Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Concord Review (So Far) - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

Run of Show- - Start - is Concord DOA? - Housekeeping - Concord Review (So Far) - Ads - SuperChats - Character Customization & Progression - Quality of Life - The Future of Concord Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The month and year are halfway over, and that means so is the Kind of Funny membership drive. If you love the nearly 20 live shows we do each week, we'd love for you to throw a Kind of Funny membership our way on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny and YouTube. We'll see all of you for the happy hour this Friday on YouTube, but only members can call to talk to us. What's up, is the gym not extremely high? I'm usually looking on this horizon. I was like, what the shit? What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Thursday, August 22nd, 2024. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Forbes 30 under 30, aka the New York Game Awards nominated, aka Kickball King. Blessing Eddie O. Ye, Jr.

What is it now, Mike? I was going to say, you had a new one. What was it? The number one Concord Streamer. Come on, the number one Concord Streamer in the world right there. I want you know, it warmed my heart yesterday because of course it was in between Ben Chores I opened my phone, I'm like, let's go fuck with Andy. And I open it up and only

blessings on a lot of like, okay, and I click in and then it was you and Mike playing, just best friends having a good time. Hang it out, having a good old time. There were 300 people watching Concord last night, about 250 of them run my stream. Nice. Very nice. Oh, this is going to be a fun game to see how it goes for the rest of

this, huh? Of course, he's the master of and the master of the souls like. It's souls like, Mike. Greg, it's great to have you back. You have a fantastic t-shirt on today. Shout to not Sam wrestling, everybody. Very fantastic. I already told the boys here on the panel

and Barrett out there, but big news, ladies and gentlemen, pumpkin spice lattes are back at Starbucks. Start your fall off right with a pumpkin spice latte. It's not fall yet, though. Not sponsored. Not sponsored, but one day Starbucks call me. It's false somewhere. Yeah.

Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. No. You think about the aerodeans. Call Alana. She'll tell you in Australia. you, they're always doing weird shit. You know what I mean?

Coalas falling out of trees changed colors. She'll confirm that. She will. You know what I mean? Alana, she's a team player. She'll help me out of that one. And of course, he's the Hispanic heartthrope Texas tree, Latino heat, clicking heads and ripping him to shreds. The globe trotting, headshotting, three-point shooting, rootin-tootin. Nitro rifle from twitch. com.com. Saw a comment from Duke of Dustin in the chat who said, any bet on the amount of times you're going to hear

it's a good game, it's just not $40 good. I almost tweeted out last night I'm having such a good time playing Concord off stream so I don't have to answer the same fucking question if this game's going to die on arrival. And it would have been so beneficial financially for me to go live as well and stream on Twitch and I would have had people in chat

and I'm sure Blessing had a lot of people in chat and it was active and all that stuff. But I just didn't want it. Number one Concord stream. Exactly. I would have been. been number two. I just didn't want to answer. I just didn't want to talk. I just wanted to have fun. People like, I'm the developer. I'm like, I don't know, man. It's going to do what is going to do.

I'm just playing the game. When somebody in our chat was like, why are y'all playing this? And I'm like, we're having fun. I don't know what to tell you. So do you want, let's get it out of the way then. Yeah. Do we even want to talk? I mean, we've talked this to death pre-release or pre-release. Now here we are in early access for whatever special edition. It's fully out tomorrow. Is it going to do okay? Do we not even care about that? part of the conversation? Are we just talking about the quality of this game? No, no, I mean, I think it's, it's absolutely part of the conversation. It's just,

it's an unavoidable thing. It's going to be talked to death. Every freaking podcast you're going to be listening to over the next week is going to be talking about the same talking point. And it's talked to death and I get it, but it's really hard to ignore it, you know? So that's just kind of

the reality of it. It's a very like games industry focused question and discussion topic that you can't you're gonna hear you know like football player gets a concussion in the NFL sports podcast are going to be like what you know should that person retire or not you're going to hear that same you're going to hear that for like several weeks or whatever that's just kind of the reality of this you're going to get exhausted by it it's going to be us talking about

the Xbox deal trying the FTC and all that you know it's it's the same sort of thing you know okay okay I mean to answer your question I don't think this game is going to do well like I don't dead on arrival is such an aggressive term, but I think there's a good shot that, yeah, this comes out, and it does absolutely nothing. And there's a lot of reasons for it. I think this is one of those cases where we've talked about it forever of the market will speak, right? The market will determine how people react to this.

And even though, as I'm playing this game, I'm like, yeah, this feels, I would pay $40 to this. Like, I think it's a good enough game to pay money for. I think the market is speaking as far as people just don't want to pay money for a competitive shooter, right? I think, you know, I was just talking to Mike right before this episode, just talking about all the other games that are coming out and the games I can get away with coming out as a competitive shooter at full price. And I think the one that's remaining is just Call of Duty, right? Like, Overwatch is like the second I would go to you.

And even that's free to play for Overwatch 2. Battlefield, we're talking about how, like, we wouldn't be surprised in the next Battlefield goes free to play. Like, it's just not that space anymore for you're a competitive shooter to come out and have a premium price. Even if you have the marketing speak of, oh no battle pass all heroes will be free we got you on free content all i don't think that stuff is working for people anymore i think people look at this and they go oh but why would i play this if

i can play all these other lists of games for free especially good enough that are good enough let alone like all the other betas are happening right now and pre-released up between marvel rivals split gate two but we were playing frag punk not too long ago like there are gate there's game after game after game that's coming out that i think is um exciting people and is also yeah i don't have to pay Sure. And I'm here to tell you if it's fun or not. Yeah. Before we do any of that, Mike, is it worth $40? Is this game worth $40?

Yes or no? Clear your mind. Yes, Greg, it is. Andy, is it worth $40? Yes. All right, then let's get into a review of this here, game. Because if you didn't know, this is the kind of funny games cast. First off, hi, Destin. Destin Lagary in the chat.

He said, hi, Greg. I want to make sure I say how to Deson. This is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday, we run you through the biggest stories in video games, whether it be a review, preview, or just topic of the show. We couldn't do without you. so please pick up that Kind of Funny membership. $10 gets you the ability to say,

hey, I'm supporting a local business I love. 11 people, they're small, that's cool. It also gets you all the shows ad-free. It gets you the ability to watch the afternoon podcast live as we record them in private, and of course it gets you your daily Greg way. However, like I said, we're all about live talk shows. YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games, Twitch.com slash Kind of Funny Games,

podcast services around the globe. You can get the shows for free, but they'll have the ads. If you want to go that extra mile, especially right now, have been playing a lot of Concord. Blessing. How many hours of Concord do you think you played? Oh, I don't know. I'll say like 15 hours between the beta and this. Okay, Mikey.

I have nine hours yesterday alone, probably another six on top of that's a 15. Andy? Over 30, over the like several betas and then a couple hours yesterday. Feel free to go above me on and do a YouTube super chat. What are your questions for our review panel about Concord? You can send them as superchats on YouTube.com

slash Kind of Funny Games, and of course, be part of the show. Housekeeping for you. The boys are back in town Friday, August 23rd. That's tomorrow at 8 p.m. Join Nick, Josh McCouga, and Mark Ellis live and in person for one night of comedy at the Lost Church, San Francisco. It's one night only. Grab your seats before they all sell out.

Kindofuny.com slash comedy for details and tickets. Then on Saturday, August 24th, hey, that's Saturday. At 11 a.m., Nick and Mike are hosting the grand opening of the Razor Store, San Jose. Come check out the new store. and hang with them live and in person at the Westfield Valley Fair Mall shop 2103 for your chance to win thousands of dollars in prizes, including a Razor Blade laptop, RCP ahead of time at kindof funny.com slash razor. Mike, I read that today on Games Deal. I'm like, that's awesome. Yeah, it's a really awesome experience.

I mean Nick get to share with some fellow best friends. I know a couple of you have already signed up to come and show up. So it's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to celebrate Razor, their products, and a brand new store. It's going to be great. the blades a cool laptop it is cool I'm Blessing's desk he's got one

of course we're an 11 person small business all about live talk shows so today you've already gotten kind of funny games dailies we're the one the only Paris Lily called in to give his hands-on impressions of avowed of course the stream after this will be Concord and like I said you have Greg way up right now

about where I think you should start Monster Hunter if you want to join and of course the core in review is recording this afternoon you can get it tomorrow on YouTube and podcast services but hey use your kind of funny membership, watch it today. Thank you to our Patreon producer, Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by hymns and oral frames, but we'll tell you about that later.

For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be topic of the show. The day is finally upon us. Blessing. We used to do an incredibly popular show called PSI Love You XOXO. It just kicked the shit out of the X-Cast every week. It was embarrassing a lot of people. What we talked about there was Jim Ryan in PlayStation's obsession. with these live service games.

This was going to be PlayStation's future. We're going to do it. We said, what does that mean? We've heard about fair games. We, of course, heard about Hell Divers, too. Then we heard about Concord. Concord is out right now. You can get it if you were the ultimate edition, whatever.

Tomorrow it's out for just $39.99. Firewalk Studios, apparently been in development for eight years, according to tweets that have been talked about today on Games Daily. Andy, I turn to you and say, what do you think of Concord after 30-some hours? I love Concord. I think it's missing a decent amount of, like, I really want Concord to have a payload mode like Overwatch does.

I think that in the way that Call of Duty, you play your little death match modes in order to level up your stuff to then go into the war zone. That's kind of the loop that they've started. I wish that this was a bunch of smaller modes to go and to level up your stuff into the payload mode. I wish, like, a payload mode was the main thing. I know that's pretty much just what Marvel rivals is.

I know that's pretty much what Overwatch is. But some of these modes, I don't think, lend themselves to what these heroes are doing and how these heroes' abilities kind of play off of each other. But I think it's such a really nice polished game. Character arts fantastic. I love the abilities. I love that there aren't character ultimates that your character builds up to then maybe just kind of unfairly change of fights.

I love that it still requires a lot of, yeah, you can use your abilities, but you still need to be able to shoot that enemy or whatever. So I think it's a very, very good game. If I were to give it a ranking right now. Please give us this kind of funny review scale on a scale of 1 to 10. I mean, I think it's still, I think it's still missing a lot. And I know that the $40 price point will drive people away. Right now, I would give it a 7.5 out of 10. I'm just having a freaking blast with it.

I think the, the performance is fantastic. on PC. When we are all squatted up, I feel like the interplay between all of these different characters is a lot of fun. The abilities are great. The newer maps that we've been playing are awesome. I don't love all of the modes. I think there's like a three point sort of three point domination solo mode where you have to like have control of two of the three points and the longer you have that is great. It doesn't really work awesome. It doesn't work well with like a hero shooter. It works better with a call of duty where you're all just you know sop. Metavish with a gun

you know what I mean? So McTavish. But I love the mode where you control one point where it's just King of the Hill and all the chaos is sort of going around there and you're all flankers are happening like it gets really chaotic in like a very very good way

and I don't love any of the search and destroy modes. The the perma death modes I don't think again led themselves to a hero shooter in this way but I think it's very fun. I think that I hope they make the decision to give PlayStation

Plus users at some tier. Like in a month or so, hopefully they make that decision because this game will struggle with all of the amazing free-to-play titles out. One question I have for you that isn't the doomed question, but very specific to you and us and how we operate.

You love Concord. Is Concord a game you'll come back to and play more of? Or is this like, I loved it. I reviewed it and now I'm moving on to everything else. I mean, I will definitely be playing more of it until I get back to Marvel Rivals. Like, I like Marvel Rivals a lot

more. I enjoy the payload mode. I enjoy Overwatch style games. You know, I love pushing the payload and having that sort of syncing up with your team. I just enjoy that strategy a lot more. So Marvel Rivals is like

the multiplayer game I want to play way more of this year. Um, I want to play more Overwatch too with Blessing. Whenever there's another Spector Divide playtest, which is the game that Shroud was helping on, I want to play more of that. Like there's just so much out there right now. And I think if Concord came out in 2015 and was a $40 game, it would be the biggest hit in the world. And it would be a mainstay.

It would be a game that would be like, this is a permanent game from here on not. In the way that Overwatch never died, in the way that Apex, still has big numbers, whether you want to listen to the internet or not and hear like, all these games are struggling. It's like, no, they're still really popular. They still have really big dedicated fan bases. I think if this game came out a decade ago, it'd be Concord 2 with, you know, we'd see how it would have evolved.

It would have like 30 champions by now. It would be Fortnite. It would be nice. Yeah, I really think so. I just think it's like a game that feels like a game that started development eight years ago, honestly. Like you mentioning that, that makes kind of personal. sense. It just reminds you of the suicide squad situation where a live service sort of

looter shooter that sounds like a great idea 10 years ago. Now, maybe not so much. I want to skip, Mike. Blessing. What do you think of Concord right now? Yeah, I've been going back and forth regarding the score, right, whether I feel like this is a 6.5 or whether I feel like it's a 7. And as I started writing down my notes, right, and my notes started to get more and more into the negative side, and that's where I started to feel like, oh, maybe this will be a 6.5. But then, like, I opened up Twitter again, and I saw somebody post some clips from Concord. And there's something about being in that moment-to-moment gameplay that really speaks, even though I think there's a list of things that I think they can do better.

And I think there's a list of things that they'll improve over time as well. And so I think to start off with it, I think the moment-to-moment gameplay is super fun. I think it's a fun-ass video game. When you're in the flow, when you're switching between characters, like, I think there's a lot of unique systems that work. I'm with Andy that I think some of the modes are out of place in this game. Like, for sure, I would replace a search and

destroy with a payload type mode. Can I throw a time out real quick? I don't mean to derail it. And we'll give it to Mike so you can come back to time out. Everybody freezes. Mike, what are the modes in Concord? It's 5V5. I've always thought of his Overwatch payload. So if somebody who doesn't play, I don't know the different things. Yeah, Greg. So I tracked the modes.

There are six total modes in this game. Three playlists on the multiplayer side, along with one solo playlist, which we'll talk about later. But the modes you have right now are team death match and kill confirmed domination and hard point and search and destroy. Now, of course, they have their own unique names in the game, but for the generic shooter fan out there, those are the game modes right there. Thank you. Back to you both. Yeah. And so like not all those game modes speak to me, the ones that speak to me are the more fast-paced ones because I think this game is designed as a more fast-paced game. And I think it works

in that way. And some of the features that I like are the crew bonuses, where this game very much encourages you to switch between characters, the more you switch between different of heroes, the more you get bonuses throughout the match. And so I don't have the list of them on to know if you guys have any of them written down. Yeah, the crew bonuses. I have those written down for us. Yeah, you have added mobility. Yeah.

You have faster reload. Longer range. You have longer damage range. You have a faster dodge cool down. And there's two other ones that I'm blank down. Yeah. So they're all tied to different character roles. There are six roles in the game that all of the free gunners run into.

And so, yeah, like you said, Andy, you have increased team. Healing received, fast dodge cool down, improved mobility, improved weapon recoil, fast reload, and longer weapon range. Yeah, and they have that system in there to encourage people to switch. Because the more you switch, the more you then get those bonuses throughout the match. And I think that works because they also designed the characters to be pretty approachable. I am surprised with, again, what, I played about maybe 15 hours of this game. I have mastered, I feel like, five or six characters already. And I do not have that even in a game like Overwatch.

who are Overwatch, I have hundreds of hours in Overwatch, I'm still only playing Reaper or Hanso, or Lucio. I think a lot of that comes down to is you are still dude with a gun with maybe one or two passive abilities, right? And I was mentioning that the first time we were playing of how, oh, damn, they took that one character that I was playing the last couple matches. Let me try this one. For the first five minutes, you go, oh, man, I'm not feeling this.

And then immediately you're like, oh, shit, I kind of get this, and I understand it. Yep. So the characters are approachable. The abilities don't run that deep. Like every character feels like their own thing because their abilities are unique. But yeah, there's no ultimate. It feels like it is only a couple of abilities that you're having to worry about for each character. And so when I switch off of Idzy, who's like the teleporting character, and I switched to Lennox who has like a revolver and like one of those quick shooting pistols.

I forget the technical name for it. But like the P-shooter or something like that. But when I switch to him, right, I'm like, oh, I get this. Like, this feels fun. And I think the game's design revolving around switch between characters and learning different characters and having to figure out what is the hero I need for this moment in the match. I think works pretty good. It has been really fun. And then you go down the list, again, I think the character abilities are great.

I think the sound design in this game is really fantastic. I think the- You can tell where enemies are coming from. Yeah, it's awesome. The footsteps are actually pretty fantastic in this game. The polish of it is pretty good. And then also, I think the graphical fidelity is pretty good. I like looking at the world.

I think the characters are very well realized as far as like how good they look. But on the other hand, when we talk about characters and we talk about world, I am pretty let down by the actual personality and the actual like art direction of the characters. Interesting. I don't care for any of these characters as far as like who they are. Okay. And like this is a game that. But the cutscenes.

Cuts scene a week bus. Yeah. I think that's one of the things that lets me let's be down greatly is the fact that it's a game that is going for world building. in narrative and they're going to give you the cut scene that's going to start off when you start the game, right? And they're giving you the new cutscenes every week. And they have the galactic guide that might keep bringing up where... Gotta read. They have all of the...

It's like the glossary of things, but like they've really expanded it out and they have paragraphs explaining what's going on in this world and who these characters are. Greg, imagine this. You hover over a menu and then you hear the Reapers or fought the quarry into it. Like it looks like a mass effect. Yeah, it's very cool map. It's very...

It's narrated, though? Huh? No. No, but like that's kind of... I have... I had that same sort of vibe. For a second, you got to be super stoked. I was like, one of my favorite Starfield missions is just walking around to that museum. I had the same sort of vibe going through all this is like, man, I feel like I'm reading Mass Effect lore right now and was kind of immediately uninterested because I just wanted to play the game.

And that's the thing is there's all this exposition, there's all this lore, there's the cutscenes, there's the characters. I don't care about any of it. And I think Mike hit the nail in the head when we were talking about it when we were streaming last night, where he started talking about how these characters don't really have that much dialogue between each other. You know, you play Overwatch and you start off in the spawn zone and if you're playing with a particular set of characters, they might have unique things

to say to each other. Or even when you're playing Marvel rivals, it's like, oh, I'm playing with the gardens of the galaxy. So there's a connection here. I know how these characters interact with each other. In Concord, I don't care about any of these characters' relationships. When I'm playing in match, I don't get a sense of, oh, these characters know each other. These characters probably saying, too. Just like when we were in Be Elzebub. You're right. Yeah. Like, there's not really much of that. Oh, me. It looks like you were doing that. That's how Winston talks. And for a game that I think its marketing is revolved around the world building and all this stuff

I'm like, dude, this is the stuff that I care about the least in this game. Like, I do not care about it. And I think that flows into, yeah, just like when I'm choosing the characters, none of these characters are characters that I would want like a figurine on my desk of. You know, I don't really care for, I don't... But it's these one of my main characters, I don't like how she looks. You're excited about the Concord's

Secret Level episode that's coming up on Netflix, right? I mean, no, but yes. Yes, because Secret Level sounds like a cool idea, but no, because, yeah, like the Concord stuff isn't doing it for me in terms of world and lore. But yeah, there's a lot more I can say about it. But I think right now, I'm at a seven out of 10 because when I'm playing the game, I'm having such a good time. And I want to play a lot more. And so I think that's where I land on with a 7 out of 10.

Snow, bicycle, Michael, when Andy said 7.5, you reacted. And I wasn't sure if it's positive or negative. It was positive. Andy is on the same mind like as I am. I'm a 7.5 out of 10 on this. I don't think it's great, but I think it's very good. That's the thing is I use a lot of the words when we look at our scale and it goes from six is okay, seven is good and eight is great. And this is one of those shooters where I go, this is a very good shooter. This is a solid shooter. When it comes to moments a moment like blessing brought up, the gunplay is tight and it feels good, right? The movement is fluid. It is a mix of Destiny PVP with Halo, right? Each character has a Dodge mechanic that brings you out into third person. Each character has its own double jumps or

hover, they all have their unique ways of getting around the map and they all feel good to engage with your team and get up to a certain spot or disengage and be able to make distance and get away and get back in, right? I really love the moment to moment of gunplay and movement mixed together. I like all 16 of the characters, right? And for me, I am somebody who jumped into the Galactic Guide and started to read some of the lore. And I like the characters in the world that they have. Everybody is unique. Everybody has their own abilities. And I love that you can jump in between each one and a crew, those crew bonuses that we'll talk about during the match. There's gameplay mechanics in this that take it from a good to just okay shooter

to a great shooter. And that's the gameplay mechanics that really get deep into it. Talk to me about them. When we talk about the abilities, the recharge abilities aren't just on a cool down, right? You have to do certain things to get them. And you'll notice on some of them, it's, hey, get a kill and you'll get more grenades back. But on a couple of them, It is, oh, you've run out of healing pads, hold down the R1 button to get it back, right? I like these unique mechanics of, oh, wait five seconds and then you'll get that cool down back. No, it is very cool of, no, we're doing different things to go get those abilities back. I really like it.

I love that a lot of the equipment will stay throughout the entire match until the other team destroys it, right? So at one point, me and Blessing and Andy were together, I threw down a shield and had four healing pads there. And nobody was coming near us because I could just sit there with all. all this equipment. If I'm veil the sniper, I could throw a grenade and it will sit there the entire match until someone runs into it and destroys it. These are the small gameplay mechanics that I see in this game that elevate it from a good game to one of the greats, right? But I think there's some developer choices in here that just kind of make it where it's not, oh, this is going to take over your life and make it great, but it makes it a solid game. I love that we have

crossplay and cross progression, right? These are things that I talked about in Snowbike Mike's Dream 2023 multiplayer guide and beyond. It's like, you have to have this. And Sony coming out day one with this on PC and PlayStation, that's a major win. I love that we have,

I mean, the crew bonuses are interesting, right? It encourages you to switch your characters, which you don't really get to see that often, right? Can I ask one question here as an auto washer? Are you switching these characters in match? In match.

I think when you guys started on day one, there was a conversation. How do I do it? Oh my God, it's so fast. Is it easier than now that you... Still very fast. Still very quick.

Yeah, that's one of the ones I had written down here of quality of life stuff that could be better. You switch your characters when you die. So during the respawn, you switch. But it is very quick, and I'm shocked that after the beta, they didn't lengthen that or fixed that by any means. They definitely made some quality of life changes

in terms of letting you know what their crew bonuses are and showing you what's being applied. Sure. Because initially, that's something that I found out right as the first beta was about to end, and finding out about that, and having this like, oh shit, this makes a kind of like good shooter into like something better, right? You know, I love the idea that you can kind of have this rhythm and strategy with it where if you're going,

if you want to main the character that has the Uzi, Itsy, right? And she has this Uzi that shoots really, really fast, but maybe it doesn't have the most range or maybe the bullets are a little bit more, you know, like not, you're getting like really, really bad recoil. You want to start off maybe with a character. that has the faster reload, or you start off with Vale the sniper and she'll give your team, or she'll give your selection of characters from here on out more range. I usually start off with the sniper. And if I do decently enough, I'll just keep playing at it. As soon as I die, I switch off to something else. And now any character I have has improved range. And now

it's cool. Now it's he can, her oozy, which may feel like there's crazy damage fall off from far away, now she's getting improved range. And if I die with Itsy, her mobility ability is, you know, near the end of matches or in the beginning of matches, Michael picked this big tank character, which walks at about, you know, which could walk across a room in about an hour, it feels like. Like, these are one of the slowest, most lumbering large characters. Is that one off? There's one off. There's a lady with a big gatling gun.

And I would tell Mike and other people and encourage other players who were playing this, start off with a mobility character. And now when you want to go back to that tank, they're going to be a little bit faster now. Yeah, I really like that you have that mechanic in the game. And that's also build off the crew builder, right? There's 16 characters in this game, but Andy can go in and actually set the 12 characters

that he wants to get those crew bonuses from and have an easier time finding them quickly in the menu to select them. And then, of course, have people on the sub. So the crew builder is really cool because now there's variance of each of these characters, Right. And so now you can earn these variants, which I have found each and every week, which we're going to talk about my things I don't like developer decisions. But these variants will give you different things, right?

When I talk about my variance, for Teo, I unlocked an extended magazine and added grenades, right? So now I have two of this character that I could put in my crew builder. One, that has a speed boost after he dodges. And then two, the second one will have that extended mag and extra grenades. So I have two Teos that I could work with, right? on top of that, now you are playing this game of, well, I really like this character. I have two of them. Okay, I'm going to stick with them.

Because this, I would say the two of each character is really mainly for the rivalry modes that these guys don't really like, but I like the competitive side of. No respawns, search and destroy or domination. Okay. Which is more like once you die as that character, they're off the board. So you can't go back to them. So having these variants means, oh, I can still get a second tail if I wanted to. or, hey, I have a second of this character, which I really dig.

Oh, no, wait, isn't it if you... If you win the round, you can't select that character again. So it's like a five-round thing, and if you start off with your main and you win that round, then the game says, off the board, go select another character. So I really like that aspect of it. And so that's really cool. The variance, the crew bonuses, all the unique abilities, the crew builder, this galactic guide is so interesting because it's a...

Andy said it is so mass effect. It's so cool, but it's missing that extra level of polish, which this game has so much of. All of the maps are beautiful. The sound design is incredible. You can hear footsteps. You can just feel the bullets. Like it's a great time. It sounds like a space shooter.

Yeah. But then you get into this galactic guide where it's supposed to be the hub, the lore builder of, hey, did you find this fascinating? Let's teach you a little bit more. And you're just smacked in the face with walls of text and wallet-sized pictures. what I called it, right? And it's like, no, like, have one of the characters voice over and narrate the text or make a mini video of these things. Have a rotatable item like in Skyrim during the loading screens where I can move around the giant eel that you can find on one of the planets.

Like, have these things available to make it interesting because what it looks like is you go and you click on the Galactic guy and you go, oh, wow, this giant space map doesn't have a zoom out button because it's massive, but like, you know, that would be nice. so you're gliding all around looking at these things and then you click on them and it's just paragraphs of all white text in your face and you're like that's not exciting.

It's super pretty but it feels like someone just dropped a bunch of PDFs into a folder and I was like here's all the stuff you can read. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The presentation's lacking. Yeah, I agree with Mike. If the characters were kind of voicing these and added what we were sort of missing

at the start of these rounds where you don't get the, Hey, Teo, you know, oh, that's like that one time you did this and that, like, we don't have any of that. So I think it would be really cool if some of these people were either voicing these lore things or maybe giving their perspective of what these lower things are.

Little blurb here and there, because, like, these are like walls of text, Mike. Walls of tax, Danny, is right? And so there's a lot in this game. There's also, you don't regenerate health. You know, characters can heal themselves in certain cases. There are healing characters with different equipment that can heal, but like, you don't heal, you don't re-gen health.

So now you have to play this game of engage, disengage, go find a healing pod or find a teammate that can heal you. And I like that, right? It's very different from what we see in most of the first person shooter genre. So there is this fun back and forth. There's a lot of positive, a lot of great customization. I want to get into more because, yeah, 7.5, it is a very good game. It's not a great game, but it's a very good game.

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Alex writes in and says, The Galactic Guide is an ideal, but I maintain that it is an improvement compared to the first few years of Destiny where the lore was outside of the game. Remember that? I do remember that. I'm gonna go to the...

But that was like, it's like night and day to a degree, right? Because like, destiny was a cutscene story. I'm doing the thing. Yeah, that's going on. The travelers here versus this is just like, go shoot the shit out of everything. Yeah, it's interesting because, man, I showed blessing.

So, you know, every single time you turn on the game, you will be hit with the weekly vignettes, right? Every time? Every time. Every time you turn on the game, it will hit you with that. You can skip it, of course. And this week is only, what, less than two minutes. I clocked it at like a minute, 45 seconds, maybe a little more, a little less. But it's the same one from the early access.

No, I have a different one. So I think here's the catch that they had. If you go to their YouTube channel, they have three currently available. We saw the first one back during the beta. Now I'm seeing the second one, and there's a third one on their YouTube channel. So I feel like we're all jumbled here of like this is week one You should just show episode

Zero or whatever that we saw during the beta It's odd that we're in a jumbled place I saw episode zero the first time I booted it up because I think I got back to back Cutscenes I skipped them both Because I was like I don't get a fuck But they have this beautiful These vignettes are beautiful

And if you watch them You're like oh this is like They are a perfect Guardians of the Galaxy The Video Game like tee up to a mission You watch these and you go, okay, like this feels like we should be probably jumping into a single player or a campaign co-op campaign like running down the streets all together. It's very odd that like they play it and then you go to a main menu and you're like, all right, I guess I'm just going to go shoot things in these multiplayer games that have nothing to do with this. Let me go level up my weekly or my daily. Yeah, yeah.

All that stuff is very fantastic then. God. The numbers going up. Oh, dude, I love it so much. The job board. All the bars going up because you're just like doing well. It's just getting right. It just feels good.

Can we talk about that job board? Because you're looking at someone who's tearing through it, right? Yeah, yeah. We both. We finished the weeklies already. I've already finished the seasonals blessings just so you know. I've finished the seasonals in one day. And so here's the issue with the, just all of the job board.

I love that the bar is always going up. The dailies continue to refresh. The weeklies are just one and done. The seasonals, get this. You can complete the seasonals. And then the seasonals will reset calling themselves tier two. But get this, on tier two, they still pay out this exact same XP. Shouldn't that be elevated if I'm going to continue to beat seasonals for 45 days?

I appreciate that. Like, I get new ones, but I feel like if you're going to call it tier two, it should unlock more XP as we go. Then we talk about variance. Now, variants are tied to the job board as well, which you would think, okay, I should be able to select the character that I want the variant of. if I kick butt and get one unlocked, let's move on to the next one.

No, they choose the variant for you and you have to wait five days. You have to wait like a week. They choose when the rollout is. So I just cleared out one variant and then I have nothing to do now. Yeah, that's the weirder part of it. It's like you're unlocking things,

most of it, stuff that I don't really care about. I can change the way in my little business card on the top right looks. Gotta change my business card. And you can change like the little designs on it and make it prettier or whatever. You use the colors that you,

want. But for the most part, you know, we had a moment yesterday where there was an unlock and Mike was like, oh, now my, my character's green now. I have this like green suit on or whatever. And it just, it never really feels meaningful in that way. Like, I'm more excited at the prospect of unlocking things than I am of the things that I'm unlocking. Yeah. I'm more excited about like just seeing the bars go up and like feeling that, that instant gratification of watching the progress go. With Diablo four's first season battle pass, where I was like, I don't want anything. on this so when it unlocked, cool, but it wasn't like I was working towards

getting that thing. Like I am in Fortnite, right? Where I'm like, oh man, I need this Captain Jonesy skin right now in this season, so I got to get it. Yeah, I wish, you know, Mike talking about them selecting the variance that you're doing, I wish maybe every, I don't know, season or every week or whatever, I don't know,

but I wish it was like three you could choose from. Three random heroes, three random agents, free gunners, or whatever. And you could choose one of the three or one of the five or whatever. But for the most part, you might be unlocking progress towards a free gunner that you're never going to use. You know, I think the first one is Teo, right? Yeah, this week is Teo. You're unlocking the variant. I rarely play Teo, so like I don't

feel super stoked about unlocking that. I would love if there was more of a selection for what these variants are. I also just, I don't know if like variant was the right system to go with. I'm sure they did a lot of testing for how long this is in development for. Maybe that felt like the most natural way to do it. But I kind of wish it was just, you know, it just feels like an extra thing to unlock because they don't have a battle pass. It almost feels like what if I just press square on top of this character and picked the thing as opposed to it being an entirely new option?

Thousand percent, thousand percent. Yeah, they got all the, I mean, the character customization is deep. And each character on top of the job board to finish out the job board section, right? is there's a character list and every single character can level up. So as you play as one character, you'll go from one to two, three, four, unlocking skins. There's skins. There's wearables, which Greg, if you wanted to, you could change the ring on your character's hands. You know, I want to.

So there's that. There's also accessories that might be found on the back of your character, which you probably will never see unless you're dodging and look really closely at the dodge one. Oh, you bust out the shield as the, as the turret or the lady with the machine gun. thing. Weapon skins, weapon charms, poses, drop in animations. Like, they got it all as if, like, they would sell that to you, but it's all included, which is nice.

You can earn it all and have some fun chasing that. So that's cool. Did you guys- Do you care about that stuff, though? Like, specifically the character poses is one that stuck out to me. Because I'm like, you see it at the very beginning of the match, and it really is just two seconds of you do your superhero landing, and then it fades into the match. And I'm like, all right, cool.

I guess I'll unlock those. I do not care about that. Like I care about the play of the game animation in Overwatch. Yeah. I love the way that that was presented. I really, I like the character poses in Overwatch as well whenever the match is done, but because I like those characters a lot. And maybe that's several years of me being into that universe,

and maybe it just requires me to play more of this and understand these characters and their motivations, but there's nothing about like trying to do the one-for-one rewards with Overwatch is a tough task because I don't have like the loving I don't have the the love and care for what these characters are to care about what the extra bonuses are. I think my thing is a lot of the, a lot of these types of games have their own. Oh, this is how we're creating player uniqueness and you'll be able to unlock things to customize whether it be your player card at the end of Apex or like, I feel like Apex has his own things that I can't think of off the top of like, here are unique cosmetics or

unique animations that you're going to unlock to like. You can get the Buster Sword for like. $300 or whatever by earning the thing that you earned at that one stream. Remember that? The heirloom, yeah, yeah. But, like, so far the things that this game is throwing at me, I'm like, oh, man, I wish there was a bit, I wish they maybe did

just take the play of the game, or if they did, like, you know, there was some kind of intro or, like, outro thing, like, Overwatch does, or, like, you know, so far what they're hitting me with, I'm like, okay, well, beginning of the game, we do the superhero landing, and then we're into the match, and at the end of the match, I'm not feeling excited about the fanfare afterwards. No, we're just

quickly getting out of it, is right? We're barely even getting a scoreboard half the time. So it's like you're just flying through it. Does that feel like, and I'll point it to you, Mike, I guess, does that do, do those feel like choices or do they feel like we just didn't get it done in time, so we're doing you through this and we'll get there eventually? No, I think it's

choices, right? This game is way too polished to be like, oh, we didn't have time for that, for sure. I think it's choices. You can see the choices because on the scoreboard, there are crew bonuses that you can see what Andy accrued during that, right? Like your teammates and your opponents,

you can see, oh, Andy unlocks three out of the six. I only stuck with one. So, like, they've made a choice of what they are showing at the end of each and every match. And I wonder what that is because I am somebody who, yeah, I appreciate the play of the games. But the moment that we're loading into the game or the moment that we're out of a game, I'm right on my cell phone, scrolling TikTok until we get to the next game. So I think there is that push and pull of, like, how much do people really care about these small pieces of the game that aren't in, like, the game itself? I will say there are quite a few.

I'll say quality of life things that feel like they are dictated by not just not we didn't have the time but more so we couldn't figure out this constraint that we're working within and I go back to the character select screen where you got like two to three seconds it feels like to choose your character right and you know

we talk about how cool it is that they've added in the crew bonuses in there so like if you're like oh man I want this bonus oh I should get this classic character I love the idea of that thought process but in practice it doesn't work out that way because you do not have that much time to pick your character between response and so I'm I'm like, oh shoot, okay, what if I pick this one?

The fucking thing ends. And I'm like, oh, well, I'm locked back into this character I was already using. And that feels like a constraint. That feels like, I don't like that pressure idea. I'm like, I got to get over to that guy to choose the thing. It feels like a system built for people that are veterans that have been playing this for four years already. And I already know who to go to, what's next. And then you're like, oh, I want, I think the problem that I keep in, that I encounter often is, in my mind, I know the character rotation I want to have.

And then you die and you want to make that rotation, but somebody has that character. Yeah. So you can't pick them. So it's like, oh, what I want to use that? Oh,

I'm back as a sniper lady. Shit, didn't mean to do that. And that's built off the back of the crew builder, right? Like what that is supposed to be is for people like Andy and Bless, when you put a bunch of time in, you have that crew builder line up of,

I start here, then I go to here, then I go to here, right? And like, I think that was made in the decision of, well, if you play a bunch,

you'll have your own crew builder, then you'll know the flow. And so it should be easier. But yeah, when you first get it, it's like, oh, this is really fast. I'm not ready for that kind of speed right now. The cool thing about the crew builder, Greg, is like you can essentially have different loadouts of characters for, you can just have one extra one if you want, like the way I do. But you can make crew builders for, well, we're playing the competitive search and destroy mode. I want this crew that I'm building right now, the 12 of these 16 characters, I want them to have a lot of healing characters.

and you could put a bunch of healing characters in that little crew builder thing and then title it more heels or title it whatever the hell you want. You can do one that's like all DPS because I know I'm rolling with a lot of people in my squad that love playing just the tanky type characters or whatever. So it's really neat that you could just kind of create a lot of different rosters and then name them whatever you want. They also have a bunch of silly nicknames for what pre-names you can kind of just give them or whatever, but I just like, I like the idea that you are kind of,

this roster is best suited for this mode. But if we're going to play this mode, then this roster that I made is going to benefit me that way. There's a lot of really cool ideas, it sounds like. You know what I mean? Not my type of game, but I like a lot of what you're saying. Yeah. And they have a solo mode, which is time trials. So it's very interesting of like, you know, you see it and you're hit with, oh, this is a multiplayer team arena shooter.

That's what this game is. But then there's a practice, a firing range. And then out of nowhere, there's just a time trials. And I think that's to encourage you to really understand. understand the maps and find the flow. And they're pretty fun. Like Titanfall. It's like the Titanfall of Time.

Yeah. You get to try five different characters on five different maps all with like, hey, your goals from the starting line to the finish line, get the best time. And there are targets that will pop up and you can kill those targets to help reduce the time at the end to get a lower score. You can use special abilities to maybe get a bonus at the end. It's a fun, interesting thing because these characters are fun to try out, right? like running around his Roka with the rocket launcher where you can hover and almost triple jump.

Like there's cool moments in this that's fun. So I encourage you to check that one out. I'm looking forward to seeing the leaderboards because it's already crazy. I'm like putting up good times. Greg, it's like 57 seconds. I'm like, good job, Mike. You're going to be top 10.

And then top 10's like 32. And I'm like, all right, well, I'm never making that. This is like that Titanfall thing where the achievement attached to it was outrageous. Like it was insane trying to get.

Yeah. I like that too. I got 38 seconds, Mike. That's great. It's your top 10. I can get in there. I just did the one with the Star Child. I didn't like that time trial.

I just kept fucking running to the wall. And I was like, I don't know how I feel about this. But I got to get back. I got to beat Mike's time. I haven't tried the other ones. Yeah, I was going to say, because you play the hot sauce guy. What's his name? Hot sauce guy.

Lennox. The guy from the commercial. Is he the hot sauce guy? Yeah, he loves that. Yeah. He loves that. He loves that. He loves that.

I play a lot of Linux. I do play the, like, the rocket launcher, astronaut girl. Yeah. She's great. She's sick. It's a, it's a very interesting one. I'm surprised. The game modes to me,

I like that they are understandable and easy. They feel like the very baseline, hey, when you think of multiplayer shooters, these are the five easiest game modes that everyone will see and understand. I am blown away that they didn't make their own unique game mode. Like these guys keep bringing up with Overwatch

have pushed the payload. Like, I am surprised they didn't look at each other and go, okay, well, like, what can we do that is not team death match, kill confirmed, or domination or hard point? I guarantee you those conversations have.

It's why, well, why didn't they do it, right? Because, like, you're coming out with just five, six game modes, but like five of them, five are unique. The six ones is the same as the other one. So it's very odd that they chose that. Yeah. And the more competitive sort of permadeath modes we couldn't even get in yesterday. I think a lot of that may have been player base.

I think maybe people are just trying to play the normal slayer and trophy hunt modes or whatever. It's in the early access period currently, right? Yeah. You have to be a certain level to hit even doing those modes. I wonder if a lot of people just didn't. bothered to get there. That's true. But yeah, these permadeff modes, I'm all for search and destroy

mode in Call of Duty, in Valorant, in what we play recently, Spector Divide, or even our time with Counterstrike, when we're playing Counterstrike 2. I love Search and Destroy modes. I think it adds so much more tension and excitement, and I just don't feel that level of excitement in

a hero shooter. Yeah. When you are playing the small character with the smaller health pool, and then you discover you're against a dude who's essentially a tank with almost double your health pull. It's like, oh, well, this just doesn't feel right. You know, I need this to be just, we are the same characters, we are the same character shooter, we are this both Valorant characters or CounterShite characters with the same health pool.

That's where I feel more of that tension. When you have a, yeah, when you have a hero shooter that is different classes and you want people to work together. Like, the whole game feels like it is designed around people clumping together with your teammates and getting the team kills and healing each other. and doing all this stuff that I feel like an elimination style mode doesn't work as well in that kind of thing unless you're doing like a free-for-all thing or figuring out some different thing that could be an arcade mode but yeah I feel like it as one of your main modes I'm not the biggest fan of it are you forced into these modes can you go and do everything and play I only like there's one mode I want to play this and still feel like you're doing everything that you should be doing yeah there's three playlists to choose from each ones are different yeah the first playlist that you initially start off with is just team death match or trophy hunt which is kill confirmed. And every time it kill somebody, you got to go pick up their little dog tag or their player, whatever. You know, you have to

get it before the enemy can retrieve it. Sure. You know, that's what gets you the point. The second playlist that you unlock at level six, I believe. And that is Overrun, which is domination. The domination, yeah, the three different, you have to control two of the points or all three of the points in order to score

and then the other one is King of the Hill with the singular point. The couple of matches we had on the singular King of the Hill match were so freaking fun. And that's the most fun I've had with the game. I also love kill confirmed and Slayer, but like I feel like those modes are kind of perfect for what this hero shooter is, as opposed to the domination mode where you,

there are three different points because on any given point, there's only five players. And you go to one point and it's like, oh, it's me and my squishy character against two tanks. There's just like a weird kind of imbalance. And that mode, I feel like, requires a lot more strategy. and usually you're not really playing with the mics on, right? You're just kind of like either it's you and a friend in a party and that's it.

You can't really hear your teammates. But for the most part, I feel like the general public understands stick with a character. Stick with another teammate. The odds of you lose. If you go out solo, you are likely going to die because you're going to encounter two other players and immediately just get team killed. Yeah, that's the big question that I've seen in the chat. And I want to ask you guys is, would you play this solo?

right? Because a lot of this is like, hey, playing with my friends is a good time. We can team up. We can communicate. We can get sweaty. We can just chat and have fun. But when you play solo, this game is very much a, you're not going to shift the tides of battle because you're nasty and you're by yourself. Because when you go one on one, you can get a win. You go two on one, you're most likely going to lose. Three on one, you're not going to win, right? So like, if you're playing solo, are you still having a good time?

I played a lot solo. Yeah. I mean, because when you play solo, it's not like, it's not like you're playing Overwatch. where when you hop into a solo match and you're playing Overwatch and everybody goes, hey man, switch off to this and that character. The character you have isn't good. Dude, why are you doing that?

All you do is just stay with another character. Make sure you're with one or two other people that are putting out damage and you're going to find success. You could definitely play alone, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, I think it's more fun playing with people and I think most shooters are going to be that way. The thing I like about playing solo is that the matches are pretty quick.

And so if it is, I get home after work and I'm like, I man, I want to play a multiplayer shooter and I don't, but I don't want to like get deep into the duffy of playing these long ass matches. This is one, it's funny. We were complaining last night about how short the matches are. It is nice for just getting in and getting out. I just went five to ten minutes of a match and then move on with my life. I think it works for that. But I prefer playing with other people. Yeah.

I love playing with my friends, but I played this last night alone before I teamed up with Bless and after. And it's just a mindset change of I can't be the only one. So I do have to be with my teammates. I have to use the ping that they provided in. It works well when you are in the group and everyone is looking down the same corridor and going, okay, this is where we're focusing fire. Oh, snap, do you hear that team coming to the left and you start pinging and everybody turns? It's a lot of fun.

But you can definitely get away with this and play it solo, no problem and have a good time. One of the things I'm very fascinated with this game is the longevity of it, even removed from how it doesn't at launch, right? Whether people abide or whatever the conversation is there. I wonder what it looks like. I know they put out the roadmap and stuff, but like the evolution of it over time, are they able to get people interested?

Like even us who are like, oh, we were playing this game, we like this game, are we playing it and liking it eight months from now? Because the thing that I identify, and I was talking to you, Mike, earlier about this, is that because the game has you switching so much between different characters,

like I mentioned, there are five different characters so far out of this roster that I feel pretty good with. And, you know, I can't really say that for similar types of games, right? Overwatch, I'm like, I know my Overwatch characters. It's Reaper, it's Lucio, it's Hanzo. If somehow those aren't available,

then I'm like, all right, well, maybe I'll play Roadhog and struggle a little bit, but I have my go-to characters. Same with Apex as well, where I have my go-tie characters. This game, the characters are approachable enough because they don't have, like, a crazy amount of depth to them, but I also worry about if I'm going to be having

the same amount of fun once I feel like I've gotten it down, right? Like I feel like with something like Overwatch, it is, all right, if I really want to like freshen this up a little bit, I'll just choose another character and start from Square Zero and learn and like try to find the depth in that character. I don't know if these characters have that much depth in their gameplay and their abilities to like really dig deep and go, oh, I'm a totally different Lenox player a year from now than I am today. I think I encountered enough enemies that showed me this is easy to hop in hard to master. Oh yeah. Because, like, there are some people that went wild. Really have a great grasp of their cool downs and knowing, just having that mental knowledge, the amount of times that we, of course, they

Nerf Star Trial to hell. Like, that's poor, dude. It pissed me all, because I was playing a lot of Star Child. Now I can't. That dude was insane during the sort of alpha and the beta periods or whatever. But, like, to see somebody know when their cool downs are about to pop and then immediately use those abilities. and you feel like you have them on the ropes

and then they pop that ability is like ah shit man like this person really knows what they're doing I think it is kind of like the easy to hop in hard to master style thing but I agree with you like you're missing out on that sort of

personal journey of yeah I'm starting a new character because they just came out how long will it take me to kind of feel really really competent with this because like right now I'm I know a different genre or whatever but a similar example of in this year I put in a

something hours into Tekkenate. And I spent that entire time mostly just playing Victor. Like I probably have like yeah, 90 something hours, which is Victor and Tekken. And like I'm still finding depth in that character. I'm still finding new combos, new moves, new strings, all this stuff. And if I really wanted to,

if I wanted to get a lot more out of this game right now, I can switch from Victor to Lydia, the new character that just dropped as DLC. And that's going to open up so much more. Another 90 hours of that game. Whereas in this game already, I feel like I am in the last 15 hours I feel like I'm already pretty deep into

multiple of these different characters and I wonder if they can keep that up as far as keeping people invested over a long period of time I don't know if that is adding in new heroes to mix up meta to keep things interesting I don't know if they're even thinking about adding in new heroes they are they are October

season one includes a new free gunner a new map new variance quality of life updates new cosmetic and rewards new vignettes January season two a new free gunner new mode new map new map new variance, quality of life updates, new cosmetics and rewards, new vignettes. Which brings me to another question. What do you want out of a new free gunner?

I want another healer. I want somebody who's an aggressive healer. Man, there's some cool healers out there right now. I like the tanks right now as well. It's tough because I like them all and I don't know which ones I really need right now after day one. It'll be interesting to see what I say three months from now of like, this is the character that needs to be in here. It'd be interesting. Yeah, I'm not sure, honestly.

I think I what I think about for the future of this game more is what new mode because a lot of these modes feel very disposable in the moment when call of duty beta comes out we get excited and we play the team depth match

and we play you know kill confirmed or whatever but we know that that's all to go into the war zone like that that's where the core audience usually is Of course, the hardcore people are still really, really, really playing Halo Infinite multiplayer. The hardcore people are playing Call of Duty, and that's where we see the competitive Call of Duty happen, where it's like you are playing Search and Destroy. You are playing just their multiplayer map modes or whatever. But the general audience is really hopping into the war zone.

And there will be a hardcore audience that only plays multiplayer type modes or whatever. but I think this game still needs something larger to kind of feed into. And I just don't know if these multiplayer modes really have the legs because they are kind of just like disposable junk food, in my opinion. Like you, if you have free time, you might hop into like a death match in Valerent or an Overwatch. But you're not working towards a bigger thing. Yeah.

And I think every kind of game seeks to have that larger thing. and during the beta as I enjoyed that I didn't need that but I don't need that the general audience might need something larger to kind of go into we're talking about future which I like you got a couple questions here from superchats

about the future ESFiorge writes in with the super chat and YouTube.com slash kind of funny games and says so since everyone agrees the core game is great do you all think it can grow a lot if Sony gives it the time like one to two years maybe a PVE mode since they already have people credited

for it. If you're not followed up on that, Alex Jay Sandoval also Super Chat and said the credits have a number of devs attributed to PVEE content. Ideally, Marvel Rivals or this will soon announce slash implement it. Would that be the speed run modes? Or like the single player?

The time trials, yeah. I doubt it. I don't... Do you count that as PV? I guess PVE might imply more multiplayer, like co-op type stuff. Yeah, I would be looking for four to five people hopping in and then you would build out an A to B linear level, which you would be running around.

Like a horde mode or something? Yeah, horn mode kind of. I mean, I don't really love horde mode. So, yeah, horde mode would probably be the easiest win there is, hey, we got these giant maps. Five of you hold this spot. Maybe we'd make you go to spot B and hold for a couple of rounds and we just bring waves of enemies at you.

I would love to see them build out the world, right? Like we're talking about a Guardians of the Galaxy type situation here of. Fun rag tag group, great production side. Give me some story missions. give me some levels where you drop us at point A, we have to work our way through. It's a bunch of bullet sponge, different looking enemies till the very end where it's a large boss fight. I would like to see that.

I'll say that whenever Overwatch does that, I never cared for it. I thought I wanted it and then I got it and it would be the Junctionstein's Revenge, Halloween mode. And like, they were so cool at first because it was brand new and you're suddenly playing a co-op PVE game with your friends, but I never went back to those modes as they kept on coming out. I would do it for the initial battle pass. They didn't even have a battle pass back then, but

when they would first unleash... You would like unlock, I think, a thing, right? Yeah, they would do like, talent versus whatever. It's like, oh, this is kind of the neat thing that I can hop in for a limited time, but this isn't a mode I'm chasing necessarily. Yeah, the future of it, I think is fascinating because I think a PVE mode maybe could kick

some life into it, but I also think regarding how PlayStation treats it is going to depend on a lot about how this game performs, which again, I'd go back to, I don't think it's going to perform well. I think it being PlayStation first party means that I think the servers are going to have life, right? I don't think the servers are going to shut down in three months.

I think PlayStation lets it rock for a while, which could be good for it. But one of the things that me and Mike were talking about last night, too, was, all right, do you go free to play at some point? Like, if this game doesn't get an audience from the $40 box version, do you either put it on PS Plus for people to play? Or do you put on PlayStation Plus?

Yeah. Or do you go, just go free to play and then what, you give people who bought the game at full price, like some kind of gift or some kind of here's a bunch of currency for a battle pass we're doing, even though they said they're not going to do a battle pass. I really feel like free to play won't happen with this game. And this is me completely is not a player. It's just an outsider and an observer and yada, yada, yada. I think the game is built not to be free to play. So to now go retrofit it to be free to play. I don't think they have enough time. I think by the time you'd get ready to implement that PlayStation, they pull the plug on it. I think PlayStation Plus makes way more sense.

of try to get the audience in there around October season 1 Season 2 is January Season 2 try to get people hype to get in there for a month Because they might just be too late And that's the worry my pitch would be Okay if January or let's say even if you want to wait until season 3

Which might be real too late But if you wanted to have a big All right this is our moment to try and strike again With this game I think if you're not going to go free to play Then yeah put it on PS Plus And have that timed with a new season That gets you a bunch of like PlayStation character cosmetics, right? Give Star Child

a cradle skin, give itzy like, I don't know, a Spider-Man skin or some shit, right? It could totally blow up in your face, you figure, right, but Marvel rivals is December. Season 2 of this, according to the roadmap, is January. Put it on PlayStation Plus in January, have it be another free option there that if, for some reason, Marvel

rivals isn't scratching your reach, you don't care about superheroes, suddenly jump into this game that hopefully knock on wood would have quality of life improvements from being on the market for what four months or whatever it would be, and be able to do something with that. I see some free weekends in the future for this. Oh, for sure.

And as there should be. There should be. Like, I think that's the biggest. I'm shocked there isn't something like that this week. I'm also shocked about the amount of people who have come into our chat, both on games daily and on this throughout the week and been like, Concord is out?

Concord's out this week. How are you guys playing it? Some people are blown away when you're playing. You're like, it's, you could play it right now. What? Like, it's not great time. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I'm a PlayStation supporting it. Yeah. I'm on the opposite side. This has got to go free to play. I think the market has dictated that we're at that kind of time here. And even if you want to go PlayStation plus three months down the line, you only get one first impression.

You're going to miss the boat, right? We saw this with Halo trying to say, hey, we've brought ourselves back. We got all this stuff. And everyone was like, been there, done that. We're not coming back, right? And so that's exactly what this game is going to face here. You are way behind the eight ball at launch here.

If you don't have a great launch or maybe, you know, I eat all the pie in my face. and it proves me wrong, but three months to six months from now, if this didn't go free to play, you won't be seeing this game. I do think Free to Play is the bigger splash than PS Plus as far as,

if you're going to try and revamp it and you're going to try and have that second, essentially a second release, I think Free to Play is a bigger, like, it's a bigger thing to stand on as opposed to go on like, oh, it's on PS Plus now. And like, I know it's a bigger game,

but we've seen it happen with things like Knockout City, right? Like that game went free to play, figure out of that things. I feel like there's other games I can't think of off the top of my head. Do you Universe Online? DC Universe Online was a box you buy game

And then no, they eventually pivoted to free to play And you also need PC audience I need that PC audience here You need such a big audience right now To keep these things going Brace yourself for the next two weeks of Concord Steam numbers are terrible Oh get ready, it's right

Is it not egg on my face? Humble Pie You can get pie on my face, yeah Well he said you said eat pie in your face Which I don't think is the We all understood what he said You know what I'm saying Mike doesn't eat eggs

Let's just say this. He doesn't need it. That it would be worse to have. If you're humble. If two weeks from now or a month from now, this is going down, I'm going to be blown away that it is a big market hit. I don't think it will be. I think this is a big problem here that a lot of people should have been talking about earlier.

Mike, last night I was the biggest Concord streamer. We got a major problem here. We'll wait and see. Any closing thoughts we didn't get to that you guys want to have a thing in here? C.J. Splits on has the biggest question. will Concord characters make it into Astrobot? No. We were talking about this last night.

I feel like if you're playing Astrobot as somebody who is like... Who's the green guy? Yeah, no, that's exactly the thing. You're going to see at Z and go, oh, I recognize that character from Concord. We're like, oh, that's obviously Star Child. It's like, no, you're not going to have these characters in Astrobot. One of the things I wanted to call out, and this is even... This is just in hope that the doves made it as far in the episode.

Make the scoreboard more, like, easily accessible between respawns. Because, like, I die, and immediately when I die, I want to check where I'm at in the scoreboard. It is just weird. It doesn't work all the time. You just hear the tab button on PC, man? Yeah, well, I'm clicking the D-pad on PlayStation. It's just, like, it only comes up at certain points,

and when I really want to look at it, it doesn't pop up. I also wish the progression and the scoreboard were just one menu at the end. Yeah, I agree with that. You see all your little, all the things going up. The numbers are making you real happy, but below it is just, like, here's what happened in the scoreboard. Or maybe that's above it or something like that. But I, yeah, because sometimes you re-cue and you're like, oh, shit, I forgot to hit that other button to go to the scoreboard.

Just a little small quality of life improvement. Okay. Nothing crazy. Well, gentlemen, I thank you for all your thoughts here. Andy gave it a 7.5 out of 10. Mike gave it a 7.5 out of 10. A blessing gave it a 7 out of 10. You are going to go stream more of it right now, which again is a testament to how much you enjoy it.

Because you can play anything you want. Yeah, I think we're going to play some of this and then maybe swap over to the split gate beta as well. We're not going to play the whole time. It's just like, you know, there's a lot of like. stuff out right now. I'm down for either. Huh? I'm down for you. Yeah, yeah, yeah. If you want to catch that stream and you're for some reason weren't watching live, maybe you're listening on your

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