Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Alan Wake 2: Game of the Year? - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: November 1, 2023

IGN's Kat Bailey joins the team to talk Alan Wake 2, review Thirsty Suitors with Greg, and more! - Starts - Spin Rhythm XD - Alan Wake 2 - Thirsty Suitors - Super Mario Wonder - Starfield Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. Of course I am Tim Geddes and I'm joined by the new face of video games. Blessing Adioia Jr. Good day to you, Tim. The big daddy himself, Greg Miller. Hi, Tim. I like your shirt. Thank you very much.

Pretty cool. I got it for this is awesome. They sent it to me and I was actually a great shirt. So I just kept wearing it. I like it. I like it. And rounding out the group today. Of course, it is IGN Cross Kind of Funny Extra Life Week.

So we had to continue that fun train rolling. It's Cat Bailey. Hi, Tim. How you doing, Kat? I didn't know we're clapping. I didn't know the disrespect from Greg Miller. He doesn't clap at all. I like your shirt too, Greg.

Thank you very much, Kat. How you doing? I'm doing great. I've been playing way too many video games. Haven't we all? That's kind of been the fun of all this. Real quick, actually, before I even get into the rigmarole and all this, I need to give a shout out. Because there's so many games to play right now.

Of course, Mario Wonders out. Alan Wake. We're going to talk about those two. We're going to talk about some other things. Thirsty suit. I'm really excited about that as well. But I needed to like pause everything to like just give it up. update to the world out there because while there's so much to play, somehow there is more.

Somehow there is more. This weekend, Eli, at Real SFT, tweeted at me and was like, Tim, I think we found the follow-up to Amplitude that we've been waiting for. There's a game called SpinRhythm XD that I have never heard of that came out on Switch last week. And just looking at the gameplay footage of it, I was like, something about this is right up my alley. So I downloaded it and I couldn't stop playing.

I must have played this thing for like six hours this weekend. And that was like tearing myself away from all the other games to play. But it's essentially like a, I would say it's more DDR like than anything, especially in presentation. You open it up. There's an over the top announcer. You hear the like the people cheering and all the stuff. It's very, very Konami Bimani vibes.

But I have not played a rhythm game that I'm like, oh, this is it. Like they did the damn thing. That was original in so long. And this is definitely it. This is going to be my new forever plane game. like I'm going to like just be playing this on the plane all the damn time on a monoguchi's on the soundtrack they got some two melody on hyper potions it is just it's a banger everyone should check it out and thank you so much for the recommendation there eli I appreciate it did not expect

a rhythm game win this weekend but that was that was super fun you don't get enough of them anymore i really don't i don't you know what i mean now it always has to be it's a rhythm platformer it's a rhythm rpg just give me a fucking rhythm game you know i just want to push buttons to the beat is that too much to i'm with you high-fi rush sucks I fucking hate you, Greg Miller. I hate you so much. You know what I don't hate? Video games.

There's so much things to love about them. And we talk about that every single week right here on the Kind of Funny Games cast. Of course, you can get it on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games or Rosterteeth.com as a video. If you want to get it as a podcast, search your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Gamescast. And we will be right there for you. If you wanted to go above and beyond, you can go to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny, just like our Patreon producers, Jedi Master Deadpool and Delaney twining have done. We appreciate you so very, very much. Today we're brought to you by BetterHelp, but I'll tell you all about that later. We've got to talk about Alan Wake 2. We've been talking a lot

about Allen Wake 2, but due to the review embargo when we actually got the game, we weren't able to give our full thoughts on Allen Wake 2 as it was coming out. Greg, you've now beaten Alan Wake 2. Kat, you've now started Allen Wake 2. Just started Allen Wake 2. What an opening, huh? Bless. And I'm probably about halfway through Allen Wake 2. about 10 hours. Hey, Greg, I want to start with you. No, I'll start with you, Timothy getting. I dragged your ass to the TV on Thursday to show you a Friday,

a very specific point in the game. Did this motivate you at all to play it? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. The way you guys have been talking about it's already been motivated. It's surely a time thing at this point. Of course. Like, I'm playing another game for review stuff right now, so I couldn't do that.

Like, it's just hard. And then Spin Master XD came out. It's hard, okay? No, I'm very, very interested in it. I'm not fully, fully sold because like I keep saying, like I'm not into the super weird artsy Twin Peaks type horror stuff. Sure, sure. I like a little bit more cause and effect type shit.

But hey, it looks amazing. And what you showed me was honestly incredible. And my favorite thing is while you were showing us like, Greg pretty much slacked, everyone was like, hey, if you don't think you're going to play Alan Wake or like might want to see something to like sell you or not, at 4 p.m. I'm going to like give a demo. And Greg straight up gave an E3 demo. Like Greg sat there and like walked us through everything, set the stage.

She was like, so we're about to get here, blah, blah, blah. And then he shows us the thing. I did the slow pan and everything. I'll tell you, ladies and gentlemen out there in the development community, if kind of funny goes away one day, I hire me. I'll just, I can sit there, I can do it, you know what I mean? You can do it. I have full faith, but I loved it because it felt that way.

Yeah. But we didn't talk about that. And then I saw you tweet over the weekend. You're like, I gave an E3 presentation. I'm like, you fucking did. It was awesome. Anyway, yeah, Alan Way 2 looks incredible. So, but now back to you then, Greg.

Yeah. You've now beat this game. Sure have. You beat, did you beat Alan Wake, Revaster going into this? No, remember we started it. I did a little bit more than half of it and then review season caught up to us.

You know, that window closed up pretty quick of when I had that week to play with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So now that you're done with Alan Wake too, I'm just going to start here. Is this a game of the year contender? Undoubtedly, I think so. Yeah, I think even when we were on PSI love you, right?

And it was me, uh, Janet, uh, Paris and, and no. But, yeah, well, you weren't doing it originally, which is what threw me off. Even there, we were saying, you know, incomplete. I was like, I'm leaning five out of five. I don't see what could really go wrong. Nothing did. Nothing dissuaded me from that, right?

Paris already five at a five. Jan was four out of five. And we all even then were saying, yeah, this is in the running for game of the year. Having finished it, having seen everything else that there is in that game, still having more, you know,

little mysteries to go off and do or whatever. Yeah, I think this is easily on the short list for game of the year, which is crazy in a year that is this jam packed with, oh, does she be on the game of year list? Are you planning on platinum in this one? You know, I don't think so.

And what's tentative about it is they're, they've said they're bringing a new game plus to it. I might wait and see, what that is because when I beat it last night, then I went into, let's go look at the Power Picks guide. Are there missable trophies? There are. And so one of the ones I'm short on are these collectibles for Allen. And it's like, oh, I haven't gone through and actually cross-referenced, but it looks like it's probably from an earlier mission that I can't easily go back and replay. So it's one of those,

how many other things like this are on the collectible list that I had to get in the moment. And so right now, obviously, I'm on to the next review. There's no chance for me to sit there and replay it right now. Maybe when New Game Plus does, it does. But PlayStation Portal. you know what I'm talking about. But this is, now this is one of my things, though, is like, you know, I got that sexy new iPhone, right? And so, you know, the first thing I did was hit up backbone to say, can I have a sexy new backbone? Because this is USBC now. And so my old lightning port one doesn't work. And sure enough, I got it, playing it. You know, how much I love my backbone. But when I, when Jen was like, hey, come upstairs, you dweeb. I want to hang out with you, right? I was like, okay. And she was watching Grace Anatomy. And I sat down and I went to start my PlayStation. And I was like, I refused to play Alan Wake on this. Like, this isn't the way to play Alan Wake. So I just played more. Diablo on it. So that's actually a great segue to you. You were saying you just booted it up and your first impressions were, damn, this game

is beautiful. Yeah, I was kind of like you, Tim. I was like, I think I'm going to skip Alan Wake 2 because full disclosure. I'm not a big survival horror fan. I've played Resident Evil 4, that kind of thing. I respect horror, but Alan Wake 2 didn't seem like my kind of game and I'm not that familiar with the Remedyverse games.

And I was going to ask you, Greg, how much knowledge do I need to have of like control and Alan Wake 1 to really appreciate this game? I don't think you need all that. I think it helps out quite a bit. Like, you know, in wrestling terms, I was popping for a lot of stuff where it would pop, oh, that, oh, okay.

And like, you know, I forget who I was talking to today. Maybe Barrett and I figured. No, Roger, because Roger is super in a number two. And he's like, man, it makes me want to replay control. And I'm like, dude, that's the thing. I'm not going to immediately restart Island Wake 2 and try to go for these collectibles. I'm going to jump back to control because, like, it was like such a great reminder of where

remedies verse is right now, right? I think after such a big break between Alan Wake and then control to be there now. And like, oh my God, but it's like, it gives you more context. It will remind stuff, but you can do what I think I did for Allen Wake 1, which was quite a whole bunch of it. Sure. But then like, okay, I've run out of time. Read the Wikipedia. Okay.

Oh, that's what how it ends. Okay, great. And then went to ball. I think you could read Wikipedia on both of them and probably jump in. I will say GameSpot has a really good recap. Like, that's what I had to do this weekend where like, as I got further into it, the way the game is formatted, right? Like, you have your missions where you're playing as Sogay Anderson.

and then you have your missions where you start playing as Alan Wake, right? And they're both kind of doing their own separate narratives that are also part of the same narrative. And as I started getting further into the Allen Wake stuff, I had to stop and be like, I just have no idea what this is. Like, I don't know what he's doing here. I don't understand like what like the riding is doing to whatever's going on in this narrative. And to their credit, I think Sogian Anderson is supposed to be your gateway into this world, right? Like if you, you are going into this with pretty much the same amount of knowledge as she is.

And so going into it with that, it's like, okay, cool. I kind of understand being in the dark as her. her character. But as I was doing the Allen-Wick stuff and as I want to keep doing the Allen-Wake stuff because it's been fascinating to see like, you know, Greg, you did most of the saga stuff and then pushing the Allen-Wake stuff. I think Roger played the same way as well. I want to do them where I'm like doing a chapter of each as I'm going just to like get both sides of story in conjunction. But as I was doing the Allen-L-Lick stuff, I was like, oh, I really need context for this. And I did like the GameSpot YouTube video that's like

Alan Wick story in 13 minutes and listen to it. And I was like, oh, it makes perfect sense. Like that lines up with everything that's going on right now. It's actually not as complicated as I thought. It is complicated, but like once you listen to it, it's like, okay, it's simple. Like this is what writing's doing. This is why he's here. All right, cool. Let's keep going.

I was thinking earlier this year, Alan Wake 2, didn't seem to have a lot of hype in the run-up to it. And so I thought, I wonder if this one's going to end up getting kind of lost in the mix. It reminds me a little bit of when control came out. And I don't feel like that one got a ton of hype until suddenly end of the year, everybody was like, I think this might be the best. game of the year. I think IGN gave Game of the Year to control that year. And maybe Alan Wake 2 is one of those dark horse kind of situation. Slow burn, word of mouth. I know that I ended up picking up Alan Wake 2 because the word of mouth was just that good. A lot of people that I really

respect, including you, Greg, were like, yeah, this is, this game's incredible and it's maybe a game of the year contender. I was like, well, okay, I should play it then. And the first, I I will say 10, 15 minutes are extremely disturbing. There's a very large man, and you're very much seeing his back a little more than that. And bad things happen to this poor man. I'm a spoiler alert. That's the thing that got me in initially is like,

I did the preview for kind of funny, which is funny because I'm such not an Alamake person. Like I was in a similar boat as you where I wasn't, the only things that were bringing me into the idea of wanting to jump into Allen Wake 2 were hearing Greg talk about it at Summer Game Fest and then like, you know, doing the preview from both of those things, I was like, okay, yeah, this game seems cool, but me being not an Allen Wake person, you know, I'm starting up the game, just like see what it's about.

And I do, I did not have the plan to play through it, right? I just wanted to get a peek. And from the get go, yeah, like picking up that character and being like, oh, this is not starting where I thought I was going to start. And it being such a striking scene of what's going on. And then that's setting up the mystery and me immediately being like, ah, but I got to know what's with this guy. I think they give you the right questions early enough to where you're immediately invested

in what's happening. And the thing I keep talking about is like, they keep giving me more questions to ask. And like now I'm very fascinated about the answers. And now I'm far enough in the game where I have multiple theories about what's going on. And any of those theories could be accurate. Any of them could be like, you know, not even close to what's happening. But I really want to know because I think they do a good job of putting you in a place where in many narratives, I think it could be annoying to not have.

any frame of reference for, all right, but is any of this real or is all of this fake, right? Like, that's a thing that doesn't really attract me in a story because I want to know, like, what the A to B to C plot points are, right? I want to be able to follow what's going on. I want to be able to be invested without all of it just upending and not being, not actually being real. I think in this, it's everything, it's so weird to talk about this without like talking about the details, but enough of it is real enough. And even the parts that feel like, okay, maybe they aren't real, maybe they are real. They're set up in a way. where that stuff really does matter, right?

Like, if all of this is fake, it's to the narrative, right? If all of it is real, oh, man, like, that's also to the narrative. I'm very fascinating about where things are going to end up here. And that's also part of the whole mystery and the power of Caldron Lake, right, of, like, making the fiction reality. Yeah. Is that permanent or is this is, and where are we in it in terms of real or fake and the way you go through the looking glass a few times on it?

It's pretty impressive. Yeah. So when we're talking about the game of the year, like, contender, all of that stuff, Like what do you think, Greg, are the things about this game that, like, really, really shine that put it to that level? It's funny, you know, when Kat was talking about, like, this seemed like a dark horse and a similar thing to control, right? I think that's one of those things that works so much to its advantage. And I think that's why it's turning so many heads is that it didn't have the hype, understandably so, of Zelda, right? It didn't have the hype of Starfield.

They didn't have this, like, oh, it is. It's this remedy audience that, you know, I don't think of myself as a remedy fanboy or a long time. But I've been with them since Max Payne, right? I've played every remedy game. Even Alan Wake, honestly, is the one that didn't work for me. Everything else I've rolled me. Want to break you. I love part of Brian.

Yeah, I love, I mean, like, not a five out of five, but it was like I had a great time with that game, right? And so like, for it to be kind of this like situation where there's this like not quiet group, but I think control really was the thing of like, oh shit, this is really weird and cool. And like this is it looks so good. And then to get here and have this. I think for me, it's visuals. I mean, you're going to talk about that. I think it is performances where even the ones that are like awkward performances are usually awkward. court on purpose. They're doing something with that.

And I think it's the unexpected nature of it, right? Because when you peel it all back and you get into the gameplay, it's survival horror. You're walking around a gun in one hand and a flashlight in another and a very forgiving dodge that I was cracking myself up in the final things of you, me and Janet's conversation from PS I love you of just me constantly. Like, you know, monsters just swiping at me. I just got to get to the door. Just get, you know what I mean?

Like it's not like the gameplay is like, oh my God, it's so compelling, so crazy. It is like the presentation. It is the story. It is the way they really do. We talk so much about Spider-Man 2 and the way they use the, well, how they use PS5 for Alan Wake, how it uses current gen technology of like,

you know, like literally flicking a light switch and changing realities and the world changing around you. Like that's all so impressive. And for me, it really was the unexpected. It really was to Blessings Point as saga going through and getting these questions and answering them.

And then as Alan being like, what the fuck is going to happen when I go through that door? I think this is the, of next level presentation. I think Baldersgate 3 is another great example of a game that's just elevated by its performances and its animation and its writing. And maybe I was really taken in by just the trailers for Alan Lake, too. I'm like, what an interesting mix of live action and CG.

One of the things that I really like about this game, just right off the bat, is the mind's place. And I think so many games would have just done it as a menu. They were like, we can't devote this many resources to modeling this out and having it a fully interactive space but Alan Wake 2 is like yeah screw it let's go and the way they weave that into the story then the way they explain it for what it is

and then the way in the end there's a section where like you know we talked in PS I love you me and Janice in particular like yeah the mind place is cool but the board it really isn't doing much we're laying out things we already know it's a great way to catch up da da da da but it's not like you're rarely are you getting real information from it to go using the game they do something at the very end with it

in terms of where I was like oh okay you you okay I don't want to say anything it ties into the story Yeah, I know, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. To your point as well, Greg, like, I feel like this game in terms of the gameplay, for me, might as well be a walking some, right? Like, it is, it's survival horror, right?

It plays like you would imagine for, like, a Resident Evil 4 type game or, like, a Death Base or whatever. But it is so basic in its survival horror gameplay that if I was judging this game just by the gameplay, I'd be like, oh, it's fine. Like, it's cool. Like, it's not, it's not anything that's blowing my mind. I'm not even having, like, a super, quote, unquote, fun time playing the game. But it is about the story and it is about the narrative.

And it is about, like, in the things that. I like about a walking sim, right? Picking up all these different things and going, all right, how does this all come together? Like, what are we building up to? What is the next twist? And yeah, like, I think to the mind place thing, right? Like, even playing it more over the weekend, as I've been like building things out and just like listening to saga recap everything, I'm like, oh man, this is so cool. Like I like everything that's happening here. And then on the flip side to Allen's thing, right? Like the way they use Allen's Riders Room to create puzzles and create these interesting scenarios where the way it works is that like,

you know, Alan is in the dark place, which is this effed up distorted version of New York. And essentially, like, he can morph reality by going into his mind palace, which is the writer's room, and picking up new plot points and then, like, using a plot point to alter reality, like, to, like, change the scene. And so you might have a plot point that is, all this cultists, these cultists came through and they did sacrifices. If you, if you're in like a train station, right, you use that plot point, boom, all of a sudden, it's, it's, It is like the cultists were here and now all of a sudden you can, you have different pathways you can go through or like different areas open up, right? Or if it is, oh man, the detective lost their wallet or whatever, right? I'm just making shit up. But like, you know, that then changes what the scene is.

And I'm like, it's very fascinating, fascinating how they chose to like use those bits in order to create like puzzles in a way that I've not seen in a video game before, right? Like it feels like a, hey, let's just think, let's think about the way people navigate these areas. in a way that makes me care about the areas more than I would even in a survival horror game, right? Like I look at Resident Evil for like Last West or whatever. And oftentimes I'm going through these places once or maybe twice as I'm walking through. And Alan Wake, there's an area, there's the subway area where I legit like was walking in circles because I would get a new plot point. I'd be like, what happens if I go back and use this plot point in an earlier spot? And now all of a sudden I am getting secrets.

I'm getting these other tidbits of story that really fill out what's going on here. Yeah, I think, you know, what Janet said on PSI'd love you, I've been ringing in my ears, and I'm going to use it later, and another review here is frictionless, right? Where, like, the gameplay, sure, you could look past it or whatever, but it's the perfect conduit to get you into the world and story they're building and impress you with those kind of things and not have to impress you with combat. And it speaks back to what I was talking about when I was talking about Alan Wake remastered, right, is like, oh, I kind of had it wrong.

Like, I didn't realize how plentiful ammo was and all this stuff. Like, I really am not worried at ever in Allen Wake of running out of resources. And I'm playing on normal. so if I went up to hard and I know they're doing nightmare and yada, yeah, but it is just a fun thing of shooting, and there's plenty of times I'm out of bullets and then it's just the duck and weave

and I just run around. I think this year has shown that you can have actually pretty straightforward gameplay foundations, Spider-Man 2, Balders Gate 3, Alan Wake 2, but if you, you can elevate that with just really spectacular

presentation in the way that you integrate all of that together and that can make otherwise fairly basic concepts work extremely well. You don't have to, like, overthink the actual interactions. You just want to make sure that the people are having a great time in that individual

universe. Something I'm surprised about is how long this game seems to be, because I remember when you were playing through it a couple weeks ago, you were like, oh yeah, I'm like, I get what it was, like, 12 hours in or something, and you're just like, and I have so much more to go. For a survival horror game, I think that's pretty interesting, because those games are usually on the shorter side. And I'd say that the better ones tend to be on the shorter side, because

there is that moment, you become a little too powerful, and then it just goes off the rails. Yeah. It's just, I mean, it's just like a horror movie, right? The moment you know the bad guy. The moment you understand the evil. It makes it a little less scarier, a little different. Do you think that this game like overstays it's welcome or does it kind of like really pay off because it is so narrative focused? I think it pays off because it's narrative focused. And I think, you know, it's important to say when I was showing you were saying that I think I was saying I was 11 or 12 hours in. That was based on the save clock. My save clock at the end last night when I started trophy hunting was like 16 hours, 30 minutes. So it's one of those things. Okay. What I love about it and that you, you You know, I definitely, I play, like, I think I was talking to me right after I finished mainlining saga stuff and then finally jumping to Allen. Alan's stuff being that nightmare world being the what's real, what's fake thing, isn't afraid to give you shorter chapters. It's not afraid to give you chapters that are predominantly, if not all, live action video

that you're watching. Like, they play with a lot of different things in that nightmare world that makes it go a bit quicker at a pace there where I was like, oh, this makes sense because some of sagas chapters I was like, damn it was long chapter, damn it was long time. Where if I would have popped over to Alan Wake and had a pallet cleanse. That coffee world chapter, like I was planning to go through this game doing two chapters a day. Yeah. So I can knock it out and hopefully, I don't know, maybe like a week or so. And I did the coffee roll chapter. By the time I got to the end of it, I was like,

in like two hours. Like what's the like going on? Like, why is this all happening? And then I did the next chapter and the next chapter was really short. And so I was like, okay, cool. Like, yeah, they'd play around with the lengths. But like I think when you do get to those longer chapters, I think it pays off, right? Like the coffee world one, for example, feel and the coffee world is also like in my preview that I did with like the let's play I did with Alan with Sam, I was going to call him, Allenwick. But yeah, like, that area is big. It's explorable, right?

And, like, that's one where they build it out in a way where they want you to, like, re-explore it, and you're coming back to it multiple times, and you have an understanding of what this theme park is. And I think it works. Like, it also works just for, like, what the game is doing with changing the areas. Like, it's the same thing where you play any survival horror, and, all right, you go down the path, you get the item that you're looking for, right? The crowbar, like, the screwdriver or whatever.

and then you come back the same path and guess what there's enemies right that's how every single survival horror game works in this one you do that you come back and it's something something morphed or something changed or something weird's happening so it's no longer flooded it's no longer flooded right like there's something that's happening like oh the floods I'm like oh well here comes 30 minutes to me exploring every nook and crap yeah yeah that happened I was like I don't have the time I'm just gonna skip all this stuff but I really like how they're playing around with your expectations Greg I have a question yeah Resident Evil 4 remake came out earlier this year and a lot of people were lauding it

as one of the best remakes ever and like real achievement and survival horror Allen Wake 2 versus Resident Evil 4 remake what's the comparison to you? I still haven't started a remake. What? I know it came when I was on another review so it's been burning a hole on my PlayStation.

It's still there. I'm getting to it. I want to have it for game of the year discussions and this very conversation. I feel like it's gotten a little bit lost in the mix because there's so many great games. Wouldn't you say that goes back to expectations because I feel like that's why I've left it on the back burner.

I've played Resident Evil 4 multiple times. You know what I mean? So it's like to go back to it, even though it's going to be way prettier and different. And I love RE2, right? Like, I still feel like Resident Evil 4 has been out so much. I feel like that's been talked about so much in terms of just as an IP, let alone now as a remake. But I feel like, yeah, remake come out and they didn't fuck it up. Great.

Like that's kind of the conversation there. Right. I've had plenty of people be like, look, even if you finish Resident Evil 4 multiple times, like our friend Brian Altano has said this. You should go back and play Resident Evil 4 remake because it's just that much better because developers understand the spirit of it. But they also went in and improved it amazingly dramatically. I think it's just Allen Wake 2 and Resident Evil 4 have different goals maybe.

Like we know we're talking about different chapters and everything. I feel like the cadence of writing a novel, reading a novel, right? Whereas Resident Evil 4 is almost like a schlocky horror that you're watching at 3 in the morning, but that's not a bad thing. No, not at all. Yeah, it's all my to-do list. I'll get there. What's funny is that I talked about this during our review on PS Love You,

that like, it's been fun playing Resident Evil 4 remake at the top of the year, and now playing All right 2 towards the end of the year, and it feeling like a full circle moment of, oh, man, Allen & Wake 2 can, this game can happen because of Resident Evil 4 and what that set up back in the day, right? Like, this game set the tone for that Allen & Wake 2 many, many years later, to come through and take some of these ideas and take ideas from other things like Twin Peaks and all this stuff

and really forward it in a way that feels like, a crazy evolution of what this genre was. It's funny for me, like, I'm playing through Resident Evil 4 at the top of the year and like trying to compare to Allen Wake 2. For me, Allen Way 2, it's kind of easy for me to go with Alamawake 2. And I think that's more so for the idea of

Resident Evil 4 remake, if I played that without the context of Resident Evil 4 and I just played it as a video game, I'd be like, oh, this is a great video game. Like, this is a fantastic video game, right? But it's not one that I view as like one of the all-time goats. When I put it in the context of what that game was when it came out in, what, 2004, something like that, right?

Like, I can totally see, like, how that comes through and how people go, oh, this is, like, one of the best things of all time. Right. So he played remake for the first time. He didn't play through. Yeah, I didn't play. I never played all the way through four originally. Yeah, the OG on GameCube was shocking.

One of the best-looking games of the generation. It felt like a next-gen experience in the PS2 era. On the GameCube. On the GameCube. Which is awesome. Any final words on All right, too, before we move on? I think the only thing we haven't said in terms of lauding this game is how I think seamless it is to go from live action to game. But you know what I mean?

Where it is like I think we've definitely seen FMVs and video games before. Metal. Hellblit. Exactly. Quantum break. And obviously as the years have gone by, we've gotten better and better at it. But this is the one where it's like, damn. Like, you know what I mean?

The jump over there where I'm excited to watch. I'm excited to play and I don't feel a difference when I'm really jumping into it. When do we, when do we put Sam Lake on like, the level of like the greats when you think of like the game directors because I feel like he's starting to cement that. I mean I would say probably

this will be the first step if not the thing that gets him there. This is, I don't need to take away from what control did but I feel like in some ways control made remedy relevant to a large portion of the audience

and then this is kind of like their Witcher 3 where now it's like even if you're just a casual reader of IG and you're like oh my God this thing I heard something like. Wow. It's like in a weird way.

I hope they don't have a cyberpunk launch. I don't want this come off as like an insult, especially like to Sam Lake, right? But like it feels it feels almost like what Sam Lake does with Island Lake 2 is like a more successful version of what David Cage tries to do with his games where it's like, hey, I'm going for something different. I'm going to put myself in the game, right? I'm going to do all these different things.

And like I can see myself playing Detroit becoming human and like seeing David Cage appear and being like eye rolling, right? Being like, oh my God, this guy. right whereas Sam Lake does it and I'm like yeah this is fucking cool though but I mean that's the he's pulling it off and again right like to the you know the tapestry he's woven over there right and what this entire team has obviously but for him

in particular there's game director on this like yeah you could look at it as hubris putting yourself in the game right but like it speaks to so many of the themes of Alan Wake the creator doing all these different things let alone to then be you know oh it's Sam who was of course the face of Max Payne like there's so many things that are like it's so meta and not a cringy weird it's like oh if

If you, because how many people are going to play this and have no idea that that's him, right? Like, it's the people who are listening to this podcast, right, who are going to know that, watch that, then get the theme, understand when they're sitting on the couch or the late night thing. Oh, my God, blah, blah. Like, it's incredible what they've done. Oh, man. So exciting.

We're going to continue to talk about more exciting games after a quick word from our sponsors. This episode's brought to you by Better Help. Do you ever feel like your brain is getting in its own way? I can't even count the amount of nights. I lose sleep just because I can't stop thinking. and my brain just won't stop talking. It turns out one great way to make those racing thoughts go away is to talk through them. Therapy gives you a great place to do that so you can get out of your negative thought cycles

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You're reviewing a game called Thirsty Souter's that looked super cool since the first time we saw this. That's really Scott Pilgrim versus the world type story at least for this game. Yeah. Thirsty Suters, ladies and gentlemen, is something that's been, yeah, since I think we first saw it, right?

It's from Outer Loop games, of course. They're the folks who brought you Falcon Age before. And you are playing a game as Jala, right? You are coming home. You are a South Asian woman. You are coming home after a bad breakup to a place in a hometown that you kind of left. in disgrace and just at the drop of a hat, right?

And as you see the footage here, you go back and you, you know, you end up fighting your exes or whatever. We've known this whole thing going through. There's dad, of course, he's Sri Lanka and mom's indie. And there's all these awesome themes and representation and da-da-da-da. There's skateboarding. It sounds like a fever dream to describe. If you don't know this game and you have, you must have seen it, ladies and gentlemen,

at this point in many of the conferences and things. But like, to talk about it being it is, of course, a game where you skateboard, you cook, and then you do turn-based battles to fight your exes, right? Like, it kind of sounds ridiculous. It is gorgeous as you see it. It's got this definitive art style, right? It's got amazing performances in it. I really like the music.

Like, it's one of those games that I really can't say enough nice things about. My clock on the PlayStation clock, which I'm never sure if it's actually accurate, says eight hours right now for me. I have beaten it. I have rolled credits. I think it's a four out of five. I think it's a great game.

And what it's pulling back to Janit's use of frictionless. I think this is an interesting. year for games for a million different reasons. But to play Thirsty Suiters and then go on to Alan Wake 2, right, and feel the same idea that these are two games that are wanting you to play them and how do you want to play them? This is probably an interesting place to start a review of Thirsty Suitors. But the idea is that basically, no matter what you don't like in this game, you can change it and turn it off.

You can figure out how to play it. They want you just to be able to go through and do that. And obviously that comes down to difficulty, right? But it's also like, cool, do you not like the skateboarding in the game? When you get into a story-based segment where you have to beat somebody or do a combo challenge, it can auto-play itself. Okay, cool. When you go into the cooking mini-games, right, there's a lot of tapping and flicking sticks

and, you know, holding. You don't want to do anything that. You can turn it from, you know, you can toggle it. You can turn it to tap. You can just turn it to auto-do it. Like, we'll just do it for you. And I think that sounds like in some ways could be a detriment to it. Of course, all this is optional.

You can do whatever you want with it. I loved it because to go back to being an obsessive remote player, Like it was that I was playing this game and I'm having a great time and I really, I do like the combat it a lot and I really love the cooking mini game. But when I went upstairs and I was watching something with Jen and just grinding on a few of the different battles, I did just turn it to it because I, you know, maybe timing's off or I don't want to have my, I want to have my attention on the screen. So I'll let it, I let it do the things where it's like going to do the cooking game for myself as I want.

This is a nice choice and it also doesn't get in the way of me complimenting what I love about the game. Because what I love about the game is that you can sit here and be like, it's Scott Pilgrim, right? And as we remember from the Scott Pilgrim movie when we did Edgar Wright and review, right? Like I don't vibe with Scott Pilgrim, especially the movie. The books I don't have as much a problem with. But in the movie, I just feel like he doesn't grow. I really feel like it's a lot of telling and not showing, right?

Jala's whole thing here is that the exes aren't evil. She kind of is shitty. And it's her realization to that and her changes and her conversations. And you're making choices in this. And you're never going to make the choice. And fuck you. It is really dealing with some shit here and working through the fact that Jala broke a whole bunch of people's heart.

She really screwed up her home life. She hasn't talked to her sister. I know I forget how many months or whatever. And now her sister's getting married. And that's the whole thing to tackle the disappointment of her parents. But what I love about this endearing and heartwarming story, right, is that I was having breakfast with Jen. And she was like, so what happened last night?

And I was like, oh, well, you know, I helped this ex who then had the realization that I had this realization. And then she talked to me about like, you know, you don't get it. Like you don't understand when you came out. Your family was all right. and celebrated. Mine won't look at me on the street, blah, blah, blah. And then there's this conversation, slight spoilers here, of her father being like,

well, yeah, you know, like, I only good about you because of what I went through before that. And I stopped the conversation. I'm like, by the way, this is happening in the most cheery, poppy, cooking mini game as I do. Like, they take all this real serious conversations and like, I'm sure things you'd like to have a lot of your family members, right? And put it into this really heartwarming package that I really enjoyed playing. playing through and having fun. And, you know, it's like, I think there's moments where it's like, you know,

obviously Outer Loop is an indie game studio, right? And so there are those things where it's like, okay, I'm going into another battle. They're not random. There's little gifts you can run into and just, or bears eventually to choose and play or whatever. But then like the guy shows up and it's the same text as before. And we're having the same conversations. And there's no, nothing in the thing that says skip text I've already read, right?

So it's like, click, click, click, okay, beat the guy up and blah. But even combat for this turn-based system, eventually you start, I mean, the one that, you know, caught headlines when at first debut, was her calling in her mom and her mom showing up like, you know, the size of Godzilla and smashing somebody

as you beat the X's you get them on your side so you have these super moves and they're really, I was like, oh, that's cool. Like what's the, what's the risk or reward for using them?

There is none. They're just there to really fuck shit up if you want and really keep the battles going faster if you want. Like if you want and I was like,

oh okay, again, frictionless. It's a nice thing to do. It's like a visual novel. Yeah. Yeah. I have an RPG about podcasts or a podcast about RPGs,

the other one. The Blood X? An RPG about the podcast. And so I think a lot about term-based RPGs and whatnot. And, yeah, it's a visual novel with term-based mechanics kind of attached, some fun QTE-style mini-games and everything, and I really dig it. I am gay, but so I really enjoy playing a game that's unabashedly queer. Sure.

And specifically what you're talking about, the pain. Some people have a lot more pain than others. and maybe the resentment of like, I had it so hard and you didn't have it very hard. And grappling with that, I think that was a very honest conversation and a lot of emotions going back and forth. Also, this game reminds me a persona five in the actual presentation.

I mean, you saw it in the trailer, how the exes were going into full-on, you know, demon mode and everything and powering up. And it's one of the first things you do you take a test to learn your thirst sona, right? It was like Heartbreaker or The Star. I'm a bar. Bohemian.

And it's doing a little Q&A that kind of reminds me of classic games like Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines. Like what would you do in this particular instance? What would you do in that particular instance? And it maybe is a little bit of a Rorschach test of like learning or personality test of learning who you are as well. I really enjoyed Ms. Marvel last year. Yeah, we did too.

which did such a wonderful job of depicting Pakistani family relationships. And a lot of people I know who are South Asian really, really, really related to it. And this gives me sort of similar vibes. And so I have been really enjoying it. I'm like four or five hours into it. I think I'm in like chapter four or five at this point. And the flow and the vibes work really well for me. Also, there's a bear and you go skateboarding.

It's a little Tony Hawkish. It's not like on that level, but it's just something nice to do to turn your brain off. I've been playing on Steam Deck. Nice. It's pretty well on Steam Deck. Yeah, I have to say. So, yeah, I have it like at 60 FPS. And just turn down the graphics a little bit and you're doing fine.

Okay. How's the presentation overall? Because like as you talk about it, like this is a game that I've done a preview at a day of the devs, I think a while ago. And one of the things that struck me was like, It seemed very chaotic from like a lot of the things going on on screen at that time. Right. And like I think this is me doing like this skateboarding minigame. Sure.

But as you describe it, right? And that's like we've been running up to it. You know, you guys mentioned Scott Pilgrim. You mentioned Persona Five, both things that I super love. Even as like you were describing it made me think of polite society, a movie that Tim recommended to me the other week. And like it seems like a melding of all these things that I, I'm pretty sure. All these, all these things that I enjoy that makes me pretty sure that I would enjoy this.

But for me, I think presentation was the one thing I was very curious about. Does it hold up? Does it look good? Yeah, I think it looks great. Honestly, I think the presentation and the humor both really stand out. It's a little over the top. All the characters are doing backflips all over the place and everything. She runs a garage and she's like powerlifting dumbbells. The summons are a delight.

I just really enjoy them every time, especially when you use a taunt. So the way that the battle system works is you're trying to find taunts. So like, I'm going to make them really mad or I'm going to shock them or I'm going to break their heart. And once you get them going, then you can use a special attack to do a ton of damage to them. And the special attacks have little QTEs that you're doing. But even though they can get repetitive, they don't feel that repetitive ultimately. Yeah, I still enjoy them. Yeah, because they just have a flow and a vibe.

And they're just fun to look at in this game. So I think, yeah, the presentation absolutely holds up. See your presentation, everybody. Yeah, you're the presentation. One of the things I want to jump off with that I really appreciate it is you know that obviously I loved persona four I loved persona three persona five

I still haven't like finished and gone all the way through but I don't know what I promise But what long one That's that's probably my problem as always But like one of my issues with the persona was always like Ah shit what are you weak to? Like what should I be doing to do the go and check the thing And do the stuff

What I really appreciate about using the taunts To get somebody's weakness right And because you know you do it and then they can't perform And then like they'll either hit themselves Or hit you for like one damage rather than whatever it was going to be, was that you could listen to what the person was saying to you and like educatedly guess like, oh, okay, like you, I could impress you or you're flirting with me so I can inflict thirst on you and then distract you with my feminine wiles, right? Like, I'm in. Yeah,

like, I thought that was cool. But to your point of presentation, like, I'm with you that when I started the game and I came back, I think, you know, after night one, I forget, maybe it was buried or somebody was asking me how it was. And I was like, it's interesting. It feels very indie. And like, what I was in my head referencing about talking about was that it kind of feels stilt. at places where it is like, cool, you're leaving the house, load screen, do the, you know, I mean, like, there is those like, but I think once you, like, by night two, when I understood, oh, these three core mechanics, right, the cooking, the skating, and the fighting are what makes up the game.

So it's like, once I had that idea of like, that's what this game is, okay, it never stood out to me again. That was the question I had is, is there a core gameplay to this, or is it all kind of a different gameplay style for each chapter that you're doing? No, what I just described is what it is. Got it. Okay. So it's kind of, you're coming back to this.

skateboarding. You're coming back to the turnways. And there's, you know, skateboarding challenges that you can do, but it's not a hugely important thing. No, they're all optional and I don't like them at all. And it sucks that the goddamn platinum's tied to him.

Eka at Outer Loop driving me crazy. I'm gonna go platinum. I started doing the skateboard channel. I was like, I don't like this. I'm out. Yeah. Why didn't you like just because you don't like that type of thing?

Yeah, it's the try, try and try again thing. Yeah, like, again, like it's, I love that. When I'm, and that's why it might work for you.

And it's not even that big of a deal, right? But to Kat's point earlier, of like, it's not Tony Hawk, right? Of like, it is this simplified skating and easy enough to do it. But then when it's like, now I've got a combo of a million or whatever, I'm like, what do you want me to do exactly? Like, I exhausted the thing. I was like, I don't know.

I just didn't enjoy that part of it. The skating between, like when you're in the open area, right? Like when you go downtown and you need to go to the shop at the end of the thing, you're skating to it. You skate that entire time and you can do little tricks and get little, you know, refill your willpower, eat a candy bar you pass for health or whatever. That's all fine. But when it got into like, now we want, there's like one where it's like, go, you're skating and like the rails are going around in the, they're like in the water.

So it's like you got to time it perfectly and going. The last one's all out. And I was like, I just don't know. Same my jam. Yeah. Any final thoughts on it, either of you? This game is vibes. But also, I appreciate how, as I already said, unabashedly queer.

Yeah. It is. It feels like a very authentic story. And the creators have said that this is a story from the heart. and you can definitely see it. So in that case, I very much resonated and connected with it, and I'm really excited to see how it ends. Yeah, I think that's Nailson, right?

Like, you know, one of my favorite things of playing games is getting to be in someone else's shoes, whether it be a fictional or whatever, but definitely for a life experience that I don't know, right? And so, like, the jolless story of, you know, trying to make amends with her exes, trying to make amends with their family, you know, the weight of being,

South Asian and, you know, her mother, having more archaic traditions or whatever and how she's rebelled from that, but how do they find middle ground? Which again, sounds so serious and is, but isn't when they do the game and the cooking mini game and she's judging me the entire time and there's an approval meter.

It's hilarious. I love it. It's really well done and I do think it's something special. And again, I think the heart of it is what shines through and you are like, okay, cool, I don't like the skating, but that's not like a big deal. That's not what it's about. Yeah. Awesome. Everybody check out thirsty suitors.

Moving on. I want to talk about Mario Wonder. We reviewed it a couple weeks back. but that was that weird situation where it was Nintendo, so we only got one code. And even then, their embargoes that kind of limit a lot of the things that you can talk about because they're not trying to ruin anything,

whatever, and they're really sensitive about stuff. It's now out so we can say whatever we want. We've all been playing it to some extent. Plus, we've talked a little bit about this on games, and stuff, but where are you at now with Mario Wonder? I've completed the main campaign.

I've not 100% of things, right? Like, that's something I might go back and do, but I've rolled credits on it. Might go back or, like, you think you're going to go back? It's just a time thing. In my ideal scenario, I'd love to go back and yes, Evac, I'm 100% things. I'm also just not that big of a completionist when it comes to 100% of things, but a Mario game, I would make that exception for. But also, one of the things that Mario requires a view to 100% things is, like, get the top of the flag pulls, which I know I missed, like, probably 25% of them as I was going through.

And then also the three coins. And, like, I feel like I can see myself being on a guides page online. And that's kind of where I draw the line on these things. But, like, in my ideal world, I'd love to because I think this game is a delight. Like, I can't believe how, I can't believe how much this game reminded me of all the things I loved about Mario and why I love Mario, right? It's the idea of, man, like, is there such a charm and such a level of creativity and no pun intended wonder as I'm playing through this thing? I am very impressed by the fact that they have the wonderflowers on every single level of this thing, right? And as a reminder, right, that's a mechanic where you get the wonderflower and then the level changes and you have like a cool set piece moment.

And that happens in every single level. and all of them are different for the most part. I guess there are some that like repeat certain elements, but they're all unique to that level. And I cannot believe how well they pulled that off. Like the fact that like I did not know what was going to happen level to level. Like that's a feeling I've not had in a Mario game. And I guess in a 2D Mario game in a while.

You know, I kind of understand what people are saying when they compare this even more to a 3D Mario than a 2D Mario just in the sense of, hey, like anything can happen. Like you don't know what's around the corner. It isn't just you going through a roster of level. So that stuff I love. I love the soundtrack. I love the music.

I love the presentation. The art style changes for me have worked. I, after pleading it, I also get where Tim comes from with some of the critiques of it still feeling like a new Super Mario Brothers extension, right? Like this doesn't feel necessarily like a,

this is going to stand alone as its own thing, especially like if they make a Mario Wonder 2, right? Like this would really feel like a, you know, part of, I guess, the new Super Mario Brothers franchise. But as a next step into what Mario can be and probably should be. I really like this direction.

And yeah, like, I've had an absolutely wonderful time with it. Have you been doing too, Kat? Well, this is where I go and plug our conversation about a Nintendo voice chat. Go check it out. We talked with a review of Ryan McCaffrey about Mario Wonder.

Continuing on the year of vibes tip, this is very much a vibes Mario, where I think the badges are really interesting. And each time I get a new one, I'm like, oh, okay, that's kind of cool. Like, they're the ones that are sort of simple. And it's like, you just get a mushroom to start your level. Cool.

I like that. But there are other ones with the dolphin kick or being able to squat and then jump much higher, which has actually been, that's the one that I've been using the most recently because it's really helpful to be able to get to higher areas. And I agree that the Wonderflower stuff is the secret to this game. Because each one is joyful. It reminds me of a Mario Odyssey, when it's playing Jump Up Superstar

and you're doing the Donkey Kong stuff. They had so much fun and it felt like such a celebration of Mario that they decided to basically craft an entire game around that conceit. And each one really is different and there are fireworks everywhere and stars flying down

and never know what you're going to get. The fact that the second level, I'm not going to say what it is, but the fact that they were able to pull that off for what the second level is and have such a strong start to it and go, hey, this is what you're in for the rest of the game. Prepare for this.

this a lot. Incredible way to start it off. You gotta love when enemies suddenly start flying or they get humongous. Yeah. And you're just bouncing off them and everything. It's really great, yeah. Yeah, have you been it yet? I'm on World Four now. And it keeps getting progressively better, I think. It's like a game that starts off fairly simple and you go,

well, this just feels very straightforward. And then they just keep getting more and more ambitious with the actual mechanics. From a platforming standpoint, there's some pretty challenging levels, but there's been nothing that's really super stood out to me so far. It's mostly just the design. Like, I don't think the level design is that special, but I do think that the actual wonder flowers are really interesting. Greg, I want to talk to you about this because I know you haven't played too much of it,

but you and Ben have been playing, which I think is extremely exciting. Like, what is your thoughts or what are his thoughts? So that's a great one. Let's get Ben on the phone. Yeah, like, you know, I was home on launch day working from home because the nanny was out. And you had said ahead of time after you reviewed it, you're like, you know, Ben would really like this. So, you know, when I got it all downloaded and we were getting ready to go meet mom for lunch,

we took 20 or 30 minutes and went down there, yeah, and put it on the big screen today. He just sat there and raptured by it. And I sent you the video, right? But it is that thing of like when we finally get, this is his first Mario game. I mean, he's two years old, right? So like, we got to the end there. And I'm like, do you like, do you like Mario? And he started saying, Mario.

I'm like, can you say Wahoo? And he's like, wahoo. And like, oh, my God, this is great. And so that's one of the, I think, reasons I haven't advanced more is that we did that on launch day or whatever and I haven't been back to it granted I'll wake it come in and there's four of the reviews I've been on since then including thirsty suitors right but it is that I want to keep playing with him vibe of it yeah yeah I've been progressing a lot in it and I'm at the point now that I've 100%ed every single thing except for the final final final final last level

and oh my god in traditional Mario fashion in at least recent times it's a doozy this last one I spent literally an hour playing yesterday I lost 50 lives oh oh Oh man. It's funny because like that was gonna be one of the things I brought up of like man, I wish the, you talk about the badges, I wish they pushed you to like use the badges more and more unique scenarios.

And you were talking about some of the levels later on. I'm like, oh, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Like that's exactly where I need to get to you. Because there's one badge really like where you basically shoot out a vine like a spider me and web. And as soon as I got it, I was like, this is fucking genius. And then I couldn't really find much use for it

in the levels that I was playing. Like I found some use for it, but like I wish there was a level that was just framed all around that where I can kind of go crazy with it. That's the thing is, I feel like there, if I had one gripe, and it's even a, it's even a weird gripe, because it's to, it's, to the game's credit, there are so many creative ideas in Mario Wonder that I wish we could like pick and pick and choose a few and really develop them and let them breathe. Because it is, it does feel like moment to moment, there's

something wondrous and new and crazy that happens. And then you're on to the next one, right? It feels like for like a year straight every day, Nintendo had game jams. Or we're like, what are your ideas? All right, let's make this level. Let's make this level. Let's make this level and let's make this level and it's super polished and it's super cool and super creative. But I think that then, yeah, like let some mechanics feel like they fall by the wayside when it is. No, you should use this more. Like this should come back around more. That's one of the things I wish I could see.

And I don't know if that's making the game longer. I don't know if that's making again a Mario Wonder 2 that is. All right, now let's do that. But it makes me want to get to where you're at, Tim, with like the challenge stuff to like really try to push the difficulty of it. Yeah. I mean, I'm loving my time with this game. Like this is, it's definitely in my top 10. like it's a contender.

Contender. Rest of peace, Andy. Yeah, exactly. For sure. But now that I've done the majority, like literally I got like, I was about to be the level and I died right before the flagpole. So it's like, I fucking, I hate this. But I'll be back and I will do it. But now that I've seen all that the game has to offer, I really stand by my review of a four out of five on this one where I think, and that's a four to five for Mario, for what we expect.

Because there's so much, so much great here, so much that's so special, so much that I love. But I do think that for, again, like I said in my review, to a lot of people, this is going to be a five, and it should be a five because it's such a special experience. But for someone that's been there, done that every single time with Mario, I'm with you with a lot of what you're saying of just like, oh, man, that idea was great. I would have loved to go a little further with that instead of just more different things. Like, there's just so much that I don't think everything like totally hits. And we're talking about the level design. And like, I brought this up. It's a very bite size in some ways.

Which is, which can be good. You know, Mario 3 is my favorite of the 2D Mario. I actually think Mario 3 is more expansive, at least so far, but to me. But one thing that stands out to me is the power-ups are actually not that complex. You have bubble Mario and you have elephant Mario and fire Mario. Maybe there are more than I'm forgetting about. Not really. But the badges are much more about that.

And I think it's interesting. Some of the badges could have been power-ups, honestly, like the dolphin kicks. Just turn Mario into a dolphin for heaven's sake. Yeah, totally. I mean, it's like Frog suit and in three. Those are things where some of the decisions I don't feel like fully add up. But I also totally get it. And I think that like the content that's here is amazing.

I think that that's just the biggest hesitation I have is that there was so much amazing here. And it comes together so well. I just feel like there is a lot of room for like that. Let's take this from that eight to a 10 that I just feel like it doesn't quite hit there as much as I wished that it would. And you bring it up the jump up superstar thing. I brought that up in my review. well and I feel like there aren't moments of this game that hit that high. They emulate it and they do such a good job of like having so many more of them,

but I just feel like there wasn't a single Wonderflower thing in this game that I'm like, holy shit. You bring it up the second level. I feel like that is definitely one of the highest moments for me in terms of like the wonder and surprise of it all. But I've seen things like that done in Rayman games. You know what I mean? I've seen some of the more interesting visual levels.

I've seen that done in Donkey Kong. country returns or whatever. So again, I'm coming at this from somebody that like maybe cares a little too much about all this. Because I got a problem. I really, really love this game. It's a lot better than new Super Mario Brothers. Sorry to new Super Mario Brothers fans.

When I revealed Wonder, I was like, well, I hope it's better. And I think the Wonderflower can see it in the badges definitely make it a cut above. And it's just more fun. It's more visually interesting. Part of it for me, I think, to what I was talking about before with, like, developing ideas and all these things, right? Like, I think part of it is me coming at it as a, as an adult playing a Mario game, right?

As opposed to, like, being a kid and, like, you know, the fact that when you, when I think about the TLC of this game and, like, the amount of work and the amount of, like, creative care put into it, the amount of enemies that I find where you're only here for this level. Like, these, this group of enemies was made specifically for this specific level and they're here and they're never here again, right? like that is a that's a lot of work to make so many of those moments happen same with the wonder seeds same with like you know a lot of the level design i agree in terms of like you know this the level design itself is like what you'd expect even out of like maybe a new super marie brothers

but it is the wonder seeds and all the stuff that's that's elevating it the amount of stuff in here is absolutely insane but for me i come into it and i'm able to like kind of identify that it's more of a roller coaster ride than a i'm going to like you know put in like put in the effort to like get better or get good or have that like experience that brides against what you're doing, right? And like, you know, have that I'm going to put an ever into getting good at this kind of thing. Yeah, I think my ideal Mario game, my ideal Mario game might be Mario Maker in some extent because I can go and find those intricately designed like tough levels to go through and have that level of progression. But yeah, I feel like Mario Wonder is more of that, hey, like this is a ride.

This is about the experience and this is about giving you this roller coaster of things to then get you to the end and say you had a good time. Yeah, theme park right. It's a good comparison, I think. Two major pros I want to give the game now that I'm a lot deeper into it in terms of like the postgame stuff. I do think that 100% in this game is worth it and it's a lot of fun. And like getting all the purple coins and stuff, that is where I think the level design starts to shine a little bit more is the way that

they place those and the way that they teach you to think about how to find the secrets to lead to them or the levels that have a second wonder seed. like that stuff I think is really rewarding and very clever um and the multiplayer I just think is inspired like I love how they did it in this game like when you uh go online and you're playing like levels with live ghost player there aren't it's like they're transparent so that you can actually interact interact with them but there's was a couple times where I was playing through and as you boot up the level live people can join in with you and you're seeing them run behind you and stuff and there'll be people that are like solely already beat the level of

level. They already know what they're doing. And they're kind of like trying to help guide players to like, uh, find secrets and stuff. And it's just so cool. And it reminds me of journey, but it's Mario. And it's just like such a cool thing that, um, I don't know if this is a feature that's going to be able to work in five, 10 years when people are playing this game because it just won't be there. But it is something that I never thought I'd want in a Mario game. In a lot of ways, it's a kind of antithetical to how I want to play these games. But there's something that is so charming about it and that just really works and it makes it feel like this community moments that like I think is something that I never expected to get from a 2D Mario game. So shout to them for that. It's like a live version

of the me verse in some ways. Honestly, it is like with the little like the notes and the the drawings people can make. RIP. Yeah, yeah, exactly. RIP me verse everybody. Never forget. Closing out the show here, Starfield. Wow. Yeah, you've been playing a lot of Starfield. You're a big RPG person. We haven't talked about Starfield for a while. It feels like on this show. What did you think into the game? I have a complicated relationship with Starfield.

I saw the tweets. For context, Starfield was my most anticipated game of 2023. It is such a cat game where I get to be in a spaceship and fly around and have my own crew. And it's a Bethesda RPG. I really love Bethester RPGs, actually. I loved Fallout 4. I love Skyrim. So this felt like perfection to me.

And it was hard to get into because it was missing one thing that I really, really, really love in a Bethesda RPG, which is the sense of walking out of the vault and into the castle and looking out, seeing the world spreading out in front of you and just be like,

walking along, right? And who am I going to meet? Who am I going to discover? That kind of thing. And it feels like a very expansive but also connected world, even if you're fast traveling. And because Starfield is necessarily so much fast travel.

Initially, it was not hitting, and I was going, I'm waiting to find the fun because the shooting is not good in this game. And the quest lines feel kind of underdeveloped. And I don't know how I feel about all of this. And finally, once I built my damn ship, once I went and I played with spaceship Legos, and I came in, I was like, okay, I get it now. I found it.

Also, if you're not vibing with Starfield, A, go get mods. If you're on PC, go get mods. I would highly recommend the one that doesn't have the people zoom in with the conversations. That's a good one. I'm so tired of that mechanic. I would play it with Special K because the HDR is very lacking in the base version, and it looks 100% better with that and the DLSS. mod and then

God, what was another one? Oh, the inventory mod. That was another one. And also the mod that makes a UI go 120 FPS instead of 30. So it's not jittering everywhere and driving you crazy. Once I had all of that. Once I completely rebuilt the game. Once I redid the game, I started

getting into it. And then also, I waited a little too long to get into the Vanguard missions. Those are the ones that have had the most TLC. They're really good, actually. And they go quite deep. And it's actually two major quest lines and they're quite ambitious. There's one in particular that's basically alien, complete with the ticking radar and everything.

Very cool. I thought that was extremely well done. Sometimes this game gets too ambitious for its own good. And then I'm actually digging the main story. Yeah. I like Star Trek. I'm a Star Trek fan. And it's obvious that the writers of this game like Star Trek as well, because they spend a lot of time thinking about the nature of the universe and thinking about the nature of religion and being philosophical.

There's a memorial scene where everybody kind of gets up and it's talking and being like very thoughtful about, you know, what happens after we die. I like the major choices that are being made at the end. I like some of the sci-fi twists as a sci-fi nerd. I'm like, okay, I'm digging this. It's clear that these people really like sci-fi. And also, I like my ship now. I did stay up until 4 in the morning, pinkering with it.

Awesome. So now- Ship was the ship's name? I didn't name the ship because they didn't know until recently that you could do that because they hit it. Oh, you know it's buried in that weird menu? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. So now that you have this moment that you're like, okay, I get it and I'm in. Yeah, I got it. Are you all in or you're like, okay, cool, I'm finding the fun. like it's still not living up to my hope. It went from disappointment of the year to, at least it's in my top 10.

Okay. Yeah. So I'm digging it now. I'm good. I think that when modders really get their dig into it, when they get the actual modding tools, I think they're going to create something really special because the pieces are there. I'm pretty interested in it, but it feels like it needs to go to another level. I'm also excited to see, I think Betheszo said there would be some expansions.

for this one. I want them. I want those expansions because I want more pieces for my ship. I want more quests. I want more mechanics. I want more things to do

in this universe because... With that local map. One of the things that are... This game is really missing is the exploration. Going to planets is boring. It's not exciting

to walk around on a planet and do things. Usually it's like, go kill a pirate base. Go invade the random research. I'm like, no, I'm not going to do that. I'm going to, at a certain point, I realize that you're just going to be a lot happier if you do the bespoke quests and don't try to make reactive stuff happen.

One of the things that maybe Baldr's Gate 3 has over this game is how much more reactive it feels than this one. This one feels pretty clunky at times. But yeah, like, it took a while. There's not a lot of games like this. I wish there were more spaceship games where I was exploring the galaxy in a AAA context. Todd Howard made the game he's always wanted to make. I respect that. It's a game I've always wanted, and it's taken a while, but I finally like Starfield.

Yay! I love that. That's a great way to end this episode of the Kind of Funny Games Cast, everybody. Thank you so much for joining us. Where could people find you? Hi, I have a podcast. It's called Acts of the Blood Out. It's about role-playing games.

It's independent. Also, I work over at IGN.com, where I'm the news director, and we're putting out news all the time, news, news, news. And I'm on Nintendo Voice Chat, which is our TV. dedicated Nintendo show. So go check me out on that every single Thursday. And I will be joining you this Thursday on that show. So I'm very, very excited to talk more about I imagine Mario Wonder and other fun things going on in the world of Nintendo. But until then, remember, stay tuned here on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, Twitch.

.com slash kind of funny games. All the different kind of funny games channels because we're going to be doing a whole bunch of fun IGN, kind of funny crossovers this week on all the different shows, ending in. Friday being a giant mega stream all day long. We're going to be hanging out in the studio with a ton of IGN people in the studio. So that's going to be a lot of fun. But until next time, I love you all. Goodbye.