Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Death Stranding Review (2025) - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: May 21, 2025

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Yo, what the heck is going on everybody? Welcome in to your kind of funny games cast for May 21st, 2025. It's a lovely Wednesday, aka hump day. Hump day. And it's Mike and Roger to get you over the hump. And looking forward to the second half of the week. Ah, that fucking hurt. You know what I mean?

Like, what, what's the level of Mike giving you a high five or a low five? I love giving a good crisp high five. It's my passion in life. You want to hurt me. I know you do. One of my top five passions given a nice crisp. High five. You see it through and you just...

Yeah, but I do the low five. Do it how you did it to me. Bear gets it. You know what I mean? He likes the pain. You got to get a nice, crispy high five to start your day sometimes. And of course,

that's what Mike and Roger are going to give you during today's kind of funny games cast because today we're talking about our death stranding experience. Yeah, it's 2025 and we're gearing up and getting ready for death stranding too. That's the year. Well, I mean, it's like, people are like, you didn't play this in 2019, Roger?

I didn't want to play this game With the rest of people With everybody else No we're different Roger That's why we're bringing the hype in 2025 Exactly I thought I was above death straining When I saw die hard man And I saw mama and I saw these dumb names

I'm like oh why would I play that stinker And I play it and I'm like oh my gosh My whole life has changed Yeah I said I'm too dumb to understand this game And then we played it and I said I love this game Yeah I'm the right amount of dumb

I'm in this right here Like, I'm a jabroney that will just walk, okay? And, like, I did that. So, Roger, we're going to talk about... No, no, no, no. Before we do that, how have you gotten away with playing all of the Metal Gear Solid games except for five? Not playing. Yeah.

Barrett played all those. And then also Death Stranding, which you did not play. And then you did actually play Metal Gear Solid 5. Yeah, that's the one he had to play. Decidedly without me. Yeah, I was pretty fucked up. That in the Baldur's gay situation. Well, here's the deal on this one, Roger.

We were like, Mike, you didn't want to play Mike? Why didn't you grab the controller? And I did. I really wanted to grab the controller. But I didn't want you to take away my shine because I know all the Gibronies out there watching and listening. No, if I took a step off of that treadmill and let you walk, they would have said, oh, well, Mike didn't actually walk step for step with San Porter Bridges.

I think there was a lot of people already saying that. I insured. Anytime I, you know, tuned to the stream, were you sitting down looking at a big TV ordering food? Breathing heavenly in the microphone. And so I insured that through the entire thing. I mean, just so everybody knows out there who are watching and listening, you know, we got to day three. I guess it's day two, but day three.

It was Sunday heading into Monday. Friday. I was dying, right? Like my feet were tightening up. The souls of my feet were burning. Yeah. My yams were looking good, though. They were strong and solid.

And he's like, Mike, like let me walk for you. I can see you're in pain. Like, please just take a seat. Let me do this. And I looked at you, Roger. I said absolutely not. I will walk the entire time. You did the mic thing.

You said, no, yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll tell you the time. Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you the time. Don't worry about it. Never. Never. Never. So did I get to play this? No. Did I want to play this?

Yes. But did I do it for the content? Of course. And so we're going to talk about the content and what we created during our Death Stranding Marathon stream. That just happened last weekend. Yeah. And we're going to talk about our Descranning.

And we finished it last night. We finished it last night. So we're going to talk about all things. Death Stranding and our excitement for Death Stranding 2. So today's Kind of Funny Gamescast is all about Death Stranding and we want to share your experience with us. So make sure to super chat away if you're watching live on YouTube and or Twitch. Give us some of your favorite moments from Death Stranding 1.

Tell us some of the things that you're looking forward to in Death Stranding 2. We're going to talk about all that and everything in between because this is the kind of funny games cast each and every weekday. We get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in the video game World live on YouTube, Twitch, and of course later on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, consider supporting us with the kind of funny membership available on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to get all of our shows ad-free, watch us record them live and get your daily exclusive show, Greg Way.

For a chance to be part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as Super Chats as we go. Don't forget we're kind of funny. We're an 11-person small business all about live talk shows. Today, during kind of funny games daily, Greg and Tim talked about, is Xbox up right now? Are they winning? Are they up right now? We'll talk about it. Of course, they talked about it.

Go check it out. After this, the stream will be Greg playing Outer Worlds for their re-review coming up very soon. Greg, Andy, and Stella, I believe, are all replaying the Outer Worlds to get ready for Obsidian's next big RPG of the year, which is crazy to say about in the outer worlds too. They're going to be talking about it on the re-review. Today's afternoon stream is Greg playing the game. You can get in your questions, getting your thoughts about the game with him live over on Twitch and on YouTube. Of course, if you're a kind of funny member, today's Greg Way is Greg Miller talking about the last of us now that he's a dad. Oh.

And you know what? We're going to talk about dads in this game too. A lot of dads. And I wonder what Greg thinks about being a dad after playing Death Stranding because like you're my future. You're my bridge to the future, Roger. You're my son now. Oh, okay. Where does Mads Mikulsen play until all this?

We'll talk about that. Of course, thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney Twining. Thank you to our sponsors, subway surfers, and Factor. But I'll tell you all about them later. Let's jump into the show. Roger, let's talk about our death-standing experience. Hit me off.

Stop, stop, stop, stop. Thank you. I forgot about that. What do you want to start, Mikey? I mean, I guess we should just start with, like, the start of the marathon stream. Kind of like where that came from. Maybe we gave people like, yeah, what the idea was, what did we actually do? Maybe people didn't watch it.

and they don't care. So, like, what should we tell them about? So, yeah. So in the beginning of this year for Kind of Funny Day, we had a bunch of promises and kind of laid out the next year of Kind of Funny with a few big events. We talked about Game Showdown. We talked about top 100 games of all time.

And one of the things that we mentioned that we were going to do this year was a death straining walk-a-thon marathon stream, a literal marathon stream where for every step that Sam Porter Pridges makes, Stonebike Mike will also make that step. in order, of course, going back to the bit, if you don't know already, that Mike is a hardened athlete. He attempted or was, had a thought, or at least was going to run a marathon. Well, I have a medal. Okay. The half marathon.

And a t-shirt. The half marathon got rained out. So then everyone got the medal, including myself, who also didn't run it. But Mike didn't do no training, was not planning on going to that event. But, you know, he swears that he could have done it. Slept like a baby. I dreamt about it. You were running the marathon in your sleep.

every single night, just toss it and turn in. So that was the idea behind this stream. And also, of course, I had the honor of meeting Kojima and the Caroline Polichek connection, which is very exciting and like it's happening for the sequel. So I wanted to play Death Stranding 2. Death Stranding 1. I've never

played a Kojima game full through other than Peace Walker. Wow. Which is a weird one and half of Metal Gear Solid 5. So I wanted to really put my time in and actually play Death Stranding and I wanted to do it in some type of marathon stream because I know if I start, I'm probably going to stop halfway through and then never actually finish it.

So I wanted that accountability. So I wanted to sit down with you, I guess stand up with you and have you walk and I play and I thought that was create something something special and something unique. And Mike, we freaked it. We absolutely did that for Friday, starting at I believe 2 p.m. all the way

until Sunday ending at 3.30 a.m. We completely went crazy and we were just in this room ordering a lot of food. We'll probably do a tier list of all the food that we ordered an eight during this entire weekend. You gotta eat big, be big. That's my saying. You got to you carboload. People say you carbolo before the marathon. We carboad during the marathon. We were

taking, you know, you have the water stations where like the kids hand you like the Gatorade or whatever. People were handing us fucking Red Robbins fries. It was incredible. We needed to be our biggest supporters. So we just went crazy on this weekend and we played the entire game, most of the game. I think we had people said, chat said by the time we finished it, they said, oh, you only have three hours left. And then we proceeded to do a seven hour stream to finish it off yesterday. Well, you know, how much of the intro was ordering more food? Yeah, okay, well, that's, again, you have to carve load, right?

You got a car, even though Mike wasn't walking during the last. We got a car. We need to figure out what these corn dogs were all about. Yeah, again, we will do a ranking by the end of this, so which is the best dinners that we had. But I was, I was very excited about this because I wanted to play this game, and it looked interesting. Yeah.

And Mike, I don't know what your impressions of this game are, like, what you came into it with. Like, you played a little bit of death training on the screen a while. It was a special one for me because I'm a person who tried Death Stranding and I put it down. When I first played it, it wasn't for me. I usually don't vibe with these kind of slower games. And so I put it down and I watched Miles Luna who I got the idea from to do the walk-a-thon marathon stream. And when you said, oh, I want to be prepared for Death Stranding 2.

I thought, man, this is the perfect win-win scenario, right? Me and Roger both get to play the game together and we can do a walk-at-on marathon stream. So like let's make great content out of this. And so I pushed you hard of let's do this in one weekend. And you said, Mike, like, why don't we just try one little 10-hour stream, see if it's a hit or not, and we'll go from there. And I pushed you of like, no, let's sit in the room and let's play it all the way through. I think the audience will vibe with it.

We're a month and a half away from Death Stranding, too. There's no better time for people to get caught up to get you and I prepared and kind of build the excitement for it. And also, you know, that's kind of my role here. here is to try to find fun and engaging ways to create content on the live stream side of things that our audience can have fun with, the team can have fun with. And it just seemed like a perfect blend of you and I together all weekend long, minimal resources, right? Greg, Tim, we only called Baird about seven times, you know, so we would bother it a couple

of times. We called you for help, but we didn't want to bother you. It was too late. For the celebratory thing, the nice thing, you know, didn't want to call me then. We did call blessing. He now is confirmed. that he saw the call coming in. Like he was there.

He was actively looking at his phone and then decided to say no. And so for me, it was exciting, right? This is exactly what I wanted to do as something on the content side of things for kind of funny. I thought it was going to be really fun and exciting. And then on the flip side,

I get to experience death stranding, right? Play, in quotes there. But like, really, I get to experience death stranding with you, one of my best friends and also prepare for death stranding too. And so for me, it was like, this is a win-win, let's see where it goes and it turned out to be an experience of a lifetime Roger.

This is something that I will laugh at, giggle in my mind and remember forever of you and I starting on Friday at 2 o'clock in the afternoon and just kind of experiencing it moment by moment where it was going to go. How much will I walk? How little will I walk? How long is the Kajima cut scene in a walking simulator game? We learned they're pretty long. But then we also learned that Roger doesn't follow the simplest path, okay? Because here's the problem, chat. Roger's talking a lot. He's chirping a lot about like, oh, Mike, you didn't play the game. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And it's like, if I played that game, I would be cutting paths that people have never seen before, Roger. I would be following the most efficient pass from point A to point B. There you are, Roger, looking at your best friend, snowmike Mike on a treadmill, dying, right? Please, Roger, give me a break. Can you just get to point A to point B? And you are out here taking the most inefficient rounds possible. scaling up the side of a mountain, find it invisible walls,

getting lost on detours where we just needed to go and deliver the package. But God damn didn't make for some great contents. You know, I, I, what's your name? Snowbike, Mike? I thought it was Snowbitch Mitch for a minute, but there. I didn't realize that you weren't a hardened athlete

that you couldn't figure it out because I see the vision, right? I see the vision. I'm trying to find the area of the most friction, but also the least friction. You know what I mean? Sometimes you've got to go up the mountain to go down the mountain. You're trying to go around the mountain. That's going to prolong your hurt.

I just want to go up it and then down it. So I figured it out. And that's going into it really quick. If we're talking about the game itself. I forget who said it in chat, but it was such a clicking moment for me and why I was digging this game so much. And I'm at the point now where, of course, we have the sequel.

So I shouldn't probably go back and replay some of it, but I really want to because the chatter said, this game is going to uh picking up your groceries from the car and bringing it all into the house in one trip simulator. Yes. That's what that's what it is.

And that is something as I feel like that's like a like a dude thing. Like he like you know what I mean? Like a dad dude thing right was like oh I got this. Don't worry honey. And it's like I have free hands. I can help you. Oh no I got this. And he just just take everything in your hand.

You're about to fall. You're about to break the eggs. But you do it anyways. And you're like, oh, look how cool I am I. That's what this game was for me. and it was such a great experience trying to basically do the things that I do in Skyrim, right, where I'm just like, I'm like breaking the fucking geometry.

I'm finding all the little rocks that I can go up that the developers didn't really design this for, but I'm going to figure it out and I'm going to go around it. Like, I was breaking this game so much that I found fucking invisible walls. I didn't realize that there were invisible walls in this game, but we found it. We climbed up a mountain and they were like, yo, you can't go up this fucking mountain. You got to stop going up this mountain. And for me, that is the stuff that I really clicked with that I didn't realize or even think that I would even click with. I thought I would be a story person. I thought the story

was going to be the thing that made me keep on going throughout this 50 hour experience. But instead, it was actually the gameplay of it. And if I were to do it over again, I absolutely would because now I see the vision. Now I get it, everybody. I should have built roads. I get it. I should have built a few zip lines here and there. But once I actually figured out, oh, I should have been building zip lines. And I actually did it for the first time, fucking clicked everything into my mind. And this was, this gameplay experience is something special. Yeah, I think that's the fun part about making it a live stream and content and kind of knowing that your best friend is walking the entire time. Like, we can't sit around and kind of look out and map out what you want to do because this game is really fascinating, right?

It is a true just open world and you choose how you want to go and attack it. And then they give you tools that will help you elevate that throughout, right? Of like, hey, let's make this more efficient and easier where you can build a road, then you can ride your motorcycle on it. Or we can make these zip lines that will. conquer all of the terrain and you just fly over it. And it's like when you're making content and it's supposed to be for the laughs and it's also like, hey, Mike is dying on this and we only have so many hours in the day. You're screaming at me as I'm trying to go up a mountain.

We cannot just sit there and utilize the tools that are given to us. You miss out on a lot. And it's wild to think of like, we did it. I think a lot of people get caught up in the first one at the beginning of the game. And I found this the most fascinating. He's like, they give you three paths and you kind of go, oh, okay, like I see the vision. But then after that, they just like, good luck, figure it out. You can go any way you want.

And then they build on that of like, now you can build all these things. I sound that's so fascinating and cool that it's just the ultimate sandbox of go whatever you want to do. Try to climb this. Roger's got too many boxes on the back of his head and he's in a cave and he's swaying left and right. I'm hitting the ceilings of things and the boxes are falling down. It was cool. Yeah, it's. Gameplay-wise, it was cool.

Absolutely. The word that I kept on going back to was mediation. meditative, right? Even though I'm on a stream and it is like flashing light, like bright lights in my face, Mike is walking, it smells like burnt rubber because we're burning this fucking treadmill the entire time. I did have that sense of like, oh, if I had this and a glass

of wine, I could just do this all night. Like, I can just really take my time and it kind of resets, it reset me as like a gamer a little bit. Because for me, I'm the person that if you, it is a nightmare to watch me play a video game most of the time because my fiance, she doesn't play video games like that. So like she watches a lot of the gaming experiences as like a spectator right i'm the one in the control controlling

scene i'm the one playing the game and as she watches me she's like you got to stop fucking running around yeah you got to stop pressing the l3 you got to stop looking swinging the camera around like you have like you're like you have no attention to anything like i'm always running and going from here here to here not really focusing on anything trying to find you know getting lost for this it is oh you're from here to here you're going across the country all you have to do is just take your fucking time. Just take your time, build a rope. Like, there is nothing in between there. Of course, there's sometimes when, you know, an enemy pops up and a fucking BT attacks you and you're freaking out and it's annoying. But other than that, it is you just have to take your time.

You've got to just think about what you're doing here. And the journey in the gameplay is the journey, right? It is going from point A to point B. It is not just a, I didn't, for the first time in a video game in a very long time, I didn't think of going from point A to point B as a chore. I thought that is the game, right? That is the fun of the game. And that, that's, is kind of the most subversive thing that I didn't expect from a Kojima game. I didn't expect that the traversal was going to be such a key part of the fun of the game. What a fun time, Roger. I had something on the top of my head, but I've forgotten it.

But it's just, it was so much fun to watch you work through things, watch you explore this world and kind of be a passenger alongside your decision-making. I think that's the fun part when we always talk about. it's always a nightmare to watch someone play a video game because you're thinking of five different things they're not thinking of or you want to go some other way. So it's always fun to see what people decide and what you decided to do. I'll never forget our, you know, most of our treks took about 15 minutes. Some of the longer ones were like 24 to 30 might have been the longest one. But somehow Roger on a normal trek that's supposed to be like 13 minutes took 45 minutes.

And that was just him exploring, wanting to conquer the. the terrain, wanting to have his own story. And I think that's a really cool part about this. And on top of that, right, you're in this world that is kind of experiencing this insane situation going on with the timefall and the start of death stranding, right? And it's like, nobody's out there, right? The only people out there are porters similar to you that are moving packages and supplies to different areas.

There's also the bad guys with Higgs. But, like, it's wild of like, there's nothing, not even wildlife in this world. And so it is a very empty world And when that music swells up And you crest that first peak and see a vista Or you go to some You know the big Where we burns your mother's corpse there

The big furnace or whatever It's like oh man Like these are cool And the art style in this game is wicked dumb Yeah man It's it's hyper realistic But it doesn't Rarely I should say

Gets to the uncanny Valley Right we have we have characters And people that I know right I've seen their faces in movies and television and their directors. We have Guillermo D'Otoe in this. We have Mads-Mickleson. But I was very rarely creeped out by like, oh, that's Mads McEllson, but he's in a video game and he's not real. But it's like they have created this world that feels so effortless.

And I think I stand by this. We were having that discussion during the stream where I was like, I think this might be like top five best looking video games ever made. And you were like, no way. And then we start talking through it. And we're like, well, maybe it is. Like I at least totally think this is my top five, probably top three, honestly. best-looking highest fidelity video games ever made because the stuff

that they were able to do, especially when it came to the terrain of this world, like, the moss on these rocks like look photorealistic. And I just can't, I'm so excited to see what Death's Running 2 is, specifically when it comes to that and the visual fidelity of it, because, man, it looks so good in

2019, six years later. Holy shit. I'm sure that they're doing some crazy stuff with the Dust Manchin. That Death Manchin is awesome. I love the crazy collab that he had with Conan and the cosplayer. That was crazy. Him with the weird otter hat was so

much fun. It's wild that there was there's so much to this game and like you and I, we learned a lot. We didn't do much of it, but like it's crazy that there's an honor hat that you put on that helps San Porter Bridges swim a little bit more. You got a crazy exosuit that you can put on. You can build these

roads and it's like, well, we didn't build any roads. But man, when we jumped on other people's roads, that was awesome. And thank you to everybody who built those. The online connection is cool too, right? Of like you start and you don't really see that then out of nowhere it's like, oh well, here's somebody else's rope that they like took this

path and they're going to help you out. Oh, later on in the game 20 hours. And here's this guy's road that he built out and like really thought about it. It's like that's really awesome too. So I loved like all of a sudden you started integrating like other people's buildings and we shared this world that was our world but also

like yeah, we started connecting the nuts. It works as a great tutorial, right? Where you're walking around this world and someone like me who was not building anything at first, right? Seeing the amazing creations and the smart designs that people were building out, right, where someone, I think I used someone else's zipline for the first time. That was how I was introduced to the zipline, even though they wrote it and they said he can use a zip line.

But I'm like, how far can a zipline go, right? You jump on someone else's zipline for the first time. They very smartly, I don't know how they built this out, but they do it in a great way where, you know, if you don't have anything built in a certain area, they're going to put something there from someone's online experience. and throw it there and show you, hey, listen, you could be using these things, and you hop on the zipline for the first time, and you're like, oh, this is how I could be doing this. I could be building out an entire world.

So it works as both, you know, working into like the themes of the game, as we'll talk about, right? Like connection and, you know, all these different people that are connecting and throwing different zip lines and roads. So it works in that sense, but it also works as tutorializing the entire experience. Yeah. We didn't get to see Jeff Keely. No, we didn't. Disappointed on that one. Come on.

We should have that. Shaw Harmon. That was pretty lit. Conan, of course. We saw Conan is right. Then there was a bunch of big names that he brought in. An awesome cast. A small cast, but an awesome cast, Roger.

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So we talked about our experience over the weekend. me walking, you playing, us eating a lot of food. So much food. Late nights. A lot of laughter. Talk about Chad Kroger. Yeah, I'm sending an email too. Might change my life.

Mike's reaching out and making some connections of its own. We learned about it. Him and Lenny Kravitz. I'm going to throw the phone in the ocean. 30 days, 30 days on his compound in Peru. There's some moments here that got to be found inside of there. Or maybe if you just watch it, you'll enjoy it laugh. because there was some great times together.

And the entire thing is going to go up this Saturday. It is actually processed. It's going up. So on YouTube, you can check it out. Saturday, I'll probably throw it up at like 6 a.m. our time.

Get it up super early for the East Coast people. Watched a lot of KFAF episodes. Shout out to Nick and Andy for, you know, letting us watch that. We had to get a written notice from them. We had to get approval from those two to play some old episodes.

And so, yeah, it was a really special experience to share with you, Roger, our incredible audience of kind of funny, best friend. So I encourage everybody to check out the Vod that will go up this weekend, watch

the finale that also happened last night. But I think another cool part is we talk about the gameplay Roger, but there's a wild story going on. And I think at first you kind of get hit with it and there's a lot to take in by the middle there's a lot of questions. And by the end, you're riding this roller coaster of like, holy cow, it's going down. Kajima's back again. Yeah. But it's also carried by a really cool cast of characters. Yeah. No, absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah, that was surprising to me, right? As I mentioned earlier, I put my, I put my nose up, I thumbed my nose at the idea of like, oh, these characters are named Fragile and Die Hard Man and Dead Man. I was like, what a strange idea. But by the ending of this, I'm like, this is my crew, right? Like, this is absolutely my crew. And I fuck with all of them in different ways. And now when I'm at the place where, man, we watch the, I'm sure we've seen the trailers for Death Straining, too, right? I'm sure you've seen at least one of them, right? I've seen one of them or two of them. them before. But like, that meant nothing to me. It's all white noise, right? Now I know, and I haven't rewatched those, and I'm so excited for the sequel.

Because, man, this is such a great crew of characters, as you were alluding to. Yeah, it's interesting of Sam Porter Bridges' journey, right? Yeah. Someone who has dooms, doesn't like to be touched because of his doom's level allows, like, the BTs can touch him and he gets a rash. So now he's also a porter. He's out by himself, right? This is a guy that's kind of isolated and doesn't have much connections going on. his mom calls and he's like mom I don't want to do it right now mom I'm busy on the road by myself and it's like wild when you bring up your crew because at the end it's a team this is a team effort and everybody's together and they're here to help sam overcome this giant obstacle and save

the universe in the world and it's like wow that was like a really big journey to go on because at the beginning sam was gruff he wasn't speaking much he wasn't shaking anybody's hands he was just a man on a mission and then it changed to like oh this is some beautiful stuff he's got a team yeah and i think that goes back to like the which i understand i think this is like even though i love this game so deeply uh i think for multiple reasons right the connection that we had during the stream like that whole scenario of us playing it just elevates the game so much on top of that but i love the game for what it is i will never begrudge anybody for uh the criticisms that they will have about the writing or uh the way that kojima builds out of stories because i get it right it is very on the

in some places. It is very aloof in other places, right? He over explains a lot of things, and then he under explains a lot of things that I'm sure he should have actually just explained in the first place early run. Like dead man. What's up with dead man? This Frankenstein man. That we just kind of glossed over. We just gloss over. Okay, he's built

of stem cells and dead individuals. Don't worry about it. But he doesn't connect. But it's about connection, right? He doesn't like connecting. He doesn't have any friends. I get it. I totally understand the criticisms behind all that, but it worked for me. It all worked for me. Like, it is so campy.

It is so out there. The fact that this character is, this character's wearing a mask and his die hard man. And his whole thing is that he, it's hard for him to die, right? Like, it is so, it is so on the nose.

But it works for me because, um, of just how simple the story is. And, uh, also the world that they've built here, right, where everybody is so afraid of connection at the very core of their

existence, right? Because like connection could kill them, right? Like the idea of connecting getting too close to somebody. That is what basically, um, broke a lot of these people and their origin stories, right, was their connection and then the severing of the connections,

and then they all go, Mama, you know, with her baby, right? Like, it's, that is kind of the core of it. So then when you have, like, characters that have insane names, right? It is almost like this layer of protection between, you know, the connection that they want to have deep down, but they also don't want to have because they want to protect themselves. So, yeah, it works for me on that level, but I understand the criticisms of it all for sure.

Tell me some of your favorite characters, because I know you love Hartman. Yeah, Hartman's my guy for sure. I mean, I could watch an entire moment. movie about Hartman, right? When I think about what the A24 movie is going to be. Like, I think about some of these characters and like, oh, I want a prequel. I don't want a sequel. I don't want a adaptation of the game. I want them to explain or go into some of these characters a little bit more. But yeah, Hartman, for anyone that doesn't know, is a character whose family is killed in the

initial death stranding and the initial void out. And during that moment, he also dies or at least his heart stops for a little bit. So he sees his family going on the beach, which is like, their version of purgatory. And then he wakes up. He's revived from his heart attack. And he spends the next, you know, years of his life dying every 21 minutes. He dies for three minutes. And he goes on the beach and he tries to search for his family.

And he's like forever alone. Like he's the, there's no connection to anybody else on his beach. So I thought one that was such an interesting and unique character idea. Right. And like the way that they built out his room and everything around him. Like they sold. me on the idea that a man could die every 21 minutes for three minutes and he's figured out his life. Like he's very efficient and also just the the way that that, how compelling that is, right?

Like, I think that's like that kind of, that was one of the moments that like touched me in the fields where, you know, this guy is just trying to search for the only thing that has ever connected him to people, right? Is his family. And he just is forever alone in that sense. How about Big Cliff? Big Cliff. A war hero.

War hero. That's Mads Mickelson, everybody. that's Mads McElson. He put on a performance. Yeah, man. That dude delivered. Yeah, it's, that's, that was really cool because I love Mads Mickelson. I don't know how familiar you are with his work, but like, I love Hannibal. He's incredible as Hannibal actor in the show. So it was, it was great to see him. And I also, he was also the guy that I would see in all the trailers. I'm like, okay, I know Mads Mickelson is in this,

but like, what is his deal? And by the ending of this, it was very aloof until the very ending when you get that reveal, which I won't spoil necessarily for anybody. We might get to spoilers in a little bit, but I thought that twist was really great. And his overacting is also perfect, right? Like him, they have the flashbacks of him talking to the BB and him, I'm going to take it to the moon, BB, I'm going to take it to the moon. It is so over the top, but it works in context and it brings it home for sure. Yeah, when that story evolves and you learn more and more.

I love every moment of connecting to BB and getting a flashback, right? Now, first we're like, is this BB's memories? Whose memories are this? Because you are seeing it through the eyes of BB. You are in the tube and you're going, okay, well, I guess this is the baby, like what's going on, and to see it more build out and him and die Hardman, and then the story with the president, you're like, oh, man, this is crazy.

I love it, but I also think that that is a little bit of my criticism towards the ending of the game. I think that's where my criticisms of the game kind of start to snowball a little bit, right? I still love this game. I think I would say, if I already given a score on the kind of funny scale, I would say it's like a nine out of ten for sure. Like, it's an amazing video game. Yeah. But that last kick of the game.

I don't know if it was the hot dogs that we had, the corn dogs. I don't know what was happening there, but it just, he over-explained a lot of situations that I don't think we needed to over-explain because it was shown to us many times before. And there was a lot of things that I was just like, could have used a little more time on that one, right?

And that was the Mads-Mickleson of it all, right? Where we had it, we saw it, we saw it every single time, we would connect to the baby, we would see a cut scene. So I got most of it, right? But we just kept on showing the same thing, sort of. And like, there was a moment where they explained, I guess the BB of it all, right?

They show it. I'm like, oh, I got it, cool. and then they took a very long time to finally reveal like exactly and tell it to the audience and I just feel like those things could have been conjoined a little bit more and truncated and then also of course with like the actual ending of the game where people are like man the last hour of this game is crazy

I'm like I for sure I agree with you but I get what he was going for of like you know you're running on the beach and there's like this constant like you have to it's it's a very you just have to keep on going through the motions because that's what you know San Porter Bridges is going through on the beach in the actual world but as a player I was like man we could have just made this a little bit shorter

because I wanted to because you know we're at the point now where I want the answers and now we're just stringing us along a little bit more well here's what we're going to do it's time to rip the band-aid off right sure I appreciate you being so good to our audience out there of holding back the spoilers but of course as Toby Blue writes in and says

go full spoilers in my opinion it's a six year old game and most of us have watched through the stream together that's true So, yes, right now we're going to pop the top on this, Roger. I don't want you to hold back anymore because I know you're doing so well at keeping it all hidden and kind of shadowed off. But like, let's talk and take the jacket off, Roger. And let's talk about full spoilers. Let's get weird with this story, Roger, because, yeah, BB is, it turns out to be a couple of things.

Your BB that you see in the memories too is actually San Porter Bridges. It's him. But the BB on your thing is actually a different BB. It's a different BB. It's a different BB. It's not him in the past. So you think it's a baby, but it's not your BB, but then it turns out to be your BB,

because it's your baby. Yeah. Right? And it's like, it's a crazy story, Raj. It's a crazy shit. But yeah, I think that was my just initial criticism of like, man, we're so close. We're so close to like, we explained it.

We explained it when you show my sister. Fuck, why am I forgetting her name? Amelie. Umali. Fuck, I wasn't going to say alphabet, which is the mama's twin sister, whatever. But it's not her actual name, whatever. Amelie.

when you're with Amelie, right? And she, like, shows, like, they show it. They show, like, the thing of, like, oh, the baby and, like, gripping the baby. And I'm like, oh, I put two and two together that moment. But then it takes, like, 20 to 30 minutes later on to then be, like, fully do it again. But I was like, man, I just wish that we can continue that. So I already knew about that. Oh, why?

Washi already told me. Because I, a long time ago, this is an old game. And, like, me and my buddy Washi were talking. And Washi was like, wow, this game's fucking crazy, Mike. I was like, Washi, just tell me. Like, I don't know if I'm never going to play this game. Just tell me. And so I already knew about Cliff being the father to San Porta Bridges.

And there was a moment in our stream yesterday when we got to the finale where you connected the dots. But then you were like, okay, because it took, we didn't get there, right? We got right to the doorway where it's like if you put it together, you would understand, oh shit, is San Porter Bridges the baby here and he's his son? But then we kind of pull back and then we don't go full in until later on. And so I got to watch you live in person go, what? Oh, my God, am I?

And then, like, you had to stop because we just, we went hard left. I totally get what you're talking about there. Because it did take some time to finally go back. Tell us the whole full-on story of, oh, yeah, Sanported Bridges is that baby. And oh, man, that baby died. And then Amelie met him on the beach, gave him the lion kid, threw him back and said, you're a repat now. He's a repat now.

Yeah, it's interesting because I understand. man, I think I'm starting to understand the way that Kojima works and operates, right? He is somebody that really respects and loves acting, right? He loves to see his favorite actors act and do their thing. And, man, they nailed it. They nailed it. They nailed it. They nailed it.

They nailed it. They nailed it. So he likes to stay with those moments and spend a lot of time with these actors and make sure that they have those moments. And then everything else kind of falls to the wayside a little bit, right? Like, he explains it. And if they are in the game, I'm sure. I would have understood that the timefall wasn't timefall by the ending of it, right?

If I really like listened to it and connected the dots, right? But it just, by the time we ended the game, I was like, oh, wait, what? And the chat's like, oh, no, that's not timefall. Don't worry about that. Well, I took that as like, we stopped the death stranding. Yeah. So the rain is now safe again. Yeah, but then it just, it got a little confusing.

Okay, okay. It's funny because it's like, this game is very confusing throughout the entire time, but I felt like I was there. I felt like I got it and I understood it. but in the last hour of it kind of exploded everything, but then also built it back, but in a way that I wasn't,

I never got to the place that I was before where I felt like I was on it and I was getting it and I was, I was on the same path as Kojima, and then we get to the end, I'm like, shit, I do need that hour long video explaining it all, which is not a bad thing, right? I mean, a lot of games that I love do that exact thing. Yeah.

But it just, it felt like, I want this next experience, I know it won't happen, to just be a little bit more tighter when it comes to the narrative. You know, that's never going to happen. It's going to be crazy, Roger. It's going to be more.

Where do we go? Because, like, fragile, right? Yeah. But what's the line? But I'm not that fragile. She says it differently twice. She says, I'm fragile, but I'm not that fragile. It gets me every time.

It gets me every time. And that story was crazy. With her and Troy Baker, who will get to in a minute as Higgs, who is the bad guy of all of this, wanting to push for the death stranding, the big apocalypse, the extinction level event. And it's like, man, fragile has a story. And at the beginning, She's just eating these space bugs.

And you're like, all right, like, what's up with fragile? She's just teleporting all around. And then she gets the coolest story in the video game. I loved that part. Yeah, no. Her whole thing, I was like, this is corny in the beginning. But then you get to that point. You get that.

Yeah, he does a great job of making you care about characters that you would have never thought that you would have cared about just by giving them the most tragic backstory, humanly possible. That and Mama, just two extremely tragic backstories that you're going to then love those characters forever because of that. Man, that mama's backstory was tough, too. Insane, yeah. That was an insane one. Yeah. And then she builds, she builds the

weapon to cut BTs out from this world to send them and actually send them fully gone. And then it's like, oh, we're going to cut the baby. Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, that's a wild one. Yeah, it is funny that he's like, hey, we got to kill one Margarqually, but I love Margarqually. So we got to have another Margarqually.

We got to make... She had a twin sister. Yeah, they're going to become the same. Don't you worry about it. Don't worry about it. But I also did like the way that that story kind of came to a head at the ending, right? Because we have my mom, right, the two versions of my mom's sister, right? We have the one on the beach in the sky. We have Amelie and then we have Beatrice, right? Which was my real mom?

Bridget. Bridget. Bridget. Bridget. And then we have Amelie up in the sky, right? And then it's the same thing with Margaret Quali's characters, right? We have the one that's living, but then the other one's also in the BT realm technically, but that's also like coming back and forth. It's like the Ha and the Ka.

I enjoyed that stuff. I felt like that kind of came together for me. First, when we had the two versions of Margar Quali, I was like, okay, bro, I know you get, I know you love Margar Quali, but we could have, we could have. Yeah, exactly. You can go off or you don't kill her off, but I appreciate it. Yeah, that was good. You brought up Di Hardman.

I want to kind of go through the list. I want to get to Higgs for sure, because I still have question marks. Yeah, Higgs is probably one of the weakest characters. Yeah. Let's talk about him right now. Yeah. He's a badass villain. Awesome look, right?

Troy Baker given a performance, like really making you feel it. But then, like, he's so little used that it's like, oh, I didn't get to learn much about Higgs here. And that's on purpose, right? Like, I mean, because he is in the sequel, right? Like, they show him in the trailers, right? He looks badass. He lives a guitar, right? Like, not spoiling him, but you see him in the trailers.

Well, I mean, we can spoil that. Well, yeah, I don't want to spoil for you. I don't know what you know, whatever. Oh, yeah. Oh, you mean trailer. Yeah, yeah. And she also says, like, I couldn't kill him. Yeah, exactly.

And you're like, fragile, what? You wanted to kill this guy. So I'm sure for the next one, he's going to be, he's going to be all up in there. But in terms of the main storyline, they really push him as like, this is like the big bad. And of course, it's a swerve, right? It's a swerve because he's not actually the technical big bad. It is, it is, um, it is, um, it is, uh, Amelie is sort of the big bad. I would say she's the extinction level event.

Um, so I understand why, but they build him as this, this huge big deal. And when you get there, you're like, oh, I guess he's done now. Okay. And they even do like the metal gear solid four thing, right? Where you're fighting him and you're punching him. you're punching him and it's like, am I supposed to feel something right now? Because I'm not. And that's like, that is the biggest gameplay thing that I have throughout this entire thing

is that the boss fights are not very good. I don't think I've had, I had one really great boss fight that I think back on and say, man, this is the one because right before I get into the, the Troy Baker stuff and fighting, no, right after that, they throw me into like a mini boss thing that just was just a bullet sponge and took forever and just stopped my progress fully. And I just hated it. And I was like, looking at the chat. I was like, am I doing something wrong?

They said, no, this is pretty much what you're supposed to be doing. You're supposed to be just throwing grenades at them and blowing them up. It took forever. And then we get to like the actual, like the look of having, you know, homily stuck to a BT, this massive kaiju-looking BT that is controlled by Higgs, is cool in premise. But it just results in me shooting rocket launchers at them forever. And that was my biggest criticism of, of Metal Gear slot 5.

When I got halfway through that game, I stopped playing it because it was like, no, now you just got to shoot rocket launchers and blow up a bunch of zombies. And I was like, that's not what I'm playing. this game for. So I think that's like the dissonance between Kojima's like baseline design of like he's making this game this open world delivery

game and then oh now you got to have a big boss fight. Okay how do I integrate that? Well you're just going to shoot a bunch of rockets at people. So it's I want him to figure out some way to make that a little bit more cohesive. I don't know what that looks like. I don't know if it is non-traditional boss fights but yeah I mean

in my mind I'm like I could have done this entire game without boss fights and been fine for the most part. Yeah, it was fun as a passenger to watch you, right? Of like, the first boss fight was exciting because you didn't know what was happening. You had that kind of like screaming, yelling of jumping from building to building to get out of the tar and then also fight back. And we were laughing and having fun. And there was a moment of like, oh, I'm figuring it out and I'm freaking out. And then by the end, when you fought the giant whale, you're like, oh, wow, this is really boring. Like this, I'm not even moving on this one. Like the first two

boss fights, you were really actively moving, parkour. through this area while fighting. When you fought that final whale, you stayed on the same roof the entire time. The best boss fights, quote unquote boss fights, were the stuff with Cliff, right? Because that is more... Oh, those were sick. Those were more, I would like say, like cerebral, like psychology-based ones where you're inside of these massive war scenes, right?

You go through World War I, World War II, and then Vietnam. And then you're just doing the same thing, right? Where you're running around and then he has a bunch of... He has a bunch of guards. that you're just picking up shit off the floor, you're shooting them, and then you just have to get the right cover situation, eat enough bugs, and then you're done.

But it was fun to explore those areas, and I think maybe something like that, but with more exploration or even more cargo-based things. Like, if I had to deliver things to certain areas in order to get a gun, like, that would be interesting, right? Like, I don't know, like, kind of connecting, connecting the strands, right, connecting the dots between, hey, this game is all about balancing my weight

and getting from point A to point B, and then, oh, this boss fight is completely, different when picking up guns and shooting and it's called like it's call of duty is is interesting. And I think that is a that is a big, not issue, but something that a design challenge for Kojima to potentially overcome. Well, it's interesting. We talk about the boss fights, right? But then there's this open world combat that I found really exciting to watch you.

Yeah. And what I'm excited for is like there's moments where we start going from, oh, you just deliver to, hey, there are other delivery guys out there that have now kind of gone rogue and want to steal your packages, right? They're called the mules. And you start to get a couple, some weapons, right? You get the lasso gun and you can kind of do that. You get the rubber bullets and the rubber bullets. And it's like there was fun moments of what I think we've seen with Blessings preview and other previews and now heading into Death Strait 2. It's like, there's going to be a moment now where it's like, oh, you can completely avoid that and walk your path and get away. You can stealth

through that and maybe slowly take them out. Or there's some combat here. And you showed that combat in those kind of situations of like, I'm just lasso on guys, but it was fun and exciting to watch. Yeah, it was way more involved than I thought it was going to be. I thought this was going to be, from what I heard, I truly thought there was no way to non-lethaly take out these people. I thought I had to just blow them up and then run away or something like that. I thought it was completely a no-go. But no, you can really take these people down and that's in the base game because we're played the director's cut. We should say that specifically played on PC, which so there are some added things, but it doesn't seem like anything too formative. I think there's

like many areas that we went to, like they're indoors that are more stealth-based. But the stuff that we were doing most of the time with like the rubber bullets and stuff, that was all, you know, added in the base game. So it was very surprising and it was fun. That was fun stuff. And that reminded me of like a metal gear solid five. So I'm excited for the next one to see how that expands and how, how stealth can I get with it. Yeah.

And all some crazy mecks. Oh, shit. Is that what's happening in the game? I mean, I'm just seeing the trailers, right? I'm like seeing them on top of these giant bodies and stuff with like no heads. I'm so sick. Because I don't remember. The only thing I remember from the trailers are the kid stuff.

You know, Luis, as we'll talk about in the second. Just Luis walking around or being a little bit older. And then the Troy Baker, Troy Baker running around with the electric guitar. That's all I remember from the trailer. So I'm excited to see more of it. I think the exciting stuff is a lot of people are pointing out in the chat of like, there's some cool Higgs, aka Troy Baker, lore that you can go learn on some side stuff.

A lot of people are saying, like, when you do the marathon stream, You don't get to spend the time. And so the fun part is like, Roger, do you think as the lead up to death stranding too, will you spend a little more time going back to Death Stranding one, right? Will you go and spend a night building roads? Will maybe you go do some of the side content to expand the story? Because a lot of people are saying, hey, maybe we missed out on that, which is understandable. Yeah, totally.

When it's like Mike's dying, there's a timer on the stream. Mike's y'all just made like this or I'll kill you. So that's on me, audience. You got to remember. And I totally get that. piece of content, yeah. Yeah, it's a piece of content. And also, like, yeah, I will go back and play some of it.

But also, I think my criticism still stands, right? Like, I understand you put more lore in the side stuff, which I respect, and I'm sure it's great. But also, if you're making a main villain of a game or, like, or a semi-main villain that I'm supposed to care about and doing the big punching thing where it's like, oh, we're really putting everything into this fight, right? Like, this is a huge deal that me and Higgs have finally met. And I don't really know shit about this guy and I don't really care about this guy. that stuff needs to be funneled into the main story pretty, pretty well. You can't just leave that to the side stuff.

You didn't look at the side stuff. Like, no, the main story needs to be the main story and it needs to, you need to kind of account for that, right? He was a bad guy, though. He was a bad guy, though. He was dropping nukes, man. Yeah. He had fragile delivering nukes.

He tried to get you to deliver a nuke. Yeah. That was a cool moment. I enjoyed that when we failed that the first time. I was like, what the hell am I supposed to do? That was cool. I really liked that. Yeah, that was a good time.

And so, yeah, I was a good time. And so, yeah. hope that you go back because I think the coolest part is we got to see the world share their creations with us and I would have loved to see you spend more time because I think the coolest part is when we started building zipline and I love just like we talk about when you watch someone play a game it's a nightmare because you're thinking of seven other things you did good though I will say I just want to cut you off but I'm saying you did it great in terms of not backslake driving me oh of course you did great and I do love the moment I wish I had it

I want to put her post it one day. I'll just me just say, why don't you go around this? I said, why don't you just shut the fuck up? I was like, Mike, it's fucking, it's noon. I'm hungry. Shut the fuck up. Let me cook. It is so cool of like this game being a true sandbox and it being the walking sim where

the object is to get from point A to point B, go however you want, right? And there's going to be people like me. It's like, well, Roger, why don't you follow this canyon and then get to like the flatland where it's going to be easy and take a slow walk around that? And you're like, no, no, I'm going up and over this goddamn mountain. I'm going to cut the time down by half. Believe it. And I'm going to make it.

Another one. The vehicles? The vehicles. Yeah. Okay, we got to talk about the vehicles for a second. Got to elevate the vehicles. What the fuck, dude. Why is that thing banging off of every single rock, Roger?

The end, I can't believe. I can't believe. I love, I love, I love, I love, gojima. You know what I mean? Like, dapt them up. You know what I mean? Like, it's a great guy. What the fuck?

Like that, that shit, that's a, that is a, that is a, What the fuck. That is an offense that should have delayed the video game. Like that is the fact that these fucking, this fucking, I look at that. I just bang into the smallest rock humanly possible and just hard stops me. Unacceptable. Hard stops me. That is not how you fucking design these things.

No, it needs to be something of all-terrain vehicle. I know there's a truck that we didn't get. Sorry about that one, everybody. But either way, the fucking motorcycle should not be hitting every single fucking rock unless someone told me, which I couldn't, I couldn't believe, they're like, hey, you should do a wheelie. And I was like, what? And I do a wheelie and you can just wheelie the entire time. And that avoids every single rock.

Yeah, it was a, that was a weird one of like, do the wheelie. And you were avoiding like 90%, but you're also still banging into some. It's like, yeah, look at it. Just right there. Never felt good, never looked quite right with the motorcycle. And that was a disappointment of like the vehicles are clearly probably supposed to be used on the road, right? But when you go off road with them, you're just having the time of your life. And it felt so frustrating to watch you bang into things and be like,

He's getting no momentum, like, just help him out. You know what I mean? Like, we got to figure this out. I'm just struggling, just absolutely struggling in this game. Yeah, so that's a, that's a huge area of improvement for the next one. So I'm excited because it seems like that's the direction they're going forward. That would be very exciting. The ramps also made me laugh because we got a good one coming in from one of the best friends out there.

Did you use the ramps and did you hit any stunt tricks from Jake C over there? I think we hit one and we're like, old shit. We hit, we hit three. ramps total. One ramp was sick and it actually worked. The other two ramps sent us directly just dead vertical and then straight down. There was no ramp. I was like, give him about 40 feet on that thing. Come on. Come on. Gojima. What a sliders. What a game. What a time on that one, Roger? And so, yeah, what are you excited for for death training to Roger? Because I think of it like, I mean, clearly we're putting all the boxes back on our back. Yeah, I would assume. Is he still

delivering packages in this? And so like, you got the weight game again. And so like, you got the weight game again. Yeah. You're juggling things. Vehicles, of course, creating roads and ropes and ladders. Like, what more do you want? What do you want to see refined? What do you want to see expanded on? Yeah, I mean, there's a lot I want to see expanded on in terms of the story. I'm very excited to see this universe get bigger and to see more and more characters into it, right? Just building upon the baseline that we've created here. We have El Fanning. El Fanning is in it. We have a ton of new actors and people that are going to be added to the Descrending universe. So I'm very excited about that. but like in in terms of honestly hype level like just getting that out there this year's a weird one for me because I look around and I see a lot of people saying man this year is really great in terms of video games and it is it for sure is there's a lot of

games coming out but there hasn't been like last year was such a roger year in like a very real way from the fucking jump like we had a yakuza game that we had it you had infinite wealth which is incredible we had uh final fantasy we had uh even just in the beginning of the year we had uh fucking yellow taxi goes room right like we had like three of like one of my top 12 games of the year right right right there January, January, February. And this year I'm just, I'm just not feeling. Like, there's not really many things that are really grabbing me, getting me super excited, getting me into that level. And this one is the first time this year where I'm looking forward to a game in the way that, like,

I get like butterflies in my stomach. Like, I'm thinking about like, oh my God, like, what an experience. Like, death draining two is that level of hype that I did came out of nowhere and I'm so deeply excited for. So yeah, I'm excited for just to see how crazy Kojima gets with it. Like, are we going into time loops? Are we going to multiverse shit? Like are we how we I mean I saw the fucking second trailer where it's like doing some metal gear solid shit like what does that look like is that how far we ride in that line are we actually going to skirt up into potentially making some type of weird like multiverse shit like I don't know what he's doing here but I am interested and I'm also interested to see the gameplay improvements because yeah it's of course we have to be going across the city no we're going somewhere else which I don't whatever we're going to a different continent we're going to a different area delivering stuff. and I'm excited to see one, how they adapt that terrain and then two, how they

kind of create the baseline at the beginning of it, right? Are we starting with everything that we ended with that terrain? Like, do I get the zipline immediately? Because that's what I want. I just want to start off with everything. And I just want to add on, add on, so by the ending of this game, I feel like I'm fucking invincible doing insane shit. Like, that would be a really cool

idea. It's to start off with just, hey, you have baseline, you can build ziplines, you have the PCC2, whoever it's called, you have the motorcycle, you have the car, you have everything, okay, now we're going to get crazy with it. By the ending of it, you're going to be fucking Iron Man. That would be my perfect world where we just go... Because I don't know if you've ever seen those videos

where it's like what 2,000 hours in Death Stranding looks like, and these people are fucking doing insane shit. They're running, they're fucking flying. They're doing insane stuff. So if we can get there and, like, for the normal gamer by midgame, like where you're just doing wild shit and you can kind of focus on like mid-maxing that level of stuff, that would be dope.

All right, Roger. Well, of course, the title of this is our review of Death Stranding in 2025. You have already given it a number, but let's do the fun little review synopsis from you right now, Roger. You played Death Stranding here in 2025

for your first ever time ahead of Death Stranding 2's release in June. What would you grade it? Yeah, as I said earlier, I would give Death Stranding a 9. I will give Death Stranding a 9 out of 10 on the kind of funny scale. I will say that that is a capital

A amazing game. Capital amazing game. I don't know what you're doing capital. You're going to lowercase amazing. You're going with capital A amazing. Yeah, capital A amazing, but not all caps. Amazing. I like that. I like that. I would say it's a nine out of 10. I definitely see where this game can be improved on. And I see the world where death's training two can be that 10 out of 10 for me. It definitely has that road to do it. All it just needs is the quality of life. Right. That is all I want. I want more quality of life stuff and I want that story to go absolutely fucking bonkers and for him to kind of streamline the things that we're explaining and not just re-explain the same thing 10 times because that's what it felt like towards the ending but other than that I had an incredible experience with it an incredible time hanging out with you doing this amazing stream hang out with the audience supporting us

for so long breaking records that kind of funny here and really getting me to experience a game that I wouldn't have experienced otherwise right and uh death's journey too has the possibility I mean we know for sure it has Caroline Polichick in it. And she's doing the title song of Death Training on the Beach. The song called On the Beach. So we have a contender. Contender.

T-E-N. 10 out of 10. I'm excited. All caps. I'm hoping for it. I'm hoping for it. What about you? If you were to rate it, if you were to give it a score, I know you didn't play it. I'm an 8.59.

I think it was a great to an amazing game. I think it was another Kijima title that I love and I will think about forever. just like when me and Barrett did Metal Gear Solid games, I was wowed by what this guy is capable of as someone who didn't play the Kajima titles back as a kid. Experiencing them now as an adult who is talking about it with his friends and experiencing them live

and getting awesome tidbits from people who are super informed and experts in it. It's like, oh, wow, this guy has got something. And his team is truly incredible. And so, like, I am kind of ride or die for Kajima. I really love all of his work and his work. team's work and playing through this with you, Roger, was an experience, right? I really, I love the idea of this game.

I can't wait for me to play it, right? I'm excited to go hands on the sticks because I am someone who loves going on a hike. I like scurrying up the side of a mountain. I love creating my own path. And so, yeah, this game really speaks to me. And then on top of that, the weird, wacky storytelling of Kajima always gets me excited because we get to do Lollah Lule lore breakdowns and we just make up the inner parts of the story where people are like, well, that's not true.

And then we'll figure out what's true and what's fun. It's like awesome stuff that he leads us on this cool little trail. And I loved our experience, Roger. I will definitely cherish it. I will remember it. And I can't wait for two. I'm excited to do it. Hopefully all over again with you.

I got new shoes. Oh, shit. You know, they're comfy. And so like I will be bouncing off of this treadmill with you right next to you. Doing tricks on it. And I'm excited about this because we have, potentially, we might do it again for another marathon train. We're still talking about it

figuring it out. But also, you and I get to react and kind of break down the death straining two trailers, which I'm excited about. Yeah, hopefully that's,

hopefully some future content. Yeah, exactly. And it seems like he's cooking up another trailer. I see him editing and stuff. One more. I see, I see images of him fucking in premiere and stuff. But like that's lit.

Like, you just do the one. You do the one big one. Yeah, we don't need to two. The second one was kind of crazy. You know what the third one has the Caroline song. You know what I mean?

We got to listen to it. We got to listen to that song one more time. How amazing is that to think about Caroline and getting this opportunity and like having your song as the title song? It's like, oh, snap. That's like a James Bond song. I know I said it a couple of times, Roger, but like that is the honor of like, oh, snap, you're the James Bond song. That's late. Yeah, I think about the metal your solid five title theme a lot.

So like the fact that she's able to get that level of thing is very exciting. So yeah, I'm excited to. Really cool. I'm excited to experience. I can't wait to hear the music. Yeah. Because everybody, we were going crazy for the music in the first one. Yes.

The music hit at all times and every single time, every track through it, Roger, hit at the right moment and they were all like perfect. Everything was really good. Y'all put me on to churches now. I don't know who that was. Now I'm into that, you know what I mean? And so, yeah, I'm excited to see what he's got up his sleeves because this game needs really good music for what it was. But I don't know what two is going to be. Yeah.

It could be over the top action all the time. Exactly. I have no idea. And then also we have a movie coming out too that is actually happening. Like they're actively casting and they have the director and like they're making this happen. This A-24 Death Stranding movie directed by the same director as Quiet Place Day 1 or Part 1 or what the fuck was called. And then also he directed movie Pig with Nicholas Cage, which I fucking adore. So man, that's going to actually happen.

That's exciting. Honestly, if you asked me way back when this first dropped, there's no way I thought this was going to get a sequel. Yeah. There's no way I thought we'd be making a movie as well. Yeah. But it's exciting times because after Death Stranding 2. we look forward to OD and then Fisint. Like, we got a lineup here of games coming from this team.

OD. Will it come out? OD, he didn't say it. He didn't say it. He didn't say it. He didn't say it. He didn't say it. He didn't say it.

Let me talk about Fisit. For everybody watching live over on YouTube and on Twitch, we're not done. We're going to end this podcast and this episode of Gamescast with a fun one. I let Roger and I and all of you share the fun of our experience. But the experience wouldn't be the experience without the moments. And there was some moments. of ordering food throughout this marathon stream. And I want us to rank the food that we ordered, Roger.

So to end today's Gamescast episode, we're going to look back on 60 plus hours, a marathon stream that went from Saturday to Monday morning and also a Wednesday afternoon. We ate a lot of food. I had a lot of meat sticks. A lot of meat sticks. An insane amount of meat sticks.

Eat a lot of nuts. Put a lot of nuts about that. Heart rate was through the roof. Yeah. A little bit more. Heart rate. Yeah, yeah, a little scary. A little scary.

The best line was, oh, man, this was from Timu. It's not reading right. Then we put it on you, and it was just perfect. It's just perfectly normal. It was a perfectly normal art rate. And so, Roger, let's look back at what we ate. We had some snacks. We definitely had a lot of Starbucks, but we also had some fun moments of ordering

meals together. Yeah. What did we order? Where should we write? So I'm just going to go for the dinners, right? That's easy, right? Including the one from yesterday. Yeah.

So we had night one, we ordered. Chili's. That was our first freak nasty idea. Thank you to the audience for talking us through that one and getting us the triple dipple. Then we got Denny's for the second night. That was tough. That was really tough. That was unfortunate. Genuinely tough. A great French toast.

Was it? No, no, that's not great French toast. Let's go back a little bit because if you watch that clip, if you watch that clip, Mike was not happy about that French toast. Then we had red romans to round that out. That was also tough. That was a tough one. And then yesterday we bought a bunch of corn dogs

Yeah, we had Korean Corn dogs So the first ever time That was tough So let's work through them We started with chilies We got excited by chilies A little little Duo date to chilies

Yeah, that was beautiful We got caught up in the Appies Yeah, caught up in the triple nipple Yeah, we got what was it the Oh no, but you got the sliders You got ass I got two orders of sliders And both of them came just butt naked

No ketchup, no mustard No LTOs No letters or nothing that they were mostly like any slider, mostly bread, and you got so mad about it. You're like, I don't want to eat this. Well, it's like you got to put a little something on it. You can't just give me a Kings Hawaiian roll and a slice of bad meat in the middle. I think you specifically said you didn't want shit on it.

And then I told them not to put shit on it. And then you got mad. That's why I was butt naked then. I just got some ketchup on that. I got those. And what else did I get on that? You got the chicken? Oh, you got mozzarella sticks?

You got chicken. You got chicken. The hot Nashville chicken tenders or whatever. Oh, and they were good. Those were smacking. Those were smacking. I should have gone with the cassidias. Yeah, you should.

Oh, those egg rolls. And then we got the egg rolls from me. And those were way too spicy for you. I said, those are too spicy. You said, Mike, this is just black pepper on this. It's too spicy. It hurts. The whitest man in the world.

And then I got the chicken tenders as well. And I think I got mozzarella scissors or something like that. But yeah, that was good. So chilies? S tier. That's number one. S tier number one. I mean, I mean, I don't know about S tiers or whatever,

but let's just do number one. I go that's the best one. Yeah. That's definitely the best one. All right. Chili's number one right now. For sure. Right now?

Okay, let's fucking go through it. We've got to talk about the other ones. Oh, those fucking chips are so good. Those chips are unreal. You know what the chips are going to drive chilies. Absolutely. And then we had Denny's. Oof.

So there's four options. So we made a bad call here. We gave the opportunity to the live audience watching during the marathon stream to vote on what we should have for dinner. And you gave them four options. And they, excuse my language, fucked me. Yeah.

They fucked us. Yeah, they look at them. They fucked you like that. I mean, there's just a moment, Roger. You gotta watch this. We've got to watch this. This is my only break. Yeah, uh-huh.

As you're right there. This is my only break. That was your only break. This is my only break. They're like two hours. Conveniently all the KFAF lay on the couch is cut out of here. This is my only break, Chad. And so,

Denny's. Denny's. We think about breakfast. Eggs. 24-7. Also, that's when you ordered an extra? No, that was Red Robin. We'll save that later.

Yeah, so I went with my classic French toast, sausage slings, bacon. Okay? Yeah. And I told Roger, I said, if this French toast doesn't have syrup, you best believe I'm throwing a temper tantrum and I'm going to hit you with this French toast. That's so upset. Roger, message this poor Door Dash driver. Please God make sure that's syrup in this. He's going to kill us.

Yeah. And there was. There was, which was great. Yeah. And yeah. So it was bad. I got the slam witch or whatever the fuck.

The Grand Slamwich. Yeah, yeah, that was a bad comment. You got the Grand Slamwich. Yeah, the Grand Slamwich that had like, it was like bacon.

It had a ham, had eggs and a cheese. And it was like on a sourdough with like cinnamon on it. It was fine. It was like a totally like a five out of ten, four out of ten. It was whatever. This was sucked.

This is the, Denny's is the worst one. Denny's his three right now. Well, I mean, we're going to move. Well, Denny's is two right now technically. And then we move.

We move them. Okay. It's definitely four. But yes. Yeah. Denny's going out of the bottom. All right. So then Red Robin.

We had next. I blacked out. I don't even remember. Oh, we got a big ass burger. We got big ass burgers. We got extra fries. And they were the most greasy thing that we've ever had in our lives. That burger was tough.

It was an issue because I know, because I'm a former bigger person. I still have it in me, right? Like, I still all I want to do is eat whatever is in front of me. And I destroyed that burger. And you didn't even finish that burger. So that's how I know that we have an issue here Is that when Mike doesn't even finish a burger And I destroy a burger

That's not good We got a problem We got a problem And it wasn't like a good destroying It was not like I was like into it It was a bad burger I had a peach milkshake It was also bad

And a root beer float Peach milkshake Peach rings milkshake Oh yeah it was awful Oh I thought it was just a peach milkshake It's peach rings Well it was a peach milkshake That they put the cute candy gummy

Peach rings in Awful Oh, did you know the story about this, Barrett? No. So we did a thing where on the stream, he said he wanted two milkshakes. He wanted a Dr. Pepper Roopier Floats and he wanted the peach ring milkshake. And I said, hey, Mike, you can only get one. I'm ordering.

You can't get two. And then he said, I'll rock paper scissors for it right now. And if I win, I get to order two. And I said, okay. And I fucking beat his ass. I beat his ass in a way that I already told him exactly how I was going to beat him. It's funny because 20 minutes before we talked about rock paper scissors technique. Yeah, exactly.

I was telling him that what I do is I go, I always go, what I go paper? I go paper. I go paper. And then if it's a tie, people freak out. And then they go rock because they want to be strong. And then I stay paper and I was win. And that's exactly what happened. So I beat his ass, right?

And then as I go to the bathroom after I order everything, he talks, I come back and I see on the chat all a bunch of ones and chat be cool, chat be cool. And then I go back in the clips and I find him be like, Chad, I just spent $20 and I ordered the same milkshake to here. I ordered the second milkshake. So the same DoorDash person picked up probably the easiest lick of their lives. Oh, just double it on. Just double it up, bro, because you just spent $20 on one milkshake that sucked.

Also, I heard you were warned about the Red Robin pizza, and you ordered it anyway. Yeah, so that's also another great point. Yeah, we ordered the Ohio. Yeah, which Jeff Grubb was defending because it's Ohio. Yeah, it's Donato's, which I can also speak to as someone who was born. in Ohio? No. Absolutely. That was bad. I could have told you. It was the weirdest pizza in the world because it smelled really good.

You take a bite out of it. You taste the pepperoni. You're like, oh, this is good pepperoni? And then you start tasting the sauce and the cheese and you're like, why is there no flavor here? Why is there zero flavor? That was crazy. So that was bad. So that, Denny's, I would say Red Robben is better than Denny's because I ate the entire burger and I like the fries. And the pizza was like not, it was awful. But it was also had pepperoni. It was pretty good. So I'll give it a pass there. You know what I mean? Come on.

So I'm going to say that Red Robin is above Denny's, below Chili's. Yes. And then, of course, yesterday we had corn dogs. This was a bad decision. This was a really, this was a real. I don't eat many corn dogs. I haven't had many in my life. And you didn't really know what it was.

The idea of elevating the corn dog in such a way where all of a sudden there is French fries mashed up French fries surrounding the outside of this corn dog. We've taken the corn dog and just dip. it in a bunch of Cheeto flakes Tithu's flates. Then for some reason we decided to make a half and half where we cut the dog in half and then

on the top half of the corn dog, it's just cheese because we wanted to do fried cheese sticks, but who wants just a cheese stick? So let's do half and half and it's like, no, it should be the dog surrounded by cheese. That's a true half and half. And they said, no, it's

half cheese, half dog. And that that was a bad idea. Yeah, and the But mozzarella wasn't good, right? And then when you have these things, right, they're not mozzarella sticks, right? So they don't have the same textual, like, contrast. Like, they're not as, like, crisp as you would want them to. And then the cheese just sucks. So then it's like, oh, this is like a bad mozzarella stick and it was $8.

Just take the mott stick. Take the dog, wrap the mott stick around it, corn dog. Yes. Like, that's all I want here. Shadow trickster tests. Mike has awful taste takes, bro. But then says it's a mott stick and a dog. And I'm describing to you what it should look like.

Yeah. No, it's not a... Quick question. Yeah, of course. More importantly, what the fuck is this green one? Yeah, this is the to- That's the to-kis one. It looks like just it's covered in like moss. Yeah, it didn't taste good either.

Actually, no, it was the better one. No. Tockeys was... Oh, really? I like Tockeys more than Cheetos. I think... Chitos wasn't hot. But then we also got Cheetos, hot Cheetos,

uh, fried Korean chicken. And that was pretty good. It was like, it was like, it was like a general so's chicken, but like super fucking fake spicy. so I liked it, but I also hated it because I was like, oh, I'm going to die if I keep on eating this. Yeah, that was too spicy. I didn't like that at all. Yeah.

So I actually would put this lower than Denny's. No way. Yeah. I'd put this lower than Denny's. That's how I feel in my heart of hearts. But I'll put it above Denny's for you, but like Denny's at least gave me a cold French toast that I could eat. I'll give it to, actually. Yeah.

So, okay, our list goes like this. Chili's at number one, Red Robin at number two. including the pizzas from Donados, which he also called Dantes. Denny's at number three and then corn dogs at number four. So that was that was tough. Oh, Grub Killis says, to be honest, you didn't finish any of that order. We put a fucking dent, bro. Me and Mike were fucking throating dogs.

We were in there. We ate a lot. Remember that first dog? Remember that first dog? We went straight out. We were going to bite for bite. We were going to bite for bite. We were sharing the wiener.

Oh, dude, we were sharing that wiener. We loved it. Let's jump in and let's finish. today's games cast with some super chats coming from you, the incredible best friend audience out there on YouTube and on Twitch. MJ or M. Junior

Monkey writes and says, y'all got to watch the Death Stranding 2 trailer now since you've experienced the first game. We also have another YouTube membership from Mr. Monkey saying watch that Death Stranding 2 trailer. We will. We'll make that a separate piece of content

sometime between now and Death Stranding 2. Me and Roger will sit and kind of go frame by frame. I love it. We should probably do it sooner than later before I forget everything. Yeah, but dead wife. Got a lot going on. We'll figure it out.

Oh, yeah. And of course, we do have a super chance coming in from Ricardo Gonzalez, who says, Mike, what about those themes of dead wife? Oh, dude. A lot of themes in this game. Okay, a lot of themes in this game. And now that we can spoil it, themes. Okay.

Thank you to see J. Splitz-Sides. You're trying to do the Zoom and he's like, I thought you were going to go. Say, Mike, is that you're going to go. See J. Spitzis Slits on. Mike, is that shirt a larger and XL? I'm happy to report that this shirt is an Xcel, okay?

It's got more of the boxier fit, so I think it hides the gut pretty well. Yeah, that's pretty good. Okay, but I'm not double Xcel yet. Yeah. But the question will be tomorrow when I wear the other t-shirts. Oh, you're going to wear the other boxy. Oh.

Will it be, oh, Mike, you need a double XL on those? Because this is the new boxy look. All the kids like the boxy look, right? I don't like the boxy look that much. But also, I'm just, looking for a comfortable t-shirt. You don't like the boxy look. Suck it in my gut because my gut's so big.

How did I get so big? We learned yesterday that he has a double gut. He has a double bump above his big belly. Right here. Feel that? And also my belly's cold. You feel that right there. No, right there.

You see, like, isn't that crazy? It's like, if I take my t-shirt off, there's something protruding out of here. It's like the alien coming out of somebody's belly. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, shit. It's something to pop out of snow like Mike's belly. Be careful.

You know what I mean? That and then it's very cold, the top of his, the top, the tip of your belly. Yes, yes, yes, yes, very cold. Brightened, Jason, the drone says, congratulations. Watch out. It's a Duma. It could be a tumor. Cal writes in, aka Kabab, says, Mike, what are your thoughts after yesterday,

now that you finally completed the epic journey of Luigi's Mansion 3? Ah, great game. Great game. I love that game so much. Thank you, Cal. And then finally, Cameron. Cameron Abbott, aka Reverend Cam Abbott, right? It says,

Roger never did the deliveries to find out he was your client on multiple occasions. Really great reveal towards the end. Now show me them yams, Mike. So Roger, you got some fun side content to do if you want to continue. Cameron was followed up with that saying that was about Higgs. Oh, yeah. That makes a lot.

You see Higgs kind of being your client. Surprised that there's no like New Game Plus. I would have loved a New Game Plus. I hope that's in the sequel. Oh, yeah, that should have been New Game Plus. Like jump back. you're just, well,

a lot of people are saying it could be a hernia. I don't know what a hernia is. I don't know what a feeling it. Go to a doctor.

No, he's just fingering it. He's just having a good time. I'm freaking it, he's freaking it. He's freaking out. Do you think there's something, sorry,

just to get away from this conversation, um, with New Game Plus, do you think because of the nature of the, like, strand shit? Like,

do you think that like gets in the way of, yeah, but I just want the zip lines from the beginning, right? I wanted to be able to just start making shit. Right for the real. after everything. Well, you can. You can't continue the game.

And I just want to run and build and then do some side-patch. Which is what I will do. But I wish there was a full new game plus because I would like to kind of do everything in order and kind of go like that. Cupcake Bliss writes in right before I was going to end the show and says, how do you guys feel about the scenes between Sam Bridges and Cliff at the end of the game and Die Hardman and Cliff versus Cliff? Oh, I love that stuff. Yeah. I thought all of it was very good. Yeah, the Die Hardman stuff, especially when you think back to, because they did they do the, they had the emotional moment and then they kind of like go back to it and like explain really why that's so emotional later on, like right afterwards. So I,

at first I was confused, like this, he's acting really well. Like this diehard man, the actor, I forget his name, but he's incredible. But I was like, okay, well, why is he so emotional right now? And then they fully do the reveal. Like, here's exactly why. Like, let me show you that moment again. I like throughout, uh, as dead man pulls you aside and heart man go like, hey, we don't know where this guy stands. He could be. evil and like he's everybody's always watching because you're connected and so it's like let's let's keep an eye on this and then we find out the backstory of like oh no this guy's just ride or die and like he's lost a lot of people that he cares about but also like he's going through

some things yeah no and i think that's kind of like the the core of the game which i think is interesting is like there of course higgs is a bad guy but he also i'm sure he has a lot of trauma and everything we're going to get into the next game right like they're like amalie is not necessarily a bad person or like the bad guy of this game, right? She is sort of a redeemable character because that's kind of what her whole mission is. She's trying to hold off. Yeah, she's trying to hold off. And she

that is, that is literally her purpose on this planet is to blow it up, right? So it's kind of like bucking destiny. So yeah, I was happy that there wasn't like, oh, die hard man, it's a secret villain of the game, right? Like that was kind of like elevating everything else. Yeah, I liked, I like die hard men and Cliff. I thought

that was really cool. And then I loved I mean, the crazy Kojima stuff, the over-the-top action movie stuff, of like, you got five minutes. I did my best to, like, help you. Nobody's listening. Like, you got to get out of here with this baby. And, yeah, all of that scene was super dope. I liked Sam Porter Bridges with Cliff. I love that reveal of Roger getting it, but then also, yeah, we have to go sideways for about 15 minutes before we go back to the full reveal.

But, like, I mean, all the scenes with Mads is wild, right? Like, every time he connects and he's the BB is so much fun. I love that. Cupcake Bliss writes in again one more time and says Do you think we'll get more Higgs and story? Oh, for sure. Test training too. I'm excited to break down those trailers and look deep into that.

Let's, also shout out to Red Hudson right there. Let's finish it off. Read it, Roger to finish off this episode. Mike and Roger are goats. These streams were an absolute blast. Thank you both. Bring back the hashtag Yam cam cam for DS2.

We have some exciting ideas to elevate it and really elevate the gam cam and also elevate you ordering food because we're going to try to eat healthy for the next one. but also if Chili sponsors us, we won't. We don't give a shit. Either way, you guys are going to freak it. We're going to freak it, bro. And that's what it's all about, bro.

Come on. Kind of funny, best friends. Thank you for joining us on today's games cast. Where we look back on our death-standing experience here in 2025, Roger gave it a score, but most importantly, we got to relive the fun moments with all of you and talk about a game that is just wild and exciting. And we'll get a sequel next month.

So hopefully we'll all be talking about it in June with all of you, because this has been kind of funny games cast each and every weekday. We run you through the fun nerdy news you need to know about, into awesome game discussions, reviews, topics, opinion pieces, and more. Here, I'm kind of funny. And after this, we have a stream going on. Greg is going to jump into the Outer Worlds for the big re-review coming up soon with Greg, Stella, and Andy.

So jump into that. Tell Greg what you think about the game, what you should be talking about for the re-review. And thank you for your time and your day. Have a wonderful one. Goodbye, everyone.