Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Fire Emblem Three Houses Impressions - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 229

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

Quip starts at just $25, and if you go to http://getquip.com/KF right now, you can get your first refill pack for FREE. Go to http://Audible.com/KINDA or text KINDA to 500 500 to start your free 30-day trial! Tim, Andrea, and Greg talk about The Dark Pictures Anthology, Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Sea of Solitude. Time Stamps - 00:02:19 - Marvel Games at SDCC 00:10:15 - Fire Emblem Three Houses 00:22:06 - Dr. Mario World 00:30:59 - Kingdom Rush Vengeance 00:34:14 - Pokemon Go 00:46:31 - LEGO Tower 00:56:36 - The Dark Pictures Anthology: Man of Medan 01:14:40 - Call of Duty Modern Warfare 01:20:15 - Sea of Solitude Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 229. The Kind of Funny Games cast as always. I'm Tim Geddy's joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games. Greg Miller. I put the Superman sticker on my notebook. Wow. I've had a whole bunch of stickers for a while. You know, remember this? This woman who made it whose name is escaping me.

It's on here as Tainted sweets. Tainted sweets. Works at Marvel now. Oh. I remember she freaked out when I got the tour. That's right. Yeah, yeah. What's the notebook?

This is my Judges Week notebook. And so now that we can finally... blow the dust off of some COD multiplayer. Some embargoes popping up left and right. It's exciting stuff. Yeah, finally. I'm sure we'll talk about that today. And joining us again, the busiest lady in the business, Andrew or Renee.

What's good, Tim? A lot of things are good. Yeah, man. Video games are cool. And on the shock mic today for a little bit, we got Tom Bach, the Tom Bach, who also is a Patreon producer for this part. So thank you, right? Well, I got it.

Shout up to James Hastings as well. You guys making the show happen. Tom Bach is an alum. An alum. He's been on the show before. He's been on the game. Kind of for many games cast. It's fantastic stuff.

He's there. Joey's going to join us in a little bit to talk about the dark pictures anthology. Man of the dawn. I'm excited to hear about this. You should be. That's some cool stuff. You better strap in, buddy, because you're a coward and this game's going to break you. Wow.

Are you not a scary cat? I don't know if I would classify myself as a coward. I'm scared of what I heard. I make noises. I yelp. But I do it. I'm excited about it. I like scary things.

I'm not. like Andy. You know, like Kevin. That's a great point, actually. Yeah, Kevin doesn't play scary. Kevin straight up said he wouldn't play this game this morning. This game. Yeah.

Cowered. Man. God. All right. I was going to be mean, but you know what? I'm not going to. He's out of the room. You guys can fill in your own blanks about what I was going to say about Kevin.

Oh, I like a bad. You know, page show supporters at the Silver Membership or above. Get to watch this show live as we record it. You can get the show three days early and get the full exclusive pre and post show. Or if you don't want to do that, it's cool. Monday. You can get it on YouTube.com slash kind of funny. games or on roostate.com or on podcast services just search for kind of funny games cast like

i said our patreon producers this month tom bach and james hastings the men the myth the legends thank you all for all of your sport in any which way are you doing great how are you doing i'm great tim i was i'm just telling you that i feel like i haven't talked to her in a long time i feel like i haven't talked to you in a long time yeah people it's hard for people to wrap their heads around that one i think in terms of such a small office only eight of us right and then obviously contractors in every day but for you and me co-founders we're in the same room but it's rare we're actually in the same room. Yeah. We all doing our own thing. We're all checked out. Yeah, we're all on email.

A bit bopping around. Yeah, I know. ComicCon next week. Woo! Marvel Games panel Hall H. Do you know things that we can't do yet? I do. I do a lot of things you guys can't know. What games are you guys talking about? Is it the, it's the big thing? You're going to break my fucking embargo? No, no. You want to go? Square. Square Enix put out of press release this morning,

announced that they will be doing the first gameplay reveal to the public at the Hall H panel for Marvel's Avengers. That was an press release, so that is public knowledge. I remember there was games. I just remember what the third one was. There's Iron Man VR, there's Avengers. What's the third one? I didn't see anything else in the press release.

Marvel Games put up the image early on when they announced it. Gotcha. Wow. They're coming pretty hard. They're coming super hard. And that was the thing about it where, you know, this is God, year three. The year three of hosting the Marvel Games panel.

And obviously, each and every year I go there, I'm excited to talk to dev, see what they have with their sleeves, yet-a-y-y-da. This is the, stick with me. The smallest amount of games we've had on the panel before. It is the longest panel we've ever done. And it's the first time where every one of the games we're

talking about are games that I'm super fucking excited for. Interesting, because I remember last year was the first time I saw you do it. My first time I ever in Hall-H that was exciting stuff. And you guys, the big thing was Spider-Man. Right, of course. Which is crazy to think that that game wasn't out. Right, I know. It feels like it's been out forever now. I know, I know. But yeah, that was the, we got

to see the kind of reveal silver sable. Yeah. And we got to meet the voice actress and everything else. And then the limited edition PS4 Pro. Right.

Yeah. Sexy Red one. That did really well for me. That was cool. Twitter wise. But then yeah, there was a lot of like I would call filler games in it.

Well, Marvel games does have such a, you know, it's the tendrils that are in everything, right? So it was like Strike Force and this and mobile game updates and stuff like that.

And that was, I guess year one right where Sinzaro came out and shot did Marvel Powers Unite VR and stuff like that. There's all those things where I think it's more of a, hey, we have a.

That was last year too. They did that. Yeah. Maybe it was like, I think they don't know Spider-Man for that. Okay. That makes sense. And a couple other characters.

And that's the thing. They first showed that two years ago, though, right? Yeah. I remember being there for the review. Yeah. But yeah, they have a wide library, right? A gigantic library of games they're working on at any time. And I think we're going to get, you know, updates on some of those.

But yeah, these are the three that we're coming out full guns blaring up. Do you think Tim, since I can't ask Greg because he might know. That they're going to show the behind closed doors demo of Avengers in full of the panel. I mean, if you're saying that the press release said that it's going to be the public debut of gameplay, I imagine. I don't think that there's going to be much more than that ready to show this soon after E3. And usually when you look at different, you know, kind of games announced at E3 that then follow up at Comic Con, it is usually the behind closed doors stuff that they show. Squares done that a lot. I hope they do because I really liked that demo.

Really? Yeah. Didn't we talk about this post-a-3? I don't remember. You saw it though, right? I did. I did not like it. Oh, I did.

See, normally, I'm a black widow hater. But after that demo, I was like, her combat was the best. Yeah. Totally, absolutely. Hers are the only thing I'm like, this looks fun. Yeah. And then it cuts a quick time.

I mean, we'll see how this goes. But exciting stuff. Is there anything else for Comic-Con games-wise that we're looking forward to? Because I feel like games at Comic-Conn's never been the biggest thing. Yeah. But usually there's at least like a something. You know, Nintendo usually has a presence.

Yeah, we talked about that. I think yesterday, right, where we talked about like, I haven't gotten an email about Nintendo or whatever in terms of going to see the games like they normally do. Oh, do you think the switchlight will be there? Comic Con might be too soon or not. You never know. But it'll be at Pax West. Undoubtedly, if it's coming on September.

ComicCon was the first hands-on like preview for the NES classic and S-NES classic, if I remember correctly. It's only, what, two months away from launch at that point? be there. I think because you would, I think that would have been a beat you put your press release and the first time you can see it. Even if it's just behind a glass box, right? It's going to be a Comic Con. I think you would have promoted that if I'm Nintendo. But if you're Nintendo, I would have done my announcement at E3. So who knows what they're going to do? Why you can own the moment right now? On the moment. Do you know how many games had two thumbnails on games daily? Like can you get more prestigious? They would have the moment during E3 too.

No, they wouldn't know. Yes, they would have. They're all Keanu. Yeah. Exactly. You're right. Tell us what you know. No, I can't do that. Sorry. I won't breaking bargos unlike Tim. Wow. Wow. Just because I want to talk about Death Stranding in the pre-show with my exclusive insight. We just wanted you to blow it up, just go do it. You know what I mean? Yeah, so I'm super excited for that at Comic-Con.

I think it's going to be a really, really good panel from it. I think they have a lot of really cool shit to announce and show. Yeah. I mean, I think that's great because you did a great job last year, but the Marvel games guys are great. Sure. And I feel like this is the... This is the first time that there's a line of games that, like,

have the potential to be, to matter. really mattered, you know, not just Spider-Man. Yeah, and that's what's interesting about it, too, is like, obviously, you know, since that PlayStation VR event where they let us play Iron Man, I've been preaching the word of how good that game is to see what the update is on that, to actually get that to a Hall-H-sized panel of like, hey, no, this game actually makes you feel like Iron Man, here's a video, here's what we're going to show, here's what we're going to talk about. Like, that's super exciting on top of the fact that you figure, for it, for Ultimate

Alliance, right, the game's out the next day. And then, in fact, that, yeah, Avengers looking forward and actually getting a review of all that stuff. Crazy stuff, man. Yeah, Ube's backing out of Comic-Con this year. Like backing out or they just didn't go? They just didn't go.

But whatever you want to call it. That makes sense. They don't really have anything to show this year. Yeah, but usually, even when they don't have something to show, they're there and they kind of have a huge presence on the show floor and they throw their big boat parties and stuff.

Well, they don't have an Assassin's Creed to promote this year, and that's probably one of their more popular brands that has a comic book element to it. Last year, I hosted a panel for the Division II, because they released their new division comic and along with the novel that they were talking about and how it ties into the narrative of the division two,

but obviously they don't have anything new to report there because they're promoting the launch of episode one, which is happening. So that makes sense that UB's not there because what are they going to do something for Ghost Recon? That doesn't make sense. Hey, man, they got the puncher in their game. Here's my dog.

It's me and my dog. Got the burns. Not cool, John. Was his name Tam-Tam or something? Bam-Bam. Bam-Bam. Damn. He was cute, though. He was cute. Damn, Bam Bam was adorable. So was jealous.

You gotta love it. You gotta love it. All right. Enough about Comic Con. I want to talk about a video game, but it is embargoed for people watching live. So we're going to have to put the stream audio down for a little bit, but we'll be back. We did figure this out. This is how we're going to do it. Yes. Okay.

Yes. You ready for that? All right. Bring in the audio down in three, two, one. It should be down. I just want to get quick confirmation from Joey to make sure that it's going to. Joey, can you hear me? I don't know.

Joey, can you hear me? So I'm excited to go to Comic Con though. Yeah, you're going to get to actually like vacation at Comic Con. My first, Andrea, this is my first ever convention, period. Then I'm just going for fun. Good for you. No work. After about 100 total.

It's going to be cool. Very exciting stuff. I'm trying to remember the first time I went to a con and didn't work. Probably, no, I worked that one. Chicago Comic Con. That's me, baby. Little Greg Miller. Little Greg Mills.

As an adult, never gone to a con for fun. You kidding? That's work. I'm sure we're getting to work somehow. But like, whatever are. Oh, yeah. People are hitting me up, but like, hold the crew here? Yeah.

It's like, I'm sure. We'll see what's up. I don't know if I have gone to a con just for work or just for fun before. It's going to be weird. It's going to be cool, though. We good? We're good. Cool.

I want to talk to you guys about Fire Emblem. Oh. Houses. Coming out very soon. The Nintendo Switch kind of summer of fun begins. We had Mario Maker 2 and then we got this. Then we got Marvel's and the Lions. You got Astral Chain coming out.

Just like. Astral Chain. You know what I mean? Leading into Zelda Links Awakening, all exciting stuff. I am about a little over two hours. Maybe in between two and two and a half hours into Fire Enblem, three houses. I played in my Switch in bed next to Gio while she fell asleep.

When you were playing it, did you wish it was the Nintendo Switchlight? No, not particularly. I was okay with it. You don't need a great D-Pad for this game. No. Everyone knows I'm a big fan of Fire Emblem. My first kind of takeaway is this is a very different Fire Emblem. Really?

Yes. They do not have the signature kind of triangle weapon-based system going on where the rock paper scissors. Sure. With the lance swords and axes. It is, it's class-based. And it's a much more similar to the last Fire Enblem game that came out, which was Fireblum Echoes, Shadow of Valencia or whatever it was.

There was a remake of one of the OG original Fire Emblem games that is a bit more, again, class-based and more focused on building your team out. and instead of focusing more on the kind of like unit per unit battles, it is more like strategically thinking about placement of everybody. And I haven't totally wrapped my head around it yet. I'm enjoying it a lot. What I do love about the game, though, is the presentation of the story. So it is entirely Harry Potter meets Game of Thrones meets anime. Fuck yeah.

It's like three really good things together with the cons of those things as well. the biggest con being the anime there's a incongruence to it all with the video versus gameplay I'm not like the best person to be able to differentiate like frames per second and all that shit

but I'm pretty sure that the cutscenes of which there are many especially in the beginning they're beautiful and they're great and the voice acting's awesome and the characters are cool and everything about that's great but I feel like they're running at 24 frames per second which is like movies looking but the game's not so when you have them back to back like

They look choppy as hell. And it, like, kind of like takes away from the visual fidelity of it all, which is kind of a bummer because this is the first console fire of them. We've gotten since Fireman became relevant in the West. Like we had games on the GameCube and obviously before that, like NES and stuff. But Awakening on the 3DS is really what kind of gave this franchise, like the steroids to become one of the top Nintendo franchises. but it very much seems like a console version of Fire Emblem being made now. It looks very targeted at people that have played persona and maybe haven't given Fire a shot, but now have a switch and are like, cool, I'm going to get into this.

Sure. You were asking me if I recommend it to you. Yeah, you hit me up and said, do you want to code? I was like, do I? You tell me because I don't, I've never played a Fire Emblem and I've never been really drawn to it. I've heard good things about it, but. And it's weird because I love the games. based on the gameplay of the other ones, I totally was like, give it a shot, you're going to like this. But a lot of the gameplay that I love has changed. So I don't know necessarily that I would recommend it to new players off the bat.

Unless you're interested in playing a very long RPG that is like if the Harry Potter Game of Thrones anime thing sounds appealing to you at all. It's the anime part of the throws me. The anime part just looks. Like you can like get past that. So you're talking about big old scantily clad? There's a couple of those. There's definitely a fair share of titty. in there, one of the teachers in the game.

So it all takes place in the school. It all takes place into school. Blackroom glasses? She always doing this and she's always like, dude, it's just like, it's a new. I've played an anime game before. It's excessive. There's just a lot of boove

on some of these teachers. It sounds like that. That seems inappropriate to be teaching this class. Oh yeah, you can find them. Fire a lot. Anime cities, yeah, definitely. The internet got you back.

No, so boiling it down, there are three houses in this game. And that's where it comes. kind of the Game of Thrones, Harry Potter elements come into play here. It's more Game of Thrones in the sense that everyone has a really stupid name that I'm never going to remember. And I don't understand why the world needs to be called like Fartside and then like the other things like flogel songs and whatever. I'm like, whoa, just like maybe. Well, they want to make sure you understand it's not your world.

But what they do a good job of is making everything very simple for stupid people like me. And it's all color coded. So it's like, oh, the yellow guys. Oh, the blue guys. Oh, the red guys. Cool. So there's the three different kingdoms, and it pains me. You need to make the choice, man.

Fire emblem all about the choice. It is this perma death idea where you go into battle. If one of your characters dies, they're gone. They don't come back in the story. They're just over. And it's really satisfying. And you realize you're hooked to this game. When your character dies, you're like, well, that's it.

I'm restarting this 40-minute mission over again because I'm not losing Jill. I'm not losing my palate in Jill. You know what I mean? But there's choices you have to make. And this game more so than any of the fire emblems I've played so far, even in just two hours, there's choices you're making that are changing the path of what you're doing. Okay.

And from what people that are a little farther than me were telling me is that those choices kind of like follow you throughout the game, and each of the three houses, depending on what choice you make, has very different story beats, which is similar to the last, or two firearm limb games ago, fates that was split into three different games. That is now back in one game total.

So they're not trying to milk them money. from every which way. You get this, the whole story. You could only just beat one of the houses and be happy. You get a full story. Or if you want to keep going,

this is the most replayable Fire emblem, thus long, which is all good stuff. But choosing one of the houses is a big choice you have to make early on. God, it took me way too long.

Because I'm like, I really, the yellow guy, man, personality-wise, you're the best. You're the best. It kind of is, but it's like,

you don't really get enough to go in of really understanding the different styles of these characters. But I'm like, I like this guy's vibe. And the leader the classes, those three right there. So why don't you just pick the blue? It's you. Because that's what I'm saying. It was hard for me to not choose the blue, but he has such a stick up his ass. And I'm like,

just like, I don't like you. I don't like you and you're weird, your weird friends. It's like, no, man. Like, I'm, I want to just hang out in vibe. I went yellow. So you're telling me once and for all, you're yellow and Andy's blue. No, I'm not saying that. No, I'm not saying that. It's been a part of the truth. It's been a part of the judge. The Farnble makes you make, Greg. Burn blue, Andy. You know? Yeah. But it made, I cared enough about this yellow guy that I chose him over blue. Like that should say something. That Does say something. That means you did a lot of work there.

I like the homework. The core of this game breaks down into, the old games used to essentially just be, you have your mission, which is kind of like tactical RPG, chess-based grid system. You go through, you fight it used to be rock,

paper scissors type stuff. That's all still here. Modified instead of rock paper scissors, there's, it's your weapon degrades, right? You have a certain amount of points. You can go move your characters. Each character can move a certain amount of spaces.

It's all about spacing. And then when you get near enemies, you can see what their attack and defenses, what you're attacking defense is, it's all number-based, and how many, like, numbers are going to go down on your weapon if you use it. There's these combat arts that you can learn that are, like, the advanced skills, those use more of your weapon degradation. So it's all strategy of, like, trying to figure out how to use your units.

But now there's a new thing of, instead of in between those matches, it used to be like this whole just menu-based system of a lot of support conversations where you can be like, what are the characters up to you? And you can kind of just, it was just all text-based stuff, go to the store or whatever, but it was all in a menu. Now you actually walk around the school. So you can, this was introduced in the last game,

but I feel like this one really kind of is nailing it, where it is more like a traditional RPG, 3D gameplay. You're walking around talking to people. And that's what this game is all about, is these characters, the interactions. So far,

I'm loving the writing. I really care about the characters and I want to see my class succeed and fuck up the other classes. It reminds me more of Game of Thrones than Harry Potter in the sense of the houses having their kind of like, like one of them is like a deer and one like they have their animals the lion and stuff and they really really care about the pride of all of it

what you're talking about come on but it doesn't seem as like lighthearted and like goofy as like the hufflepuffs and the the raven claws and the harry potter side of the world like they do take it really seriously and there is big threats going on and it's all backed up by just classic stellar gameplay of the the matches looks dope it's it's really good i just wish that the the looks of it would match up a bit more with the the gameplay yeah where I don't love the look of the grid system. Like, it looks, like, because this is the first time they've ever stuck with the same art style for, like, cutscenes and gameplay itself. Whereas, like, on the 3DS, it was a big issue with Awakening, where there's three separate art styles. You were either seeing your character in the text-based thing,

it's like beautifully hand-drawn cartoons, or you're in the actual, the grid system itself was pixelated, and it looked so rad. Or it took me full. Four trailers to find boobs. They wanted to hide them. That's her. Yeah.

What? She's wearing a swimsuit to class. Big deal. She's a teacher. I guess. But in Awakening, it was weird because there'd be these like polygon models of the characters as well that you see in cutscenes and it was

fucking hideous. So it's like each character would have three different designs that you'd have to like understand who they are. And it's like color base you can kind of figure it out. Now it's like they all, they always look the same, which is good. But I miss the pixel-based look of the gameplay before because I feel like it

makes the gameplay here look a little. Dated? Or not dated, but simple. Simple. Yeah, it looks simple. And so I'm definitely excited to keep playing it. You've interested me. You've piqued my interest.

I want to see if you'll like it because there's also this whole calendar system now where in between each big match there's, you get a week. Yes. You get one week to deal with stuff and teach your kids different skills because you are the teacher. And then you go into the battles and stuff, whether the battles are against the other classes for practice or if there's actual real threats out there, story-based. And I'm really liking the story so far.

I've stayed out of really much of this. Like we watched the directs at E3, but I got even then, wasn't really paying attention. And I'm totally invested so far. I think they're really well-written characters. And the gameplay is great. I still haven't read my head around like where the challenge is going to come from because I was so used to the rock, paper, scissors stuff. But it's cool shit.

Hey, Tim. Who do you think the audiences, though? If you said it's, because I've never played a firearm, I never touched it. Do you think it is for the hardcore Firemone people, even though the gameplay's different? Or do you think they really are trying to get other genre people to check it out? I really think that this is their attempt at making this as mainstream as possible to just be like, hey, guys, do you have a switch? All you people that weren't Nintendo people that now are Nintendo people, you should give this one a shot. And I think that them making it one game instead of three is like trying to simplify it that way.

I will say that So far, I think Awakening on 3DS was a better Entry point early on For people that have never played before Because you start playing that It's like oh I get what this is And you either like it or you don't

I'm a little over two hours in And like there's just a lot of story And it's like I've only really done like Two of the main missions And I'm like that's a long time To like really Tough jumping in beginning into this But also it's what hooked people on

People like me It's what hooked them on persona Right It was making me care about the world And the characters before I ever had to start battling. I never thought I would like it and it's like, you know.

And that's my thing. This is a different firearm game. So I need to not like judge too quickly because it is different. It is not what it used to be there. And I need to see if I like this. And so far, I'm really, really enjoying it. And I can't wait to keep playing it.

So I'm interested. Interesting. You sold me on it, too. Yeah. I think you have to be predisposed to like JRP's though to even be interested in learning about the fire emblem characters and the storyline in the world

because there's nothing that I've seen and nothing that you've said is like setting off my interest meter at all. Here's my thing. But that's the kind of gamer I am, right? I don't play this style of game ever. I would take JRP out of it entirely.

Like this, it's not a JRP. It is a tactical strategy RPG. Right. I mean, looking at it right now, it's giving me like, you know, difference, but like when you get into the fight fight there, like Valkyria Chronicles vibe, which actually, and I know that whenever I talked about

Valkyria, people told me I should play this. It also has like X-Core. overlay system in terms of the hex-based. Yeah, the grid base is a very particular style of gameplay, right? Like, you have to be ready in your mind that you're going into this type of tactical game. The pitch I would have for you, not that I'm trying to sell you on it. Right. I would say to lean into the game of throne side of it.

Like, it is story, like the anime bit is just the look. Right. Story-wise and, like, character-wise, it is fantasy, like, epic fantasy stuff. And I feel like that's right up your alley there. It is. And the way they present the story and stuff, it like, it is the Battle of Kingdoms. and all this stuff. And the other thing is,

like, this is one of those games where you need to know nothing about the other games. There's no connections. Well, that's good. Primal three hours is all you need to know. You can jump in and know everything. So, exciting stuff.

Interesting. Stay tuned for more. I will definitely be playing more. Also, I thought it was funny that this person broke embargo and it goes to a 404 now. Damn. Unlike me. I didn't break embargo.

Barrett, you can now... All right, hold on. Bring back the volume. Doing a quick time code really quick. Please don't stop the music. And we're going back to stream audio in three, two, one. And so that's Death Stranding. That is.

You back Death Stranding. Greg. Hey, Dr. Mario World. Everyone's favorite mobile game. Ooh, I started playing this last night. So are you further than where we were talking about yesterday? Because I hadn't even opened it yesterday. I have it now.

So where are you in the game? I'm still in this tutorial. Oh, I'm like on like World, let's see, 14 or something? World 14 or level 14 or whatever. Like are you on the, you're on the 14th square of the thing? Yeah, it still feels to me like I played for like an hour. Gotcha. A little less than an hour because I still have my unlimited hearts.

Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, so I have no, I'm not a Dr. Mario kid. I wasn't raised with a Nintendo, obviously. So Dr. Mario's always something I've seen. I'm like, oh, I should like that based on Tetris and Luminous and everything else, never given a shot. Obviously, this dropped on iOS, downloaded, dropped it there. Didn't realize it was like doing the match three thing,

fighting all these different viruses. So I started playing on the train. And again, this is just top level. Hey, it's not the main game I played this week. I am interested in it. I'm still in the hour of unlimited hearts where I'm not having to get nickel and dime my micro-transactions or anything.

I was wondering more of you were going to play it and how you'd come down on Dr. Mario. I'm also not a Dr. Mario guy. Neither of you. I am so Dr. Mario. I love Dr. Mario. One of my favorite games of the Super Mario Bros. franchise spent countless hours playing Dr. Mario.

He'd be a super fan there. Tetris attack on iOS. It's coming. Toucher's Battle Royale? Yeah, Tetris Battle Royale's coming. To Mubble. No, no, no, no, no, Tetris attack. Yeah, but Tetris is coming.

Tetris attack. Tehers Battle Royale. Real quick, guys. I've never played Doctor Maro before, and I skipped the tutorial, which was a mistake. But I eventually got it. And with, like, that hour of, like, unlimited play, I got to, like, level 30 something. Nice. I fucking love this.

It's great. Oh, my God. It's so good. It's a lot of fun. Are you worried about the micro-transaction stuff? So I got to the point in, I think it was level 27, where I ran out, my hour ran out. And then if you're good, you can keep playing for a while. Because it does, every time you clear a level for the first time, it gives you another heart.

And I played for an additional like 30 minutes. Like the, as you go, the levels get harder. Yeah, but it's a lot of fun. I really, really like it. And that's my thing is, again, not knowing Dr. Mario and just going and playing with it and stuff, I see where I could really, I would really get into this. So, Andrea, as someone that has played the original Dr. Mario extensively, and now this, how does the gameplay differ?

So the first thing you're going to notice is that there is touch integration. So traditionally, Dr. Mario, it functions a lot like Tetris, where the capsule, the color capsule, would drop from the top and then you would need to match it to the viruses below. Now, this way, it goes the other direction. It goes from the bottom up. but what it's great about it is that you can free move the capsule around with your finger, and then once you let go, then it slowly drifts upwards. And once you've let go of the capsule, you can no longer bring it back down.

But if you keep your finger pressed on the screen, you can essentially move it anywhere you want, which really gives you a lot of strategic choices, because in traditional Dr. Mario, you essentially have unlimited capsules until you fail the level or until you clear the level. And here you have a limited, amount of capsule so you have to very

carefully think about how you're going to use them you can't just kind of really nilly drop them around. I've just gotten into a couple of levels where they've opened up all of the items so I haven't really dug deep into what the items do and things like that but I love how when it comes to the puzzle mechanic of the game they utilize

the mobile interface to give it its own twist so it's not just a direct skin of classic Dr. Mario though I would play that if available. I would prefer that because I'm not I love Dr. Mario but this isn't really doing it me and just... How far are you?

I think I just finished my unlimited hour. Gotcha. And there's something about the limited capsules where it's like maybe I'm just not good enough at it in this way that it just is like, what am I doing wrong?

See, I dig it. Like that's the thing is like playing it right there even just to get going on level 10 right now or whatever, the stage 10. Like I can totally see where I'm going to come back to that. And even though I've been running to the wall of microtransactions that people talked about at the limited playtime.

I think for me that won't be a big deal since I'm not the biggest mobile gamer where I do feel like that'll be, I'm on the bus. Okay, cool, I'm out of my five lives or whatever or I'm not and I'm just going to turn it off and walk away and let it refresh over the 30 minutes. Yeah, I think that they're doing a lot of really neat things

with the match three element. It's not a traditional match three. Like when we first talked about it being match three, I thought it was going to be something much different than it is. I thought it was going to be a little bit more candy crush. Oh, okay. But I like that the way they're incorporating the match three with this.

And I think it's got a lot of potential. I'm going to need to play substantially more to see how the microtransactions are later on. Because I remember the very first time I played Candy Crush. I got probably to like levels 60 or 70 before I like hit the paywall. Yeah.

But then once you get to those upper levels, you hit the paywall faster and faster and faster because the levels get increasingly more difficult. And that's the challenging part about these freedom. play games. And we know, we were talking about it on Games Daily earlier this week. And I was reflecting on that conversation because obviously a lot of people were leaving comments on the video about microtransactions in mobile games specifically. And I think the challenge for mobile game developers is how do we extend our gameplay much like a live service game, like a destiny or

division or whatever, but for a mobile market and make it feel rewarding, but also, you know, to continue to make revenue from it. And I would love an example, particularly from a best friend or somebody who also plays mobile games, that has a game that they think is not an egregious example of these timed microtransactions, that plays consistently. Because I think the real key is like what Greg was saying, I pick it up, I play it for a few minutes, I'm done. I don't really feel the pay well.

But I can imagine we wanted to sit down and play this for like easily an hour at a time before. I was my issue back in the day with Pagle Blast. I loved it with the payable stuff. It's like, well, you're ruining my experience entirely. Yeah, see, but that's the thing where I feel like, and I don't, and I'm, I only speak for myself, I guess, where with this one versus a game like Pagel, where I feel like Pagel's like one more, one more, one more, let's go, let's go, let's go. Like when I, even in these early levels when I'm accomplishing it and I clear it, I'm like, oh God, I got three stars, cool. I feel like that's always a good, I can click it off stopping point. Like I don't, I'm going to, I'll play more sure if I have more time.

But if I also, as I usually do, get distracted by Twitter or Instagram or email or whatever, like I'm going to move on. where I guess it's just the For me it's a distraction game Where it is just something I don't think I'm ever going to be like I kind of forgotten about I put it on there Because I put that on there yesterday right Clearly on the ride home last night

And when I got home last night I wasn't pulled to go play Dr. Mario right Like I is something that's there When I want to play it And I'm not like oh Jonesing to go get into this version Maybe it gets more difficult And starts you know

Challenge me and tweaking me Or something that'll be a different story But who knows Staying in the mobile game realm Before we get to your thing I just wanted to give a quick shout because I keep forgetting it to bring this up on the show. Kingdom Rush, Vengeance, baby.

So good. Isn't it so good? So good. What's the gameplay of it? Andrea recommended this to me like months ago. I didn't even know it came out. Kingdom Rush, classic tower defense game. And that's another thing, the game that we can't say the name of anymore, but that we were talking about earlier.

That's the other end right there, Andrea. It's very similar. Okay. Maybe I'll try it. It's very similar. So I am straight up. Kingdom Rush, wow. I'm straight up addicted to Kingdom of.

vengeance on the flights of Florida I played it the entire way it's my favorite playing game and it is just so that is literally what it what it should put it on the box put it on the app store it's the best playing game ever it just sucks your time away and next thing you know you're landing you're just like I want to keep playing it's weird because each level lasts way too long they're like 45 minute levels which is great when you're just trying to waste time but like it just seems counterintuitive to the mobile design not mobily right yeah it's it's kind of weird but it's like this is the type

a game that I would recommend playing on an iPad. Like it is... I almost exclusively played it on iPad previously. This new one is the only one that I haven't started on iPad yet. I would love this game on Switch. And I'm not sure why they haven't thought about porting it or maybe they have and it's part of the plans eventually. A bigger screen would be great.

What's really fun about the Kingdom Rush series is that they have a hero system. So in addition to your traditional tower defense where you're building towers and upgrading towers along the path where the enemies are moving, you have a unique hero and each hero in the game has special abilities and then you can upgrade them. There's like a little mini-R-PG progression system with these heroes and then those heroes work in tandem with your towers. And as you progress through the world, you'll find that different heroes are better suited to different enemies because all of the enemies have different strengths and weaknesses like this tower is good against this enemy, for example. But maybe this hero has a really high rate of fire

and so you want to use them in levels that have lots of fast-moving enemies, or maybe one has like a freeze attack. So if you get like large waves, you know, just the deep strategy that, you know, Ironhead Games has put into this has been so much fun to see the iterations build from game to the game because it's not the fourth game in the Kingdom Rush franchise. And yeah, I'm so glad you're playing it again. Oh my God. They nailed it this time around. And it's just so satisfying. It's just chaos that you're absolutely in control of. And it's just like there's all these little pads and these little guys are coming.

You're like, oh, I'm fucking your day up. And then you're like, oh, shit. It's really just kind of like putting your finger in holes that water's coming out of. The day. Yeah. Yeah. Just trying to like, just control it all. And like you'll totally be good until you're not and you're just absolutely overwhelmed.

And that's when it's the most fun. It's because you're just like, oh, man, like we got to upgrade the arrow towers. Like go faster, go faster. Like that's going. You're like bombing people. And then you have your hero that you can at any point tap on him and tap anywhere else in the map. And he'll just run over and start fucking things up. It's so sad.

Have you been using the girl that teleports? Yes. Oh, she's my favorite. It's just awesome. I love it. And, like, it is totally an example of the one more match type thing. But, like, the loop is so good because there's the RPG elements where you're like, well, I'm so close to level on this guy up.

I guess I'm going to replay it again to get the three stars to keep going. Fantastic mobile game. But Greg, you're also playing a mobile game. A fantastic mobile game. It's brand new. Brand new. People haven't talked about it. Pokemon Go.

Whoa. Pokemon fucking go, everybody. You know what I mean? I got bit by the bug, Tim. It finally happened after downloading it. Which bug? The catarpee? Oh, you know, probably Porrigan.

It's not pidgis? That's all I got. They're all bugs, you know, because they're all bugs. They're all bugs. They're pocket monsters, Greg. No, no. You're thinking of Digimon. So, yeah, I downloaded a Pokemon Go, obviously, with all the rest of you when it

first came. I remember Kevin being so excited when it was originally in the office and we were playing it. And it never worked for me. I have no history with Pokemon, you know, and put it down. Every so often, Goldfarb would try to. gave me to pick it back up. I'd screw around that nothing would happen. And then, of course, Ghostbusters World came out last year. I had a great time with Ghostbusters World up until, like, I think it was month two,

maybe the beginning of month three, where they really fucked up their whole in-game economy and what they wanted you to do. And it was also that point. I wasn't getting new ghosts. It was just the same thing day after day, the same challenges day after day. Like, it was clear like, okay, cool. like I'll wait for them to update this and make it more refreshing, more interesting to play. And I turned it on. Actually, I downloaded Harry Potter, the Wizards Unite when that had happened. Played with that bit up, but I'm not a Harry Potter guy.

I was like, what's going on with Ghostbusters World? I actually kept crashing, had to delete it, reinstalled it. Went back in, it's all the same shit. Like, it's clearly a game that they just put out and then they've never really done anything with. And so this past weekend we were going to RTX, missed my flight, and woke up in a panic, rebooked the flight, but then had a free day in San Francisco. so Jen and I went out to way out in the sunset to the avenues, went and had breakfast. And I was like, let's walk home and let's walk through the park or whatever.

And so we were walking and talking and just catching up. And somehow we got on to maybe somebody walked by playing Pokemon Go. And it was this conversation of just like, you know, more of the game's daily conversation of just how incredible it is that that game is still around and still thriving and doing all this. And I was just like, I'm going to open it up. And I opened it up. And then we're sure enough we was walking, talking out's catching stuff. She's like, you're playing Pokemon.

I'm like, yeah, a little bit. It's like, I'm going to jump in too. So then she got in. And then we've just egged each other on this entire way. That's all we did at RTCX. Yeah, it's all we did RTCX. You know, in the neighborhood we were going to dinner the other night and we put our name on the wait list.

Then it was like, I don't know, just walk around the blocks. Had all these Pocostops. Just walk through the neighbor. This morning we woke up like early because Jen's like we haven't been spending quality time together since we got back for RTX. Let's wake up tomorrow early, get a cup of coffee and then just go walk catch Pokemon. I was like 100%. Walk through the park today.

150%. Some would say. I don't know. I don't get that for Pokemon reference. The number of Pokemon and Gen 1. You fucking fake that. There's more than now. There's more. I have way more than that. In Gen 1, Greg. But it's not Gen 1 anymore.

Pori-G was in Gen 1, all right? I know when I get somebody down in the single digits or the teens. I'm like, oh, this is an OG motherfucker. Shut up. You don't know anything about it. I send you photos all the time of these guys. You don't know who they are. Thank you. Clearly, that's what I'm talking about. Remember Poygon 2?

No, I refused to remember. That was a fucking mistake. We talked about Poregon 2 on Games Daily. Wow. Well, we showed Poreon photos. Anyways, though. Pogo 2 is in Pokey floats. I've been having a ball with it.

I don't know how long it'll last. You know what I mean? Who knows how long we'll be obsessed with this. But it's just a fun thing to do. It's all Jen plays now on the couch while I'm playing. So now you're going to play Wizards Unite with me and Joey. No, again, I started Wizards Unite and it's the same thing. Where when I started Wizards Unite and jumped in, I was like, okay, how does this play?

Because like Ghostbusters, I mean, being a Ghostbusters fan using, you know, the proton pack and traps and stuff. That was awesome mechanics. It's the fact that there's not enough new ghosts or things challenge me. Okay. Wizards United was jumped in in the world and there's all these different things. and it's like, oh, but I'm just tracing the spell and I'm like getting people out of ice blocks and getting fucking badges and whatnot.

First is just throwing the poca ball. It's the same thing. No, it's out of poker ball less involved. Or I'm just like, I don't want to be like, oh, you want something simpler. Yeah, for a handheld mobile game, well, if I'm just walking and talking and screwing around. Because that's the thing is like,

I'm enjoying it, but it's a hot and cold thing. We're like, oh, man, let's really go get some stuff. And then other stuff like, click, I don't need, I don't really, I don't need to do this. That is a drawback to Wizards Unite that was unforeseen that you can't, one-handed. Yeah. Unless you have

gigantic hands. Which Angie had noticed today as you were walking to lunch and I was like way behind them because I was stopping to do all these skills. I should have just

taken my phone and send some spells too but we were on a time crunch. We were like, come on Joey, let's go. Yeah. This spells for that.

And so yeah, you know, I send you photos all these funny little man I'm catching and got so many funny little men. Yeah, Greg just keeps sending me Pokemon pictures and giving his caption

of what he thinks it looks like and where they're from and what they're thrilling content. Hey, you know what? If you don't want to be my friend you shouldn't have me your phone number. That's on you. Oh, yeah. That is also a solid point. Let's see if we can bring

it, like, if there's any gold here. Oh, I've seen plenty of. You text messages? He's, you text photos of the Pokemon, and then I give him my caption to it. He says, to me a picture of Machop. And it says, look me in the eye and try telling me a man didn't fuck a dinosaur.

And this thing popped out the egg months later. Let me see the photo. Because look at it. Look at him. I mean, he's clearly a little man, but he's also clearly a little dinosaur. And then he says me a picture of Machop. They call that a humanoid. said that was macho.

Machop. Oh, my apologies. My apologies, everybody. Then he sends Machoke and he just says, this guy fucks. This guy. Am I wrong? Look at this guy.

He's got a wrestling belt on. He's got to wear underwear. The other one doesn't wear underwear because this little man dinosaur. Says me one of Zigzagoon and says, look at this fucked up raccoon. Yeah. Zigzag what?

Zigzagoon. They have Pokemon names. Yeah. Well, guess what? You can read the name and you understand exactly what it is because it's clearly like that's exactly. They are literally just putting dogs in this game.

I got... Oh, it's cute. It's fucked up raccoon. Fucked up raccoon. Then there's Mag Cargo. He says, look at the balls on this dude's mouth. Wait, who is it? Mag Cargo.

M-A-G-R-G-O. What the fuck is this thing? It's like a lava, is like a lava, snail? It's a snail? Look at the balls in this guy. Well, is it a, no, it's a snail because it's got the shell. The game makes it. He has more testicles hanging from his mouth in there.

He does have testicles hanging from his mouth. But look at it is. Look at Houndor. That's a fucking dog. Someone caught a dog and shut it in a They called him a hound He's just the I mean he's and now I'll give you a spoyk Spointe is definitely a monster

That look at that's a dog A hound or dog Now put now find spoyk All right The fuck is definitely from another dimension That's here to fuck us up Like spoik is going to What how fuck is this?

It's cute It's like I got a pig nose It's a pig hence the oink But he's got a little He's got the little Curly rain The Coak Spring oink

Dude Thank you, Joey. That was good. Wow. Nine tails can get it, though. Nine tails can get it. On the panel, on the panel, Greg, I was talking about how fucked up it is,

that Dratini turns into Dragon Air turns into Dragon Night, and I don't think that you understood how fucked up the same. Can you, I want the slow reveal here, Barrett. All right, I'm going to look. I don't look to see you. I want a picture of Dutini,

then a picture of Dragon Air, and then a picture of Dragonite. Thank you. You got to give me a minute to do that. What is your issue? Andrew. Oh, no, I was just going to say that I would love to be a fly on the wall, the Pokemon company, when they have to come up with the names of these new things.

It's all in Japanese, but here's how it goes. We were, okay, you tell me. Go ahead. None of butterflies, so rudderfly. Done. Print. There you go. It evolves in a rudderman.

A rudder fly would be like a water type butterfly because then it'd be like the rudders of boats. There's always reasoning, Greg. There's always reasoning, okay? Greg, I'm gonna need you to close your eyes. They're closed. All right. I'm sending gifts.

All right. Because here's the thing about Pokemon Go to bring it back to the game and not look at the characters of all this way. Is the fact that to go from what my first experience with Pokemon Go was, because you remember it when it was like, you know how this started? I can actually tell you. We were walking to the park. Yeah. And we were talking about tweets for some reason. And I mentioned that tweet from the other week that Pokemon Go's launch is the closest we've been to world peace.

Somebody tweeted that. And it was so true, right? I remember that how weird. it was to be in our sleepy-ass sunset neighborhood where we used to have the studio and find there was a gym there kids and people in like the dirty Nelly's bar at a sign-as-out-it-this isn't a poca stop even though it was like leave please leave yeah exactly and it was like holy shit people were running around at all hours and I playing the game like what an amazing experience and that's what I had me open to it but to go from that when I started it and it was like a broken and buggy

experience to where it is now of the way gyms work and the way you know taking stuff over works and the way gifts work, which I remember when they got launched, like, what? You know, you just send shit to each other. Like, that sounds dumb.

And then, like, now when I wake up and I walk porty, that's the first thing I do, is go through and get, clear out, and send all my gifts to Scott Lowe, to Jen,

to Pascoe, Pascal. Santa Claus in the morning, dude. Exactly. And get it back and see our friendship levels increased and I'm going out

to do it. I'm transferring all these Pokemon. I'm getting all their candies. You know what I mean? I'm using different things. I'm getting excited when I see new ones. We, you know,

We beat a raid at the Austin Airport. Beat a raid this morning and stuff. And again, fucking 715 walking around Golden Gate Park today in a random-ass park. And there's a raid pops off. General, like, let's try it.

Some random guy jumped in. Hell yeah. Who the fuck is this guy walking around the park too? You know what I mean? He was all alone. Is he just a creeper in the bushes? Nobody knows. But we beat the right.

I got some fucking creature. I don't know. Some creature. I want to say he was a dragon, but I'll look at my phone and let you know. Interesting. Can I look now? What am I looking at?

Yeah. now. So please pull this up. Of course. This is Dratini. Uh-huh. Okay. Now, Dratini, of course, the Pokemon, my friend. The original quest was have Dr. Dr. Tritini at your side, walk Dratini around, get some candy with Dratini. I've just never unequipped Dritini. So, so to be Dratine. That's a ball. I've evolved to Dragon Air. Right. Who looks- which is this. Who's got a ball on us? And you're like, okay, cool, you're pretty. I get it. You're going to be hot when you're an adult. You know what I think? That's not what I think when I look at this weird snake with balls on it. You don't think so? No. I think

Go back to Drutini. Yeah, I think this, I think Dragon Air has a potential to evolve into something super cool. This is like, this is Ariana Grande when she was on Nickelodeon. Right? Then click over there. This is Ariana Grande when she put out her first album. Okay. You know what I mean?

Sure. And then this is not Ariana Grande now. This is Britney Spears during her fucking freak out. Oh, gosh. This looks like, like, this looks like Charmander's weird brother, right? Like, why the fuck is this? This is literally the top evolution of one of the only dragon-type Pokemon's from general. Like, they're so late, usually in Pokemon, it's like the later in the numbers you get, like, the more like rare and cool.

Like, out of 150, I think he's number 149. Yeah, he's really up there. And here we fucking get him. He has a fanny pack. Wait, wait, where's the fanny pack? I need to see the fanny pack. The dragon air, uh, movie. Also, that did a little bit of a funny bag.

as Dragonite plush is pretty neat. Because he's like a, he like sends messages. That's a man purse. That's a fanning pack. That's a European carry-all. That's just a sightful. Go down. Look at the card.

Look at the card. I'm like, that's a straight up purse there. That's still a purse. This car. When you saw Pokemon, the first movie, you get this car. Little, little wings. Probably can't do much flying because normally dragon the wingspan is proportionately much larger than the body size fuck you up with hyperbeen though

Lance had two of these fuckers it almost from this angle it almost looks like a briefcase It's a business trip dude that he's wearing cross-body style It looks like a class at the top like a doctor's bag like an old school doctor's bag right? All right well anyways so that's what you have to look forward to for your dragon air I want to point out the person we beat in the raid today and I now have is Charpeto. Charpetto. Wow. Wow.

He's a shark, not a peto. Heads up. Just a heads up. Well, you said it's in the name usually. Sharkpedo, I imagine. Like a Torpedo. Why is it spelled peto?

Because it's like a Pokemon. Why is it called a peto? I'm just saying if I was in, if I was a fish dad, wouldn't let my fish kids go around Charpeto. Bad name. Andrea. The last mobile game we're going to talk about today. Lego Tower.

Yes. So I'm playing this actually right now. And what I, want people to know about Lego Tower first and foremost that it's from the team nimble bit if you guys played Tiny Tower the Tiny Tower Craze you guys remember when tiny tower first came out unfamiliar no I remember being I remember Tom Bach you you know you know what I'm talking about right so they've made several iterations they did Tiny Vegas which was really fun they teamed up with Disney Interactive and did

tiny Death Star which I loved as well and their latest partnership is with Lego and of course Lego makes sense to do a tiny tower skin of because everything in Lego is mini you got the little mini figs they all have their little clothing pieces. You've got the tiny little bits and coins and all this stuff. So essentially the gameplay is almost identical to very traditional tiny tower. If you guys have played it, you're building a tower. It's in the name. You stack it one floor at a time and it goes straight up and each of the towers you can customize to make them a certain type of level. So you have your residential levels, which act as like apartments for your mini figs. And then you have a variety of

businesses that can be a recreation or a service or food. So for example, I have a billiards hall. I've got a burger bar. I've got a bank. And each of your mini-figs will then be assigned. You assign them a job in one of the different levels, and then they stock

items, and then you sell the items to earn coins in the game. And each of your mini-figs has a dream job, and so ideally you want to place a mini-fig on the floor to work that is their dream job. So, for example... What are some of their dream jobs? So I had two people who wanted to work at the burger

bar so I specifically I can dream bigger. You know what I mean? Dream to own the burger bar, Lego mini figs, you idiots. Well, maybe they will own it Sunday. Yeah, exactly. You got to start somewhere.

Build your money up. And then there's three items per floor and then you see you have to have three people working and then they each stock a different item. And so part of the time management of the game is going in and restocking each floor as it's running out. And the microtransactions come in where you can hurry the stock. the stock process by paying some bucks, which is like the in-game currency. And I want to give a thank you to the PR team who gave me $5 worth of currency to try out.

Money hat. It actually has gone pretty far. I still have like, you guys. You guys, they gave me five bucks to play within the game. It is a free-to-play game, of course. And what's different about this version of the tower game from Nimble Bit that I haven't seen before in some of their other games is they have a tower. club. And in the tower club, it's like a subscription. You get the first five days free to try it out.

And a big thing from the tower games of the past is customization. So the elevator mechanic is very important because you're constantly sending people up and down the tower. And so if you're part of the tower club, you can get all of these different customizations, whereas before you either had to earn enough money in game in order to buy them or you had to pay real world money for them. So now you can get into the tower club and you kind of get to rotate through all these different customizations without having to pay for them one by one, which I think is really cool. So yesterday I had the flower elevator and today I have the cupcake elevator. But maybe I want the dragon elevator for later today. And what's great about that is that you kind of get to change your customization based off your mood for that day.

And then they have background customizations, lobby customizations where your personalized mini fig lives and then roof customization. So, for example, right now I have Garmidon's shark mech as my rooftoper, which is pretty cool. So if you go up to the top of the tower, you can see I've got my big shark on the top of the tower, which is neat. And so the price admission for the Tower Club is actually not that bad. You can buy a couple of days for a few bucks. But if you want to buy real bucks or legal bucks. So for five days, it's $2.

For 25 days, it's $5 for $2.99 days. so essentially almost a full year, it's 20 bucks. And that gets you kind of the unlimited ability to customize. And it gives you a discount on all of the other purchases that you make inside the game. And it doubles the rent you can collect from your tenants. So this is clearly just, I don't want to call it a time-waster, but it kind of is. It is one of those games that you kind of just check in with from time to time.

And if you guys enjoyed the gameplay of the Tiny Tower variants, then I highly recommend checking out Lego because a lot of the charm of Lego is built into the game. A lot of the floors are designed based off real Lego sets that exist in the world that you can own. Do they have IP?

Is there Batman and stuff? I haven't seen any licensed stuff yet but I would imagine that that's probably in their plans for DLC. But since the game just launched I haven't seen any license. They have the Ninjago stuff but that's of course like a Lego owned brand.

I hope they do Lego license stuff. That would be really neat. And the mini figs are just so fun because in previous iterations, you know, sometimes the little characters don't really do a whole lot as they're walking around in your tower. But they'll like dance. They'll, um, this one guy does air guitar. Um, they'll throw tantrums. And it's just cute because it's a little Lego mini figs. Who doesn't like Lego mini figs?

Come on now. Yeah. And they all have like these different faces. And then there's a whole collectible piece system so you can customize. And if you get drops for pieces that you already own, you can send them to your friends, which is kind of cool. And there's different special. minifigs that can show up at your tower. For example, there's a construction guy.

And if he shows up at your tower, he can knock three hours off the construction time of a new floor. And so if you don't have a new floor that you're ready to build, you can also send those to your friends, which is something that I haven't seen them do before either. So really kind of encourages more of a social aspect to what is really just like a solitary game.

Sure. That's one of the things has been so interesting about Pokemon Go and actually like actually playing it, not just fucking off it and putting it down, is the fact that I haven't seen the microtransaction wall, right? Where it is like I am a flush with items and stuff. Now, I have put money into the game. I bought the team rocket outfit.

I wanted to wear the R and have glasses and stuff. And then once I had left over money, eventually the biggest problem I have is that my item bag is always full. And you can delete stuff or whatever. And I just need to use stuff more. But I did spend money to expand the bag. But in terms of actually always having something to do and not feeling like, ah, I got to wait for this to cool down or whatever.

And then also just the weird thing of like, and I understand, I understand this is why the game's popular. And I don't mean to waste time on a game people already know everything about or understand. But like the actual desire of like, oh, quite cool. Like let's do this and let's walk around. Like when we got to the airport in Austin, it was like, all right, cool, we got lunch and then we just walked around the airport rather than just sit somewhere and, you know, check Twitter. It was walking around and talking to each other and doing the raid or trying to collect this or seeing that. Like, it's a really interesting different game that I'm, I'm very excited that I'm into with Jen. Whereas I think that was the problem with Ghostbusters even where I was into Ghostbusters, but nobody else was.

So it was just me playing and it was super solitary. Even here being able to. I think that's the developers problem too. Oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was just you. Oh, thank you. Well, thank you so much doing stuff too.

Yeah, exactly. Like being able to see what other people are caching and doing and, you know, have that thing of exchanging gifts. It's an interesting way and reason to turn it on and do stuff with it. Before we move on, I'll let you know about our sponsors. Support for this show is brought to you by the, new audible original Stan Lee's Alliances. That's right. Stan Lee's alliances, a trick of light. In one of Lee's final and most innovative works, the legend invites audiences to unleash the power of their own imagination to bring a new universe and cast of superheroes to life. Performed by

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need to tell you about quip? Barry uses quip. I use quip. Gia uses quip. Greg Miller uses quip. Jen uses quip as well. Kevin, I think, uses quip as well. We're a whole little quippy fam here. I absolutely love my quip toothbrush. We're not the first to say it. Sometimes we need a vacation from my vacation. Delayed flights, hotel snafus, chatty travel companions. You can get away for two minutes twice a day with quip. You don't need to think about anything. There's the two minute timer, four quadrants of your mouth. Every 30 seconds, there's a little vibration. That means you need to switch, switch away. You don't even need to think about this stuff. They send you the toothbrush. They send you the replacement brush every three months. They send you the toothpaste. I just get to

sit at home. I don't need to ever worry about my teeth again because we have quip. That did not go as well as I thought of what I apologize for that. But my teeth are clean. You know what I mean? My breath? Feeling extra minty, feeling extra good. Doing the old Greg thing. It smells minty. It smells minty. That's the power of quip, ladies and gentlemen. I love that it has the little travel thing.

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The Dark Pictures Anthology, Man of Medan. Man of Madan. We're not trying to say. We got to see this. Andrea, you got to see this Greg and Joey Noel. Joey Noel coming out on Shock Mike. Tell me everything. Because I don't know.

much about this. I know that it is from the same team that brought us until dawn. Correct. Super massive games. And they're doing the anthology series, kind of smaller like not bite sized, but more of an appetizer compared to a full meal of an until dawn type situation. Today announced, you can do

multiplayer, right? Right? Well, let me set the stage for the setting of Man of Madonna. Going into it, that name doesn't really give you any hints whatsoever about what you're going to play. So this very first iteration of the dark picture anthology of which we discovered, and we talked about on Games Daily today, there will be eight

total games. They're aiming to do two of them a year, which is, I think, pretty ambitious, and I hope that they do that. They are going to be connected by a man called the curator, who functions much like the Crip Keeper in Tales from the Crip. So essentially he'll be like almost like the narrator of sorts. And in this story, we meet two brothers, Brad and Alex. We meet a brother and sister, Julia and Conrad or Connie. And we meet a skipper named Fliss. So we have five characters. They all look to be in their early 20s.

And Fliss is the local. She's kind of the captain of this vessel. And the four friends are going on board to go on a scuba diving trip. They're going to go look for wrecks. Rec diving is like their big hobby because they're rich or something. Yep. They're rich white people. Well, no, the two brothers.

are African-American. Sure, but the rich white people are the ones. And so then the, I think, presumably Fliss is, I don't know, I don't want to, she kind of looks Bahamian, but she's, she has like a Jamaican accent, right? Something, like she's definitely from, like, Caribbean.

How much sexual tension we talk about? Oh, man. Oh, man. So there's a, so we first learn in the very beginning that Alex and Julia are dating, so there are a couple. that's not a secret. And then of course, Conrad, the brother...

Played by Sean Ashmore. Played by Sean Ashmore. Wants to get with Fliss, the captain of the boat. He's the charming... Playboy. He's had a million women in every port. Is he the only, like, known actor? He's the only one that I recognize.

Press release calls out the fact that, yeah, Sean Ashmore's in there. And then Pip Torrens is the curator. And he was in the Crown, Star Wars, the Force Awakens. I think he was Snoke. I'm not joking What did I fuck out? Snokes, what's his name? Oh, Andy Circus?

Yeah. And this is just an old guy He's an old man, old white guy. Pip? Oh, he doesn't have an interesting character design from a visual sense. He just looks like a dude. Yeah, but he was asking for celebrity, right?

Yeah. So we meet these five characters. They're on a boat. Their whole thing is we're going to go out and find a wreck. And so they head out on the water. You know, we get this playful banter and some choices and stuff that you make early on. And then you find a wreck is like the first kind of major beat in the story.

And it's not on record. And so the captain's like, well, you know, we should really call this in if it's not on the map. You know, people need to know where this wreck is. And they're like, oh, live a little. Let's just go down there and check it out. And so that's kind of like the first beat of the story. But that is just the amuse to what's coming later, which features this giant massive warship, which is why we were at the USS Hornet for this preview event. And there is a prologue,

which I don't want to spoil, that explains why the ship is important and what the ship is going to happen. And that's all I'm going to say more about the story, because I want you guys to experience it for yourself. But that just kind of like lays the foundation. And what I loved about the setup that we got to play is that they really nailed that interplay between these young people, the same where they did and until dawn. Like that dynamic between that group of friends in that cabin, I thought felt believable and felt real. And so far from what we've played, I think that they have nailed that in this one as well.

The interesting thing, right, is that what we went to was obviously hands on, but it was more importantly, the embargoes up today. Hey, we have multiplayer. And so, right, what they showed was shared story mode and then movie night mode. Share's story mode is two players online and you're playing the same story. You jump around perspectives and stuff, but it's the same story, same situation, but then you're not always, but most of the time doing different things. And so what's awesome about it, I didn't fully get till the end, right?

Because playing it coming off of Until Dawn, right, a game I think everybody here loves, right? Supermassive. It was a great game. And again, they nailed it. the pacing felt weird getting going in this one of there being downtime or is like because it does pop up of like the other your friend is deciding the other player is deciding on what to say so it'll be downtime and conversations then feel more drawn out and like because you're doing on you we know what it's like to pick our choices but to wait for someone else on the other side of online to pick a choice that we can't see is okay that feels weird that I thought it made the conversations feel stilted see I didn't find that maybe because so Greg and Joey were playing together But I guess if you have a partner that is processing the information at a different speed than you are, then it might make the gameplay feel a little bit one-sided. I was playing with Alessandro from GameSpot.

And there were a couple of moments where there was a hesitation. So, for example, in our play-through, I was playing as Conrad and Julia in the opening moments, and he was playing as Brad and Alex. And so you could see him, like, moving around on the other side of the boat doing his, conversation looking at things in the environment and then I was having a different conversation looking at different things. And so what's really neat about what they've done with this two-player mode is that each player has their own section where they control all of the decisions and control whether they find a secret, whether they pick up the right piece to unlock a clue.

And then you merge your stories back together and then you're in a scene together where one character is being controlled by your friend and then they get to choose. You don't actually get to see what the choice is though. You're in. in the conversation, almost like a cutscene, and then there's a pause. You kind of get a pause on the face, and then it says your friend is deciding, but you don't get to see what they're deciding, so you don't know how the conversation is going to play out. And I think that's so cool. Yeah, and that's what I'm saying. At the end of it, that's when it's revealed. Well, me and Joey got to catch up and actually, like, you know, there's your on, so this first part we're talking about

happens on a small yacht, basically, right? Small boat. And so it is a difference of, yeah, at times see people walking around, but it can be even more moment to moment interesting where we went out and watched the movie thing together, which now is up to five players sitting at it in front of a TV, passing the control. Everybody is assigned a character, and they make the choices for that character past the controller.

But it was Joey's first time seeing what my character got to see, which was talking to his brother. I brought my brother on this trip to meet my girlfriend, Julia, for the first time. And the brother goes to put away beer, and my character brings out an engagement ring in his hand. And he's like, You know, by the way, bro, I have a question for you.

Like, you know, it's a big life decision. And the other character, the bro, who's putting away the beer, is Joey. Joey doesn't get to see my character bring out the ring. It's her putting away the stuff and her picking the choices. So it's him being like, I got to talk to you about life and this choice I have to make. And from the other room, Joey gets a pinwheel of what to say. And she's like, what do you, it's not that hard. Like, listen to your heart.

Not thinking, like, her character thinks that we're talking about med school when my character thinks it's about this engagement ring. And so Joey didn't see that, and I didn't know she wasn't seeing that. So it wasn't until we were watching later that you got that. And in the same way, you know, I was playing as Conrad on top of the boat with the captain, the guy who wants to get engaged and his girlfriend go underwater. They go diving into the wreck. So I'm playing as Conrad having no idea what's going on underwater, legitimately not knowing what's going to happen here.

And like these pirates roll up on the ship and we yell at them, like, yell at them, they get all weird. I throw money in the water. I throw money at them. They're like bishing about a hole in their boats. So Conrad's like, here's $10, $20, $30. He's being an asshole. Again, just a rich Wicca.

The pirates drive off and then there's a mishap with the grill. And then Joey's group surfaces from the water. And then you see money in the water. Exactly. Why is there money in the water? Because they do show a portion where they like focus on them. I'm like, okay, well, clearly that means something. But I have no context for what happened or why the explosion happened.

And then like what altercation had happened. And you didn't know that. I had found stuff in the wreck and stuff like that. And what was crazy about that scene in particular is that they have a choice where you're starting to surface. Like you have this like sweet moment under the water because you're like, you know, deep sea diving with your lover or whatever. And then you see this explosion on the surface and you have no idea what it is, what's happening.

And then you get this choice of like, do you want to surface immediately? And he's like, no, we got to stay because of decompression sickness. And then they're like, and then you get to have to choose if you're going up or not. And then it's like you don't realize until you get to the surface and you've made the choice like why the explosion happened. And I think that interplay of how they've written it so that you could play it either way is so clever and gives it so much replayability. It really makes it feel, I think it really ups the ante and the choose your own adventure style that they, I thought, did a fantastic job with until Dawn here because you can't see what the other person's doing or hear what they're choosing. So this sounds really cool and unique. It also sounds like you're missing out on a lot, though,

if you're not having a conversation immediately after with the person you're playing with. And if you're playing online with somebody, so you're not on chat? Yeah, there's no voice chat. You have to be in a party or something. Yeah, okay. It just sounds like it's weird

where you're not supposed to know what's happening, but then you need to talk to them to know what happened, but in the moment you know what happened, then that's going to affect your decisions going forward. I think it's just a personal preference of how you want to play. Like, if you want to not know, If you want to just go in blind and kind of experience it for what the story is, you wouldn't need to be on chat. But if you want to have that moment of dialogue with your partner where you're like talk over the decisions and make the decisions together, you can obviously do that.

But I think what they're doing is just saying, hey, if you want to experience the other side, go back and play it again. But I mean, until Dom was the same way, if you made specific choices, there were a whole paths you never saw, right? Yeah. I just think it's weird. Like I don't get then what the point of having it be another human being is. I think it's just the dynamic of being able to have that suspense of not knowing what your partner is going to choose. And I think it makes it more interesting because when we were all talking about it as a group afterwards when we went to go play the movie night mode, which we'll talk about here in just a second. We were all talking about, did you see this? Did this happen to you in your playthrough?

I made this choice. And we all learned about things in everybody's play through that were different. I thought that was a cool moment. Definitely. I just don't see how this is going to enhance that compared to until dawn, which that happened. and it was just you're playing with the computer and not having to wait for people to make decisions. It's not that long of a wait.

I was just saying that, yeah, it was just enough to be in the beginning of like, wait, this is weird. And then watching movie night where it is just one player making decisions and the computer's responding back. I was like, oh, I see what was different and why it threw me off that way. I think it adds a really interesting dynamic and dimension to it

of yeah, like I would be down, like until dawn I loved and played it through and never played it again. Like, and I couldn't, I didn't want to go for a platinum or anything. I just had a great time with it. whereas if these are shorter experiences, right? Like I totally be down for, I ran through as, you know, player one. Now I'm going to come back and play player two

and see what Joey saw underwater and make those different decisions. And it's the classic untilled on tropes of, you know, what choices do you want to make and the way it all branches, right? Like, you know, the pirates eventually come back and like you're all tied up. And so then it is now, do you want to be nice to him?

Do you want to talk shit to him? Do you want to do this? Do you want to do that? At one point, like, I was in charge of trying to get to their boat and go off to get help, right? And they were like very clearly like, all right, the plan is do that and get out. I was like, got it.

And I was going, going, and I saw a knife, and I'm like, I'm going to fuck these guys up. And it's like, I'm going to roll the dice and see what happens. And like, why not? And then on the other playthrough, I'd love to. And then after it was all done, they were like, cool, did you lose anybody in your play through?

We were like, fuck, you could have lost people. And that like, basically, at 90 minutes, we played. Oh, yeah, you can totally lose people. Yeah, release date August 30th. Yeah, it's coming up real quick. Not far away. So you're talking about a movie mode. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, so the movie night mode is for two to five players locally. and it's basically like a pass the controller mode. Your players one through five, you put your name in, then it'll say like, Gregi, it's your turn to play. You pass the controller. And then while it's his turn to play, he has control of the choices

and the outcomes that happened during his section. And we each picked a specific character to play as. And so you get to pick those choices tied to that character's storyline. What I thought was interesting that they mentioned in the press release today is that your actions and your impacts on the story as an individual player are judged against

the people you're playing with. and you get achievements and rewards for each individual player's decisions versus as a single playthrough. And I thought that that was kind of a neat touch. I mean, because they understand that this is really more of a playable movie than it is a video game because it's basically like you blight walking, you swing the controller, stick back and forth to pick choices for dialogue. And then there's a couple quick time events and that's it.

So it's pretty approachable for people who don't play a lot of video games, particularly people who don't play video games with controllers with sticks, right? Maybe they're mobile players or whatever. And so I think it's a nice way to maybe have a shared experience with friends of yours that enjoy the horror genre or horror TV movies but don't want to play a horror video game. And so I think I think it's a nice touch. I prefer the two player mode quite frankly. Or just the single player and they all just sit around. And granted, like, you know, the online, the common is it's around four hours to do a play through of it.

And there's a million different things like we're talking about. But even then it would just be like it's a weird. The last controller thing. It's a weird thing you have to go through the tutorial again. There was no way to skip it. I was like, I'm hoping that that was just a build issue and not going to be in the final game. Because they made us go through the entire credit sequence again.

But hopefully they'll just add a skip button in there because if you've played it through once on your own. But then you want to show your friends, you shouldn't have to go through those opening sequences again. Yeah. It's so weird. Like I feel like they still haven't cracked the knot. That's from game ranks, by the way. But I found that.

of figuring out like these games should probably, especially if it's anthology, be closer to the hour mark or hour 30 mark with a bunch of different things that could happen. Because like when are you going to have five people in a room for four hours to play through this? Extra life. You know? Besides that. Well, we've been playing through until Dawn and our What's Good Games after our streams. And so we did the first section last month or the first section in May, the second section last month. and we're doing the final now.

And so I guess if you break it up with your friends, you don't necessarily need to. Because, I mean, it's in chapters, right? So you could easily stop playing at the end of a chapter. I'm just thinking about- Uncle Dawn was so great. And I was trying to convince my friends, like, we should all play it.

It's like, if it was a complete thing, I'm like, this is going to take an hour and a half. It's like watching the movie, but we're all interacting together. They totally would have done it. But it's like, no, it's a whole video game. We might need to break this up over multiple sessions. Like, you lose the people that you're talking about.

that aren't traditionally. It's the normal thing where I feel like you do it and you pass around and even if you don't complete it, they got to experience and see it and they don't really care how it ends. That's why I think though one-on-one online thing makes more sense.

I am interested to see what it would be like to play it solo. Because you can still play it solo obviously. But if they're, what part am I getting, right? Because like I definitely, I was player one online with Joey and I definitely felt that

Joey's underwater segment probably seemed more interesting than what I was doing. Not that I was bored up there, but it was like when she came back up I was like in the ship. I was like, fuck, that sounds awesome. I was just talking to her and I was choosing if I wanted to hit on her or not.

You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah, I got way more like story lore clues than I think you did. Yeah. But then you got more context for the next scene of why things were happening. I was like, I don't know, who these other people are? Where do they come from? Right.

So, yeah, I'm interested to see how they merge those or what the single player like path is. Because I do think that, I don't know. I guess it would be just to be interesting to see what it was. I mean, ultimately, If you want to see the entire story, you're going to have to do multiple play-throughs. But I think they set up that expectation with Untildon. And it's just more emphasized here because they needed to split the narrative to make it compelling for two people to play at the same time. I think it's a really interesting way for them to diversify what they were doing instead of just doing essentially the exact same formula.

They're doing something different. I think they could speed it up to your point of like make it shorter if they had taken out less of like the secret and collectible things. because you're encouraged to explore, which takes time, by uncovering these, oh, this secret, you've now unlocked a premonition that could potentially unlock an option in the story later on. And so you want to explore some of that stuff. But that exploration element is what makes it probably double the length

that it would need to be if there was no walking around at all. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I left high on it. I want to play more of it. I did think it didn't look as good as until dawn graphically. I didn't think the faces looked as good as they did until on. And again, this is a multi-platform game.

So I'm sure that's where the things come. And it's also not final code. You know, we need to make that caveat. So we don't know exactly what it's going to look like. And there's popping and stuff. So it's like, okay, cool. But like I'm in it for the story and the adventure and the choices and see how they all play out together. But yeah, until Don looked beautiful.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so, yeah, it's interesting. They're doing so many of this anthology business, right? I hope it's a great idea. Yeah. Next up, Call of Duty, Modern Warfare. What do you guys got for me in that little book?

let me pull up my judge's notes. We went and saw Call of Duty Modern Warfare at E3. Embargo's always lifting. Who knows what's going on. One of the things they showed there, Tim, was a 2V2 gunfight mode.

So the idea here is that you partner up with somebody against another team of two and then you're put into different areas that you then go and fight. We played in what, I forget the official name, is King, the interior of a warehouse. So there was like,

it was like a warehouse, obviously. and then like wooden hallways on both sides, this little structure in the inside, right? You both start on opposite sides of the warehouse and then need to kill each other. The thing that's cool about it is that they give you the weapons every time, so this isn't like you're coming in with a load out,

like, all right, it's pistols and knives, all right, it's rocket launcher and shotgun, all right, it's this, that, and the other. And then it's a countdown clock, it starts and you just fucking go and you have to kill the other people. I brought in their actual thing because I wanted to break out the actual,

the high level like I did on Games Daily, right? So it's two teams with two players will face off against each other in a fast-paced firefight. When the round starts, you'll have 40 seconds to locate the other team and defeat them.

If no one has killed in the first 40 seconds, then a flag will appear in the center of the map. Players will need to run to the flag and defend it for three seconds to get the point. Awesome.

If no one can defend the flag within the time limit, the team with the most health wins. Last team standing gets the point. The first team to six points wins. You will not need to create a class. All weapons and equipment selection is handled by the game mode.

Also, you will not be able to heal after being shot. All players have a set amount of health. The maps play that the pre-beefs are king, pine, which is the exterior of a dense forest, and stack a desert container yard. This, I'm not a call a duty guy. I'm definitely not a college duty multiplayer guy.

I've already talked about modern warfare. I think single player story seems interesting. I'm in. I'm so in for this to be party modes. Like this was so, it was me and Brandon Jones, and I forget who we were facing off against. But it was, it was tense. It was fast.

When we did fuck up, it was like, okay, cool, get back out there. Get back out there. And then when we like started getting to the mind games, because it's, they're small. areas on purpose, right? And it is just that it's a shotgun or whatever, and a rocket launcher. And so it would be trying to bait the other person, come around and just fire the rocket off and then try to flank them over here. And then

it was awesome. It was so much fun to be in that, like, frantic thing. And then it did come down to the flag a bunch of times because the time sounds awesome. 40 seconds and then the flag comes to bait everyone out. That's cool. These are quick. The way they were describing it is almost like a fighting game matchup, like

very, very quick. You just get in, you get out. because some of these call of duty matches, you know, kind of feel like you're just like endlessly respawning over and over again. And I like that you don't pick anything. You don't have to look at your loadouts.

You don't have to pick your weapons. It's an even playing field for everybody. And the maps that we played, the interior of the warehouse was very close quarters. Whereas the forest, while still not a giant map, provided a little bit more strategy, and that's where they gave us the rocket launcher.

And it's so frenetic because, like you get a glimpse of somebody and you immediately just start firing right away because you don't you know the time is ticking yeah and so you you're forced to engage right away and it's just such a fun addition and i'm so glad that they brought this on because it iterates on the traditional call of duty modes that we've seen of the past in a such a different way that it's going to bring people like gregg and i back to the table to be like hey let me let me rediscover this you know yeah yeah because there's just that it was just that energy of it and how fast it was. I know we keep saying fast, but how fast it was, because you'll start and you'll

move and you'll see people at the other end of the screen, right? But if it's pistols and knives, what are you going to do, right? So you have to like, you see them go one way, you cut that way, then are you going to wait for them, or are you going to try to go and engage? So is the weapons that you get, like, I know it's the, they're always the same, but is it random, or is it like based on whatever level you're on? I'm not sure. I think, I think it's, I don't think it's based on level, because I did have

rocket launchers in the warehouse, because I don't think I ever played forest. I think me and Brandon only played warehouse. but I think it's the game doing it so I would imagine the game has specific pairings it wants to give you I don't think it's just like totally random where you're going to get like frag grenade and stun grenade fuck shit you know it's a shitty match but like that sounds fun yeah right but the thing is it it does

it reminds me so much of like gold and I Proxmines only that's exactly oh man that's cool yeah it was really really cool and I can't wait to play more of that and the 2 v2 dynamic is really interesting because you really have to strategize are you gonna roll together Are you going to split up? Brandon and I would go to different sides and engage out, right? And try to get them, try to flush them to center, call it out.

That was the thing. We're screaming at each other on where people are. This reminds me of, in Halo 2, there was a match type that got really popular called shoddy snipers. There was 2B2. And one person who had a shotgun, one person to have a sniper. And like, that just set up such great on Ascension, baby. It was so cool. Let's go.

That sounds great, though. Yeah. Yeah. It was really fun. And then they announced that the full multiplayer reveal will be happening on August 1st, first. Cool. Cool.

Any more Call of Duty stuff or can we move on? No, because the other stuff we saw we can't talk about. Super fast mode. Super fun to shoot.

Yeah. There you go. See of Solitude. Yeah, quite a pivot here in tone. So Sea of Solitude is a small little indie art title

from a team called Joy May Games. They first really kind of debuted it in earnest at EA play last year. And then Cornel Geppert who's the lead writer

and the head of the studio was back at EA Play doing a bunch of interviews this year and she's done a ton of press. So I've known Connie for several years. She's been a friend of mine in the games industry. And I was just really personally excited for her that they got to finally launch this game because this game is such a personal experience for her. Even at the very beginning of the game, there's a screen that comes up that says this is a story about loneliness and despair and about mental health and there'll be these very serious themes that we discuss almost like a trigger warning at the beginning of the game. And the journey that the lead character Kay goes on chapter

by chapter is essentially her confronting these demons or these monsters in her life that represent different things. One is her own personal monster. One is the monster that her brother becomes and the monster of her parents, the monster of an ex-boyfriend. And the stories of them are each very different in how they affected Kay's life and how Kay kind of needs to, to clear this corruption from these chapters. And there's a lot of metaphor, but the thing I think that really sets this game apart as an emotional narrative than other games

that we've seen semi-recently, even a game like Celeste, is that Celeste felt more like almost like an allegory and that there was a lot of room for interpretation for the player to kind of make that story their own, whereas this is very much Connie's story, and the narrative is the focus of this game, whereas the mechanics are not really the focus. focus. But you clear corruption through these different spots in the world and then the corruption goes into a backpack. So you're literally holding that negative energy and weight like on your back throughout the game. And there was just certain chapters that really spoke to me more than others. One chapter actually just full on started crying during because it was like it reminded me so much of something that happened in my own life that I wasn't expecting. I hadn't thought about this moment that had happened for a really long time. And then the way that it represented and manifested in the game.

was just really powerful. And I think that's why it's been such a divisive game critically, because a lot of people don't know how to feel about this, because the gameplay elements are very basic. The puzzles aren't difficult. The traversals just like very simple platforming. I really love the art style and what the animator did, but I think some people are upset that the gameplay isn't stronger than it is. But that didn't bother me because I think I went into this knowing it was going to be a mostly narrative experience. Almost like an Edith Finch type experience is what Stimer was comparing it to and I think that that's a good a good comparison it is broken up into different chapters

in that way too So it's her story and it's her Converning her demons What it's not hyperrealist it's not realistic in the way of like You're marching through your town your town fighting your brother is it's like you No yeah yeah it's almost like a dream world So it's set in like this almost underwater version of Berlin

And you you start out on a boat and a lot of the city is sunken underwater and then as you go through different chapters like the world transforms to kind of match what's happening and you end up in this like frozen overworld at the end and I think there's a lot of you know

things that you can draw from inspiration as to what that means in the world in relationship to what's happening in the narrative and I'm trying to speak about it vaguely because I don't want to give it away because it is such a heavy narrative experience and so I don't want to go too much into detail about what happens to the chapter

From the description you're giving of like pop-a-o-yo, remember that? Yes, that's another good example. The kid with the giant monster that represents his dad's alcoholism, right? Which is, again, autobiographical. Like, that sounds interesting. Yeah, so I really enjoyed my time with that. I played it in a single night. It's just a few hours.

I would say maybe like anywhere from two to four hours, depending on how fast you explore. The one thing that I think they could have just left out altogether is they put a collectible system in. And it didn't really make sense to me because this is not something I want to to go back and play again just to get the collectibles because it was such an intense experience. But there's like these seagulls that you shoe. And then I like that the seagull goes up and then it lets you see the overworld. But I think the idea of like collecting 39 seagulls or whatever it is throughout the world just, it felt it just felt like a miss because there's really a mashup ride of two ideas.

Yeah, there's not really a sense of a need to explore. Though I do love the way that they designed the world in this game. But it's not like you're going to go find like a treasure. or an item or something around a corner. It's not called Seagulls of Solitude. Exactly. And then they have a message in a bottle system going with the Sea of Solitude theme.

But the messages on the bottles aren't particularly poignant to the overall story. And so I think like they could have just scrapped the collectible system and the game would have been better for it. Stronger, yeah. But overall, I thought it was really powerful.

I think games like this are very difficult to make because these issues of depression and loneliness and methods. health and the conflict that we have and our interpersonal relationships and all the emotions and feelings that come along with that are inherently going to be difficult to make into a video game. And that's why I feel it almost feels more like an interactive story or an interactive piece of art than it does a game in that sense. And that's why I feel it's like such a different style of experience than a game like Celeste that also had a big emotional impact on me. But you

recommend it. Yes, absolutely. Definitely recommend it. I mean, it's like I said, it's a smaller game. I I think it's 1499. EA provided me with a code to play the game. I'm not sure. I'd have to look at the platforms you can get it on. But I think it's on all of the platforms. PlayStation 4 for sure. That's what I downloaded it.

Yeah. So I played it on PS4. You're not making choices, are you? It's just, no, there's no narrative branches at all. You're almost like observing the story more. The gameplay really comes from you walking through the world and then clearing corruption from certain areas.

And then when you clear the corruption, you unlock almost like a ghost of yourself that shines a light through the monster that's blocking your path ahead. And so, I mean, that in and of itself, like, speaks to, like, clearing this negative energy from your life to push through your demons, like, quite literally. And so as you go through each chapter,

how you clear that corruption or how you move the demon or the monster that's blocking your path changes chapter to chapter. So I thought that was a nice touch that they changed it up. It's not the same. Because it would have gotten pretty repetitive if they had used the same mechanic in each chapter. But each monster has a little bit of a different mechanic attached to it. But yeah, the voiceover that they use is like it feels really real, particularly the scene

between the parents was like really hard to listen to, like listen to their dialogue back and forth. But in each scene, I think, will speak differently to people depending on, you know, what they've experienced in their own life. Yeah, cool. Yeah. But the, um, so it was released on July 5th. It's on PS4, Xbox 1 and Windows.

There you go. So I think that's through EA origin. Makes sense. It might be on Steam. Don't know. Unclear. I'm looking. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this has been the Kind of Funny Gamescast.

Thank you very much for joining us this week. We will return next week as we do every week, because that's how a podcast work. Until then, I love you.