Tom Talks About Stuff He Watched
These newsletters are pretty much only that now
Hey Sicko fans!
Last you heard from us on the ol’ newsletter, we were announcing a casting call for our next secret project, which was implied to be more ambitious and even dumber than The Tragical History of Modesty City.
Well, it is. We are midway through pre-production prep with our cast and uhhhh this shit whips so hard. God it’s so funny. The cast is so good. I can’t believe that I get to work with such people…ahhhh it’s so good.
Once again I am very aware of how annoying it is for me to gush on and on about a project for which I can give you basically zero details and which you will not be able to see for probably 6+ months. Well, sorry. This is what you sign up for when you become a Sicko fan! Sorry honey!
Anyway, here’s the rest:
Behind The Scenes in Sicko Labs
Tom’s Dragon Quest Update
Hey all. You may remember I am playing all the Dragon Quests and Final Fantasies. Well right now I am deep into Dragon Quest 7. This was the one for PS1 (though I’m playing the 3DS remake).
DQ7 is notorious for being the extremely long one. “A normal playthrough will take over 100 hours,” the wikipedia article says. I thought, whoa! This must be a very ambitious, epic tale that really pushes the series forward.
Folks, I am here to report: Insanely no! It is actually hilarious how unambitious this game is and how little it pushes the series forward! Dragon Quests 1-6 all, in some way, changed the formula and tried something different. Obviously some games did this more dramatically than others, but all of them had a unique hook that made them stand out. I can’t stop laughing at how 7 not only does not have one but also is the longest so you have to spend more time than ever before without any new stimulus.
This sounds like I am about to absolutely slam the game. Well no—I love it. The reason is that even if the game does nothing but serve you reheated Dragon Quest leftovers, Dragon Quest is extremely good. “Gimme da slop,” as they say.
The structure of the game is so transparently basic it cycles all the way back around to hilarious and endearing. You start as Dollar General Link on a dinky island, the only one in the whole world.
Everyone says “there’s no way there’s another island.” You and your homies find a temple where you can put some puzzle pieces into pillars—fill up a pillar with puzzle pieces and you travel back in time to another island. This island is having a Dragon Quest Problem(TM). You will spend 40 minutes to two hours solving the Dragon Quest Problem(TM). You will be given some puzzle pieces as a reward.
You will travel back into the present, and wow! Because you solved the Dragon Quest Problem(TM) in the past, the island is here now! I can’t wait to see how much it’s changed! You travel to the island—it has not changed AT ALL because that would mean having to design and model two different maps for every island and the developers did not want to do that. Every house is exactly the same. Every pot and barrel is in the same spot. This is hundreds of years in the future, mind you. Anyway, you will do some little challenges in the present, usually involving going through a dungeon you went through ten minutes ago (it’s the same), and then you will be given some puzzle pieces as a reward.
You will then go to the temple and use your new puzzle pieces to unlock a new island in the past. Would you believe it too is suffering from a Dragon Quest Problem(TM).
Can you see how hilarious it is that a game with this structure is the 100-hour one? I thought “The Long Dragon Quest” would have the most involved story but this is basically just like a big collection of unused ideas from Yuji Horii’s notebook. Little scenarios not fleshed out enough to make their way into a plot, except they have now had the grand idea to make a game that is 100% little scenarios.
Consider also how because the islands are all trapped in the past in their own little pocket dimensions, none of their scenarios have any impact on any of the others. There is so little being done to disguise the fact that this game is just 100 hours of “here’s a Dragon Quest scenario we couldn’t quite flesh out, hope you like it lol.” Again this sounds like I am being negative—no. Turns out I love being able to turn on the game and play a little Dragon Quest scenario and not have to remember what’s going on in the plot (because the plot is, “time for your next Dragon Quest scenario”).
This game retains the class system from Dragon Quest 6 (and to a lesser extent 3), where you can assign characters different classes that level up as you win battles, unlocking new and better abilities. There are some new classes but mostly it’s the same as before. The main difference is that you get a stupid fuckin outfit for your guys when you change classes. This is a much-needed boon because your main guy looks like utter shit by default. Not that the other outfits are much better.
One fun thing about the class system: it is pretty much the only thing that makes your party members different from each other, and the only method you have to exercise any agency whatsoever over the combat portion of the game. Obviously, you do not gain access to the class system for 20 hours. This is not an exaggeration! One of your party members leaves permanently as part of the plot, and it’s honestly surprising because that person has been with you for so long. This happens before you unlock the ability to use classes.
What a dumbass game! This is sort of unrelated to anything, but so often in the little scenarios you are asked to walk back and forth between two locations over and over again. To be clear: there are often no monsters between the two locations. It’s like, you tell Guy A that there is some Dragon Quest Problem(TM). He goes “oh no. You better tell Guy B.” You go to Guy B, who lives in a house that takes 3 minutes to walk to. He goes “Oh no...that is a problem. But, I don’t know. Does Guy A want my help?” You walk back to Guy A. He says, “the past is the past! Of course I want Guy B’s help!” You walk back to Guy B. He says “Guy A really said that? Wow. Amazing. I’m off to meet him. Please come see us as soon as you can.” You walk back to Guy A. Guy B is now there too. They say “OK now you can go to the dungeon and play the game.” This shit is not a Dragon Quest trope. It only happens in this one, which is insane because why would the 100-hour game be the one where they decided to add padding.
Anyway, Dragon Quest rules.
Tom Watched The Boys
I resisted watching The Boys for a long time because I remember Garth Ennis’s Preacher comics leaving a bad taste in my mouth in college, and what I knew about The Boys was that the comic was worse and dumber. Therefore a TV adaptation seemed really unappealing.
Then, I learned that Karl Urban is the main guy!!! They really do not market that enough. He’s so cool. I decided I’d give it a shot.
Here’s my review: What a dopey show (non-derogatory)!
There’s approximately zero original ideas in The Boys. “What if superheroes were bad. What if Superman was bad. Aquaman is lame lol...what if he was bad. What if the Flash uhhh...was bad.” The satire is insanely on the nose. There is zero subtlety anywhere. Nothing it has to say is going to be new to you. Its sensibilities are puerile and juvenile. I blame this on the source material—I’ve done more research since watching the show and my conclusion is the comics are even worse and dumber than I assumed!
So how is the show good? Well, it’s simple. Instead of being written by an incompetent crank, it is written by veteran TV writers who understand that a show should have interesting characters and a coherent plot. The comic did not have those! Turns out when you backfill a dopey concept with solid character writing and good acting, the dopeyness stops being embarrassing and becomes fun.
Also: I learned that in the comic, the titular “Boys” who hunt and kill rogue superheroes all have superpowers also! This is so fucking dumb! In the show they’re all normal guys! This is like writing 101! Tension is exciting! Every time they’re in the same room as a superhero they all understand they can be instantly killed at any moment. It’s so exciting! Garth Ennis really sucks ass.
Anyway, good show. Karl Urban is so cool. The guy who plays Homelander is having so much fun...and so am I!
Tom’s Book Korner
I read Trouble Boys: The True Story of The Replacements by Bob Mehr.
Like any guy who looks exactly like me, I love the Replacements. When I heard there was a big thick book about them that was getting big time laudits, it was a no-brainer. Part of the Replacements’ appeal is their mystique. Four dumbass Midwest boys fucking around, too drunk and dumb to succeed, out of place in every contemporary pop genre, falling ass-backward into some of the best rock songwriting of all time.
Well turns out! In real life the mystique is actually way more depressing lol!!!
What the book makes devastatingly clear is that The Replacements all suffered some pretty severe childhood trauma (some more than others) that went untreated and festered for decades. Their failed grasps at stardom weren’t romantic tales of a band too pure for the industry to understand. They kept getting given, over and over, opportunities for success offered in good faith by people who really believed in them and didn’t want them to become anything they weren’t. And then they would intentionally reject the opportunity and insult the offerer so brutally they made an enemy for life.
They would literally burn their per diems on tour as soon as they got them. I don’t mean “literally burn” like waste it all on booze. Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson would light the money on fire. These are guys so fucked up they’d rather manufacture a world where they’re born losers than live in one where success was an option and failure would be their fault.
I never really paid much attention to late-period Replacements after original lead guitarist Bob Stinson left the band. Popular consensus is that the records after aren’t as good, and they don’t really sound like the same band. They were never “punk” in the strictest sense but the post-Bob albums are particularly toothless. But reading this book has inspired me to give them some real listens, something I’ve never really done before.
The early albums are definitely better, but I’ll be damned: they’re pretty good! The band sounds more generic than they should but Paul Westerberg knows how to write a song. That said, the book spends a lot of time on how the quest to Write a Big Hit And Finally Make Money ran into the roadblock of “Paul became insanely depressed and hated his life” and uh yeah that kinda comes through. The giddy spark that elevates a piece of good songwriting into a Big Hit is nowhere to be found.
Good book. Highly recommended for any Replacements fans, or music fans, or fans of a tragic, funny story told well.
I was just thinking to myself yesterday, hmm, I have decided to put myself in no posting chastity this week, it should would be nice if the sickoes had a newsletter I could read instead. and behold.