Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Battlefield 1 and Dragon Quest Builders Reviews - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 91

Episode Date: October 27, 2016

We react to the Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer, review Battlefield 1 and Dragon Quest Builders, and discuss the positive Final Fantasy XV preview coverage. (Released to Patreon Supporters 10.21.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Video blocks. Video blocks. I'm sorry. What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 91 of The Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes. joined by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Moriarty and Greg Miller. Hi.

It's good to be here. How are you guys doing? I was thinking we should do one topic and then change our clothes. Yeah, that'd be great. Now, so what we're doing is we're recording everything out of order because we recorded the games cast yesterday when we normally do it. But we knew that the Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer was going to come out today. So we're like, we should do a separate topic just for that.

And then they announced the NX drop, the Nintendo Switch that we now know about. So we did a reacts about that that you should check out over here on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. We're very excited about it. Let's take a second just to talk about that, just to, you know, what the appetite of the games cast audience. X gave it to us. He did. Yeah. You win, Colin?

I'm in. Name's terrible, but I think that the everything else about is super promising prurtered as soon as possible. I'm in. I think it looks really exciting. Hell yeah. Greg. Of course. It looks awesome.

It's exactly what we've been talking about wanting for it feels like forever. It looks like that's what it's going to be. I'm totally in. I think it's going to be success. I think the name will grow on us. And I was saying that thing. Like if they put multi-platform games on there and they don't run poorly and they don't look like shit, it'll be interested in see where I play them.

Yeah. I'm most excited because the idea of the 3DS and Wii U libraries, both being in one console, a console that doesn't look like a toy, third party support, and the ability to use a pro controller with awesome huge buttons. I'm just like, thank you. That trailer gave me everything I needed and the new Mario that looks like it might be Mario 64 2, which is I'm just I'm not gonna get too excited about that yet because that's just like it's too much the greatest thing ever This is the kind of funny games cast each every week we get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them and I talk about Nintendo a lot and don't worry

I'm gonna keep talking a lot more about it in the years to come But if you wanted to get this show you can get it early on patreon.com slash kind of funny games or you can get it late like one of them loser kids over on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. I appreciate you. We love you. Don't worry. Yeah,

but you're like one of them cool losers. That's a thing. That's a thing. Is it one of the things? All right. Yeah. Anyways. All right.

So Red Dead Redemption 2 is the topic of the day. We got the trailer. Uh-huh. It was like a minute and 13 seconds. Beautiful. So everything we thought we would see. Yeah. There's also a press release over on the PlayStation blog.

I'm going to read that. Read me the PlayStation blog. I will. It's written by John Kohler over there. Oh, we know John Coler. He says, for the past 20 years, Rockstar have continually redefined the concept of open worlds. From the record-breaking Grand Theft Auto series, the Midnight Club Racing Games, the schoolyard comedy bully, to the breakout hit Red Dead Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar is consistently delivered on a level that few have managed to match.

Now, following up with Grand Theft Auto 5, one of the most successful entertainment properties of all time, rockstar is set to return with Red Dead Redemption 2, the latest entry in the Red Dead series of games, and there's no better place to play it than PlayStation. Handcrafted to take full advantage of PlayStation 4, Red Dead Redemption 2 is an epic tale of life in America's Unforgiving Heartland. The game's vast and atmospheric world will also provide the foundation for a brand new online multiplayer experience. Learn from that there, GTA 5. We're pleased to announce that PlayStation 4 players get first access to earn select online content in the vast open world of Red Dead Red Dead Redemption 2. Check back on PlayStation blog for more details soon and for all the latest on Red Dead 2. In addition, the PS3 classic Red Dead Redemption will be coming to PlayStation now soon.

Relive the epic story, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So, yeah, fuck about PlayStation now. Just port at the PlayStation 4 for God's sake. Give me PlayStation 4 version. Fuck this streaming garbage. So that's a big coup for Sony. What were you going to say? My question for you with this coup for Sony, I agree.

Do you think that this, does this give more credence to the rumor that Red Dead was supposed to close out E3's conference? Possibly, although the, we don't know if that's true or not. We've heard that for people who trust, but, but the, Again, like I don't know if that's true and I don't have any like I I've heard it from from you know You know especially you know people that you if you heard something from that person you'd be like oh, okay But it doesn't it kind of say something that this trailer isn't the trailer that they talked about? That's exactly what I was gonna say that What we heard about that trailer was something like it was like a shoot up a shootout in a saloon or something like that

That's what I heard I think a lot of people heard that I don't know if that's true. I don't know where the fuck that came from So I'm not you know saying that's what it was I don't know but I heard it was like so violent And that was the thing. It was like, it was so violent over the top that it wasn't able to be shown there. It could be a different trailer.

Maybe we see that trailer later. Because they were in those shootings. Exactly. So regardless of that, I often see these third party partnerships on multi-platform games with Battlefield or with Call of Duty. And I'm like,

there's probably some marginal with Destiny or whatever. There's probably some marginal marketing value there. And it certainly probably gets more people to play the game on that console. And so they wouldn't do these things if they didn't make money. They're the bean counters and they understand that.

But with this game specifically, I think it's huge because if we go back to Graham, Grand Theft Auto 4, which was very Xbox 360 heavy, they got the DLC for Balladaytony and Lost in the Damned, which were awesome pieces of the DLC. Really, really, some of the best DLC ever actually, way early. And if that's a similar kind of thing here with the multiplayer stuff, which is more what they're going for now with Grand Theft Auto Online with GTA 5 and stuff, then that's a really big win for them. Because the game's not going to be on PC for a while. It'll obviously come to PC later, but it's not going to be on PC for a while.

So PS4 is going to be the only place to play the dominant portion of the game, it seems like, initially, that people are still playing on the same. sister game Grand The Theta Tidal 5, if that makes any sense. So I feel like that's a pretty big thing for Sony. I agree, but I mean, I think it could easily not be. Is it just going to be hats? Is it going to be that this mission pack, is it like the Call of Duty shit where this mission pack drops a month early? Or even like

the early GTA 5 online updates. Sure. When those first started, they weren't really of consequence. It wasn't until a couple months in that we started getting the real sizable things like the cunning stunts pack and stuff now. Years later. Which is such an amazing name. Yeah. So I think that this is really big. The trailer itself, I mean, we talked about, you know, I think you thought it was

going to go a little longer. I thought it was going to go a little shorter. I think it was more towards the shorter end, clearly. Yeah, no, 100%. I don't think they, I kind of, there's a few things I feel about this. First of all, it looks fucking awesome. I mean, the game looks pretty. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever Red Dead Red Dead Redemption too. It's going to be great. And the scenery and the scenery and the setting brings you back to Red Dead Redemption, like those little quaint kind of open forests and like these big pastoral kind of areas. It's like they emphasize those seven characters at the end of the trailer again. So we're interested to see.

I'm sure we'll meet them over time in the marketing. But it also brings up why they announced it now. No reason to announce it this early. I think it's totally stupid to announce it this early, especially in light. Not that they one hand to what the other hand was doing with this, but like with the switch announcement and all these kinds of things. Well, Nick Tim and I were talking about specifically with, there's only a few companies that can really interfere with each other in such a way that they can ruin or diminish the ability for the marketing

of the other and it actually happened with Rockstar Nintendo, which I think is interesting. And I think Nintendo is really brave. And I think that they just had to go forward with the logistics of their investor meeting and all these kinds of stuff. And they won the day. Oh, I'm sure they won. And I'm sure that sucks for Rockstar. Because it really brings me back to the fact that like, it's like, you really could have announced this in literally six months or more. I don't, unless they were afraid of a leak or something like that, I don't quite understand why it was announced now. But with that said, we know it's coming. It certainly gives other third parties room to get the fuck out of the way of it, which I'm sure they're all super eager and circled two months on their fucking calendar where

they're not going to release anything next year. So, I mean, that's my feeling about it. Looks great. I'm sure it's going to be great. Really excited to see more about it. On the other hand, don't understand why it was announced so early. Trailer was a little short, which I expected. And we have a lot of questions. Yeah. I was going to say for the question part, Colin, you and I haven't talked about it since PSI Love UX OXO, which was before we even had the name and the release date. In there, I talked about what do you think? the story is, da-da-da-da-da. And I mentioned, you know, do you think it's a prequel? A lot of people think this kind of looks like Dutch or whatever. And you're like, I don't think it will be,

I don't know. Have you seen the most recent screencaps and comparisons? Because there's one where they put, they cut out of the logo, who would be John Marston, who would be Dutch, and who would be the other guy. And they put their Red Dead counterparts above them in how Marsden looks like Marston, Dutch looks like Dutch, and then the other guy, unless I'm confusing him, has the exact same thing where his hat's like pinned up to the side of his head and stuff. It looks interesting that maybe this is going to be, Red Dead 2 is going to be the prequel, the Red Dead One and tell you the story of this gang. Obviously, we don't know.

All we're left is to speculate, but I thought it was interesting. Yeah, it's possible. Do we remember the date in which Red Dead redemption took place? It was around the Mexican War, wasn't it? Was it 1840s or was after? I thought it was after. Let me check. Because that's really important simply because they show it a locomotive in it

that would certainly indicate that it doesn't take place in the first half of the 19th century. It could. I mean, it's not like trains didn't exist. But it seems to, like the whole vibe of it seems to suggest. reconstruction or after. And I don't know. So we're talking like 1865 to 1877 somewhere in there. But I'm looking into it. Yeah. So when we have, I don't, but I don't know. I mean, who the fuck knows? A rock star, I'm sure, has all that shit nailed down in terms of aesthetic. The game set during the decline of the American frontier in the year, 1911, follows John Marston.

Wait, Red Dead Red Dead Red Dead Red Dead Red Dead Redemption took place in 1911. According to Wikipedia. God, I remember that. So yeah, this must take place before that, then. Cool. So, I mean, just based on. I'll try to find you the image I'm talking about too. 11 red dead redemption took place. Jesus, I don't remember that. And I beat it. Yeah. I wrote the strategy guy for the game.

It'd be great if you went back and read the strategy guy and your whole thing's like, we have no idea what year it is. It's like all these things. I'm trying to think about, wow, I was like 50 years off in my mind. Where that game actually took away. It's been a while. So yeah, definitely I think that certainly does suggest that. The game takes place primarily in the year 1911 during the final decade of the American

frontier and the cowboy and outlaw archetypes that shaped it. The landscape of the wild. West is beginning to fade and modern technologies like automobiles, machine guns, and oil drilling projects are beginning to appear. Right, that's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. That's right. It was the kind of the fusion of the industrial revolution with the West. That's right. For some reason, I had in my mind a more quaint West. That wasn't being infringed upon yet by expansion and all those kinds of things. So based on the imagery in the in the trail, you're right. It seems like

with the screencaps that I haven't seen. I remember anything about the fucking story and Red Dead Red Dead Redemption at all, to be honest. clearly. But based on the imagery of the train, all those kinds of, seems like it moves back to maybe the late 19th century then? You think so?

If it's selling this old. So that's pretty cool. 1911. Geez, Louise. Makes you want to go back and play it again even more now. This is not the one I'm talking about, but it's similar, right? So there's Mars in there.

You look down there, it looks like him. But then this guy with the hat is the one that is like spot on. And granted, this is just grasping in straws. But then there's this guy, the band of Lerner. dude. Well, it seems like it seems like it's not grasping at straws maybe. I mean, um,

it seems like the Red Dead Redemption two name is very, very, uh, intentional, obviously. It's the third red dead game. So we all assumed that it was going to be Red Dead and whatever revolution. So all of this guy, which I think red Dead shit sandwich, yeah. So I think that that all makes a lot of sense going together. Yeah, I'm super excited about it. I got a, I got sitting on my shelf. I should just watch. I just unplug my PS3. to put PSVR on my shelf. Well, now you get as soon

you can play it on the power of PlayStation now. I know, I can't wait to play it with a little bit of latency. It's going to be fun. So that's something that's interesting to me is the last night when Nintendo announced their thing. I was like, is there a chance? This is it going to be on NX?

And it's not. So that's a much better one. It's gone. Kevin, I'll send you these images. Yeah, I mean, I think that's pretty obvious at that point out. Yeah. Good job.

Internet sleuths. You're always making my life a lot easier. year. So about them announcing it so early, like it is weird because they can kind of do whatever they want. But I think that the reasoning for it is, I mean, they totally, and they could have done this later as well, but there's the power of things not leaking. This game's had a lot of weird leaks over the years or whatever, but in terms of if it got, if it's coming out in fall 2017, the chances of something coming out are pretty high, right? And I think that the Rockstar did something really kind of cool and unique in the game sphere and owned the last couple days. Like,

this whole last week was theirs. Everyone was talking about it on Twitter. And, like, making events like that, I think is really, really a special thing. And, like, their social following went up immensely, if you looked at the beginning of the week till now. So it's like, they definitely gained a lot from it, right? Sure. But I agree with you that now it's just like, cool. Well, now there's a whole year to wait.

Yeah. And they were also eclipsed, you know, as the week wanes or whatever, like they have been eclipsed now. And I feel like people, I might want to say no one's going to talk about Red Dead, but it's certainly not the top, top point. a discussion moving into the weekend anymore. So I'm sure that they didn't, they didn't intend for that to happen. It seems like it was, seems like the, the wick was, was snuffed out a little early for them. And it's funny, because I thought it was going to be the opposite. When they were talking about Red Dead, there's going to be a trailer.

And the Nintendo is coming to. It was like, oh, man, sucks for Nintendo and it really sucks for Red Dead. You guys are funny. Yeah, I mean, I would have assumed Nintendo would have, just based on, like, hardware. Yeah. Hardware is always more exciting, but I think it would have been way easy for, it would have been way easier for Nintendo to fuck it up. Even if they fucked it up, I still think more people would be talking about how they fucked it up, then this Red Dead minute-long thing that's exactly what you'd expect Red Dead on PlayStation 4 and Xbox 1 to look like.

Speaking of the graphics, though, I'm not extremely impressed with it. Really? Yeah, the scene of the dog. I mean, it's a pretty game, but I mean, current gen consoles are pretty, right? This definitely doesn't impress me in the same way that I look at a, like, even recently playing Battlefield and seeing these deserts and trains and stuff. I'm like, this looks fucking fantastic. Yeah, I don't, I, people are going to get on me again about this. But when Grand Theft, when I went into a preview event, like last minute, when we were

at IG and I had to go fill in for maybe Greg or someone to go see Grand The Auto 5. And I came back and everyone's like, look how beautiful it is. And I don't think it's not beautiful at all, to be honest with you. Like, there are games that look way better than this. I'm sure that it's not going to be the most technically impressive game, but it's an open world. And it's, they're showing you the in-engine footage of a game. So I give them credit for that. It's not really bullshit what you're seeing.

That's the thing is, like, I would much rather expansive in a world that, lives and breeds than things being like extremely realistic and pretty. But my thing specifically, because people I know are going to destroy me in the comments for saying that. But like I'm specifically talking about the scene where it's the dog versus the roosters or whatever the fuck. Like that dog animation does not look good. Like it immediately, like it stood out to me. I'm like, oh.

And like that shouldn't be happening, like especially for a trailer. It's like when you're watching a trailer, it should be the perfect things that you're trying to show something. Yeah, which could signal bad things for the game's aesthetic. But I doubt it. I feel like, yeah, like when you saw the guy walking through the field, I was like, yeah, everything, it doesn't, everything's not quite right, but it's not fallout where it's like, wow. Yeah.

It's nitpicky, but I feel like when you have just a minute long trailer that sheer purpose is looking pretty, nitpicky is all you have. Yeah, I agree. I was actually shocked that we were going to see anything in Engine at all. So I thought for sure it would be a cinematic of some sort. And I was expecting to see the saloon, the rumored saloon thing, like really violent trailer, which I think would have been great. Maybe we'll see that in the future. Maybe we'll never see it. Maybe it never existed at all.

Maybe it was a phantom. So, yeah, I think, you know, to the, rock star's not dumb. In fact, they're like some of the smartest people in the entire industry by a fucking mile. And so we make fun of or question the reason of announcing it a year out. I do think it's silly. But at the same time, they might look at Grand Theft Auto 5, even though it was released at a different time. And they're like, we announced that in a similar time frame. And that game fucking murdered.

Because we just, I mean, that is, I think, the third bestselling game of all time. It's incredible how much Grand Theft Auto 5 is sold. It's just absolutely insane. You know, like how much that came still sells. Yeah, still charts every month. And they look at that and like, well, we, we teased it so much and got people so hyped and excited that they had to have it. And they're like, well, why, even though we see evidence that we don't need to do that, we also have this evidence, this firsthand marketing evidence that it works. So we really should have this very carefully controlled cycle of previews that lead up to the review.

To me, this is a lot like a PSX or the announcement of the PlayStation Pro event, right? where we whip ourselves and then in the audience into a frenzy, right? Of like, no, this is what they're going to announce. This is how they're doing. This is what it should be. And it's the same thing with Rockstar and this game where I think I'm been beating the drum for so long that like what I think they should do is. The GTA logo, fade it up, never show anything, release the game. And we keep talking like that is actually what Rockstar is.

But Rockstar shows us today and showed us with GTA5 and has never really given us a reason not to associate them with old school video game marketing. and it fucking works. So why would they stop that? Why would they change that? Yeah, they're one of the few ones that there's going to be so much to show in the game and so much that everyone's going to be interested in the very, they can be like, this month we're going to talk about grass,

you know, on the field and everybody like, fuck yeah. So it's not like you can get grass. So it's not like everyone, every company and every game can do that, but they have such, they can go so deep into the game. And the game, I'm sure, so vast that they have plenty to talk about.

And I'm sure that's all mapped out and all done already about how they're going to roll it all out. So we'll see. I think it's, there's no reason to doubt that it's going to be anything less than excellent, but I felt that way about Mafia 3 as well. But this is, but Rockstar is, Rockstar is a hangar 13. So, yeah, I think that similar with Nintendo Switch, there's some things you might be concerned about, but there's no reason right now not to be excited about it either.

Yeah. Will there be reasons to not be excited about it later, maybe? But we'll have to wait and see. I am stow. It looks fantastic. Can't wait to play it on my switch. So guys, Battlefield. One.

Yeah. Want to talk about our experiences with it. Okay. Fun were having with it. Do we like it? Do we not like it? Who knows? Colin,

how much have you played? About an hour maybe with the campaign. And then online, we played a couple matches of our friends at rooster teeth. But an hour's worth as well. So we got the code a couple days ago, downloaded it. I was pleasantly surprised, actually. So contrasting, I mean, this is kind of just a minor thing, but contrasting it to my experience with Mafia 3 where you download like this. smaller package file, then the game acts like it's installed, then it goes into the game,

and then it just sits there and installs for like five hours because it's actually not on your system yet. I saw a similar thing with Battlefield where I was like, oh, it's like, oh, 13 gigabytes. I'll download it. We have great internet, so I was like, it downloaded about 25 minutes. And I was like, there's no way the game's 13 gigabytes. So the game boots up, but then it just isolates a bunch of shit from you and actually lets you play it.

So props, I mean, not that this is the first game to do that, but props to Dice and the EA for doing that because I think Mafia really dropped the ball and it was actually quite disappointing and I've seen that go around. Actually, Jim Sterling on the Jimquisition this past week talked about his experience with that Mafia 3 and how that was kind of bullshit in that regard. So I put the game in and messed around a little bit with the campaign. A few shout-outs to the campaign. First of all, I like the, we've talked about this in the past, I like the vignette style.

I think it gives a better way to explore a lesser-known war. In World War II, it's very typical, for instance, when we played World War II shooters to go from like Normandy into France and then the Netherlands and then down into Germany and just the way the Allies did it. And maybe you go to North Africa and maybe you have some campaigns in the Soviet Union and then as they pincer in Operation Barbarossa to the east. But it's usually a linear kind of experience. And I like that with this four-year conflict that is lesser known, especially to us in the States, because we had a very minor kind of participation in it compared to the European powers. I like that they kind of give you little flashes of everyone's in

participation. And I think that's really cool. And what I walked away from with my brief time with the game so far was I really love the way the game's introduced. I think that it's, I tweeted out about it. I was like, that's arguably the most violent intro I've ever seen in a video game. Not from a gore standpoint necessarily, I mean, there's blood and gore

in it, but from a real, like a realistic kind of standpoint, they make you play these different characters and they make you watch them die. And I think that that's really cool because when I was first playing, I was actually stayed alive for a while. I put the game on hard afterwards when you're allowed to kind of mess around. But in the beginning, I was kind of confused. I'm like, this must not have started yet. I haven't gotten a chance to pick my difficulty level or anything

like that. And so I'm staying alive and I'm running out of ammunition and like running around. Then I die and the guy, but he's supposed to die. But then this happens time and time. Yeah. And I think it's a neat little thing to show like these young men are dying. They're not really dying for anything. The war, as they say in the beginning, I really like how they introduced it saying like World War I was supposed to be the war that ended all wars. Didn't solve a goddamn thing. In fact, it made the situation much worse. And World War II was basically just a continuation of it with some different powers. The Ottomans don't exist anymore. For instance, Nazi Germany now exists instead of the German Empire, et cetera. So that was my big takeaway. It was kind of like the,

and I use the term lightly, the historical realism of the game, I think, is really cool to make you feel the tragedy of these young men losing their lives. But at the same time as you, when you played online, you realize that, yeah, all these things were involved in some tangential way, but not quite like this. Not quite like this. Yeah, great. How much did you play? Just the multiplayer we do with Roosteat. So now we're there? Yeah. So that was fun. I played the prolog bit and I finished the whole first war story.

So there's five total. And man, it's awesome. Like the vignettes are super cool. I love that the way they're introduced. I completely agree with you. I think the prolog is very powerful. And it does a really good job of kind of using the jumping from person to person as they die to introduce you to different gameplay elements. And I like that it gives you a little bit of everything.

Each character dies in such a gruesome way. I feel like it starts, it gets progressively more and more intense. Like the first guy with the flamethrower is just like, that's, it's a lot. And the effects are beautiful. And I think that the best thing that the game has going for it is that it absolutely nails the tone and the feel and the look of everything. It's beautiful game too. I played it on PC on my ultra wide monitor. And my God, it's just you just see so much of the vista and all the destruction going on.

And I love seeing the destructible environments and stuff. As you're going through, like, these levels, because the level in the first war story is the same one that we played online. Yeah. So with the windmill and all that stuff. And it's just like it starts off pretty built up. There's like a lot of like buildings here and there. But by the end of the first war story and also by the end of our 45-minute match,

there's not much left. Like almost everything's destructible. And I know that that's kind of part for the course with the battlefield. Yeah. It's really cool to see and I think that the emphasis on tanks, especially in the first mission, the first war story is entirely based on tanks. They're doing a really good job of making these things feel like characters themselves. The tanks literally has a name in the first mission and... You know, best or something like that is?

Yeah, best. Yeah. And it's cool and it starts off. So the prologue was super awesome. I mean, it immediately got my attention like the just black with just text and it was like the war, the end all war. but it didn't and all that stuff and the guy waking up and like the tone and the ambiance of everything just feels so perfect and to see these characters just kind of get completely destroyed

like I wish that the prolog actually and maybe it does later because I haven't gotten to the end but I hope it goes back to that because I thought those characters could be really interesting and that the jump back and forth between you know seeing him

just kind of chilling in his bed to like being on this horrible place like it really feels like war and not like war is cool like war is bad and I think that that's something that uh obviously games have touched on before but usually it's more of the like you're a fucking war hero right right right yeah to fucking kill people one man army's train yeah you're going all these different places fight all different people and even it's like you're the underdog and you're out here and you're going to overcome all the odds this really feels like man you're kind of fucked and even if you're

waiting you're still kind of fucked and i mean that's how the prolog opens i played through that and it does you know i mean it says you're going to die like you won't you know this is you're not meant to continue on this way. So to get in there and know you're in this losing battle, but how long can you last before it all goes to hell? Yeah. And I thought that that was going to kind of continue through to all of the different story missions and two. And those light spoilers, but I'm not going to go too far. They didn't do that. And it surprised me because I was like, it could be kind of easy to just have these vignettes and have at the end, everyone dies. But they don't do that. But they do, even just from the first one, there's like little twists and little things

that happen. And I'm like, man, like, there's something really satisfying about it being. It took probably an hour, 10 minutes to beat the First War story. There's something satisfying about the contained story. I feel like the vignettes offer a really unique perspective into campaign design where we're so used to getting this for shooters like eight to 15 hour experience where you're just kind of doing the things and your character kind of develops over time and like you have troops and stuff. But this allows it to be really character driven.

Sure. And kind of just let you refresh the characters. I'm very excited to try the second one because this one is very much based around the tank and the people in the tank. And you kind of get to know them. And what happens to those people didn't take 10 hours for me to care about them. It took less than an hour for me. When things happen, I'm like, oh, fuck. You know, it hits you.

And there's a moment with a pigeon where I'm just like, damn, this is beautiful. The same pigeons is flying around. I'm like, it's my boy. I remember we got really excited about when I say we. I should probably say I got really excited on Collin' Greg Live when I heard that one of the modes in the game was using carrier pigeons to kind of send things. Well, how couldn't you get excited for that? It's fucking awesome. But I didn't know that like the first mission was going to have a carrier pigeon that you get to play ass.

Nice. Playable pigeon. Fucking fly around. And I'm like, this is awesome. And a central mode of communication. It's funny because like it started off. And I think a big critique I have of the game is the vehicle controls are very, if, I never truly feel like I'm in control of the vehicle.

And that's whether it's a motorcycle or a plane or a pigeon. Or a tank. Like all the things. It always just feels like I'm kind of winging it. I'm also a little biased because I'm used to controlling wardhogs and Halo. Yeah. And I remember back in the day that being like so obtuse and weird, but now it's just like, oh, well, that just feels right. Yeah.

What do you mean? Because when we were playing multiplayer, I was flying planes and driving tanks, I didn't have any problem. Maybe. I mean, I had problems, but it was me being super. I had huge problems flying. But that was because you weren't inverted. Yeah, I could, I couldn't, I needed to invert.

And it was, I felt like I did. I actually, I honestly went into the menu and I was like, it is inverted. I don't understand like what's going on here. I guess that's true. So I don't know exactly. Like, I don't know if it was just me or whatever. No, it wasn't because I kept crashing my plane too, I guess. Because I was trying to figure out what the difference was.

But I don't know if it was the type of, maybe it's the type of plane we're flying. Maybe. And I don't know. The tank kind of controlled a bit better. But that's just because it's a tank and it's a lot slower. Yeah. You don't really have tight controls with that. But the motorcycle, for me, every time I've been on one,

it's super, like, all over the place. And it's also because I keep trying to use the right stick, like a ward hog, but that just makes you look this way. So, like, you look in the wrong way. And then you slammed it off. But again, that definitely sounds like a me problem. It doesn't seem like too many other people are having that issue. But it was interesting because when I did the pigeon thing,

like immediately I just, like, nose-dived and fucked everything up. And it just like, it starts to look like a physics-based, like goat simulator type thing because goddamn pigeon. just fucking around. But once I got the use to the controls, the pigeon sequence might be one of my favorite game sequences of the year. It's just fantastic. I think the,

what I appreciate about the game is, like you said, that Battlefield's heritage is these open battles, battlefields. And it was always a stark contrast, the call of duty or kind of, even more than that to the first, really the one player, single player, very man versus the world kind of shooter. And I play a lot of shooters.

I really like the genre. lot. I typically play them single player, but I play Call of Duty almost every year in the campaign. And I play Doom and obviously Wolfenstein. I mean, these are these are great games amongst many, many others. And I feel like there's a place for those kinds of games. I feel like there's a place for me against the world kind of games. Doom is, you know, totally outrageous and but really, really fun. Wolfenstein's a very similar way where you kind of sometimes have a pseudo squad with you like in the beginning of the game, but ultimately you're by yourself and turns into big firefights. And then you're kind of sneaking around. You can play the game different ways and stuff like that.

Call of Duty, I feel like, has obviously ebbed, as the years have gone by more into having your own pseudo squad with you. And sometimes there are monster closets and sometimes there's a finite amount of enemies on the screen. But call duty has its own feel. And what I realized when I was playing battlefield was, I don't really like playing games like Battlefield, typically because I don't like these wide open areas where there, it seems like it's more objective base where enemies are just going to continue to come until you do what is necessary, similar to a world at war, which was obnoxious in Call of Duty, where you basically had to just trip up an imaginary line

in order to like get the next sequence going. But you, but I can't deny A that I still like, I dig it because of the setting because of the unique kind of setting. And really the impressive technical vastness of the areas. And as you said, the destructability, which is the hallmark of the, another hallmark of battlefield, which I really enjoyed. But I feel like at the same time, I feel like I had a blast without really expecting it playing multiplayer as well.

And even though it's like hectic and kind of heinous and silly, it's, it's still fun. But I feel like when people look at this game in the years to come, other than like the multiplayer, I think where they're going to walk away from is that I think Dice intentionally tried to set a morally ambiguous and very gray single player game out there on everyone. Because unlike World War II, where I think it was pretty obvious who the antagonists were and who started things. And of course, it was Nazi Germany, along with Italy and Japan. World War I started for very specific reasons with very specific delineations, but you wouldn't necessarily. necessarily look at one side of the other and be like, well, you know, the Ottomans were evil or the German, Hungarians and all of them, they were evil or the British were evil. It's like, yeah, it's just, it wasn't quite like that. It was really the ramifications of the way that war ended and, and

specifically the punishment put on the Germans and with Treaty of Versailles and stuff that really started this ball rolling with the Wymer Republic and all the way the Nazis came to power. And then you had absolute evil. But I like that. It gave you a perspective on all sides. And then basically, I mean, what I walked away from. and I thought it was kind of overt and kind of beating you over the head was like it's all for nothing and it's you don't really know what the hell you're even fighting for and you gain control of these characters and they're dead a minute later and that was basically their experience as just fodder cannon fodder as tens of millions people around the world that ended up fighting in the conflict so I think that from a subject matter from a thematic standpoint and from a mood standpoint I think Battlefield clearly has won the day and I think you only have to play it for a little while to understand that but I think that the game's gonna have a real stickiness online too and I think that I think that with the modes and with these environments and obviously with DLC plan and all that kind of stuff. I think the game is clearly having not played Call of Duty yet and actually I'm acquainted of softball of Cold Duty.

I love Call of Duty. I can't help but feel like it's going to win the day there too. You know, like I just, I feel like what I've seen of Call Duty looks really old compared to like something like this. But I was also telling Greg that I kind of, when I was in the tank in the first mission, immediately I was like, ah, fuck. Like I probably would have played the game for a few more hours. if I had some infantry options immediately. And that's kind of why I'm excited about Call of Duty,

where I'm like, well, at least I'm going to do some weird shit. It always does. But I know I'm going to be able to on foot and I'm going to be able to fucking shoot guns. And obviously you can do that in battlefield. But at the same time, I didn't quite like starting in the tank. And I agree with you on that. I loved the mission, but I thought it was weird that it immediately starts you off in that. And I would say the majority of the whole first fifth of the game,

you're in the tank for probably two thirds of it. So you don't really kind of get out on foot until. like pretty far into it. And I thought that was a weird choice. I loved it from a story perspective and I loved the story that it told. But yeah, from a gameplay standpoint, it felt a little bit of a weak punch because you are just moving so slow. But I think that that then added to the building of the characters and the actual like

dynamics of the story and why it was resonating with me and not just being another just, here's just a shooter game. But I feel like it somehow made those elements even better because of how it was designed. So it's, I feel like it does a really good job of kind of being a tutorial for the online experience. I played the online stuff before I did it. So when I was playing through the single by, I'm like, oh, this really explains like the conquest mode or like how you're supposed to go about this stuff. And when I was first playing, there was like a question of like, who is on my team and who's not on my team? Because it is such a grand scale thing where there's just so much going on that it kind of just feels like if they're,

coming at you, they're bad, and if they're coming this way, they're good. Well, they had a little blue thing above their head, but I think that the game is a really good job of kind of getting the fun elements of the online mode and kind of translating it into a fun gameplay experience tied with a really cool, interesting story with cool characters. In a way that, like, it sounds like that's easy and normal, but it's not when it comes to shooters. Like, I feel like shooters campaigns and shooters online are very different experiences, especially with something like Call of Duty.

But I feel like this does a really good job of meshing the two together. And I'm super excited to play through the rest of them. There's a in between the prolog and the war stories, there's this like intro cinematic video that kind of like shows you just a bunch of glimpses. It's kind of like a trailer of the rest of the game. And I'm just like, man, like it's cool. You see the world map when you are choosing all the stories. And I think you can choose them in any order.

Yeah, it looked like you could go in different orders. I went to the Tang one first as well. Yeah, because it kind of guides you. that direction. But it's cool. It definitely, it's vast. The scale is very large and I'm excited to get back to it. Yeah, me too. I, I've been thinking about it, which I, you know, which is a good sign. And it's just funny, like, to the point of like, you know, we talked about the new order a lot back in the day of like not taking too long to put a gun in your hand and like the time to fire is like a really important thing in a shooter. And a really important thing in games.

Like, how long does this game let you play? Like, or until it lets you play. And Wolfensstein really suffered from that. And what I thought was ironic about Battlefield was it doesn't suffer from that at all. Put the gun in your hands immediately and then it takes it out of your hands. And that was in a way even worse where I'm like, I want to shoot. Like the gunplay feels so good and using these kind of very antiquated early 20th century guns compared to like when we were using M1s and all these other things in World War II. It just felt cool. And so yeah, I mean, these are minor quibbles that I have with the game. But I feel like, you know, all in dropping the quibbles. Quibbles. I don't know what that means. But the, I mean, I, I mean, I, I, I mean, I, I, I, I, I,

I feel like whatever qualam I have with the game in X, Y, or Z is, is all, it seems to be pretty easily made up from. And I will say, not that I'm like, someone at Marvels at games beauty a lot, too. The games are, the game's fucking gorgeous. And I, I felt that way on PS4, but it's especially prominent on PC. I played on my PC too. And it's especially prominent there. But with the exception of the smoke effects, which I thought were a little wonky on PS4,

everything else looked pretty on par. They did a really nice job with this game. And I really feel like, uh, people are going to love this. I, I just, I see all the making. It's not like it's not really that hard to see it's not Battlefield hardline or even bad company or something where it's like kind of like splitting off people Seems like it's gonna be a very big game and if I were if I were Activision and our call of duty I'd be a little bit nervous about it It's I'm not saying call of duty is gonna not sell 15 million guys of course But you think this is the year they might make up some ground I feel like this is a thing right battlefield always comes out and a lot of people like that's the technically better game with the exception the ones that are broken as fuck

But that there's something there for people like and people get excited for it but it's still call duty can't stop Yeah I think it's I think people are gonna gonna gonna really be amped up about it and it's getting great reviews and by the time a lot of people listen to this they would have played it themselves i think yeah so they'll get a little taste of it but i i definitely think that the campaign itself and and again the moral ambiguity and ambiguity and the grayness is just alone so tantalizing and if you're into on the line gameplay which i'm sure most battlefield players are then obviously there's going to be a suite of things for you to do there yeah that are going to keep you very busy so um yeah props to dice i think that they've i think it was pretty obvious that they were going to deliver from the beginning and i like that um again you

You know, as we said, exploring World War I is cool. And I give them a lot of credit. And I give EA a lot of credit as a publisher. They've been pretty open about how they didn't want to do the game in that setting and how would they make it work. And they've made it work. Oh, yeah. And honestly, that's, I want to end it here where it's just like there's props to them for making that fun as well. Like even the tank immediately when the mission starts driving over the trenches and just kind of breaking through all the shit.

I'm like, man, this is super cool. And we haven't seen this before. So that's awesome. And I, in addition to them nailing the tone, just the game is so. cinematic in a way that only video games can be where it's just like it's fun to be able to interact with something that looks so film-esque and the the score is fantastic and I feel like it the music is very very well utilized like jokes aside like the pigeon scene was so cool to me because there's like this

swelling music that plays that really makes it feel like there's all this horrible shit going on but you can fly above this this little bird's just flying around and it's just like in it's saving the day you know like the Bird fucking save shit. But then later towards the end of the mission in a tank and there's, you know, you're facing off against the final like boss part of it. And the Battlefield theme song kicks in and it's just like, fuck, this is awesome. Like it feels like such a great little contained thing.

So very, very cool. So guys, another game that we're going to give our thoughts on. Arguably bigger than Battlefield one. The only thing bigger. Yeah. And somehow it built up all the way from the ground. Dragon Quest Builders. Hell yeah.

Now, you guys are both obsessed with it. I want to hear your stories. You have two different perspectives. We got the Minecraft guy. We got the Dragon Quest guy. Where do we meet? What's the consensus? I think it's awesome.

Colin, do you like it? Yeah, I don't know that. It's awesome in my opinion. I think it's a great game. I mean, for me, it's exactly what I wanted. We talk about this all the time. Games not delivering on your expectations for them, right? From the time we first heard about Dragon Quest builders

and it was going to be some weird RPG mashup up with Minecraft. I was like, and it's going to be on Vita. I was like, this sounds like the perfect game to have on mute and watch TV with and fool around with and build something out and it's done that to a T for me, right? Is it, I mean, is it awesome in terms of like, is it uncharted for something? No, of course not. But I mean, it is awesome in terms of like, I'm in love with it. I find myself, man, I should play, I have Batman Arkham Asylum. I want to play more that. I want to play more Tomb Raider. I want to do more VR stuff. But I'm like, I could also kick on Luke Cage or West Wing or something like there and just sit here and chill out and go

through and grind out and find new materials and find new recipes and do all these different things. It's, it's on Vita accomplishing exactly what I want I mean. And it's interesting to see so many people who are excited for it on PlayStation for on PS3 enjoying it on a console when for me it is that experience. But it is a Vita game, which obviously I'm always excited about. It's a Vita game that runs well. It's a Vita game that's fun. It's a Vita game that's deep. It's a Vita game that you can get really into. And what I've talked about in the other shows from, yeah, somebody who's played hours and hours of Minecraft, right? Is the fact that it's a dumb down Minecraft. You know what I mean like it is baby's first Minecraft in the same way it's baby's first RPG or

whatever right I'm like okay take this question run and do this there's problems with both those things whereas the RPG side which we'll touch on with Colin I know more is just like it sucks that there's not a quest log it sucks that I can't see everything on there and have a better tracking system but again it's so simple why does that matter I'm at most having two three quests at a time the Minecraft side of it is it's doing away with so many things that aren't annoyances in Minecraft they are Minecraft that's the game but here you don't have to worry about it where you know in the very beginning you start with just these you know empty boxes on the bottom of your screen which you fill in with the materials you're collecting or whatever you're doing

but then you know you build your own chest i was like okay great i'm building these chests i'll be able to put the stuff in there like minecraft if i put two chests together they'll become one big chest okay no they don't do that there's still mini chests but when i go to craft i don't need to take out of the chest what i want at the crafting station it knows that back in that chest i have a whole bunch of sand so i can make some glass okay that's really cool easy taking away some of the challenge of like trying to figure out where you're putting all your resources then you make like like an enchanted chest that when you're out there and you fill up your bar, that stuff's just automatically transitioned back. And if you have stuff back that you've already crafted,

you can hit X at any time in the open world and then pull up your menu and take stuff out of that enchanted chest and have it ready to go. It's a cheat. It's an easy way around it. But for what they're doing, the kind of game they're building, what they want to be, it works. I wish they went deeper with it, right? Like, we just finished chapter one or whatever, which is the first area. And then you jump out and, you know, Colin, I talked a little bit of that. We touched on this and PSI love you X OXO and the fact that I was getting ready to leave and it's like, well, when you leave here, you go to New Land and you leave all your stuff behind. You're going to lose it all. So I stopped because I wanted to run around to get the challenges done that you had to find

online to find out what the challenges were. It turns out that it's cumbersome. When you leave that chapter and start the next chapter, you can always load your previous save and go back into that other chapter you were in to complete the rest of the challenges, which you can now see. But in the other, now it's a completely different save for the next one. So you're starting over in these little mini worlds. Seems silly. We're in a Minecraft, you know, I want to build out this my universe, my world. When I started the chapter, I thought, okay, I'm going to build my first base here. You know, keep leveling it up because you don't level up. Your encampment levels up, right? You can increase your health bar, but it's your town level that you're going with.

And you hit level, I, you know, I focused on it for a while thinking, like put my quest aside. I'm going to build this place out and make more rooms. You're getting like XP off of the rooms, which then fill in your town level meter. I hit level five real quick and that was the max level. I was like, oh, okay, well, I'm going to keep playing through the story and the next, you know, I'll get to some tipping point where my time can level up more. No, you know, for the first one, level five is as far as it can go. I don't know what level chapter two is because I've been playing this game wrong. I've been playing this game thinking I was going to have this one world that I would then be bopping and scatting around, you know, go out to the next world, the next chapter

and come back and be able to screw around with that and build it out. That's not how this works. Now that I understand that, it's like, oh, okay. And like I was all hesitant to go jump out and not do the challenges. That was silly because I could have jumped to the next world and then come back to the save and gone back to those challenges there. But I'm enjoying it. It's doing what I wanted to do. Combat's super simple. The Minecraft element is super simple, but it's all enjoyable. It's all enjoyable junk food gameplay where I'm just going through and it's got those hooks of well, I'm almost there. All right, I did this quest. Well, there's an exclamation mark above her head. What does Pippa need for me? Oh, I need to do this. Okay. Oh, I found this new thing. I go.

There's one new thing to craft. I craft that and that unlocks the recipe for this other thing now. And to see how that all goes. It's interesting. And I'm interested in now having, you know, gone through the first world. I'm really interested to see what happens with the next world. Colin? I think that I think what stops the game from being fantastic is it's peculiarity. It's the peculiar kind of things that it does

that I don't think make any sense. But I also think those are minor issues in a game that I think is undiably fun. I don't really like Minecraft. And I think that I wouldn't play this if it wasn't a Dragon Quest game. It's the same way I feel about Omega Forces Mousseau that came out last year for Dragon Quest.

I just happen to be a really big Dragon Quest fan. I love Dragon Quest. And so, you know, I'm a really big fan of those core games and some of the great role playing games of all time. If you're in a really traditional, grindy role playing games that don't have much story or a story that really matters, it's not, you know, I don't recommend Dragon Quest for everyone. It's not, not Final Fantasy. And that's good and that's bad.

So getting into the game immediately, and that's why I'm so interested in Greg's experience, why Greg and I have been talking about it all is Greg doesn't know anything about Dragon Quest, and I don't really know anything about Minecraft. So I don't see the comparisons to Minecraft, like saying it's like simpler than Minecraft. I'm like, I don't know. like seems exactly the same to me. I don't have the kind of nuanced understanding of Minecraft to know that it's different in any respect.

But what really hit me over the head, which I think Greg doesn't see, and that's why I think our opinions together are really powerful with this, is that like the fan service in the game's really like over the top. And I like it. The music and the score of the soundtrack is awesome. The sound effects are awesome.

All the enemies you're fighting are Dragon Quest enemies, the weapons and the items that you're finding, like the Okun Club and all these guys. These are all weapons from the games, the armor, all armor from the games. The items that you're making, a lot of them are items from the games. And I think it's a... I really like that Square Enix has worked to democratize Dragon Quest in a different way. It's not to say there has been Dragon Quest spinoffs.

There have been Dragon Quest spinoff for 15 years. It's just to say that with heroes and with going into the Muso direction and then with this particular game going into more of the Minecraft direction, I really like that they're opening it more to a non-nitch audience. In fact, trying to get more people to play Dragon Quest in order to figure out what Dragon Quest is to get back, kind of borrow back into what the essence of Dragon Quest, which is not Dragon Quest heroes, which is not Dragon Quest builders, but it's more of a 60, 70, 80, 100 hour grindy as fuck role-playing game.

But I think that, you know, I enjoy the game. I think I would enjoy it even more, and I'm playing it on Vita as well, I think I'd enjoy it even more if there was a Quest log, if the challenges weren't so vague and like, I don't understand the reasons why in a game that has such significant localization and a lot of translation in the game that they didn't just go the extra step

in the original game to make a quest log to and that was really weird out. So I was telling Greg is like a Dragon Quest 9 was the last core Dragon Quest game that came out in the States. And that game came out on DS and, uh, or 3DS I guess. No, it was DS.

And, right? 2009. Yeah, yeah, DSX. Um, And I felt like I was telling Greg, I'm like, that game was so side quest heavy that there were literally, there are hundreds of them. And the game numbered them. Like you go into your log and be like, this is sidequest 37. And then you see it in your list, like, I don't even know where 38 is.

I don't know where 39 is. This is sidequest 40. And so in this game, I'm like, where's the, where's the, there's so much heritage here. There's such a legacy in a bunch of through lines, the real dragon quest. But you don't tell me what the fuck I have to do. Like you don't, and I found, I was, I've been reading a lot about the game too, hoping that there was some information from the Japanese version. In Japan, it was on PS4, PS3, and Vita.

So a lot of people played it over there. And I was like looking for information and reading about things. And it's like, yeah, like, chapter by chapter. Your shit just disappears. Like nothing you do in chapter one has anything to do with chapter two. Like, and I'm like, that is strange. And why didn't it tell me that? Like, not that I'm dumping a lot of time into it, like making my base because I'm not.

But like, I'd be fucking pissed. if I spent 10 hours at this place making this thing and then I'm like, yeah, that doesn't really matter. For me, the problem is it's not, I'm not mad at it. I just wish I would have looked into it more in the beginning because I would have played the game differently.

Now, because it's a platinum, right? This is a game I'm enjoying. I'd like to platinum. I'm going to play it on planes, right? But now when I take off tomorrow and I really get into chapter two, right? It's not going to be, I spent so much time just building my base fucking around,

making the rooms look the way I wanted them to. I'm like, oh, I made these rooms too big. I'm going to bring them back and just have bedroom after better. them and go make the signs. And I was just doing stuff fucking around the way you do in Minecraft, which is great. Then it turns out at the end there's a challenge for beating it in 20 days, right? And it's like, oh, all right, cool.

And the next time I play, it's going to be, what's your mission? All right, great. What's your mission? All right, great. Oh, I got to get this to whatever level it needs to be. I've hit the base for that level. Great. What's your next?

Because it was before where I'm playing, you know, and I've built an awesome base. I'm really proud of it. I've enjoyed it. And like, you know, these goddamn fucking scorpions show up and knock down part of the wall. And I'm like, well, fuck. And I go over and I reassemble it. And then I'm like, well, I might as well move the armory over here now. And I do the, you know, and like, no, that was stupid.

That wasted time for that one challenge, right? So now the next time just bang, bam, bam, let's do it. And then double back and do all the other stuff. Especially because, yeah, the base doesn't matter, right? It's just like data on the screen. It doesn't actually matter to the game or to the future of my playthrough, what it matters or what it looks like. Yeah, I don't, I don't quite understand the philosophy of the design of the game.

And I think that that's one of the, that's one of the things that's really, a hang up for me where Dragon Quest much like, and I'm not saying this is a core Dragon Quest game because it's not, but Dragon Quest much like many RPGs is about, is about creating a character or like leveling a character, finding new weapons in armor, finding better curative items and things that let you go further in the world and making enemies that were once unmanageable, manageable, manageable. I mean, that's basically the essence of a role-playing game. That's the essence of a lot of games.

And Dragon Quest was always really good at it. So when games came along in the genre, in the role-playing game genre, like, Lunar or something like that, where the enemy scaled and all the stuff. It kind of frustrated the shit to me because I was like, well, what's the point of even leveling then? You know, and it's the, I got a similar feeling here, which is unfortunate because Dragon Quest isn't about this where I'm like, well, and the game makes it really clear in this respect where it's like, your character is not going to get any stronger. You can fight no enemies or a fucking thousand enemies. Your character's going to be exactly the same strength. You have to find new things to craft new items and armor that make him stronger. I'm like, all right, that makes sense.

But since it's not carrying over from chapter to chapter, I'm way less excited about the prospect of spending a ton of time with this game since I just don't feel like it really matters. You know, like, and that's, I feel like this game's did so well in Japan and is doing so well here. It seems like critically that we'll probably get another one that I hope that they, they borrow down into that and do fix that problem because I do think that that's weird. And I said it before, like the game has an incredible amount of text.

Dragon Quest isn't a chatty, chatty kind of game typically, but this game especially seems to have so much translation. And again, a lot of localization, then I'm just like, but no quest like? Like, I just, like, it just things like that just fucking piss me off. Like, I do, because even if you can't see the active quest and so like that, it's nice to see what you've done. Like, once you do something, it's just gone.

Like, you don't know what the fuck you did. You know, and then the challenge, I was reading about the challenges. The challenge, one of the challenges in the third chapter is to kill three dragons. Look what the fuck you. How would I even know that? Yeah. I'm like, how would you even know that? Like, that's one of the things where I'm like, it's just,

because we're playing it wrong. That's the whole thing. Like, I'm with you when I was, like, I'm playing through my first chapter and I'm looking for the, it'd be awesome as quest log. I think it's because we got not sold wrong, but like it was, oh, it's going to be this open world RPG. Well, it's around my town and it's whoever I bring in. And each, at maximum what, there's like four, in chapter one, like four active people in that

town who are talking to you to give you things. So once I get one quest from that, I get a four at any time and there's above their heads and it's not the exact same thing. And then it's, yeah, you know, going out and doing it and getting into it and getting involved, I was thinking it was going to be something and it's not, which is weird. And I don't like it necessarily in that respect. I wish it was what we thought it was going to be. But now knowing it, it's just like the quest for the dragons, how would you know that?

You know that when you beat the chapter, which is why for chapter two, I'm fucking beating it as fast as possible. And then those challenges will open up. And I'm like, all right, cool. If I didn't get the thing, I'll go back and get those things. Yeah. I suspect that, well, let me back up. You said that we're playing the game wrong. I hate that particular excuse.

We've talked about this in the past. If a game lets you play it in a certain way, then you're not playing the game wrong. It's actually on, it's not like playing Mario with just running into enemies. And you're clearly playing the game wrong, right? But we had this conversation, I think, with Christine back of the day about Witcher.

Which is like, you're playing the game wrong. I'm like, no, I'm not. The game lets me play it exactly like that. If I was playing, and what we were talking about there was that like, I was like, there's just too much shit to do in this game. Way too many quest, way too many question marks. She's like, well, you're playing it wrong. I'm like, how?

How? How am I playing it wrong? The game literally lets me play it like this. And I played it like this for 60 hours. And so with Dragon Quest, I feel like, with Dragon Quest Builder specifically, I feel like it's just one of those issues. What? Kevin is asleep. Literally. Yeah.

Well, the doorbell rang you didn't move at all. Not even like a, not even a look over there. So I feel like with Dragon Quest Builders specifically, it's not a matter of playing it wrong. It's matter of playing within the parameters of the game. Like I feel like there's got to be some blame put on the design. No, no, no. I'm with you. And I'm not saying we're, I'm saying that I think where we came in.

thinking this game was something it wasn't where I wish there was a quest log sure to see what but once we get going it's like well why does it matter like I mean the there's never going to be enough quest where I'm going to be really lost it would seem like and then it's terms of like it's gone once you do it it's gone well kind of sure but not really because there is the room she wanted me to build that looks exactly the same like it's visually represented I'm just saying that I don't think it's fair to compare it necessarily the dragon quest that's come before it in the same way it's not necessarily fair to compare it and I'm like it's baby's first Minecraft right because it's not trying to be, it's not trying to keep me in that world for a hundred,

or a thousand hours. It is like, hey, you need to fucking make this. I, you know, I'm just running around playing it like I'd play Minecraft. So I found like steal way early and had the most powerful weapons way early. And so that was the thing too of like, you know,

jumping through the different colored portals to the different parts of the map. I'd come out and I'd just start getting my ass handed to me by different characters have to be really defensive because I didn't understand seeds of life and I had a very small health bar. But then it was that, man, I'm getting my butt kicked. I'd go back and then I'd find steel and make the steel broadsword and they're like, oh, okay, now I can, I come back and I'm taking, you scorpions. Exactly. Fuck those guys. Yeah, I don't want to sound down on. I think it's great.

I do want to say, and I've reiterated this before on PSI, I love you and I think on this show, like, we really got to give a lot. You know, I give Square and especially a lot of shit. And I think they deserve a lot of it. But they deserve a lot of credit for supporting Vita the way they've been supporting it with big games. And, you know, it's, it was, when Dranquest. Heroes was announced for Vita, I was like, really? Like, it's just, it's just, I mean, it was obviously going to be in Japan, but here, I was like, I don't think the PS3 version of the game came out of here. So the, the, the, we had like the PS4 and Vita versions of the game. And I was like, that's really cool. And again, with Adventures of Manna and World of Final Fantasy and all these games, I'm like, you know, props to these guys for putting their money where their mouth is on these

games. Yes, they're putting them on their big brother console as well. And I'm sure they're going to sell 90% of their copies there. But it's cool. And so I, I want to, you know, reiterate, if you own a Vita and you're interested in this game, buy it on Vita. Like, let's keep sending a message to these guys. This is really the only AAA developer, publisher, supporting the handheld to this degree, including first party. So I want to give them a lot of credit for doing that. I think it's cool.

I think it's bold, and I don't think it's necessarily going to pay off for them. So I'd like to help them. If it was a shitty game, I wouldn't say that. But it seems like Adventure the Mata is not perfect. It's got problems. And obviously, this game's not perfect either, but it's better than Adventures of Mata. and I think World of Final Fantasy

with the chibby little characters is gonna be really, really cool. The devil's out. It's awesome. So I feel like we should really, you know, put our money to our mouth as well with these particular games. Although play it on PS4 if you want.

Just be careful. It's not cross by and it's not cross-save. So you're playing it in one ecosystem or the other. One trophy list though. So. There you go. This topic, as always,

brought to you by you. You can go to kind of funny.com slash gamescast topic. Leave a topic for us to discuss on a future show just like my boy Jorgon did Jorgon

Speaking to Eding your soul And speaking to square here too How do you feel About all the positive Final Fantasy 15 previews Of the first 15 hours Could it actually not suck?

I never thought it was gonna suck So I mean That's one of the things That I've said it before And I said it again I said this will be nothing less than good I've said that a million times right To my credit I never said it was gonna be bad

I just said it's not gonna reach the expectations of a 10-year development cycle, right? And I feel like I was happy to see that. I read a few of them. I've been seeing a lot of the feedback people have been tweeting them either, and I've just been kind of cursorily reading the websites

and seeing that, and I'm happy. I don't want any game to be bad. So I hope Final Fantasy 15 is awesome. I don't believe it, like, in terms of like, in terms of like it being this amazing game, but if it's good, that's great. I'm excited to play it. I think we're going to get copies of it sooner rather than later.

And I'm pleased to see it. I'm not surprised. I never said the game was going to be bad. I am very surprised and I am very excited about all of this. There's been a whole bunch of previews out. There's a really long one on IGN. There's a super long one on Polygon. I read Polygons.

Jeremy Parrish wrote one too. Jeremy Parrish is the one where I'm like, all right, IGN, okay, cool. Polygon, great. But Jeremy Parrish, he seems like a Colin type motherfucker to me where it's like... US gamers, Jerry Perch. He's going to be extra hard on this because of the development cycle and because it's not the Final Fantasy that he knows and all this stuff. But you seem to be super into it.

And 15 hours is a large chunk of time. A chunk of time to get a really good idea. And I love that it seems like everybody is super up on the battle system and that the combat, it starts out awkward and you don't really like it, which is an experience I had in the demos that have come out. But then as it goes on, it gets deeper and it feels good and it feels like you're learning it as it goes. And I recently watched all of the anime and stuff. So I'm already super invested in the story. and I'm totally sold on that. I mean, I've been sold in this game for a long time.

But to hear that people like it is like, oh, man, it just feels like a weight's been lifted. And we'll see how far this goes. And, like, there is the thing of its preview cycle. And it's very rare that games preview poorly, you know, especially on these, especially game like this. But I mean, this isn't a preview of you played 15, 20 minutes of it for a let's play. You played 15 hours. Yeah. So I'm a little trepidious just because, like, I know how this shit goes when it comes to websites and stuff.

and I feel like it's, you want to lean positive on something like this. But for these guys to be saying this, it means a lot to me. And that was the thing I took away from the Polygon one of like it starts like, we've joked about how many reviews are going to start that way. I was in, just entering college when this happened and da-da-da-da-da.

Like the chips are stacked against this game. And for him to come out, play it and be like, not only did I like it, but he's like, I really like this story. I really like Noctus's story. And I was like, oh, that's interesting.

Because that's what's been interesting to me. And the fact that you can see the Western RPG influence in all these different things. I'm like, Because again, that's the whole thing. I've been as an outsider looking in as a non-Final fantasy fanism. I mean, he's never cared about the franchise looking in. I've always saying, it's cool. What you're talking about sounds cool,

but I'm worried about it getting in and it just being another really, really nerdy J-R-B-G kind of thing. So, like, looking from the outside, reading this, I'm still looking forward to playing it. Some of the key things that I took away from a couple of these different articles, I don't remember which is from which, but it says that the game starts off with a sentence that just says, this game is for Final Fantasy fans and first-timers alike.

I'm like, awesome, cool. I think that it's good that they're addressing that. I think that that's really kind of saying in a big way, like, yo, we understand things haven't been great. And I think that they're really trying to start something different. And I think that's really important is I think that all three articles that I read are talking about how it feels like a good Western RPG and a good JRP together. And that's awesome because there is the worries for people, like Colin, that it's going to

be not Japanese enough in terms of gameplay. I don't think there's any worry about it not being Japanese enough in terms of quite Japanese in terms of whatever. But it's also like reading, I didn't want to watch too much because like we got offered to play this 15 hour version of it. And I was like, I don't want to do that. Like that's way too much time for me to put into this game to potentially have to do it again.

Yeah. But I really like that it seems like the characters, especially again, after watching the anime and like being sold on this stuff. Porty? It seems like it's very lighthearted and these are just bros hanging out and there's relationships between all of them and they make jokes about the clothes that they're wearing.

It's like one of them keeps complaining about how hot it is and he's like, dude, you're wearing a leather jacket in the desert. I like that there's that type of kind of tongue and cheek but it's not so much a parody of itself. It's more just like the characters are real and they talk to each other like we make fun of Kevin sleeping and stuff. Like it just, I am so, so jazzed about this and it's close.

It's getting so close. So, I mean, this is shocking to me. Like the fact that all these sites are being so positive about it. I'm just like, oh my God, yes. Your dreams might be coming. Could the NX be good? Who knows? This is so exciting.

Anyway, that's what I think, Jorgon. Jorgon. Ghost Jacobs says, Do you guys think that releasing only two weeks before Horizon Zero Dawn will hurt Persona 5 sales? No. Yeah. I mean, there are different audiences in the same audience at the same time.

hardcore enough gamer where you are looking forward to persona five you're probably still looking forward to horizon zero dawn and i would say if you're not to put anyone down but if you're top level mainstream gamer just own a PlayStation 4 for whatever and you're oh the kill zone guys are putting out horizon which in horizon's a new IP is going to be hard to sell it to new people but if you heard about this open world RPG western kind of thing i don't think persona is necessarily for you yeah exactly time wise it's going to be tough trying to balance those as a guy who wants through real bad trying to run through one or worry about the other and not or put one off till you're done because you don't want to be playing two giant RPGs.

And speaking of persona, Jerry Jerry says, what do you think about persona five not using the generic voice actors? I feel like the question's a little, you know, loaded there. I don't think that I'm assuming he's referring to the Nolan North and Troy Baker's. Oh, I didn't understand the question. Yeah. I mean, just based on a couple of other people respond to that. Sure.

That's what. I wouldn't call them generic voice actors. Matt Mercer, who's like the DM for critical role who has a huge following. No, he does a million video games. Not to leave that out too. He's not a generic voice actor. But even speaking of them, like if they were to be in this game, I mean, like, yes, when you get trained, you get so familiar with them, you start to be able to differentiate,

like, oh, this character is this person. Right. You watching trailers is the game of Nolan or Troy. Yeah. Oh, everybody. Yeah. Yeah. But it's, it's, uh, I.

I think that it's exciting that the Final Fantasy 15 cast and the Persona 5 casts are not those guys. But I think that it's a cool thing to be able to cycle. We're going to get a whole new group of people and then, you know, have them distributed amongst all the games. It's a lot of games. And it is that thing where like, I'm not familiar enough with the new cast yet other than Matt. But one of the female voice actors got tweeted at and they included me saying you should get this girl on the show. She's super cool. And you went and look.

She has credits. It's not like these people are just like dudes. They've just walked in. like, I've never voiced act before. They've been voice acting. They haven't been on, yeah, the uncharted or, you know, Call of Duty stage level yet. Trevor Stark, he says,

in honor of the Disney proposal video, what are the best Disney games? I mean, there's... Ducktails. Yeah, duct tail. All the old platformers. Mickey's haunted mansion or whatever the hell was.

The Magic Castle. Magical Castle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is all those, the Genesis and Super Nintendo games, the Aladdin and Lion King and all those. And I love them. Yeah.

But being completely, honest, they don't feel great to play. Even the magical castle and all that stuff. There's something about them a little too floaty. I love the look. I love the music. I love everything about it. It's Disney.

So obviously I'm super into it. But like something about them that's like, I feel like we remember those games more fondly than they actually are. I don't. I didn't like them back then. I don't like them now. The only reason I remember that Mickey game is I got it for Christmas. And I was like, uh, all right, thanks.

And put it in. I was like bitter playing it because like I don't like Mickey. Don't you know me mom and dad? Where's my Jurassic Park 2? We did the Aladdin Let's Play a year ago. And it was just so, it was broken feeling, you know. But I remember loving it when I was younger. Sure, because you're a dumb little kid.

Now speaking of just being a dumb little kid who grew up and do a dumb man baby. Did you, did you, did Epic Mickey get you going? Did you get, was that something you liked? So, okay. Epic Mickey was one of those, those big disappointments for me. Oh, yeah. I remember when it was first announced, one inspector's making this Mickey game. The, um, the Game Informer.

cover and like all we got was an image and the name epic mickey which was the code name at the time um they stuck with it and then just fucking image of mickey with a paintbrush and the the castle and looked all like darker for what you'd consider for a disney game and the idea that it's about the lost and forgotten things from disney's history and like the the world you living is dizzleland with a bunch of broke down rides and all this stuff and I'm like are you kidding me this sounds like the most tim getty's game of all time and it's super super super cool And then the more you started hearing about there was music that dropped from him like well this is great It was like remixes of the Fantasia like paint thing where you're messing around with the sorcerer and all that shit

There's so much there like Disney's just it has such a legacy and there's so much story and characters and all this stuff and when you take Something like Disneyland which is kind of a Amaguration of all the different things together already But you add that like the darkness factor of what are the forgotten things and all this stuff it was so cool but then the game just kind of wasn't that great. It was such a six out of ten, but like it needed to be at least a seven out of ten for me to be like, fuck yeah. Like I would have took it.

You know, I would have been like, you know what? Great. Good enough. But it wasn't good enough. And then there was the hope that the sequel would fix that. And it didn't. It didn't at all. But that game, I wished.

Broke your heart. It did. It did. I remember being at E3. And it was the first time I played it was my first E3. That was my first E3. who. Alfredo held you while you cried.

There's problems here. Surprise you didn't say Kingdom Hearts. Well, Kingdom Arts is the easy answer. Kingdom Hearts, obviously, specifically wanted to love them. And those are such a weird thing when you think back to it. Disney and Final Fantasy mixing together. And I feel like as it went on, it's just gotten more Disney. And the Final Fantasy has kind of left it in terms of characters, at least.

Like they're kind of just scattered around. But one and two, they're really prevalent. But trying to think out. Is there anything else? Because, yeah, I mean, Duck Tales was amazing. Yeah, I was going to say there. There's a few good NES games from that, from Disney, or Disney licenses, Disney to make them.

Capcom made most of the games. Yeah, I mean, that's basically it. By the time, I mean, there was a shit ton of Disney games on PS1 and stuff, but by that time I was just like, yeah, okay. And a lot of those games are available as PS1 classics. Like Hercules. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And all that.

Toy Story on the Super Nintendo, I really enjoyed. Was it a Mulan game? I don't know if I'm just naming movies from that era. I'd be shocked if there wasn't. That would have been great. Why not? I liked Mulan. That was so dope.

Lil Uzi Street says, How much do you guys want Kingdom's Amalore Reckoning Remaster? I'd love that. That'd be a fucking amazing. God, I couldn't imagine. There's no reason to do that if they're not going to continue with the series. So that would be great, but that's just not going to happen.

What a sad, sad state of affairs with 38 studios. Trey 3-3 says, Why is Nintendo violated Paper Mario by removing the great RPG mechanics? Have you played Color Splash at all? No. So I played it for a couple hours. And it's cool. I like it.

I feel like it's a kind of return to form for what modern Paper Mario is, which is a bit more action-oriented. It started with Super Paper Mario on the Wii. Which was great. Yeah. I love that one. But it's not a thousand-year door. It's not the original Paper Mario in N64. And it's not Super Mario RPG.

Or even the Mario and Luigi games on the GBA. And it's like somewhere along the line, they combined them and then just kind of split off of the RPG stuff. Like we got Sticker Star and that kind of sucked on 3DS and then the paper gem one. I didn't play it, but it doesn't seem too favorable in people's opinions. I like Color Splash though. I think it was cool. It's really weird.

It got back to the like super quirky paper Mario stuff where it's like there's all the special moves and like a plunger and shit. I'm like, it's Nintendo being weird. And I think that when Nintendo is weird in it's kind of more B and C tier stuff, like there's a lot of fun to be had. So it's cool. So I wouldn't say that they're, what's the word he used, violating Paper Mario? As much as that's just what Paper Mario is now.

Like, will there be a Mario RPG at some point where, like, the battle system actually matters? I don't know. I think that somewhere along the line, they're like, not enough people care about this, which sucks. But there also, there was a ton of those games, though, like between all the Mario and Luigi games on the GBA and DS and Super Mario RPG. Do you like Super Mario RPG? Yeah, it's okay. I mean, the original Super Mario RPG on SNES was so weird because of who made it. And, like, that was, I remember that was the most revolutionary thing about that game more than even the game itself, which people really love.

And I respect. I haven't played in many years. But I always thought it was weird. I was like Square. On the time Square Soft is making a Mario game? Like, I remember, I was like, that's, I don't understand that. And it was, it came out on a console that had a lot of great role playing games. So, like, when I think about the great role playing games on Super Nintendo, that game never comes to mind, to be honest.

But the move away from RPG. elements happens. I mean, mass effect the same thing. And I think that that was really disappointing. Even though I think the mass effect games get better, I think the mechanically. And in terms of like back end like systems, mass effects have only gotten worse in that regard. So it's sad to see that happen in franchises you like where the hallmark of the franchise to you is something that's important. That's not important obviously to other players. Yeah. So hopefully Andromeda gets back to that.

Austin Tex Perez says, what are the coolest developer names? Mine are undead labs and the fun pimps. Undead Labs is good. Noddy dog. Noddy dog's good. Baller. I was thinking about what was the one I was bringing up recently they made that um oh hairbrain schemes I love that name uh they showed us a game at E3 oh it was like a what the fuck was it called I don't remember anymore it was like they it was a downloadable game where you third person shoot like slashing things um god I love that I remember me and they were from hairbrain schemes like that's a great great name of a studio I like a Jaffey's Bartlett

Jones detective agency that's funny For the longest time when he did that, I thought that's what his game was. I thought that was the name of the game. And it was like, oh, no, that's the studio. Oh, that's weird but awesome. That's a cool business card to handle people. I've always been a fan of NeverSoft. I just thought it was cool.

And like the logo and the eye, but it was kind of the experience with that. Sure. Of course. Of course. Yeah, there's a bomb. There's a bunch, man. Yeah. Um, Jason.

Jason. AKA rejuvenation says, while playing a bioshot collection and some upset. This doesn't make sense. But I've been playing Bioshock. And some have said the same thing about return to Arkham. My friend noticed how the new graphics and lighting takes away from the intended tone. Will this change how remasters are made and if they need to stop doing this?

I understand what he means. It's a weird sentence structure. He was saying that people are saying the same thing about both collections. I haven't played Arkham. I have. I've only played Arkham Asylum. I haven't noticed it being brighter and not as grim and dark as Arkham Asylum was before. Reading Eye Gin's review,

the whole thing was just like the brightness kind of like really reveals the flaws. of the game being developed on a last-gen system. Well, sure, it's an old game, yeah. Yeah, but like when it being brighter though, because when you see the graphics comparison, it's significantly brighter. Sure. It takes away not only from the tone of the game,

but that also like reveals the flatness of the flowers and the- Oh, interesting. Okay. Yeah, with Bioshock, I mean, I know the game pretty intimately, and I haven't, I mean, I got about halfway through it before I had to abandon my run. I'd like to get back to it to play other things,

but that said, I always, jack up the brightness on everything I play. So games are, I hate when it's like, you know, max this out so you can just barely see the logo. I'm like, no, I'm going to see the whole logo. That's how I'm going to play the game. That is such a calling thing to do. Because I'm just like, because I don't like playing like I don't, except for in like certain

games like horror or whatever, like where you want darkness or you want like, like, I'm like, I don't find it fun to not be able to see what the fuck's going on. So like, so what I'm saying is that Biococque probably always looked like that to me. And it's just so that's just what I know Biashog to be. I just like games to be a little bit more brighter and vibrant, even if they're meant to be like these dark dire things. I'm like, I don't find it exciting. Even in Dead Space or a game I like where I'm like,

I can't see what the fuck I'm going. I'm like, how is that fun? You know, like, I don't care if the ambient light doesn't make sense. I need to see the whole logo. Yeah, that's fascinating about Batman. Because I haven't read any of the reviews. I've just played Arkham Asylum. And yeah, I mean, it looks like what I remember it to look like,

which is what I expect out of a remaster. That makes sense. That's always the interesting thing when we talk about it. When you get one, you're like, man, da-da-da-da, this game was like great. And then you go look like, you know, Ocarine of Time. And then you go look at the Ocarina of Time.

Originally like, oh, fuck. You know what I mean? So like, it's very, very fascinating. I don't know. Yeah. Final question, Colin. This is from James Saul. He says, will Colin give Skyrim another go?

And don't let him use it not working on PS3 as an excuse with a little winky smiley. No, I'm not going to give it another go. The, the, uh, the PS3 thing. I mean, that's, that's, that's old news now. But that was, what, five years ago. But, there's just no time.

I got a pick and choose. Skyrim is not a game. I mean, I think Skyrim, I played Skyrim for 20 hours or so. I mean, when it came out. I didn't, it wasn't like just a jumping, you know, jumping and jump out. I intended I'm playing it further. There was other things. I think Arkham City came out.

That's that winter and some other shit right around. It was 2011, right? So it was a pretty busy time. You were doing Washington's beard. I think Resistance 3. Yeah, Resistance 3 was out. So if I'm remembering the timing, right, it could be the year after that. Anyway, it's just one, it's a commitment.

in and I don't have time. I have this whole slew of games. VR has totally, I now have this triple assault going on, right? Actually, like a quadruple assault because Siv 6 comes out soon, which I'm going to fucking lose my life too for a little while, obviously. And VR has this whole catalog of games. I haven't even played E. Valky yet in the while. That was the game that sold me on VR and I don't have time to fucking play it. And there's all these other VR games I want to try out. PS4 has its own games with Battlefield coming out, et cetera, and so on, last guardian, obviously come out later. And then Vita. still has these games I want to play too.

So I'm not just going to like throw Skyrim arbitrarily onto this list. I did it with Biocshok because I love Bioshop. And even then it just became untenable. So I was reflecting to Greg recently that I'm sad that I'm not beating more games because I feel so under the gun to get from game to game that I'm not sitting there and enjoying these experiences. So that it would be the antithesis of what I want to do to throw Skyrim on the list, especially because I don't even want to play Skyrim.

But I'm happy that people want to play it. It's coming out in a couple weeks. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you very much for watching. Until next week. I love you.