Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Apex Legends, Anthem, and Division 2 Impressions - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 208

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

Robinhood is giving listeners a free stock at http://greggy.robinhood.com Fran, Andy, and Tim give their thoughts on Kingdom Hearts 3, Apex Legends, Division 2, Rage 2, and more! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Shout out to our Patreon producers for helping make this show happen. Who are they? Let me read them off to you. Trevor Starkey, Joe Beezer, Mohamed Muhammad, a Blackjack, Stephen Johnson, Scott Hardinger, Fanatic Gamer in 1986, drunk on writing, DJ Kanto, Neil Mariquin, Sancho West, James Gastings, Ben Fraley, Eduardo Cabrera Lechuga, Michael Howard, hey, Snowbike, Mike, Daniel Hay, Casey Kern,

and Mateus for shame, thank you all for supporting us. You too can support us. Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games. What's up, guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 208 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes. Join by two of my favorite people in the world. We got Andy Cortez and Fram, Marabella.

We're saying really close to each other. It's good. It's really. I just hate to know. Well, it's because like when we do Gogg, like, Knicks over here. Yeah, he's like off the table. He's like right here. Yeah, he's just like leading in.

I hate that angle. Yeah. I like it. It's real good. I like the three quarters view, you know. Isometric is what they call it. Man, yeah. I didn't know Andy was going to be on today.

I'm excited. Yeah, I didn't either until like yesterday. Perfect. You know what we said? This is going to be a great show to have you guys on specifically. Greg still gallivanting the world. Jared, RIP. I heard he died.

It's crazy. What? We guys fired him. He was fired. Yeah, yeah. But we're figuring out of all that stuff out. The ongoing joke. Also, we know that the intro still has Jared in it.

There's not much we can do about that right now because we have way too much going on. We are going to change that soon. I think keep it for a while. I mean, it took a while of having him on the show before we I'm hoping to have the new intro. No, that's not true, Kevin. It was ready day one. Yeah, no, no, that's not

the, don't worry about it. It was ready day one. We didn't have it put in for several weeks. The more important fact, yeah, I was not any intro on my shows for several. And it's always going to, it's just, you know, there's a lot going on. But I will say, I'm hoping we have the new version done. Bye.

March. Yeah, March sounds fine. There's the cool things we're working on. Oh, because you have to like announce if there's any changes with the intro or whatever. We're still working on a couple things here and there and what abs. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week right here on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. You get together and talk about video games, all the things that we love about them. You can get the show early by going to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games.

And if you're at the Silver membership level, you get the show early. How early you can be watching live right now as we record it every Thursday. Or you can just get the video and audio early on Friday. Or if you don't want to give us money, that's cool. I don't recommend not giving us money. But hey, if that's how you want to live your life, Monday 6 a.m., YouTube.com slash kind of funny games and podcast services around the globe. Around the globe. Just search for kind of funny games cast.

I love you. There's just a stupid level of humor that I feel like me and you share. No, it's because like around the globe. Table, yeah. No, but no, no, Greg does the around the globe. I think he does. On Games Daily. And then at one time, yeah, he does.

He does something. He doesn't. Yes, he does. I don't know. He says, like, on time, there's a tap of the globe. He says, like, I go like this. No, no, no, guys, I know what it is, by the way. It's not his hand.

He grabs the paper. It says around the globe. At one point, me and Greg went, the globe. And we like clapped and then we snapped one time. Okay. There you. I remember now that it was like the paper. I hit marimbas.

Okay. Manorisms. Manorisms. What's Marimba's out in this, bitch? Tim had Marimba's on the show today. You guys supported us so much in the month of January that we're doing a whole world tour. You can see details on that stuff at kind of funny.com slash events.

Fran, you've been on the show now for a couple weeks. Some of the best episodes we've ever made, I feel. Thank you. It feels like the people would great. It's been a month. It's sad to say goodbye, Fran. Yeah. This is it.

No, but we got a show. We got a show that I feel today is perfect to have you two. gentlemen on. We're going to be talking about Rage 2 that you got to see. Division 2, Anthem, Apex Legends. Oh my God. A lot of shooting games. A lot of getting confused with controls. Perfect. It's like bouncing back and forth

between all those. Kingdom Hearts 3 for you. Yeah, before we get to all that, I want to talk a little bit about Kingdom Hearts 3. The update from last week, I am now a lot closer to the end than I was before. I only have one more Disney World to get through. I'm in Big Hero 6 land.

Okay San Frans Sokio. It's very cool. How many hours would you say? I'm like 22 in, I would say. That's not bad. Yeah. I think I, from what I hear, I have about eight left. So it's not insanely long.

Maybe it's a 30 to 40 hour game. Yeah, everyone that I know that's beat it has been around the 30 hour mark, some a little less, some little more. Yeah. I feel like my game clock's pretty accurate. Like there was one time I accidentally left it on. But whatever. Maybe I had 15 minutes or something.

That's still. plenty of time. And were you, like, a big fan of the previous ones? Like, you know what? Yeah, I wanted to a lot more details last week on my initial impressions. But, you know, everything I said last week stands and it just kind of continues. I'm very excited to finish this, go home and play. I'm hoping to wrap it up.

I wanted to beat it by today, but that just didn't happen. Story of our lives. What's making people finish faster than, like, is it them free roaming or? I mean, I guess. The game's fairly linear. It's actually very linear, which I appreciate. but there is a lot of like side things you can go off and do. None of them I'm not really going to do.

There's one thing that I like, which is the hidden emblems that are the hidden Mickey signs that are just all around the world. And if you collect or take pictures of enough of them, you get to unlock the true secret ending. I'm not going to do that though. If I don't get enough in my natural playthrough, I'm just going to watch it on YouTube.

Yeah, smart move. Yeah, exactly. But are you understanding the story at all? So here's the thing. I said this last week, I've said on a couple shows. The story's not hard to understand. It's just not good.

That's my problem. I know it's not a popular opinion among everyone. I've never seen a game more divisive than this. It's insane. The fan base is so ravenous for this franchise. I feel like you're just not allowed to have any criticism whatsoever. Make no lip and butts about it. I love this game.

I'm having such a great time with it. It's super fun. The combat's rewarding and cool. And like there's so much. about this that's polished and really feels like a lot of loving care was put into it. But I have a multitude of criticisms for it that I feel are very fair and it's not just comparing it to modern games and being like, oh well it doesn't hold up here because a lot of people are like, oh, you keep saying it's like a PS2 game that's not necessarily a bad thing.

I'm like it's not necessarily a bad thing, but in a lot of ways like there's real, I'm not just saying that as like a boilerplate like easy answer of like oh it's dated. It's like, no, like, it's very floaty. The, thankfully, there's not much platforming, but the jumping and camera and stuff is not that great. There is platforming. Yeah, like, I'll be, very, very, very light. A lot less than Kingdom Hearts 1 for sure. But it just kind of feels specifically story-wise, right?

This has always been a problem with the franchise. The Disney stuff feels like it gets in the way of everything else. Like, especially in this one, all the games have been leading to this. This is supposed to be like the climax of this story that's been building. for now 20 years, right? With all this, this huge cast of characters that you either know or you don't know. But the thing is, like, do I understand the story? I do because they really beat you over the head, like, to make sure you know everyone.

It kind of reminds me of, like, Game of Thrones where, like, there's so many characters. And it's crazy to look at it now and be like, oh, I could name all of them. Or at least I could be like, that's the Red Witch. Here's the beef. Here's what these people are like, yeah, I don't know. Angry at each other. Yeah. You know, but it's like, I know who they all.

I know what they're doing. And it's that way in kingdom arts? Yeah, definitely. It's like that many characters that are. Oh, yeah. Oh, okay. I never have time to get into it. Characters within characters within characters of like, in my heart, there's three other hearts.

And, you know, they're, it gets very ridiculous and it's convoluted. But it's like every time something's weird, they explain it over and over and over and over. Like, you'll know that this character has three hearts in his heart because he'll say that a thousand times. And then Donald will be like, wow. Yeah. Sounds exactly like him. But going through this, it's like, you know, 20 years of the story building. Like, it feels weird to be like, it's not like there's a world ending threat, but it definitely feels like the bad guy.

There's a big deal, bad thing going on. And it has never felt right and still doesn't feel right to be like, but we're going to help Rapunzel do this thing. Sure. Even though it's a big thing. Yeah, it's like, we're going to put that on hold because Remy from Rattah, too, he needs some ingredients. So let's get him some food. You know what I mean? So you think it's just like shoe hoarding?

It's always been this way. So that's the thing is it's like there's a nostalgia to this game that I love where it's like it just, it feels like a simpler time of playing games. And like the Disney stuff, the Disney world themselves, each are about two and a half hours. They're really enjoyable. And like there's a lot of fan service put into it. Most of the voice actors are the original voice actors from the Disney movies. So like having them back is cool. And I feel like the biggest compliment I can give the story elements of the game are I feel like.

I feel like they do a really good job. And this is not exclusive to the Disney side. This is also with the Kingdom Hearts exclusive characters. They do a good job of making each character act the way that they should and speak the way that they should. So it's like when you see Hades from Hercules interacting with characters, it feels straight out of the movie, even though he's saying and doing things that weren't in the movie. Versus when you see Axel, who's one of the Kingdom Hearts Organization 13 characters, like he has all around. his catchphrases and he has his lines. He has the way that he interacts with people. And it's like they really stay true to each character's kind of archetype, you know?

And I, that stuff's cool to see because there's a lot of Disney magic there. And at this point, there's a lot of Kingdom Hearts magic. Like there is memories tied to these, these characters that, you know, I grew up seeing in a bunch of different games and like they all have, and it does get very convoluted and ridiculous. But it's like, that's part of the charm of it, you know? It's like this is one of those games where you're either going to know you're going to like it or you're not going to like it. Like there's no in between. It is fun, I think, for anybody, though.

I don't know anybody that's played this game and hasn't said it's fun. I bet it's got to feel refreshing to not have to like unlock towers or like any sort of open world thing that we're sort of used to in single player games nowadays where this is, it seems very linear. It's just fight to the next cutscene, fight to the next cut scene. But I have been seeing these gummy ships. What the hell are these about? Gummy ships have always been an issue in the franchise. Guys, that's, it's like, that's how you get to the different worlds. You fly this little gummy bear ship that Chippendale help you make.

It's great. Perfect, makes perfect sense. Just, just all. Yeah, you know what I mean? Yeah. But it's best in this game than it's ever been. But every time I have to do it, I'm just like, ah, I just, I just, I fly the ship or they just like.

You fly the ship, it kind of feels like Star Fox. Like, you know, you're in a light Star Fox. This game has a lot of mini games. Yeah, that's the biggest thing I've heard. It has a lot of like sort of cutaway to a new, like, A little bit fun mechanic maybe, but mini-game type stuff all over. So it sounds like flying, a little bit of platform. Occasionally it's got just mini-game stuff.

It's got, sure, it's got slots. Okay, it's got cooking. It's just got everything. It's everything in kitchen sink, which it's what it's always been. But that's what it is. Yeah, there is what it is. Damn, I want to see the ESPN 30 for 30 on this fucking game so bad because it's, like, again, like 12 years of just development hell. It's not, though.

See, that's the thing. There's like, there's a misconception about the franchise and about Kingdom Heart. 3 in particular. This game was announced in 2013. It didn't exist before then. All the other games, they're not spin-offs. They're titles in the franchise. They're just not number.

But like Kingdom Arch 3 was not delayed. Kingdom Arch 3 was not. Yeah, there was just a break before they announced it and then it took five years. It was announced at 3, 2013. So it's like, that's the thing. It's like this game is modern, which is kind of the craziest thing.

Yeah, I see. This wasn't an old game. This was a new game. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because it's not too far off the path of both God of War and Red Dead Red Dead Redemption, and they all were in development similar times, you know, time periods. Yeah, about six years or whatever now. Yeah.

So just, I mean, to your early point, and that's what I've heard, it's like, this is for Kingdom Heart fans, it's got that quirk to it, and it is a bit archaic feeling at times. But the thing there is, like, but that's what it is. I do feel like it's for more than just Kingdom Hearts fans. I feel like you can now become a Kingdom Hearts fan. playing this game. Like this one, it's, it's as much an entry point as one or two were. Like, but like, you're not going to be lost. Like, you can jump in and still not like it. I'm less worried about that, but I mean, mechanically, why should I play this game?

The combat's fun. The combat's rewarding. It is a lot of different systems that are overwhelming at first, but then you get into a flow where once you're a couple worlds in and like, you're actually facing like a horde of enemies of heartless running at you, it is a lot It's jumping from one to one to one. It's like you feel like you're controlling a cutscene, but you're controlling it. You know? Yeah, it's not just a lot of that.

And Kingdom Arts too. Timing? Yeah, like quick time event type things. But not in the negative way. It's not like, you know, people use QTEs as like an insult. But Kingdom Hearts 2 was really that and God of War with what I think popularized that type of gameplay mechanic that alongside Resident Evil 4. But I feel like Kingdom Hearts had always done it in a way that's like, we're going to keep things moving and keep them. flashy. The combat is fun and flashy. And it's like to me, that's what, that's cool, that's the core of this. And it's like,

there's always some fireworks going on. There's always some craziness. But you always understand why. You always feel like you're in control of making those things happen. And again, it's fun. Like, at the end of the day, it's fun. And seeing these characters interact the way that they do is really cool. The polish is unreal, which is why when things are off, it feels extremely noticeable. And yeah, yeah, there was a bunch of complaints that I went over last time, but, like, there was a weird, a weird moment. And I, I like Frozen as a movie. I like, let it go.

I like all this stuff. That's how you tweet about this. Like, I feel like people hate on it because it's popular, you know? But. Bandwagon. In Frozen World. Just like Fran Hay T.C.D.C. Well, oh, God.

Any show. That was a pre-show thing. Never said that. Yeah, you did. I said they were overrated. You get to Errandel. And, like, in the beginning, I'm like, this is, they're doing some cool things with this world.

It's a little barren. The whole game's pretty bare. But it's pretty as shit. Like it looks like the movie, right? You're going through the main story beats of the movie because that's how the Disney world. So that's what the Disney. When you go to the Disney worlds, you're essentially playing through a modified version of the story of the movie. The Pixar ones are different.

But the Disney ones are all that. And you're going through Frozen and then it gets the let it go part and the song starts playing. And I was like, oh shit, they're actually using the song because most of the time they don't. It'll be like Kingdom Hearts sounding versions of familiar. your melodies and stuff, which is really cool. This guy is my friend. I'm just changing the lyrics. I mean, like, you've got a friend and me.

It'll be like that melody, but it's like using Kingdom Hearts instruments and stuff. Kingdom Arts has a very distinct musical style, and that is something that is 10 out of 10. The composer, Surmaura, is amazing. And full orchestration for all of this, it's like, it is definitely an achievement in score. But then, yeah, let it go starts playing, and it's actually let it go. Like just straight up let it go with Adina Mansell as the voice of Elsa and which is really really cool. Yeah, Kirsten Bell, Kristen Bell. Kristen Bell is Anna.

Like it's they're the voices. Gad, what's his name? Josh Gad is Olaf. Like they're all there. But Let It Go starts playing and it's the full song. Yeah. They do the whole scene. They paid for it, I guess.

It's, I mean, it's theirs, right? But they do the entire Let It Go scene and it's like if you put it next to the movie, I bet it'd be the exact same thing. Like, it looks exactly like it. What's happening? Which is cool because it's like a testament to how pretty this game is that it can look like the fucking movie. They cut the scenes like that.

It's in engine, but it looks exactly like the movie. But then it can just cut to goofy. But every four seconds, it'll like, not every 15 seconds, it'll just cut to Saur and he's like, huh? It'll cut to goof. It's like, gorse. It's like so fucking funny. but that's quintessentially King of Hearts

where it's just like there's this weird dissonance between what are you trying to accomplish with this? You know, but the end of the day, the power of friendship, man. May your heart be your guiding key. May your heart be your guiding key, dude. And your heart of heart of heart. I'll never frame. You're going to need that tattooed on me. That's going to be on my tombstone.

Hell yeah. Yeah, I just, this just seems like a game that I want to try out because I know nothing about the franchise and I think that I would find a lot of comedy in it. Dude, you would. Yeah, totally. And that's my thing. Honestly, I think you playing it on stream and you too

but you especially with your fucking sense of humor it's like it's gonna be great you're gonna have fun with it it's very easy to make fun of but like there's cool stuff there's gonna be a lot of moments

you're like that's pretty cool and again this sounds like a negative thing and it is I guess but you don't have to you know it's not scared it's a I feel like this movie

this movie has got the amount of comments that I've received that are like or I've been I've been getting DMs from people that are like, hey, you should have somebody that is an unbiased Kingdom Hearts fan. Talk about it. What does that mean?

You're obviously biased. Like if you're saying that. Because again, I'm loving this game. But the game constantly builds up to these epic moments. And it's like you're in a fight that you're like, this feels earned. This feels like, oh shit, I'm going to do that thing. That's great. The music swells.

The arena you're in is like super fucking cool. goosebumps. Exactly, all that stuff. But I feel like every time that happens, it's very much them being like, this is epic. You're doing some epic shit. And it's like, it's a little on the nose. But again, you just got to kind of let that go.

Because it is epic. Let it go. Let it go. It is fun. It is cool to do that thing. Every single time I'm always like, this is cool. But it is like they're telling me it's cool, which kind of takes away from it. Yeah, it's like the uncool way of telling that.

But that is the style to your point. And it wouldn't be Kingdom Hearts without it. it, I guess. But then, like, one of my favorite things about this franchise and always has is whenever they go to a different world, they look like they're supposed to belong in the world. Right. And when I got to Pirates the Caribbean and Donald and Goofy look realistic, it's rad. You're like, this is freaking tight. I wish there was just more.

One thing I've noticed and don't really, like, I appreciate the effort put into it, but I don't love the design choice is to make all the UI elements match the animated world. of like how when you are in the Hercules world like your health bar and all that stuff looks like Yeah You don't like that? I don't like that. Oh my God, I love it. That's what I'm saying.

It just feels a little cheesy to me. There's nothing not cheesy by this game, but you can turn that off in the menus. Oh, okay. It'll just go to a standard. Just the default kingdom hearts. That's cool. Yeah, yeah, they give the option to turn that.

Again, it's a thing I appreciate like, wow, they went through a lot of effort to have UI elements for all of these different worlds, but it just looks kind of tacky to me. Gotcha. And again, I feel like it looks better in other games because I could just fit like the Halloween town in Kingdom March 2 from Nightmare before Christmas like with that theme with the characters look with everything

it's like this is beautiful what's your favorite world so far in this one well I guess will it be spoiling anything I don't know all the worlds are known okay like they've all been in trailers they're all public knowledge what it is known it is known oh it is known game with us yeah um as much as I wanted to be toy story it wasn't like toy story its highs are definitely the best, but overall, I feel like there's a lot of stuff that isn't that fun. I just want to make sure I'm not fucking... Monsters Inc. was really cool. Okay.

Yeah, Monster's it was my favorite one. Pixar stuff seems like it stood out a lot, huh? And I think a big part of that is because it's not just going through the plot of the movie. Disney holds on a little too tight, whereas Pixar was like, hey, do something original. We don't want you retreading. Yeah. The story of the movies. Anyway, enough about Kingdom Hearts for now.

On the record, I would play it where I don't know where to find the time to do that, Tim. But knowing that it's like call it a... 30 plus hour. Not bad. So that makes you feel better because from the outside, I would have just assumed square, 60 hours. Legacy of, you know, decade old game, you know, franchise. It's an action RPG. Yeah. Like, it has more in common with like a god of war than it does Final Fantasy in a lot of ways.

Yeah. But did, well, but God, it was long to those. Spikey hair, though. You've used the wrong word. Really awesome hair. A lot of, I love this spike hair. That's any ton of anime. A lot of great hair style.

A lot of cute boys and girls. Yeah, I love it. Love it. So yeah, maybe. I asked this question before, too. I'm always afraid to get into games because I feel like if I can't finish them and then what's the point?

Is this a game you'd recommend even if I can just go buy it and I don't mind playing it for five hours? Is that first five hours worth it? Yeah, yeah, that's the thing too because the game is designed. It's linear and each world is about two and a half hours. So it's like... So you can get something out without playing 20 hours.

In between that, let's say there's 30 minutes of cutscenes in between each bit. But it's like, yeah, then you just get to the next world and it's like you can stop. Like each world is contained enough that like it is its own experience. Real quick before we move on from King of Arts. Barrett, can you get on that guy real quick?

Hi, hello. You are playing Kingdom Arch 3. Yeah. Pretty much blind. How far are you now? I played Kingdom Hearts 2, to be fair, two years ago. Okay. That's not that blind at all.

Very blind. Very blind. I'm digging it. I got to, I beat the, can we talk first, like, our spoiler of the title screen? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got to, like, the 2.9 bullshit. I made a joke about that. Like, imagine.

they put like a 2.9 thing and then I saw it happen and I was like there's no fucking way you're kidding me dude yeah so basically all of Olympus is like the 2.9 and then after that it's like when you get to the story the main story of like three or whatever and I was digging olympus and then kind of the beginning quote unquote of three is going to twilight town and just like kh2 when I hit twilight town I'm like man I really don't give a shit about these characters but I feel like I just got to push through and get to the fun stuff Yeah. Because I feel like, I think I know what the next world is.

Push through. Different review from Barrett. Yeah. Oh, no, no, no. It's not. Oh, so you felt that way, too, but eventually. For specific parts. I know.

I'm talking about a specific world. His tone is very different from what I just got from you. I'm just saying. The gameplay is fun, though. Like, I feel like, from what I vaguely remember of playing to a couple of years ago, like, I do enjoy. I don't know, like, what improvements they made, but maybe it's just clicking for me more this time around.

Really? In my opinion, they didn't make improvements. They made changes. Gotcha. But I don't know. It's clicking for me this time around. I like the... Careful to.

I like the control scheme and all that stuff. But the one confusion I've had is like, you know, you hold down L1 and you have like kind of these like hotkeys and stuff. I have like potions set to like one of them and it won't let me, even though I have like helo potions in my inventory, won't let me use them. And so I'm confused on like whether that's something like... Voice activated. I think you tie that to, it's tied to one potion. It's tied to a specific item. So after you use it, then you need a hot key to a different specific item because you can only hold a certain amount.

So, final fantasy 15 bullshit. Game design, man. Yeah. But it's hard. I know once I get past Twilight Town, which I feel like is the majority of kind of like the kingdom heartsy type of bullshit and I get to the next world. Like, I'm going to be all in because when I was going through Olympus, it was super fun. It's the only kingdom heartsy bullshit. I'm using Barrett's quotes, not mine.

And it doesn't take that long. It's like there's maybe an hour you're in Twilight Town. And then the rest of the game so far, and again, I'm in the last Disney world now, there's none. So it's not like King of March 2 where the first five hours are in Twilight Town? No. You're playing this dumb kid named Rock's and you don't give a shit about him.

It's not like that. It's not like that. Yeah, fuck Rock. Let's talk about a different game. Rage 2, Fran. Oh, all right. So I had the pleasure to play Rage Behind Closed Doors several weeks back now,

But then there was embargo that was up, I think, last week. We didn't have a chance to talk about it last week. So here we are. So Rage, just to catch you up, originally Rage came out many years ago from Id proper. And then outcomes, you know, Rage 2. It was really tan. It was very tan and brown, post-apocalyptic world. They're like, we're going to solve that.

Yeah. Kind of. You know, now it's a little more Mad Max and some neon colors, et cetera. But the gameplay is more fundamentally changed. Just as a reminder, it is from the avalanche folks. Oh. Who made Mad Max. Max.

Who made Mad Max, actually. Yeah. But more importantly, now I'm blanking because if I drank this Campari. Their main game, sounds with a J. Just Cause. Just Cause. Good Lord. It's been a long day already.

But yeah, so I mean, they're the Just Cause developer. So skipping forward, this game is more open world. It's definitely got those vibes of Far Cry and Red Dead and it is a shooter, but you also can hop in a vehicle and drive everywhere and get these missions. It's got a little bit of the Blade Runner vibe too. I get a lot of questions about how is it going to be different than Far Cry, you know? And they're very different from a gameplay setup perspective and a feel perspective, I would say. Like, this is also an ability-based shooter.

Far Cry is not as much tied into that as an example. I know that it's got the neon paint and it's got this post-apocalyptic feel. But quite honestly, having played both of them, they're definitely different from a gameplay feel perspective. Yeah, the first time I played a D3, it reminded me, the combat, I talked about this, reminds me of a D3 as well. of a mass effect where you're pushing people and pulling people and making them float and shooting them in the air. And I really enjoyed that sort of aspect of the fighting. Yeah, and that's the perfect thing to bring up. It's like when you get into engaging with something, you're not just throwing an aid and shooting them.

You have an ability set that you're going to improve as you go along the way. And yeah, you can combo into stuff and it's more effective. But it's still, you know, it's produced by aid and all that. But the point is it is developed by someone different and it has that feel. What I can say is I'm definitely excited about it Huh? You say it's produced by Id?

Yeah, from them and Bethesda and everything right. It's software. Yeah. Really? Well, yeah, because that's what Rage originally was Ed. That's what I was getting at.

You know, originally they did Id, you know, from Quake and everything before it. They did the first one and developed this engine and actually has none of that actual tech in it. That was actually, what was that engine called? The Tech Six or Tech Nine or? One of those.

The point, that's why I was trying to, you know, make sure that people know it isn't just, like, taking the old tech and upgrading it. Yeah. But they're still overseeing it. It's Tim Willits, who comes from it, and, you know, they're all overseeing it with. They were very proud to say, like, hey, all the shooting mechanics that you loved in the most recent Doom, like, this is a lot of the foundation is from that. So these are, like, you have hardcore shooter developers that are helping make this, not just avalanche who made Mad Max, you know. That's what I'm trying to do. Interesting, yeah, I thought it was just avalanche.

I didn't know all this. Yeah, and that's sort of, it's like, it's a property that, and I asked Tim Will, it's about this, I believe it was Tim. I was like, oh, like, you know, how are you guys feeling about having somebody else do your game, you know? And it was like, hey, like, when we find a great studio, like this is something we want to do, but you've got to find the right partner. And so obviously this is a developer they really believe in, you know, working with them,

obviously on Mad Max and stuff like that I think was where it all really started. You're like, oh, you should just take this property and do it. And actually, Rage had plenty of criticisms too, right? Oh, yeah, the first one did. It tech six, I believe, is the... Yeah, I think it is Tech Six. I was on Jeff Kinnata's DLC podcast last week, and he was at the same event. He got to play with some Rage, too, and we were talking about it.

And he was saying that he had a great time with it. The gunplay was fun. Just kind of the idea was fun and everything about it was cool. But he was disappointed with the feel of the vehicles. Yeah. Which he was surprised by because he loved Mad Max, and that was so vehicle-based. Right. So that actually was one of my main concerns currently, and I talked to the developer about it, and I was like, hey, if I have one point of feedback above all, it is the driving. I was running into situations where you would like try to, like, turn a corner. You'd like roll off a clip, but you couldn't, like, control the vehicle in a way that you felt like you could save yourself.

And it just like getting over certain things. It just didn't feel great. Ooh, Kevin's got some Red Bull off camera. Fran, maybe you're just a bad driver. If you have any sugar-free, I'll take one. You know what? What, was that just for him? Oh, I see. Can I pour some in my... Don't even worry about it then. No, we have sugar free.

I'll go grab you away. If you do, don't even worry about it. So anyway, definitely the driving, which you do, you travel long distances. And actually, quite honestly, you drive for a while sometimes. So you can even get into shootouts with other people driving. Interestingly, there was a race track set aside. It's like a race mission that you do in your vehicle on like a loop track. And I imagine there's more of it.

That was more tuned up than the open world. So it gave me hope that I'm like, wait, I think they know what they want to do, but it's like behind. I think the game comes out in April or May. Is it May? Yeah, it's right around in there because I know it's right around days gone and everything. But I feel like I didn't set it up right in that. I'm definitely still excited for rage. Two, I have a feeling that May 14th, thank you very much, Barrett, who comes out on May 14th.

But I feel like I'm more excited about it than as much as I think Far Cry, New Dawn is going to be like a satisfaction. Thank you, Kevin, for the Red Bull. I think it's going to be satisfying. I'm excited about rage because it's going to bring a new feel to this open world of shooters. And honestly, there's not a lot of games out there like it. Far Cry is like it. You know, Red Dead is not the same,

but it has that feel of this big open world. And so there's definitely something there, but I think we need to spend a little more time with it. Yeah, the driving's got to be tuned up. But definitely where it shines is what, you know, I think Andy brought up was the abilities and like this feeling of power that you have. And it's pretty cool stylistically.

And then I would also point out the story. It does have this very like... Reminds you of borderlands. Yeah, I guess... It's kind of like a... It's a very... The vibe reminded me of a borderlands and Grand Theft Auto where they're over...

Their world and it's very... Oh God, I can't even think of the word, but it's very sarcastic. It's kind of like... It's the end of the world. Self-aware. Self-aware, yeah. It's a pretty good one, Tim.

It's a pretty good one. But like their president is kind of like... like this, like super, like he reminded me of Terry Cruz in idiocracy. Yeah. Where it is exaggerated. Yeah, it's super exaggerated, exactly. It's a bit of a caricature of itself.

Yeah, I'm trying to think of a word now too. Those are all good words, guys. But we're trying, Andy. Just be careful. I'm not good with the word. Just be careful. But actually, I also feel that the story does have a little bit of, it always reminds me of Blade Runner when I see a world like this.

It's not quite cyberpunk, you know, 277, which definitely has a Blade Runner feel. But it actually brings that And so again, I think when you look at the game and the world It's bringing some interesting story, feel, and vibe Maybe a little cheesy and exaggerated time we'll see But the core ability loop And the way that that feels

I think it shows some promise but Parity? Is that the word? Kind of like a parody? Blade Runner parody I don't know. I'm just thinking of other words Just be careful. Thanks.

So overall, interested, want to see more I felt like, you know, maybe just to wrap it up I haven't seen it now in like three weeks and I wasn't able to record footage they provided some footage and I'm left feeling I'm like I need to go back and like watch it

but I think that says something about the gameplay is that there's some stuff in there but it just didn't quite stick and granted a sea of a bunch of other things going on but they need that stuff to stick like I played Apex Legends

and I know it's hot but like I played that for a few hours and I felt like the gameplay stuck the feel of it so I'm not quite sure where this one's gonna land yet in terms of that feel and it's like super important

obviously for a game like that. Moving on then, Division 2. You guys have both played a bit of it. Just a bit. A little tiny baby bit. You played last night, Andy. Today you played it for him. In between, yeah, Games Daily and this.

Yeah, the beta opened up at 1 in the morning. And so I texted him but never sent it like, hey, I'm going to say I'll play the Division beta, which is weird because he walked up. I was like, what have you been playing recently? I was like, I told you last night, but okay. And I was like, oh, nope, never said the text. Yeah, I play the beta opened at 1 a.m. in the morning. I was having,

I noticed a lot of issues with like texture pop in, like, a lot. A lot, yeah, yeah. PS4 Pro. Pro. Just make sure. Pro. Plans of issues.

It's important. I mean, nothing game breaking or anything like that, but every room I'd walk into, everything's smooth as fuck until level two pops in and then level one pops in, you know. And that happened all over the time,

even in a couple of cutscenes. I was like, why does this seem like a really, like an HDed PS2 game remaster? Was it doing like a texture? flash in or was it literally just like? It was taking a while for it to load. Eventually when it loaded it stayed though.

Sure, yeah, yeah. So it was more of a performance thing, but I was also noticing that whenever I'd throw a grenade, I would see and or the sound effects would come maybe like half a second after, kind of bizarre. I really enjoy how they are adding these encampments to the world. The settlements? Yeah, the settlements. I think are really cool.

I think that that will sort of make it better for people who want more of a single player experience where when these games come out there's a lot of single player fans who are like yeah but is it going to be okay for just single player i think a lot of these things will help alleviate those issues where you walk into a settlement and they have requests for you to help them with and when you go and gather those things for them their settlement grows stronger and you can recruit people from there to go work back with you at the white house it's sort of obviously we've seen the previews it's it's a summer sort of vibe as opposed to a cold winter Apocalypse. Summer vibe. It's really

interesting, yeah. I'm really interested in in, yeah, so how they are alleviating those single player experiences. I think it's pretty neat. I like the, did you unlock the the little robot that you can throw out there? I mean, I was only, like, I was like, I want to be

able to talk about it a little bit. Right. I played it for like 40 minutes. What happened was right? You go to the snow spoilers here. You literally just go to the White House to get set up and then it's like go to the first settlement. I got there and talked to that lady and that was it. So I haven't really been able to do more than unlock a couple abilities and shoot a few people. Yeah. I got the feeling for the world, though. That's the only thing I can speak to currently.

I've seen people say that it feels more alive than the first division. Yes. Where the first division I played maybe 10 hours of and then kind of quickly gave up on it because I believe Destiny came out shortly afterwards and I got sucked into that. I think that's what happened. Maybe not. The division come out in 2014. I'm trying to remember now if it was before or after, but it was March. Yeah, all I know is that I didn't play a whole lot of the first division.

But a lot of people have said the world feels more alive in this one. Does. There's this really cool ability where you can buy certain upgrades while you're in combat. So you can buy a drone that you can send out and it flies towards people and has a cool down. And it flies and shoots at people and you can shoot at them while they're being distracted or whatever. There's a lot of that. Yeah, that is what honestly division stands on is it does have this deep statistical gameplay. It has it in the guns.

It actually has some of the abilities. And that's what I started to notice. There's a, unlike what you maybe would expect is them trying to make it more accessible. And, I mean, I think they are with all the work they put in the presentation. It's like deep. Like, I mean, I don't know if any of these upgrades were made at the end of the first division, but like seeing like the gun, it's showing like graphs on the guns and like deep statistics. And there was quite a bit in the first division.

But the point is they've kept a lot of that. And I think that is what makes it a really fun game to play. If you want to go that deep. If you don't, I agree. I think with what you said is that like the world feels pretty alive and going to these settlements, talking to people, the presentation of just being in D.C. and the sweltering heat in the summer, there's like pools of like old, you know, moldy water out in the streets and there's just like, there's fighting everywhere.

It definitely feels cool just to walk around in that world. From a gameplay perspective, yeah, like I played the first year on and off throughout the updates. Greg and I played. So, you know, as the dark zone changed. It changed a lot with the balance of that game that it got to the point of like, well, it's a great idea, but it's not what I saw in the demos at E3 to like, this is pretty solid, but, you know,

I've kind of done all this and it's for the hardcore, but this, and that's where I was wondering, Andy, did you keep up with a lot of the first one and no, you're saying? No. No. Did you only play it at the very beginning? No, I mean, I...

You played some of the updates? Oh, no, no, no. I did not play any of the updates. But you played it at launch? Yes. So it's funny because, like, division now is already a very different game with all the quality of life improvements they made and all the drops. It's like 1.8 at this point.

It's exactly. And this, I mean, I think this is even farther than that, right? Like, let's call it 1.5 or less. But this is a pretty, I mean, at the start, I feel like it's a big leap. That's great. I mean, so do you think that when this launches, it's going to be a great game that kind of looked at all the things that needed to fix from the first one and have, like, out the date? Yes.

I think that they already had proven with the first one. They already know how to do it, and it's going to be bigger. It's going to provide more depth. You can go deeper. They fix some things that were probably bothering you. What I think it's going to suffer from is that it really, it's such a, I was talking about it today on stream very briefly. The look at that world is very realistically approached. It is not in photo reel, but like, in other words, an enemy is not going to have like an outline on it to make it easier for you to shoot them in the head.

I mean, maybe they do and I can barely see it. But everything is so subtle and green. No, it was definitely tough to see. You know what I mean? It really is like you were trying to spot these very detailed enemies in a very detailed world with foliage that's green and brown. And you're like struggling to navigate through this world almost as if you're there. And so part of that's a strength.

But I think some of the negative is like that's kind of how you perceived the last one too. It was like it was New York. It was the winter. There's a lot of like buildings at night, et cetera. And this one you kind of get the feel for the day. So how much variety does it have in that to bring? And also like meaning versus. other games, you know, like a game like Anthem or Destiny and these morphant rage even,

like they really stand out as a style where this is, you know, it's Tom Clancy. Different worlds. It's like a cover. Or different worlds sort of stand apart in Destiny. You have these beautiful planets that all sort of have different backchops. Like this is real. Is it all going to be this sort of hot brown-toned Washington, D.C., you know what I mean? Like it's all very yellow-y.

Yeah. So for you guys, I feel like you both are very into these type of. games. When we look at the last couple of years, like, let's just even start with Destiny 1, right? And then even the, with Tom Clancy, like, Rainbow Sixth Siege coming out with Division with, with Destiny 2, like, there's so many of these games that they come out and they're kind of like good, maybe great, but like not feature complete and like need a lot of improvement over time.

I don't think it's going to be that. If that's what you're getting at. Has there been a game yet that has been a success out the gate that has been doing all these games as a service things correctly. That's an interesting question. I feel out the gate, Overwatch was kind of nailed a lot of what it needed to nail.

And I even feel like Apex is doing that now. Different strokes, but I know where you're going with this. Yeah. It was, both of them were very polished and they stayed in their lane. That's exactly, thank you, Tim. Good words today.

I was like thinking about hallway and I'm like, that's not the word. It stayed in the lane. They, their lane was more narrow, though. Okay, and these games are like, you know, six lane highways. Yeah. Big, like honestly, very different. So, anyway, I agree with you.

Yeah. They're a little more. I do feel like at the end of the day, the division will, the division two will be a game that I will mostly enjoy only if I'm playing with friends. I don't, it doesn't appeal to me playing only single player. Yeah.

Whereas with Anthem, like, I could play it however, and it doesn't matter. Really? You think that's going to, I think that's a different discussion. And I think it's just more of a different stroke thing, where I appreciate the hard sci-fi world of anthem, and maybe this Last of Us sort of overgrown world,

post-apocalyptic, doesn't really appeal to me a whole lot. I guess that's my question then to you guys with Division II, is like looking at, I would say Destiny 2 was the last time one of these games of service launched that was a sequel, right, that should have fixed all the problems, but didn't. For the multiplayer games, right? For the people that are treating it as a games of the service. Do you think Division 2 will be the first time that they're like,

we got it? I think out to gate is not a fair question because, like, yeah, none of these from server, like they were already having like some issues on the private beta and hopefully this stuff will be fixed. We just don't know. They're always riddled with that. And then like basic little balance things. But I will say I have high confidence that this is going to come out because I really like massive, the developer behind it.

This is something that, again, they've learned so many lessons, not only from the launch that they did and each improvement they made, they had the benefit to iterate and say, you like this? All the fans are like, no, we don't like, we like that. They're like, great. And they just did that for years now. And then they're like, well, meanwhile, we've been doing that. We've been making this whole new thing that is supposed to upgrade everything.

So I have pretty high confidence that for fans of the style of game, you know, again, if you prefer this sort of realistic look, very statistical shooters. I think it's really going to nail that. And then we're going to want some improvements, but I don't think it'll be anything like the first game. And certainly games like even Anthem. and how much destiny had to learn after they tried Destiny 2 and changing that formula up, I don't think they're going to suffer from that.

In fact, I think they're taking a safer path too of like, we know what you guys like. It's bigger, it's better. I, you know, talk to Greg in the end game now. There's a whole new set of characters that come out instead of just more yellow bar types of the enemies you already fought. They take forever to kill. So I think that it's going to be pretty darn solid. And I've only played it for 35 minutes. Full disclosure, I never got preview to E3.

I'm not, you know, I've never had like previews with Ubisoft and the pleasure of that, so I'm not really tainted. Yeah, this is my first time playing the Division 2. I know, I don't even know if we could talk about, never mind. Don't even talk about. I won't even know what he's talking about. Oh, great last week. Okay, cool. Oh, Division 2?

Yes, yes. He went to that event or whatever. That embargo was up just last the other day, whatever. Got it, got it. Yeah, I agree with Fran. I think that they are listening to their fans and they know what the fans want and they know what to improve. on. Now, with this whole smorgasbord of games coming out around the same time, like, who's going to survive? It's really, really interesting to think about. I was already thinking about that

because that's the world I live in. And I'm, like, grateful that destiny is, like, only got a certain amount of content to play. And, like, some people, I know that's their life and they love it, and I respect that. But I'm happy that I don't have a lot to do. Anthem is scaring me, obviously, because that is my number one most anticipated game still and super excited about it. But division, to be totally upfront, yeah, I've always wanted to be an expert at it and be in that world, and I've not been able to keep up. And so I was getting asked this question the other day, like, exactly this. They're like, with all this stuff, Fortnite, Apex, you know, Destiny, Anthem, Division

2, they're like, how am I supposed to keep up with it? Part of that's rhetorical because, you know, it can't have. Legitimately, there was a real question. And I was like, you can't. You actually have to choose how you're going to play this stuff. So I'm making a strategic choice for now with division, unless I can, you know, figure out how to, you know, survive on just playing those games. But I'm like, I'll play that game for, you know, 60, 80 hours.

And I'm really going to enjoy that. And I'm going to wish that I could keep up with it. But I know that I can't. Anthem's the one that if it retains itself, I will continue it. And I'm going to spend a lot of time. Making the big bets on Anthem, baby. Well, I don't know. But the point is you do need to go in and just be like, it's okay.

you only played at 50, 60 hours. You don't have to keep up with the end game updates. There's a lot to enjoy before that. And that's how I felt when, yeah, people were asking me last time about, you know, do you think the content will be there? And I had this, I had the problem, not the problem. It benefited me with Destiny where launch Vanilla won Destiny when it came out. A lot of people felt it was short of content.

But I was so fucking busy. I was like, I beat it. Like, I'm fine that I'm done with it. And I can move on to something else or just deal with my regular kind of like, you know, nine to five best buy job or whatever. And so I appreciated that it ended where it did. And so I know that a lot of people don't see that as a benefit at all. They see that as like, oh, well, there's not enough content there.

But for me, it's like, man, if I can kind of get through the main stuff and be done with it and move on to something else, I'm kind of looking forward. Yeah, it's the type of player you are. I bring it up because I think there's a pressure these days. And it goes from Fortnite now to Apex Legends to these games especially, which are more than just battle royals. I mean, there's these big games as a service that if you don't understand everything about it, like, I feel like people treat you like a loser sometimes. They're like, why aren't you, you don't know all this stuff? Why didn't you get everything? And like, that's okay.

I want to say it's okay. Like, if you want to play Destiny, there's this high pressure that when you come in, the other players are going to be like, oh, yeah, it's this thing. And I got to listen. You only played 3,000 hours? Yeah. But I don't think it's even intentional. They're so eager about the world that they live in, but it does come across, I think it's high pressure. Even with Kingdom Hearts, I was just like, I don't even want to, like, say anything because I'm like, I didn't.

That's why I disclosed. I'm like, I be careful. But I have not played the past ones. I would have loved to, but part of me knows there's people out there and they're like, you didn't play the first Kingdom Hearts. I can't trust him. And you're like, you can only play so many games in the world. We come from the privileged position where we get the games for free, right? Like the games are given to us.

Sometimes. Sometimes, yeah. I need to start begging for games free to get so. But for the people out there, even when, like, I remember working at Best Buy and like, all right, I have 60 bucks to spend, which game is going to get my $60? And if you happen to pick the game that has the smaller amount of content or maybe the game that's not as engaging, you will feel like, shit, I should have spent on the other one, you know? It's interesting to bring that. That for me is another point, though. And I actually would say, again, it depends on the type of person you're speaking to.

Some people are more than happy to spend the 20 hours and they're like, that was awesome. Yeah, I mean, personally for me, it's like, Reson Eagle 2 is worth $60. Yeah, it's like 15 hours. 13 hours and I'm done with it. I love short games, dude. Me too, me too, but it's like, I'd rather. Even if you paid for it? For the quality there, man.

Yes, absolutely. But I think whenever I did reviews in the past, I always did try to tackle that. You know, I'm like, if you want to go deep, you may like it for these reasons, blah, blah, but if it's for the value of it, you know, maybe there's not enough content, but the story is amazing and you should play. So I don't think you should judge games based on the time played. purely on that. It's important. Well, it's quality of time played. Yeah, but it's also how you play.

If you have a thousand hour game, but it's not good, it's not good. Yes, yes. If you have a five-hour game that's amazing, it's amazing. Yeah, I mean, that's why, like, even for me, take the challenges out of, say, Fortnite every week. They do these amazing, like, you know, good anyway, challenges that you can go out and do, and it keeps you playing, and they're changing the world. Like, I'm just happy that it's a free game and it feels good to play, and I had fun with it.

It's amazing that they keep it updated. So I think, you know, it's how you. It's how you look at this different stuff. All right. Well, I want to talk about Anthem, but before we do that, this episode of Kind of Funny Gamescast is brought to you by Robin Hood. Robin Hood is an investing app that lets you buy and sell stocks, ETFs, options, and cryptos all commission free.

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That's g-R-E-G-G-Y. dot Robinhood.com. Now back from the ads. Just in the future, you could just be like, oh, hey, there's an ad here. Cool. Great script. We're using a new system here.

We're trying to work out the kinks. But yeah, that sounds a good plan. Yeah. Anthem. Yes. Frantam. Frantam. Whoa.

It's like Justin with Desmond. It's a brand with the anthem. So I think we haven't had a chance to talk about it on the show yet then, right? Which is interesting because now there's been several demos, but we just haven't had a chance to sit down and talk about it. So I touched on it already a couple times. I'm still very excited for it. We talked a little bit on Games Daily today. They have talked about more of the end game.

That is the number one question. It goes back to what we were just talking about. A lot of the hardcore players are like, how much is in the end game? How much is in the end game? Show me the damn roadmap. That's right. So they have. They showed you some.

Give me more charts. They showed you there's an act one, echoes of eternity or something like that. In March or whatever? I don't even know what the planet's called. We got a kind of funny you're wrong today saying there is no name. I'm like, really? No, I'm pretty sure I saw echoes of.

No, no, there's no name for the planet. Oh. Well, maybe there is. But putting all that, those facts. Eternal echoes of the destined mind. No, that was Kingdom Hearts Street. A bunch of adjectives announced. But anyway, they have an endgame plan.

I thought it was very interesting that after the game comes out, which is February 22nd, this act stuff doesn't really even start hitting until into March. So they definitely have some end game plan. We know that there's like months out there. But all I can say is this. Number one, I know that people, and I'd love to hear from, if I don't know if you played Samantha.

Oh, yeah. Yes. I'd love to hear from you about where your head sits on all this. The VIP demo was a hot mess in terms of, tech. Servers, rubber banny, disaster, getting kicked out all the time. Then they fixed a ton of that, but still getting kicked out of matches and some other like weird little quirks here and there for the open demo, which came a week later. And I think it's giving people pause of like, I don't know, it's not like, you know, Apex Legends launches full on and it's pretty smooth

overall. So by comparison, overall, we'll talk more about it. But meaning it's not like, well, might, by the, yeah, separate. We'll talk about the tech issues. But it's, it's not, it's not like, well, might, by the, yeah, separate. We'll talk about the tech issues. But it. But it. Anyway, it was vastly improved, but I think people were very concerned with like, is this thing going to like even load in correctly? Is it going to work? But I'm going to put that aside for a second and just say the feel of the gameplay. I've never felt like sort of a sci-fi fantasy flying ability-based, you know, RPG, game as a service like this. That's what it's bringing to the table for me.

And it is different from Destiny. Destiny is a first-person shooter. Very different gameplay feel. I always remind people and I always will, I think, on the show. I'm, that's what I'm about. You can talk lore. It's the smell of the game, exactly, and sometimes the taste. But for me, that is the most important thing, and I always use that example, when Mario

slides and turns in the friction under his feet and down to the, whatever the number is that they figured out, made it feel good. There's all those types of things that make it special. And so I think Anthem has that special feel to it, flying around and used controller, even though I play on PC, I would not want to give up that feel of the suit. and they do a pretty cool job with the world. I mean, it's very artistically beautiful. So I think I could go on and on about it's a world I want to live in.

I don't know how much is there yet. It's too early to say. I have played the tutorial, though, and we weren't able to record it, and I'm not sure how much we can talk about it. But I call it the tutorial, but it's the opening of the game. It's got promise on call it a cinematic sci-fi fantasy level. The open demo featured a live world event where they put a storm in the sky and these titans were dropping in.

And unfortunately, we missed that. And this is what the end game is supposed to culminate in. So I think what we saw in the demo, you're supposed to all of a sudden, I guess. You're like, you see the sky and you're going to go into free play, and it's going to be like, this rift in the air is like torn open. It's cool. And apparently it's going to get worse, is what I think, and it's going to turn into this full-on cataclysm event or whatever.

And they tease this at E3 years ago or whatever now. It culminates right in the Shaper storm. And they literally go into this like crazy storm of light and debris and everything. and come out on some other side probably to face this huge challenge. I remember that was the E3DM that wowed us where the Iron Man style thing flying through the forest and there was just like the storm happening. Jesus Christ, this looks amazing.

That's what's supposed to be coming in the end game. So like the potential is there. I understand the tech concerns. And you're right. I think you shouldn't buy the game if you're worried that that's not going to come through. I have confidence that, look, EA is launching a lot of services from Battlefield 5 to Apex to this. Eventually they'll figure it out. I actually think it launched.

still be in pretty good shape. They learned a lot. So I'm still super excited. Still my number one most anticipated game. So we'll see where that lands. That's fucking trash. So what about you? You played the open demo, right?

Or the VIP demo. I played the closed beta two. And I played D3. Yeah. You're not supposed to talk about the club. Well, you know. It doesn't. You're not supposed to say what you felt about it.

Yeah, the smell. You can say you did it. But now I can say that like out of whatever. But most recently you played which one last week. Both of them. Oh, you played both? Yeah, I played both. Yeah, so the first one, of course, you, I loved following all the devs on Twitter and seeing

all these like funky ways to get around bugs. Yeah. Or it's like, if you do this, hit start and then go down here and then it should be, like, weird little things like that were going on. The meta game. Yeah, there was the 90% load issue where it would get to 90% and you would have to just close out and restart and it would enter you right back in where you started. That one is a huge point.

There's tons of tech issues. And for some reason, I wasn't annoyed with the tech issues that much as I have been with Apex. But we'll talk about that in a bit. I can't wait to talk about it. I'm so excited for Anthem. It speaks to me on every level in terms of... Got you baited. You got your baited.

I thought you were going to say you were really concerned. No, no, no, no, no. No, I can't wait for this game. It's what I've been looking forward to for a long time. I'm a huge bioware fan. And I think, I've mentioned this one time where I feel like what Titanfall did, to call it duty where it added new maneuvers like this is doing that to destiny where it's it's that same sort of vibe game but now you're flying around and i've never felt cooler in a game right

and i think that's like such a basic thing to say about a game but i feel awesome playing it where i'm flying around i'm doing barrel rolls i'm throwing grenades i'm shooting the hovering all of it feels incredible i tried out two tights hovering right yeah you're just like you're just hovering It just feels incredible. And they've been doing things like that forever, but the small touches, it feels amazing. I'm playing on PS4 Pro, and I'd say the closest thing that I remember about Andromeda, where I didn't play a whole lot of Mass Effect Andromeda, but the combat, I feel they really nailed. And I feel like a lot of the best parts of the combat in Andromeda made it to this,

where just the maneuvering and running around feels great. But again, the flying. I feel like Me and Bear played a bit where we, you get to the very, very end, and you fight the big spider, and it's dropping down, and that was just a really fun encounter. We ended up losing, but it was a fucking blast to go through the waves, to shoot the things, and it's such a basic sort of enemy encounter, where it's waves of enemy, shoot them, shoot the big thing,

it goes away, shoot more way, but it's engaging because you're sort of doing this thing you've never, I've never done in a game before, which is flying around and finding ways, which is why I think I'm going to enjoy this a lot more than the division, where in the division you are, you are, it's a cover-based shooter. It's,

it's holding circle to run to this wall, popping, popping, popping. Very different. And I enjoy the, I enjoy the, um, the athleticism of this game more.

I mean, there's nothing like feeling cool. You know, it's like when a game can accomplish making you feel cool, like that's, that's just the best. I,

the closest I've ever played to a game that, and I haven't played anthem yet, but that, skate three. No, but, zone of the enders, where it's like,

you're in a magnifying, but even that, I feel was just the closest I've ever been to feeling cool, flying a meck and shooting, whatever. But that, it wasn't right. I'm very excited to get my hands on this and see if it feels the way you guys are. Oh yeah.

Yeah, like just flying around the world, I think is awesome. Will you get into what is frankly more of the spreadsheet RPG kind of combo mechanics that BioWare can take it to? I don't know, but meaning I think it's just amazing to fly around this world and free play and shoot stuff. You can start there. And I think that's a lot of fun, but I'm excited about the depth. And of course, as a destiny-type player and fan these, like, you're going to, there's

a hard mode and then there's Grandmaster, one, two, three, which you unlock after end game, which comes after level 30. And there are bigger and bigger rewards. And, like, as an example, in the open demo, I started to, and granted, again, it's in my DNA. I got this, whoa, Devastator sniper, which just, you charge up this snipe shot. It hits like a truck, man. The DPS was amazing. It feels great.

Yeah. And then I'm like, I want a better role. You could get one with more in the mag, which was more of the God roll in the open demo. God rolls are, you know, a thing in these types of games. And so I think it's going to have that potential. It's something that we haven't been sure of, but I'm pretty confident. I love the voice acting, the story. Yeah.

It feels cohesive. It feels like they obviously put a lot of effort into making the story area first person, which I feel like it's been a great change with Destiny because you're a third person kind of running around. You're seeing your friends. You mean Fort Tarces? Yeah, being in Fort Tarces, I think, is incredible because you're seeing these NPCs

and they're talking directly to you and the voice acting is great. And I think the facial captures far and away better than anything we saw on Andromeda. Good, yeah. And I just love them talking to you as opposed to being a third person

walking around in this story area. I never thought of it that way. It really does put you up close and looking at them. Yeah. It kind of forces you, I feel, to pay more attention. A really cool little quality of life

thing that they did is they let you change the size of the number pops when you shoot an enemy which is really like who would have thought of that but it's a cool little addition I can't wait for this game dude I'm so excited for it I know you guys have mainly played the multiplayer stuff

and not too much of it but do you think that this game is going to succeed as a single player linear campaign for someone like me I just don't believe you can play it single player and you're going to have to matchmake to get by stuff I have my doubt for sure for sure

I did try playing a few things solo, and I guess you could turn down settings. It's just not dynamic. It's not built that way. Best case scenario, and by the way, I believe you have to play online for the whole, yeah, you do.

You can't play this game offline, you know. I don't know. But that's like, exactly, like in the year 2019, like whatever, yeah. And you should be online. But there's no reason not to matchmake. I think the question is, are people going to be,

here's one of the big ones I'm concerned about, if you play with other people and they start freaking dragging you forward through these checkpoints. I think it's going to be very frustrating to try to have this experience where like I don't want to talk to them but I just kind of want to explore

and do my thing but I could use your help. You're kind of caught up and like you probably are going to need to find a team and talk to someone. Yeah, your teammates will drag you towards a checkpoint and you're like, oh, I'm almost getting there. Oh, load screen.

It's taking me to where they are now. And then crashes. That's not the case in the final. Yeah, I love the gunplay. How many javelins did you use? All of them. You use all of them? Okay.

So I only used, 40 hours. I only use the Ranger and the storm. Okay, yeah. I fell in love with the storm. That is the other thing, man. Yeah,

I'm glad you brought up the Javs. There's... I love that we're calling the Javs. Let's do it, man. Let's do it. All about it. But I went in thinking you were just going to like

kind of one or two would really be, you know, great and the other ones need work. They are all vastly different, but they have really, they just feel so good. and the Colossus is actually,

it's the one that you're, maybe if it's not your play style and it's usually not mine, that big tank type, you're not likely to try it, but oh my God, try it because, and I'll tell you why, the coolest freaking thing you can do and it shows the level of detail with the gameplay programming that you could take for granted otherwise. So he has a shield.

So in Anthem, you have your health meter and then you have your blue shield on top, like a lot of games these days, right? Colossus does not have a blue shield. Colossus has an actual shield. So you basically just have, your health, which are pretty resilient, and not until you pull out your shield, and then you see a separate new meter just for that shield.

That's cool. It's really cool. But the coolest part is you can actually shield charge at people. And so you'll get these rows of enemies, and you literally charge at them. And it's literally like the Hulk running through a crowd. It's like, they go flying. And you can actually hold the shield while you're flying and bash the shield into people. So there's like these little touches on the classes.

And that's a great example. I'm like, it's just fun to play. Yeah. And you were saying earlier about the classes on one of the other episodes that you can switch between. You don't need to stick to one of them. Like that's, what a great call.

Super important that people understand that too. With the Javs, you earn them as you level up. I'm going to always say Javs too. I love it. I love it. So you earn them at level 2, 8, 16, and 28, I think. And the way it works is you're just unlocking them as part of your story and experience

and you might want to switch them. And I think a lot of people look at Destiny and other games are like, oh, I don't know which, class that chooses. The number one question, again, the only thing you got to worry about is which classes do you want to choose first, between two and eight especially, because the rest are going to be a bit of a grind. And really, the last one, you know, what if you find out this Colossus is like totally Ope? And you're like, oh, no, I didn't do it till last. But whatever,

I think that's a nice problem to have if you want to play all of them. I could not believe the level of customization with the colors. Oh, yeah. It can really make it your own, right? It felt like there's a program in 3D arts when you're making art for games. It's called Substance Painter. And it is, it's literally reminded me of that where it's all these different spheres and it's, do I want brush metal? Do I want painted metal? Do I want a brass looking thing?

Do I want shiny? It's all like old 3DS. Platinum. Yeah, exactly. It reminded me of this. It reminded me of a 3D program. And then so you pick the material for at least six different parts of your javelin. plastic, there's, yeah, clean metal and old metal.

I meant like the six different parts of like, so like for the storm, there's. Oh yeah, the cape, yeah, they all have these different materials that you can add on to or whatever. And then from there, you customize the colors. Right, but yeah. A full color wheel. Yes, but no, you're right. Each one of those parts, you can choose to either be like a matte plastic or you can choose like a special metal, which has its own type of characteristics.

And in those cases, you actually can't color them. Yeah, they're just metal types. I mean, they have different, yeah, they have rose gold and whatever. But it's actually interesting, it's so detailed that one thing I noticed, to your point there, I was playing the early demo, no, the private setup that I got with EA because we played it before the demo. So it was the near final game. I changed one of the materials and I was so confused because I just couldn't know how to figure out how to change the colors. And I noticed that that material, yeah, you go right, but that material had two choices because it had, it was the etched version.

So it had the sort of black etch line, which you could change as well as the embossed part of it. Depending on how the light hits it or whatever. We'll know it was like interlay sort of texture. I don't know if you've seen that one or it's like a cross hatch is a better way to put it. So you can actually color the line as well as the color, but only if you had that material equipped. So the point is it's got tons of depth. Yeah, my mind was blown with the customization of the javelin. And that alone was like, all right, I'm in.

I mean, again, I feel like one of this game's biggest selling points is how cool it is. And it feels like with Destiny 2, one of the biggest criticisms were, it's like, why can't I just make my thing look how I want it without having to pay or without it changing my stats or without all the stuff? This is then being like, hey, we're giving people what they want because we want you.

Feel cool, look cool. Yeah. Jav it up, baby. I think it's worth noting, though, the final disclaimer, though, is that just like with Destiny 2, I mean, we didn't really know what to expect. We thought they learned from the first one,

and we assume Anthem learns from all the games before it. And when it comes out, We assume that a lot of it would be great. But we don't know. So, right? If you're not sure, I know I'm excited. I hear people even saying, they're like, man, hearing Fran talk about it. I'm in.

But be careful still if you're not sure and wait and see if you're not in a rush. But, again, I have high confidence, but there's so much I haven't seen. And like the last thing I would want is for something to turn around. And maybe it was like, same thing with Division I. It was like, I thought. They have a lot of work to do. I don't think Anthem's going to be in that scenario. But it could still happen.

February 15. the 18th Origin Premiere and then February 22nd for the official launch. Oh, they're doing that really popular. Confused. Oh, everyone loves that. Super popular. Super simple. Yeah.

God, wait, it's a week away. Yeah? Holy Earth, it's the week of when this launch is full on YouTube. It's like, it's Friday. I won't be playing on PC, unfortunately. I will definitely. I might get it. I don't know.

You'll probably be it. Dude, it's beautiful on PC. Although I've heard flying on PC does not feel great. Don't play mouse and keyboard. I mean, I get why people want to aim with it. I could go off for. hours longer on why don't you just play with the controller? Because it's an ability-based RPG with positioning your jab.

Like, why do you need to aim so precise? I get it. And some people love that feel, that precision on the mouse. But the flying is no bueno right now. They know that. There's some patches coming. I've heard you have to lower your sensitivity to like the lowest thing possible. But then it changes when you swim.

So when you are using the mouse to fly. Oh my God. The first moment we hit the water, Bear and I were like, whoa. Holy shit. Like this is awesome. Oh, you, I thought you were going to say how bad the house was. No, just in the one mission where you're like, you're flying, it's like, come down here and it's just like this whole.

Dude, there's sound effects and atmosphere is so cool. There's actually in the free play. In goosebumps right now, dude. Yeah, in the free play, one of the coolest things I discovered, like I dove down into this big, like, river. And I was flying through it and I noticed like this wall of light. Is there like, huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And I noticed this like wall of light almost, but I was like, I was under water and under all this stuff. And it was like a waterfall, and it doesn't totally make sense. But it's a flat. SpongeBob rules. Yeah. A flat wall of water. And you fly out of it.

And I turned around right away and I like flew in this waterfall. And you could fly into the water like full speed. That's so cool. It's so cool. Oh, man. That's a cool ass game, dude. Anyway. Speaking of cool ass games.

The game's cool. Final thing of the day, Apex Legends. Yeah. Dude. Wow. When I can play. it, oh my god, I'm addicted to this goddamn game. You've been having a lot of issues.

A lot of PS4 Pro, yeah. A lot of issues. Xbox, one. Really? You're playing on that? Yeah. Shut the fuck up, for real. Yeah, add me.

Let's fucking play. I'm going to download it everywhere. I'm going to download it everywhere. Crossplay, but not cross progression. Yeah, which is like, I don't really care about cross progression. I'd rather have cross progression. Exactly. Kind of weird.

It's big issues. Kind of weird. Yes, I think it's, I think Respond did an incredible job with this game. I think they learned. learned every problem that every other battle royale has and somehow improved upon it. I feel like it's if you're an antisocial person, the ping system is the most genius thing ever made and designed in a game. I think it's so smart. It works, man.

Honestly, the ping thing to me, it's like it's so intuitive that like, you know, I'm not a big shooter guy. I'm definitely not like I'm not into this type of multiplayer thing. We're doing a party mode of it and I'm in a room that was kind of far from you and Nick. and I was like, oh, do you guys have shields? And Nick was like, no, come to me or like, where are you at? And like, I just pinged that. I'm like, he knows where this is now. Like instantly, he knows where to come to find it.

And it's not this weird, like, communication problem of like language barrier. You know what I mean? It really is one of the most ingenious, simple, elegant things in the game. And it shows the pedigree that respawn and all their producers and everyone has. Like, this game is not an early access. You know, they're bucking this trend of like, well, you know, we were whatever. Well, it's free, so it's going to have issues.

Yeah. I mean, I think it comes with a stigma of, and amazing what PubG did, by the way. And it's amazing. It came out early access and it innovated and people followed. And I would never take away from it. But now on the backside, they're looking at that now two years ago, right? And they're like, huh, maybe we should try something. Then, right, they're in the middle of developing this just so, you know, right? They had started way back then. Then Fortnite came out after they already started development.

Now they get to learn from that. And so you're right. They went through all this stuff. And I literally think, yeah, they had this checkboard of like. Like what frustrates people? How do we fix this? The ping system, man. Like, yeah, I don't know how many times

writing Fortnite. I was like, oh, over here, do you want this? You're like, where, where? Oh, it's the blue house and upstairs. Where? I don't see it. And you're like, ah. And in this game, you literally, well, in mouse, it's, you just, whatever.

You press the mouse button. But any button, you just ping. And it's context sensitive. How genius you can just ping an item. And it's like, got a R99 here or whatever. And it's so genius that they have all the voice callouts because you don't have to talk to anyone. Even for ammo, you can open up your menu and without a dial wheel saying, I need ammo, you point to your ammo and it'll just say like...

I need heavy or whatever. I need heavy ammo. Yeah. And you know on the bottom of the screen who it's coming from. So, it's genius. I think because of how genius this ping system is that they prioritized it, thus making your ordinances and your health less of a priority. Because, and it may not be the same, it's probably not the same for PC, but on. console, it's a little frustrating to have to either tap right to use the thing or tap

right to get to the thing and then hit right trigger to use the thing. I hate those extra steps. I will say, so Tim, have you had a chance to really play it yet? I'm never going to play it to a level of like that you guys are talking about. I'm having a blast with it. We did Party Mo. We played three matches. Oh, yeah, yeah, we played several times.

But I enjoyed this is a thing to people that know my style of video games. I enjoyed this game so much that while I was playing Kingdom. hearts. I was like, I need to sign. I paused it, so turned it off, booted it on my Xbox, and it was like, I need to play a couple of matches. And I was just playing through by myself, having a blast, losing every time. But like, it's just fucking fun. I love the look of the world. I love how it's like, you know, these battle royale games, I feel like they need to keep trying to one up each other in the, the map meaning something and having its distinct areas. I love, this thing just looks cool. And it has a layer of polish that I haven't seen yet in any

And I didn't play Black Ops for it. Yeah. And that's what I was going to say, what is your general history of shooters? If, if, and all you like them are B-Rs. I love Halo. Okay. So your big Halo fan. Did you get into Titanfall very much even?

Yeah, see, and I think that's amazing, though, that there's, and this is what I've been hearing from people. There's this, like, instant, like, hook feel. Oh, yeah. It just feels good, man. It feels good. That's the thing. Going back to what you're talking about with the Mario and all that stuff. It's like, getting your hands on this.

I'm like, ooh, I get this. Just the little, like, animation. It all comes together nicely. but again, it wasn't that they threw it together. It's been years in the making and comes out of obviously all the experience making Titanfall. But going back to what you brought up,

I will say, I went through the same thing as everything's easy to use. You pick up attachments and they just hot swap and takes like, you know, maybe a couple dozen games, but overall you're like, fine, I understand what's going on now. But it's in a game like PubG,

it's very confusing. You're like, what ammo is this gun take again? It's like very strategic. They definitely help out the user a lot by saying, hey, the scope you have better than the scope on the ground. You literally, so just to draw the comparison, if you don't know, in PubG, if you have

attachment stuff, and I don't know if they've really changed it, but the point is you have to know what attachments go on the other gun and, like, swap stuff around and like, now if you have stuff that works on another gun, you just pick it up and it all switches. I did really like how it says, like, you already have this. And it'll tell you, you have a better one.

I like that. But I do feel like just jumping in, this game has a higher learning curve than the other ones so far. Besides the building in Fortnite, which I do think is like a better one. beast to itself. But I like Fortnite's like color-coded system because like that's simple to know of like if this thing's whatever color, it's better than the other gun. Yeah, I guess this has that but only for items.

That doesn't, the guns aren't. And that's my thing is I have no idea what gun I should be using. And I asked them about that and like it's definitely they had to think about how to balance that right. And you're right, there's like, you're right, there's no rarity. You can get a fully kidded gun and it'll say it'll be yellow. Or if it has a purple scope, it'll be purple. But it's not that the gun itself.

and you're right. Like, how do you know if the flat line or the hemlock AR is better? You're like, I don't know. Should I use devotion? At that point, it just comes with playing the game. So the good news is there's not a ton of guns. You only have to choose from a few

and very quickly within days now. I mean, the community is already figured out. So I actually think if you just play it and BRs, that one's going to come fairly naturally. But Fortnite has trained you to think the other way. But I did talk to them about it. And they were like, they said that they leaned into the ammo type because they didn't want you to have to worry about

picking up these different ammo types, which PubG is a little more like deep into. So you have like, you know, your gold, your teal, your green. It's pretty basic, but the point is there are heavy- Red for Shani's. It's supposed to apply. This is a heavy ammo gun. You're supposed to be a little less worried that it's an AR or an LM, because it's about like ammo type.

So I don't know. That was one of the things they looked at. But, I mean, honestly, overall, they have a lot of info. I don't think they overdid it. It is- I'm wildly impressed at this game, dude. It's just a game you got to play. You'll learn it. It's a language, man.

And it's not that hard to learn. I'm impressed with this game from every, every standpoint, really. And I feel like as a student of the industry and somebody that like really appreciates the marketing side of stuff, I think this was brilliant. I think this is definitely a perfect example of how to launch a good game. Yeah. You know, it's like they really, they put a lot of thought into like, hey, let's make a successful launch and guarantee that this game has sustainability based on the quality of the game, not based on promises, not. not based on anything else, just like, hey, it's here. You can play it, and we're going to give you reasons to support us financially.

You played for one night, and you're like, fuck it, I'm buying this thing. And I saw you buy the, whatever the hell it's called. Yeah. I'll give them 10 bucks here and there. Yeah, for like a skin. Yeah. And essentially, because the Battle Pass is coming. It's coming in March, and they're going to have seasons.

I also got to give them credit on that point. And I was really happy that I asked them this. I said, wait a second. There's like all this microtransaction stuff and it's EA ride. and everybody wants to know, had a deep discussion about choosing prices, you know, and they're like, well, we do look at our competitors. So thanks Fortnite, because that's why stuff costs 20 bucks in this game, because you're buying it in Fortnite, so until you don't buy it.

But anyway, I said, wait, there's no emotes. Like, there's no, like, dances, there's nothing like an anthem. And that one stood out because you would totally pay to have these amazing dances to do victory dances. Just don't want to get sued. There are finishers. No, people joke with that. It wasn't that. And I really respect them.

And I think they really meant it. They said, honestly, like, it can kind of be used. You know, you see it in Fortnite occasionally. Like, certain things will give you an advantage of like a bullet goes over usually. Yeah, that's true. And they said, we just don't want to deal with that right now from a competitive standpoint. We are taking it seriously. So I give them credit that it wasn't like they just looked at microchins actions and said,

we'll throw everything in there. I think they've been very thoughtful. And, like, respawn, like, that accompanied, a company, a team that made ultimately Modern Warfare 2 and some other very high caliber things before they went on to make several Titan Falls. So, I mean, they know what they're doing, and boy, does it show. I'm really, I'm really happy for them, and I hope this is the game that gives them sort of the freedom to make whatever they want to do now.

Obviously, they're working on Star Wars, but, like, I really hope this is like, gives me hope for that. This is like that huge sort of breakout success that EA says, hey, man, you all fucking do whatever you want to. I kind of feel like this is it, right? I feel like this is it. I feel like this is what we want to do. You said today they were already that, right?

You said they were the, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying is I feel like this is. proof of them like having that already and proving that they they deserve it. Oh really? Because this to me feels like radical heights. Yeah. Obviously like, you know, different successes or whatever. But this to me feels like the radical heights of like, we need to make this battle

real real out because it's hot and hopefully we can obviously it's really, really good. So I'm not like down talking it at all. But the way Cliffy B released Radical Heights in order to hopefully give them run enough runway for the next game and it didn't work out. That's what this kind of felt like to me. I think it's different. But that was rushed out. Yeah.

To me, this feels like this. This is the game that they wanted to make. And they put it out the way that they wanted to put it out. And that's my thing is I've been reading a lot of different articles and interviews. And I've talked to different people in different places. Secret stars. Yeah, I don't want to say anything too specific. But they're saying that like the conundrum and the fiasco of Titanfall 2 launching next to Battlefield,

supposedly, despite popular belief, that wasn't EA. That was respawned. Yeah, I've read a few things with that. We want to do this. We want to launch now. And now when it's like, oh, Anthem and this, why would you put them so close together? It's respawn being like, I want to put this out now. We want to put this out now.

And to me, that says, like, they have their own plans. And like, especially when you see this game and with how much thought they put into it of the current landscape of video games. And like, they believed in this product and they believed in getting it out so that people can just get their hands on it and trust in it. I don't think that this is a proof of concept for what could be next. I think this is the thing that they wanted to do. Got it. You know, but I don't know. I mean, we'll see.

Man, no fall damage is great. I love it. Oh, yeah. Another fall damage. I love the being with your squad coming down. I think three is a great number. Yeah. I love being able to split off if you wanted to.

But it's just so many weird little quality of life things. I love the addition of characters, like the classes and stuff. Like that's so cool. And the different abilities, like, it's just such red stuff. Yeah, it's interesting. At face value, you're like, oh, they took Overwatch. They took PubG and they took Call of Duty background more than anything. I don't actually think took a lot of Fortnite.

Fortnite was obviously... Or Titanfall. And well, some... Just the maneuverability, but... There's a little bit, yeah, a little bit of those feet and sliding and some of the field. So he's so fucking cool! Slide down a whole hill. But at Face Value, you're like, they just took all those things and matched them together.

And by the way, when I saw the reveal, I was like, this looks good, but it looks like they just kind of mashed them together. Oh, I doubted the hell out of it. I was like, there's... Yeah, when people wanted a Titanfall VR, they wanted a Titanfall VR. Not necessarily with Titans, but they want the wall running. They want like the zip lining stuff and, uh, well, I don't. I guess you get ziplining with, uh, what's his face?

Oh, you just made me forget his name. He starts with a cue. A cue, really? Shit. Soundwave is what we're called. Yeah, that's what Tim calls him sound wave. Uh, all I was going to say is at face value, you'd look at it and you would doubt it. Sightline.

Right? Is it sight, you might be right about that. I look at him. I think I was, I know I thought. His name was, no. His name, I thought it would start with a cue because on PC, you use Q to use the zip line. I'm an idiot. A lot of late nights playing this game, actually, is why.

But anyway, at face value, you can say, look, it looks like it's just taking these old ideas and matched together. It honestly is its own thing. And it works. They really have proved to me this is not even, I think they want to utilize the world of Titanfall and by the way, explain some of the like... Pathfinder.

Yeah, Pathfinder. Explain some of the world stuff and so they leaned into it but there's no Titans and I'm fine with that now. At first I was like, it's going to be a stripped down Titanfall taking these other elements. But no, man, it all comes together nice

and then they do these really ingenious things that just, it feels good. My biggest complaint about the game is the name. And it's like, I know this point it's too late, it doesn't matter. It's a hit. I'm okay with it. I just think that it's so lame and like... Apex Legends.

I think it is too, but it's like a game show that they're showing like, who's the legend of Ape. You know, like it's like they're with the banners showing like who the top killer is and all that fun stuff. I think it's weird to have a two-name game. What if it was just called Apex? That'd be cooler. Yeah. Is that why? Yeah.

I think that'd be cooler. I have a feeling that they couldn't do Apex or something. And they're like, well, it is about the legends. Because it is odd, right? I mean, granted, PubG is different. It's Battlegrounds. Wait, just Battlegrounds, but Player Unknown's Battlegrounds. But it is mostly one name.

It's weird to have a two-name game. I think that's what's getting people. It sounds overdone. And again, it doesn't matter. I just call it Apex. It's a success already. People call it Apex. It's fine.

They don't say Apex questions. But I just think it's weird that they didn't involve Titan Fall, even though it's not Titanfall. And I understand that. And also, I don't know that putting Titan Fall in the name would have been a good idea. I think it's really smart they didn't. They didn't, yeah. It was confusing as heck. But I just like, I guess here's my thing.

When I went to download it on my Xbox One, I went to the hot tab or whatever the hell. Hot Round tab. You see, yeah, Hot Brown. Good words. And I'm seeing all the different games. This did not stand out at all. You know, it's just kind of there. So maybe is it about the characters and the color palette or is it actually just the logo and the logo?

The name, like the branding of the game to me seems very generic and like it's not as good as the rest of the game. I guess that's the best point I can do. No, you're right. Everything else is such high quality and took the best of each thing. This is like, I love that there are no hard counters right now, at least, with the heroes and classes that you're picking. Or like an Overwatch, it kind of feels like the start of Overwatch where nobody fully knew how to counter certain characters.

And I love that about that. And I hope that they kind of keep that trend where now in Overwatch, it's so like, oh, they're picking this. Well, I'm picking this then. Yeah. And thus making you useless. Like, I love that every character kind of has their own quirks that do make them worth. Yeah, I mean, that's the twist they put on it was the ability-based Battle Royale.

I mean, you certainly have like abilities in Fortnite. But it's the way they do this, the fact you have a superpower or even a sub-power, it really changed the game. Yeah, like Pathfinder can grapple quickly up places or create a full zip line with, is that the super? With his ultimate, yeah. Yeah, the ultimate creates an entire zip. for your party. And there's like all those things to balance out, it's a lot harder than you'd think. And that's going to be over time, you know? Yeah. I will say with the game right now, I am definitely feeling though if you don't have a Lifeline or a Gibraltar, somebody that's a little

more powerful or Lifeline's deal as she can like drop like a health pack and stuff. I'm feeling you kind of need that ideally, but also I'm probably wrong. Like some people are probably running all of a certain type of class and you'll find out it's O.P. But I'm not feeling it's vastly unbalanced though to your point. No, same. I don't feel like I get a super dropped on me. And I'm like, holy crap, are you kidding me? They're like little touches and they go a long way. I do like the idea of also when you open up the map at the beginning, it's showing you, we're going to have more loot in this spot or this spot. I love the ship that it has purple. Random ship drop. Yeah, I think it's really, really creative.

It's another. So literally, that's where you go back to that list and they said, okay, it's hard to find items. We created the pink system. It's hard to talk to each other. We created the pink system. Everybody just goes to the tilted towers or the pop. popular spot, they created a hot zone. So, like, you're sending people randomly to these places. And then, like, the moving ship, like, there's all these little things that I think they've really solved some issues with, like, the traditional BRs. And I think that's going to influence, you know, some thoughts that the other ones have.

Before we move on or end or whatever, I do want to disclaim, as I had before. I am getting crashes with my 2080 on PC. I think, did you have technical issues? Yes, I'm crashing about, like, every third or fourth game. Even when we... Just in the middle of the game? Dude. Yes.

The middle of our party mode, we're playing, and we were doing pretty damn well. And there was a zip line, and he's going across and his shit just crashes. We look over it, and his character's just hanging midway on the zip line. Yeah, and last night was especially frustrating because I don't mind a game, or I understand game development. Like, I get that there are going to be problems. And I definitely do not mind the crashes in the beginning of games, partying up. Sometimes you exit a game, and they... and it kind of locks up.

You got to restart the game. That's fine. I can manage that. Middle of a battle royale. Oh, my gosh. Last night I sort of had the final straw where after at least like, I feel like I had five crashes

throughout my three-hour stream or so. PS4 Pro, yeah. And then I... I'm with the squad and we just took out, like I took out the kill later. You did eliminate it. I was like, I'm feeling good. I have like three kills right now.

I have my fucking peacekeeper shots on. Feeling great right now. Let me get this stuff. Where are we going to next, guys? Who are you playing at? Freezes. I was Bloodhound. Ooh, yeah.

So, the game just freezes, and I was like, are you fucking kidding me? And it crashed, and it was like my final straw of the night where I kind of like rage quit it. I was like, I'm fucking ending this game. What place were you at? I think that was like maybe five or four spots left. I got it even worse, dude. Let me explain to you. So it was, I think, the first night or something, maybe the second one.

I'm closing in with C.J. Gibson from IGN and this guy Clickit that I always play. I've been playing back to Trials on Destiny and it's the sweaty team and frankly they're helping carry me but I was like playing well and that's the one thing about this game too I feel like I'm playing well and in it yeah same here I'm just like not

I'm not shroud I'm not like this amazing natural shooter but feeling good anyway I am but that's fun yeah I need to put it you teach me Sempike so dude we're coming in and we get this choke point and it's through that big like hallway building in the center once you're sure I'm like let's go here the circle's

closing in two sides. I'm like, it's going to be inside the building. We're going to get choked in with the last team. We get inside. Everything's going on my way. I got a sniper, whatever. We get in the hallway. I'm playing Bangalore.

I got the smoke drop. And it's like a Michael Bay movie. And I headshot someone, 109 headshot. Like, let's go. And I go up the stairs. And they're like, drop that smoke, you know? And there's smoke everywhere because there was a Bangalore on their team. And then I just open fire and I knocked someone down.

And we were. Literally, that was the last squad. And meanwhile, I had CJ and click on Discord. My game crashes out. I'm out. They finished the match. I didn't get my win. And it happened again last night.

I got the same situation almost. So there's something going on that I've heard of with the GTX, RtX 1080, but maybe other driver issues. Towards the end of the game. And so now I'm like afraid to play because I was left like, I mean, it's blue balls, the worst kind, man. I'm like, I want my battle royale. Yeah.

I won my second match ever. Like, all right, I'm pretty decent at this game. And then, from then on, it's been every, I'd say like every three or four games, I get a blue screen and it just gives me the error code or whatever. A blue ball screen of death. And, yeah, last night I played off stream with my buddy Brian Riley from Roosatee and Khalif from Spawn on Me. And so we partied up, but we're playing. And I feel like every 10 minutes, I'd be like, man, I'm so scared I'm going to crash. Like, I just felt that dread.

That's what I'm feeling right now. I felt the dread, yeah. It's a special mate because I've only got it in the top. two places so far. It feels like it's a bug for the top place. I forgot to mention I love respawning characters. Oh my God. Oh, that's really cool.

It's a smart idea. The idea of like we could pick up our dead players banner who has been, who was downed and was shot and killed. We could pick up their banner and take it to this drop zone. Do we risk it? Do we risk it or do we go on with Adam? We see squads over there. I love that sort of.

What's cool about that. Risk it for the best. It being a three player, you have to do three. You can't do the solo and stuff. It's so team-based that I love that when your characters die, you don't need to sit and wait and watch your whole team play for an entire match to get back in. There is that Risket Biscuit thing where you're like, okay, we could bring them back if it's worth it. That's so well-designed. So cool.

I love it. It feels great. Again, I want to play more. I'm just really, really worried. I hope that they release a patch sometime soon because I put out a tweet, anybody else crashing, and got a lot of nose and some. I heard a lot of nose, though, for sure. And I got a lot of people like playing Xbox, playing PC. It's like, guys, I mean, maybe.

The last thing I would bring up that I don't know if it was touched on a lot, but in the interview, I asked them, I said, wait, why is it 60 players? Are you guys trying to like get it to 100? And they were like, yeah, just right now at 60. But I was doing some math and I was like, wait, it's trios. But, you know, maybe it was just. If it was 99, it would still add up. But if they're going for 100, that might mean they wanted to do squads, maybe. and maybe it turned out that they had to do three to start.

I'm just speculating. I think they're just rounding it. So I think what will happen is they'll either jump to like around the 80 mark and they'll try increasing towards the 99 or 100. But then I have no doubt eventually squads will come in and solos. Like this is a place to start. Again, season past starts in March and this is, it's interesting that it's a full launch and they did such a good job.

You're like, wow, it's done. But no, they've got a lot of stuff coming. And I'm just excited to get more people on the map without the crashes. Yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the Kind of Funny Games guest. Thank you very much for joining us here. We will see you next week, or if you want to watch Kind of Funny Games daily every weekday, Twitch.tv.tv.com slash Kind of Funny Games 10 a.m.

Until next time, I love you.