Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Cult of the Lamb Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 10, 2022

Greg and Andy share their thoughts on Devolver Digital and Massive Monster's Cult of the Lamb; Bless and Barrett talk about Marvel's Spider-Man on PC! Time Stamps - 00:00:00 - Start 00:02:27 - Cult of the Lamb Review 00:42:10 - Ads 00:44:14 - Spider-Man’s PC Port Impressions 00:53:48 - Bless’ thoughts on MultiVersus Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. Of course, I'm Tim Gathe's and I'm joined by the new face video games blessing at a yoje, Jr. What's up, Tim? The Big Daddy himself, Greg Miller. Hey, Tim, how are you? I'm visiting Andrew Goldfarb's grave and Colt the Lamb, no big deal. Wow, I'm going to talk a lot about this. Here lies Goldfarb.

And rounded out the group today, the nitro rifle, Andy Cortez. Great morning. Great morning to everybody involved. We normally record the show in the afternoon. So this feels like a fun little treat in the middle of the day. day right Greg that's right it is a fun little true here now i'm at andy's grave now andy's grave special of course because he was my husband oh so he twists the turns here everybody on this kind of funny games cast of course you can get the show every week on youtube.com slash kind of funny

games or roosterteeth.com you can also get it as a podcast by searching your favorite podcast service for kind of funny games cast and we'll be right there for you if you wanted to get the show ad for you if you want to watch live as it's being recorded and most importantly if you want the exclusive post show where we do a fun little game show every week. You got to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games, just like our Patreon producers. Fargo Brady

Delaney Twining. I'm sorry I've been saying your name wrong for so long. James Hastings and Casey Andrew, we appreciate you all. So very, very much. If you don't have bucks to toss our way, that's cool. When you're out there on these streets buying games on the Epic Game Store, use Epic Creator Code kind of funny on all Epic Store and Epic

In Game purchases to help support us at no extra cost to use. you. We appreciate it all. So very, very much. A little housekeeping for you, just a little bit, guys. Xcast has a new day. It will now be releasing every Wednesday at 6 a.m. Pacific. This is a weird situation that doesn't normally happen, but sometimes with embargoed reviews, like the case of this episode, there'll be two kind of funny games podcasts going live on the same day. So if you're watching this on YouTube, that means that just a couple hours ago, Xcast posted. So go support that too. Let's get a little bit of that cross promotion going on that everybody loves to talk about so much. Go to their YouTube page on their episode, write Lamb, and then come to our YouTube page and write Xbox. Yes, yes, I like that. And they will know, you know what I mean?

We'll know. We're brought to you by chime in me on these, but I'll get to that later. We're going to talk about Colts of the Lamb. This is our review of that video game. Greg Miller, you are the official kind of funny scorer of Colt of the Lamb. What are your thoughts and what would you give it on the kind of funny scale? Cult of the Lamb. What a fucking video game.

That's what I would give it. Four out of five, I'm saying it's great. I, you know, finished Cult of the Lamb. I had 16 hours a little bit, right around 16 hours on my game clock. And put it down, and it was one of those that when I finished it and I rolled credits, there was that moment of not how do I feel about it like, did I like it or not like it? Obviously, I had a great time with it. I could not put it down.

It was very much one of those games that when I wasn't playing it, I wanted to get back to it. But I had that moment of after I put it down of like, I'm going to be interested to see how the dust settles on this one. Was it one that I was super into because of review? Was it one that, you know, I didn't have anything else to play, yada, yada, yada. And days removed from rolling credits, what I keep doing is refreshing my email and actually hitting up PR and asking if they have PlayStation code yet. Because I played the whole thing on my Steam deck slash Steam in general. I played it a, I played this thing everywhere. Your blessing, I don't know if you know this.

This Steam thing? this new up-and-coming program, it's pretty cool because I'm playing on the handheld, then I'm playing on the PC, I put my PC on the TV, I'm playing over there, I can play on this thing. Cross-save makes it sound like more of a thing

because this thing, you just finish the game and you boot back to the screen and it goes, and it's like, we cloud sunk it. Everything's fine, don't worry. Oh, you didn't have to download the Steam Deck version of it on that thing and then uninstall that version to get the correct thing on the console.

Was there a lot of, of like issues there with get with sinking them together Greg Andy I was right I was right where you are and let me tell you I was shocked that there were no issues that it just did it and there was one version of the game and it was just like it worked and it was it was impressive uh but anyways uh I think that's the you know the most ringing endorsement I can give it is that I want to play it again like I'm going to do another run on PlayStation like I had that much fun of it yes Timothy Getty's I don't want to get too far into your thoughts before I ask what is Colts of the

land for people that don't know oh man great question Tim Colta Lamb is a, and Andy, you've played a lot of it too, right? Yes, yes. I've played about 23 hours, 24 maybe. Look at this kid. I want to get him off the bench in a second. Cult of the Lamb is a rogue light mashed with a village sim. So if you've heard me talk about Moonlighter and how much I love that, that's a pretty

good assessment or comparison to it. So there's this idea that you have your own, and I'll get to say, you have your own cult, but your own village, right, that you're taking care of and you have a whole bunch of cultists that you recruit and then need to keep fed, keep the area clean. You need to make sure that they still believe in you and the evil, horrible thing that you represent. And then when you want to, you run out and you run through one of four dungeons. And you go through there, Tim, it's, you know, procedurally generated.

It's different every time. You go in there and there's a boss at the end, but before you can fight the boss, you have to do each dungeon four times. And then the fourth circle part fills in. and you can go and fight the boss. Once you fight all the bosses, you've kind of accomplished your goal for the one who waits, who is the big evil God that you're trying to free,

that you're a disciple of now, and then you go and talk to him, and then obviously you're into end game and stuff like that. But at its core, the idea is that you go into these dungeons, you fight these monsters, you come back with, you know, resources that you've gotten there to then, you know, build new structures in your town.

It's kind of, it's a rogue light like you know and then it's a demonic animal crossing because the idea is you know, Barrett shows all the stuff here like you're building out this town, you're building structures in the town and you're taking care of your followers. But as I said in my TikTok review, right, like something that didn't dawn on me for a long time is the fact that these aren't your villagers. These are your cattle. Like you have to play this game as a horrible person that you are out to take, or horrible lamb, that you're out to take advantage of these cultists, right? The idea here is that you are, you know, making them worship you. And then through their

devotion and their faith, you're able to unlock new abilities to cast that there that'll give you buffs. You're able to unlock new structures that you're able to build in the city to take more advantage of them. You're able to go through and actually sacrifice these cultists, both to use their bodies as food if you want, sacrifice them. to extend your life. Early on in my play-through, I was playing it as if, oh, man, I got to make sure everybody's as happy as possible

and run around and I'm really thinking care of this. And I wasn't even doing the dungeon for hours as I just really was trying to get in a rhythm with my town and build out my crops the certain way and yada, yada, yada. And that's a totally, totally avenue to play this. That is a strategy to play this game or whatever. But later on the game, when I really was unlocking some of the things

in the higher skill trees, and it was like, okay, cool, if you fall in battle, you will then get to sacrifice one of your cultists. And it's like, oh, like, I've been thinking of keeping these people happy when really I should be thinking of them more as a cow. I should be keeping them fat and fed and ready to serve me and really benefit what I'm going to. When I did that, I think the real evilness of the game shines through.

Blessing? So then what does that do with your relationship to the cultists? Because I know in games like Animal Crossing, or I often think back to X-Con where I would have friends that play that game and they would always name characters after their friends, right? And so I'd go over the house and they would have an ex-com character named Bless. And they're like, oh, yeah.

And then this character died just excruciatingly. It was terrible, right? For you, like, you showed us your game and you have GoFarb in there and you have Andy in there. Does that change the relationship you have with your cultists? Is it like a delightful thing when you get to bury Andy under the ground? Honestly, it's a great question, Bless. What is pretty fascinating about the answer,

is that if you go through all the graves in my cult, you'll find that pretty quickly we stop naming them. Because again, it would be akin to naming a cow that you know you're going to slaughter, naming a chicken you know you're going to eat. Like, I did it early on because I jumped in the cult of lamb after playing the preview with you guys and having a great time and I think it's, you know, looked really cool. And Shuhay never shuts up about on Twitter. I jumped in and was like, oh, this is going to be great.

I'm going to name it. I didn't expect the cultists to actually age because it is that thing of where you can sacrifice them because you need the meat. You can sacrifice them or, you know, ascend them because they've become dissenters and you don't want to deal with them trying to turn other cultists. And then, of course, they can just get old and die. They will just die of old age. And so when I, the first old age group started dying, I was like, oh, okay. But then when I really started abusing them and like I made a demonic summoning circle, right? And there's three tears to it that you can level up again as you harvest their devotion and increase everybody's faith.

But what it does is basically is it'll turn cultists you have into buffs for when you take into battle. So like you'll go in there and it'll be like one of them is this little demon that'll go and find heart pieces when you need them to refill your heart. Or one of them shoot a projectile and enemies every so often do these kind of thing. And so once the utility of this, once the veil was lifted of my eyes of like, oh, like everybody is expendable except me. And oh, this is all for the one who waits the devil. You know what I mean? Like we're trying to unleash this great evil stuff. It's like, oh, yeah, fuck everybody.

I'm not going to spend my time renaming these people. I'm just going to go through with whatever their goofy name is, especially when it was, like, I'll tell you what. I don't know why. I'm not trying to point fingers here, but Andrew Goldfarb hated Barrett Courtney. And every time Barrett Courtney would try to do something, Andrew Goldfarp was in my ear talking shit about Barrett Courtney.

I'm like, I need to put him into jail. Was he telling you about what was he making, asking you to like feed him shit? Yep. Yes, yes, yeah, there was. There was a lot of it. You should, again, it's this management thing. You know, you can eventually build an outhouse. You can eventually build another thing where your villagers will take care of the place themselves.

But in the early goings, people are just pooping all over the village. You've got to clean up the poop. And then you can use the poop for fertilizer, yada, yada, yada. But if you leave the poop around, people start getting sick, then you got to put them into bed and they can't work the fields, but you can also build a medical bay eventually and put them into it. Like, there's all these, like, if this, then that thing. But yes, there are also our recipes made of poop. And so, like, yeah, Goldfarb was very much like, we should feed Barrett poop.

And I was like, all right. And then I feed Barrett was my friend. He is not. He hates you. But you feed Barrett the poop and Barrett. There's like a, you know, whatever, I have 10%, 50%, maybe 50. You are a big poopie boy. And maybe Barrett gets sick and he can't work the fields, but then it also increases

Andrew's faith in me or whatever. But eventually when Andrew kept being so mean about this, right, when it first came up and it was one of my first sacrifices, like, oh, Goldfarb. I need to sacrifice somebody right now for the little quest that's pop. up. And again, it is not a quest in, hey, there are multiple things for you to go do. This is, it's a quest your follower comes to you. It's like, hey, feed bear it poop. And if you go make them poop, you think you. That increases his little devotion thing. And again, I'm getting way into the weeds. But as you level these, so every care, there's an

overall faith meter over here that represents how the whole village is doing and what's going on. And you do that by doing sermons and yada, yada, yada and doing nice things. And, you know, you build a new outhouse, a new tent, a new structure in general. That'll give you a couple pluses over here. And then if somebody dies or somebody's out there being the center, that'll bring it down a bunch. You know, when it was like one of the quest was, hey, you know, do the new ritual that is sacrifice person. It's like, oh, I'm going to sacrifice gold farm because he's being annoying. And that's kind of when you start getting this turning point of like, oh, okay.

Like these people aren't around for long. And even like, you know, marrying Andy, my lifelong dream. Like in the game, you could have multiple marriages. You can do, you can perform that every one of these rituals has a cool down on it. And they have buffs, whether it's going to bring up your faith or bring down your faith and give you something. me else for battle. But it was that idea of like, you know, you can just go through and marry as many people as you want to. It doesn't matter. You can smooch. You can smooch if you want, but, you know, you can get them and do that thing. So there's like, it's a game that I personally love the

combat for, because it is simplistic. It is, it is a fun, I think simple rogue like, you know, you start every dungeon you walk into, you're presented with one weapon and then one, they call it a curse, but think of it as a superpower, right? Of like, you know, you do a slash and it does massive damage or you shoot tendrils out. My favorite was you would cause a rupture in the ground and all these ghosts would come out and then they would go and attack people. But that's randomly signed every time whatever's going to be that. That's your weapon and that's your curse for this dungeon.

You go through, you know, you beat on the bad guys. You get the thing. You get to the end and you leave. There's also a card system in there where you're expanding a deck of tarot cards, right, that you get to use. And those are randomly generated as you go through and which one you're going to get and blah, blah, blah. that's all great and fun but it's again like moonlighter for me where you I think most people might look at that and be like oh that's the main course when in reality I think it is the spinning of the plates in your village where again like there were there were hours where I wouldn't even go do the dungeon thing where I would just sit there and be like all right well I've unlocked this new thing which will make the crops grow bigger in this circle so I'm going to plants around there and then I'm low on seed so I will just sit there and harvest then I will I'll

harvest plant, manure, or harvest, plant, water, and manure. That way it'll fertilize. So it'll keep, like, really nerdy Greg shit of going through and building out this village and having it matter and feel like it.

Like, that was what I kept coming back for, seeing how I could get everybody's devotion up, how I could get the faith up, what I could unlock next, what the next weird ritual would be, what the next weird thing would be. On top of that, you're leveling up your weapons and abilities over here.

Like, there's a lot going on, which is all the shit that I love. So, yeah, that sounds like very great. Greg stuff with the Animal Crossing and the demonic and all that stuff. But then Andy, I imagine you enjoyed the more dungeon crawly aspects a bit more than Greg did and more than the kind of sim stuff. Am I right? And assuming that, what's the balance between the dungeon crawling stuff and the Animal Crossing stuff? And like, do they feel incongruent to each other or do they feel like they're complimentary sides of the same game?

I loved the Sim stuff. I had a bunch of fun with that. I wish, if I could change some things, I wish there was a longer lifespans for these cultists, because much like Greg mentioned, you eventually get to a point where you don't, like, I kind of wanted to care about them more so that sacrificing them would be a tougher decision for myself, the player. And I wanted those moments to hit more of like, this person died of old age. Or sometimes when you're out in these dungeon crawling levels, you'll get to a spot where the upcoming bossy you're about to face pops up.

And he threatens you. And he's like, you don't have to do this, blah, blah, blah. Like, I will wage war on you. And then he'll bring up like two of your cultists and at random. And sometimes you have to fight them and you have to kill them. And it's like really awesome. I'm sorry, my Lord. Like they don't want to.

They'll be like, I'm so sorry. They're just like brainwashed or whatever. And those moments are really awesome and random as hell. But I wish I cared more about the people that I was actually killing. You know, I kind of wish that they were more than just cattle like Greg was mentioning. The dungeon crawling stuff, super fun. The tightness of the combat. It kind of reminds me of like playing Rogue Legacy early in the year where it just feels really tight to play.

my only problem with the dungeon crawling aspect of it is that I wish it had more of the roguelight hooks that even a game like Hades or even a game like Myth Force that we played earlier in the year had where the thing I love about Rogelights is like starting the run and being like, oh, could this be the one? I've got these crazy good perks that have just been given to me

and you get that excitement, right? How are these abilities going to stack with this other cool thing? and oh shit, I get health back every time. These tarot cards that Greg is mentioning, there's a shitload of tarot cards that you eventually unlock, and then now those tarot cards are able to be given to you at random. At the start of a run,

or sometimes you'll find a tarot card room in the areas that you're dungeon crawling through. And then you'll... Here's two tarot cards. Pick whichever one. You're like, oh, shit. This one is higher powered, because it's going to give me back this much,

like power for my special attack, you know, like all those little hooks just aren't quite there for me, rogulight wise. And I don't want this to become a super negative review because I fucking love this game. I'm just thinking about the things that could have made it a five out of five. I have a lit. So you think it's a four out of five as well? Yeah, I'm, I'd say it's like a four point one out of four point six for me. Blessing, what do you think about that? Well, actually, you know, my question was going to be a bit similar to Tim's because for me, you know, I picked the game up after watching the trailers. I think in the trailers, looks super dope. And then, you know, we got preview codes and I put it in about six hours into the

preview. And I had fun with it, but I started to see a few similar things where, you know, I was really enjoying the roguide aspects of it because I really like rogue light games and really, I really like that kind of action. And also, the art style is really cool and really gorgeous. And then also I I really like the soundtrack of the game as well. But, you know, after the six hours for the when we got to the review portion of it, I was like, you know what? I'm going to wait until Andy and Greg check it out. That way I can have the report back and tell me if it's for me. Because my question mainly is, is it for fans of the genre, or do you think it expands out in a way where anybody can jump into it and enjoy it? Because by the time, by the time I finish my six hours,

I started to have the semi aspects of the game pull me more than the rogue light stuff that I enjoyed more. And so, like, once I got back to my camp and they were like, hey, you know, pick up the shit that's on the floor, hey, this person needs a sleeping bag or this person needs a tent. or you need to preach the word of evil God and like, you know, when you get into all that, the simy stuff, I felt like there was more meat there than in the actual roguelight portions of it, which isn't necessarily me like, that's not necessarily a critique on the game. That's more so the kind of game that it wants to be. Would you say that it's something that could possibly get me in if I care more for the roguelight stuff?

I think to go along with more Tim's point of like, are they incongruent with each other? I think so, because there's a lot of times when you're doing the sim portions of it, you need more money or you need more wood or you need more stones and stuff and you're going to find that stuff when you're out in the world beating up enemies every time you clear a room a chest drops you might get a heart if you're lucky along with some money or there's a bunch of trees around the world that you can kind of just chop down and get extra resources there the yeah the sim part stuff really pulled me in I do think the roguide stuff is lacking for me but just again, only slightly. Like, it's just missing the tiniest of things in order to make it the perfect rogulyte experience. When you are in these boss fights, though, I think they're fun as hell.

I think the boss fights are definitely a lot more fun than the challenge rooms, because the challenge rooms, to a point, I never, I'm always going to compare every rogulyte to Hades just because that's the easiest thing to compare. Understandably so. Yeah, going to any, when you're in those three sections of Hades or whatever, like they have,

very different identities. And I didn't really feel that here where there's four seconds to go out and try to kill these bosses at. You're going to encounter a bunch of mini bosses. You're going to counter a bunch of just challenge rooms. And I feel like it was almost just a palette change. The enemies are a bit different. But I don't think I ever felt like I was in someplace that was wildly different than the last spot. I want to say wildly.

For me, there were different. in the enemy types that made me be like, I fucking hate these bats. And that's like the third dungeon over, I think it is, where I was like, God damn. I remember by the time, you know, our, so we, you know, we reviewed this in an interesting way where the build we had,

we originally played only had one dungeon, then we got a different preview build that had the second dungeon, and then we finally got review code that had everything. When we were in Nashville, I only had the preview code for the first dungeon, but your saves carried over. So I was replaying and just getting, resources and doing stuff. So when it finally opened up with review code, I was able to unlock all the three dungeons I hadn't done yet because it's based on the number of followers you have. So

like that's how they gatekeep in terms of what you open up. And so when I did that, I ran into that third dungeon with all the bats. I was like, actually fuck this. And I went to the fourth one and had a better time playing there with like the lava shoot or whatever you want to call it, shooting fireballs out and the slug dudes that are going around. Like I agree that they aren't radically different. You know what I mean? These these rooms are clearly all in the same world. but I did think that each dungeon had its own identity for what was going on. Yeah, the boss fights, again, super challenging. You're going to get the boss fights that will,

maybe the boss spawns a bunch of different ads or some of them become bullet hell type things. But for as far as the perks. Good dodge roll. Good dodge roll. Great dodge roll. And I wish that the perks became a bit more, I don't know, I guess, effective in that like when I played Myth Force earlier this year, which is like

a very, very small roguelight first person thing that's supposed to look like an 80s cartoon, me, Snowback Mike, Nick, and Kevin played it. And that has like the roguelight hooks that I love where you have a stamina bar and sometimes you may get a really good perk

that you roll that's like unlimited stamina or something crazy like that, right? And I never felt like the perks in this game, Colts of the Lamb, were you ever felt like they were a do or die like oh this is the fucking run this is the one where I'm going to actually beat that boss

because I have unlimited attack speed like I never really felt the the perks affecting me that much in a really significant way Tim hey I'm sorry I'm sorry if I can jump jumble off this I disagree with that because I did but I didn't feel it really till the back half end of the game

where like at that and I'm going to I don't remember how anymore because, again, there are so many plates spinning and so many skill trees and all the stuff. But I had by that point unlocked and I guess chosen from the pulpit the benefit that when I go, I got all my cards at once at the start of a match rather than have to get them all. So, like, usually you go, you play through and then you'll find a card room and get a card that way and then play it more and then find another card room and get a card that way. This one is it drops, I think it's maybe four, maybe six cards on you at the very front. I think it's four. Those are your cards for the run alongside your weapons. Because one of the things I talk about my TikTok review and that I want to drive home here is like, I think the game is so approachable in combat for what you want it to be, which I feel like is sometimes a struggle with any game with combat of like, oh, man, I want to throw my controller.

I'm so mad at this section, yada, yada, yada. Or this is easy as hell and it's brain dead and yada yada, because I had that early on with the dungeons where I was like, oh, these dungeons aren't that hard. Like I'm not, I don't feel like I'm really getting challenged. And that's not bad. I'm enjoying the experience. Maybe that's more for the sim thing. And then it's the fact, of course, that there's, you know,

the multiple difficulties. I was initially planning on medium. I bumped it up to hard. There's one above that. But then also, there's the card business of getting all the cards at the front. There's the demonic sumning circle

I was talking about before. There's bonuses in your village you can unlock again through when you level up because you get choices most of the time, A or B. One of them was, you know, if you can now eat a meal before you go in and I'll give you an extra blue heart.

So for me, in particular, there was one, I want to say it was the last dungeon, but it might even even been the back dungeon, where I had gone to the boss and failed and then trying to get back. I failed a bunch of times. And I kept getting that giant stupid hammer. And I hate slow weapons. I want to be like a dagger. I want to be fast.

You know what I mean? And so I had finally gotten a good sword. I had gotten the ghosts and I got a good card draw. And I had demonic summoning dudes with me. And I had the heart from eating. And I was like, this is the fucking run. And it was. And like, I felt empowered on that one after failing a few times.

I was just going to ask, Andy, visually, this game looks incredible to me. And it's a couple different factors where there's the kind of tilt shift looking thing, a lot of great use of lighting and shadows and stuff, as well as a style that looks like that familiar, stretch and skew kind of old school flash animation stuff. But in a way where normally we would use that as a criticism, I feel like this has a lot more unique identity to it. Does that maintain throughout the game, or is this kind of like as much as it goes?

No, yeah, definitely maintains. I think the art style is fantastic. It looks super sharp. The game runs really well. I think one thing that the game kept surprising me with in a very, very positive way, was that new, newer elements kept being introduced and new characters kept being introduced. Not that they were extremely significant to your experience, but I love that anyway. I like in the same way that you're on run number fucking 38 of Hades.

and you've maybe completed three runs so far, or maybe you're on run nine and you're like, oh, I need that 10th run. And you still get to introduce a new element. The game keeps doing that in really kind of neat ways where I'm expecting to keep getting repetitive elements. And I never, I never really felt like there was a whole lot of repetition there. But yeah, the, I think you can drop the art style down pretty low.

And it's like a tiny game as far as like what it. the install size is like maybe 1.5 gigs or something ridiculous like that. And running it on the lowest settings, it still looks really damn good as well. I ran on like the highest or whatever and it is extremely light on your PC. So that's great for people who are playing on a PC and maybe don't have a super powered machine. It is super light. It was using like the most minimal amount of processing power. If I can jump me in one thing for me is a little bit of a detail.

screen with Andy in terms of why I think it's a four for me and not a five right and it was the idea of Andy's talking about them introducing new elements and new characters right like I thought that stuff was such padding because as you go through you'll occasionally meet a new character who will then open up a new section of the map and early on when I went there I was like oh this is going to be something significant a new place to trade a new place to do whatever a new place to unlock stuff and usually what it is is it's just a new place to buy new tarot cards or new decoral for your thing. And there'll be early on somebody there you can trade whatever currency or eyeball

you've been collecting and get a new piece that will then be able to, a new piece that would eventually unite with three other pieces to then be unlocked to get a new tunic, which would make the game harder or, you know, do something else in terms of augmenting the gameplay and yada, yada, yada. I didn't find the tunics interesting, so I didn't find the emblem collecting interesting and that I didn't find the people I was ever meeting interesting. And also what it boils down to in a lot of those places is what I think holds the game back, which is busy work.

They, you know, in the talk of the game, a massive monster of the developers, have talked about the fact that, you know, if you feel like you're getting bogged down with busy work in the game early on, keep playing because you will unlock abilities and things to make your cult do it for you, which was accurate where it's like, all right, cool, they're pooping everywhere. Now I build the outhouse. Okay, well, I still empty the outhouse, but I can build more outhousees if I want to. Okay, now I can build, even when their outhouse is full and they're pooping or vomiting all over the place, I can build a janitor's clock. and they'll clean it up themselves great. Okay, I am over here trying to, you know, min max basically, my farm settlement, but eventually I can unlock this ability where somebody will take care of it. I can assign that as a work. That was great.

It never, though, fixed for me, which was an issue of one of the, like I was talking about how the individual characters have their own devotion, that you go and level that up for them, right? You can do it with the big, every morning you can, or every day, you can preach to them,

and that'll fill it a little bit. But if you go to them then and you unlock perks to give them money or, you know, just to bless them. Give them a gift. Yeah, the bar fills in. They go to the next level. And what that would mean in the, you know, later on in the game is that if you want to use them for sacrifice to bring yourself back to life, it would give you more hearts.

Like a level one is going to bring you back from the dead, but only give you, I think it's half a heart, maybe a full heart. Whereas if you have multiple levels of devotion with this character and you sacrifice them, they're going to give you multiple hearts and you're going to be in a better place to fight, whatever you, usually a boss for me. anyways the problem i had with it is like i get the cult to 20 members and then i still have to go one by one to give them an individual blessing i can do the big speech but i there's also then the way to go do and like that was annoying to me it's the same thing of like you unlock these new areas and in a bunch of those areas there's little uh devotion boxes that you can go to to get the devotion out that you know you'd be able to spend on yada yada yada yada like it's a paltry amount of devotion and i have to literally go there rather than have it delivered to me or do something like that.

It was those little things of I never, once I unlocked the entire map and I could go to these places, I really only went to them like once or twice. Like the guy who's all about gold, Andy, I went to him like once. I think on introduction and maybe back for whatever I needed to bring him and then I just never did it again. And I felt like that was, I wish that wasn't there. I think it would have made the game a more streamlined process if some of those systems have been brought in to have it rather than go there, expand my area and put those

guys there as vendors or something that I can invite in to do it rather than put it out there and just have it feel like fat patting. I've been there once. I say I've probably gone to the fishing village quite a bit to go fishing because the better fish you catch, the better recipes you can make that then have better attributes for the cult members when they do eat these meals. One thing that I wanted to touch on as far as wanting the cult members to have more permanence in a way is that I kind of maybe just. just got my hopes of a bit too much and thought that it was straight up going to be the fultening system from Metal Gear. And I was hoping that these cult members would have like,

hey, this cult member is a really good fighter, maybe not a great worker. So I'm going to take that cult member out with me when I go adventuring into the dungeon crawling sections. And those three cult members that I just found are, that one's really good of farming. That one's really good it like digging for rocks and harvesting and stuff, I'll leave those back at the camp. Like, I kind of wish that there were a bit more, there was a bit more sort of individual personalities to each of them. Yeah, did you ever even pay attention to it? Because like, when you do recruit them, right, there's a little thing as it's like,

oh, this, and it's like early on, I looked at it thinking you'd be like Fulton, and then I never did. And usually what happened is somebody would die. And then I get the notification that Andy is scared of death, it turns out. And that's a true. I'm like, okay, whatever. It never felt like super do or die. Like when you do recruit these members, they do have perks, individual perks.

But one of them might be like, when this one gets sick, he gets higher faith or some shit like that. Like it's really, really small things that don't really affect the outcome a whole lot because I got the village singing to the point where it's like everything is automated. Everything is fucking automated. Like this shit is just full. in 24-7. Everything's going great. If somebody gets sick, I send them to the med bay, and they're better immediately. Because you're using the flowers that you're growing over there and harvesting into the box.

Yeah. Yeah. And it gets really, like, it feels great to do that. Oh, it's fulfilling as hell. Like, yeah, that's the thing. I love that aspect of it. But I just do wish that the cult members had a bit more. Again, permanence to it so that when I name a character, Tim or Greg or blessing, and if any of them die,

I wanted to be like, oh, fuck, blessings, that fuck. It's like, they do feel really just kind of disposable in a way that kind of bums me out. And again, I don't want to do that thing where we shit on a game for everyone and say, hey, it's a four out of five. It's great. Amazing. I mean, we've blown smoke of this game. I mean, this game's awesome. You should play this game.

We're literally just talking about what kept the back from being a five out of five. And yet you guys are answering to a conundrum that I was trying to figure out as we're talking, as you guys been talking about the game, which is, you know, why haven't I felt that competitive? to go back to it for a game that I feel like I've been asking for this game for a long time, right? Like on PSLU all the time I'm asking for a dark cloud and it is this exact pitch, right? Like the reason why Dark Cloud is the game that I liked so much growing up and a game that I thought would work so well in 2022 is the fact that like it has the sim, like the town sim stuff of Animal Crossing that has worked so well. And then also the roguelite stuff that has worked so well, especially in indie titles recently. And so putting out Colt of Lamb, I've been like, oh yeah,

this is it. Like they're putting out my new dark cloud game. And I think part of what I realized, especially as we've been having this conversation is part of why I like dark cloud is, you know, for those who don't know in that game, you are going into dungeons and then finding elements of your town and then also townsfolk to then collect and then bring back. And then those town folks will have requests in terms of, oh, I want my house over here. Oh, I want to live by a lake. Oh, I want to live by the river. Oh, I'm a fisher. So I want to like, you know, be somewhere where I can fish easily. They would have those kinds of requests. And they weren't procedurally generated. They were actual characters that, you know, were permanent to some extent. And I think that

kind of comes back to, as I was playing Colts of the Lamb and not having that connection with my village, I would like it so that my village would be more of a like a mass effect ship, right? Where it is, oh, I know these people's names. Oh, I know their relationships with each other. Oh, I have a special connection with Bobby over here because me and Bobby. Bobby. They call them Bacon, Love, Bobby. Both of us love Baker. And right, like having those kind of connections with the characters with the NPCs, I think helps a sim like this actually feel like something worth tending to and something worth maintaining. Really exciting for the Twitch interaction, though. Do you know what it is?

I didn't look into it. Yeah, the sort of Twitch integration that's going to be hopefully live by the time the game goes live. And they have kind of warned about the possibility of bugs. But Twitch chat will be able to vote on out. outcomes like when you're out dungeon crawling they could vote that anytime you kill something it drops a pool of poison to kind of like it hinder your experience or whatever and kind of just be a pain in the ass but you can also whenever you recruit a new cult member you can raffle that name off to somebody in Twitch chat and then that character will be named after the person in Twitch chat which again but I kind of wish there was more permanence to yeah yeah I like If anything, just double their life. Like, make the cult members live twice as long. And there is.

They can still die of old age. It'd be great. There's necklaces that expand it. Though you can give them gifts to do it. But again, I always forgot to give gifts. Like, you know, I did like the one round of gifts. And then people would start dying and then it'd be like ours. They were like, oh, shit, you're a new person.

I guess I can give you a gift too. Greg, the gift where people don't have to sleep. Yeah. Oh, it's the best. They just work all day and night. I had a guy who, the guy who worked on my farm, I did that too, yeah.

It was awesome. Just keep getting me pumpkins. I'm sorry, I have one quick question for blessing. What up? You said we call him bacon, love and Bobby, because you both love bacon.

So do we call you bacon love and bless? Oh, yeah, of course, yeah. Sorry, sorry, sorry. They call me in the streets, yeah. Before we move on to other games and stuff like that, I want to ask Andy and Greg, do you think this game ends up in your top 10 this year?

Absolutely. No question. Yeah. I think that's an easy one. And it's been a great year for Greg games, and this is another great Greg game. But yeah, for sure. Like the fact that I keep checking, I know we're waiting on a bunch of other review codes too. I'm like, just get here before them so I can play a bit more of this.

It was this game that I was like, fuck, I wish I had a steam deck. Because I'd be playing in bed right now doing all the doing all of the farming tasks and stuff. Like I fell in love with that portion of the game. And that was another one or yet. That was that one night where I was like, I have. I blinked and it was 3.40 in the morning on a fucking work night. Like I need to go to sleep. What am I doing right now?

But you get into that mode where it's like, all right, I've progressed enough to get this. And now it's only this much to upgrade this mission building where I can send out missionaries out into the world to go look for stuff. And maybe I need more meat and I can send two of my cult members to go venture out. And they put on their backpacks. And the first time a cult member grew old, it broke my heart. I was like, oh, my God, he's so cute. And they like, they, they can't work anymore. They're just wearing a white little robe and a little walking cane and they get little wrinkles.

And the first one of mine that got old was Jen. And so she was, I went to talk to her and she's like, I won't be around much longer. And I can't do this, but I can still give you an emotion. I was like, okay, Jen, I'm sorry. A sacrifice to her ass. I said, no room for the oldies. Another absolute creepy thing was that I kind of got my cult members to the point. where I had used one thing I wanted to point out also for the review is that Greg during his explanation and me during my explanation mentioned a shitload of systems there are a shitload of systems in this game and I think the best thing I could say about it is it never feels overwhelming it always I never feel confused about what I'm doing and what I'm leveling up there's so many different things to level up and to work towards and it never once feels

like I'm overwhelmed by what's happening on the screen. And I think that's really, really awesome. And in one of those, in doing what early on, I did. In the very early on, I did when I was like, wait, I'm raising the faith, but that's not letting me build the thing, but I'm talking to them, but I'm filling in the meter. And the easiest way was I just like, I let go let God. And I just kept playing. And then I saw it all start lining up on what.

It happened to me too. We're early on, I was like, I don't understand all the things I needed to keep in track of. Like, there was one specific thing in the church where you're, supposed to be preaching the word of God. There's like, I think three options when you get to the pulpit, and one of the options was always lock, his was on a timer, and I didn't really understand what it was, but I had an objective that was do that thing. And I was like, all right, cool, I guess I'll just keep preaching until maybe that gets done. But like, those were a couple of confusing systems for me on top of, like a bunch of other systems that were in the game as well

that I felt like I had to keep track of. But maybe I also do need to let go and let God and that, once you get going on it, I think you get your sea legs. And like, okay. And that's the I do think there's plenty of systems in other games where I'm like 15 hours in. I'm like, I still don't know the fuck going on with these things. But in here, I think it like takes maybe two or three hours to fully get a grasp on everything that's happening. I think the big thing, and they've talked about this as well, a massive monster. And also shout at the music. The music was great.

It's meant to be approachable. And I think that even means that like even if your faith runs out, it's not like you're going to get it game over. It's not like everybody's going to walk out on you. Like, you can fuck up and figure out. out what it is. So it's like that whole thing of like just giving yourself the bandwidth to figure it out on the fly I think worked really well and I found it to be rewarding. One last little tidbit I wanted to throw out was that I got my one of the things that I upgraded. Whenever you upgrade a system, you get a choice of two things and one of them is usually the more evil version and like for example, one of them

upgrade the left thing or the right thing and the right thing is always a little bit more positive. of like you're able to do a ritual where you give your followers a day, two days off, and their faith builds a certain amount and they, you know, they like you more because you're a great leader. Or the other one, you threaten them into working harder and that works out better for you in other ways, but that may drop their faith a little bit, you know. One of the options was that I, whenever somebody dies, I can chop up the body and, feed it to them, but then they grow, they grow a taste for flesh. And so anytime it's the funniest thing, your old little guy's walking around,

you see him like kind of walking in the corner, you're doing your thing down here. And then like, you see them kind of freak out and they fall dead. And all the followers go to them and the followers are like, fuck yeah, dude. Like all the followers gather around the dead dude and are like licking their lips and like super stoked that like we're about to eat this mother and it is really creepy and cute and just awful and like this game has a lot of really terrible elements to it that I think are hilarious. That's like some adult swim energy I feel like. Yeah.

That's great. I'm sure we're going to be talking about Colt O'Land a lot the rest of this year as we'd get into the game of the year conversations. But before we talk about other games on this here, kind of funny games cast, let me tell you about our sponsors. No one. And the rock means. no one likes waiting on a paycheck especially ladies and gentlemen when you've got bills due good thing

there's now chime now you can get your paycheck up to two days early with direct deposit that's up to two more days to save pay bills and generally just feel good about your money situation waiting for your money never good getting your money in advance great who wouldn't want that chime is more than about just getting paid early it's also an award-winning mobile app checking account debit card an optional savings account. So what are you waiting for? Hopefully not your paycheck. Get started with CHIME today.

Applying for a free account. It takes less than two minutes. Get started at CHIME.com slash KF Games. That's chime.com slash KF Games. Banking services and debit card provided by the Bank Corp Bank or Stride Bank, N, A, members, FDIC. Early access to direct deposit funds depends on the payer. Where at the sunglasses go? chime.com slash KF Games.

That's chime.com slash KF Games. Have you heard about the legendary underwear brand? That's taken the podcast, World by Storm, famous for their buttery soft undies and brawlets. MeUndies loves podcasts just as much as you do. It's like they're made for you, and you're made for them. You're made for each other. Now, of course, ladies gentlemen, you know I love my me undies

because they're the most comfortable underwear I've ever had and because they have great patterns. As the king of Halloween, my candy corn pair never fails to make me smile. Everyone knows MeUndies for their super soft undies and comfy brawlets, but did you know they also make other stuff? We're talking about durable, cushy socks that will make your feet sing. They even make hoodies for your dog so you can match every important person in your life. Available in sizes XS to 4xel and tons of colors in prints.

Beundi says a great offer for my listeners. Any first-time purchasers can get 20% off plus free shipping and returns. To get 20% off your first order, free shipping, and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. guarantee. Go to meundies.com slash kind of funny. That's meundies.com slash kind of funny. And now that we are back, Spider-Man, InsomniaX Spider-Man. It's coming to PC. I never thought I'd see the day, but the day is upon us, my friends. A couple of us have been playing it in a couple different ways. I just want to say, all I have to say about it, I love Spider-Man, one of my favorite games of all time, playing it on a super ultra-wide and 32-9 resolution. It's unbelievable. New

cities never looked better. I can't believe how dope it is. And it's super fun. Am I going to beat the game again? Not like this. Nah, it's not working for me. Andy Cortez, you've been playing as well. What are your thoughts? You were a little bit more critical when it comes to the tech of this stuff. Well, I think a lot of those issues are being addressed based on some of the emails we've been getting from PR that, you know, when I first tried it about two weeks ago or whenever it was, we got several emails leading up or since then that I've said like hey the updates that are being closer to launch are going to have better ray tracing and better DLS has performance and stuff like that well I was talking to Barrett about it actually was like I ran it at full ultra everything

and I was maybe getting around 40 to 50 frames and sometimes I'd hit 60 in certain areas and I have a I have an RtX 30 80 TI so it's like it's a pretty beefy GPU, but performance was not great, even with Nvidia DLSS on. And then I dropped it to like the lowest settings possible. And I was getting like 150 frames. And I was like, man, this is like lower visual quality, but I can't really tell.

And this looks amazing because it's working this fast and this smoothly. And I feel like Spider-Man is meant to move this fast and this smoothly. And obviously- I believe his catchphrase is got to go fast. Exactly, yeah. And obviously when we all played on the performance mode, it felt like, oh, this is the way to play it. But if you could, if you don't mind like having low shadow settings and it isn't even like terrible. I'm telling you, when this game is on low, it does not look bad at all. You're not going to, it's not going to look like shit, but it sings, man.

This shit runs so smoothly. And, uh, and that's kind of all I experienced. I just played a couple of the, a few of the first couple levels. I think I definitely Baird and blessed I played more than I have. You played more. I bear it might have played more, but yeah, I'm probably around a similar place. Of course, you know, I was excited to play this so I could play it on my steam deck. That was the one thing I was looking forward to with Spider-Man remastered.

And I played maybe like five to ten minutes before I was like, ah, no, it's not working right now. And I think it might be a similar thing with updates and with, you know, they've already, they've already pushed out updates during the review period that have fixed some steam deck issues. So I wouldn't be surprised to see maybe in the weeks coming or maybe even even. in the next few days, they push more updates than make it even more playable. But with the time I had with it, the frame rate issues were there.

And, you know, I put it all on the lowest settings. I was like, all right, cool. If I can get performance out of this thing, I don't need to look the prettiest. But for me, it was noticeable when I put it on low. There were, you know, the textures weren't crisp whatsoever, right? Like, and character models looked a bit fuzzy, that stuff that for me is noticeable

after playing Spider-Man and Miles Morales on PS5 and also playing Spire to Man on PS4. You know, after already playing this game with it looking good on console, playing the lowest-res PC version and then also the frame rate stuff not being up to par on my Steam deck, made me go, you know what, I'm going to wait. I'm going to wait for this to get fully updated and fully optimized for this thing. But, Bair, I think you played a little bit more than me, is that right? Yeah, I've been kind of playing in a little chunks throughout the last couple of weeks

just to see where the updates have gotten us, right? where, you know, when we first got it, the steam deck was not looking good for Spider-Man. And then, you know, things got fixed and we were actually able to play it. And, yeah, like, first out of the gate, it was like, okay, this isn't, you know, the best version out there, of course. I was having the same kind of struggling issues of frame rate. And, you know, like, I was also trying to, like, get into the back end of, like, all right, what steam settings should I also, or steam deck settings should I play around with to get them? most performance out of this and all of this stuff to make it as smooth as possible. Because, yeah, like a handheld Spider-Man graphically, I'm not expecting it to look like super

great. So I want that more smooth performance of making it feel buttery smooth as I'm swinging around New York. And even with the updates, I was playing a little bit last night because we got a pretty sizable update for Steam, I think, like a couple of days ago. That was like 30 gigs or something like that. and it still struggles. Having it low settings,

I capped it on the Steam Deck settings at 45 hertz, and even then it struggles a little bit. If I do 60, it just doesn't hit that, and it struggles a lot trying to balance getting the game to run low settings and run well on 60 frames per second. So maybe once the game's out for everybody, there will probably be people smarter than myself who can really get into all of the settings you should have in-game,

Steam deck settings you should have on or off while playing it to get the most out of it. Like, you know, when I booted up God of War 2018, that was after it had been on Steam and Steam Deck for months, so people had made like all these breakdown videos of like how, this is how you get the best out of this game playing it in handheld. And so, you know, I'm sure smarter people will be able to like figure that stuff out, even without more updates that will get it consistently to 60 frames per second and stuff like that. I think for right now it is a okay version of a handheld version of Spider-Man.

You can play it. Like if you want to push through the technical stuff, it is very playable. But I have to imagine, based on what they've done with God of War and also Death Stranding and other PlayStation games being very playable on Steam deck, I would think that, yeah, after a while, they get it there to where it's playable. And I'm excited for it, because even playing the first couple of, the first level, basically, on Steam deck, I was like, oh, this is special. I can't believe where I'm at right now with video games that I am playing Spider-Man 2018 handheld on this thing. And it looks even as good as it did, right?

Like, getting there with updates, I think we'll take it to a special place. Also worth noting that this game is provided by PlayStation. Yes. Yeah. And the last thing I'll say is, yeah, even with like 45, it would start. a little bit, but again, I think it's good enough for, again, a handheld version of this game that, you know, on PS4 Pro, on PS5, remastered, all that stuff looks like, super incredible. And, yeah, so I would say just go into it knowing that, you know, it's not going to be the, the high-end version that you would expect just because it's on the Steam deck. And definitely, this is one of the games that makes my Steam deck the loudest, for sure, that fan.

The hardware really struggles, I think, with it. And break tradition. Yeah. It can't be a PS4 original game without the hardware scene. Yeah, exactly. And so I was, you know, I was playing a little bit of that last night. And then I jumped into Batman Arkham Asylum, which, you know, looks great, runs great at 60 frames per second. And does not make that hardware work whatsoever.

And so, you know, it's just a question of maybe the Arkham games are better than Spider-Man, you know. Well, let's calm down now. I do want to give a shout out to how seamless using a dual sense on my PC was. I hadn't done it until this. And I was shocked. It just, it worked. And I never expected to work,

especially with how hard it was to get a dual shock four to connect to a PC forever. And you had to do so many workarounds to get that to happen. Xbox has been so great for just working. And like you even with buying a little wireless dangle or whatever. But it was great with the dual sense. Just being able to play it wired wireless and like no extra shit needed. Like that was very impressive to me. and I prefer the dual sense.

I know I might be in the minority on that one, but I definitely like being able to play it on this and just be like, wow, it just works. So, hey, they're doing something right. I can't wait to see more games come to PC from PlayStation. Speaking of controllers really quick, I did, this was even before I was getting into the hardware of how to make the game run,

just getting into the first combat scenario, I was like, you know, I think it was like bless on one of your videos where you're like, not every game is going to be a steam deck game and getting into the first fight, I was like, oh, this might be a non-steamed deck game. Just where the button layout and thumbstick layout, I was like, oh, this feels very weird with this. I had that a little bit too.

Yeah, how quick this combat feels and like just where everything is laid out. I was like, oh, this is definitely weird. I've gotten used to it after, you know, a couple of hours, but definitely know that there's going to be a little bit of that curve just because of the button layout. It definitely feels weird with Spider-Man for a bit. And I will say the, you know, when the takedown button prompt pops up above a enemy's head.

Yeah, B. Y. That seemed wrong to me. I was like, why is the square circle? This is perverted. I shouldn't be seeing a Y and a B here. It also doesn't register every time you actually hit it too. Like when I hit BY at the same time, he'll just dodge instead and it takes it. A couple tries to get him to actually use his takedown. So that's another thing to keep in mind. Moving on from Spider-Man.

Bless, you've been playing some multiverses. that evo in your blood right now you're thinking about fighting game champions dude let me the way that multiverses has grown on me in the last few days as i've hopped back into it to try and get a taste of what everybody else is feeling because if we remember right like months ago when we did the closed beta both me and and you were like i don't know like it seems like it has cool stuff about it but the the game field didn't seem all the way there i still have the same thing after playing quite a few hours on both what's today tuesday i played it on sunday and monday for quite a few hours each. And, you know, like the characters for me still feel like they're

running on ice. They feel they still feel not as tightened up as they need to be the, the collision when it comes to you combat doesn't feel, doesn't hit as right, right? And I feel like a lot of that is chalked up to, well, I'm a smash boy, right? I love myself some super smash brothers. Tim, I know I know you feel the same way because we had the conversation before about how, well, when you play smash and you've played so much smash, when you're jumping into a similar kind of game and it doesn't feel as good or it just feels inherently different. Something about it feels off. Now that I played a lot more in the last couple of days, that stuff still feels somewhat off, but the fun parts of multiverses have cropped up more and more. And now I think I'm

starting to get to the point where I'm lightly addicted to it. And it really, it really came to fruition with me when I was playing yesterday with Mitchell Salzman from IGN, where that was the first time where I dove deep into duos, which is the default way the game is supposed to be played, right? It's supposed to be a 2v2 game. And on Sunday, I was playing it 1 v1, and I was still having a good time. Playing it 2v2 and having it be this thing of, all right, what are the pairs that work the best? All right, you're going to use Batman. I'm going to use Finn from Adventure Time and let's have a good time. Let's see how we can do this. And getting into this flow of both of us knowing how to play that kind of game and then getting into that domination mode of we are beating.

people one after the other because, you know, we both, we're both coming off that Evo energy, right? We're all powered up. Having that was such a fun time. But then also the things about it that are Fortnite-like, right? The daily missions, the battle pass, leveling up each character, I was surprised now that this stuff is established in the, now that it's in the open beta, right? And there's actually a carrot on the stick to chase after. I'm surprised by how much that changed the game for me, where I, the missions that I had on Sunday were, hey, get, use two DC characters in a match, or use a DC character twice, you know, get five ringouts using projectiles. Hey, get a match done without using any modifiers, right? Like, they were,

the missions that they're giving for your daily missions that, you know, you do the daily missions to level up your battle pass faster. They had me playing the game in the, in different ways than what I would, then I would have done normally, right? Like, I didn't really have a DC main. And so I was like, all right, cool. I guess I'm going to try out Harley Quinn. Turns out I really like Harley Quinn. You know, like I wasn't.

Why, why not Superman? Why would you pass up for me? Generic, yeah. Yeah, basic generic. He doesn't have like, overrated. Any like unique thing about him, right? He's a strong. Lame as flies.

Yeah, look his costume. Stupid. Dumb as hell. Are you for your answer? I was rock. But no, yeah, I use Hardly Quinn. I would have kept going. Super Main is also a heavy character, and I'm not, like,

I don't really like using the heavy characters in fighting games, especially a Smash-like fighting game. And so, yeah, like, you know, there are other missions, like, yo, use your neutral attack like 30 times. And up to that point, I was not using my neutral attack, started using it. And I was like, oh, shit, this is cool. Like, it's making me think outside the box

in ways that I wouldn't normally playing this kind of game. But then also the leveling up of these character was something that I found that I've been finding fun as well, where I recently started off using a lot of Finn because, again, Finn from Adventure Time in this game plays a bit like Link in a way that I really like. You know, Young Link is my main in Smash Ultimate. And so coming in and using Finn and Finn having like his up special being the tornado spin, but he like uses his bag instead of his sword. But then also he is a sword character. And so like if you do a running, down smash, you are, you essentially do like a, you know, swipe forward with your sword and smash down. And if you are by the side of the stage, you're basically spiking people off the stage. Getting into that flow of, oh, I know how this dude is supposed to play. Oh, I'm about to rock it with this character. I found so fun. And as you play, you are unlocking these, uh, I forget what they're called, but they're essentially modifiers that you apply. Perks. Uh, perks. Thank you so much, Andy. You're unlocking perks that you apply to your character.

So there'll be things like, hey, if you, you know, add this perk, you can then hit enemies 10% further horizontally. Or, you know, you can throw projectiles, 20% faster. It is incremental stuff like that that will modify certain stats that your character has that normally, like playing smash, right? Like, we played a lot of smash here. I would never think about those things. And I know, like, spirits, I think, have some elements of that. But normally, that's somebody who didn't really get into, like, the, a plighter. plying spirits meta in smash the way I'm sure Tim did.

I never thought about like, oh, what if I can throw my projectiles 20% faster? Or what if I could hit an enemy 10% higher on each up smash, right? Those are things that I never thought about. Now that I'm getting these perks in multiverses, I am like, oh shit, all right, let's see what works best, especially with the tiered system they have for perks. They have like three slots for smaller perks and then one slot for a bigger perk. That is character specific. And so now with LeBron James, if I do a no-look-

What are I doing? Fighting game champion, LeBron James. Finding game champion, LeBron James, if I do a no-look pass to one of my teammates, that then buffs that skill. And I am now, like, going for no-look passes all the time when I'm playing as LeBron James. LeBron James is now my second main. You should know, I've been loving LeBron James in this game.

But, yeah, like, the carrot on the stick stuff in this game has been pulling me in so much. and then also having friends that are playing it as well and going, yo, let's hop in. I've been very surprised about, right? And that's been boosting it as well. The fact that, you know, Mitchell Salsman was playing. There's a whole discord that I'm in with like other fighting game folks that are into multiverses. My friend Yami was into into multiverses.

And now we're like, all right, when are you going to hop in? And, you know, I think that comes back to it being this cross-platform game that is available on things that aren't the switch. And then also it being free to play. So it being very easy to jump in. Like this game is having a life that I was not expecting it to have. And I am pleasantly surprised with how much fun it's been. And also like with how successful it's been, because it seems like the latest numbers are that it's hit over 10 million players.

And so like it seems like it's successful. And once it launches in 1.0, it'll probably continue to be successful. But yeah, I've been having a blast play in multiverses. And this will definitely start, I think, or continue the trend of free-to-play fighting games where... I hope so. All the fighting community just seems to be so ecstatic with this because this is going to bring in so many new players I would have otherwise never tried it

because spending $60 on a game, why not play that free version or whatever? But also it's just the quality is so high. I love that the small daily challenges, I think one problem with daily challenges that other games have experienced are usually super team dependent where when you'd play Halo and someone on your team has a challenge,

some random guy that you've never met has a challenge to like get five kills with this weapon. It's like, oh, you fucking suck with that weapon. Don't use, you know, like you run into issues like that. But in this game where you can play solo to knock out these challenges and not hinder anybody else's experience, I think is also super huge. Where I was playing with Mike and one of my challenges was use a tank character. And I'd never play as a tank character. But I'm playing with Mike, my friend.

And it's like, okay, well, I'll play as Iron Giant. Fuck it. Like, let me just try this out. We'll do a couple of matches and see how that goes. As opposed to, you know, in any other game when they would say, play as a tank. And it's like, well, I never play as a tank. But here we go. And I'm going to fuck up this experience for the other four or five people on my squad.

And here, it feels a lot less of an issue that you run into, like, pissing off any randos or anything like that. I thought the game's super fun. I played a lot as Ari. I think Ari is my main, and she just feels really good to play. Another sword character is super fast. She can throw her dagger, and when it sticks in somebody, she teleports to them, and she gets extra damage when she does backstabbing attacks. I unlocked the top perk where, like, I can throw the sword at my teammate.

Then when I shoot to them, then I get a damage buff for however many seconds. I think it's just really smartly thought out and I think it's going to continue to get traction in the fighting game space. And like I'm so excited to see where this game's going to be in about a year and a half from now. Like a year and a half to two years from now, see what the roster is going to look like. We've already seen supposed it leaks. And I just feel like this game is going to explode because of it being free to play and because of having all of the IPs and licenses. that they have kind of in their library. Is there a timing for the full release?

Soon. I want to say some in a few weeks. It got delayed recently. But I want to say that we're like two to three weeks away from the full release. Because right now they're- One of Rick and Morty. Yeah, season one with Rick and Morty,

which I'm actually very excited for. But yeah, like, I mean, to your point, Andy, about its success, I'm surprised by how much I'm already seeing it pop up on TikTok and on other platforms. Like it's been having a, having mainstream penetration in ways that makes sense for the IP that they're just shoveling into this thing. But also, yeah, the fact that it's free, the fact that it's easy to hop into, the fact that I do think the gameplay loop can get addicting. Like, funny enough, as somebody, for me,

as somebody who, you know, I like fighting games, I am looking for the stuff that, you know, plays tightly, the stuff that feels right, right? And so, like, the last year, you know, I've gotten into King of Artis 13. I was playing Guilty Gear Strive around this time last year. and then like the latest one DNF dual, I played a bit during the beta, but then I fell off after it came out. Hopping into multiverse, I was like, oh, there's no way. Like, there's no way this is going to pop off.

Like, it just doesn't feel right. And it turns out, like, there's, like, it goes way beyond feeling in terms of what this game is doing. Like it is, like you mentioned, right, for the free to play aspect of it, I do think that's going to be very important, especially to see if and how fighting games adapt to that going forward, because, you know, that has opened it up in terms of what character unlocks look like,

what, again, individual progression for characters look like, what cosmetics look like for each of these characters, things that fighting games have done before. But I think I've struggled with, you know, I look at Street Fighter 5, for example, that was, that came out as a premium video game, right? It is still a premium video game. That has had DLC packs to follow it. Last week, I was streaming it with Mike Imron and the homie Idaum, who was competing at Evo, was killing it at Evo.

What a fucking final. Jesus. Incredible, like, incredible content to watch. Incredible. Highly recommend everybody go watch that Street Fighter Top 8 for Evo if you missed it. But we were playing last week, and leading into the stream,

you know, I told Mike, hey, use the company account, buy me because we were playing on PC and I had the PlayStation version of the game. So I was like, hey, give me the game, but also gave me the latest version of the Challenger Pack that has the character Luke that I like to use.

And Mike gets the game, and then he buys Challenger Pack 4. And I'm like, oh, Mike, no, this isn't it. to give me Challenger Pack 5, right? And it's that thing of, this game is $60 anyway, right? Like, why are we paying so much money on top of that to get access to these characters? When, you know, you look at multiverses, and it is free to play, it is $10 for a thousand

gleamium or whatever. To unlock a character, it's 700 gleamium. And I don't want to play as every character, right? I don't need to buy a battle, a character pass with, you know, whatever the entire last season is. I just want a handful of characters, right? Let me use Iron Giant or let me get access to LeBron James. Let me try out just the characters that I want.

You know, you get that. And then you look at the cosmetics and it's like, yo, they got Cowboy LeBron in here, right? Like, I'm sure. I'm sure you're going to get more LeBron skin. The next skin is, is him in a Robin costume. Oh, yeah. Like, he's going to be dressed as Robin from Batman and Robin. And it's the La Robin costume, which is like an inside joke.

This is real. No, it's real. Yeah. And this is all like an inside sort of thing. And that's one thing that I love about the development is that like you could tell these people know what they're doing and they're not just people throwing in IPs for the sake of IPs. Like he, a lot of a lot of his career he was called, he was insult and called La Robin to Dwayne

Wade's Batman because people are like, oh, well, Dwayne Wade's the real player on the heat. So like I think this is a play on that. It probably has to be. But also LeBron's moves are like one of his moves, I think his. forward smash is when he pointed at got mad at J.R. Smith because J.R. Smith didn't know that the game was tied and he was like, that was like a huge moment in sort of meme basketball history.

That's like his forward smash attack is him pointing at the scoreboard. This is his neutral smash. Yeah. And then his upsmash is when he throws up the powder before the game starts. Like it's just they care and they know what the hell they're doing. And it feels like. It feels like. like it, you know? It's, yeah, I like they have, um, ultra instinct shaggy in here, too, which originally I ruled my eyes at, but now that I played the game enough, I am like, damn, ultra instinct shaggy is kind of cool. Like, I'm kind of digging this character as well. Um, but I mean, even speaking to LeBron, LeBron is one of my mains because his move set is ridiculous.

And not only to the fact that, you know, it's a really fun move set to use, but it works so well with the character, right? His up special is him essentially, you know, shooting a jump shot, whereas his right special, no, his neutral special is him doing a pass, right? And that then lets go with the ball. And so you have two states of LeBron. You have LeBron with the basketball in his hand and LeBron without the basketball on his hand. And those have two separate movesets. And like, it is this really cool thing of, hey, if you have the ball on your hand, you're more powerful.

And then you have more projectile type of moves that you can do to get distance on your opponents. If you don't have a ball on your hand, then it is all about melee. And once you get a melee on an opponent, that's how you get the ball back in your hand magically. And I've been really enjoying using that character and trying to find the different ways in which I can kind of combo moves. And so it is me, me like zeroing in on an opponent using my neutral special to pass the ball to them, hit them. The ball bounces off of them back to me. And then I go for the side special, which is a dunk. And that does big damage on them.

And that was something that I just figured out on my own in the lab. And I was like, I'm going to use this like crazy. And it's been so fun to do. And yeah, I've been very surprised by the amount of depth that it seems like a lot of these characters have. And a lot of it is still messy. Like, I do think there's some work to be done in terms of making it not so chaotic on screen, especially when it is 2V2. Like, I can't, I feel like this game in a tournament setting might be a little bit difficult to keep up with and watch. And even as I've been playing it, right, like, again, yes, I mean Mitchell were playing.

There were times where I felt myself button mashing because there's so much happening on screen. like I'm fighting against aria Stark and she's doing the short thing yeah yeah you get lost yeah yeah you get lost I think there are things they can do to tighten that up and they're they've already talked about a lot of the updates they're making they're redoing the hipbox and herpox system they're like really trying to make this thing that make a thing that is viable and that's going to last for a while and I'm at the point now where I truly do believe in it I think I think this has a big feature ahead of it in the way that we talk about the memeable status of it like I don't think this game gets immemable until LeBron James joins the roster because in

Until then, it's other IP doing stuff and it's Bugs Bunny fighting Shaggy and Batman fighting Superman and whatever. Like, I feel like we've kind of seen that. But in the same way that a Fortnite me might pop off because Thanos is twerking with the fucking master chief and, you know, whatever the hell is happening in Fortnite. Like, and all that shit just looks really funny to visualize and to see Cratos dancing in a silly way. to see suddenly LeBron James just passing the ball to Velma and her just stuck up against the wall getting hit by the ball. Like, it looks so stupid. And I don't think the game really hits that saddest until an NBA player,

LeBron James is now on the roster. It's just, it's really silly to see. I think honestly, like to that point, I think LeBron James has done a lot for this game. Yeah, I think it's taking it to another level. I'm like, oh, shit, all right, who else are they going to add to this thing? Don Shegel. Algyrhythm, baby.

Oh, my, get Al-Lbron. rhythm up in this. Oh God, please no. Greatest villain of them all. This has been the Kind of Funny Games cast. Of course, let us know in the comments below what you are thinking about multiversus. Who is your main?

And are you excited for Colt of the Lamb? If you're patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Game supporter, guess what? We're about to debut a fantastic new post show. Isn't that right, bless? That is right. Do you want to know what it's called? Yeah, give a little teasey tease.

It's called OS tease. If Tim doesn't win this, this is the biggest blow to his identity I've ever heard. Wait, let's go. Tim for everyone else. I know. I needed to win. Thank you, but thank you.

I love you all. Goodbye.