Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Everybody's Golf VR is a Dating Sim? - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 223

Episode Date: May 27, 2019

Hurry to http://upstart.com/kindafunny to find out HOW LOW your Upstart rate is. For a total of $75 off your first 3 boxes visit http://greenchef.us/kinda75 The crew talks about Andy's flirting experience in Everybody's Golf VR, their early impressions of Dauntless, and much more. Time Stamps - 00:00:06 - Start 00:06:02 - Andy - Everybody’s Golf PSVR 00:22:06 - Dauntless 00:41:19 - Ads 00:44:50 - Fran - Beat Saber Oculus Quest 00:56:54 - Andrea - Oculus Quest And Oculus Rift S 01:01:38 - Lone Echo 2 01:02:47 - Asgard’s Wrath 01:04:22 - The Division 2 Raid, Operation Dark Hour Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's good, everybody, and welcome to the first ever episode 223 of the kind of funny games cast where three, sometimes four best friends gather around. Fucking shit. You know what? I was so nervous. I was going to screw this up that, of course, I screwed it up. I'm Andrea Renee, joined by the Best Hair of the Business, Mr. Fran Marabella. Thank you, Andrea.

Oh, yeah. Honestly, it's kind of a three-way tie for Best Hair at this table right here. had a rough night. You can't tell with the hair because it always looks messy. And the best video game journalist in the business, Andy Cortez is here. What's up guys? All the scoops. Whatever you need to know, let me know. Hot scoops and breaking embargoes.

I just realized that we do shows together sometimes and we're frandria. But if we ever do it, we're frandy. Now, we've got options. I know all three I tried. Friendry, Andy. Maybe. Well, I'm cool, Andy. Don't forget. Oh, that's right.

What are you? I don't know. He's just Andy. Yeah, I'm just Andy. Just Andy. Just Andy. Nitro rifles, what people call me. Welcome, everybody, to the Kind of Funny Gamescast. This is where we talk about video games that we've been playing,

and sometimes we discuss deep and meaningful topics around video game culture as well. We want to give a big shout out to our Patreon supporters at the Silver Membership or above. You guys are watching the show live right now as we're recording it, and you get the show three days early with those exclusive, pre-end post shows. If that sounds like a fun time to you, head on over to patreon.com slash kind of funny games and another big thank you and shout out to this month's Patreon producers, James Hastings and Mohamed, Mohamed. Of course, if you aren't part of our fantastic Patreon community, you can still watch us Mondays at YouTube.com slash kind of funny games

and on roosterteeth.com. Plus, you can also search the Kind of Funny Games cast on your favorite podcast service. Hit that follow or subscribe button and then you'll get to listen to us all the time, wherever you are at World. work at the gym. It's like you've hosted before. While you're driving. You're pretty good at this. Oh, thanks, Andy.

I appreciate that. Hastings, by the way. You ever go to Hastings? Is that in Minnesota? Hastings, it's like a store. It was a store back in the day. Very similar to like a Sam Goody. Oh.

I don't know if it was like maybe only a Texas only thing. I would have been, well, really? There's stuff like that. I forget I lived in Cincinnati for a while. There's a store I'm forgetting, but it was only around that area. Got it happened. Seems like everybody would happen. Hastings was like bookstores.

like slash CDs slash video games part of the family like inheritance I just googled Hastings store Yeah it looks like it I mean it looks like a Like an entertainment store

That sells books movies And video games Yeah And they had a They I think they had snacks there But then they shut down Back with the whole recession and stuff Really sad stuff

Is this all just because his name It's James Hastings Yeah just reminded me of Haystings Because I'd go there and like I don't know It wasn't my favorite place to look for games or CDs or whatever because, you know, I preferred I preferred Walmart. I don't know why.

Walmart was like my destination for one I want in Lego. Probably because you could pick up toilet paper and Legos at the same time. That's true, yeah. But also, on those two things together. Also, I was like 11, so I wasn't super into buying toilet paper. I wasn't super into buying toilet paper. What are we talking about?

We are talking about video games and this week because Greg and Tim are both out, we've got the Motley crew for you here and we hope that you guys enjoy the show anyway of course they were in florida at the full sale university hall of fame week and a bunch of you from the looks of greg and tim's photos on instagram and twitter showed up to say hello

to them at the meet and greet so that's cool orlando out partying yeah i'm gonna be there winter park florida i believe was the exact name of the city is that correct oh it's in winter park i thought i'm not going to full cell back when i was like looking for art schools to go to it's good and i was no way i could ever do this like why just it was i ended up going to the art and suit anyway but The Fulsa was like the destination for when I was in high school looking for avenues to spread my creativity. Yeah. Yep. Looks like that partied, though.

Thanks, Kevin. They had a lot of partying, having it. Yeah, very jealous. They're having fun out there. I'm going to be out there in Orlando for GuardianCon. Very nice. July 4th, but that's a few months away now or less than. It's like a five weeks away.

Yeah, it's coming up fast. That's really cool. So GuardianCon started off is only like a destiny thing, right? And it's kind of branched out and through. It's like the looter shooter car now. They were going to meet at a restaurant bar or something and a ton of people came down. That was the first one that I missed. It was like a kind of funny meetup.

Exactly. Then it like blew up and now it's become bigger. It's had Fortnite last year. Borderlands is going to be there this year and a bunch of stuff. There's even more announcements. But above all, it's a charity-driven event. Oh, got it. They raise money for St. Jude's.

They do millions and millions every year. It's been getting bigger and bigger. So pretty exciting. What's like the average sort of draw there? The reason to go. Like thousands of people-wise? How many? I think it was a...

Usually it had been, I think, around 2 to 5,000 total. Across the days. Now, I don't know if it's going to break those numbers, but it's somewhere in there. It's not like massive. I do feel like it has been growing and it's becoming more of a, like, just a thing that normal gamers talk about it. Because I know it started off as a small con back in the day and I feel like kind of it's not like a household name. Yeah, it was destiny con the first year. That's what happened.

Oh, gotcha. said, well, hey, you know, if you could not use that name, and they went with Guardian Khan. But it's actually one of the best community events I've been to. It's just mostly hanging out and meeting people. It's driven around that versus playing games and all that stuff. Although that's becoming more of a thing. And tournaments has become more of a thing, too, like watching everything.

They had Fortnite last year. They had, I think they had PubG and they had Destiny. And so there's like a big arena or seating gathering that you can watch. Oh, okay. Interesting. Anyway, coming up. Sounds groovy. Andy. What's up?

Let's start with you. We've all been playing a little bit of VR this week, but if you guys caught Nick's Instagram post from last week, you may have seen Andy playing some Everybody's Golf on PSVR. Game not provided by PlayStation. I bought it. Good for you.

That you bought a game? You normally request a game from Greg Miller. But he's off in Florida vacationing. He's in the Key West, Florida Keys on his yacht, doing all this sort of fun stuff. Leisure boat. And so I was like, I don't really want to ask him, because I want to play this before tomorrow's games cast, right?

So I just bought the damn thing, $30. And I'm a golf fan, just, you know, an actual golf fan, not just golf games. And everybody's golf kind of swept the kind of funny studios, right? Like all of us were playing it. We were all super into it. We played it several times on stream. And back in the day, I was a huge fan of, like, Tiger Woods on Wii and shit like that. the Wii Motion Plus

back when I was dominating Longhorn Landing in Austin, Texas. The motion plus, that connected on the bottom. Yeah, you had the motion plus it added like that extra dimension or whatever. I've always been a fan of golf games. And so I love everybody's golf. VR just seems like, holy shit,

this could be really, really neat. Go ahead. No, I'm just saying, I can't wait to hear what you have to say about it, because I didn't know this about you. I'm a golf fan too. I stopped playing many years ago, but I used to go out around here.

I loved it. I'll pay like once a year maybe. Yeah, I used to play like, you know, whatever, once a month in the Easter, but it's been many years. I would be awful. But regardless, I love it. It's so much fun. I reviewed a ton of the Tiger Woods games on GameCube, and I used to play links. I think it was called links on, you know, windows and all that.

Golf games, you know, in video games, they've always been a great demonstration of like the technological prowess of the hardware. So anyway, I've always been super into them. The coolest thing was on. simulation. Right. Yeah. The coolest thing was on, I believe the Xbox 360 version

back in the day of Tiger Woods where it was one of the first game face where you took a photo of your face and you uploaded it to their side or whatever. And that one is like still the best one that I've seen to this day because I feel like it hasn't gotten any better since then. I don't know why.

The feeling of that one. I forget if that was the one where you could add the top spin yet. Was it more realistic? Remember when you could like... It was just 360. Yeah. Okay.

But they all became cross. platform like it was on everything else but it's funny I probably reviewed whatever when you're talking about yeah so everybody's golf VR it is it feels like it's a very like it's almost like diet to everybody's golf like it's the VR component that you're kind of used to where you know games come out and then you kind of get the VR version and it doesn't yeah it's not like the whole game um the there's no walking around kind of your your home grounds or whatever. It's just you pick your course. I believe there's three courses, but the way they sort of implement progression is that you can only start off hitting three holes at a time.

So it's like you do three and then you're done and you do three again. And eventually if you do that enough, you'll become level two and then you unlock nine holes or whatever. And it's just, it's a kind of interesting way for them to kind of put more hours into the game instead of just giving you 18 holes from the start. Yeah. I think it controls really well. I enjoy the way it controls. It's super immersive. It was really funny yesterday because we had the windows open

because it was kind of hot back there. And I'm like on the ground, looking at how the green moves, and like I'm seeing the wind blow and I'm feeling the breeze hit me from the open window. And I was like, Joey, this is so realistic right now, dude. This is awesome. I think it's great.

I think I would have bought it regardless just because I love golf games anyway. But in VR, it really is kind of an added treat to where you, the swinging feels natural. Well, in a way, you don't ever want to go like a full golf swing. You kind of just, it's kind of like on a, I remember on Tiger Woods golf back in the day with the Wii moat. You didn't have to do a full screen. You could just go like with your wrist. And it would, the speed and everything would kind of. I played golf.

One of my favorite golf games of all time. The simplest of golf games, but I mean, that's what you do. You chees it. Just a flick of the wrist. Yeah. But this, you know, I like getting into it. I like feeling like I'm standing there or whatever. But it don't expect like an actual golf swing to work here.

I do think that it's not like a Rory Maca Rory game. No, no, no, no, no, no. What's up? No, I was just like agreeing in general. The swing is one of the problems I had. I'll wait until. Yeah. I still think it works pretty fine.

It could have been camera placement. I was having camera placement issues. And the room was bright because the windows are shining, which can cause an issue. Yeah, it's hard for the VR unit to catch that little blowing ball or whatever. Yeah, we should have drawn the sheds, actually. But I'm definitely enjoying it.

Again, I think we just unlocked to the second course, and I just unlocked the second caddy Lucy. Still does kind of like the little kind of silly things where, you know, the very attractive caddy is kind of talking with you. And here's the weirdest thing. Very busty, many skirted Japanese style. You know, they're both Japanese.

You missed the best. You haven't even experienced the best part yet in this fucking game. Oh my God, I can't believe this is even a feature. Okay. So, you know, the cat, oh, and it's not a style. It's not stylized from the standard of everybody's golf. Because everybody's golf, the one that came out last year, I believe, the characters were a lot more. Oh, yeah, that's right.

They're more. Cartoony, big head. tiny bodies. That's right. Like Me's. These are real catties. They're a lot more similar to Me's. This one is still not fully realistic, but the, you know, the women have like bigger eyes.

And they look like anime characters almost. They have a lot more big features. Yes. Yeah. Than you would expect. Yeah. But they're, but they're human. They are human proportioned, right?

You know, they're not like these weird kind of, you know, scary, stylized creatures, which I think works. Scaricatures. Because, I mean, even, any time. That's perfect. You're fired. I just gave up. That's perfect. Anytime any one of these caddies would like walk up to me, like they walk up to you and then they bow and like I would get scared just because I'm just like, oh, like VR is kind of freaky.

Yeah. Yeah. They're right up in there. And they're in the room with you. That's the thing you had to remember that again, it's not like playing on the TV. They're right there. Like you might walk up to you. Yeah.

Like when you go off, you walk up to the front desk, right? And you like reserve your thing. And there's a woman right there. And you see the menus and they're like, what do you want to pick? What course do you want? It's literally like, that's what it was like. When I logged in, Andrea, if she was the person at the front desk, it was like this and the menu is here. And I actually had to like, yeah.

I had to back off. It's kind of freaky, yeah. My audio's all over. And so you end up, you pick, you know, whether you want three. The more you progress, I think we're at like level eight now or whatever. But the weirdest thing happened yesterday where I'm enjoying the game, having a fun time. And then my caddy, I think her name was like, me, Riku or I forgot, I forgot her name. RICO, I forgot her name.

Anyway. In the middle of a match In the middle of me like doing a little three-hole course or whatever She said something to you She goes Do you want to come with me to enjoy the sights of the course? And the game stops you stop golfing Oh you said yes of course

I mean it's cute right I'm single now guys come on And And suddenly you are on like a balcony Overlooking one of the Vist and this is the view, like, you know, pretend you're the player. The view is like her like this, right? So Andy has now turned around and put his butt to the camera.

And she's just like looking and she's like, and she turns around and she's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, it's like, and you're just kind of like she's looking over her shoulder very coyly. You're just enjoying this moment on this balcony and you just stay there and you can move on. In everybody's golf? In everybody's golf, I could not believe what I was saying. It was so bizarre. I do believe it because it's Japan.

I mean, I hate to say that it's still true. But I expect the caddies to just be, you know, attractive because that's a very Japan thing. But like the fact that like we went on this, we on this date and like, just I didn't ask, I didn't even try to kiss her. What's the tipping situation? I don't know.

I have no idea. It was so bizarre. Andy, I had a question. Yeah. It was a three whole course. I'm getting a four whole course. You know what I'm saying? I got it.

I'm going to make it worse. Uh-huh. I'm just curious You know whether you want to spend say two minutes there with her or 20 I think you can spend it a lifetime I felt like it was like time So you can stay there and watch her for as long as you need Yeah in that moment

As long as you need yeah Okay And you can get up right up closer It's very Wow I couldn't believe it I'm not sure what to make of that You need to experience it to believe it

Because I like I even now I feel like I'm lying But I'm not I believe it, but in the very little amount I played, like I was having trouble, like, figuring out the swing, and it was taking me a while. And they started talking to me. Like, it was very, like, chitter-chatter. Very cute, pretty accents.

Yeah, like little developing a minor relationship with you. So now I could see there's a little bit of that going on. I just didn't expect that sort of thing to happen. And so that's right. When you log in the game, can you choose a gender? And, like, there's no reverse scenario. Is there like? No, no, no, no, no.

There are no, I don't believe there are male caddies. Like if Andrea wants to get like a hot guy caddy, like is that? I don't think so, no. What bullshit? Yeah. Seems like a one way to be okay with it if I could like get some coy over the shoulder. I don't know for sure. I don't know for sure. I believe there are four caddies. I've unlocked two of them. I just unlocked Lucy. She's a little bit taller, right? A little bit more intimidating to me as a human being.

But still like very cute, right? But I unlocked a third color option for Riku. I forgot her name. And we just developing this bonnet. And at this point, it's like, who's going to be my favorite? You know what I mean? I'm only laughing because you're clearly getting attached to these characters and you're single and like you're in a VR world, like just getting like in relationships with these caddies.

It's really fun. And that's the new movie. It reminds you of like a black mirror episode, honestly. Oh, well then. But again, the game is fun. I, you know, aside from all the other cool really like horny stuff, the game's great. I like, it does this really cool thing where kind of like,

like a normal golf games, you can look at the higher bird's eye view. Yes. And so that feels really neat because you're... You're looking at yourself. Yeah, it's really cool. You're like God's eyes from above looking down at you on the course, right? I feel like I'm an attack on Titan or something like that. Yeah, or you're in like a Titan.

Yeah, so like you get, you know, you go up into the sky and you see and you get to choose where you wanted to go or whatever. I definitely enjoy the gameplay. I got several tweet... I tweeted out yesterday I was playing and I got several replies of like, how does field? Does it feel gimmicky? It doesn't. It doesn't really feel arcady or anything like that. Okay. You can still do the thing in everybody's golf where you choose

the cup to be like a tornado cup. So like if you don't hit it well, there's a tornado in the cup that kind of sucks the ball in or whatever. Oh, that sounds great. Like cheats. It's like bumper bowling kind of. Yeah. Okay. I'm into that. But I just play, you know, I play standard because I'm a decent golfer. I'm not horrible, but I'm, you know, still pretty bad in real life, IRL. I'm trying to look up a video and see if I can.

see the date the caddies the date with the caddy yeah yeah so far I just see the busty caddy I don't see the date with the caddy and they have a British side and they're just super sweet and like oh line up the pot now you know you're so adorable

it's good stuff have you played any other golf VR games before this I haven't because there's some I guess on there's Rift and Oculus I haven't no or five I mean maybe but I haven't had the chance so this was my first

experience in golf VR, which is, you know, going back to the technology aspect, it really is, it's, I can't wait for them to perfect this. Yeah. It has a ton of potential. It's, it's, I mean, I think even right now at this early stage, it feels great. And even, like, there's the cool thing that I do, like, when I'm actually golfing, we're like, I'm about to, like, I'm preparing the putt and then I'll, like, get down on and, like, look at how the green is lying, you know, and it tells you anyway, but it feels

cool to, like, see it from that perspective. And, you know, I think it's awesome. I think they did such a great job with it. Again, it does feel kind of like feature incomplete. Like there's no real story except for the relationship you're building with these women. But there's no like creative player. There's no progressing through. You know, one of the things I love about playing, I believe Mario Golf on like super, or no,

I think it was like Game Boy Color. Was that like you're the new golfer on the block and you got to like, it was kind of like Pokemon meets golf where you go to this course. and this golf leader's like, hey kid, like I heard you're a challenge for me and not today and then you play it in and it's like it's awesome. Here there's none of that. It's super stripped down.

But I think that could also... You just go in and start golfing. That could just be more approachable for somebody that wants a more simplified game. It's like when I played NBA on Switch, NBA 2K on Switch, where you know, the Switch has none of the story stuff and I was so happy because I'm I've just had it with the story modes

on NBA 2K like playing on PS4 and stuff. So on Switch is just All games. Here it's just, you just go off, you pick the course, you pick the caddies. The wind mile per hour, you pick whether you want the courses to be mirrored or not. Yeah. And you pick your caddy, yeah. So exactly, not a ton of option.

Fall in love. Yeah. This is riveting. Rividing. Yeah, so I. So as far as I've seen, no male caddies, I'm sorry. I wouldn't kick a female caddy out of bed, all right? Yeah.

So that's fine. I mean, you saw him. But still. You know, you should give... In all fairness. Lucy was a looker. Give dual gender options or even multi-gender options. It's not a bad thing.

Shall we move on to the next thing? If I can, real fast, I know it only have so much time. But what, do you know if you can play with the controller using button taps? You can't, no, button taps, I don't think so. I think you could just use the dual shock as like a swing thing. Oh, you have to keep swing? I was hoping you could play with just buttons. Because what I was going to say is I really like the immersiveness of it.

Yeah, I'm not like all these games. Like, it's so immersive. The swing's not. going to feel real and you're going to slice it when you don't want and I like it that it's there and actually it's a ton of fun I could see playing it with friends and passing the headset around you know no multiplayer that's the problem oh

there's no multiplayer you can't play online against anybody you'd have to create your multiplayer let's be honest how many people are going to be in the queue to play online multiplayer in a PSVR game ask firewall yeah online I actually think it could be fun in the same house as long as you could watch the person play and then change the headset out of it seems like a pain in the ass yeah because you would have to recalibrate

Every time you take the headset off. I would have to constantly have my Neutrogena oily wipes and like, I get a very oily face. You know what I mean? Gotcha. Anyway, I did dig it as well. It seems a little featuring complete. But that's too bad that you always have swing. I would enjoy it more if I could actually just button tap it.

I can't even confirm that. Because the immersion is cool. Because I know you can use a dual shock. I don't know if it requires you to swing the dual shock or actually buttoned. Yeah, I saw that it let you choose the controllers and I didn't try the other option. But I dug it too. It was neat. It's cool.

It makes me want a PSVR, honestly. because I enjoy standing there and getting some activity instead of just sitting down on my ass. It's still like graphically, there's such a long way to go, but it still looks pretty decent. It's funny like it looks like an Xbox 360 game to me still. Play with the window open.

A lot of VR games do though. Just because of the way that they are designed. But okay, I'm putting a pin in this. Good fine. Let's move on to Dauntless. So Andy, this is the other game that you have been playing. I talked about Dauntless last week on the show. Of course, it launched this week.

And they announced right before the launch. It's the first console game to launch with true crossplay between Xbox 1, PS4, and PC for Epic Game Store, which is fantastic. In fact, the only third game to have crossplay between PS4, Xbox, and PC joining... It's a new frontier. Fortnite and Rocket League. But this is pretty cool. So what do you think of Dauntless so far, Andy? I think it's really...

As somebody who enjoyed Monster Hunter, I feel like it's... I feel like it's more user-furt. friendly in a way. Yes, I agree. The hub world is, it reminds me a lot of... Ramsgate. It reminds you a lot of playing World of Warcraft back in the day. Like going up to NPCs and well met traveler.

And then they have like their own dialogue box that you want to read. Or you just don't read like most people in, you know, games like that. You accept quests. The quests are pretty straightforward. I do feel like a lot of the worlds that you travel to just have kind of like pallet swaps. Like I know they're different worlds where you want to go take down a... Well, it's all part of the same shattered aisle. Yeah, but you want to go take down like a frost behemoth.

And the Frost behemoths world kind of just looks like a white version of the fire behemoths world. Like I, there's not a whole world design is a little. There's not a whole lot of variation, except for the fact that like it's all different colors and like the grass is green here. But this one that's kind of volcanic. But this one, it's what they still feel very samey to me. And it could just be because the world is laid out in a certain way where, it's obviously very open it kind of has to be very open

I see what you're saying in order to have these big arenas I do think that they did a great job with a lot of the behemoth animations it's really fun and super creative my problem with so far is I think that I'm too early in right now to they did such a great job

I think with a lot of the attack variations to where it's so hard for me to even know what attack is coming you get into a rhythm with like Souls games and not that I'm a soul's player But like, I played games where, you know, you know, oh, that attacks this, let me dodge this way. Because it's gotten to the point where I'm so early on. And there are so many different behemots that I fought that I don't, I'm dying kind of a lot because I don't know the variation.

And I don't know what animation that thing is. And what animation is that attacking to do, you know? And it's going to take some time to get comfortable with your weapon combos and all the items that you can bring into the hunts with you. So for me, obviously the immediate comparison is Monster Hunter since I wasn't really a god-eater player. And it took me probably a solid 15 to 20 hours before I felt competent, not even confident in Monster Hunter. So I would imagine that Dauntless probably has a similar learning curve. Yeah, for sure. I think the movesets are really fun once you get the hang of square, square, and then you hold triangle.

and I've been using sort of the Kratos blade weapons. The chain blades. Yeah, the chain blades. Those are really, really fun and satisfying and they look cool as hell. Yeah. I've never been a huge fan of, like,

even when we played Monster Hunter World, I was never a huge fan of the big heavier weapons. Like the great swords and the hammers. I just, I never liked, once you get into an animation, you are stuck there and hopefully you hit the guy, you know?

I kind of never, I never dug that whole thing. And it reminds you of back in Dragon Age like Inquisition playing dual wielding. daggers like that's more of my style the sort of speed styles more of my thing the the paid stuff is kind of

interesting they do this thing where you unlock these things called cells I believe and the cells are kind of like the add-ons that you put on your armor they're like gems or augments yeah yeah and they you know will give you you know every time you get attacked

15% of blah blah blah you know that sort of shit they give you buffs yeah so so there's a way to there's a way to fuse cells to make them more powerful. You take weaker cells and you merge them together. Kind of like the gem system in Diablo where you would get the lower level gems and then combine

them together to get higher. Even in division two, like with some of the mods. I know you can like fuse mods and make, you know, whatever, you know, it does stuff like that. But there's an interesting paid element to it to where I can fuse two cells, but I have to wait 24 hours for them to fuse.

Or you can pay to have that process like I believe it's like immediate. I'm not sure if it's immediate or not. But it does speed up that process. That microtransaction is fairly common in free to play games, but I've never seen it in a game like Dauntless before.

It's traditionally just reserved for mobile titles. But I also don't think we've ever really seen a free to play game like Dauntless before, have we? Not that I'm aware of. And admittedly, I don't know enough about other big free to play games in the space, like Warframe, for example. I don't know

how they handle their microtransactions. So. Yeah. So far what I've seen, a lot of it is cosmetic. They're in season five right now, so the season five theme, they have their own battle pass. It's called like the Hunter Pass. It is called the Hunt Pass. Hunt Pass. And it's very similar to where, I guess the theme right now is sort of like a ninja

assassin, right? Like there's cherry blossoms everywhere. You can get upgraded armor and you look like a ninja. I believe last season was like kind of a Viking. sort of theme or something like that. So they do have seasonal things to kind of bring you back in sort of similar to what a lot of other games do.

Yeah, Fortnite. Yeah, Overwatch and all that stuff. During the winter, everything will kind of be covered in snow. You know, they do interesting things like that with the home world, with Ramsgate or whatever. I think it's cool as health as a free-to-play title. Like I still haven't paid anything and I think I'm maybe like seven to ten hours in

around that range. I'm having actually a lot of fun with it Like the other night I was I was streaming it And then I stopped and I took a shower And I was like I kind of want to like you know I really want this new upgraded armor piece You know it's very similar to Monster Hunter where You take down the Frost behemoth

Whatever the hell it's called and it has its own armor set Yeah And so you know you want the upgraded fire set So that when you go fight fire behemets You don't get damage as much because it's all like resistant to fire but then you want the frost weapon to take down the fire thing, you know. It has that hook.

That's really fun. I think the combat's a lot more flashy than Monster Hunter. Like I feel like the... The damage numbers falling off of the enemy definitely makes it feel a little bit more like action RPG in that sense. And the only real problem that I had with the combat, and admittedly I haven't played enough with it, was the missing reticule or reticle.

Redical. That's the word. I think sometimes I maybe use it as a bit of a crutch. Sure. And I perhaps just need to practice a little bit more. My weapon of choice is the repeaters because I like ranged weapons. Unlike you as well, I don't traditionally favor heavy weapons like the great swords, axes, the hammers of those types of games. But so far I've been enjoying it. I just really love the customization that they offer because I think in a game like that,

that's a live service game that you're going to be spending. a ton of time with your character, especially in a third person game, we get to see your armor and your character model a lot. Having such a diverse set of customization options. The dye system is really neat. It's great, yeah. I haven't really unlocked a whole lot as far as that goes because I know that there, a lot of that is tied to micro-transactions.

And I'm normally the type of player that, like, if I put 10 hours in a game, I'm like, all right, let me give you some money. Like, I've had fun with this free game, you know, let me reward you a little bit. So I might look into the whole dying system there. But I do, again, don't expect Monster Hunter World with a bunch of cutscenes or like there's not going to be. It's very narrative light. Yeah, it's very narrative light where the only real narrative there is is like at the start of the game you have a cutscene. And then you talk to NPCs in the world that just stand there and say, ah, you're back or whatever.

Real quick, just to chime in on that, I've never once listened to any of the monsters. Hunter like cutscenes. Oh, for sure, for sure. And I paid probably 80 hours. I, like, I hated them. Yeah. Oh, of course. The narrative Monster Hunter wasn't exactly, like, you know.

But, and so that may be a favorable thing for some people. One thing that it does, that I do miss from Monster Hunter is going into Monster Hunter and just go into the free roam mode. But you can do patrols here, but you're still on that time limit. You still need to take down a certain monster. Oh, you're out on a point. And Monster Hunter World was my first Monster Hunter. So I don't know if the prior Monster Hunters did that to where you could free roam, but one thing I miss is like...

Like going on an adventure kind of a thing? Yeah. One thing I miss about Monster Hunter World was the level design to where you're going... There's a lot of scaling. There's a lot of elevation differences and stuff like that. And one of the coolest things, I think, in just video games, period, is seeing two monsters fight each other. When they just happen upon each other and you get to suddenly you're in Jurassic Park and you're watching these two giant things, ignore you. He would raffle us, taking on literally anybody.

It's so badass. So good. And like there's none of that here because the only other living thing besides you and the NPCs, or not the NPCs, besides you and your teammates are the behemoths. And there's just one of them there. There's not even like small enemies. No, there's nothing like that. There is a monster hunter though, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of little smaller animals in the world. Like you're kind of just like in this open world area or whatever. In these shattered island like sort of floating things, you're going to that island to take down that behemoths specifically. So again, it's free to play though, so you can't really expect a lot of features like that. Also, I think, you know, comparing it to Monster Hunter is not necessarily fair because Monster Hunter's been around since the early 2000s. Oh, of course. You know, and Phoenix Labs is a relatively small studio compared to Capcom.

And so they just did not have the same amount of funding that a Capcom game would have and, you know, the years of learning. But that being said, I'm with you that the world does feel a little bit empty. And hopefully, you know, over time, they'll continue to add art assets and diversify the NPCs and add in more creatures and things like that. So, and that's the beauty of it being free to play is that you don't feel like you're paying $60 for a game that's like half baked at launch because you're not paying anything. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I'm feeling very left out on this conversation. I've been wanting to, what I mean by that is I haven't played Dauntless.

I haven't got to play Monster Hunter. I've always wanted to. I can only play so many games, man. I'm just like, say this all the time. So I meant to save this for the show. So yeah, I broke embargoing it the other day. Unknowingly. I heard about this.

I wasn't even going to bring it up. Unknowingly. I'm super jazz to play and I'm like, oh, I have the game a day early before it comes out. Greg slacked me the code. And my first thought is like... And didn't slack you the embargo information? Well, no. My first thought is like, well, there's no embargo information.

But also, this game's been out forever. So there probably isn't even an embargo. Because of the beta and stuff. Let me just play the game, right? And I'm like super excited and like, oh, like, I have a lot of viewers because this game hasn't even come out yet. A lot of people are excited to see this brand new game. I'm creating a character. Even though it's been out sort of.

Character creation is kind of light as well, too. They do some interesting things with like you pick the character's face. And then you pick masculine or feminine body. And the face kind of stays the same, but only like the jaw features will kind of like straighten out if you want. like a hunkier, you know, hunkier looking dude or whatever. But the, yeah, the hairstyles and again the facial features, the facial hair.

Let me have the mustache just connected from the beard, guys. Come on. It's... Disconnect. It's 2019, right? We all want to feel included. But, no, I'm just kidding. So I'm done with the character creator and there's a couple people in my chat there are like, how do you have this

game? And that's happened before, whenever I'm playing a game that, like, the streaming embargo is ready to go. Like, it's up, So I can stream it, but it isn't out yet. And I've had people pop in the chat and be like, yeah, like, hey, how did you get this game? Like, oh, you know, I requested a code. Like, oh, cool, that's awesome, you know, whatever.

So there's a couple of people, like, in my chat asking me how I got it. And then one of them was like, hey, read so-and-so's message. You're, like, I'm not saying that I'm ignoring them, but, like, read their message. So I was like, okay, chill out. What the fuck, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, sometimes you get people in your chat, like, read this person's message. You're like, dude.

Yeah, like, don't. So I saw the message And it was like, how do you have this game? And I was like, oh, well, I work in the industry And I requested a code, so that's how I got it. And I'm just going along my merry way. And it's like, I'm the community manager. And this game is embargoed until tomorrow

at 7 a.m. Pacific time. Whoops-see. I want to clip it. Is there a clip of that when you realize? Fucking kebabs clip the shit out of it. You kidding me? Cabob said it to me. And so I'm just like, oh, fuck.

And immediately my body gets super hot. You know what I mean? And it's the same feeling you get when, like, you show up to class in high school or college and they were like, all right, turn in your essays. You're like,

what fucking essay, dude? I didn't know those. My body got super out. You're in your underwear all of a sudden. Oh shit. So immediately I go to the home screen on PlayStation and I close out of the game.

And I text Greg and I'm like, hey, there's an embargo. Whoops. A little problem. And Greg is like, stop streaming. Stop streaming.

I was like, oh yeah, I cut off the game. So Greg called me while I'm streaming. And I'm like, yeah, so a couple of community managers are in here and they told me,

you know, the games under embargo. as he started like, well, fuck, that's my bad. I didn't put the info in there. So then I move on. I go to play Overwatch, but then Greg texts back. He's like, I'm looking at the email. There's no embargo information on the email at all.

That's not true. I have the exact same email and there is an embargo in the email. Oh, really? So Greg's a liar. Greg is lying too. Wow. So anyways, here's the thing that might have been, it might have been confusing, though. And it was confusing to me.

I had to double take. At first, I panicked because I gave preview coverage of Dantlis. And then I got the second email with the second embargo. and I was like, oh shit, do I have to pull these videos down? I was like, no, I got access to a preview build, which was not the final build. And also, we didn't show any gameplay. Got it. And then the second email with the code for pre-launch, very clearly in bold, says all covered is embargoed until 7 a.m. Pacific

time on Tuesday, May 21st. This includes written impressions, video, social posts, etc. Whoops. Yeah, so. Got to read those embargoes closely. So I just felt like such a fuck. And like, the stream started off. With me being like, I answered somebody's question like, oh, Andy, how'd you get the game?

It's not out yet. I was like, guys, I'm the number one game journalist, guys. Like, I got the scoops on everything. I could say that. I was fucking around. I was like, I can play whatever fuck I want, guys. Come on, you don't think I'll play Death Stranding 3 yet? Of course I have.

Yeah, yeah. And so I'm just talking shit. And then that happens. I'm like, oh, my God. I'm so embarrassed. Yeah, I was so embarrassed. But then I ended up, you know, playing it yesterday. And for the last two nights I've been playing it.

And yeah, I'm digging it a lot. I think if you are not looking to pay money and you want to play a game that still isn't super behind the paywall like I haven't run into any issues like that yet I think it's a lot of fun especially when you're with a good crew

that like is coordinated and stuff like that I think it's fun of shit you could still queue with randoms of course and which is always weird because you start off in the level and then you can go farm materials

or sometimes your teammates just go fight without you. And yesterday this happened to me to where I'm farming and they were fighting and I swore to Christ for like eight to ten minutes. I didn't know where they were. Yeah, because if they don't fire a flare for you to see, then it's going to be very difficult for you to find them

because they, as of when I played, they didn't have tracks, animal tracks in the game. And so it's really hard to hunt the behemoths. I don't know that was in the game. If you're not, wait, what? I don't know if I've seen animal tracks. No, right, because they're not in the game. Oh, oh, I thought you meant now they would be.

No. As far as I'm aware, they're still not in the game. It's something I asked the team about when I did my preview is like, is this something you guys are considering? Because right now, like, if you get separated from your team and you're not, if you're one person is close to the behemoth and the rust are far back, you'll miss all of the clues that show you where the behemoth has gone. Like birds flying in the air or trees moving or what have you.

and then you're kind of screwed. I was like, my team's got to be so mad at me right now because I cannot for the life any find them. Hopefully they would fire up a flare in case you were lost. You know what I mean? That's the problem with not being on comms and a co-op game, right?

Sure, yeah. And you can turn on the mic, but I, of course, have like my, if I'm not playing with friends or people that I know I have my mic, on your stream especially? Yeah, got to be real careful. But I think it's really cool.

I do recommend people at least trying it out if you're into, if you've ever played Monster Hunter or have been sort of like tangentially interested in it. I think it's fun. And there's a lot of monster variation too. I've been really... 20 behemoth variations.

I've been impressed with all of them. Like everyone that I've seen so far, there's a lot of cool mechanics that I'm just, I guess I was just used to Monster Hunter where you're just kind of fighting a thing that maybe like melee's you, but I've fought a lot of them where there's like a fire one that shoots out a spread of fireballs

and you have to dodge them correctly at the right time. There's an electric one that shoots out, like these electric barbs and they charge up in the ground and then they shoot an electricity like orbit you and you have to dodge that like there's a lot of like not traditional sort of monster hunter combat in here

it feels more like a like you're I don't know like a what's the word I'm looking for like a shoot him up or something like that you know like a gun hell bullet hell sort of game you know it's really cool I recommend it yeah I mean I think I've heard nothing about good things and you know there's not a lot of I don't know any other free to play games like

in the genre, right? In the hunting combat genre? Like was God Eater ever? I don't know I know. No, God Eater's not a free to play game. It's a traditional retail release. So yeah, that's the nice part is there's like not a lot of competition. It's free to play.

That's what you should be looking at. I mean, of course, you can go buy Monster, but it's free. First compared to other free to play games and second, in the genre and there's just not much there. So I think it's great that it's out of. You can throw grenades. It's really cool.

It's satisfying. The combat's fun. And it's crossplay. Yeah. Oh, yeah. that's the thing too. And cross progression. I feel like I've been playing with mostly PC players,

except for like when I group up with a couple of the guys that I play with Tucker and Bushie. Like they're on PS4. But then for the most part, it's a lot of people on PC. I don't know if I've played with anybody on Xbox yet because I haven't, I don't know if there's an icon to indicate that.

If it's Xbox versus PS4. Probably not. Probably not. Yeah. Because the platforms wouldn't like that problem. Yeah. Interesting. This episode's brought to you by Green Chef.

Green Chef is a U. USDA certified organic company and meal plants include paleo, vegan, vegetarian, pescatarian, keto, gluten-free, and omnivores. That's a little something for me, for Kevin, for Nick Scarpino, for Gia Harris, for everybody under the video game son, as we say here. Gia and I have been using Green Chef for a while now. She made these breaded pork chops. Kevin, they were fantastic. You would have loved them so much. They were Italian breaded pork chops, and they were great.

Why don't you ever have me over? I don't know because I need to eat the pork chops. You know what I mean? So here's the thing. Very super, super easy to make. 30 minutes or less. I'm seeing her in the kitchen do this thing. Next thing I know, I get to watch TV, go in, eat the food.

Do I always watch TV? No, I say that I'm working. I'm really watching TV. But the food is really, really good. But when you work here, it kind of funny, watching TV kind of is the work sometimes. It gets really complicated. But Green Chef's expert chefs, design. flavorful recipes for your lifestyle that go way beyond ordinary substitutions.

You can let Green Chef do the meal planning, grocery shopping, and most of the prep for your week after, for you week after week. So you can save a ton of time, not need to worry about stuff. They'll just send it right to your door in this adorable little box. It's super easy to do. Usually I have to deal with that part. Like the box comes, I take it, bring it in, open it, break it all down, put it in the little sections that she likes to make it even easier for her.

But she has so much fun. She has so much fun reading the instructions. She has like a binder. She keeps all the recipes and I have a lot of fun eating it. For a total of $75 off, that's $25 off each of your first three boxes, go to greenchefe. US slash kinda 75. So that's for a total of $75 off.

That's $25 off each of your first three boxes. Go to greenchef. dot us slash kinda 75. Oh, fantastic stuff. I'm telling you. You got to try this. Next up. Shout out to Upstart.

As most of us have found out the hard way, getting into debt is easy. Getting out is hard, especially if your FICO score. FICO. FICO. Every time. FICO score isn't great.

Sky high interest rates can make it incredibly hard for you to break out of the revolving debt cycle. Thankfully, now there's upstart.com. The revolutionary lending platform that offers smarter interest rates to help you pay off high interest credit card debt. Growing up, one of my closest friends had a lot of issues with this whole debt situation of the credit

variety. And this service really could have helped him out because although his credit score was pretty low, he had great education, was working consistently. And that's what Upstart looks at when they're trying to help you out with your credit. They make it fast, simple, and easy to check your rate in just a few minutes without affecting your credit score. The best part, once the loan is approved, most people get their funds the very next business day. That's the next day.

That's a pretty damn good deal. Over 200,000 people have used Upstart to pay off credit cards, student loans, fund their wedding, or just to make a large purchase. Free yourself from the burden of high interest credit card debt by consolidating everything into one monthly payment with Upstart. See why Upstarts ranked number one in their category with over 300 businesses on Trust Pilot and hurry to Upstart.com slash Kind of Funny to find out how low your upstart rate is. Checking your rate only takes a few minutes and won't affect your credit. That's Upstart.com slash Kind of Funny.

As we saw in Nick's Instagram video, you were playing Beat Saber on the Oculus Quest in the kitchen. Yes. So I wanted to try Oculus Quest, especially. I hadn't tried PSVR in a while. I've played Vibe in Oculus in the past. It's been a while since I've stepped into VR because I just can't play it at home, really. I mean, I could. It's just a lot.

It's set-ups a lot. I don't have a lot of space for it. And then I mostly only stream when I'm playing. And so I can't really. But listen, if you can play in the kind of funny kitchen, you can play anywhere. Yeah, seriously. That's right. Unfortunately, you can't stream Quest because there's just.

no video output. But what I will say is I was really impressed going from, it's just such a hassle. You know, I put on the PSVR stuff. I'm like, where do I adjust? And like the whole thing, it's fine, but it's a big production. Then I'm like, give me the headphones, you know, and I put on my headphones. I helped them with all the cords were all tangled. And the cords tangled. And then I'm, whatever you're. I stepped on the helmet or the, the visor cord and I'm plugged it all yesterday. I was like, God damn it. And it just goes black, too. I'm sure, right? So anyway, I wanted to play in the back to back as much as the fidelity and everything seems to be better on PSVR for obvious reasons. But I just put this thing on and right away it recognizes, you know, that which controller is which it was like showing.

So wait, let me take this step back. I put it on. The room stuff is cool. And thankfully you can see through a very low frame rate black and light camera. It's a little dizzying, but you get used to it. The pass-through camera is to me kind of a game changer. It is because you put it on and you're not like, I mean, you have to have this for VR from now on.

Absolutely. Some of the, I forget if, was it Viper. This is the apex pinging system of VR. But Oculus Invive, they have functionalities like that, I think. Because I've used it in other VR before, not PSVR doesn't have. But where you can. I know newer versions of it. You can see out of it.

I've tried older versions of Oculus. Exactly. Oh my goodness. Papa Nick is here with the chicken nuggets. Just putting it on and still being able to see. The first thing I did, I was like, wait, Is this actually fairly accurate? So I was like touching things to make sure I was like, okay, it's mostly what I'm seeing

is not like out of whack. It's one of the most-s-a-camera. Science fiction things. Yeah. Like futuristic things where it scans the room and you're like, oh my God, this is like the movies. So yeah, we heard Greg talk about this numerous times and put it in anyway. So I put it on, can see through it and it recognizes the controllers sitting on the

couch and it's like L&R. And I was like, you know, you just knew which one to pick up. and put them in my hands. And overall, it was very fluid experience. And then, yeah, like, I just, you know, went into the menus, started up eventually we figured out where Beat Sabre was. And, yeah, it's so cool that you can just draw freehand. It's not like, when I heard Greg describe it,

I still think in my mind that it's, like, gauging what a circle is and it's, like, autocorrecting. No, like, literally you can just draw whatever you want on a floor in this grid and set your space, and then it sets a sphere around or a sort of cone around you. Yeah, like the, I think it's called the Guardian system. The Guardian system. Yeah, and it's so cool that like, whatever you set,

it's going to tell you as soon as you start going outside of it. Yeah, it'll put like a mesh grid up in the game. But then I'm like, I'm like, wait, I'm like, where are the headphones I got to play? And they're like, you can just play it, of course. Yeah, because it uses audio that goes through your skull into your head. Oh, does it use that? I thought it was the, oh, so it is the. Well, I mean, there is a little bit of external too,

but what's great about it is that you can turn it down so you're not blaring music. to people around you, but it feels a really loud inside your head, almost like you're listening to headphones. If you have it turned on, like, all the way up, it is blaring out loud. It's very loud, yeah. I asked them in turn. And everyone will come over and be like, what's Kevin doing? We took a lot of video, Kevin.

So that's what I wanted. But they have the option where you can turn that down, but you can still hear it very well while you're inside the headset. Yeah. But whatever, we've heard people talk about a lot. It came out this week. wanted to finally try it, and it is a game changer. Like, it's, you can't wait for everything to catch up fidelity-wise, sound, you know,

sound needs to improve, all that stuff. But for what it is, it's really amazing. And if you want, like, a simple VR experience that you might just pick up and play for a little bit and set it down, I mean, it's the best I've ever used. Fidelity-wise, I did only play Beat Saber. But, yeah, like, that was a nice demo because it doesn't require a ton of fidelity. but it looked clean. Like everything looked good.

It didn't stand out as like, you know, low res or half-res. It just only had so much graphics horsepower. So it felt pretty good to me. I think the one critique I have so far is on the actual headpiece. It's very top-heavy. Part of it, I could probably cinch it a little better. But also there's no, I don't think there's a slide for the bottom or any. There's no way to like really get it cinch to your face.

where with PSVR, they got a lot of soft material in there. And once you adjust that... The screw in the back that... Yeah, it fits a little better. Of all of the headsets, Oculus Rift was always the most uncomfortable and the quest is even a little bit more uncomfortable for me. It was like uncomfortable for you? Is that because it was just heavy?

Yeah, so I have a pretty small face. And so when I wear the headset, I have to really crank the tightness in order to keep the lenses in a place where the image isn't fuzzy. and so I really have to tighten it across the top and across the back of the head. And to do that, it requires a lot of pressure on my face, which is why it's difficult for me to play VR for long periods of time. But overall, it was good.

I forget if it's $400 or $350. It's $3.99. It launched this week. And Oculus did send kind of funny an Oculus Quest headset, so just so you guys are aware. But they didn't send me one. They didn't, but I used it here. You used the one that they sent us.

In other words, I have no incentive. I mean. Is the... It's just disclosure for you. Do we know battery life? Don't know battery life. It's a great question. So it uses a USBC cord to charge,

which is great because it charges relatively quickly, but I don't know the total battery life. Kevin, you get an idea? Yeah, no. Unfortunately, I don't know the actual battery life. But I feel like I used it for maybe like 30 minutes, and it went down a substantial amount. My guess is it doesn't have great battery life

with what it's pulling for how much is in there. In fact, maybe some of the weight you're feeling is from the battery. But what I will say is I only charge it for about... It says two to three hours depending on usage. Depending on the game, too, obviously. I played the sports game on it. Yeah. And it was very basic.

Oh, and I had the volume blur. All of that's going to be a factor. But let's be honest, you're not going to be in VR for two consecutive hours. Maybe not you. Oh, well, you're right. I don't know. Okay. You are right.

Not me. Put a chip in him. Andrew, I don't know. If everybody's going to be. Golf comes out and you can just look at caddies in there. I mean, Andy might be in there for a while. Just go on an extended date with your caddy. Just gave me caddy view at 2K20.

But I was going to say I charged it for a mere probably 10 minutes. It was fully dead because it was unplugged. And within upwards 10, 15 minutes at the most, I felt like it was 10 minutes. It was already almost 25% charged. USBC, man. USBC was crazy. So that was really good. So long short, I would recommend it if you don't mind the lower fidelity and you don't

the hassle. Actually, it was really, it crossed my mind to, like, pick it up just for Beat Saber. And what I also really like about it, if you have friends or kids and family members, it's like, as evidence by what happened today, it's like, go over there. As long as you have enough space to play and you can go anywhere with it and you can just walk away. You don't need a thousand to $2,000 computer. Yeah, but you can walk away with it. It's like go in the basement, go use it there. Go any dark space or no.

I guess you could probably play it outside, couldn't you? Well, we've also played it. No, maybe not. We played it in the studio. Can you play it outside? Yeah, why wouldn't you? Well, if it's too bright, I don't know. No, I think it's fun.

We played with the studio lights on. I think the darkness is where you'd have a problem. Because there's no, there's no camera that is facing you to have the light issue. But what's picking up the ground? Isn't it infrared? Oh, yeah, maybe it's in. But there you go if it's too bright. Also, one more thing that I wanted to say, you were talking earlier that, like, other people can't see it.

See what? Oh, what's you're playing. I believe if you have. like a Chromecast you can cast it from your phone Oh you can go Wi-Fi So the piece that we haven't really talked about

is that the way that you can actually Connect and download games It's through the Oculus app on your mobile phone So you have to have an Android or an iOS device And then you install the Oculus app And you connect the Oculus app to the Quest And that's how you run the quest For most games or how you can

Update the software and stuff But you don't have to be connected to the app once you've got everything's set up. Yeah, so once you've got everything set up, you can just go into the app store on the... On the Quest. On the headset, yeah. Download games and stuff.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. Is there a Netflix app on that? Yeah, there is. So it launched this week with 50 plus titles, many of which were on the Rift, including Dance Central VR. Keep talking to Nobody Explodes,

one of my favorite VR games. The Climb, of course, we've got Beat Savor, which you've been talking about, vacation simulator, super hot VR, just to name a few titles. Moss is also on there, one of my favorite VR games from last year.

The most time I've ever spent in VR was with Moss. So I think that if you guys have been holding back on VR and you're interested, this is a great entry level. I think what's better about this than something like Samsung gear or even like a Google Cardboard is that it's certainly a step up visually and it doesn't require the substantial investment that are Rift S or an HDC vibe. would require, or even that a PSVR would require if you don't already have a PlayStation for.

Yeah, because you still need the pro, exactly. You need the camera. You need room for it to look at you, you know. Yeah, I just, I think the, so a PSVR is what, 300 now, right? Well, it depends. We did a deal of the day earlier this week that had it on sale for 180. Whoa, wow. Yeah.

Really? Holy crap. But sometimes that doesn't include all the. It came with Astrobot and Moss. But listen, those deals, those flashed. sales come and go all the time. So, but yeah, I think the retail is $299.99. Let me double check.

Yeah, might as well double check. Yeah, I just think, I think the wireless, you know, it being wireless and also the controllers are great. Like, I love the, I love the Oculus controllers. They're so good. They're probably my favorite of the three, like, over Vive, yeah. I really, I enjoy the feel of them. I enjoy the button placement, the sticks of them.

You forget about them a lot. It looks like brand new. It says on Amazon here, it's 21995. So $200 bucks. Nice. But yeah, so it's more expensive, but... But it's not portable. There's like a demo when you first get the Oculus going

where you can... It's one of those, like you put in a cartridge, you get to play a game, and it was like a shooting gallery game, and those... The controller makes it so... It feels so realistic. When you go to grab it, it just... It feels like you had a gun in your hand.

Dude, I'm like... Oh, sorry. No, sorry. I was just gonna say Super Hot was cool once I realized how to... Because it was for some I used it. Oh, yeah.

Like, I was like, I can't grab the gun because I thought it only had a trigger on it on the controller. So I'm like, trying to grab the gun and I'm like, in the game, you see your two hands. I'm like, what's wrong with my hands? Oh, yeah.

And then I realized just your thumb... Face buttons, yeah. There's a... Yeah, there's a second button for your thumb, which is, it's sitting right there. I didn't even realize. It's perfect, man. Yeah. Kevin, I'm really excited for...

This is not Oculus Quest. or Oculus Quest related, but I really want to try out Firewall with that new DLC that they're coming out with. I haven't even looked into that. I would love to do like a party mode of that. It's a pain of the ass. Yeah, it's a pain in the ass.

But it'd be cool. It'd be cool. Like, dude, firewall's so good. Yeah, it'd be really cool. Well, since we're still talking about Oculus, I'll talk very briefly about some of my hands-on that I got during Judges Week. Both Greg and I went to this event

during Judge's week where we got to try the Quest and the Rift S I go into a deeper dive in this week's episode of What's Good Games. If you guys want to hear more about it, about it, we got to play three games. The game on the quest was called Phantom Covert Ops by Sansaru. And we also got to play on the Rift S, which is like the upgraded version of the Rift, Asgard's Wrath, and Lone Echo 2. So Phantom Covert Ops was an interesting game where it's a tactical stealth, first-person shooter,

where you do on-water traversal in a tactical kayak. And these are all quests. This is just one game on the quest. Okay. The other two were Rift games. Okay. That's why you keep up. So I also like you went, huh, that sounds interesting.

It sounds like you named like six games. Right? So the idea is that you play like a covert soldier. So calm. Yeah, exactly. So calm. but like in a kayak. And so you're seated while you play this game

and you have like a traditional like kayak for and you have to row to the left and to the right with the controllers in your hand to move yourself through the world. And the rowing felt pretty smooth. You don't bob around a lot because obviously that would cause a lot of motion sickness in VR and you don't really feel any resistance

from the water which I liked because then your arms would get super tired. But I found it difficult to turn, just like it's difficult to turn in a real kayak. So I had some trouble there, but it was an interesting concept. You can stop in like high reeds and hide there. You can use, you have three weapons. You've got a silenced pistol. You have a sniper rifle and an SMG.

And so you can use them for various situations. You can use them to take out light sources to sneak around people and to shoot guards. You never get out. of the kayak. So it was a little interesting of an experience. Maybe you are just part man, part kayak.

Maybe. Maybe you just have like a bionic kayak for your bottom half. It was an interesting idea. Graphically, however, you could tell that it was on the quest

and not on the rift. Like there was a mark difference in the quality of the graphics. And I don't know if that's just because of the style of game because it's meant to be realistic.

It's simulating real plants, real water, like real humans, versus a game like a vacation simulator or a beat saber, which is just like all fantasy. Blocks of color. Right, exactly. And so that to me was a little bit off-putting because after playing a demo in the Rift S,

it was difficult to go down to the quest and see the downgrade in the graphics, especially since VR is difficult enough for me to play as it is because I get very nauseous in VR. That said, the traversal felt really good. The guns felt okay. The sniper was my favorite. So with the two Oculus touch controllers in my hands,

when I would raise my hands up to my face, like I was holding the barrel of the sniper and then like the stock of it, when I held it up to my face, it would aim down the scope. Oh, cool. Which was pretty cool. So it would like zoom in on the scope.

And could you do hip fire if you tried? You could do hip fire, yes. Not that you would want to with a sniper rifle, but you could. The fact that it distinguishes between the two is really cool. Based off where you have your hands. Yeah. Or differentiate.

It was a really cool feature. I did find that the stealth was pretty forgiving, which was nice. But once you attracted the attention of the soldiers that you were trying to avoid, I mean, you were pretty much dead. Yeah. I mean, the SMG was okay, but it had so much wobble because you're in a kayak. So like imagine trying to hold like an automatic weapon. when you're like in a kayak on water.

It's like pushing you back. So it was, that was a little weird. I would have preferred a crossbow. I felt like that weapon lends itself to a stealth FPS style of gameplay. Laser sight. Yeah. And then the silence pistol was rough because it was only iron sights. Oh gosh.

And so it didn't have, it didn't have the same like Zoom mechanic that the sniper rifle did. There may be upgrades later on. I didn't get a chance to ask the dev team about that. but an interesting title. Phantom covert ops. And then quickly the two other titles I got to play on the Rift S, Lone Echo 2. Did you guys ever play Lone Echo?

We played Echo Arena. Yeah, I think I played that with you. Yeah. That was so fucking. If that game, if a dumbed down version of that went to like the quest, holy shit, I'd be on that in the heartbeat. Because Loan Echo, it's more of a story-based. It is a story.

It's like a single-player story. So the characters are back. I didn't play through Lone Echo. I only played Echo Arena as. well. I think I played a demo of Lone Echo but never played it all the way through the story, but it essentially picks up, it's a direct sequel, picks up right where that game left off. I found the motion in that game because if you remember it from Echo Arena, at least there that floating through the world, it felt faster. Yeah. So I didn't get as sick. This one, you move a lot

slower and I just like, I had to stop the demo. Like I thought it was going to hurl everywhere. I was like, I just can't. I'm sorry. I can't play. I'm not great with moving either, but for some reason playing Echo Arena was totally fine. Yeah. I have no idea. Yeah, it's weird how sometimes certain games, a lot of that also has to do with if the frame rate is optimized for the headset or not. Little things like that, you don't necessarily notice if you're playing on a flat screen, but in virtual reality, if the frame rate isn't optimized, it can really affect your motion sensitivity. And then Asgard's wrath was, wow, what a surprise how absolutely gorgeous this game looked in virtual reality on the Rift S. So this game is action RPG. set in the world of Asgard, so of Norse mythology,

all the characters you should remember from Thor and from God of War. Kevin, we should try to copyright asgard. Everything is Marvel now. Yeah, good. Yeah, copy right. Good luck with that. Let me pull up my notes here. So you get to play as a variety of Nordic heroes, like Loki is one of the people you get

to play as. And there's large instances in the open world setting of Asgard that you get to play as. And they have this cool mechanic where it goes from being. being first person on the ground. You come across these totems in the world where you go into God mode where you pull way back in the world

and it's like a fixed camera. You can kind of look around in the level to help you solve puzzles or figure out which part of the level you need to traverse to move on to the next section. And I go into great detail about the fun time I had in my game

including finding a humanoid shark as my travel companion. So if you guys want to learn more about that, I do encourage you to check out this week's episode of What's Good because we have a couple more things I want to get to. Wow, it's a 30-hour game. 30-hour gameplay experience.

Yeah, full RPG in VR. And like I said, because it's on RiftS, the graphics looked fantastic. Yeah, it looks really good. Really did a good job with this. And they have this really badass, like Lady Viking you can play us. Anyway, I also wanted to talk, Fran,

about your power per hour grinding destiny too. Oh, man. Or would you prefer to to talk about Operation Dark Hours instead. Yeah, it's a tough call. I mean, I can talk about it. Yeah, because, you know, I've been playing both Division 2 and Destiny.

Like, that's a good idea. So maybe we talk about Dark Hours. Yeah, I think probably talking about the raid because we haven't got to talk about it on the show since. Yeah, we talked about it a little bit on games daily, but not much. Yeah. So, yeah, like you just like, your team, just like Greg and myself and a number of other kind of funny clan members went out last Thursday, sorry, Friday night.

and got into the raid and everything seemed fine at first you know and we clear the beginning of it and there's not going to be in spoilers but then you get into the first boss room and most everybody knows this by now. It was brutal. We've been talking about it on Games Daily

and stuff but they have a big problem that consoles because of the frame rate and the accuracy of what you can do with the controller and a bunch of things how much detail there is in an animation a weak point your chance to actually aim at those weak points

It seems like it's been totally optimized and built around PC and that performance. And those sirens are on our end. Yes. And I also want to take this opportunity. There may be some light spoilers for the raid. If that's something that you're trying to go into blind, just it's just your light spoiler warning. I mean, like, I'm going to talk about like the boss's name and like the mechanics and stuff. It's very minor is what I'd say.

Yeah. Because we haven't got, at least I haven't gotten past the first encounter. Yeah. Yeah, I wouldn't spoil maybe how to beat him if that's. What or do you know? Oh, I mean. Exactly. So it won't matter.

I mean, like it's a division boss. Yeah, you shoot him. But there are mechanics. We won't go. We won't go. But there are mechanics. It's not. It's a good point.

I would actually say you don't have to worry about sports as long as we don't go into how to get, you know, to him and weaken him. But anyway, long as very short, we have this big problem. Not many people have beaten the raid in particular on console. People are beating it now, but it took some 36 hours versus like five hours for the first clear on PC. and then how fast has it gotten to on PC you said? It's down to, I think, 23 or 24 minutes is the speed run for PC. And then I think the fastest console clear is three hours. Yeah.

So that's the difference we're dealing with here. I mean, they're both skilled players, teams, you know, that know how to do their buildouts. And so I'm disappointed with that. I went in pretty excited in the beginning, just sort of was a bunch of enemies. And I'm like, okay, but I feel, yeah, I did a good build. I felt good. We had an old team. And it felt good.

It felt big. and then you get in this room and it's got some mechanics to it. So that was interesting. I kind of expected it, I guess. It wasn't like a weird puzzle or anything. It's just sort of how you... It was super puzzle light.

It's a little destiny-esque, I would say, in some ways. I think they've caught some things. I think destiny is way more intricate with their puzzles. It is, but it did, like, frankly, it pulled a little bit from some mechanics in Wrath of the Machine. I mean, it could be coincidence, but whatever the case got in there, there are mechanics. I like that, and I was feeling pretty good.

But then you faced this boss boomer. and was just doing like no damage. Like a team of eight people like trying to crush him. And he would like, you knock him down and he gets up within like seconds. Yeah. And his-it wasn't fun. And the AOE for his melee attack is gigantic. So he's got this like almost looks like a mini gun, but not quite.

But it is like a Gatling gun style weapon. Vulcan Raven. And what he does is if you get too close to him and by too close, I mean if you're halfway across the room from him, he'll like punch it forward and hit you with it. And one of the whole mechanics that you have to kite him around the room and it's really challenging if it's your role,

if it's your turn to kite him around the room in order to get to the DPS phase because like the sprint mechanic in the Division II is not great, right? But somehow, despite the immense amount of armor and this gigantic weapon that boomers wearing and holding, he runs he runs hella fast. Yeah, I was

watching some of your stream and I was like, I thought he was just like a random batty. And I was like, why is this guy so fast? It's the most athletic man I've ever seen. Yeah. And it's unrealistic and that's a problem in the Division 2 at large is that a lot of their elites that are really heavily armored like that are incredibly nimble.

Like they're doing these spin moves and then they're rolling over tabletops. They're jumping down from high ledges without breaking a sweat. I'm like, your kneecaps would be broken in all of that armor. They got the best of the best. They got the best of the best.

But yeah, it wasn't what I expected and I don't know what's to come. How many more bosses? I don't really want to know the exact details. So I do want to do it on my own with obviously a team, seven more people. But man, like I had to go back and tried to redo a build

because I realized I was like, you're doubting yourself now. What's that? No, I wasn't doubting myself. I just had like, You know, you can build so many ways in Division 2. Right. And I was skill, heavy skill, tons of healing items.

Like, I could heal like crazy. I had like 11 of these chem launcher tank. I could heal everybody and myself, and it'd be no problem. Plus, I just had tons of skill, so I had all these cool mods on my abilities. But, and I actually had an amazing LNG load out. But for a DPS, you know, what I needed to do within seconds, that was the game breaker where that build doesn't work. But also, too, just with my health and arm.

was not great. But I had all the healing and I thought it would be fine, but not the way this works. Yeah, so the frustrating part about the raid that we were talking a little bit about on Games Daily and this week was, is that the way that they designed at least the first encounter, I can't speak to the subsequent encounters, is that you really can't use your skills at all. Your skills are virtually worthless. Everybody has to run like healing chem launcher and then maybe like Hive Revive or like the...

Yeah, you mean offensive skills. Yeah, there's not... The fixture drone. Essentially because if you put a turret down, it is a target for Boomer. Just like most of the elites in the world, if they see a turret, they auto target the turret and will smash it instantly. And then you have to wait for the refresh. And the really tough part about what Fran was talking about was skill power is in order to really utilize a lot of these high-end mods, your skill power has to be through the roof. So when you're specking for skill power, most of the time you're sacrificing weapon damage, you're sacrificing critical hit and critical chance.

and you're sacrificing potential elite damage buffs as well. And so it's really, like, you have to make an incredibly specific build just for this encounter. And I don't know how it works for the subsequent encounters, but it's like, what's the, I don't know if I find it fun to have to min-max a separate loadout for each encounter of the boss, knowing that it's really difficult to get the buffs that you need because of the way the R&G works in the loot system of the division two.

Yeah, it's like... Is there any word of them tuning this? No, they... So that was the story today. Go ahead. Give them the bad news. Yeah, they had said over the weekend, Reddit sort of blew up and it's like, what is going on?

It's so much harder on console and it's so difficult. And then one of the UB forum folks that was on Reddit, I think, works it massive. It was like, yeah, you know, we're open to change. It sounded like that meant, okay, they're discussing it. And sure enough, we show up to the state of play, which went out yesterday. That's their weekly show for edition 2 that Ubisoft does. and the community developer confirmed, he's like, no, there's no changes coming.

Like, yes, we're open to it. But this is it right now. So get in there, change your builds, and he didn't say it like that. But that was pretty much where you're at is like, they're going to see where this goes. But to Andrew's point, it's like, I wonder what the completion rate is.

That's what I want to know. That's what I want to know. Because you can tell me that like console takes three hours more than PC or whatever. Yeah, people are doing it now. That's all they have to say. How many people on PC have completed a computer? Compared to console.

Those are the numbers I want. How many people tried, how many people out of the active player base are raiding? Well, yeah, well, that too. But like in Destiny, we knew the number, usually people who raid in a giant group that's hard to get together was 10 to 15% of the entire population. You already know it's going to be small. Right. But I'm really wondering what that number looks like for this one right now. Same.

And I think the really challenging part is we know raids are supposed to be tough. Yeah. I'm not complaining that the rate is hard. No, absolutely not. The frustration is that there's very much a difference between the way that the DPS is handled for the boss encounters and how PC has a clear advantage from an input controls perspective than console players do. Not only that, it's difficult to get eight people into a raid that all have their builds optimize the exact way it needs to. if one, you're not in a clan, or two, if you're potentially

with people that are in your clan that just have not been able to get the drops that they need in order to optimize their builds. And so, like, yeah, we should be able to, you should be able to go out and grind. It just felt like we spent, like, six hours at that first encounter and had, like, nothing to show for it when we left.

Like, didn't get any drops at all of any kind, not even, like, consumables. And, like, there's, like, no loot boxes like to get materials or anything. So it's like, did I just waste these six hours when I could have been doing encounters in the regular open world that maybe would drop some loot, you know? You didn't know then and that happens with rates.

But like it was just a frustrating thing. And like I don't know when I'm going to go back to the raid because that means I need to get seven other. It's hard to organize. Yeah, I need to get seven other people that have min-maxed their builds specifically for the raid. And it's like when's that going to happen? Yeah, I mean, I'm committed to doing it.

It's just going to take so much time like you're saying, I would like to find a team that can go in at the times I need and stick with it. It's so hard to keep eight people together, let alone keep going back with them. But, um, well, and like, I think the frustrating part for me, Fran, is it doesn't need to be eight people. The only reason it feels at least so far that it needs to be eight people is because you need that many people doing DPS. And it's like, in Destiny at least you understood why it needed to be six because there were specific encounters, at least in the beginning. Obviously we've had plenty of people who were like solo driven or whatever. You have two people over here.

But like, yeah, it's like this person has to pull this lever while this person is doing this over here. And these two people need to step on these plates or what. Right? But like it doesn't feel like there's any mechanic like that at play in the raid that I've seen so far. Yeah. I mean, you're right. I don't know that it was necessary. Maybe this comes into play later.

Like actually the first outside area was a big, big area that you had to control. And so eight people working a very big area made a lot of sense. That's why I was like, oh, it's like big. Right, but like if you're just making the map bigger so you can have eight people in the rate, it's like, but why? No, totally. But that's where you go inside. That's enough of a challenge to have that many people. You go inside this next room, and it is very small.

Like in theory, though, some people are on ad control, but you all have to get together to do this DPS phase and it's very difficult. But I would take a step back and ask, and I think this is what we've touched on a little bit, but like, is it fun though? Like, that's the simple thing. It's like, one, is it fun? but two, it's an adjustment for, especially I think players like us for destiny players. It's like normally you would encounter something like that. Maybe we even play it for eight hours, but you get a few rooms in. You step back and you're like, man, yeah, you know what?

I should have used, I was using Whisper. So I should have used Wardcliff. And you know what? Instead of this subclass, I should have used that subclass. But there was other options. I'm feeling very much that it's like, one, there's not many other options for your builds. Like you probably need a super high DPS AR and who knows. Or LMG.

All the speed runners that I've seen are using LMG's. It's funny that, oh, that's good to hear I have an LNG, but I don't have a build for that, which leads me to my next point. That's my favorite kind of guy. It's funny that my build is LMG and I like, whatever. I don't have enough DPS out of it. Assault rifle? Accelerated reader.

But what? DPS damage per second. But the problem that you start to realize, and this seems to be what you'd be saying, though, is that, yeah, you're not just going to, like, go back to your vault and, you're grab the LMG, Andrea. You know what? Do you have that Gillagard? Just equip that.

It doesn't work that way. Do you have an LMG with these stats that you've infused up that is the highest power? Do you have the Gilligard with these stats that you've been used? And do you have three pieces of that armor set to get all of the stat buffs? Have you now got your elite damage over 90%? But also do you have your crit hit chances? It is such a spreadsheet. And do you have seven other people that are like that?

Exactly. So I would at least point out, though. I appreciate that is a different kind of. kind of game. It's very tactical and strategic. But what happens on the fun side is you do all this. There's none of it. And I've already played for 120 hours. And like, I just don't have those things. So guess what? I'm going back to the world and grinding and, I mean, it's just, it's going to take a lot of time. And it's a weird feeling that it's just sitting there. And what I find is raids kind of start to pass you by. And what I don't want to have happen is the biggest thing I

complain the most with raids is I want to do a blind. It's why I'm so always sensitive to spoilers and stuff. Like, I want to do it on my own. So one, I want to get together with group that's on the same level, but sometimes you play with that group and they start moving on and doing their own thing, and they'll come back and help you. I don't want your help. I mean, if I have to have just your help, okay, now I need you to be quiet. But then what you do is you go to LFGs and Discord and you're like, I'm trying to get groups together at a random and you might be like, hey, can we do this blind? And they're like, yeah, but then next thing you know, somebody's boarding stuff out and dude, the last boss has an X, Y, Z. You're like, ugh. And so you miss a

moment in time. And that always bothers me because I want to be a part of this experience. And now there's teams that manage to have the right builds. And we're dedicated enough to be fair to get the stuff and have people in their network to do it. But I feel left out potentially. So far, so good. It's blind. I'll go back in and we'll see. But I did use Division II as a pretty good discord, an official one that you can get into and use for matchmaking on all platforms. You should try to use it. But I did that and it was kind of funny. I was doing it on stream. And It was interesting to say the least. But it was still kind of fun, but we didn't make it that much farther.

And everybody knew how to do it at that point, like you're saying. New builds, new people. Hard to communicate with that team, though. And that's what I was getting at before. It's like, if we stayed together and kept rehearsing for days, we probably could do it. But I'm never going to see these people again. So I've got to start over. But when Greg gets back from Florida, maybe.

Well. Yeah. One last thing. We talked about this kind of at length on the game over a kind of podcast. You got five minutes. The God Award document. You got four minutes. Raising Cratos is so good on YouTube.

I've heard that it's a tearjerker. It is, oh my gosh, I teared up nonstop. It's a beautiful video. It's so well done. It shows how difficult it is to make a game, not only just any game, one of the best games of all time. And it's so good.

There's a lot of chill moments, a lot of goosebumps. You see how tough it can be, being in game development. So that's a lesson to all of you budding game developers. It's not easy. It's not easy.

Where do you watch this? YouTube. It's just on Sony's PlayStation YouTube channel. It's two hours. It's fucking great. Dang, I would like to watch it on my flight, but it's on YouTube. I wonder if I can. YouTube Premium, free trial.

You can download it. If you have YouTube Red, you can download. That would be smart, yeah. Excellent. They don't call YouTube Red anymore because that sounds like a porn site. Oh, it's YouTube Premium. Well, this has been a fun episode of the Kind of Funny Gamescast. Thank you so much for joining us.

Again, if you guys want to watch the live pre-show and post show, head to patreon.com slash kind of funny games and get in on that membership action. Thanks again to our Patreon producers. You guys can also hit subscribe at YouTube.com slash kind of funny games and on your favorite podcast service wherever you are in the world. Around the globe. God, you all missed it. Thanks, everybody. See you next time.