Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Division 2 Impressions So Far - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 213

Episode Date: March 18, 2019

The first 500 people to sign up will receive a 2 month free trial. Go to https://skl.sh/kindafunnycorepodcast to start your trial now. Get 15% off at http://mvmt.com/kinda Greg, Fran, Andrea, and Kevin give their impressions of Division 2 so far. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast episode 213. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the busiest lady in the business, Andrea Renee. What's good, Greg? Your shirt, number one. Oh, thank you. This is a brand new outfit that we're big fan of this year. Thank you. Thank you very much.

I was saying during the pre-show that I love this shirt because I got it in a special Mario capsule collection that Forever 21 was doing in the New York store when I was hosting the Nintendo World Championships. Okay, awesome. Over there, the man, the myth of the legend, the best hair in the business, Fran Mirabella of Third. What's up, Greg? How's going, best friends? It's, nothing's, my hair is up. Yeah.

Before this, you came in here and you did my hair. Or during the pre-show, you can get on Patreon.com slash kind of funny games. You can come see, uh, Fran do my hair? Yeah. Did we talk about it on the show last week? Give me the one. Yeah, I can't remember it was in the pre-or-post show. It was the pre-or-post show that.

It definitely looks much, much better. Do I look much, much better? I don't know about that. I would, yeah. My quick review, although I don't know, should we talk about it after? No, just do it enough. What's your quick review? Well, first time I've ever done Greg's hair was a little bit wet, which I wasn't prepared

for, a blow dry, a little blowout would have helped. But he's got very nice... Fallible. No, you know what, it's actually, it's thicker than mine. Really? Yeah, and it's nice quality hair. Good stuff to work with. So I used...

Good stock, that Midwest stock. Good stock, man. I used a matte paste, and then we put in, like, glue for hairspray, basically, is the way that I finished that off. Gotcha. A little bit of my routine. It's mold. Excellent. And rounding up the group, you know them as the glue from browsers.com, Kevin Coella.

Oh, no. That's not right. That's not right. Sorry. Interesting. I made a little. Twitch.com. FM3 underscore.

Andrew N.A., what's good. Games. And then it says right there, browsers.com. Kevin. He pointed at nothing. Folks. What are you? It says it right there.

Oh, yeah. It does. Tim gave me his notes. Tim gave me his notes. I don't know. I mean, I already did him on the show. Tim Geddes has the day off, ladies and gentlemen, because guess what?

All we've been doing all week long is playing the division two. That's right, agents. We thought we'd bring together our strike team here to talk to you about it. But first, of course, let me tell you some housekeeping. This is the Kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every week we get together to talk about the video games. We love. If you love that, you can go to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games.

Get each and every episode early. So early you can watch this as we record it live. So early you can get an ad free on Friday. Or if you have no money to give us no big deal, you can get it for free. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, roosterteeth.com and podcast services around the globe each and every Monday morning.

Remember, we're going to Kansas City Saturday, May 30th for the kind of funny world tour. We will be doing a meetup at the Flying Saucer Draft Emporium. It is free. You don't need a badge to get in. However, if you want to buy a badge for Planet ComicCon, We're doing a bunch of panels there. You can get the whole rundown on kind of funny.com slash events where you can also see the New York City meetup coming up on April 6th.

Also right around the corner. Today I want to thank Patreon and producers, Scott Hardinger, DJ Kento, Casey Kern, Sancho West Gaming, James Hastings. And I also want to tell you that this episode is brought to you by Movement and Skillshare, but we'll talk about that later. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be, us talking about the division too. I was about to do it.

I was seen if I could get you. I was seeing if I got you for sure. Greg, fast note. You meant March 30th for Kansas City, right? What did I say? May. Yeah, March 30th. 100%.

Yeah, it's right around the corner. I have been playing the division until my eyes hurt every night. So I am very tired and we are not stopping. We are not stopping. That's good stuff. Andrew or Renee? Yes, Greg.

You've had the division since Monday when the servers went live. Correct. We've been playing the gold edition, everyone at the table. I have the ultimate edition. Early access. I think I might actually too, actually. Do I also have the ultimate edition?

I don't know. And just to be clear, the code was provided by UBC. 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Take our opinions as you will, but it doesn't affect us at all. No. Like I've said before, I'm buying, I'm buying mine for my friends. You know what I mean?

Like the other one. Andrew, anyways, though. You've been playing this. The game will come out for everybody tonight, 12 o'clock, midnight. What are your initial impressions of the Division 2? Having a ton of fun. I'm very impressed by how steady the game has been up until our session last night. Yeah, sure. Yeah. So I

the day before it went live for everyone who pre-ordered and has the gold and the ultimate editions, I was playing and experienced only one crash. I was in the middle of a mission, crashed to the dashboard, had to do the entire mission over again. Kind of a bummer, but it only happened once. Was it a game crash or a server disconnect? No, the game crashed to the dashboard. Oh, wow. Yeah.

Like the whole thing just like, were you playing in a squad with anyone else or were you just by yourself? Yeah. And so it just pooted out. And that was the only problem I had until we were streaming with Fran last night. And Greg and I had five blue screens in like an hour long period. You were getting blue screens. You were the only one who worked. I didn't know.

The game was crashing. I thought you were getting a server discount. No, no, no. We were getting it straight to the blue screen. And it's like, let me upload the problem. And it took forever to upload it. So that was the exact it. All of them all of a sudden, like, froze in the world.

And I have an awesome clip of something else that happened. But they just dropped. And I was the only one remaining. And consistently, what, like three? It happened a lot. It happened a lot. With me and you guys, it happened three times. Yeah.

And the positive side is when we got back into the game, it booted us directly back. We went right to where we left off. That was great. It reconnected, yeah. Right. But that aside, I'm doing top-level starters. What do you think? You had a great time.

You're having a great time? I'm really loving the way that they've changed the intro progression based off what I played in the original division. It hooked me much earlier this time than it did the first time around. I think the diversity of the story missions and how they've always. opened up a lot more things without it feeling overwhelming. Because sometimes UbeSov games suffer from like map fatigue. Sure.

You look at the thing and there's a million things. There's like so many. Where do I go? Exactly. And you're just like overwhelmed. So I think that they've really struck a nice balance so far. I'm level 16 now in the game, no, 15. And having a really great time with it.

You can do a lot of this game solo. I think that's a big question that we get a lot is can I play the division by myself. And yes, you absolutely can. We're going to get to all that. We're going to get to that. Fran, top of the order, top of the batting order. What do you think of Division 2? You've been playing since Monday.

It's now Thursday our time. Yeah, I know. We're talking about a lot of stuff on the show, so I'll try to keep it short. My review is, it is what I've been saying. You're reviewing it. No, no, no, no, no, Fran's review of. Until I do it.

No, but this is early review. We're 15, level 15 as well. I'm level 15 as well. We're all the same. A bunch of show-offs. No, I think I'm level like 12. If you were making this rack of lamb every night. That's right.

Good stuff. Kevin takes amazing dinner breaks, so I'm jealous of him. I do it fast, though. Yeah, no, we're kidding. But short of it is, it is division two. It's quality of life improvement. It's a new world and it's beautiful and the new level of detail in that world. And it's sort of, the way it feels is absolutely different.

But it's mostly the game itself is like a quality of life, right? Like more abilities, new abilities, new ways to earn stuff. It's a little cleaner. The progression's cleaner. There's a lot to do as well. Like you said, you don't just. go through like, well, I cleared that, now what? There is so much going out on the map and sort of more targeted, too.

It's like, dang, I really do want this muzzle for my 5.56, whatever. So let's go do this side mission to get the blueprint. It's a lot more clear. So I feel like, as far as we've made it, it's what I expected. If you liked Division 1 but wanted some quality of life, that's what I think you're going to be like, this is smooth, man. It feels good. And I'm definitely feeling an addiction.

I want to get back to the world. I know we'll talk about it. Kevin, what do you think of the Division 2? So I didn't play much of Division 1. Right, I think you're the one who's played least at the table, yeah, in terms of Division 1. Right, right, we play a little bit. Then I tried to get back in, played with Andrea. At the time, she was like a level 17 and I was like level 10.

Yeah. And we like started doing a mission and it was not fun for me to play. The scaling was not friendly at all. But they've really fixed that this time around. But we haven't. Save it, save it, save it. We're going to get to all that. What do you think, though?

And I know this, I'm not trying to stop organic conversation. I've been having an amazing time. It is so much fun, and they've done things to change the game where now wandering around and exploring the world is so much more fun and feels extremely rewarding. I'm getting very similar to like Assassin Creed Odyssey vibes where it's like I want to keep playing and I want to keep just walking around

doing random little things because I feel like it's beneficial to me. Sure. I know this will sound ridiculous because this is, I mean, last year at the end, right, what's your most anticipated game of the year? I said Division 2, and obviously I was a big Division 1 fan. I'm floored by how much I enjoy this game. Because I knew, oh man, I loved the division.

I platinum the division. I'm excited for Division 2. But I thought for sure something they would fuck something up. Or I wouldn't like some aspect of it. Or I could see a part where I'm not playing it. You know what I mean? Because like even with each wear out or whatever. With Anthem, there was the thing of like, this is fun for now.

I'll eventually stop. You know, when I was in fall out. I'm not going to be here forever. Destiny 2. Oh, I platinum did. I'm not going to come back to it. That's not me. Whereas this one does feel like

We were talking about this last night Or this morning Kevin Where we are like This feels like a game We will actually come back to This feels like... Yeah, yesterday When there was a point where

Just you and I were playing Yeah And I was like I think that once we're done Putting you know Five hours a night into this We will be able to like Come back to it

The opposite of Monster Hunter Where I knew when we were done With Monster Hunter We'd be done It'd be too hard to jump back Yeah this feels like I can just pick it up And grab and go

Yeah Framins I mean you brought up Quality of Life right And I feel like that's what they've done here. They talked about everything they learned with Division I, everything they updated with Division I and how they're going to put that in Division 2, and I think they've knocked it out of the park.

I'm curious, what is it that appeals to you most about Division with all these other games out there? Desti didn't quite do it, Anthem didn't quite do it, et cetera. For me, it's what I've always talked about, right? Space is dumb, we all know it. You know what I'm kidding. But for me, the more I can be grounded in a story or a world, that's what works for me.

So being in real world locations, in quotes, obviously, you know, it's a video. A real character. Exactly. It's pretty close to one-to-one for DC. Well, sure, but I mean also, you know, like being a, you know, I'm getting shot, I'm getting whatever. But I mean, like, I'm running around with guns. I'm in our world.

Like that appeals to me. The idea of being a hero, not even a superhero, right? Just being a hero, that you're, you know, the division thing is that they're going to stand for all this, right? That they're the last hope kind of thing. We all look to them. I love that narrative thread of the game of, it's what we joke around about last night we were playing, but when we are running in,

we're going to a mission, but something's happening, like, remember Scott Lois, Scott Lo's like, we're like, do it, Scott Lois like, we're here to save DC, and it's like, we are, we are here to sit, and like, that really always speaks to me, and I love that third person perspective. I do love cover-based shooter mechanics, right? Because like, you know,

we just did a party mode for a first person shooter, arena, first-person shooter game. And it's just like, I'm so bad at that. I'm so bad at PVP, like, that's just not what I am. Whereas in division, PVE, third person, That's where I'm at home, right? It is what I love about third person action games.

So I'm like, okay, I can run around and be a part of this. Interesting. Yeah, I was going to say, are we talking about the solo play versus? Now I'll go everything. Now just get into whatever you want to do. I just wanted that top level. That was my other related question for you, though, is that we're having a lot of discussions and questions on stream about it and, you know, just between us.

But solo play, the scaling, there's something going on there. So I think that's part of this discussion. But putting that aside for a second, would you play this game alone, Greg? 100%. Really? the whole thing. You'd play alone. Honestly, I think it's... With matchmaking or without.

Without. Without. I played a lot of division alone when you wouldn't be online. I'd run through and do stuff. And even with, what I've noticed with Division 2 is that even if I'm the higher level and you join on me, the missions get harder. And it's not...

That's cool. Like last night we were getting our heads kicked in for a little bit. And it was fun, right? Because it was... Right, fuck, this isn't impossible. Yeah. How do we do this? Where do we put down things?

What do we do? Even as a player right now in Division 2, when I'm waiting for you guys to finish something up and come online, I'll go run. a mission by myself and feel pretty easy. That was pretty easy to go through and do it. Whereas coming back, then it gets harder. It's when you get to the end game, that's going to be impossible.

Yeah, what I really love about what they've done with the new skills. As friend was mentioning, they've expanded the skills that they're offering in the division to is that when you do run into a wall where we come up against a group of enemies that really make us think about what kind of strategy you want to go into, it reminds you that, oh yeah, I'm supposed to be using everything in my arsenal. I was supposed to be using both types of weapons, both types of skills. I love that they unlocked both of the skills in the main game because when we were playing in the beta,

you had to pay to unlock your second skill slot. I'm glad they got rid of that and just opened it up because you definitely want two skills when you're running in. I wish it was easier to hot swap them, quite frankly, but I guess they have to give you a little bit of a penalty for that. But I really like how they make all of that complement each other. So when we're rolling as like a four-person squad, we can talk about like okay who's got healing who's got you know suppression so it brings somebody

up to speed if you're just a kind of funny games cast person walking in right what you're talking about of course is the skills of it where you have on your r1 l one you've assigned out whether it be a turret whether it be a grenade that goes and seeks people whether it be the rollipoli polio right the healing drone right yeah there's all these different ones and so yeah it's you're 100 correct and same thing with the weapon slots of having two of those is i think it's easy to be rolling along with everybody to be helping out a friend who's lower level or whatever and not be thinking about it. But then we get to these moments where

yeah, we are challenged by the game and it is like well hold on I'm going to swap off the grenade function instead put on a healing drone that way I can take care of it when this guy comes. I'll know to play that and slow and so forth. Yeah like how Fran was like weakening armor for some of the heavies and he would call out when he was using his skill and so we could focus fire on specific

people. It really brings in that squad based element that games like Ghost Recon really excelled And I think that it makes it really fun to play with people, but I agree that I also had a good time playing solo. Yeah, it was a manufactured segue is why I asked. I wanted to say it is like is a niche solo experience. And I absolutely, what I do like when I'm solo is there's no pressure to loot. There's no pressure to go back to D.C.

And it's what all these games struggle from. It's like guys, and especially, I'm like streaming, you guys are waiting. The servers are shutting down two hours. And I'm trying to like destroy like green loot that's like three levels below me. I'm an idiot, and I can't let go without reading the stats. So there's a solo experience, putting that aside, there's these moments where you need to sort of take that break, do your inventory cleanup, all that. Maybe look around for some cell phones. But see, outside of that, I absolutely think it's a niche experience.

I'm making a bet, you know. I don't know how the community is going to feel, but it scales, it's pretty tough solo. And so that's why I say it's niche. For me, if you want to go in and be that hero, and you're just like, I got it, I got it all. But that mission's going to take you, like, a while. And it's a huge difference when you're getting flanked away we were last night. It's absolutely, in my opinion, the game is designed for the friend game. And that's what we call it.

100%. I'm not arguing that. No, yeah. I think, don't get me wrong, I think even though the missions get harder when you play with other people or stuff, I think that is definitely the way to play it. It's way cooler to do that. Even when we opened up the clan yesterday, right, to have everybody in there, a random clan member, kind of funny best friend. Joined on me, right? And we just ran around and did stuff. And it was like, even that not talking to him on a microphone, it was fun.

I had more fun than that. When he joined on, I think he was level 19. Yeah. And it made things like. Oh, I wasn't even talking. There was a different friend before. Sorry, sorry. Yeah.

Well, we had someone joined on who was significantly higher. Right. At that point, we were all level 12 or 10. Oh, that's who I was talking. And when he joined on, there was a point where we had to unfortunately come to the decision about, we got to boot this kid. And I'm worried, like, scaling for me still is this question of how exactly does it work, right? Because when that guy, the 19.

did join, that mission went from, oh man, we fucked that up to, holy shit, this is impossible. Because the gold was hitting us in one shot, pretty much. And it is confusing because so you do get, it's called the co-op buff and you see a little meter. It's like you've all been, if a 19 joins you and you're, say, a 10, everybody's going to be 18, I believe. Below them, one level below, but you get a co-op buff. But like, you're still feeling that one level below quite a bit.

So I think the intention is to keep the scale. It's like you're not exact at their level, but you're closed. I actually personally think they're going to need to tune it because it feels a little far away. It feels like a penalty. And that was my point about solo play. It seems designed for, or it is, frankly, the AI, the flanks, everything is designed for a squad. And I believe that's the right way to play it. So I would think twice if you want to play it solo.

But some of you might prefer it. And I talk to a few of those people. They were like, I love being in the world alone and just you're a hero. It would be nice that they would provide an option for people who are low level to scale up. if they're ready for the challenge or for people who are high level that want to play with their friends to scale down.

Like matchmaking? Yeah, and say like, hey, I'm not here to get high end rewards. I'm here to help, you know, run you through the mission. And so you could lower down instead of having to have the people on the other end move up.

So you would have the option to forego rewards in order to help lower level people. That might be concerned because I got Poe a copy. I want to play with Poe, but Poe doesn't play games like we do, right?

Even though I was like, you want to play division? He's like, oh, let me start installing it. I'm like, oh, no, no. And so like when he does finally get in there and I'm level, what, 18, by that point, I'm 15 now. I assume this weekend, 18, 19, 20. Like, you're going to be best 20. Is that going to even be able to help him?

You'll be 30 by the end of the weekend. Well, I know that. By the end of the weekend, guys, I'm canceling plans on the weekend to play more. Would you consider creating a new character so you can start that? I know, but like, like. I hate that shit. I remember back in the day doing that with Christine, where I had a character I had to run with her because it was broken.

And sure enough, as soon as she got to the right level, I was like, see this character. You're never playing it again, bringing my main. But you don't have to do that, though. You mean, like, literally a level two can jump in your game and play. Sure, but he's not going to have fun, right? Yeah, that's the thing. Like, we didn't have fun with that 19 yesterday.

Imagine what it's going to be like for Poe to jump in, and it's going to be, I'm 16 and he's won. That's my point. I think it has to do with the skin, because at the end of the day, you have, hopefully, as long as you have your two weapons slots, you have a couple guns, you can duck and cover and play it safe. It's how hard those bullets are hitting you,

And they are hitting you. I guess my point there was, whether you're level 2 or 12, and we don't know exactly how it works, and you're jumping into a 19 game, and you're getting that buff. You're all supposed to be the same at one level below and be feeling it the same. What you don't have are all the abilities,

so you might not have the healing, dread, and all those things do matter. And even like your gun recoil, you're going to miss shots. And the perk system, all the passive perks that you're unlocking is really, I think, where people are going to feel it. And that has to do with all the attachments you can get for your guns, the how many armor packs you can carry,

et cetera, et cetera. So I think there's a lot of things at work. And I hope that massive takes a look at the feedback and maybe is a little bit more transparent with how that scaling system works. The biggest problem I'm having with the scaling, it's I don't think it's scaling the weapons up. So if I'm shooting someone with like a level seven gun,

but I'm in a level 12 thing, it just doesn't feel like I'm doing any damage. Like I'm used to when we do, and we're all level 12, I'm used to knowing this gun is going to take out this much. And then when I go shoot and it's not moving anything at all. That's my biggest problem. And I think that that's the problem you're going to have with Poe is he's going to come join you.

And he's just going to be like, well, I'm just kind of hanging around trying not to die. And that's never fun. Honestly, I think the cooler thing, I don't know how I would do this, but to push him through and then go into the dark zone. Because right, the dark zone does negate everything, right? You're all at the same. Yeah, exactly. You all start from the same squire. in terms of what you're going in there with and balances you that way.

And I feel like that might be a better way to play with him and people who are behind to catch up. Yeah, but they need to look at the scale-up. But one thing I would point out is like this is mid-game, you know, early and mid-game. So you kind of look at it that way too. Not that I prefer, there's something with a scaling that could be touched up. Absolutely. But it is the mid-game. So eventually you hit 30 and it kind of doesn't matter anymore.

So it really is like that first, I don't know if it's going to take us 40 hours or whatever. But then you're on the end game. With their article, I think I've seen quotes of 30 hours, 30 to 40 hours to get to 30. But then it won't matter as long as you make it to the end game. But I think there will be a lot of people that maybe they're staying around 15 to 20 for a while because they don't have a lot of time. And for those people, I think that's where that scaling is going to be a tough one. So we'll see if they touch it up. Yeah.

No, I want to try. We haven't done Darkstone yet either. We should mention. I went and did the intro mission and stuff. I did the intro mission. You did? Yeah. Hey, man.

Probably when you were selling off fucking. for an hour and a half. And he writes in to patreon.com slash kind of funny games. Actually, it's my Twitter. How does the Division 2 cater to players like myself who only have a few hours per week to play games? This kind of speaks into what you're talking about, right? With scaling of getting to that 15, 20 level and being around there for a while.

I was just to say, I think this game works best if you've got a dedicated squad. A couple people that are going to have a similar schedule to you. And I know that that requires a little bit of planning. but like if you're doing that and you're all scaling up together it's a lot of fun yeah and you I think you're gonna be able to find those people right

and I think you know we've talked about it before with games as a service and then being like the best ones do it as a buffet where you show up right or a theme park I think it was actually I forget who said this on one of the shows

a theme park right where you show up and it's like today I want to ride the water slides I want to go do this or I want to go it's a small world and that's what division strikes me as in a lot of ways right where it is when Fran does want to go dial into these stats and worry about what he's doing.

I can be like, all right, cool, I'm just going to pick up shade tech for a while, or I'm going to go do this side mission, or I'm going to look into my projects, right? You talk about quality of life. I feel everything is at a glance. You know what you can do, what you should do,

and what you want to do, and you can figure out where to go all of a set. Yeah, they did a really good job. Like I said, all the missions, and they had a little bit of it before, but it's going to tell you potential. Lute drops, hey, I can get a blue, something from the boss.

I can get a mod blueprint. I can get all sorts of stuff. Oh, if you need skill, tech or shade tech or whatever, you know exactly where to get it. They brought the loot to the loot of shooter, which is... Yeah, and there's a lot of loot. Yeah, we were talking about this on what's good and how... Sorry, what was it? That's Good Games.

Oh, where can I get that? You can get that at what's goodgames.com slash podcast. So, thanks, Greg. You always throws me off a little bit. We were talking about because obviously this, you know, gearbox has been teasing Borderlands. So we're talking about how Borderlands is clearly like the king of... of the loot or shooter mountain or whatever, and how a lot of games that use this term,

loot or shooter aren't actually giving you loot worth seeking after. And I think the division really stepped up their game from the first time, for the first game, and make it worth chasing. And I think that's really exciting and everything that Fran's detailing about how they lay it out in the menus as to how you go about getting that loot.

Not only is it like you want to stop at every duffel bag and suitcase that you found in the world. And there are so many this time around. Every nook and cranny of DC has something out there to totally distracts. Everyone just left their suitcases on the streets of DC. Run! Had to do. But they also give you specific quests and specific missions to chase for the loot that you want.

And I really appreciate that. Yeah, they even have right, don't they have a recommended system? You go on your progression. It's like, you recommend you do this. You can do whatever you want, but they actually do try to guide you. If you're looking for a critical path, if you're looking to actually get the most of your time right now, I'll go do this. Yeah. But you have the loot.

Like, it is such a amazing, great feeling, right? And I understand that I'm getting close to a hornet's nest here. Let me just speak, all right? Where I enjoy Anthem, right? I enjoyed Anthem when we were playing it. I was right there with Fran, six to seven, wherever I'd that and that thing, right? But it was that thing I said at the time. Like, I'm not the game as a service person.

I'm enjoying this, but I don't think I'm the end-all be all of it. Playing this one, it is such a different feeling where I see the chasm where people are like, well, this is, Anthem's not even doing the looters-shooter shooter thing the way people expect or want. And I was like, oh, right. I'm having fun as an Iron Man thing, teaming up with people going and playing stuff, right? This is such a different feeling now of,

oh, a blue, open this thing, purple, and you're like, oh, I'm so excited to finish it to go around and get everything. Even though Fran takes it too far and waste way too much of our time going through is loot. I do the same thing at the end of the mission

where I do look through and it's like, all right, favorite junk, junk, junk, you know, I want to sit there and balance and go. You have to be aggressive about deconstructing your inventory. You just do, Fran. This isn't like Destiny where you can vault a bunch of stuff. You don't want to put a bunch of stuff in your stash.

You're going to get something better. Just start dismantling everything. It just doesn't matter yet. It's not totally true. It just doesn't matter yet, Fran. I mean, we're not going to go down that road. But what I will say is there is that enjoyment. And I'm not even the craziest of types.

It's that honestly, it's true. Like, there are people who get so deep into these stats. They're going to go to the shooting range, which, by the way, had some really cool DPS readouts. You can do test area of a fact. You can test range. It's really well done. I forget if they,

made any of those improvements in the first one. But this one's feeling pretty solid overall. But there's people that go really far. But that is what I like about division, as much as you're just ducking and covering behind a brick wall, shooting an enemy that seems to be a brick wall, and it takes forever to chip away at them. It is very tactical and strategic.

And so, yeah, when you go through your loot, you have the option. And by the way, this is where you can do it or not, but you can go in and you're like, oh, there's a 10% buff health on kill. I didn't even have that on another one, which, by the way, it was one thing I started to notice. I was like, oh, health and kill, yeah, because that is a really great buff and other little things. I'm with you. Like, there's like, you know, if you have all the same.

If you're not looking. If you have the same brand of all stuff, right? So it's like when I started noticing I was getting multiple brands, I started stashing those. And I'm like, these are blues and they're not going to matter. But I can't just deconstruct them. I need to keep it around. Yeah, and like my point was is midgame, do you care enough about maybe getting a 15% skill power buff or whatever? And by the way, you should because that makes you more powerful.

But the reality is you can probably. on the mission with the team and it's not like the biggest of deal but that's it's there if you want it and like that is where I think they did a really good job with the you said they brought the loot to a looter shooter and there's like a ton of stats and stuff early game there's sets there's tons of different sets um let's talk about the stats for a second the one kind of gripe I have about the stats so far is the the balance that they've brought into the stats because a lot of times when you're looking at weapons you get to decide play style stats like do I want a reload do I want, you know, a damage buff?

Do I want, you know, like a stability buff? I know what you're gonna be up. But instead, they're offering those, but then they're giving you a penalty buff to balance it out. And that part kind of bothers me a little bit. It takes away from the fantasy of being this really powerful agent who's coming in and, you know, it has like these weird tech drones

and all these things at your disposal. And it almost feels like it's punitive just for the sake of being punitive. And I kind of don't like that. So here's my question though, is does that start to lesson in the end game. Because normally, so right, here's a very specific example. Sure, because I was gonna say,

I have this one buff that I keep getting that's like a 15% reload buff, but then it's like I get 10 or 15 fewer bullets in the magazine. Oh yeah, there you go. So your mag smaller, but you get a faster reload. So I agree with you in the mid game. That was the first thing I went to apply a 20% stability

buff to my solar off. I'm like, yeah, well, let's go because this thing, especially on PlayStation we're playing on, which I love it. It looks great. Don't you not PlayStation? Oh, my God. Controller.

Like, it's so, like, hard to control that. Get out of it. What it requires is skill, something you lost when you went to the PC. If you're shooting, start aiming down a little bit. Exactly. It's like real life. Thank you for the lesson. But the point is, recall is no joke when you're on controller.

So I'm like, all right, I'm going to get 20%. Buff, that's a big deal. It's a one-fifth increase, right? Okay, I'm going to be all over this. But then I look and I'm like, wait, brings accuracy down like 10%. So I was like, well, I definitely want it because I think I can control the actually... Cut to Fran beautiful mind on his window with a Sharpie, like writing out all this stuff. Yeah, I always use the Charlie from Nitzvili.

Yeah. So I'm like, it's the crazy conspiracy work. That's what's going on back at HQ with me. It's just a fire. But anyway, early game, I'm wondering, is this positive negative system just there? And then it starts to go away in the end game? Because normally, and what I'd say is what you'd want to see is like a crazy... Let's say you get 50% stability, but you're going to lose 15% accuracy.

That's something I can start to think about. But right now, they're so like, you're like, yeah, it feels like it's even Stephen. In a lot of cases that it doesn't feel good. When you say even Stephen, I think what my perspective on that is that it feels like it's not worth it at all to apply these, to apply these mods to the weapons because the buff I'm getting doesn't outweigh the drag. Yeah. That's interesting because I actually got the stuff. same buff you were talking about with the, I can't remember, it was one of those really big saw-looking guns where it was, it's got 100 rounds, so it cut me down to 85.

Yeah, like, it cut me down to 85. And honestly, like, I don't know that I noticed that. I do, however, notice how long the reload takes. And it did seem significantly better. I feel like that's what, so again, mods to bring these up, obviously, you know, a mod is for a gun. What they changed here that I think is awesome, right, is that when you go into your perks system, you have the skills that you're unlocking, which are the drones.

of the grenades, whatever. Then there's a perk system that, you know, you invest the shade tech points in, that'll give you more carrying capacity, you know, a bigger backpack. If you deconstruct, you might get more material. Right, right. But what's different than the division, Fran and I grew up on is the idea that you go in there,

right, and you can get these mods there that are permanent. Like, you just have them at your disposal for, once you get it for all your guns, right? And so, yeah, when I get a gun I like, I do jump in there with my mods and go, okay, well, what does this do, what does that do? Trade out the different scopes, get it to what I like. And I have noticed, obviously, that, yeah, this is going to drop accuracy or stability or something like this.

But the ones that I'm investing the way I want to are making it a better gun, right? My assault rifles feel better because of it. Yeah. Oh, go ahead. I was just insane. And making those changes on a gun and then doing it to another gun. So adding a scope, adding the same scope to, like, three guns. Not having to go in, like, having to go in there and remove the stuff.

Quality life is huge. Totally. Because that sucked in Division I of like, I want to deconstruct this. Better go in and strip everything. It sounds so small, but as much. Lute that turns over so fast in these games, right? It was way too much upkeep. Now there are some mods that are only,

I think it's for your regular gear. Your regular gear, yeah. If you put it in your backpack or your chest. You can't just use every, you got to take it off one and put it on the other. But the game again, I noticed I didn't pay attention to that at first. I was like, oh, I got gears slot or mods from my gear. Started mod on my gear.

And then when I had junked some old stuff, went to delete and it was like, whoa, hold on a second. Like, you're about to delete a mod. And I was like, oh, I've done it. I was easy to find of like, I've been doing it forever with my guns and the guns don't matter. but then I did one gear piece, wait a second. Went in there, popped it off. I do want to bring up an important counterpoint here, though.

And, like, we're only in the mid-game. There's a lot going on in the game. Again, to bring it up, there's somebody who's just along for the ride because they like kind of funny. Remember, we're all about level 15, 16 for Andrew. 12 for a little cab dog. And level cap is 30, but then, of course, world tiers and gear score, and there's a whole bunch of stuff.

But when we're talking about mid-game, not end-game, that's what we're talking about. We're at midway through to get to the end game. That's true. It's so funny that you bring it up because it happened on the stream last night. When I say midgame, I'm talking about end game and midgame, but beyond the end game, there's more to that. And somebody was like, well, you're almost halfway done in the game. I'm not halfway done with a game. I'm saying I'm halfway to the end game, which is a midgame experience in terms of the loot.

Anyway, I wanted to bring up the important counterpoint, which we haven't had a chance to really dig into and sit down with. But I think the intention, if we really get into it and you pull the, you know, Charlie at the conspiracy board is like, okay, wait, I just added this stability here. But wait, I also need to counter that by putting this other. mod on. And what it's trying to do is get you to plus minus. And by the way, it does have a stat load out, a readout, that is, right? You can actually go to a screen that has all your stats, you can see sort of the finality. So I think it's really trying to get you to do a lot of upkeep and plus minus if you want them in max like that. Yeah, if you want to, yeah, exactly. And meaning, I think there is, the early mods we're

getting, Andrea, I think they're just like, they're not great. And so you have to make that choice. My hope is that as you go, you start to get, you know, frankly, just some good mods that make you amazing. And certainly, if they're going to do this whole positive negative thing, that it's got to be an amazing mod. But again, we're a little early. But I think it's an important counterpoint. I feel like there'd be a ton of comments that are like, oh, you didn't know, you were supposed to. No, totally. You really have to spend a ton of time. And part of this, of course, is waiting into it, right? Like, you know, the game was built, according to Massive, and I believe in Julian and everybody, that this was built with the end game as the game,

what's in mind, right? So right now we are. even though it sounds shitty to say, playing one giant tutorial for that. And so you are wading into it and learning new things in the same way right of unlocking your second skill is a big deal because they don't want you to rush through

the first skill, they want you understand how to use it, start thinking about what you want next, move that way. Well, I think that's pretty standard for RPGs in general is that you spend the first 20 to 30 hours of a 100 hour experience,

just learning what kind of gear you like, what kind of play style you want to do, and then just junking a lot of your gear. And I think that is a, pretty standard game mechanic. And the way that they're doing it here, I think what's interesting about it is that as Fran was discussing, it allows people

who want to get really nerdy about the numbers and about the gear score to do that, but you can also just really not care if you don't want to. That's how I'm playing. I'm not caring about all that stuff. I'm just putting on, like, I'm reading, oh, it's going to cut down on my reload time? Great, that's what I'm putting on. If the game shouts that, right,

there's big green arrows to show you that it's more damage or whatever. And like, yeah, then you can get into the, well, it's this minute. It's, much damage, but this much time for reload, and, you know, my rounds permitted, yada, yada, yeah. But, like, if you just want to be more powerful in that moment, you know how to do that. Yeah. On a shop by shop basis.

It is important point to me. You don't have to go that far. I think that is where we started this conversation. It's like, if you want to do it, it's there. And that's what I've always loved about division. And even that, I didn't get too deep into it. But now that I've been playing these types of games for many years, I am into it. And yeah, I'm excited.

I'm excited to go into that shooting range and see, like, the reload, you know, buff when you get it fast enough, like, how much DPS you can do on certain things. and it's a lot of fun just doing that, feeling powerful in the world. In the world, I think, is something that we haven't touched about. We're talking about mechanics so much and things and how you're playing.

I'm so impressed with the world. For me, in particular, right, I spent a summer out in D.C. during college, doing an internship. And I loved it. It was great. You know, I was out there party and have a good time. But when they announced,

like, I loved New York so much in Division I, that when they were like, oh, cool, now the next one's going to be in D.C. I was like, it seems like a weird pick, but okay, I can't get over how, What a great job. We've talked about the looping everywhere. The fact that there's so much stuff on the map, I'm sure we'll talk about that.

But the interiors and the levels they've built, right? We did the American History Museum back to back with the air and space museum. And both of those were like, like, I was in there going through. And like, there's minor spoilers for set pieces in here. They're not the end of the world. But if you've been to these museums, they exist in the real world. But it's just that thing of like, I never realized when I was playing through New York, how much of it was, okay, I'm in the streets of New York.

I'm in a subway. I'm in a building, I'm in a construction site. And so to get into this and have it be, all right, cool, now I'm in Vietnam because I'm in the American History Museum, in the Vietnam exhibit that's playing the audio sound of a jungle.

And it's like, this is so brilliant. I'm having a fight in a planetarium. While the planetarian presentation is going on, it was like, they massive must have had so much fun coming up with this and being like, cool, the gloves are off.

How can we vary our environments and keep people on their toes? It was really fascinating getting to talk to the massive team when we did that Washington, D.C. tour that Ubisoft invited us to go out and do. And getting to speak with, so Chad Chatterton is one of the lead environmental. You made that up. You forgot his name. It's actually his name. I swear to God. Kevin Kemmerton was there too.

And he was talking about the research trips that they did and how he took thousands of photos and made this catalog system so that they could get, not only the details of these really iconic locations like the Air and Space Museum, you know, like the American History Museum, but also to get some of the more environmental storytelling pieces like, what do all the trash cans on the city of D.C. look like? What do the parking garage science look like? They really wanted to make it authentic. And I also got to speak with Chloe Hamoud, who's the lead IP researcher and talking to her about how they really wanted to emphasize what actually happens in a crisis in D.C. by talking to the agencies who are on the ground in Washington to kind of blend what the actual like American government

response would be with of course the fictional world of Tom Clancy and how they blend that together and they have so far really nailed it and the environmental design of these levels, the level design is just so unique and it makes it have so much more personality than the first division had like you said New York is cool but like we've seen New York in so many video games and so many movies not to say that New York is born. because of course it's one of the best cities in the world. But I really like how they took the uniqueness of Washington, D.C., and really made it approachable and fun to play in.

And that applaud. I mean, Kevin was bringing this up last night when we were running somewhere, and he just was like, oh, you can go in here and you can do this. Like, I remember in the original division, oh, I can go in this building. That was, I knew that there was going to be stuff in there because I could actually go. There are so few apartment complex to go in.

And I remember that, this is going to sound weird, but I remember that hallway that all the apartments had when you got in there. Like every apartment looked and felt the same, whereas this one is, we're busting into places and finding the doors that have the giant locks on them and shooting the locks and going in and scavenging. And you don't know what you're going to find, but you think if you go over there, you're going to get something cool.

And that's part of like the world is so satisfying to explore. Yeah. Where it's just like, I feel like every time I go out and like every time I get out of the White House, I do the same little hostage mission. And then I go in a different direction and it feels totally new. Yeah. And that was the thing last night of like, you know, when we were all jumping on and on.

off and getting, I think Fran would jump down. It's like, all right, what are we doing? And I was like, all right, cool, I have a tour set up. We're going to do this side mission. We're going to go to this side mission. We're going to go down south and do this story mission. And it was like, I need it. Again, it's like this, again, to use it again, a buffet of like, what do we feel like doing? Well, there's two side missions on the way

to the main mission. There's a safe house over there. I haven't unlocked. We can get there. Let alone, just the random people you run into. And you, I do understand that there'll be complaints of like you're just trying to get from point A to point B and you have to deal with people. But it's even so much quicker to deal with them

than try to get around them and they'd be running as they shoot you in the back. It's happened to me a lot. All those games. Red Dead's like it, Far Cry's like that, anthem's like that, whatever. It's just sort of a staple in these because guess what?

If they're not there, there's nothing to do in between. Overall. It makes the world feel real. Yeah, it does. No, but meaning there is stuff there. I think that, you know, the mission design that like we were talking about,

the side quest, that's what got most of the attention. You're not going to run into a big encounter in the middle of the street that's going to blow your mind. But, like, it's a fun. little shootout if you want it.

And once you get powerful enough, you can kind of skirt past it. Well, yeah, but you can also stealth past it. There's been plenty of times I see the dotted red and I'm like, oh, there they are.

The dotted red means they don't know I'm here yet. So if I get low and I or I wait for them to walk by. You make a good point. I never, you probably need to treat a little more realistically

and do that. I don't have the patience for it. I'm like, whatever. Just run it straight by them. I'll, like, whatever. The stealth options in this game are lacking to say the least.

It's not designed to be a stealth game. It's just getting to cover and let him pass. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, that's why it's not designed that way. So it's just too much patience for him. Like, I'd either kill them or run by them and take a couple shots in the butt. You know, you're fine.

Exactly. We just save D.C. too. Come on, guys. But I did want to like chime in and just agree on the level of attention. There's a big difference. You can feel it in the level design, the mission design. This variety of, yeah, you go through some things like you pointed out a couple cool missions that we stumbled on. I was like, wow.

Like, it feels so original and different than just being in an apartment hallway, which is what. the first one suffered from and there's a big difference and even i think there was a control point we did or a propaganda machine yesterday where you were running around and we were done and i think you had found an echo we went over and got it and then i was doubling back to show you and it was one of those things where i was running and looked down i'm like oh there's a bunch of body bags here which we're in division one as you remember i remember there being i'd taken a lot of photos of the one thing but we were on a catwalk at that time whereas this one we're surrounded by them you can walk over them which sounds weird but i'm just saying that the environments aren't always the same

blown out hole. Last night the mission we struggled with, right, where we needed to come up with, was a bunch of train cars off the rails that we had to keep, you know, going in and out of. And it was like this is a really cool setup again where it's not just a basic square we're fighting and it is, different terrains, different entry points. How are we going to do this? How are we going to

balance it? Oh, sorry, go ahead, Kevin. I did have some issues though walking around that terrain because I found like there were a lot of points where it's like, why can't I walk past this? Sure. Oh, so you have to climb and it's like, oh, interesting. Yeah, that's maybe a good one. hit on. What? The vaulting? Oh yeah, just to like put a pin in this and we're going to obviously see more as we unlock more of the map of Washington, D.C. But another thing that the team was talking to me

about is how they really wanted to section off specific districts of D.C. to say this is what you can expect to happen in this district. And this district has a different thing. Like, for example, there's a section like where the river is. And like this is the district where they quarantine sick people. So you're going to see a lot more bodies in this section. And this section over here. here is where, you know, all of the military set up, you know, supply routes. You're going to see a lot more like supply pickups over here. And I think that that's them taking the design of the open world a step further than they had in the original division and makes it feel like it's actually a real place that's not just copy and paste. And I think that it absolutely shows that they

took the time to do that. In the same vein, I feel like the enemies feel varied. I know when I'm fighting a truceon versus a hyena versus the group I don't even know, but all of a sudden guy had a fucking chainsaw last night. I was like, who the fuck are you? Like, where did I just not run into that? I've clearly run down a different street into a different area. I haven't been before. And there's a new gang there. But like the way the hyenas fight is. So we're just a street gang. We're running at you a lot of times and try to flank you. Whereas the true sons fight like we are the militia. Like they think they they think they're the shit. And it's this weird balance of like making it all feel unique. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know.

I have a lot more to say. I think about AI. I can say it. I mean, I got it. I still feel like although they did a good job with it, that the enemy design and stuff, because it's rooted in the world of Tom Clancy, is one of the biggest things that the division suffers from, because it is gritty and real. To be fair, well, how do you keep it grounded in that? And what they do is they put a firecracker on the back of someone,

effectively it's their pack and you can explode it, it's electric, maybe it's gas, whatever, and that's their weak spot, which actually kind of makes sense. And the big gold guys, like, right, we know to shoot off their armor, and then it reveals them and they take more damage that way. It's visualized. But I do think that you're right, that the AI suffers from a little bit of sameness

because of exactly the reasons you're talking about. But even the gold bar, like the heavy enemies, we saw probably three or four different types of gold bars just in our play session last night. The introduction of the mortar guy last night was like, oh, man, there are still people to find. Yeah, yeah, and it changed the way we played and how we had to take care of each other. And it wasn't even a gold bar enemy up there. Yeah, it's just a purple on top of the order. The fact that people do go prone this time around.

Like, they've done a lot to their AI. But I do agree, I mean, don't get wrong, it's still that we're fighting people over and over. I mean, I'm glad you brought it up, because there is a lot of, again, quality of life improvement from Division I. It's like when one of the enemies used one of the new abilities, the like foam chemoons. Oh, yeah. I forgot we ran into that guy last night too. Yeah, and like they're starting, they're using your abilities. We know that the Black Tuss, especially once we get there in the end game, they're going to start doing stuff like that where you're like, dang, now I'm fighting fire with fire.

But that happened even, again, in the midgame around level 15 for me. And I actually, I really enjoy that. I'm like, all right, we're starting to see variety already very early. Like the mortar showed up like, there is that variety. Yeah, I was up to say. Yeah, the RC bombs. Very early on. I want to say like mission level like five or seven, they started rolling at us.

And at first I was like, the hell's going, boom. And it's like, oh, shit. Totally. And like there are. There's a lot of different types. So I don't want to take away from the fact that in the world that's rooted in, we're seeing quality of life improvement. We're seeing the variety.

I like it, like sometimes too, like you know when some of those crazy hyenas run at you, like all spiced up. They're coming at you with the batons. Yeah, so all the enemy types are given, I call it a... Personality. Yeah, like a slight tweak in the personality. An archetype, that's it. So, you know if the hyenas where the batons are running at you,

they're just going to not stop, and they're going to beat you over the head, and if they get a hold of you, you're in big trouble. And I appreciate it. A lot of them do jockey for position, not the thrasher hyena, but like a lot of, like true sons for sure do try to flank. And you'll see them run at you. You're like, oh, they're going to fight me. Oh, fuck, they're trying to get behind me.

They're trying to get behind us to circle us. Yeah, and I do. feel the Verizon. So I do like that. So I don't want to take away from that. But there is that part of it too, which is the, you know, it's how far can you take it? It's like, but wait, I am shooting at this person. Why aren't they reacting a bit more? And like, look, to be fair, we've got a long way to go in terms of enemy AI. It is an improvement. But that's where I'm feeling in this game that like there's still brick walls a lot of time. I like did, I just threw like a grenade out there and, you know, they kind of like maybe move a little bit, but not always. It's not consistent is what I'd say. I find, I found that when I throw out grenades, people run away from them. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's just like, it's pisses me on. But sometimes they're like,

wait, wait, if you stand there, explode. You gotta throw it and then distract them with gunfire, is what I found out of, Mark Dab writes in. It says the IGM preview,

and I think it's actually the review in progress from James Duggan, said the bosses are not varied enough, saying that they are really just bigger versions of existing enemies. What are your thoughts? I saw Destin and Duggan tweeting about this,

and I think that so far where we're at in the midgame, they're not wrong that we haven't seen really unique bosses. But then I mentioned that guy with the chainsaw that ran out of us. It was terrifying. But I don't think we've seen like the big bosses yet, right? Like we're not going to see them until later in the game. But it's that thing too. Yeah, I don't know.

I don't ever expect. I mean, hopefully I'll be pleasantly surprised because I like what I don't expect in this game. But I don't expect somebody getting like a mex suit and fight me. No, but I think it's less about the actual boss themselves and more about the boss in the level design. because I vividly remember fighting the woman who was the head of the JTF in the original division and that's like one of the three major boss fights

that you're doing that game. Rest of peace, Joe Farr. And having that, and having that boss fight be really crazy. It was like on record. What was her skill set? I don't remember, but the way that she was like in the level and the level design,

it was there was an upstairs and the downstairs. And I just vividly remember it being a super challenging fight, not just because she was a bullet sponge, but because of the way that the design was laid out and what you had at your disposal and, you know, all of that, I think is part of it because I don't think this game is not like a traditional RPG.

We're going to get a crazy, giant, weird boss. Like, the challenge of the game is not just that one enemy. It's all of the enemies together within the level design. Sure. But I do agree with the general sentiment, and that's just what I was getting at, is like there's a certain enemy AI set, there's certain, you know, they share a certain, I don't know, feel for lack of a better way, but they're going to run at you or maybe not or they do react to your grenades and stuff, but you don't have as much to call it special boss design. And I do, I was thinking back on the same thing, probably a different boss.

I remember when we ran into it was the flamethrower person in the first one. Joe Ferrer. Is that who that was? Yeah. The one that I was talking about was different. Oh yeah, no, no, no, I'm sorry. Yeah, no. You're talking about the JTF.

I'm talking about former firefighter. It was a big, like, flame throw a pack, and it was like the tank type. And it was like the beginning of something. And then it just didn't go much farther in the game, is what I'd say. And I am looking in here in Division 2, and I'm waiting for the same types of things. And like, meaning so far we've played, what, 15 hours or whatever, maybe more. And I don't feel like I... I'll check my U-Play.

Yeah, I think the difference is, like, what we do get is there's the yellow bar enemy, he's got a real name, and they're going to run at you. And, oh, you have the chem launcher? We haven't seen that before. So there's a newness to it, but what there's not, which I would like to see, and I don't know if it's going to be there. And I personally think it's just not that type of game, but it's like really make like a boss design. Like a level slash boss design where they're, I don't know if they're throwing spice packs at you and you have to do something more called puzzle oriented or the weak spots are more like obvious. Like I don't know if they strap the bomb missile thing to their head for some reason.

Don't shoot me here. I'm exaggerating because I don't want to lose the suspension of this reason. reality they've created and that's what they struggle with. But I feel like there is room for like, how is this boss like special? Maybe it has like a crazy chem launch or flamethrower, but it's on a hose that gets like set loose and all of a sudden you got to take the hose down. And like it's not that type of game though. Yeah.

But I personally would love that. I haven't hit that in the game. But I think that that's the problem, right? Is that they can't service that and maintain this commitment to realism that they have throughout the rest of the world. I don't know. Like using my example, like we shoot at a turret that just. sits on a shelf, like why can't you maybe, and maybe it's in there, we don't know yet,

but why can't you have a boss where the backpack falls off and starts doing something? Now you have to deal with the boss and that. I feel like we're going to get that with Black Tusk. I really do. I feel like some of the side missions that we were doing kind of felt like they had a little bit more of a specialized boss. That gold guy at the end had a little bit more. Where at the train one, he does put down a big turret, doesn't he?

Yeah. Yeah. And at the, in the one in the, um, the space museum, there are two snipers on the top of this thing, and we have to then change our strategy to deal with the snipers and the people running at us. I don't know how much more to reverse you were going to get, but I think that that's the realistic version of that.

And I understand it's different structure, different folks, and especially coming from a destiny or even an anthem with a bigger person to fight or a bigger thing at the end to fight, or a destiny rate, I guess is a better example. Like, for me personally, what I want out of this experience, I like that it's kind of grounded, And I don't mind that, yeah, I like, I appreciate it. Like Kevin's saying, no, you get the end.

It is two snipers. You get this guy. And like, it is different that that guy is throwing down his turret. And they're working us in a different way and trying to flag for being smarter. They're using the multiple access points to us the same way we're trying. Like last night in the train cars where I think two of you were down and I was falling back. And then sure enough, two dudes were coming up the back air. I was like, fuck.

Yeah. Kevin's laughing of when Fran tried to get me to jump off a goddamn bridge, break my legs and save him. I was going to. I killed the guy. We've completed the mission. to me to die. But he's the commander. You know, he can do that.

I'm just a lieutenant. Kind of funny. But to finish the, but look, I don't... Oh, 17 hours, by the way, is what my clock says. Your clock's right there. So, yeah, I'm probably right about the same. I don't expect it to maybe be that type of game. You said different strokes, different folks, right?

That is it. I'm always the guy that's thinking back on Metroid, one of my favorite games. I'm thinking on Zelda. And I love getting to enemy designs because we're going to replay these strikes or missions that you're going to keep replaying it. I don't know, I kind of like these big, yeah, boss types. Like Metal Gear style boss. Exactly.

That being said, I do have an appreciation for, ultimately it is just you can strategize around the way that the dude dropped the turret, he's got the big armor, and there's all these different enemy types, and you can play that a lot of different ways. And I think it's more that than what I want it to be. Sure. But I would, I don't know, I think it's where they could take division with maybe Division 3, but it's like, imagine, right, these world events where you shoot somebody. massive just went, oh my gosh.

No, no, no, but it's very hard to do. I think you could agree, right? Imagine more real-time destruction of environments, things like you see on uncharted, like things happening where you maybe shoot down a roof that comes collapsing down. In real-time, changes the event. It's not so much that right now. And I'm not saying it's a bad game because of it.

Oh, no, we're having a great time, obviously. I can use a little more variety there. Trying to balance that with the open world design that the division is, is the really challenging part from a technical perspective. And that's why you're not seeing something like that in this game because it's hard enough to load in the world as it is. And quite frankly, I'm very impressed with how little loading screens there are in the game compared to a lot of other open world games.

It's a long load to get in. But then I feel like even the fast travel goes quickly, but more importantly, when we're all running around. I don't like the fast travel too much. I feel like I wish I had like a loading bar that was going instead of the like really. The dot dot dot dot dot dot. Sometimes I'm like, how much time do I have? I can say very fast on that, though.

It does take a good 15, 20 seconds. It's no different than Anthem in loading time, but the presentation, it's funny how it gets you. You're like, it looks cool. I see the map. And you don't think about this blank screen with a loading bar. I actually think they did a pretty good job, but I could use some improvement.

Like, why can't I look at the map while I'm fast traveling? It just gets locked up and just stare at it. But, I mean, with all due respect here now, and it's somebody who likes Anthem, like, they're apples and oranges. Because, like, you can walk the entire thing and never load if you want. It is the fact you're cheating.

It is the, you know, the javelin or the forge to load. You should have to all. But listen, we can look in our menus when we're loading in Destiny. Why can't we do it in the Division 2? Oh, no, no, I'm not saying for somebody who hasn't seen any of it, you know what I mean? I do have a question, though, from Michael Friddish, who I think is pretty poignant. Why in 2019

the game have slow-loading textures? I have noticed a lot of that. I'm running up to the theater and there's that stupid truck that's like the door, and you look at it, I'm like, this is just like a very interesting piece of, oh, there it popped in its hands. Okay. So you're getting texture popping. Yeah, on a pro on a PlayStation 4-Pro.

Yeah, I'm still getting some pop in too, but I think that's just the result of how much art is in this world. And Ubisoft is really good about making their art incredibly dense in the world to make it look realistic. And a byproduct of that is if you're going to have all of these different lighting effects and textures and the dynamic weather and the day and night cycle, it's going to just be a lot of processing for your system to do. So I don't know, that doesn't really bother me that. If I can say one thing at that point to when I was playing, Jen was like, oh man, a lot of textures aren't popping in yet. For me personally, this is a Greg thing. I went, yeah, I guess not, but I'm not. It's so different to watch someone play a game versus playing the game, right?

Because I'm running there and I'm doing that, and if this thing doesn't have a billboard texture, I'm not thinking about it. I felt the same way you did playing on my PlayStation Pro. I was like, oh, yeah, there's some things that are popping a little bit later than they should. But then I went to my PlayStation in my garage. Yeah, your regular PlayStation 4. And there was a big difference there. Really? I felt like the pop-in was more and even, it was more of it happening.

And it was longer delayed. I wonder if they're going to tweak that or optimize that with an incoming patch. I would guess that they would. But it does make you think, like, what an amazing technical achievement rockstar had with Red Dead Redemption to you? Sure. Yeah, you don't see a lot of that. But it takes you 15 minutes to get anywhere on your horse. They got plenty of time to render everything in.

You can dance straight. There's an artist drawing in my hand. I mean, it is the counterpoint, but it is a problem. I agree with Greg. It's a con. It's worth saying, though, that the world does look and feel so good that you don't notice it as much. I'm pretty critical with that and frame rate and all that, as you know. I don't, people were asking me a lot about it.

They're like, wow, what's up with the texture pop in? I was like, oh, yeah, I guess it's happening. I was like Greg. You're boiled in on what you're doing. It's not like I'm running up to a character that is like gray box T-pose. Hey, what's up? There's a question that was written in from a fan. Oh, sorry.

Andrew Carter. Andrew Carter, huh? Yeah. A fan dropped off a post-it note. You have a marker that matches this. He let him use it. Andrew Carter says, why can't there be a facial hair option

where the mustache is disconnected from the beard? Oh, well, just men don't have that. That's not how facial hair works. No, but it's still got a little, like... He's got a full goatee. What are you talking about? Andrew Carter's right, yeah. Oh, you don't have it.

You're a beard in mustache. Well, when Andrew Carter, like, creates a me on Nintendo, they let you do just the mustache, and they let you do just a beard. Maybe just a stubble option. But I don't need a full-on... Andrew Carter does not need a full-on, like, monster Nick Scarpoeno beard.

You know what I mean? Good question, Andrew Carter. Good question. Andrew Carter. Andrew Carter is going to be the new host of debatable. I have a feeling soon. An unlockable barber in the game. Oh, shit, really?

What? From what I've seen. Nice. I have to check and see which level is. Is it still in there? Is what she's wondering, I think? No, that... Oh, sorry, go on.

I was going to say, what do we think about character creation? Because obviously, Division I... It's so basic. They still look ugly. The hair is still bad. The faces are still bad. Listen, like, the people in this world look rough, okay? Oh, they've seen some shit.

It's the apocalypse, right? There's one long hair option, and three of us in the group have it. And one of us is playing as a female. You know what I mean? Now, all that said, when Scott Lowe ran up on us, it was like, oh, fuck. You look like Scott Lowe? Well, doesn't that say more about Scott Lowe and the genericness? generic white guys.

Not all of us. Okay. Somebody made you too, Greg. Did you see? Somebody tweeted out. They made you. Oh, no. Shit.

Yeah. And it looks like you. Yeah. So for some reason the white. But he's like too thin, right? He's too thin. That was my thing.

I went over to the mail option and I was like, you know what? I'm going to try to make myself. And I went through. I'm like, no of this looks like me. And I went back and made a car. Yeah. So once you reach level 15 and unlock the campus settlement, you travel over it. And then you can unlock a barber.

And I'm going to leave his name blank in case you guys don't want to know. Joe Sarah. I will check that to that because I can go back there. I had a rough thing to New York. I will say for all the detail they've added, the character screen is, I don't know if they're trying to speed you through it or it's just not the tool set they have. I feel like it's the latter. They just haven't developed it out. And they let you do a couple things like the nose height and forehead, but like it's not.

It's not like bio-wear or something where you're like, ooh. And even skin tone, like I found confusing and it was difficult. Very confusing. Yeah. Like I didn't quite understand it. I picked like a type and then I could only do skin tone within that face type or something. Well, because when you're at the character creation at the beginning, I think the idea is that you hit the randomize until you get a character that's close-ish to the one that you want. I mean, I've done this now like four times.

Did you do the thing where you started it and looked at it? Like, oh, that doesn't look good. I didn't. Because I knew through practicing through these press demos that we did that I needed to keep hitting randomized until I found one that was pretty close to what I wanted. And then once you have something pretty close to what you like, you can do little tweaks up and down. But you can't take a face that looks like it has like a brown skin tone and then make it a white or black skin tone. You have to find a character that has a black skin tone and then you can adjust the level of darkness. Same with like the white textures, the brown textures and everything in between.

Very confusing. There was first five minutes, I was like, it's not great, Kevin. It's not great. I don't know what I want to do here. Also, Julian knows that they didn't put the right red in for red hair. Can make my hair blue? Can make my hair blue? Can't make my hair red. That's the top issue of the character creation.

But the randomization is the same thing, though. It's still working within all these face types and everything, right? I didn't miss out by not randomizing. But the randomizing, what's weird about it is that, like, ethnicities have specific types of facial features. The way the eyes are set, the way the forehead is set, mouth, et cetera. Like that exists in biology in the world, genealogy or whatever. Can I get a science with Kevchuk on that? Yeah, but that is like, but that's within a certain stereotype,

like not even stereotype as a word. This is just the way that like the human DNA works. And so the thing that's tough about the randomized character is that it mismashes all of these different types of features together. So you get some really wonky-looking faces. Yeah. Because that's not the way that human bodies are built within the human genome. Yeah. Okay.

That's what I was getting. It's that they're, yeah, they're trying to fit you into these like, I sort of predicted that you'll look like something that I guess they thought you, you know, the character should look like, but what doesn't account for is, you know, you might have a lot of different mixed features and you're trying to make yourself and you're like,

I can't do it. Like I actually do want the nose from this other character and the jaw line from this other one, but I can't mix them. So yeah, I was definitely left wanting on it, as the short of it, and it is a miss. I feel like in a world that is so important that you feel like you're in it.

And it's surprising. I don't know why they didn't just unlock those, all of those sliders and just let you make your own. But didn't they, couldn't you choose? Because when I initially started setting it up, I didn't realize that changing skin tone was going to change the face type. So, like, then I made tweaks to the chin to, like, match the previous chin that I had. It's very confusing. All I will say is it's not nearly customizable enough to make yourself consistently.

And, yeah, honestly, it is a disappointment. But I made a character that looks reasonably good. It's funny. I tried to, like, as I'm being honest. I'm honest, try to make myself-ish with longer hair, and that was all I meant to do. Your character was hilarious. And all I get is two points of feedback is that John Reisinger. Is it Reisinger?

I think it's Risinger. Risinger. Sorry, John Risingger. Or Dr. Disrespect. It does look like Dr. Disrespect. It does look like Dr. Disholm. I put up the photo of our team on Twitter, but mainly on Instagram where I was like tapping. And you and Kevin, I was like, fuck, which one's which.

And then Kevin has a beard with long hair. His face type, by bad, is different, but it's hard to tell. You can't tell, yeah. I bet you, I don't know. We should compare if you have the same face. It seems like a lot of work and something you'll take like 15 minutes to do. I want to get back to some customization questions or actually cosmetic things. But first, a word from our sponsors.

This episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast is brought to you by Movement. There's no one who disrupts the status quo and looks good doing it, quite like the team over at MVMT. That's Movement Watches. Movement watches, sunglasses, and accessories are designed in L.A. styles are super sleek, clean, and fashion forward. If you didn't know, we all love our movement sunglasses. I wear mine all the time when I'm not doing some goofy wrestling thing because I don't want them to get broken. But when you see me taking photos with my lovely wife out on the beach or

traveling down in L.A., I'm wearing those movement sunglasses, and they do so much more. As much as we all love our screens, the fact is they're draining on our eyes. So check out movements Iver scroll glasses that protects your eyes from harmful blue light so you can keep on gaming. You also look great doing it. There are ever scroll lenses come in a ton of different frames and styles, so there's a fit for everyone. Movement watches, meanwhile, started just $95. You're looking at $400 to $500 for the same quality of traditional brands. You know, Nick loves it. You know, we all love it. You know, Kevin wears his, but I think Kevin got married in his. Whenever we have to dress up, we usually wear our movement watches. Movement has sold almost 2 million watches in over 160 countries.

get 15% off today with free shipping and free returns by going to movement.com slash kinda movements launching new styles on their site all the time so check out the latest movement watches at mvmt.com slash kinda that's movement dot com slash kinda join the movement meanwhile let's talk about skill share skill share is an online learning community for creators with more than 25,000 classes in design business and more premium membership gives you unlimited access so you can join the classes and communities that are just right for you. Whether you want to fuel your curiosity, creativity, or even career, Skillshare is the perfect place to keep your learning, keep you learning and thriving. Of course, you know Tim used this when he was getting ready to work on all the

projects we needed for kind of funny 4.0. He went there to learn about different video effects he could use for all the packages and the starts of the show, you know so well. SkillShare is also super affordable. An annual subscription is less than $10 a month. Join more than 7 million creators learning with Skillshare. The first 500 of my subscribers to use the link in the description of this video will get a two-month free trial. That's right. The first 500 people to sign up will receive a two-month free trial. Go to the link in the description of this games cast to get started today. All right, Gabriel Barra wrote in with this question. How do you guys feel about the cosmetics? I feel like in the first one I was quickly finding new apparel and switching my agents look on

the fly, whereas here it feels like they're learning a lot more, leaning a lot more on the store with drop rates for clothing being lower. I'm not finding too much clothes. Yeah, because we've hardly got anything. I found a couple things in the world. I found quite a few pieces of clothing by moving in the open world. Yesterday I got a bunch too when we were going in terms of shirts and stuff. Yeah, it's like a light blue color when it pops up.

But yeah, just wandering around opening backpacks. I've gotten pants shirts. That's where you get it from, right? You got to find it. You don't really get it as mission drops. Yeah, mission drops are definitely weapons and gear. Right. Yeah.

You can dye your guns and all that stuff. And that's the cool part. You can hover over stuff. And to be fair, I think you need to take a closer look, is there like a T-shirt somewhere that I can earn? I don't know. I saw some dye out there. But otherwise, I guess you have to explore a lot.

So I don't know if any of us have done enough of that. Sounds like maybe you guys. Is there? There looks to be a lot in the store. I mean, this is a ton of the store, yeah. For me, this is next week's discussion. That we're like, hopefully, we're like, all right, here's what's going on with the loot.

The store is not even open, by the way. As of recording, the store, like, had, you could preview a couple of things, but you can't buy stuff yet. Really? Yeah, I tried to go ahead. When you tab over to store, it'll say, yeah, this isn't up. But like, when you go to the actual, like, dial into the items, you can see them there for 250. Yeah, you could see the stuff. You just couldn't buy it. Oh, really? I didn't know that. Okay. I couldn't. I do wish there was a way to purchase more cosmetics with in-game currency. That'd be very nice. Yeah. That's the thing that's really frustrating is that

Ubisoft usually nails that by offering plenty of options and ways to earn currency to buy cosmetics, but also being able to fast track it with real money. And right now, nothing in the apparel store is able to be purchased with in-game credits, and that's a huge bummer. Yeah, yeah. I didn't really do either or. All I will say that I will place a bet on that is sort of the average. I don't think you're going to be earning a lot of, like, shirts and items, like, as a natural play-through, let's call it, the average. I'm doing the missions.

I'm doing it. It does seem like you have to make an effort to go searching for this stuff. Yeah. But I don't know how much is it out there. Have you gotten? I'm sorry. The point I just wanted to finish was I don't like the way that. that it's dropping.

I've been playing for 15, 20 hours. And we had that one t-shirt. I don't even, I can't change the color. I think that was like downloadable stuff. And even that was. From the gold or I can't even change my t-shirt or, I think I got a pair of glasses from one. Like, I think it was Ubi Club even.

So I don't, I'm just not getting a lot naturally. I think that something that maybe we need to consider with the cosmetic system. And like, obviously, like, I'm down to pay for cosmetic items because I just like to look the way that I want to look. But what they added this time around that really wasn't as prominent in the first one or maybe not even part of the game was the gear sets that actually have a visual identity and they have a stat bonus. So in addition to the clothing that you're wearing underneath of your gear, the chest piece

you're wearing, the gloves, the knee pads, they all have different manufacturers, much like in borderlands. And so if you wear the same gloves, knee pads, and vests from the same. vendor, you're going to get a stat buff for that and visually they're all going to have the same look. So I think they're wanting people to chase more of that stuff than the actual cosmetic items. And I'm kind of like on the fence about how I feel about that. Yeah, as quick as returning over gear, again, when we get to end game and I'm getting amazing stuff and I want, then I'll be building out a set or whatever. But right now I see it. I'm like, oh, that's cool. But I know that I'm

going to get gloves in a second that have better stats. It's the same reason I don't buy anything from the store, right? Where it's like, well, what I do? Not not, I'm sorry, in the in game store of when I talk to a vendor. I'm like, well, no, this thing's 20 things better. I'm going to get 20 things better. No, just playing the game. Yeah, I would love in the comments, if you've played it over the weekend by the time this goes up, would love to know if you've searched for this stuff and how much of it you feel is in the early to midgame, call it the first 15 to 20 because I'm not feeling it. Greg, you've found some stuff, but I do feel there's a definite danger there where it's like once that store's open. Sure.

Maybe I'm just going to buy this because like this stuff sucks. I don't know that it does. I haven't explored the way Greg did. Have you gotten an apparel cash yet? Yes, I got it from something. Yeah, I don't either. Yeah, me too. I think that's where I got the glasses. I definitely have, obviously we had Oh, it was challenge base, maybe. We had cashes based on the additions we got, but since then

the ultimate edition came with cashes. Turning that stuff, but I turned all that in like early, early on. And I got at least one or two since then, last night or the night before. I got a fireman hat. Exactly. And I got those headphones that look at the Guardian of the Galaxy headphones. But those are ones that are they're selling on the store, so it did drop that for me instead of making

bottom. I'm also having a problem that I did a bunch of UB club drops. You know, I've had it forever and none of it showed up. Like, I'm very confused. I think it's actually a pre-launch early access bug. I hope so. Because like I got sweatpants and like another shirt that has something. None of that is available to me. It looked everywhere. It's classic Greg luck where the one patch I want is the Assassin's Creed Odyssey one and I oh, I redeemed it on Ubi Club. And I go into my patches and I have the beta one and I have Rainbow 6 one and I have a Wildlands one. Where is the Assassin's Creed?

So I went back to Ubik Club. It's like, you already redeemed it. I'm like, Mother. God damn. Where is? Yeah, where is it? I don't know. I think that hopefully these issues

would be worked out with the day one pass that they're going to push. Totally. But are they bathing you into the store? That is the question. We'll see. Next week we'll know more. Like,

and I'm glad that you reminded me that you do get these apparel drops in the caches. But that, again, is an RNG component to an already super orangey heavy game. And it's like when it comes to cosmetic items only, why I have an RNG component. Why not just put it in the store and let me buy it? Yeah. Well, they did, right? No, I mean, with real world money. But I'm sorry. Giving people options that

can't afford to spend additional funds on a game that's already $60. I just like, I'm not trying to say that they have a loot problem because they don't. There's a ton of loot in this game, so don't get your panties in a bunch about that. But I just wish that they would follow the model that they've set in their other games.

Remember, in Division 1, we could buy with in-game currency e-credit. Thank you, cosmetics. I was customizable. So the hope maybe again is that we're going to continue to upgrade the theater,

upgrade the White House, and there will be a vendor that does that. I don't know. I'm not defending it. I'm just saying we are talking right now without getting there. I was just going to say before we move on with cosmetics,

like I've played for 11 hours I just checked and I think I've only found a shirt and I've been trying to walk around a little bit. That's the RNG component of the loopbox in the world, right? Experiences might be different because hearing you guys like, oh, I found a bunch. Like, that's cool, but I haven't.

Totally, yeah, totally. R&GISIS, man. Something, yeah, but there's something on the natural path that maybe it's, but the last point I would make. There also is, again, the counterpoint, there's a lot that you want to go out and earn. Once I figured out that I got that rose-colored dye drop, which, by the way, is R&G,

it's a dye drop that I got that was rose, but maybe you want another color. I think you can rerun that mission for that chance. Oh, really? I'm not totally sure, but the point is there's, as you hover, the fact you can go out and do that, and actually dyes are pretty cool. Like all these custom sets, you can actually, through the mod and gear system, you can dye these pieces to make a custom look color-wise. And I think they even have like potential skins and stuff.

But you can only, to be clear, dye gear that's blue or higher. Yes, exactly. And that was the point I was going to make. You can only skin weapons that are blue or higher. So the counterpoint here was that there is this feeling of earned power there that once you get it and you see. been walking around with dyed gear wherever we're going that's pretty cool and once you do it you're like yeah like I literally had to starve that my gun but so I don't know I feel about it took me 12 hours to get a colored gun once I got it I was like let's go yeah my American

flag guns I'm rocking right I'm like fuck yeah yeah so you feel that and like on that side maybe that's the intention is like you are gonna starve for the first 10 to don't tell us totally yeah yeah maybe it is there so it's a little early to say yeah something to keep an eye for right. Corey Cudney says, how do you recommend newer, no, fake it made of name. King of the Gifts, Corey Cuddy. Andrew Carter. How do you recommend newer players to this series handle progression, building out

characters, etc. So far, I've just been plugging weapons and gear with a higher number and calling it good, wondering if the FJS, that's the Fran Jose Sharks, of course, have best practices on making sure you're a good asset to a team. I think right now you're fine, Corey. We talked about this with Kevin right now, right? you're just plugging stuff in and whatever. And I think the higher we get up,

then it's just about communicating with your team in terms of what this mission calls for. What are you running? What are we having troubles with? Yeah, I mean, even when I would join up with you guys over the last couple times, we play together, like one of the first questions I asked is, you know, what skills are you rolling with?

And then the second question is, should I open a bottle of champagne by myself? And I drank three quarters of it. I know. As soon as you said that, I made a bowl of R-WR-Way. But I was playing, after they shut the servers down, I went over to Destiny and Ransome Reckoning. So here's the thing.

about that is when you when you're in early game I mean you know how it is like you're just going to be dumping gear constantly to get the thing that has just a few more points a few more points but the skills are really where you can manage your effectiveness with your team and that's something that you should

look at effective I mean like you want to be critical with your skill points at the beginning and your shade tech points because they'll go quickly if you start to use them on unlocks for different types of skills so for example let's say you use your first unlock. I always recommend people to get either the attack drone or the attack

turret as their first unlock because it will help you in some of those early missions. But then you can get the different variants of the drone or the turret, but those are five Shade Tech points each. And that's like five potential perks you could buy. I've gone all perks. Yeah. I've got my skills that I like, right? I have the drone. I have the turret. I had opened up another one. Oh, the chem launcher. I didn't dig that. And so then I was like, you know what? I just been pouring it into my perks, so I'm almost done with what I can before I get to level 30. Yeah. Just so I understood the question, was this just about skills and shade tech perks, or was it

the overall? Handle progression. Because I'm saying with the gear and the guns, you kind of just got to roll with what you get, you know, for the first X amount of levels, you just got to keep recycling through gear until you find stuff you like, where you can diversify your progression is in the skills and the perks. Yeah. What I wanted to say, though, is so on the perks.

and the skills, I actually will say, like, make sure to use them. And you can do it how you want, though. But I actually think just buying the different perks and messing around with them probably makes it more fun early on because you get to try more stuff. More health kits, more, or more armor kits, more. Well, that's on perks, right? I'm just saying actually maybe. You're talking skills?

Contrary to what you said. Maybe just there's a lot of, the first variant of everything is just one skill set. And maybe go and try them because it's kind of more fun to like, I tried this. I mean, yeah, that sucks, actually. I hate it. I'm going back to whatever, but I feel like that it's a lot of fun. Now, you also can't change who you are. If you love the turd and the healing drone, then don't change it because that's your play

style. I felt like such a jackass last night because I've been letting all my skill points sit there because I was like, oh, I might want to open up a different turret, so that's going to take five extra. And then I looked at it last night when you mentioned that. I was like, those were all shade points. I've just been sitting on these skill points for no reason. I was like, what an annoying little blip in the corner telling you?

me I have it. It's going to sit there forever. I'm like, I'm moron. If I understood that right too, right, you're saying. The game was like, let me help you. I didn't even spend him still, though, because I'm like, I like the drone and I like the turret. Like, I like what I like. It's just so lock it to make the message go away. But then it's like, well, then I get into that choice of just saying, which one do I unlock? Which shield do I unlock?

Let me show you the magic of the chem launcher. And I will change your mind. Which cam launcher? I bought the fire one. I bought the incinerator. The incinerator's great, but the chem launcher with the, with the healing is pretty great too. Actually, I didn't think I'd like the hive as much as I do, but I think it's going to be my

new favorite skill. Hive tech. When I see Kevin use the Roli Pooleys, oh my God, I love it so much. See, this is my point is, my advice is actually fight if you are that type of person. I was that type of person almost on the betas. And then when I went in this game, I said, you know what? I'm just going to buy.

I'm going to buy the thing that nobody else is buying right now. Because when I went in, everybody knew that turret and healing drone, that's what you get. So I got these like firefly things that you throw like a paper airplane. And I got the one that said like it was hard to work yet. Yeah, but it only works on weak points. I had trouble with the firefly too.

It's confusing. It only works on enemies in the weak points. It's like Sam Rockwell and Iron Man 3. I don't know how to use this thing still. I really enjoyed trying out. Anyway, that was my first piece of advice is do that. But do read stuff closely and take if you're the type of player, of course. But in the perks, like you notice and it was a good tip, there's one that relates to

like if you get headshots, it's extra XP. Yeah, that one's great. Just survive longer. All those. Yeah, totally. They related to XP. So look closely still, read everything. That was my last notice.

As you go through gear, even though it was green, I was so much looking at the power and DPS type increases, make sure to look at the perks. Because, like, yeah, I saw, for example, the health on kill, and I don't even know if it works that well yet. But a couple on, like, armor drops. You'll get, like, plus 300 armor as a random R&G drop. And that's like, you look at it, you're like, well, wait, or health drop, that is. So your health might only go by 100, but you're, sorry, your armor my only.

go by a hunter but your health you get like a 250% not percent point bonus you get what I'm trying to say look closely and I actually really do appreciate that in the early loop game it's got this level of detail for players that want it yeah and then my experience with it is I was sticking with the same two things I had the the one that heals the drone that heals your armor and my rolypoly's I love the rollipoles not going to change on those but then I tried the turret and like for my play style which is like I got to throw stuff in there and kind of hide as much as possible and try to survive.

Like having the turret really changed stuff. So I'm glad I was able to try that. I also got the chem launcher. I haven't tried it yet, but that also seems like something I couldn't really use. It's fun. A couple easy ones. Wesley wrote in and said,

if you help another player clear out a mission, side mission, or control point, does it help with your progress or do you need to do it on your own? It doesn't help with your, if it's a story mission that you haven't played, I think it'll clear the progression for you. Yeah, but if I was going into some friends games

and helping them replay some stuff and the benefit of that is you just get more gear drops. Yeah, but if you haven't done, we did confirm that. Control points and all that count towards both of our progressions for our projects and stuff. As long as you haven't done it yet, don't fear jumping in someone else's game.

Side mission at all counts. Maybe the counterpoint was like an anthem, for example, I played with a crew that I mentioned and they did the whole thing with me. They weren't seeing cutscenes and they realized they'd have to go back and do everything. It's not like that. Yeah.

Not like that. Tristan writes in and says, as someone who has not enjoyed games as a service before, mainly due to season passes, would you say this game is for me? I'm enjoying Anthem, but it's also because I know all future content will be free. Does this apply to Division 2?

Yeah, they said all year one content for the Division 2 is free. It's included. And then they've added the season pass for additional content on top of that. Yeah, that's like bounties and challenges. that's not the main. They're doing episodes, right? They're doing episodes throughout the year that are all free and you can just keep going. Right.

In early access. So there's actually a graphic that's in the What's Good Discord that I could maybe put in the kind of funny subreddit that highlights all the stuff that's either early access, that's cosmetic content or it's extra content, depending on what is most important to you. But that's what something that, you know, Julian talked a lot about over several press events that I went to is that they didn't want to. like they did with Division I. And so they decided to make all of that content included. And then they obviously still want to sell a season pass to make some money. So they added more stuff on top of that. And that's one of the things for me that makes me so excited to keep playing it,

especially this weekend where I've taken everything off and I'm just going to play. And you're all, yeah, exactly. Let's just chill out, Fran. You know where I'll be. Right there in the Francafe. I'm going to be so far behind now. What are you doing this weekend? Stimer and Brittany are coming into town.

We're doing streams on Saturday and on Sunday. There's your stream. You play division. Play division. Come on. Yeah, but that's only like two hours. Bye. That's like 20 hours.

But I really get excited of putting this much work in now. It's St. Patty's Day. Putting this much work in. Learning how to, you know, loving the game, getting into it with you guys and hitting, you know, level cap, hopefully this weekend, starting that end game. And then having this constant drip of content. In the clan right now with the clan challenges, Fran, we were talking about it yesterday, how cool it was to get the full group in there. See the XP start filling in, right? Have the clan leaderboard in there.

But then just have the ability to jump in and. And do I want to spend, like right now where I can't wait to fucking get home and play more and spend six hours sitting there? Or is it going to be that, hey, I got 30 minutes. Let's see what anybody else needs and run around and do some stuff and just get some gear. Yeah, I think there's plenty of content at launch and without the season pass and all that. You don't have to worry about that. Do you know if this is an aside? Do you know if your save data is attached to your Ubisoft account like it is of destiny?

Or do you have to upload your data? It is attached to your account. It's all in the cloud. You don't have to do anything. There's no local save other than maybe settings, but I don't think so. Yeah, because I've been turning it on here and there and everywhere. Oh, great. So yeah, it's just all there.

It remembers. Final question comes from Justin Harris. With Ubisoft massive nailing this game, is it officially the first looter shooter to get it right, at least at launch? No, like I said, Borderlands. Yeah, yeah, exactly, right? Like, Borderlands has amazing loot and the end game progression that they did with subsequent DLC packs for all of the Borderlands games, I think Gearbox really nailed it.

and I'm so excited for Borderlands 3. Can't wait. Can't wait to see what they have. But what about for like current gen stuff? That's the question, right? And I think obviously we keep talking about it as if it's out and we had all these blue screens last night, right? Like, let's see what happens for real on Friday.

It hasn't even launched it. When everybody does have an access, I do want to see how, what are cute, because you were talking about how you'd run into cues when you got booted once. And I haven't seen that, but again, we are playing in early access. So when it does get out there,

it'll be very interesting to see Friday tomorrow when we're trying to stream. Is it all going to go great or is it going to be the traditional kind of funny stream where we try to stream and nothing works. I am really excited about to play tomorrow, just because now we have had that like four days of playing. Sure.

It's not like Anthembourg, nobody knew what's going on? And what does this do? And like, come on, let's do something. I don't know how to do it. So what you get with that early access, right? Yeah, for me, that's what I was going to say. I'm like, we're only level 15. It's way too early to say the game has not even officially launched yet.

It was recorded on Thursday before the midnight launch on our time zone. So we got to like see how that goes. But what I will say is very early, division has learned from itself above all. And you can compare it to Anthem, compare it to everything. But it is division through and through. And I love it. I'm seeing all the learning.

So what it really just nailed is learning from itself. I don't know, as you compare the different games, I think there's a lot to say still and a lot. See the end game in particular, that, to me, we're weeks out from answering the question because I can't even get the level 30 and tell you they nailed it without doing what the end games. Yeah, I can't wait to see what it's like to get there

and have the strongholds we're being teased with, to see what's going on with the raid. There's an eight-person raids. Even like Kevin and I were waiting for you guys last night. We ran up on the Air Force One down. And it was like, oh cool, I've played this at E3. Let's do it, Kevin. We were obliterated.

And it was in our level. It's a tough level. Because there's the giant halo of enemies. And it was just like, we were not prepared for this. We need everybody. We need to have a plan. We need Fran there to count us down from five. If you didn't know, ladies and gentlemen, this has been the kind of funny games cast.

Episode 200 and 13. Rest in peace, Tim Getty's. I'm future proofing. I'm future. Just in case. Just in case. What did you think of the Division 2 with your opening weekend? Let us know in the comments on YouTube.

Feel free to tweet at us. Of course, find a Kind of Funny Klan if you're playing the Division 2. They are everywhere. The official one, we're doing official, in quotes. You don't have 50 people in these, so we're cycling it as we can.

If people drop out or this, that, and the other. But of course, many best friends are making them. So feel free to get out there and squat up and have a good time. Remember, the Kind of Funny Gamescast is recorded each and every Thursday on Patreon.com. slash kind of funny games. It posts early and ad free on Friday on patreon.com slash kind of funny games.

But if you have no bucks to toss our way, no big deal. Head over to YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, roosterteaf.com and podcast services around the globe, each and every Monday to get the show. Keep up with Andrea on What's Good. That's right. What's Good Games.com.

You can find us on YouTube. Right here, YouTube.com slash What's Good Games or on your favorite podcast app. Keep up with Fran on Twitch.tv. FM3 underscore. I'm streaming with him quite often. Kevin, too. Yes, please come by, support me.

Also, always good reminder is on the Epic Store. You can catch me just the name Fran Mirabella if you want to support me in Fortnite or on the Epic Store. I'm not unified naming, huh? I actually want that. It's not as easy to check. Big old ball of wax. It's a legality thing, kind of.

And keep up with Kevin Cuelo on brazers.com. No, that's not true. We're going to do the post show. That's on patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games. But until the next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you. If you're looking for me, don't look there. Go to Brasers.com and search Milk, Mommy. See what happens.