Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Dead Island 2 Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: April 18, 2023

Greg and Mike have been playing Dead Island 2, and boy, do they have opinions about the new first-person zombie RPG. Time Stamps - 00:00:00 - Start 00:03:00 - Housekeeping 00:03:45 - Dead Island 2 Review 00:28:30 - Ads 00:29:35 - Dead Island 2 Living in the Past 00:51:09 - What’s Andy Been Playin’? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Gamescast, our Dead Island 2 review. I'm on your host, Blessing, Adioia Jr. Join me is WWE superstar Greg Miller. He went to you. Hey, Wes, how you doing? Good to see you. I appreciate you go to me. Honestly, I just have a bullet pointed in the dock, and so you're going to get it first no matter what.

I thought we talked about no looking at the dock. Well, not for this show. I usually don't host this show. No doc. No doc. You feel it inside, bless. I'm going to feel it for KFCU. I'm going to feel it for KFCU.

For Gamescast, I'm looking at the dock. Isn't that right? The master of hype. Mike. That is correct. Of course, Greg, as you know, we've put down the gauntlet for one blessing at E. Oye Jr. throughout all of the week at Kind of Funny Games Daily. He has to do the entire show intro, looking dead into the camera without staring at his

notes. Now, do you think you'd do that? For KFGD? For KFGD? Yeah. I think I can get pretty close. We get to find out because Wednesday he's hosting. Oh, you're on the hosty Wednesday. Okay, there you go. Without the dock. Wednesday, without the dock, I will do it just like you. I can't wait to see the intro. Why does it have to, why does a gunland have to be thrown? We want to make each other better, all right? Yeah, exactly. I like the people over on the kind of funny streaming side,

or maybe just the kind of funny thing where they talk about goddamn bats all day long, all right? We want to make our content better. I did watch it today. It was really good. It was really good today. I like the party you talked about bats. How are you doing? The globe trotting, headshotting,

clucking heads and ripping them to shreds, the Texas Street, Latino heat, the rootin-tudin, three-point shooting, Twitch.tv slash Andy Cortez. I'm doing really, really great blessing. I'm ready to talk video games with you all. and I'm ready to ask these guys about zombies. Who do you, voodoo, bitch?

Where's that from? What do you like to know? Wow. That's the first. You don't know that iconic song? This kid's on me. That's why he's not on the review. He's here to ask questions.

All right? He's like so many other people, you know what I mean? Who maybe don't remember 2011's Dead Island? They don't remember the game from 12 years ago. That's finally getting a sequel. With Sam B, who do you voodoo? It's a great song. Is that from the game?

game? Yeah, there was a song on a Who Do You Voodoo Bitch by St.B? It's the opening of the game, dude. It's insane. Wait, is it really from the opening of the game? Uh-huh, yeah. I did play, like, the first hour of that game. I could not tell you about anything about, who do you, who do you, who did you? The original Dead Island. Yeah, it opened up. But also, it was very

unremarkable to me, and so I'm very excited to talk about Dead Island, too. Here, if it's just as unremarkable, or if it's more remarkable. Because remember, this is the kind of funny games cast, where each and every week we get together to talk about the hottest topics in video games. You can get this show add free, watch it live as a record, and get a whole bevy of bonus content over on patreon.com

slash kind of funny, just like our Patreon producers did, Delaney Twining and Tripod Plus Plus shout out to them. Or you can watch it on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games and roosteat. Or you can listen on your favorite podcast service to search for Kind of Funny Gamescast. Remember, you can use Epic Creator Code, Kind of Funny on all Epic Store and Epic Ingame purchases like Rock or League and Fortnite to help support the channel. How's keeping for you. Barrett's next video essays just around the corner, join him on Wednesday, April 19th at 2 p.m. Pacific time after the game stream, while he talks about why Jedi Fallen Order is his favorite Star Wars game

on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. And over on Patreon for this week's Remember Blank, we're talking all about, remember that game you can't believe came out in honor of Dead Island too. Right in, right now on Kind of Funny.com slash remember blank to get your memories read on the show. Today we're brought to you by Rock and Money, but we'll tell you about that later for now. Let's begin with what is and forever will be topic of the show. Tots, tots, tots, toss, toss, toss, toss. I like it.

Bring a little PSI love you flavor. Of course. You gotta add some flavor to it. Today is our Dead Island 2 review. Greg, you're a lead reviewer. Yeah. Mike, you've played the game. I am more than halfway through the game.

Andy, you've not touched the game. Don't plan on it. And that's the same thing for me, right? I have touched the game a little bit, but I've been waiting on the final verdict before seeing if I want to touch more of the game. Greg, as our lead reviewer, should I touch Dead Island too?

How much of it did you play? How much have you already touched? I touched 30 minutes. Okay. And it left you completely underwhelmed? I, yeah. I played 30 minutes and I was kind of like, all right, this doesn't seem remarkable.

Let me wait. This is a video game. I wasn't like, oh, this seems bad or anything. It was like a, this isn't blowing me away currently. I'm going to put it down and wait. and see for reviews. I think then you probably shouldn't come back to it. Dead Island 2 is for me a three out of five on the kind of funny scale.

It is an okay video game, which, of course, I find you can have a lot of fun with, as you know, from, of course, Sonic Frontiers, right? That was one of your things. And early on when I was playing it, I was like, this strikes me as it's going to be a Sonic Frontiers for me, which, of course, you infamously said it's a three out of five. I'm scoring it a three out of five, but it's a five out of five to me in terms of enjoyment in terms of the world, yada,

yada, yeah, yeah. Dead Island 2 doesn't get there. What Dead Island 2 does is bring Dead Island and Dead Island Riptide

into 2023. It brings it all in, I think, while dropping the main complaints I found in 2011 and 2013 with the game, which were performance issues.

It not loading quickly, it crashing a lot, being buggy. I played on PlayStation 5. I had zero crashes. I found the loads to be very quick, very good. I think the game

itself is pretty in terms of like you see this LA cityscape right here as we go through and brawl in the hills with some people right um however it's just an okay game and it's that you know if you want to borrow of course from our friends before right of it's swimming in sevens uh three out of five at a five out of five like there's nothing wrong with being an okay

game I thoroughly enjoy Dead Island too and it's funny I went back and watched my Dead Island review in 2011 from IGN.com I went back and watched my Dead Island riptide review from 2013 on IGN.com and both of those video reviews sound very similar to everything I'll say today in terms of like, look,

this isn't a fantastic game. In 2011, I did give it 8.0, which was great. Then Riptide was the 7.2 and you can see it continue as video games have caught up, changed, evolved, and done a bunch of stuff. And as we are less impressed

by open worlds, zombies, right? You hear me in Dead Island 11 be like, yo, it's fallout. It's an open world fallout with zombies. That's cool, right? It was. Now we have dying light. There's a million other things doing it, let alone zombie fatigue.

Open world changes, yet, yeah, yeah. We'll get to all that. For Dead Island 2, though, it is just like my, my commentary on it is so much like Dead Island and Dead Island Riptide, where it's like, listen, Dead Island 2, I find to be fun. I like to run around zombie RPG worlds. I like to get more powerful. I like to scavenging materials and then make. my weapons better and see the numbers go up and be able to kill things quicker.

However, it is the same commentaries before where, listen, this is just empty calories. It is, it is, it is a, I think it is a fun video. It is a flat fun. It is a flat three out of five. It is an okay video game that I enjoyed my time with and I will continue to play right now until the next big thing, right? Until the next game comes around. It fills that gap.

And that works for me right now as a reviewer, I think, as somebody who, you know, all these different games and is ready to move on to the next thing. And, you know, of course we have Star Wars. Of course we have Zelda. There's so much happening around us right now. I wonder what that means in 2013 to the audience, though. In terms of like, this is a fun game, I think, to go through and do stuff. Is it as good as Dying Light 2?

No. Dying Light 2 is a better game, you know, as a complete package. Personally, in terms of worlds I like, I like the more, hey, the zombie outbreak just happened here. We are in a zombie movie, whereas Dying Light 2 is you're in. in Mad Max. We've been living with this. We've changed and done stuff. But, you know, the whole parkcoring of Dead Island, I'm sorry, Dying Light 2, I think the twist and turns of the story up until the ending that we all hated, Bless, there's more going on there to sink your teeth into, whereas Dying or Dead Island 2 is an enjoyable experience. It is the 30 minutes

you played, you are going to play for me. It's 20 hours until I rolled credits on the story, and I did side stuff here and there, and I'm still going back and doing it. But it's going to be that, you know, exponentially. I do think it does interesting things in terms of, you know, instead of going through and leveling up and choosing your skills like you did in Dead Island One and Dead Island Riptide, they've replaced it now with a card system. So as you level up, you pop a new card that you can then play on your deck or whatever, which then changes your stuff. And you know, as you do that or find them in the world, you can change it. And so by the end, I was getting things that I was putting into my build that was making like, oh, I do, I do stomp heads when they're

on the ground a lot. So being able to stomp ahead and either, you know, send a lot. And, you know, off an explosion or get a bit of health back, that is good for me. That is helpful for me. Oh, I, you know, I am burning people a lot and using electricity on people a lot. So the fact that if I do that and they die with it, they explode and take up the zombies around them, that's a good buff for me. However, like, you know, it still is just running around melee weapons for the most part. There's our guns in the game, but not, it's not a first person shooter. I wouldn't go that way. There's a lot more to talk about, but I am just hogging the thing. I think it's a three out of ten. It is a three out of ten. I enjoy. If you liked Dead Island,

if you like Dead Island Riptide, there's no reason not to like this, but it's not like it's reinventing the wheel or really turning your head. One more thing I want to piggyback on before... To be clear, a 3 out of 5 just before... Got to say 3 out of 10 again? Sorry. We're going back and watching the IGN reviews and putting my IGN scores

in my head, I've thrown it off today as I've talked to other people about it. Before you get to my... Three out of five. One thing I want to piggyback on based on what you just said, I've been looking forward to this game for the idea of, man, I hope this can be what dying Light 2 was for me last year. Yeah. Where I went to dying Light 2, I had low expectations.

Ended up enjoying that game a lot because it fulfilled this, oh man, okay, I'm getting a lot of quests. I'm enjoying this parkour, going through this world, fighting the zombies, doing the puzzles, the obstacles, whatever they throw at me. I really just enjoyed the moment's moment of that game. Watching the reveal trailer or the re-reveal trailer for Dead Island 2, it seemed like it had this fun energy to it that I thought could be a secret sauce for Dead Island 2. Would you say that this game has any secret sauce that separates it from dying light too for people who might have played that game and want to hop into another game that's like it? Well, specifically jumping off your point, I think that's a big missed opportunity for it.

Of course, you're in L.A., you know, HaleA, as they call it over and over again. It opens with, you know, you and of course you can pick between four survivors to play us. Of course, this is co-op. You can get it with other people, yada yada yada. Six survivors. Oh, shit, really? Six slaves. I picked my, I picked Amy and never looked back.

He got the first person that's right. Yeah, yeah. Well, I went through them all. They're all like class. base, I'm assuming? Yeah, they have different, you have innate cards. Every person starts with two cards, so you have built-in abilities, and I like to Amy's the most. That's why I started there.

Thanks for the correction, Mike. But, yeah, outside of their personalities, I think you get in that opening cutscene of the plane, I don't think they double down enough on that, where L.A. should be, it is this really colorful places you've seen there, right? And I feel like they could have done a lot more with that, and they don't. So instead it is like, I think they're working with well-known stereotypes for the L.A. Actress, the assistant, right? the bunker guy who's going to sit down here and has missed the whole thing,

but it's kind of been looking forward to it, a number of other ones in there, muscle-bound dudes, but they don't play it up, right? They don't do that to really make you go, oh, ha, ha, ha, this is a fun satire of it, nor do they give you anything interesting with it. I think the story is the most forgettable thing about it, where it's just like, I, Barrett the other day was talking to me about a game he was playing, and he's like, yeah, I've been looking for a game to play with a podcast. And, like, this is a podcast game where, like, I would, I would probably, you know,

muting the voice work for the other characters or whatever or skipping every cutscene but still being able to hear zombies but listening to something while I play. Mike, what's been your experience so far? Yeah, Greg did a great job of running through that and, you know, to keep up with the word of the day, this is a unremarkable game, but I did not expect dying,

or dying Dead Island to be remarkable. It's going to be remarkable. So I wasn't looking for this game to be a remarkable video game. I was looking for this to be a fun video game and I actually had a really tough time finding the fun. the nights that I played this. I think Greg has touched on a lot of key points.

I think going into Dead Island too and having it Haleigh and kind of playing that up, I would have thought they would have brought more fun into the characters that you meet, the dialogue, the writing just seem to fall flat. It just becomes very basic lines. No characters will stand out or be remarkable

to you of like, oh man, do you remember that fun hippie dude up in the hills? Like, none of them will be that. And that's an unfortunate part right there because I think that's where you do separate yourself from dying light too, right? I think The movement is a big miss. Coming off the back of Dying Light 2, I am surprised that we didn't have a grapple hook.

I am surprised we didn't have a wall run or some sort of crazy double jump, right? Like, it really kept two. Boots on the ground. There's a small light slide. You have a Dodge that plays out pretty well if you get used to the Dodge mechanic. But really, they missed the fun factor in this game.

And for me, I expect to see reviews landing at the six out of 10 marker. I think we'll have some highs of eights. We'll have some lows of about four. but I think this is going to settle in on these six to seven range. I'd be shocked at these mates. I'd be shocked at these. There will always be one nutcase that will give you a nice. I can guarantee you when we open this up on release day.

There will be one nutcase with an eight out of there. But I'm more on the two out of five on the kind of funny scale. This is a very densely populated, well-done, detailed open world, semi-open world. Of course, it's now broken into a bunch of different zones that you will instantly recognize. And I was impressed. I talked about it during our world. our preview on Kind of Funny Games Daily of like,

I'm impressed with the detail. The world looks good, right? It is next gen when it comes to the graphical fidelity, what the zombies look like, how you can rip and tear and just break apart the zombies is truly impressive, right? Like if you get a sludge hammer to the top of the zombies, you can

rip that wig right off. And it is awesome to see the insides of the skull and all the bones and flesh. Like I am really impressed with what they did on the zombie side of things. When it comes to just the fun, that's where it's really going to get lost on. if you're turning it into a podcast game, that's too bad, right? Because I'm looking for the fun dialogue.

I am looking for that. But yeah, 80% of the game, you could take your headphones off. You wouldn't miss anything, I promise you. You know what I mean? That's kind of disappointing on the other side of like when we talk about video games. I didn't know we want to just listen to metal music over the video game, right? That's certain kinds. But yeah, the fun factors miss there.

The card system is interesting, right? As Greg said, it is fun to build and change up your load out. It is just us moving away from a skill tree and saying, how can we still put those skills and attribute points into something different? Oh, what if we just gave you cards instead? I think it's a beautification of the skill tree as we move into that next generation of video games and what everybody wants to play. Each one of the slayers all have its interesting attributes.

I will tell you, I picked Bruno, which looks like a little pump, right? Like all tatted up. He's got the little pink dreadlocks. You think that he's going to be interested in fun. And the unfortunate part is his dialogue lines right from the moment go sound like generic Soldier 42, right? He has no charisma, nothing that stands out. And it is disappointing, right? Because I thought we'd get some flashy wild characters. I'd bring up again the fun, but like, I thought at least our Slayers would have some fun dialogue lines. Unfortunately, nothing really pops out

at me or stands out and it's memorable. On top of that, I would be very encouraging and I would tell each and every one of you that's about to jump into this game. Be mindful of who you pick. I picked Bruno. He is the least amount of health possible. And I, I will tell you that that is going to become a factor because it is a melee-centric game. You're going to be in the weeds with these zombies. And I found a lot of frustration coming from not having enough health, dying quickly, and having to replay parts over and over again, which was very surprising to me, right?

I thought we'd have a little more love there, but he is very much dodge and weave. And the moment that you don't read one, right, you're going to go down at about three hits with Bruno. So I really encourage you to take a look at your play style. Be mindful of that and look at the characters in front of you. don't pick off of just looks alone like I did with Bruno, which is unfortunate. And that's one of those spaces where I think the card system works against it based on the traditional skill tree.

Yeah. Where I wish it could be that you could, okay, I'm going to invest in my health point. Exactly. I thought it was crazy that my inventory never expanded. You know what I mean? You just had the wheel is right. Yeah, you have a wheel and then you have the back in. And I forget, I want to say it's like eight and eight, but don't quote me on that.

But there's the section you have on like the hotkeys and then the section you have like in your backpack. Yeah. And I thought for sure I was going to expand out so I could carry more stuff. never did. And of course, this is a big game of scavenging and looting. Like you are going through and looting every suitcase, looting every room if you're playing like I do and you want to be meticulous that way to find the secret messages, but also get better weapons to then either break down for the components to then upgrade or to take back and sell the people to get the

money to buy the things you need to go off of traders that are out there. Definitely. And to wrap it up, I mean, of course, crafting is going to be at the high end of this game, right? Like, Dead Island, Dying Light, Dead Rising. It's all about crafting, right? It is a is putting the player first of, hey, you need to go into these menus. You need to craft, right? You need to make it your own. And that's the fun part about this game is like there's a lot of awesome environmental cues where you can stand by a kiddie pool and just electrocute all the zombies.

You can blow up fire barrels and have some fun with that. But that comes on the player to make it your own playground. So you're going to have to really get in the weeds with crafting to make that a good time. You know, all in all, I think it is a well-done world. I think L.A. is much better than Dying Light on the concrete. contrast of where you're at, what the story is, the beautification of it all. I love how detailed it is. It is much shorter, only 24 levels.

Very interesting on that one, 24 main missions. It has a lot of side missions to do. It has a lot of collectibles to go get lost. And so I am impressed with that, but I am blown away that is such a short game, right? This is going to be about three nights if you're really tearing through this game. And so I don't know where I fall on that one. I think they want you to replay it with others in co-op. I think they want you to check out the other Slayers.

is right, but when you first kick it on, you play that first night, you're going to go out to the menu and it's going to say, oh, you did 11 out of 24 missions. I think a lot of players are going to go, man, that's a short game right there, which is interesting to me. Sure. Yeah, I appreciate that the homepage drops that information on you. Right. 24 story quests, 33 side quests, 15 loss and found quests, and then 84 challenges. The challenge is, I will only pay attention to for trophies. But then, yeah, the rest being there. Side quests, I still have a ton left to do, though. But again, what do you want, you know, bank for your buck.

And also nothing stands out on the side question. But that's my thing about it, right, which I think is interesting, because we're both in the same page in a lot of ways. I feel like for me, the fun factor did come from, oh, I really love this katana. Oh, it's electrified. That's great. Stick with it. You know, earn the materials, get the money so that I can increase it with my level,

eventually get something better that's more, you know, a legendary or a superior or whatever it is. Cycle those things in. Break it all down and make my weapons different. Because for me, the fun of it is getting from point A to point B, how am I going to kill the zombies. And one of the things you bring up, right, is using the sandbox nature of it, right? This game, I would say, when Dambuster took over for this, because of course, remember, Dead Island 2 has had a hellish development cycle, correct? Yeah, Yeager development was originally

hired to develop in LA. Nice. Dead Island 2 in 2012, but was removed from the project in 2015, replaced by Sumo Digital the following year. Sumo Digital was also removed with Dambuster, an internal studio of Deep Silver becoming developers in 2019. I think not to its detriment. Because again, I'm a guy who professionally reviewed two of these games, or three of them now, but two before, right? And when I went and watched my video reviews, that's when I was like, oh, right, that zombies from Dead Island 2 was in that game.

Oh, that, oh, they're the butcher, the giant crusher, like you, the exploder, slop or spit, or whatever they call. I'm like, oh, right, these are guys from the other game that are back in this game. I think Dan Buster really looked at this and was like, we want to make a modern Dead Island, for better or worse. Obviously a little bit better, but I don't know.

It is technically. We want to do all these different things, but what is our stamp on it? And like, you know, both Dead Island and, of course, dying light, and like you said,

even Dead Rising, right? Modding your weapons isn't new. That was back in the day, a big thing I remember for Dead Island one when I was playing that one. I was like, oh, this is cool. I'm making an electrified knife.

Neat. Obviously, it's all old now. What they really did to step up and say, what's going to separate ours is these environmental hazards. Yeah. So every place you go has water, like, you know, the jerse cans of water or gas around, the big red tanks, the gas spills, water with, you know, the electrical cable hanging

in and dilapidated buildings. And this is all meant for you to, rather than get into a scrum, get surrounded by 20 zombies, it's meant to be that, you know, light the fire, step back, bait them to you, let the fire do a lot of the work till you're down to. like the apex variance they call it and stuff like that. It's interesting. You know, talking about the environmental hazards, right? It's cool at first. It becomes very repetitive after a while. I'm sure all the gamers in the comments will be, oh man, it's the same red barrel. It's the same kiddie pool with the electric.

I do wish that they took that to another level, right? Sure. We saw in Dying Light 2, which was very interesting of like environmental hazards became traps. And we just played, of course, Callisto Protocol, where you were grabbing the zombie monsters, throwing them into just wall traps. I wish there was some elevation of Hey, let's put some traps around here. Let's have some fun with that because it is, hey, there's 20 red barrels. Hey, there's just a downed electrical wire, throw some water on it.

Like, it doesn't really get past that point. And I think we could have played a little bit more in the sandbox, like you said, of like, what else can we put here? Because it comes down to environmental hazards, puzzle solving is also the same generic puzzle all the time. We should save that all to itself. I mean, we're going to talk a lot about like some of the pitfalls here. But I think you had a lot of room to play in this genre that is the open world. hack and slash zombie slaying game and they took a lot of like let's just stick with

or Dead Island let's be that which is fine but also at the same time it doesn't elevate that that's why that's why again like I think if you are interested in this game yeah it's a fun time for me you know if you're a dead island fan but it is that same thing where it's just like you could pass by and not play it be fine it's not that kind of thing but like yeah to your point you're 100% correct of like it is that thing of like you walk in and there is the giant pool of water the giant thing of gasoline like okay like you know, like, maybe I use it, maybe I don't, as my weapons got better, I didn't, it became fine.

There's, you know, you talk about dying a lot, which, and I'm not making a joke here, wasn't my case for the most part. It would be the, you know, the giant inflex points, like you're talking about, inflection points, where it was like, here's a main mission. When I, I would die in just a casual fashion,

I was kind of impressed of, even though I'm playing a single player, it would load me in as if it was a co-op game where I came back and the people I killed were still dead. It was now down to the people I was fighting already, if I'd open a door. I'm like, okay, cool. That doesn't work for boss battles

for big story beat moments. You have to sit there cut scene and go in and again, which I didn't find annoying. I honestly felt like that level of strategy of like, fuck, I almost had it, but that last second they spawned an exploder from there. So this time I'm gonna do,

like I liked that and that was when I was using the environmental hazards and feeling really cool about it. Whereas the other times were like, all right, cool, fire, run backwards. They're running into it, done with them, run around. It wasn't like an awesome, awesome thing. No, I was going to say it was so interesting, the checkpoints,

because I noticed that too of like, what is going on with these checkpoints? Because when you're in the open world, yeah, those zombies are already dead. Like you've made progress and that felt good and rewarding when you'd get like those deaths that you're like, ah, that's BS, you know what I mean? But yeah, when you're in the normal story, it's like, oh, no, you're back to a real checkpoint here. Redo it all again. And it was like, man, as a single player, especially on Bruno's side with no health, it felt frustrating because on the opposite side, when you did get that checkpoint and

a number of zombies were taken down. It's like, oh, that's nice. That's rewarding. I feel like I'm chipping away. I'm dead. I can come back and have a better try. Like it is a little demoralizing, restarting everything when it's like, oh, that's a better checkpoint system right there. I think, you know, again, I think part of it is probably a bit of philosophy in terms of what they want, and I'm projecting here. I don't know. My thought would be since it's a multiplayer game, they want you to be able to drop in, encourage you to open your game and let people in for those points. Again, you get through them or maybe you're frustrating, quit the game and don't come back. I enjoy doing it personally, and there was,

one, yeah, last two nights ago, I guess, which was the final boss, where I was like, it was a series of fuck, but it was always a fuck, I'm gonna get it. Fuck, oh,

didn't get this time. Fuck, okay. Well, and like, oh, I got it in like that moment. Like, I loved that. For Mike who said he was struggling

with some of the difficulty, what are the accessibility and difficulty options, if at all? I didn't notice any difficulty options. I thought I looked to go into easy mode. I did not see any. I could be wrong,

but like, I thought I kicked that on and was like, where's the easy mode? when I was playing as Bruno a number of times and never saw one. Yeah, I never even looked for it, so I couldn't tell you that be truthful on that one.

I know that, like, you know, one of my things was the idea of, you know, it's a, you're leveling as you play the game, right? Early on, very early on in the hills of Hollywood or whatever, I went off to the side and was greeted with some zombies that had a big skull on them. Like, oh shit, okay, sure enough, they killed me

in one hit, right? And they were just normal ass zombies. It was like, okay, well, this is gated to some degree. I shouldn't go that way, blah, blah, blah. When I got later in the game, and we were in the game, and we were in, like, okay, it's pretty much the final run of, like, again, you're counting down on the main screen. I think it was when I had three or two or three missions left. I popped into take on

the main mission and they were two levels above me, which was like, oh, shit, I'm getting hit here and it's actually hurting. I need to be a bit more of, I die a few times against normal ass zombies. And I was like, cool, clearly when I kill them, I'm going to get more XP than normal. No, you kill them. You got the same amount as XPs if I was fighting the normal thing. I was like, oh, that's lame. You know what I mean? Like, if I'm going to be challenged, I think I should get the reward there. Yeah, that's an interesting. system of like this leveling system, but also the enemies are leveling up with you. So you're going into spots where it's like they're a little bit higher than you.

I found that to be really interesting of like, could we have done this differently where they're just zombies? Did I need the health bar there? Do we need to really have them level up with me? Right. I think some of the frustrations I had was like coming around the corner, you're like, why is this guy got a skull on his head? Like do we really need that?

Like let's just have fun. Let me take on the big thwacking zombie, you know, the big muscle head. And let's just have a good time, right? Like why does he need to have five levels? ahead of me. It's very interesting on like that. I'd like to know the inner outs of that of like, why can't they just all be regular zombies here? Sure.

You know, while we're starting to teeter over here, I think things that are cons, for me the biggest con. Again, I think for Dam Buster to come in here, I would have loved to have seen what Yeager was doing and what Sumo was doing, right? Because this is so safe. This is so just Dead Island that you

have to imagine that the other two Dead Island twos that never saw the light of day, maybe we're off track or behind, but must have hopefully been something radically different. And this one, they were like, Dan Buster just fucking make Dead Island again, and they made Dead Island again. And like we keep saying,

that's fine for if you like Dead Island or whatever, but like how does it work in 2023? It is, I would almost say, unforgivable that they don't have crossplay for this. Oh, like the first thing when you log in, you turn it on and it says connecting to Epic servers or whatever.

And it's like, well, why am I not logging with my Epic game account to play with everybody? Instead, you are silent. You play with PlayStation people. You play with Xbox people. You play with PC people.

You're not able to get in there, use your epic name and go crossplay, which is stupid for a game that is all about, hey, get in there with your friends and go play multiplayer and go kill some stuff. Yeah, especially a game that's going to have probably a smaller audience, right? Of like, I'm going to struggle to convince my friends after this of you to buy this at full price, right? And then on top of that, it's like, yeah, crossplay is a must in 2023, especially for a game like this. There's really no reason that you're not pushing for that and really working hard to achieve that goal. Because, yeah, everybody should be playing with each other here,

no matter what system they want. You know, a copy sold is a copy sold in my book. So let's make that happen, it's right. Now, I want to talk more about Dead Island, too. But before we do, I want to tell the world about patreon.com slash kind of funny games. Over on patreon.com, that's kind of funny games, you can get the show ad-free. And speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.

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development hellate development limbo. Are there elements of the game that feel like they live in the past from that? You know, you talk about it seeing multiple studios. Are there things where it feels like, oh, yes, came up with this idea in 2013 or 2014? And on the flip side, are there things that Dead Island 2 brings to the table that feel brand new, that feel fresh? I would say, my honest needs your reaction without having thought about it ahead of time would be no and no. Yeah. I don't, you know, you made a comment about at the top that, you know, one of the remember blanks this week.

on patreon.com slash kind of funny is a game you can't believe came out like for everything dead island two's gone through the fact that it's out and about to be upon everybody is crazy but it's also when i booted it up like even though when mike went to the preview event and i was like how was it like i was like dude it is dog shit it doesn't work it doesn't and then he's like oh it's fine it's not you know blah blah no oh shit okay and so when i booted it up i'm like clearly there will be something wrong and i play dude and it was like oh no again it's such a weird one and I think it's so reminiscent of my last two Dead Island reviews, right? Of like, there's nothing wrong.

It just is. It is a video game. It is a flat three. It is okay in that you can take that however you want to and whatever you want to do with it. But in the same breath, yeah, there's, I don't think there's anything this game does. Or I was like, wow, that is a cool, inventive new idea. I think it is a conglomeration of everything from Dead Island before it. You know, new systems or menus, new I think the UI looks great for the most part.

I guess the world looks great and the UI in your HUD and stuff looks great. The two different menus I'm never a fan of. Come on. Just give me one menu to get into. Make it cleaner. Anyways. But then it's like, again,

the only thing they do this time around is the environmental hazards, but they're so on the fucking nose. It's the same with their puzzles. You want to talk about why Dying Light 2 is a better game than Dead Island 2, right? It was, remember in our review for Dying Light 2,

we had conversations of like how much I enjoyed just going into rooms be like, oh, fuck, what do I need to do? And that power count, it goes there, but I can't get there. But if I do, you know, oh, wow, this is really fun. Dead Island, too, is, oh my God, you walk into this room and I got to turn all these valves to make the numbers match the numbers on the thing. And like,

Mike never even learned it. He just randomly spun wheels and got it all that happened. And it's like, there's a few other of like, oh, this security office is locked, right? And you see the lockbox and then it goes up to these two power cords that split off and go, and you come around and you smash the one box and you walk around and you throw you your ninja star through the window and take out the other box and you're like all right, walk into the security thing. The other main

one is, oh, the gate doesn't have power. Oh, just go grab a box and put it back into the other box. It's very, very basic. You'll do that probably 20 times. Circuit breakers are big. A lot of circuit breakers in this world. Circuit breakers that have no vision there. I'd say I'm still kind of confused about the overall gameplay loop because when I look

at a game like Dying Light and we did a sponsor stream for it where I kind of understood the rhythm and kind of what Dying Light was asking of the player. And there was a lot of stealth. There was a lot of finding the big watchtowers to then find your checkpoints.

There was, it seemed like there was a lot of kind of like the world was very living, right? And that was kind of the problem that I had with Redfall when we played it. This is a world that's living dead, Andy. Whoa. Is this like, is this more like Far Cry? No, I still think it's more like Fallout.

And I, you know what I mean? Where it's like, this is a RPG. This is you go to home base or whatever the new base is. You check in with everybody there. They give you your quest. You run out. You do the quest and you know you loot along the way and fight other stuff. And you might, you can find a side quest if you want to.

Are you upgrading your home base? Nope. Because it's like you're in multiple bases since it's no longer, well since it's not open world, it's open zone. Like you'll eventually late in the game unlock fast travel between all of them. So it's like, you know, you have your map and you can go to the fish shop in Venice. I might be getting that. which is wrong where it is, but like it doesn't matter. You go to your mansion in the Hollywood Hills or whatever and like bounce between those,

but you're not like doing anything there to make them better. It's strictly like you're, it's more like you're walking into Megaton, getting the mission from whoever leaving and then you have different spots like that to go to. And so, you know, there's a main storyline that's pushing along your character or whatever, moving along, but again, it's not only is it forgettable, it's like the same, I feel like the same zombie story I've seen, and I, granted I love zombies and I, you know, reading watch as much as I came about zombies, but like, it's the same, it is horror slash zombie schwalk.

Like, it's just like, you know, like pretty predictable, I think, across the board when you introduce things, what's going to happen, then they even do the thing at the end where they make it way more complicated than they need to make it. It's just like, come on. Just you just, you're a survivor and it's a zombie world. What are we doing here or whatever? Yeah, interesting how, you know, they kept it so true to form from the original. It's interesting.

When I think of Dead Island Riptide, my mind goes to the hoard mode moments that they have. in those missions where you would fortify around you a little mini base and fight off hordes of zombies. And that was a big one in Riptide that I remember. Sure, it was multiplayer, right? And this one's multiplayer as well, but didn't notice any missions that were like, hey, hold this point and oh, craft the barbed wire fence there. Oh, yeah, yeah. I did not find out there. Like, they didn't have a single one of those. And I thought, you know, if we're going to stay true to form and we're going to really just feel like it's 2011 all over again, why not have pieces from each one, right? And I think Riptide, that was the big one from Riptide. Surprising, they didn't even

even have one feeling of that, which is weird to me. Yeah, again, like, back to Blessing's initial question. You know, Bless, you touched it for 30 minutes. And I do think I'm not, it does, to say, oh, it doesn't change. That's the entire way. Isn't 100% correct. Like I said, you get more powerful. You know, when I unlocked the, what is it?

Strike dash strike. That was cool. I really enjoyed that. I'm just, strike dashing. And when I did that, it finally started clicking of the dodging, you know what I mean? Like, okay, I should be lighter. feet and move this way and do that, which open it up for me and you get running drop kicks and you know, you're expanding. Eventually they introduce the thing, of course, as you know, the whole thing

with dying, Dead Island is that you are, you know, you can't be infected, you're special. That's always been the story for every one of these games. It's the same thing here and eventually, you know, that evolves this time around into you having the whole fury ability where you can go black and white, like, rage mode and kill everything. And then eventually you can start using perks that would actually turn you more towards a zombie and like fills in a different bar and you start having pros and cons of like you do this and you'll do more damage but you'll be less of this blah blah blah and it's just like that's an interesting idea or whatever it's been done before i also never felt by that point i was so fucking powerful i was like why would i sacrifice any of this to go do that like

do all these different what do what are these heroes called these legends what the slayers do these slayers have like an ultimate ability well the ultimate ability is become a zombie and then you just swipe your hands at them and so of course the card they all have that yeah Everybody's going to become that. Again, you know, you plug in your slayer to the narrative. So everybody's having the same story, same stuff. And so, of course, the cards will affect, you know, what does your ultimate ability have, like Greg said, right?

Are you regenting health? Are you pushing zombies away after each hit? Like, each card will dictate what kind of small little twists and turns you'll have on that ability. But it will stay true to form. Everybody will get the two hands, slay it out for 15, 20 seconds. Their personalities come out in the story because when you're going through and choosing between the different Slayers, they have an intro where you kind of get

like a little piece of each of them, right, where they introduce the characters. And they seem like they're dynamically different characters, at least in personality, how they present. Does that reflect in the story itself? So I got to play two because I played the preview. Amy was the Irish rock star. Oh, not Amy. I was going to say, no, Amy's not Irish.

I don't know what Amy's name is. My girl was an Irish rock star. She was a band gal. Amy Gill's. She had a little bit more energy, a little more fun line delivery when it came to it. But, like, that was going to certainly wear off after six plus hours into it. Bruno, like I said, you thought off of just looks alone. He was going to have some fun charisma. No, he fell off.

I think they're all pretty basic lines. I don't think. I think in the 24 missions and probably the 10 hours to 15 hours you're going to play this, I don't think any one of them will come away besides just looking at their hands looking different. for each person. Unless, Greg, you think so. No. I mean, that was my thing.

I'm trying to see if I... I bet your name is Danny, if I had to guess about that. That would make sense. Yeah, I was Amy. And, no, I liked her delivery. I liked the performance fine, but it's not like we're in her head at any point.

I think the most you get is like, in the very beginning she had some line about like, oh, man, I'm supposed to be in Atlanta or whatever for the Paralympic soon or whatever. I was like, oh, that's cool because she has a, um, um, what do you? A prosthetic list. Yeah, yeah.

So it's like, oh, that's cool or whatever. And that kind of explains why she's so athletic or whatever. And there's a few times where she's like, oh, come on, Ames, that was stupid. And I was like, oh, that's cute. But it's like, you don't get to know her. But I thought her performance was fine and whatever. But yeah, I was good. Opening also, opening cinematic is something.

Greg, I'll tell you what. You watched that original announcement trailer like you brought up, Blessing with the fun. The opening cinematic is like, whoa, what is happening in this vision right now? Because it is bad. It is real bad. That's not a good opening. cinematic.

Why? You're running through the plane all the hells regularly? Oh, man. I was like, man, I think we could have,

I think we could have done a little bit better on this one. But I think that's the only time you get to see the six slayers with their, you know, interesting personality shine, right?

Every single one is rolling up to plane in a different, different way. And you're going, oh, wow. And then you get to pick who you want to be off of just like the 15 seconds

they get each, you know, in the minute of screen time. Another thing I want to talk about is weapons. So, like, I could have sworn, and we talked about a little bit,

Dead Island, weapons were a big thing, especially the melee weapons. And I went through to IGN to check out, like, okay, what is the list of melee weapons? And they have a long list, right? You're talking about axes, a bat, bat, baton, broomstick, a frying pan, a handbow, Yeah, Wolverine Claus, right? Oh, hell yeah. Oh, this looks dope as hell. But yeah, like, what is the weapon selection like in this game?

Does it feel like they're elevating things at all? Or does it feel like, okay, cool, it's more Dead Island. They're just adding in the same melee weapons. For me, Super Dead Island. I don't think anything was new to me where it was like, oh my God, this is fresh, right? Like, maybe there's some iterations I didn't remember from 2011, right? Like, they're just a door closed.

Use the circuit breaker. You'll do that a lot. But, like, I had a cool pitchfork that I put on fire, right? And, like, you poke them until, like, their little fire gauge goes up. But then, yeah, you have some special moments where either you charge up the weapon all the way or you get, like, the special kill moments. Yeah. And you'll see some cool where the axe will go into the forehead or the pitchfork will go up

through the bottom of their mouth through their eyeballs. Like there's some cool moments like that, but weapon-wise, this is the generic, ultimate generic melee weapons. I don't think there's anything that stands out wise. I want to say there's something that stands out. I do appreciate that you find your fit. Where it's like, I use the pitchfork and I didn't like it.

And I use a cup, there's like a bow staff. And I was like, there's a whole bunch of stuff that are like longer weapons or the more like heavy-duty hard swing weapons, right? And I stayed away from those after I tried them and stuck mainly to katana's baseball. bats, butcher knives or hatchets. And I was like

really happy with that and then it gets into of course, you know, we talked about it, but modding your weapons going there, you know, you unlock blueprints as you play and level up, but you find them in the thing, you can buy them as well. So it's, you know, I have the electricity katana and the fire katana and then I got a bleed damage baseball bat

and then I got this one baseball bat that's, you know, up the limb or the ability to hack off limbs or whatever. It's like, you can't put a mushroom on a shield. Can't put a mushroom on a shield. Step it up. But you do get to build, if you want, in Arsenal, that is yours. And again, like, it's similar with the guns, where guns aren't a huge part of the game,

but you find them as you go. And, like, you know, even though I had an Uzi and a marksman rifle, I stuck to just the assault rifle and then my shotgun, which eventually I got an electric shotgun, you know what I mean? Like, there's stuff like that that is there and shakes it up, but anything revolutionary? No, again, this is a flat three out of five. Nothing's revolutionary about this game.

It's just it can. I found the fun. it mic didn't. So I got a two-part question, which is a bit loaded, but, you know, follow me. Is there, does it feel like there's space for Dead Island 3 after this game? And also, what would you want out of a Dead Island 3 if they were going to go that direction? I mean, yes, I think there is space for Dead Island 3. I think there's ways to improve upon that. I think movement is key, right? You do have to find a way to marry what Dying Light does with grappling hooks,

parkour mirrors, ed's running. If you added that onto this with the world that they have, you have a really good mix of some big time winners, but then also it comes back to

the fun, right? You have some nice touches in the sandbox that Greg talked about, right, of like finding your own fun, creating the fun. There's a sandbox there, but what it comes down to

is like, can you add more fun? The characters need to stand out, right? You've got to have solid dialogue. You got to have more fun when it comes to side missions,

bosses, right? Like, why have we not gone back to Dead Rising with the psychopaths, right? Like, why are people so afraid to go there and have these awesome moments where you go, oh my God, it's crazy Bobo the clown in the kids pener. Oh my God, it's sick read, sick free and Roy with the tigers. Like, why don't we have that? So yeah, I do think that Dead Island three could be a thing, but there's improvements that must be made in this to make this viable, right? Because everybody loves a good open world collectathon, right?

Like, we're never going to give. away from that in the video game genre, right? And as much as we say zombie fatigue, it is always fun to hack and slash some zombies. And this one has a lot more fun on the hacking slashing size than dying light, especially with the ripping and tearing of the flesh. Like, that looks good,

but you got to find a way to elevate the movement for sure. I want to double back to what you're saying there about where are the psychopaths. There's one part in this game. Obviously, there's no spoilers because there's really not much of spoil in terms of anything going on. But it's a character square off where it's like, you're on the Santa Monica Pier, right?

And you're going down and they make a reference early on. Like, yeah, it might sound crazy, but I heard there was a clown over there. And like, as you're going, you hear the, like, laugh and noise. And like, Amy's, my character is just like, come on, fight me. What are you doing?

It's like, okay, this is interesting. You get to the end. And it's just, I think it's the introduction of the butcher, zombie variant type, but it's just a butcher that has clown makeup on. And we've seen the butcher in two other games. And it's just like, you fight it, you beat it. I was like, oh, there's, I thought you were like, I thought we were,

to like an actual like variance rather than it's just being like oh it's in clown makeup okay like that's that's what it's missing like so is there room for like I it's the weirdest thing because it's a three out of ten you can go listen to the

IG five god damn it's a three we're just going to start saying that all right it's a three you can listen to the other IGN reviews from more than a decade ago of me being like hey man it is what it is but it's a fun time like I'm sure you'll get a dead island three at some point, but like we don't need it.

Like what we need is them to blow it up, right? Like, I'm on the website when I was looking for the character names and it's like, the much love zombie saga is back. They need to blow it up. Blow up that idea. Like, not that people do love Dead Island for what it is. Like, you know,

I love Dead Island for what it is. I think it's an okay game. And that applies the other ones that I enjoyed before. But it's like, back to formula. Why is this a zombie saga? You know what I mean? Like, let's get over trying to tie this into a narrative that no one's, this isn't

resonant evil. like no one's like really dug into the umbrella corporation side of this and what's going. It's like, and like the way they end it, like don't do that. No, don't. I don't want you to do that. Like that's not like, that's fine just to be a zombie game. And I think that's what it's missing. You know, even the description here is interesting to read the website, which of course is all marketing stuff.

But Dead Island 2 is a unique formula of horror, dark humor and over the top zombie slaying, spanning an epic pulp adventure. This thrilling first person action RPG takes players across a brand new playground, a hellish version of L.A. or Hela, as we'd like to call it. Deadline 2 is stylish, vibrant, and flooded with zombie infection. Explore iconic gore-drenched Los Angeles, meet larger-than-life characters, slay countless foes in exquisitely bloody detail, and evolved to become the ultimate zombie slayer.

It's like, I wish that game existed. I wish that's what this game is. This game doesn't deliver on the larger-than-life characters. This game doesn't deliver on the dark humor. game, like, this game, again, I think is fun to play. I enjoyed my time with it. Like, I think other people will too. I'm excited. Like, I want to do eventually a stream where I play with the kind of funny best friends, like phone of Greg, and I come in and I kill zombies with the on PlayStation since it's not crossplay. But it's like, it doesn't live up to what it could be. And I don't

know if Dead Island 3 is the answer to that. I'm sure for, you know, deep silver, the franchise, the IP is too big to let languish and let go away or whatever. But I think it is time really shake up the formula, but I would imagine two developers before them did that, and they didn't like that. Any final words on Dead Island, too? Man, you know, just not a good game, not the best

of games. I look forward to seeing the reception for this. I am higher on this game than Saints Row, right? When we talk about beloved franchises that are surprisingly coming back and trying to make a splash in 2023, right? Like, I'm at least walking away from Dead Island

going, hey, you did a better job than Saints Row. And sure, that bar is low, but, like, you know, you try to revive a franchise from 10 years ago. That's a tough one in 2023, especially when we look at the gaming landscape full of just, like, bangers right now, especially with a big lineup of Star Wars, Redfall, and Tears of the Kingdom right around the corner, right?

Like, for you to come out and say, hey, we're here, it's like, okay, well, you know what? You tried, and I don't expect myself going back to this. Question for you, Mike, before I, Final Wars and Steenoff or whatever. You know, you talked earlier about, when we were talking about like podcast game or whatever,

you like, oh man, that's not, that kind of sucks or whatever. Do you think if you could have played this with the boys? You could have played with Washington. You could have played with Andy. You could have played with Nick. You were all running through and just bashing the shit out of zombies

fucking around, horsing around on Discord. Would that have been a better experience for you? Would have been a little bit better. I don't think this would have been like a, hey, like we all got to buy this right now at full rice type situation. But it definitely would have been like, oh, that would have been more fun.

I think it might have like broken the game, right? Because four people surrounding one zombie nonstop is going to make it way too easy, right? But I think the idea of co-op, I'll give it to them. It's something that Dead Island is known for, especially with Riptime doing that. Like that is what this game is about. I think you'll have more fun. Similar to what we'll see in Redfall, right? Of like co-op is going to elevate these kind of mid-level games to a little bit higher

when you share the world with friends. Do you, from what you've played, is Redfall better than this? because I'm excited for Redfall as well, even though I haven't played it, but I like the idea of running around and killing vampires in the same way. From what I played of Redfall compared to this, yes, Red Fall will be better than this. I don't think by leaps and bouts, but yes, Redfall with what Arcane is doing when the game play systems itself and giving the player the sandbox and tools, I think will be better. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I mean, my final thoughts on Dead Island 2 is it's okay. It is a three out of five. it is okay. $70 game? Yeah. Everyone to their computers immediately. Click the pre-order button here and then get, I want physical.

I want day one edition. The base. Oh, Jesus. Price. I'm seeing $60 on Epic. 60? At least on PC. PS 5.

Jesus Christ! They can do so many. 70 bucks on PlayStation 5. That's tough. Xbox Series X also. That's tough. Yeah. Anyways, it's, it is an okay game.

I enjoy playing it until one of the big hitters comes along. I'm going to keep playing it and working on that platinum and trying to do it. Will I ever get to it? We'll see how the year always gets away from me. But I enjoy playing it because I enjoy these kind of games. I've always enjoyed the fallout, the far cry, the horizon, sneak into the area, kill everybody, go through everyone's pockets, get all the things, go back to your base, make yourself stronger, go back out and do it again.

but that's all this game is. I think elevated is a great word, right? It never elevates past that. That's what I mean by it's a flat three. It's a flat okay. It's an okay video game. I think you can have that level of fun for your first 30 minutes. I'm like, oh, okay, no.

Or you can keep going and it will incrementally get better with, you know, add-ons and mods and things like that, but it's never going to cross this threshold where you're like, fuck, yes, ah, this is great, blah, ma-ma. But the completionist in me always wants to go back and do those things and check every box and get everything and see every, quest. Will you sing the song for me one time? Who do you voodoo, bitch? I got a zombie on me. And you can't harm me. Who do you voodoo,

bitch? Everybody, look up Sam B's work from Dead Island War. Sorly lacking. Fucking Andy didn't even know it. Andy didn't even know it. Soorly lacking that song nonstop playing in the background of this video game. Well, before we wrap up, Andy Cortez, you have a couple games we want to talk about. Just real quick, yeah. I've been playing Mageeeker. Oh, how is it? I've been, I got more and more into it, Greg.

I can confirm that it's a game that I would recommend. I don't think it's necessarily blowing me away yet, but made Sheekers a top-down action-rpg, very pixel style by the developers who made. Moonlighter. One of my favorite games of recent memory. The cool thing about it is, Riot games is kind of, they kind of remind me of what Marvel does

where they just kind of go out to a bunch of developers and say, hey, make games with our IP. And so rather than this being kind of developed in-house, we've seen them go out and have like a side-scroller game made and like a turn-based game made. This is a top-down action RPG, similar to if you've seen, and I think what Greg saw this, he's like, oh, Andy loves Hyperlight Drifter. He would love this. You play the role of a League of Legends character named Silas.

This is all based in the Roontera universe or whatever, the League of Legends universe. You don't even know anything about League Legends. I did the GDC demo and I started the game. It's not meant to be like, oh, you have to know league. Yeah, pretty cool systems and mechanics. You are essentially somebody who can steal spells from people, and it's all very elemental base. So if there's like two fire mages in the arena that you're fighting and two ice mages, you steal

the ice power from that dude, throw it at the fire guy, and he's going to take a lot of a lot more damage. You could just hack away people if you'd like, but there's a kind of really cool strategy that goes into it. So I'm enjoying it so far. I'm enjoying the characters and the dialogue. The music's great. It's something I want to keep on playing for sure.

And then I recently beat Fallen Order for the first time since it came out. Jedi Fallen Order. Not a game of the year. Fuck you. But a really good game. Yay. Top ten. Yeah, that's a four out of five on the kind of funny list for me.

It's still like super, it's still buggy in a lot of spaces, which is kind of like surprising me. To be this laid into it. There's a lot of like just enemies that. I was talking to my Twitch chat and I was like, it feels like these enemies are playing on a European server so like I'm getting like a weird kind of lag between this fight

and I don't know why they're acting this way. It felt like I was fighting the game a lot as opposed to like fighting enemies in some cases but I still had a very good time with it. All the characters are still great. It looks absolutely insane on PC and again I need Greg

and his PC character to kind of pop out more because we need to shame these developers more into and pressure them into making better PC ports because this PC port was still dropping a fuckload of frames. I have a core I9 process with a 4090 and those areas where I'm like why am I getting 20 frames per second right here? Please Greg I need you to just shame them more and more. Hey PC players it's me Greg Miller

the man who's meant to lead you. The port people next to a fucking sap like you this guy's trying to play a game from years ago with a 4080 cord attachment or some shit and it still doesn't work why would he do this how much money did you spend on it it didn't even work no you can play it on any of the nice consoles on your big tv but instead you sit in your smelly fart chair just fucking trying to get it to work and it doesn't work why do that i want you to why i'm trying to get him to pressure the developers i'm sorry i'll pressure the developers developers stop making PC games They don't work

They don't work And nobody likes them Focus on the console stuff Leave the PC people To go to their little chat rooms And get caught by Chris Hanson Damn God damn

I didn't think we're bringing Chris into this Here's the Here's the wookies Why is the wookie look so bad Yeah I forgot how bad you guys look They don't look great in this world But like this game still

There are so many moments in this game, though, that I'm like, God, if this game came out today, I'd be like, wow, this is a gorgeous video game. We're made days away from the next one. Obviously, you've seen footage for the new one, and then you can immediately kind of tell the difference. But I had the same sort of feeling when I replayed through God of War 2018, where it aged really well in a lot of ways. I would say, like, I'm still super stoked for the sequel, because I know we always talk about lessons learned on this podcast. And I think Respond has a lot of lessons that they would have learned from just, how do we amp up the old gameplay? Holy fuck.

Like not being able to fast travel to these bonfires is absolutely egregious. Like having to go all the way back and fucking Metroidvania your ass to there. Like the fact that there was never fast travel like broke my brain. I couldn't believe that it wasn't an addition later on or whatever. When you end up meeting one of the NPCs

that like can teleport and stuff, a lot of people in which I were like, it would have been really cool. cool if you could unlock fast travel here when you meet her as a part of the mechanic and kind of have a play with the world but unfortunately no there was a lot of moments where I was like that's night sister magic andy

she can't teach a Jedi that I mean you just no medical reasons why they spell magic with the CK at the end too I love that that's actually another good one for Dead Island too as well actually where you eventually unlocked fast travel via maps and like the safe places but I was like then that's stuff where I killed the thing

at the pier and I'm like all right quest done run back to that I'll run back there. Like on the map, like, maybe after I beat the game, you give me a pocket map. Don't be afraid. Yeah, I never want to see Daphimir ever again. That place has got awful and traversing through it is just such a pain in the ass. But still a very, very good game.

Game of the year. Ladies a gentleman, how stoked are you for Star Wars? I Survivor? Let us know in the comments below. Remember, this has been kind of funny games cast. We each and every week we get together to talk about the hottest topics in video games, live on Patreon and later on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games and on podcast services around

the globe. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.