of the best case scenarios for that Ever. It is not ready to be shipped. Does not begin to describe. This is like an out pre alpha build, essentially.
How much of the development hell story do you know of that one?
Very little. Because when it came out, I immediately saw the backlash and I was like, I think I was just starting Spawn. And I was like, no, man, I don't, I don't need to get, you know, be let down again. So I don't really know how that went down.
So from my understanding of it, the developers for the remake were run by a guy whose ambitions were bigger than his ability to pull things off, which I have that same problem. Okay. I'm just not running a studio, so people don't have their livelihood depending on me. But you have that combined with the fact that most of the source files for the original game they could not find. So the remaster that they were planning on doing had to turn into a basically full remake. And it just kind of exploded from there.
Well, I mean, I've worked on a remake. You know, we did Spyro, reignited, you know, and you can't take Those origami style PS1 polygons and do anything with them. You have to rebuild. So I understand. I'm sympathetic to the challenges of that. That being said, we had to do three games at once and they just had to do one 10 hour long game. So they probably just had no budget. Right. And a lot of talent. But games live or die on gameplay and debugging. That's it. You know, the graphics, the screenshot, the gameplay, the cutscenes, all. I mean, sorry, the gameplay, yeah, but the cutscenes, all that stuff is kind of the easier things to do. But it's gameplay. Is it fun and debugging, does it work? And this apparently does not do those two things well at all.
And I just want to make sure everybody understands. I have no problem with anybody doing a remake like Final Fantasy VII remake. I am all here for it. Even though that's essentially just making a new game and being weird. But, you know, like, remake a game all you want. The problem is that they remade it badly.
Right. Well, that's. Hey, the minute you make something, you got to be judged against it, you know, and it's, it is tough too when you. I mean, I could see someone saying, I love this thing. I want to remake it. And it's like, all right, man, you love. But then if you can't live up to it, it's, it's, it's, it's. Harper. I feel bad really for the Artists who are on board because clearly the art team did their job right. That's the best kind thing I could say is visually looks. Looks great actually. But yeah, the games are super buggy, man. I mean, even where I did this indie game, Berserk Boy, and I watched them spend almost, you know, a solid two years just debugging, you know, where they were adding content. But a lot of that was gameplay testing, rebug, debugging, debugging, debugging. And so if this was like one of those games where they needed to get it out and they did it in two years from scratch, it's probably not enough time for the team they had.
So you being somebody who does not have a ton of experience with the 13 comic, how much does this one make you want to go back and read it?
Not much, honestly. This makes me want to play the game again, you know, fair enough.
Because they're so similar.
Right, Right. They're very similar. And I'll take something a little more interactive than. I mean, the books. I did read like some fan translations years ago of like around the first five volumes, maybe, maybe four, just because I was like, oh, this is what the game was based off of. But I mean, as with all European comics of that era, the backgrounds are impressive, but the figure work was very Gen Girard. And you're either into Mobius or you're not. For me, I'm like, Mobius does Mobius great and Miyazaki does Mobius really great. That's it. Like everyone else to me, not quite as good, but I did love the backgrounds on this. On this particularly, like when he would draw like deserts and stuff like that with all the rocks and everything. And some of the city stuff was incredibly. But. But there gets a point where I feel like maybe they. He was redrawing photos too much. So I like a little more artistic interpretation of my comics, you know, But I did like the painted covers. And I will say this, that logo is a banger. I know it seems so simple, but go, go. I'm going to tell you. Name your comic27 and make a logo, you know, if it's memorable. Whoever did that logo is a genius.
Your reaction right there is a lot of why this isn't a super slam dunk. Me wanting to use this in a Primer course for 13 because you're getting basically everything just handed to you right there. So, I mean, this is a tough one because there's this game and that's it. There's. So there's no other options. There. There's not a ton of options anyway, besides just go read the comic. There was a. I believe it was a two part thing that they did with Jean Claude Van Damme and somebody else over on French television and another series that went after that. But I don't speak French and Kayleigh won't care, so I don't think I'm going to even try that one.
We live in a time where for some reason, somehow, some way, I love the Reacher television show Reacher. All right. Like, shouldn't. Like this. Didn't like the books. Love the show. You get a charismatic, charismatic lead actor and you find a crew that understands how to take these sort of what are now tropish. But at the time this comic came out were fairly new, these tropish things, and you give it a bit of that. Did you ever see the show Lupin on Netflix?
No.
Based on Arson Lupin. It's a French Arson. Lupin was like the French answer to Sherlock Holmes back in the day. This was a modern sort of like reinvention of that idea where this guy's a fan of the character and sort of adopts that identity. So there's a way, I think, to do this on Netflix or something, if you just had the right. You need the right lead and you need the right crew. But I do think there's enough there with that kind of soundtrack. You could get this vibe in a TV show and it would work pretty well.
Well, funny you should say that, because I was wondering if you were going to do this full Muppets cast who.
Would be 13, the person who mistook their identity and turned out to be an assassin. Fazimir. Because you wouldn't expect it, right?
Oh, you're right. I didn't expect that answer at all. Because I was thinking Gonzo.
No, no, no, no. I expect Gonzo to be an assassin. But Fozzie, you wouldn't expect it.
That is so much better than Gonzo.
I killed people. Ah. You know, So I did not really ever appreciate how good Fozzie could be in realistic scenarios until the Muppet show from 2014, the Muppets, when he's dating the human girl and her parents disapprove of Fozzie and he's like on the. The 110 talking to the camera. And I was like, there's something Fozzie in this world. Works pretty well, actually.
Okay, now I just really want to see that and I want to see both of version where it's all Muppets and one where Fozzie is the only Muppet and I think they will both.
Be amazing and they take them seriously. Yes.
Oh, of course.
The. The Bear. The Bear identity. Right? Jason Bear. I know it's the wrong series, but you get what I'm saying. Jason Fly. What was Jason Bourne. Jason Fly. It works.
I mean, it's also Fozzie. So the corny joke writes itself. But Rob, it has been great talking to you about this one. If people want to hear more from you, where else can they find you? Around the Internet?
Sketchcraft. Sketchcraft.com is my main site. I got a nice little newsletter, a little blog I do from time to time. I post. I have a store there. But I also have a YouTube channel called Sketchcraft where I do post regular videos with my buddy, Uncle Jerk called the Sketchcraft Shout out where we cover different cartoonists. We just did a two hour long artobiography, the TMNT artobiography. So if you want to dig through the old 80s TMNT layouts and hear all our stories. I did work with Kevin Eastman once on a small project. So we get into all of it there on the sketchcraft on YouTube and.
Sketchcraft.Com you should definitely go do that because it is a very fun channel to watch or have on while you're doing your art. And except for me because I have been told that I am not allowed to do visual art anymore because my art is too horrible. So I'm going to try to suck some of your art skills out through the Internet tubes. But hopefully.
Quick bit of advice. If you're a horrible artist, just make it really big and call it fine art.
Oh, that's a good point. I should try that.
Really big. All right. And you're good to go.
As always, the best place to find me is over@playcamps.com where there's links to all the social media things, which is basically just, hey, go to Blue sky, because that's what you should do. Because that's just where I mostly am. If you want to be on the show, then there is a link down in the show notes where you can find a list of all the things I'm looking to find guests for. And there's even a section of that list where I've been trying to find guests for a while. And if you can help me find one, then I will do something for you that will make it worth it. But nothing weird because let's not make this weird. Come on. If you want to help support the show, you can be like Dan McMahon or Ono lit class and give the show money because unfortunately it does cost money to make a podcast or just share it with friends and stuff. Make sure other people get to hear it because you know that that's always a cool thing. I make this so people can listen to it, not just because I want to hear myself talk. Don't forget, the Play Comics is a part of the Gig.com network, home to such wonderful shows as Legends of Shield where we are going to finish up talking about Daredevil and then Thunderbolts and then I don't know what the release schedule for Marvel looks like. So some other things and it'll be fun because that's just how that show rolls. Also, keep an eye out for Carrington, Martin and I and our releasing of Sugar Spite and Everything is Fine. The world is kind of colluding against against us to keep it from coming out, which mostly just means that I've gotten caught up in stuff and haven't been able to edit. But yeah, that's going to be coming out. Keep an eye out for that. If you like the music that I'm rudely talking on top of right now, head on over to Backy Track GG to check out all the great music over there. But most of all, just grab a game, grab a stack of comics, go find yourself a new favorite character.