Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Doom: The Dark Ages Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: May 9, 2025

Wishlist Now!Empyreal Steam Page - https://nwzo.io/click/dzexr/ Empyreal PlayStation Store page - https://store.playstation.com/en-gb/concept/10012299 Empyreal Xbox Store Page - https://www.xbox.com/en-GB/games/store/empyreal/9nv4j14zzqqn Go to http://auraframes.com and use code KINDAFUNNY to get $35-off plus free shipping on their best-selling Carver Mat frame. This episode is sponsored by BetterHelp — go to http://betterhelp.com/kindafunny to get 10% off your first month. - Start - Housekeeping:You are about to witness history. SnowBikeMike, the most athletic man in his own mind is embarking on his most daring quest yet, going step-for-step with Sam Porter Bridges in A LITERAL, marathon stream on a treadmill.Come join Roger and Mike this Friday as they attempt to do a FULL PLAYTHROUGH of Death Stranding 1 through the weekend, but they can only do it with your support! Will Mike and Roger break this treadmill and have to drive to Andy's home at 1am to borrow his?Find out: Friday on TwitchWe’re an 11-person business all about live talk shows.After Gamescast is the 3rd episode of our limited series, What Was Cut from the Elder Scrolls Online ShowIf you’re a Kinda Funny Member:Today’s Gregway is Roger with a Doom the Dark Ages daily journal breakdownThank you to our Patreon Producers: Karl Jacobs, OmegaBuster, & Delaney Twining - TOPIC OF THE SHOW: DOOM The Dark Ages - Roger’s Thoughts - Blessing’s Thoughts - Parris’ Thoughts -  Andy’s thoughts - Ads - Music and Audio - Difficulty - Weapons - Upgrades - Levels and secrets -  Mech and the Dragon - Superchat Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast for Friday, May 9th, 2025. You're probably wondering where Games Daily is. Whoa. There's not one. Oh. There's no news today. I'm Andy Cortez. I'm joined by Blessing Adioia Jr., Roger Percorny, and Paris Lily.

Good day, Andy. Good day, Andy. How's it going? I'm doing great. Good morning, everyone. I'm good. I'm good. How you doing?

I'm excited to talk about cool video games with everybody. This is the kind of funny games cast each and every weekday. we get to talk, oh, we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews, and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services around the globe. You keep it tight, Andy. That's what I like about you. Keep it tight, Andy. I'm trying to. I mean, I had a whole bit going on. I was excited for it. If it's games daily, I've talked to you about volleyball. Yeah, that's true. But, you know, this is a review. We've got important stuff going on. You got to get to doom the dark ages. Yeah. If you love what we do, support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to get all of our shows ad-free, watch us record them live and get a daily. exclusive show. For a chance to be a part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions

as YouTube super chats as we go. Send in your biggest questions for Doom the Dark Ages and we'll try to answer them today. Heather Dock wrong? You see that? You see that? Oh, what? No, I'm like... Oh, great comment? I'm like, no, it's a chap being mean to Roger. Yeah, there's no reason. I'm betting all eights and nines and Roger being wrong.

That's so... Fuck y'all. It's funny because usually I'm the butt of that in a joke. No, they now shift blame to me now. I'm the new guy. I'm the new guy. It is always the new guy. The rose.

Everybody, this is a big, momentous day in kind of funny history, okay? You are about to witness history. Oh, shit. As Snowbike Mike, the most athletic person living in his apartment maybe is embarking on the most daring quest yet with Roger Bricorney, Snowbike Mike will be walking a literal marathon step for step with Sam Porter Bridges. Yep. a big, big stream today, Roger. Do you want to give us a tease at all?

Yeah, we got a lot of liquids. We got a baby in a jar. We're going to fill it with liquid. We're very excited about this. And we're going to be walking, again, with every single step that San Porter Bridges makes in the game, Snowback Mike will take that same exact step. So we're going to be trying to go the entire weekend.

How's he doing so? What do you mean? Oh, yeah, on a treadmill. Got a little treadmill. And we also have, I believe, some type of like climber, like step climber he has. And then also, if this treadmill breaks, we will come to your house

and take your walking pad at 1 a.m. Is there a plan for this treadmill after this stream? It is Lanzas. So it's going right back there. You're trying to take the treadmill. I don't want to do. You're trying to take the home. So it's very exciting.

And we're very nervous for Snowbike Mike and his body because he did say that he was supposed to be on this podcast today. But he's like, no, I got a stretch. That's a lie. He's not going to stretch. There's no way he's going to stretch. He's going to stretch for two hours. Yeah, there's no shot.

So pray for him and watch us live all weekend, hopefully. We're going to try to finish this game by hopefully kind of funny games daily on Monday. Beautiful. We'll see how this goes. Can't wait. Can't wait to see the shenanigans. Tune in live on Twitch. Twitch only, correct? Yes, Twitch only. Because of the whole YouTube.

You know, if you go longer, you have to create a new event. It's in a link. We're in 11 person business. All about live live in talk. Just go ahead, bears. Yeah, I actually have a little bit of housekeeping. Oh, I love this. Greg's not. Look, Greg's not here. But blessing you are. Twice. Now, in KFG.

GD, I have caught in strays over some Xbox stuff where you two mock me. Don't think I don't see it. Oh no. I just won't say that. You're talking about me? I don't. No, Andy does TV.

No, it's blessing in Greg like the other day. Andy does the Paris voice too. And he does it actually well. That's the problem is that me and Greg do a very bad job of it. So it's funny because we're like, oh, this is a terrible impression. Andy, I got the range. Andy has the range. He can actually get deep.

Point blank period. Wow. Nailed it. I fucking crushed. that one day. You actually did. Has you ever said point-blank period? Was that a thing? I've heard him say it twice and I was like,

that's his thing now to me. Oh, okay. It may not be, but to me it is. I heard him say it twice. We're in 11 persons. This is all about live talk shows after gamescast is the third episode of our limited series. This is the Elder Scrolls online show. Tune into that if you care about game development.

If you care about game devs talking about the trials, tribulations, successes, everything that goes into making a video game. And this episode especially is what was cut. from the Elder Scrolls online video game, which that's always my favorite thing to ask devs whenever we talk to them, and it's always kind of a dicey thing because you risk the devs pissing off fans and stuff like that.

They go in depth of it. It's really good. I try not to get into hot water there. Remember, if you're a kind of funny member, today's Gregway is Roger with a little daily doomed to dark ages journal, just like Bless he did with his death stranding too. Yeah, back to back.

Stealing my shine. Yeah, stealing your shine right here. Yeah, so I think it's 50 minutes or something like that. It's every single time I've played the game. I pull out my camera and I would just talk about it and how my opinion has changed all the way up until this review. Can I say that's such a good value? If you're on Patreon, if you're a kind of funny

member, right? Like two back-to-back days of hour-long unique content of, yeah, both be doing the Descrating Two thing, Roger doing the Doom, the Dark Ages thing. That's a lot of content. That's what happens when Greg's I hear. Yeah, come on. Come on. Come on. Today, uh, or thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs,

Omega Buster, and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by Imperial, all our friends, and better help, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with topic of the show. DDooms, DDoom the Dark Ages, a prequel to the critically acclaimed Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal that tells an epic cinematic story of the Doom Slayer's rage. Players will step into the bloodstained boots of the Doom Slayer in this never-before-seeing dark and sinister medieval war against hell. I mean, it just sets the stage right there.

this is the sequel or the prequel but a sequel um already sitting at 85 on metacritic right now wow um this is the obviously doom eternal came out in 2020 in 2020 Kevin can you bring up the video uh for our first ever piece of pandemic content oh yeah what's up welcome to kind of funny game's cast do me audio review i'm only audio we didn't have video for this didn't have video we didn't think it was going to last long I also pushed that we could do video and everyone was like no it's too much we're like yeah we don't need to do that

don't worry about it I'm like we can do it have the technology in there like no no no yeah we won't need that technology for four years this was March 2020 this is this is audio quality though like the audio quality is good I feel like once he added video then we're pulling it off a discord

I'll tell you what three years in the pandemic I'm like our audio quality is still better than all of ESPN I'm ridiculous ESPN was like took a long time to catch up but yeah that's a weird little kind of look back at, holy shit, we've been doing this for quite some time. Nick Scarpino was on that review with us. Yep. That's when he

was like only 48 or something like that. Time really, really flies by. I had just gotten hired like a couple months before that. Yeah. Very, very wild. I think I overlapped during that review. And I remember reading comments, being like, blessed you got a lot of people talk. So Doom Eternal was an 89 on

Open Critic, Doom 2016, an 86 on Open Critic. And this is the more modernized Doom. Doom the Dark ages running on id tech eight the brand new engine that they have over there at id i'd like to get everybody's kind of quick thoughts you know quick little just give me a couple sentence summary with your review score if you've beaten it how long did it take you i know that this game is very much a chapter by chapter type game it tells you how many chapters there are i'd rather not us say how many chapters there are for people that don't know because

if you're... I mean, it tells you in the game. It's like you're on this chapter of this many. It gives you the actual number. Yeah, I didn't realize that. That's how I tried. Yeah, it does.

All right. Well, fuck it. Fuck my idea. I didn't want to be like, well, we're on chapter, you know, 20. And somebody would be like, oh, man, that means... People say, don't say. One person said, don't say. Okay.

That's whatever. Yeah, just don't say. But how long did it take you if you've beaten it? What did you play on? And what score would you give it on the kind of funny score? Roger, I'll start with you. Hi. I finished the game,

so I won't say the chapter thing. I don't know how many hours. It doesn't say. I was looking at like the chapter ending thing, and I don't think it says like how many hours I put into it or whatever. What did you play on? PS5. I put on PS5, base PS5.

And I really, really dug this game. I was a big, huge fan of Doom 2016. It's one of my favorite video games of all time. Doom Eternal, a little bit of a step back for me, even though it is a step forward in a lot of ways. It just got a little too complicated with the gameplay. I was managing too many systems, dealing with too many, you know, the ammo, shooting off the top of the one enemy, switching weapons. It was just a lot for me to focus on, and I just didn't have as much fun.

And also the parkoring of it wasn't necessarily my thing. I had some fun elements with it, but it wasn't my jam. So going into Doom the Dark Ages and stripping all of that back and focusing on the on-the-ground Doom Slayer running around and just parrying things and with the shield, it just feels heavier. better and it also feels way more streamlined. I'm interested to see what the rest of the doom community is going to think, especially the doom eternal people, because it feels like a step back a little bit because there is no double jump. There is no dash. There is a focus on streamlining these systems, specifically when it comes to your health and your ammo. You know, you are able to get health and ammo pretty frequently in this game. You don't really have to deal

with, you know, the chainsaw or different elements. You can just kind of go in there. You know, and, you know, beat the game and feel like you are constantly getting ammo and replenishing and you don't have to worry about the chainsaw or whatever. With all that aside, I really, really dug this game. This is my probably the best out of the three in terms of like the gameplay and the way that it feels. And this is my perfect middle ground. I don't love the story, though. The story is like the big negative that is keeping that from an amazing score.

But if I were to give a score right now, I would say it's an 8-5. Really great. Blessing, I, your junior. For this, there's a comparison I want to make that it's going to be a little bit wacky, but stick with me. I'll stick with you, Big Ben. You know, if you know, you know, I grew up in Illinois. And I remember, like, my first time I had deep dish pizza. Oh, that was going to be a Michael Jordan reference.

No, I remember who was Michael Jordan joined in Bulls. No, I remember my first time I had deep dish pizza because my friend, my best friend Abby at the time, right? Her mom made it homemade, and I ate it. And I was like, man, this is some of the best, the best food I've ever had in my life. Deep dish pizza is blowing my mind. And for me, that was Doom 2016. Doom 2016 was the first time I had deep dish pizza Where I was like, oh, y'all have something here

Oh, this is a magical You're on to something You're on to something Like this is a special experience right here, right? Deep dish pizza for me is something that you cannot have all the time It is something that I have every once in a while, right? And like I remember my second time having deep dish It was like at Gerdonno's or whatever, right?

And like I remember coming, I went to Chicago A few months ago for MagicCon with Mike and me and him Went to, I think it was Girodano's that I went to either that or the other spot. Chat, let me know the other spots in Chicago that you go for Deep Dish. But it was one of those things where the more I have it, the more I'm like,

all right, I love this. It's more Deep Dish pizza, but it's not as special as that first time for me. And that's kind of where I'm at with Doom the Dark Ages where, you know, it's been every about four, five years that we're getting a new Doom game now. And the formula, the structure,

like the core ideas of it stay the same. And so as I'm playing Doom the, the Dark Ages, I'm like, oh, this is fun. This is what I want. In a lot of ways, this is comforting. Like, I'm having a really good time with this game. But at the same time, it's not blowing my mind. Like, that first time I jumped into Doom 2016, and I was like, oh, you guys, like,

you know, redefined what this is in a way that really made me fall in love with Doom, which is kind of crazy when you think about, like, the legacy of Doom and how far back Doom goes. Doom Eternal, like Roger was talking about, right? Added this mobility to it, added the Air Dash, added these things that had you, like, you know, moving around the map a bit quicker. Doom the Dark Ages. The thing that it does different is it grounds you a bit more.

It turns you into a tank. I like that. One of the first things that happens when you start off of the game is that you get dropped from a tall distance. You land and like all of the enemies fucking die around you. Like you have like this shock wave and they keep that through the rest of the game where if you jump from a tall distance and land like all the enemies around, all the fodder enemies around you will die.

Like they really do a good job of characterizing you as a tank. you have that, you have the shield that you're using to stain your ground in Perry. They don't have a dash in this game. They have like an R3 run, which I believe is new for this game. I don't remember that being in Doom, right? It was not in Doom Eternal. Exactly. And so like, I like the ways in which they're finding ways to make it slightly different,

but at the end of the day, I think, by the time I finish this game, because yeah, I beat this game. I don't know if I said that before. By the time I finished it, I was like, all right, I don't know if I'm going to be thinking about this game that heavily toward end of the year or years from now is like a monumental, experience that I had. But if you're somebody who loves Doom, if you're somebody who's looking for more of that experience, I think it gets the job done in a really good way. If I'm giving it a

score, I'll give it an 8 out of 10. Paris Lily. What about you? So for me, I wasn't necessarily a big Doom guy back in the day, right? So when 2016 and then Eternal came in, you know, I gave him a shot. I honestly felt Eternal got a little overly complicated from what, from what I wanted from it, right? So going into dark ages and Blessing and Roger have already touched on this, I feel like they streamlined it a lot more. And I think the thing that they've done with this is they've made it more welcoming to a more casual audience, to someone that isn't familiar with Doom. So you can kind of ease your way in because I love how you can customize the difficulty in this, depending on what it is that you're trying to do. So I just played this on just a standard difficulty. I didn't tweak or modify anything beyond that.

Oh, and I played this on PC, and I actually have no idea how long it took me. I would guess anywhere between 15 to 17 hours, something like that. I really enjoyed it. I really did. I felt this being more grounded. And like you're saying, Dune Slayers more like a tank now instead of trying to have him flip and fly all through the air and do all this crazy stuff is what I wanted from it. I wanted to get a bunch of cool guns, get that freaking.

shield and just slay demons. And that's what I got to do in it. I enjoyed the music in it as well. I think from a visual standpoint, it looks fantastic on IDTEC 8. They really did their thing when it came to that. This was a lot of fun to me. The story was the story. Honestly, I'm just killing stuff.

It didn't really matter to me about the story. But I really liked it. I'm going to go score a little bit higher than the other one. I'm going to say a nine, because I think this is just a first person campaign shooter, and that's all it's trying to be. It's not trying to be anything else beyond that, but it's a lot of gosh darn fun. And I also think there's replayability in this, believe it or not, because there's all the secret areas and things that you can go back and try and get, because when you do get to the end of a chapter,

it gives you the percentage of everything that you've done in that chapter. So that does compel me and want to go back and see if I can 100% everything, not to, to mention all the difficulty stuff. So you can ramp up the difficulty in this. And I'm sure we'll get into that as we talk about this more. But I can't even imagine what nightmare difficulties like on this thing. So I definitely want to go back and check that out too. Andy.

Thanks, guys. I don't know you wanted to know my thoughts on much. I have not beaten it. I'm about 13 and a half or 14 hours in, something like that. I'm right kind of near the end, though. and I love this game. I love that in an era where a lot of studios and publishers are chasing the games as a service thing still or what's the best way to monetize, blah, blah, blah.

This is just a let's just give you a sick-ass shooter with awesome action, with fun mechanics. Random boss fights that kind of pop up out of nowhere, they're kind of like, oh, shit, I'm excited to kind of take this on. with a lot of different levels of difficulty and customization. And I enjoyed that whenever I had an issue with something, there was always an accessibility option that allowed me to tweak things. While I'm playing the game, I'm trying to play on one of the harder difficulties. I'm getting my ass flipped.

I'm always getting shot from angles I can't see. And I'm like, fuck, man. Like, I know I could be better if I just saw where that was coming from. Maybe I could dodge it, jump over the projectile or whatever. and then I looked in the accessibility settings and there's an option to turn on like directional wherever you're getting shot from. Oh shit really?

Yeah. Oh, that would have changed my life. And it made me enjoy the game so much more to know that I'm dealing with this big fucker and I know there's a lot of smaller dudes kind of trying to catch up to me. And I don't know how close they are though but those, you know, the directional things

really help out a lot. Another thing that I remember when I previewed it And Blessing was watching, we were all watching the trailer and one of Blessing's criticism was that whenever somebody is pariable, they get outlined in a very, very purple, bright outline sort of look. And that's obviously good for people who want the big notification, but sometimes it's a little too much of an outline and it's a little too bright. And the option is there to turn that off. And I turned that off and I enjoyed it a lot more as well because you only see the button prompts pop up to go kind of in for the finisher attack. I think this game just, I think this game is like immaculately paced. I'm, I'm so blown away by how quickly you're getting in and out of the action and how they're kind of breaking up any sections that may start to feel monotonous.

I think they do a really good job of kind of ending levels where you think they should end before they kind of go on a little bit too long or if you've seen the previews at all when you ride the dragon or when you do other sections. they everything is like just as long as it needs to be which is I think awesome at least in my opinion that's how I thought I never felt like any one section kind of dragged on too long I enjoyed all the weapons the like when I previewed it I wasn't really blown away visually because I think id tech has always been amazing and they have always looked so far ahead of their time and so when I played it at the preview event I was like I mean it looks awesome but it is doesn't look like what I thought the next generation of IT tech would be. And I was, I was so fucking wrong. I don't know if maybe, I guess we were just playing on another build or something, but I

played on like the highest settings possible. And I was just blown away by all of the lighting details by all of the breakable objects that are still casting shadows and the amount of tech going into this really, really blew me away. I love the visuals. I love the lighting. And I love the fun of it. I think it's just a straight up fun ass shooter. If you're You're looking for something to just, like, turn your mind off, and you kind of will because the story is whatever. Kind of a bummer, because during the preview, they were really kind of pumped about, look, you're not just kind of like experiencing things a little vignettes.

You're getting, we're giving you narrative. We're not finding everything through Codex anymore. You're going through here. We're actually going to do cut scenes that are going to bookend every chapter. We're going to make this a big thing. And they were awesome to look at. They were hype with the content of them were cool. but I didn't care about what the things were being said

or the sort of the antagonist. Yeah, like I just, I loved seeing what was happening because it looked visually impressive and I get pumped up whenever the doom search is looking at something and throws his arm out and the shield goes to his arm. Like, it's just like, it's just stuff to get stupid hype over,

but it was nothing that I ever made me go, oh, I wonder what the antagonist is going to do next. It's a weird one, right? Because this is, it's a prequel, and it feels like it is trying to capture a new, audience or people that haven't played the other Doom games. But the story is so in the weeds. Like, you know what I mean? Like there's no, it doesn't feel like from the beginning of it. It's like, here's what's going on. Here's kind of the vibe of all these characters. She kind of feels

like, you're in this world now. And there's no way to jump on to any of it. I, I don't know. Like, it's, it did not feel, it felt like intrusive in some moments. It's not too obtrusive, right? Because it's like two minute cutscenes per chapter. You can easily skip those things. But it just felt like a weird choice with what they're going for when it comes to the gameplay and making this such an easy experience for everybody to have like this very in the weeds whatever story that's that's so I'm sure the the nerds the really big do nerds are going to love this stuff but for me I was waiting for the moment of like oh everything's going to change this is going to connect to this thing and I was like no just by the ending of it I was like it's whatever I even had some

moments of surprise and chalk in Warhammer space marine too where I'm like whoa I didn't expect that plot to us and here I just like I haven't gotten there yet I'm not quite done with the game yet, but I still love the cutscenes because I think everything they're doing on a technical level is just so freaking impressive. And we don't talk about ID Tech 8 or IDTech enough. I know like Decim is always the one we always talk about. EdTech is

like so efficient and it runs so well and it looks amazing. Go ahead. Bless you. Did you play on PC? Yeah. Okay. So that's, yeah, because I was going to go where you're going to go. Yeah, because I wasn't actually blown away as much Paris. Were you about to say something? No, no, I was just, I was going to echo what Andy said

because I played on PC as well. And I mean, playing at Ultra with ray tracing, all the reflections, global illuminating. I mean, it was stunning. Really, really did. So it is interesting that you on console, it wasn't as impressive because I was blown away by ITTEC8. I thought it was fantastic. It ran really well on a base PS5, right? I mean, it runs 60FPS or at least to my eyes.

It's smooth. It's super smooth. But this is the first time where I played a Doom game or an IDTech game where I was like, oh, it felt like the entire industry caught up. You know what I mean? And they finally caught up to where they are and now Doom feels good. It looks great. It looks amazing. But like it doesn't feel like a standout in the competitor field of everything that's going on.

So it didn't look bad at all, but it wasn't like a standout for me where the other Doom games were a standout every single time. And I mean to compliment it though, right? Like I think the thing that did stand out to me in terms of what they're doing with the power of the consoles is how much is going on on screen at any time, like the amount of enemies that they're throwing at you. This feels like the most enemies that you have on screen out of any Doom games so far. in fact massive encounters

massive encounters while playing this game halfway through I was like I got to boot up Doom 2016 to compare and contrast and it was funny because I looked it up on my PlayStation and I was like fuck I own this game physically do I still own this game like do I still have the disc and I went and I dug out my Doom 2016 disk

put it in and like yeah it's crazy the jump in terms of like how massive the battles feel this time around versus previous dooms which I think really enhances it and also the level of destruction that you're having on enemy because they, I think they introduced this quite a bit in Doom Eternal as far as how

degradation. Yeah, how enemies will degrade as you're shooting them down. And here, it's the same thing. One of my favorite enemies was, I forget the name of it, but it was an enemy that would ride around on their mount. Yes. I love killing that motherfucker. And you would fight them and like, you would have to take out the guy. Like, you would get essentially two like glory kill prompts, right?

One for the guy that's on the mount, like halfway through killing him. You would take him out and then it's, okay, now you're just fighting the beast. And then you have to take out the beast. Like that type of shit is where this game exceeds, right? And like I think for me that's where I come around on man for me this is such good comfort food and it's such good like just pure mindless fun. I was just smiling like the whole time. Yeah. I just had a great time with it. I don't know if I would give it a score yet. I'd probably like

it'd be between eight five and nine for me because I'm I'm still so blown away by by the fact that I think Roger makes a great point that the industry caught up and that's something that I was always kind of worried about, man. It's been, there have been so many amazing indie games that have come out that look fantastic and play amazing. Witchfire? Dude, which fire, even, you know, this void breaker demo that I can't freaking wait to come out when early access hits.

There's so many awesome stuff that indie devs or, you know, I guess still indie does, but people from certain studios that break off and make their own thing, there's a lot of amazing video games out there and how can this powerhouse? still kind of prove to us that, no, well, we're still doom. Like, don't get it mistaken, you know? And I think that they did that. And I had so much fun with my time. Yeah, it'd be between an 8-5 and a 9 for now.

Once I beat the game, I'll have a better decision there. But I'd love to keep talking about this game a little bit more right after a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Imperial. We've told you all how important it is to developers to which wishless games that you're interested in. So if this sounds cool to you, make sure you wishlist it. Imperial is a complex feature-rich action RPG where you'll be sent to a planet in a far-off corner of the galaxy to explore an imposing monolith.

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It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. We're all better with help. Visit BetterHelp.com slash Kind of Funny to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P-com slash Kind of Funnful. BetterHelp.com slash kind of funny. And we're back to get into the nitty, gritty. And there's a lot of things that we can kind of go into right now. And the first thing I want to touch on,

because I would like to get some of the more negatives out of the way. Whenever it happens all the time with the games cast, man, I love this game. This is an eight. Man, I love this game. This is a nine. Easiest recommendation I can make this year. For an hour.

And then we sort of shit on it for a while. shit on expedition. But it comes from love. It was just the map. We're talking about the map. Oh, well, that's, yeah, you guys right. The map fucking, oh. It comes from a place of love.

You know what I mean? It's always like, man, this game could have been perfect if this or if that. But also, this game is like, it is such an iterative game, right? That it feels like it is like the negatives, like, pop out because the game is so fucking good. Because we've done this so much. We've talked about it for so much that the negatives pop up. But yes, we should get the negatives out before we start talking about the positives. And, you know, I'm kind of worried about even talking about this negative, negative because I know that

it will really kind of start fires for a lot of people because we know that Mick Gordon and Doom Eternal on that whole issue and him, you know, a lot of drama, a lot of bad stuff, right? And the audio in this game and the music in this game, first off, the music kicks ass. I think the audio mixing in this game is real, real bad. and it took every other level I'm lowering up, I'm raising the volume of the music, it's way too quiet and the, and then some of the shooting is like getting,

it's clashing with each other. It's kind of like, oh, that doesn't sound very good. Like there was a lot of moments where I have issues with the audio. And it, again, it feels like I'm trying to start drama like, oh, McLeff and now look at the audio. Like, I think that's a legitimate critique. Yeah.

I also was missing some of those needle drop moments. that you've had had of previous dooms where I can call out names of songs, right? BFG division from Doom 2016 is one that I still have on repeat at times. And I don't think I had any moment of that from Doom the Dark Ages. In fact, like, probably about halfway

through or so, I was like, fuck it, I'm just going to put on my own music. Like, I'm going to rock out to my own stuff while playing this game. I recommend people, unless patches go through or anything like that, who knows what the day one patches could be. Because I got to assume that they have to be aware that it isn't as good as it can be. So I would recommend 100% volume on the music and maybe like 75 or 80 on the sound effects.

I even did that and I just didn't feel like the music was loud enough. And I thought it was like a revisionist history thing, right? Because like we think about the music so heavily with Doom. So I went back and I played Dubaternal. I'm like, no, this is way better. Like the mixing in that game is substantially better than in Doom the Dark Ages. So I couldn't find a good middle ground. I played with really nice headphones.

I played on my TV. I switched my settings and I just, I couldn't figure it out. Yeah, I also don't think the, the music is totally fine. Yeah. But I don't think it has like that replayability as Blessing saying. Like I will never listen to this on Spotify when it comes out and that sucks. I think it could have been been, I still think the music is awesome though. It's very metal. It's different tempo type shit. I liked it. I loved it and I think it would have been more impactful had it been implemented in a better way. Paris, you, you enjoyed the music. Did you feel at moments like I felt where. because they hit you with sort of open room moments, the natural sort of fading out and fading in of the music when you're starting encounters didn't feel so natural in the way that Spider-Man does it when you're about to start swinging. It felt kind of lacking for me. What are your thoughts on the audio pair? Yeah, I mean, to that point, I think you're correct.

I just think overall I thought the music was fine. I guess I never looked at it from Roger's point of view. It was like, do I want to replay this on the Spotify playlist? I never thought about that. But I thought in the moment, as I'm going through the game, some of the beats really kept me engaged at, you know, as I'm in these battles. But the transition from that, you know, to quieter moments. I think you're kind of spot on about that. They could have been a little better.

And it is funny that you say as far as the audio mix goes, because I, because I play with these exact headphones on. And I'm like, do I have this pitch too high? It's like, what, you know, so I was kind of messing with that a little bit as well. So maybe to your point after, you know, there might be a day one patch or something might come out later that addresses some of that. But I think people should go in expecting for the audio mix to be a little, little pitchy in my opinion. I thought the same thing when I did the preview,

whenever you see a bunch of enemies out in the distance and a cool mechanic in this game is obviously you have your sick-ass shield. And we'll get into all the mechanics here in a bit. But when you shoot an enemy shield with bullet projectiles, and eventually with laser guns that happens to it, it just happens faster with bullet projectiles.

You'll see the heat, the shield start to heat up, turn a really, really bright yellow color, you throw your shield, boom, it pops, it breaks everybody else's shield, and you get a lot of armor coming to you.

And I wish I could just take the armor sound and lower that down a bit. Dude, because it hits you in Chung's like, I think it's a console-specific issue because if you play on console, by default,

comes out of the controller. So I, I played with my pulse headphones, so it wasn't coming out of my control, it was coming out of my headphones. And yeah, that shit sounded out. Yeah, so they need to figure out a slider there. Because, yeah, when I turn it on for the controller, I was like, wow, this is loud as fuck. I need to put on my headphones.

I thought those sound effects were a bit overwhelming at moments, and I hope that they can figure out a better mix. Because there's a lot of awesome accessibility issues or accessibility settings with gameplay and visuals and all sorts of things like that. And I would love for the audio to have as, you know, custom. customizable options as you can. One more talking about it, right? Like this might be a very specific my setup kind of thing,

but I was playing on PS5 with my pulse headphones. And when I tell you, the intro, like, sounds stuff for the game. Like when you first boot up the game, sounds so crunchy in that way. And I don't know if that's a patch. I don't know if that's a, oh, you just can't listen to it at the volume level that I'm at. But I could see, like, a lot of this stuff

maybe getting fixed in post. Yeah, I really, really hope so. So that's, yeah, my biggest issue with this game is the audio, and that's a bummer because it's so important to the Doom experience. Having that cut seats start with a

dunan, da tan, da, da, da, and also, anybody you all think that the intro music kind of, you get the cyberpunk 2077 vibes? I always kept on expecting to do-da-dun-d-d-d-d-d-d-d- Oh, yeah,

welcome to night city. Yeah, I always kept on waiting for that to pop in. I'd love to talk about weapons. and how some of them are kind of not necessarily throwbacks, but some of them are more medieval.

Because that's going to be a positive conversation. Oh, sure. One more thing I want to talk about, which I think might be a little bit mixed to positive is the difficulty. Because like, I remember in... Oh, I got some. I remember in talking about Doom Eternal

during our review, one of my bigger critiques was, it felt like Doom Eternal, the normal difficulty, which I believe has always hurt me plenty, was tuned on the way, difficult side. And I remember getting frustrated toward the end being like, I gotta lower the shit down. Like this game is fucking kicking my ass in the last few levels. I remember that one enemy that

just wouldn't die. The fuck it. I forget his name. But like, we're like, I need a Perry for you. Yeah, yeah. I was like, this guy's all over the place. And they were like, we agree. They were like, yeah, I get this guy out of here. Let's make a whole game with Perry. Doom the Dark Ages fuels tune on the opposite direction. Where for every Doom game, I always play on and hurt me plenty because I look at that as the default normal difficulty. I was breezing through this game. And like when we talk about the new mechanics being added, right, the big new thing is the parry and the shield and stuff. When I tell you, the default parry window feels so generous.

And you can tweak it. They have like a very specific like, oh, you can go in here and make it smaller. If you play on this higher difficulty, it'll make it smaller, all that stuff. But I found that fascinating that on the default difficulty, that shit, dude, I'm parrying everything. I'm knocking everything back. For the first time in my fucking life, I played a game on hard. I played most of this game, I think, from chapter 8 to the ending on hard. And I had a great time because of that

because the first eight chapters I played on a regular and I was just, man, this is way too easy. I actually went in there and I made the Perry window to the smallest possible. And I still felt it was too easy. Really? Like I think there is some patch, they even patched the version that we were playing with

because there was some issues with the Perry window. Even after that patch, I still felt it was too easy. So I think there's going to be some, especially with the audio mixing with this, that they're going to start tweaking afterwards to make it right. But the Perry window just never felt perfect.

I mean, here's the issue. We just finished, I just finished Expedition. Right. So Expedition has such a perfect Perry window that I'm like, maybe it's just that, I don't know. I also think it's the fact that it's a first-person shooter that they're trying to do like a parry with. And I think that it was them figuring it out a bit. I think overall it's been a, it's a success in the game. Like, I grew to really like the parry, especially with how they do it with the different types of projectiles,

wherever you see a green projectile or a green melee move from an enemy, those are the ones that you can pari. I think it felt additive to the experience but I never felt tuned to like when you're playing a third person action game and the Perry's feel perfect. I think a lot of that has to do with yeah, first person, the perspective of you not exactly knowing in a third person game you know where that swing

is about to hit you. First person might throw off your viewpoint a little bit. Paris, what were your thoughts on the difficulty? Yeah, I definitely want to jump in on that because like I said before, I left it all default. I didn't change anything. So I essentially played it on the normal difficulty that they wanted you to play on. And to your point, Roger, it was extremely easy until about chapter 12.

Yeah. I felt that it got a little more challenging at that point. And then when you get to the end, I reflecting going, man, I should have played this on hard. So to that point, I do want to go back and start it from the beginning and play it on a harder difficulty. And I am to your with the pairing, I didn't tweak any of that. I wanted to play it just as it was that patch did come in. I didn't think it really did anything beyond what I was already doing. So that would be a suggestion I would have for anyone that is a veteran to first-person shooters.

Don't play it on the default difficulty. Ramp it up if you want more of a challenge because you essentially will breeze through about, I don't know, probably three quarters of this game on that difficulty. Yeah, breeze through the entire game, honestly. Yeah, and it won't even be like more of a challenge. I think you'll have a lot more fun, honestly, because then you'll be able to experiment with all the weapons because at least for me those first eight chapters I was just using one gun and I could have just finished the entire game with that one gun that's how easy I was using the plasma rifle

the entire time I mean there's a lot to talk about sure because we can get to the nitty-rity of the combat now where weapons are fantastic the weapons are fantastic well yeah real quick I just want to say I played on uh I played on nightmare difficulty which is the it seems like there's seven difficulties or eight I don't know how many yeah it's crazy I'm on because there's aspiring slayer there's hurt me plenty there's ultra violence and then there's nightmare. I've been playing on nightmare and it's really challenging and it gets like

and I've been dying a decent amount. Like I've been using my life relics which is like your kind of immediate resurrection power which is awesome. Not a power I just kind of ask you if you want to use them or whatever but like it is a great amount of challenge and

I turned it down to ultraviolence because I was like oh I want to try to beat it before the review. you and there's a lot of moments where I'm right there close to beating a massive boss and you kind of like do the gamer lean and you kind of get up closer like I'm gonna fucking get your ass like it's I think it's a really an amazing amount of fun difficulty as opposed to like a frustrating type of difficulty I will say I still had plenty of fun playing it on the default difficulty because it was kind of that turned my brain off I am taking down

everything and this time around this time around on default difficulty they're very generous with resources I remember in previous doom games running out of ammo and like being down to my last couple of guns and being like all right like I have to use this thing right here to the point of Roger talking about using using one gun for most of it in this time around I'm late game I'm just going back and forth between two guns I got the oh what's the one that crushes the skulls is it the ravager or whatever it's the skull crusher but there's one really awesome thing about this game is there's a lot of weapons and some of the weapons have two variants yes and they switch up either this one has less bullet spread but it does less damage or whatever. Like they give you kind of two variations. And don't forget the upgrades. What's up? Don't forget your upgrades.

And you can upgrade. Yes. You can, you can, your weapons in the shield and all in the melee as well. Upgrading the weapons is fantastic. And I've been using the upgraded version

of the skull crusher that you were talking about blessing because it's a bit of a tighter shot window. It isn't as spread out, you know? Yeah. So for me, it was that in the super shotgun. And then occasionally I'll switch to other weapons

just to like, you know, have some fun. Or I added one upgrade to the rocket launch. that gave it a certain benefit and I wanted to try that out but for the most part I'm sticking to those two weapons and I'm having I mean super shotgun for doom is such a classic sure it's like my overliable kind of thing and I'm just going through the fastest shots oh of course no I upgraded that thing all the way as soon as I could um but I'm doing that I'm like the the melee this time around is what gets you ammo from enemies and it's way more generous than in previous games or chainsawing but

like you can chainsaw once and it's like a limited resource and so you have pick and choose when you do that here you have three male well depending on the melee weapon that you have. You have a certain amount of meleys that you can do, but that replenishes fairly generously. Depending on which one you use. Depending on which one you use, yeah. And like, I was just getting, I was getting ammo back.

Like, I had a rotation of shotgun in the face, melee you, one more shotgun, end you with a glory camera. And then shield bash. And then throw my shield at you. That thing gets stuck in you and, like, fucking starts bit in your chest. We got to talk about the shield. Because to me, this is, if Mario Odyssey,

that was like my first 3D Mario. game that I really got into and I loved. And I fell in love with Cappy. I love Cappy so much. It's my favorite game mechanic. I go back and I'm like, fuck, I wish I had Cappy. That's what I feel like is going to happen with Doom. If we take away the shield, I'm going to be fucking pissed because I can't live,

I can't play Doom without this shield. I played a little bit of Doom Eternal after I finished this game. I was like, man, I just need the shield. Because it changes the way you play this entire game. As Blessing alluded to, you can take the shield. You can throw it at an enemy and it stuns them for a very generous amount of time. So then you can focus in on that. now you don't have a shield, so now you're, you're vulnerable to a lot of things, but you can go

around, you can end that enemy, you can, you can really do a lot of great strategic stuff with it, and it's just fucking badass, dude, it's so cool. Honestly, shout out. It's a Captain America fantasy. Yes. I was going to say shout out to roglights for, I think, helping out with a lot of, not helping out, but just, I think getting game developers and creatives more creative with what abilities, how abilities can upgrade and how things can get better and continue to progress, because I love so much. The weapons that I made were, I mean, I'm kind of using a lot, but for a while I was like super shoddy all the way, of course, for close range type shit. But then I ended up using the normal shotgun again because I upgraded it to have the three

round. Do, do, do, do, do, do. And then it lights people on fire while it's doing that. and then the second upgrade for the plasma laser weapon or whatever. The first one you get a weaker but a much faster shooting type of oozy, just very, very, very fast, rapid fire thing. But then you get an upgrade that's a bit more of a medium range. It shoots a little bit slower, but upgrading that one and the lightning or the electricity

sort of stunning enemies and then chain lightning to other people was such a freaking blast. Will chain lightning ever get old? No, never. Never. It's always the best thing in a game. What do you think about this game is all the coolest shit in the world? Like it has chain lightning and has a shield and has parrying. Like, this is just the coolest game ever.

Dude. And then the standard like assault rifle. Just the spike sort of shot thing was just so fun the way it feels. So one thing I loved was whenever there's a large enemy and kind of, I think this game is just like a beautiful symphony of violence. because there's so many things you could do together to just have fun. That's a back-of-the-box quote right there. Yes, it is. I would throw my shield at one of the large enemies,

and the shield, when it's embedded in an enemy, like Roger was mentioned earlier, they get stunned, and they kind of like wait there, right? But then I upgraded my AR, the, I call the AR, but I upgraded the AR to then when I'm shooting the enemy, it spreads bullets to other enemies around it. And so other enemies are getting hit by the bullets that are also hurting the main dude.

And then you could obviously recall the shield. Shield bash. The other weapon I was using quite a bit was the medium skull crusher one, which I was mentioning earlier. That's another like absolute fun weapon that I had a lot of, a lot of fun with, especially with the larger enemies. When there's so much real estate to hit these enemies in and these crushed projectiles, you see them kind of perfectly cover

the size of the enemy and it's just shredding them down. You're seeing the body parts disfigure. It's amazing. I love the upgrade on that one because you can upgrade it so once you're at full, like because it ramps up like a turret, right? So once you get to that full ramp up, then you do extra damage. And with like with then getting the glory kill, then you just get unlimited ammo pretty much.

And you're just going and you just constantly have that right trigger going. It is, it is so cool once you can figure out that type of gameplay. The upgrade I wanted to mention was on the second plasma gun that I really loved. The slower, yeah, I love that weapon because of the stunning, because of everything, but then the highest, I think one of the highest upgrades you get on it, and you find these upgrades

either through finding money throughout the world or secret areas where you get these rubies. The ruby of the tangerine. I have to say that every time. Every time I get a ruby. What is it from? Michael King. What movie is?

Dark Knight. He found a ruby. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Come on, fucking, Jesus. He don't know. He just saying, yeah. I mean, I love the dark. Where was the Ruby in that movie?

Where you find the Ruby? I saw that, too. I saw that moment of him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I don't want. I trust him. He's not going to lie to me. He's not going to lie.

It was the monologue about the crazy, what was it? Yeah, the little kid, the village or whatever there. Yeah, he's talking of the little joker analogy. A little joker. He did it again. He did it again. Yeah, there was never a ruby. Are you sure that was that not right?

Was that Rises? It was dark night. He's talking about the Joker essentially. He talked about the Joker. How like this one guy was stealing, he was stealing from everybody and never to use it just because of chaos. And he was just like,

some people want to watch the world. Yeah. Okay, remember that one. Just want to watch the world. So I upgraded that one all the way. And as you're shooting people, it shoots faster,

gets stronger, and then it starts dropping health. Oh, yes. And it was called like the vampiric whatever. And that's like, I love vampiric type shit in a bill, in games,

whenever you're leaching life off of people. So that ability felt so much freaking fun. Paris, what were the weapons that you felt yourself kind of? I was leaning towards the plasma like you were, but I love the super shotgun and I love the shredder. Those were probably my go-toes that I was constantly going to. Yeah. The shredders to the AR, right?

Uh-huh. Yeah, okay. Gotcha. Yeah. And then, yeah, actually, I think that's exactly what you talked about as far as the upgrade, because you have that upgrade where it will spread out the bullet. bullets to other ones. And then the plasma had one where it took, I think that was, yeah, it was a

plasma where it would take out everyone's shield immediately. Yes. When you hit an enemy. Yeah. So I'm, yeah, I freaking loved it. Absolutely loved it. Also, the shield has its own upgrade path. You kind of unlock later on and really cool stuff there that I'm not sure what I'd love to find out what the numbers are, the numbers differences as far as what damage they do to actual things and what the best min max is or whatever, but I kind of just went for whatever

shield upgrade I thought looked the coolest. And one of them that you eventually unlock if you parry a projectile your little shoulder turret pops up and and just starts shooting. Oh, I didn't like that one. Just because I felt like it was just like tickling them.

I didn't know what I was doing anything. I was like I'm not doing this one. And that's not the one I used. I used the one with like the spirit birds or whatever the fuck. Yeah, like these magical sort of things. Paris, how did you upgrade your shield? What did I do exactly? Because one of them when you parry, you kind of set a trail of fire on the ground.

There's all the ruins. Yeah. Yeah. You shit. I don't remember. Oh my gosh. I don't remember. I don't remember.

He played eternal. Because I was because part of with the upgrades, I kept putting into the weapons. more so than the shield. I was trying to think I did it twice with the shield. Shit, I can't remember. Can I fire it up right now and tell you? Well, we should talk about the upgrades

in terms of how it is presented to you, right? In Eternal, you're just kind of finding these things and you can upgrade a certain weapon. And this one, it is based on exploring the levels and finding coins, finding rubies, finding, what was it the other one, the weird purple crystal, sap? Wrath, a wrath gem or something like that.

And they have like, so gold, you can. can find anywhere and then the rubies and then the wrath gem that is based on finding puzzles a lot more secret a lot more secret of stuff uh i was negative on that at first because i was like i just want to fucking upgrade my gun i want to fucking go from here to here i don't want to have to do this but then i open up the map and i was like oh they just show me where all this is which i did not but i told blessing about that he's like there's a map it's kind of weird because i've never opened a map in a doom game i just go from one place to another just fucking end it uh but for here

i was i was hundreds percenting levels like i was actually going in there actually no 98 percent levels because I always forget one fucking gold piece and they'd count that towards that. Whatever. Bullshit. The map way more improved this time around. Way more improved. It's not just really hard to look at hologram thing where you're like, what floor am I on? You know, I forget if it was Eternal or the first or Doom 2016 that used that sort of hologram look, which aesthetically looked awesome.

But it was really hard to tell what the maps would, the floors would be kind of overlaid on each other. And it was really kind of hard to to grasp what the hell was going on, but they made it a bit easier with kind of opaque floors and letting you know. A lot more flat level design this time around.

Well, yeah, because there's no Viral. Yeah. I did think it was kind of weird, though, that they showed you where the secrets were. Yes. I don't love that.

It's a little weird, but for me, I was cool with it because then it allows me to upgrade everything and go in there and actually find a lot of secrets that I wouldn't have found otherwise

and really cool stuff. Like, really cool secrets here. Really cool level design, especially towards the ending of the game. Yeah. And there's this one, which I'm not going to spoil where it is or how it happens, but there's this one where it's like,

because usually you go to find a secret level and it's just one Ruby or whatever, right? There's this one that kind of follows the entire map, and it's like four to five different secrets all in one. And it feels like a huge chunk of the game. Like it feels like it's like a main path, but it's not. It's like one long secret path. Really cool stuff the way they ramp it off. See, the one that I liked, and I wasn't expecting, was there was like a Ruby that was behind a wall that I could see

and I just had to like go around and get it. And I went around and looked for it. I'm like, oh, where to go? I thought it was in this room. And I come out of this room and, like, they do like a trippy thing of, oh, you're not where you thought you were. Now it's a combat challenge.

We're throwing a hundred enemies. And they do a- awesome. They also do a fun one where you throw a shield at certain things where, like, the shield, like, almost like Kratos, when he throws it at like the ice thing where it, like, locks the door.

You have to throw it there and it opens up a gate, but you can't take back the shield because then it'll close the gate. So you throw it there and then you go around the corner and up, there's a million enemies. Now you've got to fight them without the shield. I wish that they did a little bit more of that because that would have been like a nice way

to like actually in the main game switching up. But things like that add to the experience. So I'm actually very happy they did upgrades like this because this game is a very short game in the grand scheme of things. Like 13, 12, 12, 13 hours? I feel like if you're playing on easy or whatever or regular, I feel like you can mainline this game without doing any secrets in a very short amount of time.

So forcing you to kind of go outside the boundaries and find the secrets is very important for the length of this game and really understanding the whole depth of it. Chad, I'd love to you all for you all to prep your super chats while we ask Paris, what were we asking Paris? You're asking about the shield. I just

had recorded all, I recorded all my gameplay, so I was like, shit, let me go back and find where I was actually doing an upgrade. So the last upgrade I did on the shield was the power surge, where it, you throw the shield, and it'll cause it to bounce around and hit a bunch of different enemies. That was the last one I did. Everything else I was putting in

weapons. Captain America vibes right there. I love, again, because of the amount of enemies they throw into a lot of the combat encounters, I love the ways in which they let you take care of a lot of them at once. Like, you mean, talking about the shield. We might have mentioned this before, but I know we mentioned the plasma thing of if you have enemies with plasma

shields, there's plasma weapons that'll overload the shields, and those will explode in their faces. Also, for the metal shields, if you do enough damage to them, they'll then blink red, and if you throw your shield at them, like, fucking explodes everybody around. That's where you get the loud ass armor. And that was always satisfying to me. Always great.

Also the shield bash, which is, if you're playing on PC, if you're blocking with your right click, then you left click and you just... You just auto-zipped towards somebody and then that causes a massive sort of, you know, big sort of area of effect blast, killing a lot of the fodder enemies. And those are essentially your reloads to get more armor, more ammo, more health, you know. And there are times while playing this game that I missed the dash, like the air dash from Doom Eternal, except for when I was reminded that I could do that. The shield bash kind of functions at that as that a little bit.

Like if you just see an enemy from far away and you want to get to them fast, like it works from quite a bit of distance of L2 to lock onto them R2 and then you shield bash right towards them. I thought that was a really great mechanic. I do wish there was some sort of just dodge. Especially with the parries.

Yes. I need a little, because like there's some moments where you're, you're doing one parry, and then the other parry's over there and you have to kind of run to it. It just, I want just a little bit of a side dash. It felt like I'm kind of, with how some of the projectiles work, enemies will shoot out, you know, three red blasts with one green in the middle, right? But sometimes they are connected by a red gate of damage that will hurt you if you hit it. So you can't just stand in between these shots.

So sometimes the green one will be on the very far right with a big gate and then you parry that one. And then the next wave, it'll be on the far left. And it did feel cool. It did feel cool to start to sprint to get over there. And I think the window is large enough and generous enough to where you can pair it. It just, I would have felt mechanically cooler to be like, dodge left. I think that's why the peri window is. Now remember, you can dodge when you're on the dragon.

Yes. Well, we got to talk about that. The dragon segments and the mec segments, for me, left more to be desired. Sure. I was not looking forward to it. Yeah, whenever those segments would start, I'm like, all right, I guess I got to get in the mech. The mech felt like I was like playing. I want to say it felt like playing punch out, even though mechanically it's not, right?

Like, it just felt like I was just heavy. All right, R2, R2, R2. Yeah, Dodge. R2, R2. All right, now he's down. Now onto the next one kind of thing. It is a very overly simplistic game design, right? especially with the dragon and the mech.

And it's very weird because they're trying to break up the gameplay, right? They don't want it to be boring. But I honestly, I want all doom stuff. Like I just want to play as the Doom the Doom Slayer, the Doom guy running around shooting things because there is so much depth to that gameplay. And then when you take me out of it, and you're like, okay, here's a cool moment where you're in a mech.

Okay, that's awesome. But then the gameplay is literally just right trigger, right trigger, right trigger, dodge. It really stands out in comparison to the main game, which is, has so much depth, has so much. fun there when you're just doing the most baseline stuff but i will say it's there's not much of it though yeah not much of it and and that's where i'm at i think that they are i think that they are short segment i think the segments are short enough to where the yeah the gameplay is kind of basic but for me it's more of the it's more of the scale of stuff that's happening i'm kind of more into

the visuals and what's being pulled off technically um because i just loved seeing the little tiny tanks down there and then these big enemies that are that I've seen from the ground level out fighting in the distance which is always cool as shit whenever they you're just kind of running through these open levels but then you see a gigantic mech and a gigantic demon fighting each other it's some of the coolest visuals you'll ever see yeah yeah visually incredible um one thing I wanted to bring up and I think it's one I think it's an easy thing to miss

But once you notice it, I think you will have a really great appreciation for it, especially I don't know how the experience is on console, but on PC, when you're playing the game and then the cutscene happens, the tech is so, the technical team, they're, they were so fucking flawless with going from shot to shot without the load in or pop in. And that almost never happens in video games when you're watching a cutscene. and doomsayers walking and then it cuts to somebody else yelling at him when that cut happens you always see

hair load in or people load you know like there's always some sort of visual jutter that you just kind of expect from modern game engines this shit was so flawless from shot to shot I was and you could tell it was like a big point of like that they wanted to nail that shit because they really did and I thought

I was just always blown away by man that's so cool because you just kind of expect that with games nowadays. That cuts to the next shot and, you know, the dress will kind of like fall down because of the physics have to load in or whatever. I was just really blown away by that shit on technical level. I'd like to read some super chats.

And then we can also talk about some other stuff after that. We're running a little bit long, but we got a... I guess there's really only bosses and stuff. There's not a whole lot else we can really go into, but I'll read some super chats for the time being. we have a super chat from I see Weiner

Oh $2 super chat A Futurama reference Can we get a quick Stonebike mic review You got to tweet it in blue sky Yeah Only he was streaming for 72 hours

He did finish the game Shinobi 3000 Something to point out Yeah yesterday he was like And can you take the hosting spot for me tomorrow I was like okay I look and I was like Mike you beat the game though right I got a stretch

You were the first one of us to beat the guy Shinobie 305 with a $2 Super Chat says let Idsoft take a crack at a Halo game. Oh, God damn. I was thinking about this, not this specifically, but just how good Doom is from a quality perspective

of just like moving around in the world and feeling like, man, there's no other shooter that's like this. Like there's something about like how grounded and how like there's a feel to Doom that has been replicated as well. And like I would be fascinated to see how they interpret Halo.

Crossover game. Well, you know, it's, it's funny to bring up Halo because they've already committed to Unreal 5, but it almost seems like Halo would be great in this ID tech engine. But I guess we'll never know. With all the physics and all the breakable things, like, ah, it'd be a freaking blast. We also have a super chat from Justin Madison, who says, uh, it's off should work with Mashuga on music and audio. Mishuga's a metal band. I thought the music was, again, awesome. It just wasn't implemented in a way that made it super memorable for me.

Sure. Yeah. Cody Bishop with a $2 super chat says Quake Next, time for action space sci-fi. That was another thing I was thinking about. It's like what is the feature for its software? Do you get another Doom? I think they've done a good job of like doing those incremental. All right, this is what we're doing.

This is the director we're taking this. All right, Doom the Dark Ages is going to be a bit more tanky and not as mobile. as the previous one. I wonder if it's time for either, all right, let's take a break for one game and do a quake or do something else

or do a new IP or if it's time to redefine doom. One of the conversations I was having back in the office with Mike the other day was like,

could you find a new either, not genre but I guess a new format? Like I think Roger was talking about like like doing the S rank type stuff with the action and I was talking to Mike

about like what if they went returnal with it and like made more of a bullet hell like Rogue Light style Doom thing. Obviously, these are dreams and hopes. Like, I don't know if they'll actually do that kind of thing,

but could be an interesting... That would be incredible. Yeah, it could be interesting, Elaine. Bless, did you play on PS5 Pro? No, I don't have a PS5 Pro. I just played on base. Yeah, I was going to answer it. That was a question from Mark, $2 super chat.

We have a $2 super chat from Demon Hacker says, this not competing with Blueprint. It says BP. I was like, Black Panther? The Gas Cup? Express 3 and Death Stranding 2 for goady. No, but it might be a contender.

I might hit my top 10. I think this year's just so strong. We'll see. Yeah, I was thinking about this because I was talking with Danny about this yesterday. I don't, this year is already so stacked with Game of the Year candidates. I don't think this would make the list, but to your point, maybe the back end of the top 10, just as a standalone campaign, you know, shooter experience. But yeah, this is just a crazy year for Game of the Year.

So it's going to be tough. I think if they update this with some type of, like, a horde mode, because I know that they added a horde mode in Eternal. If they do that here, I could see that being a little bit higher in my top 10. To what? I can't read that name. I don't know what it says. But a $5 super chat says one of the handful of people who played 2016 and Eternal on Switch,

I loved it. Praying for Switch to Port with Mouse Controls and Jira. Ooh. I mean, that sounds like it can happen for sure. was always kind of shocked that Dune Dark Ages wasn't announced at the Switch 2 thing with all the other third party

you know the little third party what's what I'm looking for? Yeah no I was gonna say collage Oh montage montage Montage is one of those aches Hollanite was there Holo night was there

You can just do anything though The gamage The Gamage Demon Hacker asked How the performance was on console And Blessing and Rogers They loved it Yeah

It was awesome I mean, it sounds, I have to, like, I need you to boot the game up for me on PC so I can look at how it looks on your PC. Because it sounds like it might look better than it does. Of course it does. I mean, of course it does. Oh, my gosh. It looks really good. I saw Mike playing an X-Me. It looked really good. I played it on.

It's also funny, Paris, we were laughing earlier about the difficulty levels that they have and how there's like seven of them and they're all kind of named weird things. The same thing for the visuals. I think high is the third of like seven or eight visual options. You go like low, medium high And then like fucking horny And I don't know what It gets like It gets like violent

Ultraviolent I forgot what it was But I had my visual settings On ultraviolet Violent It looked freaking incredible And yeah I'm stoked to see

How it continues to improve Because it wasn't even the most Most recent driver Were you having that issue Paris whenever you booted up the game? I got the latest driver from Nvidia Oh my God So, but it's funny, when I first started playing, I didn't have it.

And then when I got the new driver, I did see it, it definitely helped. It definitely improved performance on there. But yeah, dude, playing that thing at 4K, I mean, I guess I can talk about this now. I was playing an RTX 5090 and DLS has four on balance mode, I guess, but they suggest you play on performance mode. but I was still averaging like 280 to 300 frames for second. It's ridiculous. But everything maxed out. Yeah, it's nuts.

What's up, Les? I mean, Kevin's out there right now working on my computer, adding it a new GPU. I forget which one he said, but it's one of the good ones. It's one of the good ones. It's one of the good ones.

And so, like, I don't know, my PS5 might be counting on the case. You didn't know how many fans your computer are at? It also forgot that it overheated. It was incredible. Listen, all right? I need somebody to do it for me so I can take it home. Like, I'm not, I'm not full Greg Miller,

but I do have some Greg Miller jeans in me when it comes to the PC show. Oh, you definitely do. I remember when we wanted to get you a new process and you're like, but like I don't use my, I don't lose my info if that happens, right? No, it's on your hard job.

I'm not gonna like lose everything on my computer. You know? I guess I've on stuff on there. Any last thoughts on doom the dark ages? I suggest everyone give a shot, check it out, play it. I think you have a great time with it. I have a lot of fun.

Yeah, it's an easy recommendation. Yeah, easy pick up. had a great time with it. I'm excited to see what they do post-launch, because Eternal was supported a ton after launch. That was the pandemic, but we got two pieces of DLC, we got a bunch of modes. I'm excited to see what that looks like

for Doom the Dark Ages. They did it again. Also, I want to bring in another super chat from Rain and Bishop real quick who says, do you miss glory kills? Do you like the new execution system? Also, what's up Paris? Real quick, I think I do miss the glory kills. I was one of the things that when

you first saw the trailers, right, it was like the, you kind of go in and melee them to death as opposed to like go in, snap their neck, right? Like take their arm, fucking shame into the thing. Like,

Doom 2016, and I had to like double check this because I booted it up again. Like most of the kills, even for the fodder enemies where like they had animations to them and I kind of miss those animations. I kind of get why they take them out

because there's just a lot more enemies to kill this time around. I think there's a lot more going on. I think it would break up the combat a lot, so I don't mind them being gone. But I did like that if you, if you if you jump up in the air

a different animation will happen and that is I think that made that was enough variety for me because I think early on I had the same thought of like oh man the glory kills got really violent and kind of cool and creative but then I think after about four hours like I'm just

seeing the same ones all over again it is kind of like breaking up the momentum I want to see a happy medium because they do have him when you are facing off against like a powered up enemy like that like if you kill this enemy, you or maximum ammo gets increased. Those are cool. And usually those are like a nemesis system.

Yeah. Oh my God. That's a call I kept on thinking about because they were named enemies. They were the ones on the map that, all right, this is like a special lead. They call like leader enemies. Yeah. They're the leader of this whole crew. You have to kill all of the sort of mini bosses to then be able to face that leader while

it's still attacking you. Yeah. You can't attack it. And also after you kill all the mini bosses, more mini bosses spawn. And you have to kill that person. It's crazy. And when you do. that you

you like reach into their chest and grab their heart and then like yeah you take it they're looking so sad I kept on him to eat it I kept on wanting to take a bite to the heart yeah but I wish there was a bit more a bit more animations I understand why there's not an animation for every enemy because I think that does get a bit repetitive but in booting up doom 2016 I'll surprise by how quick the glory kills are

like it's not like they're fucking five seconds for each of them like it is go in snap neck go in snap neck right like it we are fairly quick I would have like to see just a little bit more Um, I have another super chat from ghostly icon who says Xcast, baby. Off topic, they should really remake SkyRen release it a year before Old Scroll 6. And no, Andy, I'm not doing mobs. Have no time for that bullshit. I need a real release.

Mobs. Yeah, Andy. Stop talking shit about the mobs. Yeah. Mods maybe? Oh. Like, to Mod Skyrim, maybe? Because they spelled it M-O-B-S.

No, we know they're after you. We know you pissed off. I mean, I know what you mean. Yeah, mods can be a pain in the ass. Whenever I see Skyrim looking amazing, they're like, we have 4,000 mods in here. Like, ugh, no, thank you. Yeah, my final thoughts are the game is easy recommendation.

So much freaking fun. Go, I mean, game pass, obviously, massive. Oh, yeah. Holy shit. That's insane. It's insane. And I just also wanted to shout out the art team, because every detail and,

corner of this world is just so perfectly art directed. There's so many little things that you will see for two seconds. It reminds you of like watching a studio jibbley movie where the most insane painting you've seen is on the screen for two seconds and it's gone forever after that. And there's so many awesome props and like not I guess art designed but also for like level design purposes. There's a really

a moment where you're in your big Atlin mech and the mech puts his hand on a cliff and suddenly you're out of the mech as the Doom guy again and you're running on the arm and it's just like God this shit looks so fucking good the art team just really

really popped off and yeah I think this game rocks play it if you have time, play it if you have money play it if you have Game Pass easy recommendation everybody thank you for joining me on this episode of the Gamecast Paris where can people find you You can find me at Gamer Tag Radio.

You can find me every now and again here. Write it Kind of Funny. And you can find me on my YouTube channel. Don't ask me URL because I never remember. It's my name. Just look up my name. Just look it up. You'll find it.

Remember, we talk about the biggest reviews, reviews, and topics of video games live on YouTube, Twitch, and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, please support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows to ad-free, watch us record them live, and get a daily exclusive show.

So you can catch the games cast after this, which is another awesome deep dive into the Elder Scrolls online, talking about the stuff that they cut from the game, which is going to be super interesting. And then after that, the big Death Stranding Stream, where Snowbike, Mike, and Roger McCarty. Screencast after that? Yeah. Yeah. Andor? Oh, my bearer was talking to me about Andor. Dude, I have no time for this show that I really, really want to watch.

Yeah. Can't wait for that. Should I marathon it? Dude. Now that I'm done with Doom the Darky Because I was going to finish Expedition 33 Oh you should finish

Oh god there's too many good things A glut of good content out there right now Can I make an admission before we leave I'll say this publicly? Oh no I've not played Expedition 32 Oh no And the podcast

End it I beat it last time for the second time I was like God this might be a This might be a 10 actually I was probably wrong Would you give it? It is insane to everyone Everyone is universally loving this game

and I've not played it yet, so I got to find time. Thank you so much for watching, everybody. We love you all. Take care of yourself. Take care of each other. And we'll see you on the next games cast. And then again, big death-stranding stream today where Stomach Mike will be on a marathon walking for however long it takes.

72 hours, hopefully. We'll see you next time, gamers. Goodbye.