Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Deathloop Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 90

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

Go to http://betterhelp.com/kindafunny and take care of yourself. Go to http://hellofresh.com/kfgames14 and use code kfgames14 for up to 14 free meals, including free shipping! Go to http://nativedeo.com/kfgames or use code kfgames to get 20% off your first purchase. Go to http://chime.com/kfgames to get started with Chime! Greg, Blessing, Janet Garcia, and GameSpot's Tamoor Hussain come together to review Arkane's PS5 exclusive Deathloop. Follow Tam: https://twitter.com/tamoorh Follow Janet: https://twitter.com/Gameonysus  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Without a healthy mind, being happy is hard. Visit betterhelp.com slash Kind of Funny and see if online therapy is for you. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the future class of video games. Blessing Adioia Jr. It's me.

What's up, Greg? How much, man? How you been? I'm doing pretty good. I just had some garlic bread and two slices of asparagus. I don't like that you made me a liar because, of course, the roller skate and game playing. Janet Garcia came into the call and I said, guess what blessing just went to heat up and eat? She said breakfast burrito. I said close baked potatoes. Then Barrett and Janet were like, how was that

close? And I left, but you didn't eat the baked potato. No, I went to the fridge because these are outbacked steakhouse leftovers. And so I went to the fridge, looked in the box and I was like, okay, I'm looking at this baked potato. This baked potato looks really good. And I don't want to rush eating this right before a show. But then I looked at the sides, right? I had the garlic bread and I had the two pieces of asparagus. And I was like, these will do. These will get me through the next show. And so, like, that's what I'm running on right now. I'm feeling great. Is this baked potato one of the two baked potatoes that Mike had accidentally ordered? I love Mike so much because he was at Outback Steak House yesterday. And he ordered, I heard him, right? Like, he told the waiter,

oh yeah, I'll take this, this and this. And I'll also have two sides of mashed potatoes. Actually, no, he was like, the waiter was like, what do you want for a side? And he was like, I'll have the mashed potatoes. And he was like, the waiter was like, you get two sides. And that's when Mike was like double up on the mashed potatoes. Then they came back with two baked potatoes and Kevin turns to Mike and it's like, we can fix that. We can return those and get the mashed potatoes that you asked for. Mike was like, oh, no, I'll be good.

I'll be good. He wasn't good. So did you take one of his potatoes? No, no, it was one of my own. Okay. So then Janet, how are you? Thank you for joining us for the deathly. I'm good.

I'm excellent. I'm happy to be on a show with you again. Do you have any questions from this? Because I have a burning question, but I wonder if you're on the same level as me. Well, let's see. My first question is, Blessing said, he looked at the big potato, then he looked at the sides. Is the baked potato not also a side? That was my first question.

Second, I think that's my main question right now, but what comes from that? There are levels to this. All right. So yesterday, the baked potato was aside. All right, it was aside to the ribby steak that I also got. When I got home today, or when I got home today, when I looked at my fridge this morning to figure out what I was going to eat for lunch, it was going to be the big potato. Big potato was making the Pokemon evolution. from being, oh, you're aside to now being,

no, you're the main course. Yeah. When I'm sitting at Outback Steakhouse, the steak is the main course. When I'm at home, a baked potato, a loaded baked potato, that is 100% a main course for me. Here's the question I have, bless. And granted, I know, of course, you are in shape young gentlemen,

so maybe it's just you don't eat like the hog I am or whatever. How did you come home with this much leftovers? What went wrong in the... How many awesome blossom, boom, bloomin onions, whatever did you get before you? to blow this up where you, I assume you ate all of the steak, but none of the garlic bread, the, what was it,

asparagus. I got a hefty meal because it was, if I'm going to close my eyes and do my Sean Spencer from Syke deduction memory thing that he does in that show, right? If I'm close my eyes looking at my plate, on that plate is a rabbi steak. I also have an order of shrimp. I have like five shrimp on that plate as well. I have the garlic bread. I have like five asparagus and I ate three.

three of them. And so I had leftover two asparagus. And then I had, is that everything that I mean, I had the baked potato as well. I'm just surprised that you have the discipline to not only take food with you to go. I mean, did you like maybe get like an Uber or something where it wasn't that like much of a journey home or like got a ride or something? I'm close. I'm close enough to the, yeah, and I have a car. And I have a car. I drive. I usually get leftovers. Do you guys usually not get leftovers? I either don't get the leftovers or I don't eat the leftovers. when I get them. Like the left,

leftovers become like, you're on the wait list for the garbage. Like when inevitably a few days later, you're like, it's not like it went bad, but it just, it's old. You know what I mean?

How long can you trust it? I'm going to say like two days. Did I put it into a plastic bag? Did I put it into a plastic bag? Or is it still in like the weird container that has all that air in there? And then the food's stale and weird anyway? Oh, the container air is part of the leftover experience.

So like, if someone introduce me so I can contribute to this, ladies and gentlemen, you know, from Tim Tamper. Thursdays, it's game spots Tamor who's saying hello tomorrow. I am here.

Blessing, eat all your food the moment you get it. If you are got left over, you're over ordering. And if you are, like, you order on purpose. You do it on purpose. I assume this turned into some like company outing yesterday that I will go to

obviously because of the baby and Delta and all that stuff. I assume kind of funny paid for this. Like somebody threw down company. Of course you're getting steaks and you're getting shrimps on top and you're getting onions. Oh, yeah. You got to make their money back.

Okay. Yeah. You could order me something. I'm like, going to throw it away. Listen, listen. If I was paying for it,

because here's the thing, I thought I was going to pay for it. I didn't realize that the job was paying for it. I didn't realize that until I was like, Oh, right. You got steak money? Okay.

I'm a host of steak money. I take it back. Wait, are we supposed to have steak money? Hold on. If you're looking to finesse a corporation, then do what you need to. I'm down with that.

Listen, there's a singer-songwriter with a ghostwriter named Drake, uh, Drizzie Drake, right? They call him champagne. You got Drake's full name, didn't you? Drizzy, Aubrey, Drake, Graham.

They call him champagne poppy. And, you know, is that a good nickname? That's debatable. All I'll say is that, you know, for Drake, him being champagne poppy, for blessing, I am leftover poppy. That's what they call me. And by they, I mean, me, I'm calling myself that right now. I'm leftover, leftover poppy.

I love leftovers. Leftovers are better than the actual mules sometimes. I'm not afraid to say it. There's very few items of food that I will take as leftover and then be satisfied with when I eat it the next day. I'm closer to Janet where I'm like, this is going to a bin or like I'm taking it home to give to someone who's going to eat it immediately. You know what fixes that, though. You know what fixes that? An air friar.

Oh, yeah. Even now, what am I talking about your boogey? Yeah, exactly. The point is not to. It's like that. That's why I don't do, well, besides the fact that it's usually really expensive. But like the food delivery stuff, we're like, oh, you make the meal. No, no, no.

It's still too much work. Now I'm still, I'm just, you've only taken out part of the work. I don't want to do anything. This is the whole point of the leftover. Have you guys ever had a leftover Chipotle burrito? No, burritos. You can't. The bowl I have, like, I'll eat some, like, when I was on, I did whole 30.

So, like, that's why I had to eat the Chipotle. But, like, I had, like, half of it. And then I'm like, okay, what's really big? So then I put some of it to the side and then I ate the rest of it. I need you to eat half a Chipotle burrito. Then I need you to put in the fridge for about, let's say $12 and then come back and microwave it and eat it again. And you will, I will, I guarantee you it will taste better than how it tastes it.

If you will Venmo me the cost of that burrito, I will do this. I got you. Wow. Wow. What's that 10 bucks? I got it. Yeah, don't do nothing for free. He's going to do it on the kind of funny cost. I want taxes covered.

We don't give everybody access to that, Tam. I got to worry about Kevin's program. Hey man, wherever you get it from, that ain't none of my business. I put in the invoice and you just bring it back. That's it. The in between doesn't matter. Is Jana in our Slack? Yeah.

Okay, cool. I talk to Jana like every day. You know what I'm like sending you things for work? That's, that's me there. You have a lot of people on our slack. Arguably too many people. So it's hard to keep track of all of them. Oh, snap.

Are you Venmoing this now? Okay. Arguably too many people. I mean, I say, I'm trying to get some people fired. We just, we kick out Nick and Mike. Nick and Mike, we kick out. They never respond to Slack anyway. Oh, Nick.

Yeah, they hate it. They don't even. Yeah. This is like me when I talked to my brother. He never answers his phone, never text me back. So I threatened to take his phone. And he's like, this is the same energy.

I'm into it. Okay. There are people that have clicked into this video for the first time, because they want to know our thoughts on deathly, by the way. I think we do with leftover talk. Welcome to Kind of Funny. If you didn't know, ladies and gentlemen, this is the kind of funny games cast each and every week.

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Today we're brought to you by Hello Fresh, Native, and Chime, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with our review of Death Loop. Of course, ladies and gentlemen, Death Loop is coming out, September 14th, 2021 from Arcane Studios, maker of games like Dishonor, Dishonor, 2, and Pray. Blessing, you and I have the chance to preview this on PSI Love You, XO, XO, not too long ago.

So we've already talked a lot about Deathloop, which was our first five hours. Look at this. A cassidia just arrived. All right. That's my kind of review. Put it in the fridge and then microwave it. It's a homemade casadilla. It's not a, it's not a Chapolet case of it.

I'm sure it'll work too. All right, whatever. Blessing, I feel like we've talked a lot about this. And so, you know, we got to preview it. We've both beaten it. I want to talk to both Janet and Tam, obviously. New ideas, new opinions out here. Janet, when we were previewing it on PSI Love You,

you didn't have a copy yet. Now you do, how far are you in Death Loop? I am 11 hours in, but don't get too excited because I play pretty slowly. I don't know what that actually that 11 hours actually means, but I've spent a significant portion time at the game, I'd say. Well, that's the fun thing about Deathloop, right? Is that, yeah, hours don't matter. And arguably neither of the visionary is eliminated.

Death Loop, of course, being a loop that you keep playing through and, you know, you play through the course of a day, every time you go to a new major area, you advance the day when you get to, you know, going to a new day, the whole day restarts and you relive the whole thing like Groundhogs Day. Not a game of progression so much. It is, but knowledge is your progression.

And of course, there's residuum in ways to upgrade and do all that different stuff. Janet, for where you are 11 hours in, what do you think of it? Oh, I absolutely adore it. It's fantastic. It is a contender for my game of the year as much as it pains me to say,

because I love chickery. And I, that might still be my number one, But I was playing it and I'm like, you know, the like my brother was like, oh, yeah, like, what do you, what do you think? I'm like, oh, it's so good. I'm like, you know, I still really like chickery. And I just, I felt, I felt the pull, you know, I felt the pool of Death Loop. It's just, it's just so enjoyable. I mean, I think, like, art direction wise, it's just like a fun world to explore. I think the upgrade system and, like, the weapon system is compelling enough to keep me thinking about, yeah, I don't change my load out that often, but it keeps me thinking about, okay, what am I doing?

I'm trying to, like, you know, grind for the residuum. I do feel invested. The, the, um, you know, for those to get context, like the residium, it's like, you collect it and you can use it to sort of say, okay, I'm going to keep this weapon or maybe I'm going to like do upgrades and things. And you can lose it. I think the if you die before the next day or something like that, if you like don't spend it. So then I feel invested in really invested in not failing. You know, there's like the Juliana element where like she comes in and tries to kill you. Then there's that pressure. Like I had a scene where I spent like, I want to say half an hour. Like I'd kill the visionary and like when you do like the world gets like a little more

intense. Like, I killed the visionary, but then Juliana showed up. And I'm like, and then where I killed her, but then where she was was like a horrible spot to actually collect what she dropped. So I just spent like 30 minutes fighting for my life. I'm like, I am fighting for my life so hard in this game. And that happens somewhat constantly. And I love it. I'm, I'm hooked on it. I want a platinum it. The platinum looks kind of hard. So maybe not. But I'm obsessed with that. I definitely have things to say about the trophies. But before then, some more Hussein from GameSpot.com. Correct me. If I'm wrong, you're reviewing this for GameSpot.com.

Yes, I have reviewed it. So by the time you're watching this, you'll be able to go to GAMSpot.com and read a cool 3,000 words about this game because I had a lot to say, and I spent a lot of hours trying to say it nicely and in a way that's engaging to read. Well, nobody wants to read. Print is dead. Tell me right now in the audiovisual format. What did you take a death loop? It's my game of the air.

I think it's incredible. I gave it a 10 out 10, which is a targeted award. That's news dust. We didn't know that, ladies and gentlemen. That's awesome. Holy cow. Yeah, obviously, like in the GameSpot history, there's only a few games that have got that.

Ironically, I think I'm, I've given them, might be approaching giving the most 10 out of 10s, which says a lot about the games that I picked to review. But yeah, I think it's an incredibly, I think I use the word elegantly designed game. And also, like, the thing about it, I love, and I talk about this in my review, is it's a very introspective game. It's a game that Arcane kind of looks at how they make games, what makes their games

interesting, and deconstructs it, and places those pieces into this experience on a almost isolated way, where you're engaging with pieces of the overall gameplay experience one at a time. but in the course of doing that, you very slowly start to connect the dots. That's what this game is about. It's about connecting the dots until you understand how it all comes together.

And the fascinating thing about it is the thing that it ends up being is a classic arcane game. So by the time you finish playing this game, not only have you learned how to play this game, you've learned what makes an arcane game amazing. So by the time you finish this, you are now ready to play a dishonored one,

Dishonored 2, which are two of my favorite stealth games of all time. And I think that the level of kind of self-assessment and insight that has gone into this, and then refinement and design kind of like acumen they put into creating this experience is, it is genuinely special. Like, it is fascinating. It's a game that I spent my time not only playing, but thinking about how they designed it and how they're making one thing lead to another, the breadcrumb trail, how to make certain things satisfying

and there's a lot of quotes of Dinga Bacaba who's one of the kind of main people working on this game talking about the easy pulls to you know all this like out of wild it's a time loop game so it's kind of like Hades or like this and he's always maintained

that no there's time for that conversation later but when you play this game come at it as its own thing and hopefully you'll see that this is completely different and I understand that why he was saying that I was one of those people who were like, yeah, it's a time loop game. It's kind of like a roguelette. But I get what makes it different now.

And it is ironically them doing the thing that they do best, which just happens to elevate the formula that other people are used to to another level for me. Yeah. You know, now that I'm on the other side of it, obviously we previewed it at five hours. Now credits have rolled or whatever. Like I still stand by how special death loop is and how incredible death loop is. I have criticisms of where it goes and how it comes together. But for me, looking back on it and playing last night because I've beaten it last week sometime and I want to get my feet wet again and refresh my memory on some stuff. And running through it, Tam, this is a reference that is very personal, but I also think it's one you'd probably get.

What Death Loop is, right, is this murder toy box, this murder sandbox. It is always this idea of go through, kill these visionaries. that's your objective. But there's also side quests of kill these things or find this thing or get into the thing. But overall, when I originally started playing it, I was having the whole like, oh, yeah, this is funny. It's like Groundhog Day, obviously. You know, I'm starting the thing.

I hear the same conversation. That's cute. That's funny, whatever. But last night playing it, what Death Loop will always, from here on out, remind me of, is the Metal Gear Solid 2 demo disc that came with Zone of the Enders. Because I know you're as big a Metal Gear fan as I am, if not bigger. you're, Tam. Exactly. And when we had that disc, what it was is I'd come home every day from high school, throw my books on the floor and not do any of the homework, sit down and play that

thing over and over and over again. And what I was doing, obviously, after, you know, seeing how fast I could get through it, if I could get through it with a no kill. It just became experimentation. And, okay, I know that around this corner, this enemy's going to come. So if I wait here, what about that? Dada, da-da-da-da. Playing death loop now, you know, running through these areas and, like, you know, as Barrett's showing B-roll here right now, you know, What is this, midday or morning on this one area? It means that every time you come here at this time of day, this is what it's going to look like, right?

So knowing where someone's going to be, knowing the conversation, knowing when they will finish their line and then walk away, so that things that were incredibly hard that first time around of sneaky by and stealthily getting by now becomes so second nature. And it is that thing of, again, progression is hard to say, oh, I've played 11 hours. You could be in a million different places with that. But what it does talk about is the way you're skill. set has progressed, the way your knowledge of the game is possessed, the way your acumen for playing it, your way has progressed. Because that's the other thing is there's so many different upgrades and character augments and weapon shrinkets to put on these guns. But inevitably, for me,

I was always perfecting my own stealth loadout. That's what I was doing, right? Like, by the end of this game, I'm still playing it the way I pretty much was playing at the beginning, except I'm way better and I'm way more powerful. And that makes it such an enjoyable sandbox slash toy box to plane. Blessing, are you having a similar experience? Yeah, yeah, I'm right there with both of you. I love that Meliger Solid T was the reference that you made because for me, as I played this game, I kept thinking of Meliger Solid 5 in the way that that game, for me, Meliger Solid 5 is the best stealth game ever made. And the reason why I put it, the reason why I put it on that pedestal is because the game gives you so much choice in terms of,

all right, cool, do you want to go in during the day or during the night? All right, do you want to go in with a sniper? Do you want to go lethal? Do you want to go non-lethal? right, do you want to faulten enemies or do you want to take them out? And as you play, the game is going to react to you. Deathloop does so much in terms of giving the player choice and in terms of allowing you to play the way you play. And for a stealth game and for Arcane, I think that that has been such a good benefit.

I love how Tam put it in terms of them being self-referential and looking back in themselves and figuring out what works for us. And that is very much the similar takeaway I took away as well, which is this is the most arcane game that Arcane is made. you know, playing Dishonored 1 and 2, both those games, I enjoy, and I really love those games to the stealth elements, and I love them for the level design. I love them for so many other elements. But I'd say Death Loop takes what works about Dishonored and sits with it and goes, all right, how do we make these mechanics shine the best we can make them shine? And so, like,

cool, you have stealth, you have abilities like shift, you have things like the double jump, you have these different weapons, how do we create levels that allow you to go in, and actually learn the levels and actually have those repetitive missions where, you know, like repetitive is going to be a fun word to use with Deathloop because the game is literally about repetition. But there are times where you're going over, you're going after the same visionaries over and over to try and get their slab or upgrade your slab because many of the visionaries in this game have slabs where if we take them out, you get an upgrade.

And so if you want shift, you have to find the visionary who asks the shift. A slab is basically, oh, what's the word for Dishonord has a very, similar thing. They're basically your powers, right? They're superpowers. So, like, in dishonored, you have the ability to, like, teleport a certain distance away. Dougloup has the exact same

thing, and Baird's showing it on screen of him of, quote, finding the shifts lab, right? Where if you find it, you can do the teleport ability. And there's a number of them in the game, and they're all held by the different visionaries that exist in the game. Once you find them, you get those abilities, but then if you want to upgrade

those abilities, you have to go back, and find the visionaries that originally had them. And once you take them out again and collect the slab again, that then gives you an upgrade for your shift slab. And so your shift slab might take you further or you might be able to pause it in mid-air or you might get any sort of other upgrade for it. And even before that, right,

just to chime in to tag as we start actually talking about mechanics, right? This is what Janet was talking about with the residuum, right? Yeah, you get the shift slab. And so now you have the shift slab either until you die or your day restarts. If you take the residium, which is this, currency you're finding in the like time juice you're finding throughout the levels right you can then

invest that in between uh your days to keep that with you forever so you're using residium to keep weapons to keep slabs to keep upgrades for slabs for your character that will be persistent then with you otherwise you would restart on the beach every day with the same gun and nothing else but the residium allows you to basically infuse things to stay with you sorry bless exactly but then that's the thing i love i love the most about the game is the fact that you know i rocked with the shift slab and one other slab, the one that allows you to tether enemies together so you can take them out all in one go. The nexus, I think. The nexus. Those are my two go-toe. You know, I really ventured out because I had found something that had worked for me. I also had a certain arsenal

of weapons that I love to make my go-toes. And I had certain upgrades that I had discovered throughout my time playing that kept being my go-toes. And, you know, I love the fact that this game allows you to create your own way of playing and you know you have the ability to curate the gameplay loop that works for you and the game gives you as many choices as possible to really make that gameplay feel meaningful and so like you get in and you know like one of the things I led with talking about this game in the preview is saying that you know death loop is maybe the one of the most original triple A games I've played in years and that comes from the fact that the structure of it is so different and so interesting and so unique to

pushing player choice as much as possible. And so in the way that the time loop thing works, right, like you can choose, all right, in this loop, I'm going to go after this visionary, or in this loop, I'm going to go after this lead and do this number of tasks so that I can set this thing up. And the game at never at, at, the game at any point never feels linear in a way that you're being asked to do any specific thing at any specific time. You can tackle this game any way you want to and always feel valid. And it feels very different, original, and feels very, free because of that. Yeah, one of the things I want to double down and then go around the table to talk about loadouts, right?

You're talking about shift slabs, and it's funny as you start mentioning, slabs in general, you're talking about your shift slab. The fact that I never used that. That was never mine, right? And it was because from beginning, they explained the visionaries and the visionaries have it all laid out. And I mentioned this in the preview, the way, and we'll talk about it here, the way that for a game that is this complex and has this much stuff going on, the way they've made it where I never needed, felt like I needed to write down a note.

I never feel, I never was like, wait, what am I doing? Like, their mission structure, like the tree they use both for the visionaries and then just for your arsenal. So there's the visionaries you need to kill. There's the arsenal that can make you more strong if you go. You can follow these mission chains. You know exactly what to do, when to do it. If you do all this different stuff, it doesn't matter, right? But from the onset, I had looked out and there was like the ether, ather, I don't know, ather slab, right?

Which grants you invisibility. And I was like, I am going to stealth the fuck out of this game. I want that. So I went and got that, right? And it was this uphill fight to do it like we're talking about. I was talking about earlier. And then once I had it to upgrade the slab, right, to make it better to max it all the way out, you have to keep going and getting it.

You have to keep going and fighting the guy who had it originally. And then you get the upgrade off of him to put it in. And so it was so crazy to be doing that and then take time off and then come back and do a little bit more and bounce around. But to come back and own that area in the way that the first time I remember it all going wrong. of when I didn't have the invisibility and I snuck in these people saw me and I'm like I got a shot and I barely survived but then from the end to be like all right cool

take over that camera take over that turret do this thing go that way blah blah and I'm on the guy before he even knows like that's the power of this thing going through but as we go around Janet what are you using right now what are your slabs what are your weapons I think you already know it is that same slab we're playing this game exactly the same way

I also so far I have only like three slabs right now I have that invisibility one the shift one and then the nexus one where you can connect enemies. And I'm like, maybe I should try to branch out. And I remember using shift and I'm like, I just don't feel like this is going to be for me. I shifted once to kill somebody.

And then I shifted again into the freezing water that kills you instantly. And I was like, this was a fun experiment. We gave it a try. We tried to be different. It's not for me. Yeah, that's the one I'm using too. And I love it as like, it is the perfect tool for my brand of what I call jank stealth,

which is I'm stealthy until I get caught. And then I just started shooting people with a shotgun. And it's great because like I'm someone that, you know, I play games where you shoot all the time because that's a very common mechanic. But I'm not like a shooter person. And I think I struggle with like aiming and like the pressure. And then also you have, you know, decent health. And there's a lot of like health available around. But if you're just standing out in the open in a firefight, it doesn't take that many shots to kill you.

But since I have the invisibility and I've been focusing on trying to like really lean into other side upgrades that like maybe make my power regenerate early. which is what you use to use your powers, like that meter. So I've just been like, okay, I'm going to be invisible for my stealth. And then if I get caught, oh, I'm invisible again. You can't even see me. Boom. I killed somebody. I hit here.

I've regents. I've been cheesing the hell out of this game and loving every second of it. You know, just being like, okay, they're not going to open this door. I'm just going to wait. I'm just going to shoot. And I'm going to wait. I'm going to be invisible. I'm going to shoot.

I've just been like cheasing the hell out of it. And I've really enjoyed that. I mean, to tie back to what blessing was saying about. like player choice and autonomy, I think a lot of games pitch themselves as, you can go in stealthy or you can go in loud. And even though that is still like the mechanical binary of this game, there's so much variety and play within that that it feels like just a lot more genuine and enticing. Like I don't I don't feel like I'm funneled between two choices because I'm constructing the nuance within those options. And I can kind of take both parts,

but give them like, you know, an invisibility twist or give them like an aggressive twist or give them like, you know, a Kinesis type twist, like whatever I'm looking to do. And I've really, really enjoyed playing that way. And it's been exciting and fun and, like, powerful and just surprising just all throughout. I've really been loving it. Yeah, like the funny thing for me is hearing you guys say that you didn't really use shift because I was so reliant on it. Legitimately halfway through this game, I was like, I wonder if anybody's not going to use shifts. you guys not use it. It slows my mind a little bit. You can't even see me. How can

you shoot me? You can't see me. See, that's funny because that's ether, right? The one that lets go invisible. And I got the upgrade now too that when I snap the guy's neck and if I'm invisible, their body turns invisible so nobody even sees the body. Nobody has to know they room there. I want that. Yeah, I use that once and I was like, oh,

this isn't for me. This doesn't seem like it works that well. And so like hearing that you guys swear by, I think makes that awesome, right? A couple of cowards here. You really are able to like, you know, make that your own and make it work. And I love what Janet just mentioned about finding the nuances of gameplay within doing stealth or within even going loud. Because for me, there was a shift in the way that I played about halfway through. A shift. It was a, oh wow, that's good. Yeah,

there was a shift. I came to a nexus point. The first half of the time playing this game, I was doing stealth a lot. You know, I like stealth games. I played stealth and dishonored because in Dishonored one especially, those games would punish you if you didn't go stealthy. If you try to kill everybody, those games were pretty aggressive about it. Death loop is not that at all. At a certain point, I was like, you know what? Fuck it. I have a Nexus so I can connect people and kill a bunch of people at the same time.

I have shift so I can get around real quick. I have an ability to double jump and I have heavy weapons. I got a shotgun. Why don't I just become a wrecking ball? And that ended up being my play style toward the latter half of the game where I was still quiet. I was still pretty smart and tactical and strategic about how I approached enemies because you don't, you're not necessarily.

like Agent 47 and Hitman with health where, you know, if you're allowed, you will get killed in hitman. In this game, there is, it's like an in-between between something like Hitman and something that's a little bit more actiony, but you still have to be careful about how much you're out in the open. But then also, if you get killed, you have the, the slab that, what's his name, Colt already has, which is reprised, and so you can come back twice. And so the game is very forgiving about that too.

Yeah, it wants you to experiment and not feel like you're being punished. Exactly. And in the way that I started going loud, like that felt like a really fun way to play, you know, like going in, kind of scoping out the area and going, cool, let me connect these guys real quick and just take him out like that and really feel like a wrecking ball and feel like a force that is, you know, like I'm not trapped in here with them, they're trapped in here with me kind of thing. And the fact that like the game allows you to do that is super awesome to me. And yeah, and that if you have to go loud, go stealth and then what you're talking about, I want to talk about that. But before then, Tam, what is your load out? How have you been playing this game? So I do this thing where I play, whenever I play stealth games, I like to, like, test the boundaries. Like, it always comes back from, like, you know, when you start playing Metal Gear Solid 1,

everyone has a cone of vision. So you know exactly, like, how far they can see where they're going to move. And whenever I pick up a stealth game, that's the first thing I want to figure out. How far can these enemies see? How smart are they? And then with that knowledge, you can kind of figure out what you can do as a player. And I spent a lot of time using every single one of them. the powers. My go-to is currently Shift and Aether together because I think they're two most

versatile in my play style. My favorite thing to do in the start, like with Shift now I can usually complete, like I can kill most of the visionaries in like a minute or two just with the speed that I'm able to move around. But my favorite thing to do in that game was like use the specific all the enemies, the eternalists, they're called their like vision length to manipulate their movement. So you can like appear just outside of their vision cone or in it. So they see you and then they move away from an area you need to sneak into and then you can shift up onto a rooftop around into the area while they're looking investigating. You can like appear using ether to just show yourself for a second and they're like, huh, I'm going to go and investigate that. And while they're doing that,

you can do any manner of thing. But I think the thing that I, the way that I approach it was what is my what is my goal for that run? And I did a lot of runs where I was just gathering. Aether. The thing that I think is really genius about this is the trinkets that we talked about that can be used to enhance your playstyle but they drop a lot. You can find a lot of trinkets in this game. So I often had runs where I was like this is going to be a trinket

and Residium run where I'm just going to go in, I'm going to kill as many people as I can gather residuals, pick up some trinkets, take out the visionary and when I'm done with the day I'll have a whole bunch of resources that I can figure out what I want to do with And with that kind of approach, I would use Havoc and Nexus because that meant I could power up, tie loads of people together and kill them very, very quickly. But then when I'm doing like an actual, like, I need to figure out what's going on here.

Where is this visionary going to be? What are my entry points? I would stick to using Shift and Aether because that allowed me to get up onto rooftops or get into the ground level and sneak around without being seen. So I experimented with pretty much everything, just depending on what I wanted to do in that. run. And I think you touch on so many great things there, right, of talking about trinkets. And if you haven't played yet, I know we're throwing out words here, but they're upgrades, right? But they're for your weapons and then also for you, right? And I think they might be called something different for the diamond you assign yourself, but it's the same idea of upgrades, right? So as you kill people,

they drop these things, you get them in between your different sections of the day or before you reset the day, you get to spend that residium if you want to to keep them on your staff. But once you do it, you start to build out this library like Tam's talking about to where it is this idea that, okay, cool, I am going to go loud on this next one. I am going to go stealth. I am going, like the one I've been running with right now, or at least what's on my screen right over here that is where I left off, right, is of course, the aether one because I love being invisible like we've talked about. But then the other one is a nexus, right, which is the one we've talked about a few times, which links everybody up so that if you do, you kill one person, the other people who are

linked, they get killed the exact same way. And one of the things I, I adore about this game and think it's so cool about this game is that the visionaries you need to take out to advance the plot and do all these different things and get their slabs and stuff. They aren't superhuman. They aren't bosses in a way they have this giant health bar, right? They are playing by the same rules of you in the world. So you can link them up and then take out just a normal Joe Blow guy in the street, faceless dude.

And so I'm built this way from basically the final mission where I needed to eliminate a couple of them at the same time. And what I'd done is I finally got them all on the rooftop. I linked them all up. And there was a guy that I just jumped off the roof and flattened him, who was a normal guy, but it also took out the visionaries and let me go that way. And so one of the things Janet mentioned earlier about the platinum trophy, of course, you know, if you're not from around here, the trophies that come with the game on a PlayStation, your achievements, right?

I think I want to give a shout out of somebody who loves trophies so much to Arcane in this trophy design because I think you can play this game and finish it and roll credits and be done with it. but then it is this idea of if you want to do more, what would you do more with it? And again, it's back to me with that Metal Gear demo disc because the trophies are, all right, cool, start the game and have nothing equipped and go through and beat one of the visionaries

and get out and never be seen. Or go in with this, that, and the other and do this. It's doing what I always think trophies and achievements should do, which is tempt you or ask you to play the game in a different way. And so it is these very specific challenges they're using the trophies to do of, all right, cool. get in there and get out and do this, that, and the other, the accident way. And I'm like, wow, what an interesting way to then incentivize me,

somebody who didn't use all the different slabs and didn't use a lot of different trinkets, right? There's a trophy in there, and I'm speaking out my ass a bit on it. It was like, you know, use 34 or 37 different trinkets or different, like different kinds of permutations of a loadout. And I can't imagine I'm anywhere close to that. Because on top of the fact that we were talking about earlier of trinkets dropping a lot, the weapons and the trinkets drop and they have. rarities. So it was early on that I was getting, you know, a bunch of grays or, you know, then some light blues, but now I'm getting the purples. I'm getting the orange epics. And so

it is this idea that as you get a more rare version of a weapon, a more rare version of a trinket, you get more out of that in terms of, you know, if it was going to give you faster health region, it's going to even more. And like, if it was moderate one time, it might be super intense on the other one. There's so much replayability in this game that is actually outrageous. Yeah, for sure. It is like, we didn't even talk about carnisus, which is such a fun, like, a slab as well. And you can do really ridiculous things like launch objects around or even just start treating enemies like ragdoll.

And the opportunities for creativity in the way you play is really, really open. Like, I'm excited to see what, like, well-known, you know, stealth players like stealth gaming, B.R. or anyone else around on YouTube that, like, love to create. create these really quick runs, are able to do with it. And you can set up these weirdly, like, intricate Rube Goldberg kill machines if you wanted to. I started doing that, but then I was like, I need to review this game. So I got to stop messing around this. And that's some of the trophies, right, where it's asking you to kill people in a very specific way.

And it is like, oh, I never even thought that that is something I can do. Once you really get off your path, your track, you realize what this game can actually do. Yeah. And the other thing is it does have the. the trophy card integration, which works pretty well from what I use. You know, like a lot of, you know, not a lot of games are using it, but you can like pull up your home menu and then select the trophy card and it will take you to the area that you need to be able to.

And they'll give hints too, which I know so many people have been concerned about. Like people did write in, right, asking how does this go? So like Colin Kerford is like, I'm curious about how progression works when you have eight simultaneous targets. Do you manage to take one out? Does that feel significant? or do you just have to remember that for when you finally figured out how to take down the other seven? That's what I was talking about earlier when I referenced.

I never had to make a note. When the game got pitched, when we were seeing all the stuff, I was thinking like, oh, my God, I'm going to have to keep notes to remember how I did Visionary 3 when I come back from doing 7, 8, and 9. And it is not that way at all. The game does such a great job of visually laying out the information for you at a glance to know what to do before you go into any new area. Because it is, again, and this is something I actually want to talk about maybe as a con, later on for the story part of it. But the game is unabashedly a game.

And that means that in between the segments you're out. You're in the map. You're doing all the killing you see right here from Barrett, right? But then you finish your objective. You run back to the tunnel. You go in there. It's like, cool. You're done.

Here's your result screen. Here's your loadouts. Here's your different things. And you're prepping a load out to then choose what area to go to to do whatever next mission you need to do. Like there is constant. It's not breadcrumming you to death where you're going through at Brain Dead. Like you get on to like, oh, I want to upgrade this slab.

so I'm going to go to do that. Or you go to the arsenal and like, man, that gun they're talking about sounds cool. I want to go get that gun. Like the game does a great job of breadcrumming you and making the progression feel good. And then when it finally gets to the big ask,

which is, you know, kill everybody in one run. It does that in the exact same format of like, cool, here's how you need to have this to be digestible. And if you want to go off the beaten path and do some stuff you can. But Janet,

I'm not wrong, right? You haven't felt overwhelmed in your 11 hours? No, like it's been pretty handholdy, which I could see some people maybe seeing as a con. I personally didn't, but it is very much like your menu is a list of objectives. And it's not so much as, you know, I'm the same way where I've heard about this game and I'm like, there seems like there's a lot going on and, you know, people describing things like runs. I'm like, unappealing. Like I'm not interested in doing a bra. I want to just, I'm getting in.

I'm doing the thing. I'm getting out. You know, it's fun time. Not a long time. But with this, like, it's so good at as you explore and even something as simple like, which I just appreciate the hell out of this is someone that, you know, I love reading, but the thing is in games, I love reading, but I don't love it when it's not like a story specific game. Even if the game has a good story, I'm like, look, if this was like Life is Strange or something, I'm reading all the notes, I'm playing the guitar. Here I'm like, I ain't trying to read this diary page. I ain't trying to read this email. Like, it's too long. I'm good. But what's great is you open it up. And if there's relevant information, they'll kind of be like a pop up on your screen that says like,

you learn this thing. So you don't actually have to like, really. fully engaged that much. It doesn't like detracting your playtime, which is really nice. But if you're someone that's like, no, I want like all the lore. Well, you could read it also. Like it doesn't feel like,

oh, now it's not worth reading necessarily. The closest to getting lost in any section that I got was like one of them was asking me to find. I'm trying to have to spoil it. So like one of them was asking me to find something like find four of these things. But I didn't know what they were describing. So I just like wasn't familiar with the term. And then when I figured it out it was fine.

But like what's nice is those few times where I was. kind of confused or like there was sort of this puzzle where you know something might explode and you need to be aware of what's going on like i looked in the environment i did have to kind of find that more like it wasn't as given to me as everything else which was a bit surprising but for the most part like i personally didn't perceive this game as like i'm going for a run i'm going to upgrade i just focus personally on the objective and sometimes when you're pursuing a certain objective maybe you will kill a visionary a second time and then get an upgrade like i have never intentionally pursued upgrades. I've never intentionally pursued Residium to upgrade. I've just been playing

focused on the main objectives, selecting into my objectives. And along the way, you know, when you're doing what you need to do, you will get Residium or you might stumble across an upgrade. So what's nice is I don't feel like I need to constantly be thinking about my runs or my load out or min-maxing the thing. Like I can just focus on the main objective. And through that, I still get the joy of having attempts and failing and being strategic and still thinking about my load out, but not in a way that's so like rogue style because, you know, as Blessing said during the preview, like, it's not a rogue like game. It just has a loop. And even the loop isn't that intensive. It's very like you can choose and, you know, when you go to the tunnel and you're selecting your menu stuff, you can pick what

day, what time of day it is. You know when you're ending a day. Even when you die, you like come back like two more times. So you really have to die three times to fully fail. Like all of those things help make it feel more despite being a very like fresh. and unique take feel a little bit more traditional than like when I think time loop I think oh my god the stress of major's mask and the moon coming down like it doesn't have that it's very like you're playing and the loop is part of the mechanical construct and the narrative construct but it's not constantly looking over your shoulder like you're not like thinking about time all the time like once you select your time of day and you go that's it you're not like it's not constantly in your like play through of it it was rare where I feel like the loop got to be in my way at all where yeah i'm with you the amount of times i would clear the entire map of everybody and because they even if you're you're picking up people's trinkets and even if you have no intent to ever use them at the you know in between screen you can recycle them and get residuum from them so it was about like oh man i got this new slab and i want to make sure i want to overcompensate

to make sure i have enough residuum for that and the one trinket i do like let's clear it out and do that and get through it that way and then yeah the you know the couple times i did die and lose everything. It was more like, I knew I was pushing it. I knew I was pushing it and that isn't good. And like, you know, it's been talked about a bit here and there, but there's a multiplayer component to this game, right, where Giuliana, who is your antagonist, you've seen in all the, you've seen in all the many, many, many, many, many trailers. Right. Like, that can be an AI person if you're playing single player offline, but if you're playing online, other players can invade your game and come after you as her. So like, I had a similar thing. I think we were talking about

before, Janet, it might have been off air, I forget. But like, where I was like, I had been struggling with this mission. I finally had it beat. I just need to evacuate. And as I'm going to evacuate, it's like, Julianna is on the hunt. I'm like, oh, God damn it. It's the most heartbreaking thing, but also just adds, it adds a level of, I guess, suspense to the game, where I had the exact same thing happen, where I went in, went to do a mission. And on the way to completing that lead, I was like, okay, cool, there's also a visionary here. I'm going to stop by this visionary, kill them real quick, collect their slab, and then get all the resources from that and bring it back. And so it was, I was in like a heavy session of a day, or at least a portion of that

day. And on my way back to a piece out and make my way back to the loadout screen and escape the district, you know, I got that Giuliana thing. And I was like, fuck, all right. Like, I wasn't prepared for this. I have a show that I want to do for kind of funny right after this. And like, you know, I'm times running out, but I guess I had to take out Juliana. And sure enough, you know, I had the decision of, all right, do I want to play it safe? Do I want to play this way I have been playing this or am I going to get risky and go loud and go more wild? And in that moment, I was like, I got to save time. I got to go wild and I got murked by Giuliana and lost all that progress. But it is that, it's that give and take. Like, I think the thing that's nice about this game,

when we're talking about progression and we're talking about the loop of it, compared to like any other time loop game that's even come out this year, I would say this game does a really good job of making sure that you have some sort of progress that you're making from loop to loop. You know, it's not, it is no, it's not a roguelite, right? Like, Returnals one of my games of the year in that game, there were so many runs that I had nothing to show for, right? Like, the only thing you're really collecting between runs and return all is like ether. And, you know, that's like whatever. And so, like, in this game, even comparing something like the forgotten city, you know,

the forgotten city, there are times in that game where I would finish a loop. And like the whole point of that loop would be to do one thing and then start the next loop over, just test things out. And death loop, the game is so handholdy in a way that, you know, I'm with Janet that I think that can go either way depending on who you are. I think most people are going to appreciate how handholdy it is because if it wasn't as handholdy as it is, it would be, I think, too much to manage.

Unless you're like, unless you're the hardest of the hardcore and you are busting out the no pad and you are, you know, you're making your own sticky notes. You become a cult. You just have like that bored. Yeah, like you have to become a mad person. Essentially, if you want to keep track of the things that the game is keeping track for you.

And so I like the fact that it's there. But where the game, where that, where I guess the loop stuff starts to matter, right? Like, if your response to that is like, okay, then what does it matter? The fact that it's the time loop where it starts to matter is the fact that you can then make choices of how you're going to check off those lists, right? It's the thing of, okay, cool, I know that in this district, at this time of the day, I had this lead here. What if I can knock out two leads and a visionary, right? Like, what if I can do X, Y, and Z thing here and then collect this gun that was teased to me? What if I can do X, Y, and Z thing here at this,

in this district during the nighttime and knock out multiple things. This is why it's so long. I'm not doing it. I'm not like, I'm like, look, you get Maybe the map on the menu. You said go to, and, you know, again, not to give specifics, but like, it's a lot like, you know, if I was play, if we use like a real life example of like my family in my apartment, if I'm trying to kill everyone in my apartment. It's like, it's like, it's like, okay. So it's like, they're like, they're on the other side of the door listening in. Like, what are she talking about? They're, they're fine.

It's like, okay, well, I know, I know Maggie goes to the gym at 5 a.m. on this time a day. So that means I got to go to the gym to see, like, what this information. So that's kind of how it works. And I guess it's funny hearing you describe. it that way because I'm like, yeah, that probably would be faster. And that's why I'm like, I'm 11 hours in, but I don't think I'm like, close to rolling credits because I'm like, look, we're going as long as possible. You gave me one thing to do here.

I did it. And now I go back into my tunnel. I want to ask, like, for the folks who finished it, how many hours did it take? Because for me, it took me about 17-ish hours to complete the game. And I felt like toward the end, I was taking too long. Like, the game started dragging the last third for me in a way where I had gotten all the guns that I needed. I had gotten all the slabs that I needed. I think I had upgraded multiple slabs all the way, or at least collected all of their upgrades, I should say. And I was,

like, everything I have is purple, right? And I am two-thirds through the game, and I felt like I had already ran out of steam in terms of all the extra stuff I'm collecting. And at this point, I'm just knocking out all the main stuff that's that I have left. Were you guys able to complete it faster or longer? How was it for you, Tam? Wait, hold on, Tam, because that's a great question. Time matters to everybody. And you know it always eats up my time that I hate. It's ads. You know what I'm talking about? You got words. That's why I tell people go to patreon.com slash

Kind of Funny Games, where, of course, you could write it to be part of the show. You could get the show. Usually live as we record it. You get the post show. You get all these benefits for PSI Love UXOXO and, of course, the kind of funny X-Cast. But most importantly for right now, that's where you'd go to get the show ad-free. But speaking of ads, Greg Way, here's a word from our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by Native. It's Pop Quiz Time.

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Tam, how long did it take you to play through this? First of all, blessing, I just want to appreciate the ASAP Rocky reference. You said everything's purple. I like it. It took me, I think it took me 11 hours to complete it or 11 or 12 hours to complete it. And then I carried on playing a bunch more. But yeah, it was, it is, I spent a lot of time like dawdling around and figuring, I'm one of those weird people who are like, will sit on a perch and then watch all the enemies walk around

to be like, I'm going to figure out what your exact walk pattern is and what can throw you off of it. So I did spend a lot of time doing that, but it still came to about 11 or 12 hours to complete it. I think what you're saying about the kind of handholdy part of it is really interesting. I think it's handholdy in the areas that it matters the most. And those areas happen to be the main quest because they're what people want to know to keep them on track. I think that there is for people who might be thinking, listening to that and being like, I can't believe it's handholdy. I want it to be more like, you know, experiment and that kind of stuff.

It definitely has that. And they manifest through things called leads and discoveries. And those are just like random bits of information that you find elsewhere around the world that will give you some understanding of what's going on, an extra little, you know, an item that you might be able to find a code. There's also, you know, how Dishonored 2 had the Jindosh lock. There's a couple of things in the game that are like they don't really reference it. that much. It's just like a ridiculous puzzle that you need to figure out that is going to take

you a little while to figure out. And it's like one of them is based, it's predicated on you, just having a lot of knowledge about the world and the law. And it's like a quiz. And you get that kind of like the item from that by just going around and figuring things out and listening to characters and reading. And so in the way that, you know, it is a handholding to keep you on track to get the main quest done. But if you want to go out there and figure out different things and find new ways to play or even learn more about the things that I hated away in the corners of the game, it doesn't hold your hand in that.

It will push you in the right direction and then it's up to you to figure it out. Yeah. And to shut that out further even, like there are things that there are rooms that I came across all playing death loop that I still have no idea what the fuck was going on. Like there's a room and I'm sure you guys will get this one. There's like a building near, actually, I guess I shouldn't say that because I might be given away too much. But like there's one building where I went to a room and I was like what the fuck is going on here. There's like weird there's like weird sex stuff going on essentially right.

They kind of have to solve and figure out. And I kept going back to that room because that room was near a spot that I'll try. I'm sure you did keep going back to that room, bus. I had questions. But no, like it was on the path to a place I kept going back to my game in my gameplay. So I'd always stop in there and look around and be like, what am I missing here? And it's fascinating stuff like that, I think harkens back to a lot of arcane's great level design. You know, when we talk about arcane games, especially something like Dishonor 2, we often talk about the clockwork mansion, and we talk about the crack in the slab level. And I would say there's nothing on the level of clockwork mansion individually or even cracking the slab. But overall, the arcane level design still

shines, right? You get four districts, and the four districts change in small ways throughout the day, right? And so like when you leave in the morning, come back in noon or when you leave at noon, come back in the afternoon or come back in night, there are certain things that change, certain visionaries that, you know, change which district they're in or just leave all together, right? That, you know, you're going back to districts with different goals, different, like, things to do, and you're coming at them from, or you're coming into them from different angles. And so, you know, you might go into a district and you're experiencing a different side of that district than you experienced when you went in there before.

Because the way that they're expanded and the way that they're designed, you might be crossing over certain paths that you went through previous times, but you kind of always end up in different destinations because the way that they spread out leads and visionaries and stuff over the districts is done in a way that, you know,

it really takes advantage of how big these levels are and how kind of like, I guess, unique and well-constructed they are to lead you and guide you to different areas of them. And I think if I can, part of everything you just said that, right, I think speaks to this conversation we were having about handholding and what this is. And honestly, I think it, not the handholding as much, but like what we're talking about with this story and after I rolled credits and how I reflected back. And I was like, oh, man, did I like this less than I liked it?

When I was so hot on it, five hours in, to roll the credits here and I was like, this ending felt abrupt. And I didn't, it's not that I didn't like it. It was interesting. And then when Blessing and I talked about it, it turned out, we did different things. things and he was like mine was abrupt too like interesting the handholding what we're talking about i think is in the same idea of that where the story of what's actually going on in this loop and uh you know why colt and juliana are going head to head and trying to get out of this or not get out of it that's there but i don't think it's the point and it's the same way of like when i go into one of these areas and like literally it's like i need to kill the uh visionary here the visionary then

has a red diamond on them most of the time there's a couple that are hidden right but a red diamond that points all the way across the map with a countdown, count down for meters as I get there. And that's every objective you put on it. And I could see where that would feel handholdy, but for me, it really is this, the exploration and your loadout and how you want to do it is the game.

Not so much finding the visionary, not so much figuring out, okay, where am I supposed to go next? It is that idea of the more you play it, the more you learn, the more you learn a better way to that visionary. And like there was the party that you've, I think actually was the first gameplay we ever saw for it. But the party scene was so difficult for me in the beginning.

And so to have gone through that and learned back entrances and learned what will happen here and learned if I do that, this will trigger that person and learned about secret passages. And like, like how that felt, I had the same information from that first playthrough of the party as I did to the last play through the party. but I was way more empowered and felt in control of it in the last one because of my experiences with. Yeah. It's classic dishonored. It's like the objective is clear. That's not the poll. It's the how you do that.

That is the poll. That's the classic arcane. To take that same, you know, party example, right? Like, I remember my first time going there. And for me, it was a strong, probably about 20 minutes of me trying to figure out, all right, I'm in. Wow, there's a lot of people in this party. I engage, I disengage, I re-engage, I disengage, and I keep trying to figure out how do I get through this thing until I eventually took a certain route that worked out way better for me. The second time I went, because I ended up going to this party like probably four or five times, right?

The second time I went, I was like, okay, cool, I know this a little bit better. I'm going to take this route instead. And then I end up getting lost, you know, a bit into that route and, you know, getting caught and getting to that pattern again of, okay, cool, now I'm engaging and disengaging again. what is it about this route that's now not working for me? And what do I, what have I learned from this second time being here that I'm going to take into the next time? And the more and more, like you visit a lot of the same areas over and over again, but you visit them with new information that is,

it almost felt like speed running where, you know, I get to the party. And if I was to go and do a similar objective now at that party, I know that I take, you know, I hop on these three ledges, you know, take this direction called. There's a window over here that is this specific room that I want to get into. Cool, I get into that room. I do the thing. Cool, I go over here.

and do I do this thing? And now, like, that is knowledge for me. And that, for me, comes back to the, to the, I guess the player choice conversation of, or the hand-holdy conversation of, yeah, they give you a bunch of shit. Or they hold your hand on a bunch of shit. But I am gaining my own knowledge as a player, as Colt is gaining his own knowledge as the character. And those two knowages are kind of working together in a way that really makes this game what it is.

And I really like it for that. Yeah, I think, too, like something that I thought was a really strong strength, especially because it just seemed cool. Like, I liked stuff that's, okay, it's aesthetically pleasing, and it has, like, functionality to it is, this is, like, immediately when you start the game, so it's not really, like, a secret. But there's sort of writing in the air that's, like, you know,

like a message from, you know, presumably, like, the loop you did before, even if you just started the game, right? Like subconscious. Yes, and that's, it's awesome because it, one, just creates, like, a certain energy in the world. As soon as I saw it, I'm like, oh, this is, like, what remains to be a fidge style, like, just writing on the ledges.

But what's cool is like even in areas that are sort of more, you know, enemy focused or combat driven, sometimes there'll be like little messages that are something like, you know, maybe there's another way. And then I'm like, okay, so you're telling me if I go down this way, I'm probably going to get like shot up or something. And little stuff like that really helped also guide, you know, my playthrough. Or it might say something like, oh, try stealth here. And it's like, it's because there's an enemy looking out of a window. And it's like, I was going to do stealth anyway. But it was just kind of nice to have that extra stuff.

And, you know, having just beat Demon Souls, like, I saw, like, that element in there because, like, that's a game that also is very, like, game-helpy where there's notes from other players. And, like, that can kind of help guide your play-through. And when I was playing Demon Souls, like, I often would read it and say, okay, this is going to help inform what I'm going after now or how I'm going to go about a certain thing. And then, of course, the Juliana infiltration, which could be AI or could be a person, is also, you know, in Demon Souls and something that you can experience and something you can do as a player as well. So I liked those elements of it. And I think, you know, again, with the whole like handholding conversation, it's more for me like clarity and an ease in case you're interested in doing, you know, for lack of a better term, the bare minimum.

Like I'm enjoying my play through a lot and I'm having fun with it. And I'm thinking through all those things and strategizing. But like I'm just following what you gave me. And, you know, and that's why sometimes I do get stuck when it's like, okay, and now find the thing. And I'm like, oh, what am I looking for? And I got to look at my menu. And I'm like, okay, I'm looking for this thing here.

because like occasionally there aren't markers for a certain thing. We're like, at one point you get like a photograph of an area and they're like, oh, check this general area. But I'm like, damn, ain't no marker here? All right, well, let's just walk around and figure out where we're going. But I like that element of it. And I mean, I don't, I think what helps maintain the fun and the freshness is your options when you go in to do those objectives, but also, again, the order of objectives. Like when I first started playing, I was kind of following one sort of line of objectives. and it kept bringing you to like similar places.

And I'm like, okay, I could see someone like being annoyed by this, but one, you can pick a different time of day. And then two, if I really don't want to come back here, I can just do something that isn't here. And then that'll be a way to sort of break away from it and do something different. So I really like that element of it. And I'm so curious as to how long this game's going to take me to finish.

But I've had a really good time with it. I hear you talk about like tackling it line by line. Because for me, it was always, all right, what's next up for me in this day? I do whatever's available to me in the morning in terms of what's on my chart. And then I get to noon and I'm like, cool, what's there to do with noon?

And I do that instead. And so I was often mixing and matching my leads slash objectives in ways where I was playing the game very non-linearly. And I think it's interesting, especially when we get into the story conversation and narrative conversation,

because for me, I don't know if that supported or hampered the way that I took in the story because oftentimes, like you have eight different visionaries right that you're trying to go after and all of them kind of have their own stories that are smaller stories in the world but all stories that um are the story of the island you're on and they all kind of intersect uh in interesting ways but to keep track of them i'd imagine that it'd

be way user to keep track if i also do it line by line as opposed to doing it in the order that i just see them come up like i'd go through a day just to keep the story line like i wasted so many days because it doesn't matter you probably taint it way better than i have because for me one of my not even a complaint, but I guess one of the things that I don't love as much as the pure gameplay is, like, the narrative. Like in the game, there are, I would say there's kind of multiple stories interweaving in terms of you as cult and like what's going on here back and forth in Juliana and you're trying to escape the island. But then the story of the island, right? Like there's, you know, all these visionaries, there's all these like things you can pick up. There's computer terminals you can read into.

There's notes you're going to find. And, you know, you mentioned it earlier of, you know, the game does a good job of if you find a note and you can, click out of the note, there's a small pop-up that'll give you the quick one-sentence summary of that note or what you discovered based off of that note. And I found myself early on enjoying a lot of the notes and a lot of the terminal stuff because you would get in there. And that is how you're getting a lot of the narrative. You know, the game isn't, the game will give you those pop-ups, but there's not really cutscenes. There's not really anything to really guide you through the story in a very in-your-face way. You're kind of, it's, I guess it's similar to like a, almost like a

portal, but not even that in the way that you're getting a story as you're going, right? You're not having somebody constantly in your year except for, except for Juliana, who's speaking to you in any sort of explicit way and feeding you out of the dual sense. Just out of the dual sense. Well, I turn that shit off of me doing. It's so loud. No, I have, I like it, but it is very loud. And then like, you know, there's a lot of swearing. Like, I'm just in my apartment. It's like, you know, it's not the fuck up. And I'm like, damn, this is a, yeah. Yeah. It's funny because I played a use in my pulse. And so I had no idea that was a thing until just today when I sat down to this podcast and I

clicked into it because I wanted to check a thing out and she started speaking to my controller and I was like what's up motherfucker? It's like all right damn. Um, uh, good morning to you too. But, um, I would say there are cutscenes. I mean, I would count those cartoon kind of style. Yeah. True. Stylizations. As cutscenes. And that's, and again, that's very much where it's like, okay, in case, somehow you were just zoning all this out like, this is what happened at the, like for this. Now that we know all this, here's what we see. Um, so I like those elements of it. That's true. But I would say that those are more so like, so you know what the next thing you're doing is like keeping up in any sort of way.

Cole does a great job of narrating, I mean, to himself, which is us, but what is happening and what that means for the story. All right. I figured out that if I do this thing, then he'll have to go here. So that's great. And like, you get the little thing and I'll get him to the party kind of thing. Like, that's great. I will still, I will still say that the story, it kind of is what you want to get out of

it in terms of, you know, like if you want to read the terminals and read the notes and all that stuff, and I think that's when you're going to get the most out of it. And I think it's more so in this game than in similar games that do have, readable notes and like other things like that, right? Like in this game, if you're not reading the notes, you're probably going to miss out on quite a bit. And it's still going to be like understandable.

It's still going to be playable. And you're still going to have those animated bits that'll keep you somewhat informed. But I felt way more obligated to actually read that, that shit more so than in other games. Cam, what is your take? 10 out of 10 here? What was your take on the story?

On the story, it was something that I really enjoyed the way it was told. I did it in a very non-linear fashion as well, but as someone who is a big fan of the Souls games where they tell broken stories in small chunks and then allow you to piece it together, that was very much up my alley. I think the core story that is being told

is the story of Cole, Colton, Juliana, and their kind of relationship. And the game kind of knows that's the core story. And it does a lot with not playing its hands, hand immediately. It knows that it needs to take this relationship and extend it and layer it over a 12, 13, 14 hour experience and make sure that you're always hooked into that back and forth up until the very end of the game. And I think it does an incredibly good job at it. And it does that not by telling you, and then we did this, and then we did this, and then we did this,

and then this happened. It simply tells you a story through their interpersonal relationships and the way there are ups and downs. You know, you get Juliana I describe in my review as this agent of chaos. Like, that's how she behaves. Like, you'll speak to her one day and she'll be like, just up your ass about something. And then Colt will say something and she'll be like, she'll react in the way that catches you so off guard. She's like almost sweet with you for a moment.

And that's the story telling you, hey, you should think about what that moment means for Colt and for Juliana and what it could, what implication it has on the context of the game. as a whole. So that kind of like back and forth, you're never quite sure of what her position is, what her motives are. And then you're never quite sure how invested court is in her versus his own journey to kind of break the loop. Because you have moments where he's like, oh, maybe I care about this person or I did use to care about this person. What does that mean? That story for me just kept me going from start to finish. And then underneath it all is, you know, arcana incredible at creating like, you know, this world that the world that you see and then the world that existed

before it that the world that you're looking at was built upon. And they do that so well in dishonored and they do it so well here. So I was immediately fascinated with what is the situation? Because these visionaries didn't just stumble upon the ability to, you know, harness time for their own powers. And digging into that in the morsel of information that are scattered around the rest of the world was kind of like the cherry on top for the gameplay like every now and then I'd stumble upon it and it'll be like oh that that is a reference to the thing that I read maybe an hour ago over there

and it colors in the picture a little more for me so I feel like it's got like two parallel tracks where it's like the cult and Juniola Giuliana story and then the island story and the visionary stories as well because they all have stories interpersonal relationships they hate each other some love each other they've been through shit together and those I feel like it had a multi-tiered, textured story. You're right in saying, I don't think it's the core of the game. It's not amazing, but I feel like it's a really nice compliment to the gameplay experience. And that's the thing I would say is it's a compliment.

It is the baked potato, yes. And sometimes that could be a meal. You thought we did this whole thing in the front for no reason, listener, but there it is. We got there in the end. But yeah, that was it when your credits rolled and I was like, oh, okay, it's over. I was in a weird spot of like, I didn't think much about it, which I think rare where you know what I mean I feel like we finish video games and then I want to talk about them I want to do it I want to talk about death food but I want to talk about what you were using and what you

did and how you did you know about this secret path when bless was like oh yeah I mean did you understand the ending I was like oh yeah well and bust was like you did that I did this and I was like oh that's interesting but yours was abrupt as well right bless yeah yeah like when I got by the time I finished the end in the game I kind of wanted to replay it to like just re-experienced again because I think the game goes interesting places in terms of what they're doing with the characters and what they're doing with the world. And, you know, like, it's a story that I think you guys put it well, right, comparing it to the loaded baked potato.

It very much feels like a compliment to the actual gameplay itself, which is why I'm overall fine with it and why I overall still adore this game, even though, like, it's not my story of the year, anything like that. But, you know, like, it's a fun one. I think Tim compares it a lot to, he compares to writing a lot in the, and the, and the quips a lot to a Marvel movie. And I think that's an interesting way to put it, where it has this light, quick energy to it,

especially the dialogue between Colt and Giuliana, where you have your back and forth, and there's always some sort of quip or some sort of punchline associated with it, and you're on to the next one, right? You're in the game, and you're back to focusing on stealthing around and doing whatever. And I think with that, you know,

there's a fun energy that the dialogue adds to the game overall. And I think also it adds to what the energy of the world is. Because Deathloop, you know, as a, Death Loop stylistically, I think is really cool and really awesome. And really like, you know, when you look at the island, when you look at the character design, when you look at the masks that the enemies are wearing, when you look at like the architecture,

that game, the game visually and even, you know, in terms of like sound and the overall, I guess, audiovisual style of it is so cool and so unique that, you know, I think that is as important to the story in terms of building what this world is and actually making it a world that you want to get, get lost in. Without spoiling the game, I agree with you

in the abruptness, but I really like the abruptness. And there's going to be like, maybe it's me, like, reading too much into it, but from a pacing perspective, I really like how they used a very abrupt final sequence

to cap off this, the kind of journey that you've had. Because you spend a lot of the game kind of stumbling for, through a lot of it. Like you make a little bit of progress and then you rewind. You make a little more progress and you rewind. It's like one step forward, two step back.

And that's how it feels for a great deal of it. Up until that final sequence where all the pieces are in place and then you know exactly what you need to do to get it done. And by that point, the game's trained you to not only know meticulously every part of that world, but your character is basically unstoppable and capable of achieving this easily because you've built them that way. So the final run is this amazing, breathless, smooth journey

through the entire game. It's like a victory lap. It's a sail, it's like the wind to your sails. You're unstoppable. And the feeling of going through it, knowing all that you've been through to get there, it's like intoxicating. And then just as you get to the end,

it hits you with like a, now you've got to make a decision. And the question it asks you is, was that worth it? And the abruptness of that is like, you're making a decision in a moment to be like, oh, I need to behave in this certain thing or I need to do X, Y, and Z thing in this moment. But at the same time, it forces you to reflect on everything you've done to get there. And the way when you're done with it all, the question it leaves you is like, was it worth it? Like, did you, did or doing all that make the final moments of what you had to do worth it? And that's why the abruptness really work for me.

Yeah, that's an, I love that lens. I love what you're talking about there. I'm with, I'm with, I'm with Bles where we, when we were talking about it. My thing is, I mean,

I got to go back and beat it again. I want to go back and do it again, because I think I was to an extent even, like playing it expecting and one more thing. Like I was, you know, I thought the final, like,

checkbox there was going to be a bit longer. It was going to be a mission unto itself kind of thing. When in reality, it's very similar to how I'm, I'm complimenting them on their bosses, the visionary as just being normal people, right? Like, it was just another box. It was just another thing that I finished on the story and then bam,

all right credits. And it was like, oh, shit, okay. Well, I wasn't, I was expecting to,

you know, the video game thing. I'm like, oh, well, I got to hunker down. Get ready to see what's going to happen here. It said,

it was like, oh, okay. But I, I don't think I want to finish it. And I'm like, I'm 11 hours in and I feel like I'm only like half way, and I'm like,

I'm going to live in this, I'm not going to get off this island. Like, it's just taking... You're in the loop now. You're in a really long time. Yes, exactly. Jake H. wrote in, and I know we talked a little bit about it, but I do want to go around. He said, if I remember correctly, you, Greg, had said before you bounce off the dishonored games,

if you do like Death Loop, what makes it appeal to you more than dishonored? And Jake's right. Like, I started both of the different dishonored, and I totally recognize why they're beloved and everything. But, like, the world didn't grab me. It was always my thing. The world and the, just the vibe of it. wasn't a place I wanted to spend 15 hours in, if not more. And I think it's something we go back to what Bless and Tam have been talking about in terms of,

you know, death loop being a living, breathing city with all these stories there and all these interesting people, but then also the layout being so cool and the districts being so cool. And each one of the visionaries being somebody I want to know more about, like it's something about it being a modern setting that does more for me than I think dishonor did. And the color of it does more for me and the sci fineness of the weapons and the thing,

But then I think there is such a big part of it being carried by Colt and Juliana, but Colt, too. Because even when Colts just talking to himself, he's funny and he's interesting. And there's so much dialogue when you start a new day or just a new area between Colt and Juliana that is interesting and does keep me on my toes as I play through it. I'm like, oh, what else am I going to get here? What other timid am I going to get? Yeah, I remember listening to you an interview with folks from Arcane talking about why they went this direction with Death Loop as compared to dishonor.

And, you know, their answer was bowed down pretty much, hey, this is an aesthetic that's going to work for way more people, right? This is an easier thing to get into. What was it, whale punk? That was what it was before? Whale punk, yeah, whale punk is how you described dishonored. Yeah. And I know for me, as somebody who played Deshonored 1 and 2, I love Desolnard 1 and 2, but the whale punk aesthetic wasn't the reason why I love those games. I know probably for many people it is.

And, you know, like, I think there are cool things about that, right? Like what they do with, you know, talking about the outsider and all the fantastical elements of Dishonored I'd say are interesting, but something like Death Loop, I think speaks more for me and more for, I guess a different part of the audience that Dishonored was able to grab. Death Loop is going to be able to grab those people. And so I'd say I like that, but then also to answer the question in terms of comparing to Death Loop to Dishonored and what one game might do better than the other. The thing I like about Death Loop that, for me, puts it above Dishonored is the kinetic

nature of it when you're going into combat. I remember last year when we were reviewing the Lastest Part 2, a thing that we talked about was the combat in that game and comparing it to something like Hotline Miami. And I get a similar sort of feel in death loop where I feel like, you know, given whatever my loadout is, I can have a reaction, right?

Because I got my one or two slabs and I got my assortment of weapons and I have my hackamajig, which we've not really even talked about, right? Like, you have a- There's so much we haven't talked about. There's a lot going on in this game. Yeah, you have a hacking item

that you can use to hack things in the environment. And so oftentimes you would see a camera and you can hack the camera to not detect you or can hack a turret to go after enemies as opposed to you. And going into an area and being able to have the option of, cool, I see a guy in front of me, I'm going to take that guy out, I'm going to nexus these people together, I'm going to shoot these guys so I can take out three people at the same time.

Over there is a turret. I'm going to activate that turret just in case somebody's going to sneak up on me from that direction, and I'm going to turn, I'm going to sneak, stealth, take out this person. There's something nice. I love that process. There's something so fun about it, and it turns combat into less of an actiony, combat sequence and more so into what feels like a free puzzle to solve, right? Like it is there aren't there aren't enemy classes really like there's not, uh,

this game, like a lot of enemies you can take out on one hit, right? If you stealth them or if you hit them in the head, like it is very easy to take out enemies and it doesn't feel, uh, combating, right? It's not a gears of war. It's not a first person shooter, even though technically it is a first person shooter. Um, but it feels like, it feels way more about you taking your time and being more methodical and, you know, solving a puzzle the way that you want to solve a puzzle, which I think adds so much to this game, even though Dishonored has that, I'd say this game furthers that

way more, especially in its setup and giving the freedom to go aggressive if you want to. I mean that's fun about it too, is you can pick up, like, there are certain instances where you can like pick up turret like briefcases and set them up in places, which of course, again, I'm looking for an efficient fight, not a stylish fight, not a, let me flex my, oh, I can go boom, boom, pow, no, I want to do this in the dumbest, most time-consuming way possible. So especially early on when you're like still getting to know like the world and like barely building your powers. Like you don't start out with all this like thinking of residium or doing all this at once. Like it's kind of slowly piecemeal to you over like that first hour or maybe two hours.

So when I didn't really have much of anything, I'm like, okay, well, I can set up these turrets. And what if instead of fighting all these enemies in this area, I just get them to see me enough to walk down this hallway where I have a turret. And I just slowly line up. And I spent like half an hour just like slowly and put a place. tracing turrets and getting people to come in and like running away. And like again, I love that. It offers that because there is so much like health around. Like I never, there are some upgrades where you can get, you know,

health regent or get like expanded health. And normally I always go for that kind of thing in any game I play because like I'm constantly wounded and I like want to easily get my health back. I did the same thing in Demon Souls. I'm like, it's the regenerating like all day every day and the other one that keeps your body or whatever. Like because that way if I get in trouble, I can just hide and then and get my health back.

But here, there's, like, there's health everywhere. Like, the only time I died was if I, maybe if Giuliana killed me, which didn't happen too many times yet, 11 hours in, or if I got really caught up and I just couldn't get out of a situation. And then, yeah, maybe I'd die then. But a lot of times if I was low on health, I'm like, let me just run back to that other room where there's like eight health bottles or something. Yeah, yeah, health wonderful, right?

Because it's not a shooter in that way. Exactly. It's like, it's, you can come here and have fun in the way that you want to have fun. So if you want to be a cheese coward like me, you can do that. If you want to go and like, you know, chain things together, you can do that. If you want to do stealth, you can do that. And it's always fun to do that. And like the enemies are, I love the art direction of this game.

The enemies are like so stylish looking with their like, there's one. And this is like on the media kid on the death loop site where she has like this green like polkaid out of dress. But they're also like really demented and murderous. So there's just something so fun and almost like bioshaki about that. Even like there are these vending machines where you can get ammo from and like stuff like that. Like I live for that. And I love like all the little details they have in this game. Stuff like there's a candy dispenser where if you kick it a bunch of and they show this

in the trailer that was last show. A bunch of the candies fall out and like people can slip on them. Like I didn't even know people could slip on them. No, that's awesome. I saw it in the trailer. Like and a bunch of like cool stuff like that are one of the first things I did in the game. You wake up on the beach. You grab your gun.

And I turned and there was a bunch of bottles. I shot one of them and then text popped up in the like kind of over neon glowy font that said nice and I was like damn y'all thought of that I was like okay and that was like one of my fictions coming into this game watching the trailer from the PlayStation

showcase the other day right like we joke around how many trailers there are about this and how much fucking we've seen death loop right but watching that thing I was like holy shit I didn't know I could do it like I'm seeing like slams upgraded all the way and I'm like fuck I could put I see I think there was a thing with fireworks in that trailer and I was like

Oh, you can do that. I never tried that, but that's really cool. Yeah, like, I know the one thing I'll say about this game, too, is that it's pretty lenient in terms of difficulty. And I, I'm not grappled with how I feel about it because, you know, one, there's health stuff all over, right? If you want to heal, you can heal. And I kind of like that because it sucks to be stuck in a game where you're trying to be stealthy and you're just one hit the whole time. But, like, you know, enemies are super, super easy to take out. I didn't die that much. Even in Juliana. I'd say Juliana took me out maybe twice and most of the times I saw her, you know, I would take her out.

Granted, that was always an MPC because during the review period, for the most part, like, we didn't have online available until recently. So I've not tried it with the online yet to see how a player would fare in that situation. But, you know, there's also not really a difficult difficulty ramp up in this game. Like, you're going back to the same areas and encountering the same enemies. If anything, you get more powerful as you go. And so, like, I think that kind of factored in into the stealth to action pipeline that I went through where, but I saw I got to the end of the game.

I was like, you know what, fuck it, man. Like, let's go, let's go out. Let's get, let's equip a shotgun. Let's, uh, fucking take fools out as, as, as many as I can at the same time. Um, I, I don't know how you guys feel about, about that. Like, I don't think it, it, like, takes that much away from it. But, you know, there were times where I was like, man, I wish this was a little bit more of a challenge.

Yeah, I mean, like, you get there because, I mean, you started off and it was a challenge, right? Like, it was trickier. When you start off stealthing, it's hard to do because you, don't have stuff like shift, you don't have a lot of like abilities that allow you to keep an eye on where enemies are. And it stops being a challenge when your cult becomes proficient. And depending on how you approach it, the visionaries are never a push over. There's always some element of like difficulty. There's not difficulty, but like if you don't get some element of it

right, you can screw the whole thing up and it could escalate into something that you generally don't want it to be. That was the point where I was like, okay, it's not a difficult game, it just wants you to be a little more careful in certain environments and certain situations. And for me, I felt like that was a better place to be because ultimately, the game's goal is to bestow knowledge upon you and help you have these understandings come to you. And if you're constantly getting killed, I felt like that's an easy way to push people away and make you bounce away when it's the case of you didn't shoot good and that's why you died. I think, yeah, that's it. It's the game's expectation and what it is. And I think, you know, you know,

even we were talking a second ago about right you know it's it's a shooter but it's not kind of thing i feel like for what it it looks like a duck but it doesn't quack like a duck and so like you have to look at and realize it's not a duck and that was another thing i was with you where i was man like shit i haven't died at all you know i mean i'm going i'm doing really well at this no game or hours over here yeah it was like is it because is this a detriment to it but then it was the idea of like you know i didn't want it to be return i don't want it to be that i drop all that stuff. You do want that next powerful. And it is this thing of them being, the levels being puzzle boxes to themselves, right? Of like, how do I want to do it? And then what do I do? And then what did

I learn? And how do I apply that to the next time I come through and do it? That leads something incredibly special. To the point of the difficulty, I'm, I'm right there with you all where it's like, it's not really difficult. Like, there were a few moments where I was personally challenged. But then even then, like, since you're always learning about the design, you can kind of maybe avoid some of the things that tripped you up last time. There's an area that, It was vividly in my mind that I was playing last night, where there's a lot of, I'm not a fan of the proximity minds in this game, because sometimes I really, you can, you hear him beep. You do hear them beep.

And it was one of those things where I'm like, is this too much or am I like maybe too dumb? So let me know. Ain't no feelings going to hurt. I agree. It didn't ruin it for me, but there is an area where the proximity minds are at the beginning, like near the beginning of that area. And so you had to cross them every time. And some of them are right in the path where it's like, okay, let's just not

get crazy less like you know we got but then like also i'm like y'all ain't really giving me that many bottles to throw but that's fine i can shoot but then they hear my gun it's fine i have a quiet gun and then it was you're having the moment i had where it was that you're having the moment i had where it was that hours hours hours later throwing things and sliding under them doing i was crouched up next to when it was like disarm i'm like motherfoy what are you sure because i did the same exact sequence last night janet uh yeah yeah you just you just that's really funny if you crouch and walk towards them very slowly you get within a range and it will just it be it beeps quicker to tell you you're getting into dangerous territory but then you just hold the button

down and it'll disarm that's really funny i'm sending you all the video of me blowing up doing this if you blow it up if you blow it up you just you did it wrong yeah there's also so much health from blowing up too i also don't like that i die instantly in the freezing water i do get it from a traversal standpoint but if you're at like one time i was at the end of like my lives like early in the game where where like you don't have any abilities because you get those like two kind of buffer lives. And I just straight up just fell. That's it.

Just miscalculated. And they're like, now, oh, you died. I was like, you know, I wish this was a little. I don't know. I'm just like, damn. But that's like very, this is like a very small nitpicky situation. That was very early on. But like that was a little bit not my favorite.

And I was thinking about that when like, look for something on our PSI Love You preview where you all were like, oh, sometimes the traversal is like, maybe there's something to be desired. The double jump ability helps a lot though. Yeah. You can get an ability that allows you to turn the proximity mines on the enemies as well. So keep an high out for that.

So it was out of you. Yeah. Those fucking mines, man. I lost my train. I lost my train. I had a silence pistol that got me through the mines. So it was never that big of a problem. Because for me,

disarming the mines was just like shooting them one by one in the way that Janet was describing. And, you know, the sucky thing would be alerting enemies to the exploding minds. But that was another thing I was going to bring up in terms of the game being lenient, is the enemies forget about you really quickly. In a way that made it fun for me, but also had me in the back of my mind being like, maybe they should, I don't know, these enemies seem real dumb. Like, they seem real stupid in the way that, you know, we're playing through the Middle Year's Solid series right now, you know, with Tam Barrett and so like Mike. And, you know, we're talking about how good the enemies are at, like, clearing out. and, you know, like, they're not dumb enemies. These are dumb enemies.

You definitely have some dumb enemies. Like, if you're, if you're going to get into like the almost like the Lauren universe of it, you're comparing like a privatized army to a bunch of people who are like partying and know that there's no consequences to anything. Yeah, is it because they're drunk? Like, yeah, like they're just like they don't give a shit. Like if they die, they die, like they're going to wake up the next day. Yeah, but you don't forget that somebody exists after two seconds of not seeing them.

Yeah, a lot of them are also scared. Because you can hear them, they're like, oh shit, I hope that's not a cult. Like, they don't want to engage you. And also, a lot of them are like, yeah, you know, it's going to be over within a day. So who really cares? They don't make an effort to chase you down. They're just busy doing their own thing. And they all just normal people.

The enemies are dumb as hell. But it's fun. They are dumb. It's not a big complaint. It's just like one of those things around like, man, they are like, I'm able to slip back into stealth real easily. I'll say they're only, but it's funny. They're only dumb to a degree, though, because. I was thinking about how, how, like, I'm like, how dumb are these people? Let's see. And I was in an area where

there was sort of like, like, like a metal flooring where, you know, conveniently, there's spots underneath the flooring. And, you know, everyone knew I was there. And I'm like, okay, cool. One thing I like about this game, too, in terms of difficulty is it is possible to take out all the enemies in an area and then just walk around and chill. And then now it's a walking sim. So, there we go. So I did that a lot because I'm like, I didn't really, even though I did stealth, I usually did try to kill everyone for the most part. Sometimes I didn't care if I was just trying to get to a certain area. But a lot of times I'm like, honestly, it's just easier if I take all y'all out. Like, I ain't trying to worry about this. Like, I'm just going to kill everybody. So that's probably

why it's taking so long. By the end of my run had like enough good trinkets that I could like sprint past people and they would not know I was there. So that was my favorite part of it. I'm just like, I can just run around anywhere I want and no one really knows I'm around as long as I'm not like right in front of them. Yeah, but I will say like I was hiding and I was like in a spot where I'm like, great, everyone's going to come here and then boom, I'm going to shoot them and then I'm just going to keep shooting them like fish in a barrel. And I'm like, I'm good. And I even said a lot. I'm like, I'm good until someone realizes they can throw a grenade at me.

But if they don't figure that out, and eventually they did. So I will say they're dumb, but like there's a slight limit there. They're dumb and dangerous. They're dangerously dumb. Yes, exactly. So you can't get away with everything, but you can get away with more than you can't. and in maybe a more traditional, like, stealth environment. I was going to go back to the difficulty thing

and just talking about, like, not feeling that, like, a challenge of, like, fighting enemies and stuff like that. And that's just something, like, I feel like dishonored. Like, they had some different enemy types, especially in, like, two and stuff. There were definitely some enemies that you did not want to mess with in certain aspects of that game.

But, like, for me, the appeal was always, like, the gameplay itself was never difficult and, like, fighting itself was never difficult. It's difficult to get the perfect run that you want to get. And that's like always, and that's something, uh,

going back to the question, what makes it appeal more to you than dishonored. I personally don't, I'm only six hours in. I don't know if I like this more than dishonor too. Like I fucking adore dishonor too. Um, and so I have to,

you know, get through the end of it, see how I feel about it. Um, but the difficulty is doing, making that perfect run and doing everything that you want to do it exactly how you want to do it of like, you know,

I've, I've been going to this like, uh, this theme, area, it's like this role-playing situation. And I've gone to it, I think that area and like getting to that visionary to get that slab the most out of anything else I've done so far in the game. And every time it's like I have a new perk and like, all right, how does that help me, you know, get to, you know, the top floor without being noticed like whatsoever and doing things like that?

and one of the things that I think personally makes me like Death Loop a little more than Dishonored 2 is that like Dishonor 2 is a little more linear, very linear and how it delivers the game. I think at the end of each level you can like choose to replay the level or not if like you mess something up or like yeah, if you like wanted to go like full stealth, not killing anybody. But then that replayability, you're not really gaining anything

other than just like doing your perfect run. I just played this level for an hour. Why would I replay this? Exactly. And that's why, just like the, yeah, the way that Death Loop is set up, you have those opportunities to do those perfect runs again while also accomplishing something else that will help you for further on in the game. And that was like something that dawned on me last night while playing.

And I was like, holy shit, that's like another level that I wonder if like they specifically thought about with like how they know that people enjoy the dishonored games and like how they could even. further that for people who like Tam was saying and like I've watched dishonor two speed runners who do some incredible ridiculous work with like powers without powers it's wild and I'm fascinated to see like how those people are going to tackle it um this is ingenious to that point like some of the level design in a fun way reminds me of something like Mario 64 where I'll go and watch speed runs to Mario 64 and see like in the in the rainbow uh like magic magic carpet level I forget what that one's

called. In that level in that game, right? Like, you can turn around, you can do the long jump and land on another platform, right? Like, in Mario Super has a lot of stuff like that where you can make a certain jump and get to a certain area of a level, a certain area of a level, basically because the game is designed kind of in like this diorama form where, you know, you don't have to do things step by step. In fact, like, if you want, you can get into the cannon and shoot to the top of Bob on

Battlefield and call it a day, right? Like, you're given that option. And Deathloop has a similar thing where you start off and it is, you know, you're, you're, your runs are pretty rough through these levels. You're taking them very stealthily. You're going slowly. You're not, you don't know the shortcuts.

But there's, there's two, two visionaries out of my mind specifically where I, uh, they always had the slabs that I wanted. So I'd go after them over and over again. And the, by the time I,

like the first for one of them, right? Like I would go through and he has, this visionary has a fortress basically that I'm working my way up through towards. And I'm taking out so many enemies that are, that are in this fortress. And I get to the top and I finally take him out, right?

after going through all these things. I did that about three times before I had the thought of, what if I just went through the outside? Like, what happens if I just, like, shift here and then shift here? And sure enough, I bypassed what usually would take me, like, eight minutes of combat. I bypassed that in, like, two minutes of shifting around. That's the ingenious of it. Like, I feel like it was the last time I brought up.

It was probably when we did the Death Loop preview for PSI Love You, and I brought up Dishonor 2, and someone in the comments was like, oh, Bear, I'm going to put your feet to the fire. You always say Dishonor 2 is great with a level design. but you never, like, really explain it. And for people who have actually played dishonor two, you know I don't need to explain it. But for the thing that's, like, in genius about arcane games,

is that, like, they have kind of this rule set that they give to you pretty much at the beginning of the game, and then they almost have, like, an in-and-out secret menu of rules that you can discover throughout the game to break the rules that they laid out for you at the beginning of the game. And that's just, like, they implement that in, like, level design in moment-to-moment gameplay moments,

and it's just all about, like, learning to break the rules that you were given at the very beginning. And that's why I think Arcane is really great at what they do with this. And it's actually here that there isn't anything on the high as Clockwork Mansion and Cracking the Slav from Dishonored 2. But I think so far from what I've experienced, like, even those two levels, like, those two levels are great, but even just like the other levels that are just like going through the towns and stuff, we're also really incredible at doing that and delivering on that. And everything that I've experienced in Death Loop also hits that same level for me, which is,

which is fucking awesome. Blessing that visionary. If it's the one that you're thinking of, you can go straight through the window if you're quick enough. That's what, see, that's, wait, like, before,

like, you can go straight through the window before, like, they, like, do the thing. You can, you can go through the window and kill that visually before,

is even more of it before you even go. It doesn't even know you're there. You just go straight into a kill and then you're out. Because yeah, once I realize that I could once I realized that I can just like, you know, shoot up there way faster than what I usually was doing, it was a revelation. I was like, oh shit, this game is genius. This game is so good. Like what it allows you to do with enough knowledge.

But like, you know, Barry, you mentioned right, like not having anything on the level of like crack and slab and like someone dishonor 2, Deshauner 2's best levels. That is one of the reasons why I can't wait for. Death Loop 2 if they put out a Death Loop 2 because like, you know, this game sets up so much and this game does so much in terms of establishing a structure and establishing a, you know, this is what this new, this game format is. And it's original and it's, it works for us. And this is like the most arcane game we can make. You know, and I play this game and I want to play

armchair game designer so much of like what if it feels like Millegers Solid 5 where if you're getting head shots in the morning, then by afternoon they're wearing helmet. right like what if one of these districts was like a sandstorm what if like one of these districts had like a weather condition that affected it in this way like that is the type of stuff that they can they can start building for death loop two if they wanted to do that and that game right like if definitely wasn't a 10 out of 10 like death loop two if they start building on it in those ways it's going to be a fucking 11 out of 10 I can't wait for death too death too oh boo barrett all right final thoughts anybody got some uh tam you gave it a 10 out of 10 what's your final thought on death

Yeah, I think it's easily my game of the year. I think that it is one of those games that will be looked at in terms of, hey, we're going to tear this game apart and show you how to make a game that's really, really fascinating and really rewarding. It's a game where you can fail repeatedly and come away feeling like you've achieved something, and that is one of the rarest treats that games can give us. The other thing that I think that is incredible that it achieves is something I mentioned in my review is it's basically teaching you how to build one of the most elusive things in video game design that everyone wants and that's a flow state it's create teaching you how to create a flow state get in it and then leave it at will and to do that and to do it successfully it's basically like striking gold and the fact that they've done it is it is commendable and it's to be lauded like i think it's a fascinating fascinating game janet what do you think so far

Yeah, man, I really didn't want anything to kill chickery this year, but it might be deadloof. I'll get back to y'all when I actually roll credits on it. But it's absolutely intoxicating. Go play this game when it's out. I'll say one of the highest compliments I can give it. Of course, this is personal to like how I play games. But I'm gaming all the time. I'm streaming all the time.

I'm always playing games. And I can find it tiring at times. I only have so much like game stamina. I never grew up playing like eight hour sessions or anything. This is a game that I started and I lose. track of time almost instantly. I have no perception of my phone. I have no perception of the outside world. I am just completely engrossed in it. And those, the 11 hours I did play over like a very small chunk of time with when I've had it so far. It just flew away without any, any issues or any

thoughts. Yeah, it's fantastic. And I just, I can't wait to see it through the end. It's so damn good. Bless. Yeah, this game, this game is, you know, easily one of the best of the year. It's definitely competing with all the games that are on the top of my game of the year list. And, you know, I think it is a must play. It is arcane. You know, I think it's going to be the game that really makes arcane shine for so many people, right? Like, you know, we talk about Desauner and how good the DesaSeries series is. I think this is going to be the one that breaks out for them.

It becomes like what, I guess, Spider-Man was for Insomnia or what Uncharted was for Noddy Dog. Right. Like, I think this is kind of that for them in a way that, you know, this is really going to speak to the audience. and people are really going to dig it. And yeah, I can't say enough good things. And, like, I really want them to make either DLC or, like, I just want to play more. I think that's where I'm at. You know, when I say that I played 17 hours of this game, that was all within, like, maybe four days.

You know, I beat this game real quick because I was obsessed with it. And usually, I have to be playing a really special game in order to sit down and get lost in it in that way. And so, like, I can't say enough good things about Death Loop. And yeah, you know, good job Arcane. it. Indeed, Arcane. Great job. Yeah, I mean, everybody just talked about how great it is. I obviously may say nothing different. I think death loops incredibly special. I think especially once you see it for what it is, if that makes sense, of like, oh, this is how I'm supposed to play? Sure, yeah, the enemies are a bit brain dead or whatever, but it's because how do you get through this murder puzzle? How am I going to solve this? And then once I solve it that way, what's a quicker way to solve it? What, I got this new cool power. How am I going to bring that in there? I got this new trinket. How is that going to affect everything? The way all the systems built. on each other, I think is just out of this world. One last thing I want to say before we go, because multiplayer

is something that we kind of whiz past, but the multiplayer is incredible, and the thing that I want to highlight is it both uses your knowledge of what you've accumulated of the world and how to play to your favor and against you, because as Juliana, you have the ability to mimic other characters in the world in the same way that you could in Assassin's Creed

two Brotherhood's multiplayer and hide. So one of the things that I find really fascinating about it is at a certain point you know exactly where every enemy is and then if you come into that world as Giuliana, you could be like, I know that this cult has played this game enough to look at this area, know that there's an enemy there and just think,

oh, that's just an MPC. I've seen that MPC one million times. I'm just going to move on. But you could be that MPC on that occasion. And the fact that you can play mind games with other cults and then all be cult and be like, second guessing every NPC that is around you is just so cool. The multiplayer is like so much fun.

Make sure you don't like it. It's terrifying, especially when you like nail down loops for for NPCs. And then another one pops up and you're like, I've never accounted for for you before what is happening. And then it is that mind game. And it's, yeah, I played a lot as I played a lot as Juliana last night now that we can play online and play other stuff. And it was that thing of jumping in there. And like, it's so weird to be playing the level.

in reverse now of, you know, I start in there and it's like, cool, this is an early thing. So I know where the spawns are. I know where he's coming. I know where Colts coming out. But, and so I'm like, well, he's got to be coming here. And then I'd go there. I was like, but if he's after the visionary, he's going to be going. Like, it's just running around trying to play offense and defense of like, wait, I want to protect myself, but I got to find him. But if he's doing, it's a very interesting thing. I didn't follow. I don't think it's something I'll go back to a lot. Like, I probably played, I'd say five, I invaded like five different people's matches last night and enjoyed it fine, but I didn't feel the draw to really go.

Are you going to keep going back to you think, Tam? Yeah, I think so. I'm going to, it's rare for me to platinum a game, but I'm currently in my mind, I'm like, I'm going to platinum this. The only other platyms I have are Souls games and so far the first two Mass Effect. So I think I'm going to get the third Mass Effect game and then probably this. I only platinum games that I'm like, when people look at it, they're like, damn, this guy's a gamer.

Well, ladies and gentlemen, are you a gamer? If so, you're probably going to play Death Loop. Let us know in the comments what you think about it. Of course, keep watching the games cast each and every week for our other reviews, our other updates. You can catch PSI Love You, X OXO, or I'm sure Janet will keep us up to date on her death loop experience and everything else. And remember, if you want to support the show, patreon. com slash Kind of Funny Games, where you can write in to be part of the show.

You can usually watch us record it live. You could go get the post show we're going to do right now, but you can mainly say, hey, you're doing a good job. But if you got no bucks to toss her way, no big deal, YouTube. com slash Kind of Funny Games, Roosterteat.com, podcast services, around the globe. Until next time, go to GameSpot.com and read TAM's review and know. Thank you. It's been our pleasure

to serve you.