Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Gary Whitta's Helldivers 2 Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: December 16, 2024

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What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast for Monday, December 16th, 2024 on one of your host, Greg Miller, all alongside Christmas in December. Joey now. Mike, do you think that Andy's trying to big time you by not having you in the games cast intro? Oh, yeah. He's been big time in me a lot. Yeah. Okay? And we're going to talk about it here, but he's not the person I want to talk about right now. Don't talk about big time. Mike, when I walked in today, you and blessing, two lumps on a cucumber.

Nobody says hi to Greg. Nobody says, I go talk to Barrett. I say, Barrett, what's going on over here? Why is everybody big-time in me? He's got to talk to me. And, Mike, you know, I hate talking to people in the morning. That's fucked up. I can't believe you're big-time in Greg like that.

We've got to listen to his goddamn punk rock music in there, all right? Well, he sets up everything. That's how it's got to be over there. I want to talk about one big timer out in the chat right now. Of course, you know, this is all out of love, but you know I got to call you out. On Friday, December 13th, during a kind of funny games daily, I told one blessing at a Yo-Yea Jr. That I was going to try the metaphor,

Refentazio demo. Because I had time on my hands, and I was willing to give it a try. And one, Corey Pichu, Jibroni, in the chat, said Snowbike, Mike, you're not going to beat that demo, LMFAO. And I said, get out of my face, Corey. I got all the time in the world.

I'll go out there and I'll learn about the game and I'll play it. And then another JBRone, J6, 7 says, Mike, you have to look at med. You have to look at menus and metaphor. No way you're beating it. Motherfucker, I beat it. Okay, that's what you get. Five and a half hours.

I'll beat video games out of spite for each and every one of you, okay? Did you enjoy it at all? Snowbike Mike, the Master of Hype? Yeah, Greg, I am actually pleased to say that I did enjoy metaphor. I thought metaphor was a really fun time. 2024, as many people know, it's been a year about stepping out of my comfort zone,

trying new genres, franchises, games that I probably never would try, or give the chance to. And I will say over the weekend, six hours of metaphor, I had a blast. I really, really, I dug the story,

a lot going on there. Really goes deep, really gets into some territory where I'm like, oh man, you're set, they had a pot, they put it on the stove top.

They started warming it up. They were putting in some seasoning. And I was like, oh, you're about to create something here. I see it. I love the really intense anime cut scenes where it's like,

oh man, am I just watching an episode of my favorite anime? Maybe. I should just put the, controller down to then the fun turn-based battles of fighting on the front line back line trying different archetypes what mixes well with my play style maybe got the healer this time maybe I'm going to go with the mage oh you got to deepen the bond with that person to go a little

bit deeper get some more have you ever played persona or no I know oh okay so this is like your so what's the but here's the thing you did it out of spite you beat the demo did it out of spite are you going to keep going or is that enough for you you've played metaphor and you're like I get it the chanting's cool the turn base stuff's fine I'm out Here's the deal, Greg. If I had 50 hours to spare, I would do that. But unfortunately, my life does not have that many hours in the day to give that to it. So I don't think I will go back to this.

But if I had all the time in the world, it would either be Yakuza like a dragon or I would play this game. Those would be my dream RPT if I could juggle one right now. So we'll see. Here comes Barry Corny. But I'm happy to say I played it. I mean, maybe if you took a little bit of a break from Microsoft Flight Simulator, which apparently reported from you is still kind of a mess. Still a mess, but I'm playing it, Greg.

I got a PPL and I'm flying. What does that mean? Barrett, how fast can you get through metaphor? Because I remember you, I thought you put in a lot of time, but then I was listening to the Alana Pierce Game of the Year conversation that I won yesterday. But Cam Hawkins was on there and he was like, oh, you know, metaphor is not. I forget who he was telling you to, maybe a lot of herself.

It's like 60 hours, he said you could get through and do it. Is that true? I mean, you could. I wouldn't recommend it because then you're going to be underleveled for like to get through that game in 60 to 65 hours. You're skipping a lot of side stuff, which means that you're not getting the full experience. Well, not even getting the full experience. You're not level grinding. So then in the last like quarter of that game, you are super underleveled, which is going to make things way harder for you.

But there are also people who beat persona three reload in like 50 hours and it took me like 90 or something like that. So maybe they have some secret code unlocked in their brain that they can get through that game. It's called skip all the dial-up. Yeah. The Joey special. Yeah. Play on easy. You automate the battles.

Yeah. If you bumped it down to like easy and stuff like that, would that expedite? Probably. If you bumped it down to like story mode. Yeah. Yeah. Just like didn't do any of the side stuff. Yeah, probably.

Okay. Did you know there's a sword? And he rides on the sword. Fuck, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, I do it all the time around town. It's pretty lit. Yeah, I know how to get around town.

I'll give him that. And also there's a father, and he's got a daughter. And unlike one father in my life, he goes and checks in on his daughter, okay? Until, you know, some shit happens. Some shit happens. Play the game. It's pretty good, y'all. It's pretty good if you like that game.

What father are you? I'm talking about Big G. Big G is one of the early characters you meet. He daps up my board. Oh, no, I know about Grias. You said unlike a different father. Oh, Barrett. In Final Fantasy, seven.

and he doesn't check out Marlene. Got it. I thought you were talking about me for a sudden. I was like, damn. This is one of those things I just nodded. I was like, this is a deep cut of kind of funny lore and I'm lost. I don't know. I know something about me that I don't know.

Of course, we'll soon be joined by the Rogue One, Gary Wooda, for his hell diver's review. But first I'll tell you that this is the kind of funny games cast each and every weekday. We get together, sometimes four, sometimes five. Best friends are on this table to talk about the video games we need to, whether they be previews, reviews, or just topics of the show. Right, Joe? Yeah. I wasn't expecting that.

I know. That's why I'm keeping on your toast. Of course, you can get it on live. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, Twitch. dot TV slash kind of funny games. Later on podcast services or YouTube. com slash kind of funny games, no matter where you get the games cast, please know we are ever in your debt for the support you give us.

If you want to go a little bit further, of course, we would love you to be part of this show with your live super chat comments on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. You can give us your opinions of past. of Exile 2, which we're about to talk about, or helldivers too, and omens of tyranny. Whatever you want to say, we want to hear. So do that on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. If you're watching later or just watching now and you want to go that extra mile, we'd love

you to pick up a Kind of Funny membership. You can get it on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny or YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny games to get all of our shows ad free. Get the ability to watch us record the afternoon podcast live as you record them. And of course, get your daily dose of me. Greg Miller in a series we call Greg Way. some housekeeping for you. Remember we're an 11-person business all about

live talk shows. You already got your Switch 2 renders on Kind of Funny Games daily, and after this, you're going to get a stream for our Hope Miss Charity stream where we're playing The Mind. Which I've never played before. I haven't played. I haven't played. We like it a lot. We like it a lot, too, but she's not here.

So don't think you get in Jen today. Okay. She's not here. If you're a kind of funny member, though, you can get a, Greg away from me about the Superman movie memories I have because important Thursday scheduling update. You will not be getting a games cast. Instead at 9 a.m. You are getting the live reaction to the Superman trailer. It will be myself, Tim, Nick, anybody else who wants to come through. We, of course, will abstain from watching it when it posts at 6 a.m.

So we can live react here and talk about our hopes and dreams for James Gunn's new Superman movie. Then it'll be your normal day, kind of. 10 a.m., kind of funny games daily with Tim and Andy. And then happy hour at 11 a.m. meaning no stream that day, just happy hour, which of course is our Patreon exclusive show where you can call in and watch us talk to you and talk to other people and have a great time.

Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, and Carl Jacobs. Today we're brought to you by Heart Electric, still wakes the deep, aura frames in Marvel Snap, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin with one of our topics of the show. So, as you both know, I love planning the game's coverage here for Kind of Funny. You do.

I go through. I say what's big, what's happening, what are the big topics? What do we need to be tackling? Yeah, da, da, da, ta-da. And what I love about kind of funny is we're very fluid, so anything can change. So I'd put on here,

Greg Miller's Path of Exile to Review, right? Because I had come back, I had missed the preview with Zanth. I had not, I let him do the review. It was a great show. You missed all. No, I listened to it. I loved it.

But it was that idea of like, I'm going to get there and I'm going to go. And of course, Path of Exile to drop Mikey. I paid for it, bought it, jumped in, adore it. So good. so much fun. Played a bunch of it. Then it was Game Awards week and Jen went to L.A.

And Mom was in town and I was soloing Ben, but then it was also Craven. And then, mo and behold, at Game Wars, they drop Hell Divers expansion. And I'm like, listen, my heart belongs to Super Earth. So I got a pause path. So I didn't play enough path of exile to come in here and review it. But I haven't talked about on content. And I haven't had a real update from you guys. Because I remember, this is how I knew Zanth did well on his review slash preview.

I wasn't there that day, but as soon as the games cast ended, and the Slack channel, you both asked for codes for Path of Exile. So, Michael, how much Path of Exile 2 have you played? Oh, yikes. I'm on my second character now. I'm anywhere between 10 and 12 hours. I'm on act number two with my first character, and I've re-rolled a barbarian on my second character now.

Who is your first character? A witch. Okay. So Necrimancer, but a witch right there. So I have a caster now, and I kind of have that up-close, melee combat that I wanted to see as well. So yeah, I'm a lot of hours in and I'm loving every moment. Yeah.

Joster. I want to know. You and me, of course, kindered Diablo spirits. Yes, of course. We love Diablo so much. You and I have continued to play throughout the Diablo for year long journey we've been on. Yeah. Path of Exile, too.

I've played them all 15 minutes of it. Okay. So here's the thing. I rolled a character this weekend. I rolled it on Saturday. Would you roll? That's a great question that I'm trying to remember this so much I don't remember. it. The archer, I forget what it is. Ranger. That's what I did too.

Started playing, then got to the first mini boss or whatever, like in the tutorial thing. And I was like, oh, I have to pay way more attention in this than I am used to paying. And I was not in a state where that was what I wanted to do. Sure, fair. This is also coming off then on Sunday, listening to Alana, the Game of the Year award discussion. Then I started playing, well, I got, what I ended up going back to was Astrobot because we had been talking about it from. from that and game awards and I had never finished it. So I went back to that and then I started playing Bellatro last week.

Yeah, you did. Joey went everywhere after Pass the Ex-out. So it might be a little while before I get to Path Vexout. What I know I have to do is I pretty much have to spend like 15 minutes with every character and figure out what the best play style is. Because in my heart, I want to be the ranger. I love a bow and arrow. I love some range things. But like if I'm playing by myself and I'm not playing, yeah, this was me last nine.

One 13. I was really, this is my best run that I've had since I started playing less than 24 hours ago, but I was feeling really good about it. I need to spend 15 minutes with each character. If I'm playing by myself, I need something that's a little bit more. I can't, I don't have the benefit of playing range because I don't have somebody else helping me. Gotcha. So I think I need to be in it a little bit more.

So I think I'm essentially going to have to like roll one of every character and figure out what I like and then go back to it. This is my Christmas break game. Okay. I like that all along. I like that. I like that. How about yourself, Greg? Yeah, hours I couldn't tell you, a good number.

Like, I'm not like, I just scratched the surface. We did a stream. I think, have we done two or just the one? We did the one for sure, but it's at home, and it's the one when I'm slinking downstairs, exhausted, I'm popping it and going. And I am so impressed with it and so much more into it than I even thought I would be. Where when I looked at it and oh, it's, you know, it's an ARPG,

and oh, it's a better Diablo or this, that, and the other. I looked at it and I was like, that's fine, but I have so much time in Diablo. I love Diablo. so much and I have so much invested. My thought was when I started this, I would jump in, say, yeah, it's a good Diablo like, I'll jump out and go back to Diablo eventually, right?

This isn't finding an itch that Diablo can't scratch. And so I was shocked on night one to be playing this. Not even night one. That sounds like it took me a while. Like the first moments of gameplay, like, oh, this is so much more,

this is a different pace. This is a slower pace. feels there is weight to it. And then to get to that tutorial boss, I'm like, oh, I got to pay attention, right? I can't do this thing.

And like, exactly. And like, really have it be like, I told you and I've talked about it streams or whatever, but like I know I'm generalizing and I'm boiling it down too much. But to have it be a, for Greg Miller's intensive purposes,

a soul's like a RPG. And what I mean by that, of course, is not that when I die, I got to go get my spirits and I, but I mean like, if I was to do an isometric, Dark Souls, Blood, Born, whatever,

I feel like the boss battles would play this way. Where it is, oh, I gotta know, he's doing that, which is his tell, which means get over here to get around it. Dodge, roll, dodge, roll, good, all. And like, when you don't do that, you're gonna lose, you're gonna have a problem. And so I love that.

Of course, here he is, the Rogue One, Gary Winner. Sorry. Don't be. Oh, what I'm Gary! I don't know, like, why am I here again? You're gonna review Hell Divers too. I know, okay, so I know you said, do you want to do that, but you didn't, did you give me a time or a date?

did you? I can read back the text. You can read back the text for you? Yeah, okay. So behind the scenes, Gary is just late. That's no big deal. It's no big deal. To be fair, it's very unlike me.

I'm usually very reliable. And that's why, and I've, you've, there was a time back for a games daily back in the day where I called you and you're like, do you think I forgot? I'm like, oh, sorry, I'll never do it again. So like, I wasn't worried. Yeah, Saturday 10, 29 p.m. You and I are talking about the hell. We're talking about the hell diver.

We're talking about the hell diver's controller. And then I go, speaking of, what are you doing Monday at 11th? Check this against my own records. Speaking of, what are you doing Monday at 11? You want to jump on the games cast and talk hell divers. You reply, sure. Then I said, would you be down to review the expansion or is it too early? Would love the headline, Gary Wood is Hell Divers to review.

Yeah, I remember all of this. Sure. Hold on. What I mean you remember all? But I just told you you said Monday at 11th. So you remember it. Hold on, hold on. Okay, wait.

I do appreciate it. Would you be down to review the expansion or too early? Right above that. Monday at 11th. Okay. No, that's all right. That's on me. All right.

I appreciate our friendship is so sincere. You know that I would fuck with you and make up text. You're like, I got to read it. I got to read it and make sure it's really there. My ADHD has gotten worse over the years. So I have to now rely on external systems to remember everything. So basically like every little thing. I have to put in my calendar with an alert to go off at a certain time.

If I forget to set off, if I forget to set the alert or if for whatever reason it doesn't go off, sometimes you put in the wrong day or whatever, then my brain's not going to do it by itself. Of course. So what I didn't do in this case was I didn't immediately, because I have to do it immediately before it exits my brain. Yeah. It's like, go quick. Doing this at 11, set an alert, get it all set up, ready to go. So I didn't do that, like in the moment.

Yeah. And then I just completely in one ear and out the other. I appreciate you making a job in whatever you were doing. Which is weird because I wanted, I was excited to do this. You know, any excuse to talk about hell divers. Yeah. I like being, you know, hanging out with you guys. So I was all like motivated to do it.

I just forgot. What is this? What is this drink you're drinking? This is Lucasade. This is, I grew up with this. This is before energy drinks and Red Bull and stuff became popular in the U.S., lucasade, made with glucose, was the original, like, energy drink. This has been around since I was a kid. It's still very popular today.

Back in the days of stickball. Yeah, back in the days of stickball. Can you get it here in the U.S.? You guys, I want to play stickball? So, yes, I'm here. And, like, I literally, like, the second I put the phone down, I said to Leah, like, I got to go. Fucked up. And, like, I didn't change it.

Just like how I was, like, before I left the house. Yeah. Your fashion icon, don't worry about it. Have you played Path of Exile, too, at all? No, but when I was very into Diablo four last year, because that was probably my second, wait, what year was Diablo? Last year. Yeah, yeah. Okay.

That was probably my most played game of last year. I played a ton of it. And I, to the extent that I got into watching, like, YouTube, you know, YouTubers getting into it and stuff. And what I remember was a lot of people talking about how Path of Exile 2, because it's been in like an open beta for a while. People have been able to play it for a while, right? It just came out to early access, but yeah, there's been obviously places to touch and get in there. People were basically saying like Path of Exile is better than Diablo. It does a lot of things. Diablo could learn a lot from Patho. It sounds like Diablo 4 is in a good place right now with the expansion. But this obviously very, very Diablo, right? I mean, this could be Diablo if you know anybody.

We were just picking up, right, of being such a Diablo fan and jumping in here. And I was shocked how obviously it is in terms of isometric. Look, this, dungeon crawling air, RPG. But then how it feels completely different, how I have to be way more dialed in here. You have to be paying attention. Yeah. Even the portal that I use all the time to sell junk in Diablo, right? Like, I feel like, I can, I'll push it further.

I'll push further. I'll push further. So I mean, again, to look at it right now and say, well, that's just Diablo. Yeah. You're saying that when you're actually playing it, that's not the case. Yeah. I think there's a much more, there's a heavier feel to it, there's a slower pace, there's a more, I have to be paying attention to what this boss does in a way in Diablo, I don't. And the same thing here of I have to be inventory management harder here. And I feel like you have to be ready to throw your portal and go back and fill your vials and then come back out in a way that reminds me so much of like the witcher where, you know, I hit all these different vials and stuff. Who is this developer? Because like just to look at it like, it's got, it looks like to say it looks like Diablo these days is a compliment, right? Because Diablo is like top tier aesthetics. Yeah. And this looks, I would say, as good as that just from, I I've seen.

Yeah, grinding gear games, New Zealand developers. They've made Path of Exile and now Path of Exile too. Like, they are in their Duffy. That's all they're known for is a part of exile games. Yeah, exactly. So if you were stranded on the desert island with only Diablo 4 or Path of Exx. So you had to basically pick your path. Sure.

Like I'm a Diablo guy now and I'm going to play Diablo 5 and that's my life or Path of Exile 2, 3 and beyond. Like which when the two four, the roads diverging the woods, where are you going? Here's what I don't like this question. Here's what I don't like this question. All right. Obviously, obviously I have rose colored glasses for something new here in the Diablo world, right? I would still pick Diablo.

Because I want to go Diablo for a verse Path of Exile 2. We're Path of Exile 2 being early access, only being these first two acts, right? Like there's, it seems great and all this stuff. Diablo, I feel like can be more things. And obviously is richer systems and hell tides and there's this and there's the going to pit and there's so much going on in Diablo that for right now, which is a nice change of pace and a breath of fresh air, Path of Exile 2, right, Mike is cool.

I'm going to go over there. and I see the skull, so I'm going to fight that boss, and then the skull's grayed out, meaning I killed that boss. So there's going to be another boss over there. And I am not so much the boss rush. I want to go do that. But again, it's working for me here because I think it feels so good,

it plays so well, and it's that ARPG system I like. So I'm going through, and I do think the intro cut scene does such a great job of setting up. Y'all are monster hunters, right? Which gives me that witcher vibe of like, I'm just hunting monsters and doing this thing, which I appreciate.

but I do think that for me, there's an end of that enjoyment somewhere. I'm not, like, so sucked into the stories and the characters I'm talking to, Mike. Damn, that's interesting. Yeah, Path of Exile 2 has completely won me over, Gary. I might be a POE guy now over Diablo. I didn't realize you were that big a Diablo guy.

Yeah, I grew up with Diablo 2. So that was one of my first Blizzard games, and we always loved that. And this is the first time since Diablo 3 into 4 that I've had that Diablo 2 feel. Right here, Path of Exile somehow captures that. I think it's a lot to do with the, setting in the worlds that they've created.

I love the dungeons. I love all the different areas that you go and traverse through. They're all unique. They all have their own kind of like touchstones. I was in this one giant cornfield and you could see all the corn moving as we ran through. So you'd see enemies come through the corn, which is pretty dope. I really

liked that. I love the boss fights. They're super engaging, Gary. It's like playing Dark Souls, but in a Diablo top down setting. And it's like, oh, I got to be on my P's and Q's at all time. So you agree with me on that. That's not. One of the things is you've played more Souls games than I have. I've just really played Bloodborn.

I think it does lead to like you have to be paying attention. You have to be working with your teammates. And you need to know that like you're probably going to die a bunch of times and have to run it back. The first act boss is extremely difficult. I had to have Zanth who was level 43 come in and we still died five different times. Then we were able to beat it. So like, yeah, this is going to take some time. And I really, really like the system that played.

For me, that's the big twist. of the Souls like thing where the boss I was getting destroyed on, right? It was that thing where the first time I got him down and we were both there and he got the final hit and then to come back and do it three or four times. It wasn't my normal thing where I'm like, in the Souls games, I get annoyed by that just because of the way they want me to parry and what's going on. Whereas in an ARPG isometric view, like I know that so well that I felt way more versed and ready to go here. Now, tell me. I was going to say, do you think, I'm curious. A couple of questions.

is this more hardcore than Diablo, would you say? I would think so, yeah. Like, I think it's a little more punishing. I think it's on the same level of Diablo of what you would get out of it, but it is a little more like, oh, I'm beating myself up here. Because one of the things I liked about Diablo

4, which honestly is the first Diablo that I ever seriously engaged with. Really? That's shocking. I was never even though I was like editor for a PC gamer, like during like the heyday of Diablo, like one and two. For sure, for sure.

I never really, it just wasn't my sort of thing. and then I played a little bit of resurrected and kind of enjoyed it, but you could tell that it was an old game. Of course. And then Diablo 4, it was the first one that really, I'll give it one more try, see if Diablo clicks. And it really did, and I ended up being my most played game.

I played a ton online. I got fairly high with my sorcerer. We were doing, like, you know, end game dungeons, Adam and I and some other friends that were playing together. And I really, like you said, when it clicks, it's like, oh, you get that feel going and that cycle and that grind, and you get excited about gear and, like, you're really into the game. The numbers go up, like you always say.

I felt like one of the things that it did was, like, with the tiered system, like, it did scale up really nice. Like, it started to get, like, just hard enough. It was, you know, they were challenging bosses just at the right level. I don't really like boss fights. It's why I don't play the Dark Souls games. I don't really like big boss fights like games, but I really enjoyed it. I guess my question is, is there room? Well, let me ask you this.

So is this almost a little bit cheeky, the extent to which it's clearly Diablo? Or do you think they've made it their own enough that it's like, it's just another entry in the same? Because it's not like there's a whole genre of games like this, right? a big wide genre. Who was it? Somebody from Blizzard or ex-Blizzard last week, two weeks ago, got in trouble for being like they should call

these Diablo likes. People like, oh, right, hold on a second. I mean, there might be some, that might be some, and my other question is, is there room for both?

I think there's probably room in the market for both, but the question is, would you, as one gamer, play both? Or do you think you would just pick one? There's similar enough that you would pick one or the other?

Is it doing enough different? I think once you get hands on sticks, yes. I think, again, it feels different. And this is going to sound weird, but stick with me. I feel like already I can tell that there'd be a different mood for this. If I'm

brain dead and I want to go downstairs and I just want to bash things and I'm going to play Diablo. I'm going to play Diablo and not have to worry as much. Whereas this one it is, you know, I'm probably 10 hours, maybe 15 hours in right, maybe that's too much, but somewhere in there of like

I'll walk into a new area and it's like I can't just run into the middle of the area or I'll get my clock cleaned by all the ads. That's what I like. So I think Diablo forward is probably, if I play this is why, probably would still want to stick with Diablo because I like that. Sure. Once you get to,

you can clear dungeons in Diablo for, like once you get your little cycle down and all your cool downs and exactly what you're doing, you can almost play it on autopilot. But that's fun too, right, to play like that. Of course. That's my preference for sure.

Right now it's sounding like Diablo is like a wider net that's a little bit more shallow versus Path of Exile is a smaller net that's way more deep. And one of the calls here from Langley, no character creation question mark? Yeah, no, right? You start and all the characters slash, classes are there and those are the ones you pick.

Yep. And I was like, that's Diablo that, right? I mean, no, well, Diablo, you can't customize. Change your list. Do you just have these presets? It's all-school Diablo 2 as you played and resurrected. Diablo 2 had that way. It was like, no, they're all made. This is what you choose from. Diablo 4 now has evolved into a full-on character creator.

You zoom in the camera. You can see everything, every detail. I think that's fine, but like we've gone to a point now. I think this is a whole other topic, but I like this topic is, if you look at like, for example, Vailgard, and especially Baldersgate 3, which I think has the best character creator I've ever seen. I was watching someone I know stream recently played Baldersgate 3 last year,

and they spent two hours, their entire stream was just in the character creator. You can spend that long in there, like people want to get it dialing just right. And the level of fidelity and like how unique you can make it, and like, that's me now. Like it's just character creation by itself has become like a science, right? It's an art in game design.

There's a whole, you could do like whole GDC talks about like, what makes a good character creator. Yeah. And that is interesting. Yeah, and I think there's, and that was one of my things is somebody who loves doing the character creator and then having my own little narrative in my head for whatever's going on. When I started this and didn't have that, I was like, ugh.

And so I went back and forth between the witch and between the Ranger and finally picked the Ranger and I was like, I'm going to call her, Ollie Queen. So that's why I agree. And like, I think the bone arrow feels so good. And somebody, it went through already, but was talking about this argument between, oh, is it, you know, more hardcore or more hardcore or whatever, this and that, the other, like your build mattering more here. And I feel like I am

earning the experience points I'm getting in Path of Exile. So when I get there, I am more akin to like, all right, cool, I'm a lightning archer right now and I want to keep going that way. And finding those orbs that then, you know, this is level three ones that will take my lightning skill to the third level. That's so important right now for me getting in there and really feeling this character that way. Is this on consoles or just on? It is on consoles. Okay. Yeah. Are you playing on controller? I am playing on.

Come on, Joe. I'm just making sure. I fall off the turn of truck. Come on. Yeah, of course not playing. I've only played on mouse and keyboard. I have no idea. I play almost everything on a controller now, even on, even on PC.

It's what I've become, which is weird because I used to be a big mouse and keyboard elitist. Sure. And I think there is still an argument to be made that it's overall, like, if you want to play, like, there aren't, chat's going to go nuts. Because I'm sure, maybe I'm wrong about this, but like, at the e-sports level, at the absolute cutting edge of, like, legal edge. and Black Ops or whatever it is, like they're all on mouse and keyboard, right?

Yeah, probably. I mean, League Legends for sure, right? A lot of Call of Duty kids are now on controller. Right. Yeah. I mean, it's a mix right now for Call of Duty. But I think in a game like this where precision matters, there's actually two sides of the coin. I think when it's coming to dodging the bosses, I wish I was on

controller because right now I'm on mouse and keyboard and it is hard to circle around enemies and try to dodge at the same time with Space Bar and the Wazda Keys. But then on the flip side, I do think that like having the pinpoint precision of clicking the enemies that I actually want to get on when I'm yeah 100% side is way better on mouse and keyboard. See and here's the chat to correct to me rightly sell it saying Callad Deere and Halo a controller at the pro level.

I get that with Halo because you know was born on console but you know Caller Doon has always been you know multi-platform and you think FPS you think mouse and keyboard so I'm known this as a tangent. I don't know what the show is. But like when I watch like shroud or like some elite streamer, Like he ain't playing on a fucking controller He's on his mouse and keyboard Yeah, but he's also horribly depressed and alone You know what I mean? That's usually the con-in side of it.

He's always attacking Big Mike You know what I'm crazy I'm excited to play more path of exile Like I'm stoked But I'm also kind of in that thing of like There's no trophies popping So it's like do I How much do I want to play

And it's not the full game Like what am I going to get a 1.0? That kind of thing. You got the first three acts Right now available I said two earlier, sorry. You'll be able to rerun them through so you can get up towards higher levels

and have end game stuff because as Dan told us in the preview, you should go listen to that. They are trying to target you getting to end game stuff so you can work on that, they can work on that, and you can have an input on that. So I would try that. Two new characters are coming as well so there will be more classes for you

to try here very soon. So it's got a lot going for it. It's already got a lot if you're looking for an alternative. That's the word I've been using a lot. That's why I think it comes down to. I don't know. I'm sure there is an argument that you made. Again, when I was watching, like, the big Diablo streamers, half of their streams were about how Path of Exile was better than Diablo.

But I think it comes for most players, and for me, it's just going to come down to, like, well, what kind of version of this game do you like? It's not necessarily what's the quote-unquote better one, but like, to your point, I prefer to play a little bit on autopilot and just like, you know, mash my macros and know what I'm doing. And if Diablo 4 is the game that allows me to do that, and Path of Exiles, no, you've got to be really engaged. you're probably telling me

the Diablo Four is more for me. But there's going to be someone else that wants to be more engaged. So it's nice that there's something out there for both. And the diehards will also tear through all the content of a Diablo form want more so they'll jump on the path of exile too. So I think there's this perfect blend of like you have two great options here. You can jump back and forth, right?

We're experiencing that currently with Marvel rivals and Overwatch, right? You might be a diehard Overwatch fan. Now you have Marvel rivals. There's a big boost in player base over there. people are having fun with their new systems. But you can jump back and forth and have a good time. And that's me with Path of Exile where it's like, I loved the Spirit more, and we reviewed it, we did the stuff.

And I ran through it. And once I was done with it, I was like, I'm done with Diablo for a while. Like, I've seen so much of this. And I know there's seasons and there's updates. But it's like, I'm putting it down. And I thought I'd come back from another update in the next season probably. But for Path of Exile 2 to drop, be like, oh, okay, jump in and be like, oh, this doesn't just feel like more of the same. This actually feels like different.

It's funny, isn't it with games? because this is like this with me for Diablo 4. It's like it's been this for me with many games. Maybe one day it'll happen with Helldivers. It hasn't happened yet. But if you think about this time last year, I was like, well, like 18 months ago,

whenever it was, I was in my peak Diablo phase. It was one of those games where when I wasn't playing it, I was thinking about playing it. And I would literally get up early in the morning to have an hour to play before, like, you know, the kids got up and it started getting chaotic. And I'm up late playing it at night with headphones,

so I don't disturb, you know, Leah, when she's sleeping. Like, Diabli, Diabli, Diabli, Diablo y'allablo and then one day you wake up and you're like done with Diablo yeah what's the name you just you're just you're just done yeah I think at some point like maybe the momentum breaks because like something gets in the way and like you don't come back to the game for a couple of days and once you once you're not once that habit breaks a little bit yeah it falls apart very easily and suddenly it's like yeah I don't know yeah i don't play for in particular is

I think I don't play a lot of ongoing games I guess so it might be my only real example of the platinum burning me out and I I burned out out the platinum trying to get it done before the big drop for vessel of hatred and I did but then even coming back for vessel of hatred it was like I've eaten too much of this like you know what I mean yeah yeah that's what it can feel like you can feel like over stuff yeah bloated yeah it was brilliant but then you hit a point where like enough is enough yeah yeah and so yeah that path of exile is a nice palette cleanser but it is that thing of sometimes when I'm playing it and I die and I'm like okay I'm gonna run it again and then but why like I want I want the trophy there's no

trophy there's no this there's no that the game isn't fully done I should go play x one and Z to talk about that in the show. And then, of course, Thursday happened. Do you remember the movie adaptation? Oh, yeah, with the Nicholas Cage? Yeah, yeah. And the carrots I always think about in that is the Chris Cooper character,

the guy that actually raises the orchids. Okay, yeah, and she's interviewing him, Merrill Streep's interviewing him and talking about, and, like, before, because it was a real guy, right? Before he was a hardcore orchid razor. Yeah. He was hardcore into tropical fish, and he had aquariums. What the fuck is this movie?

I won't lie to you. I haven't thought about adaptations since I saw adaptations. The guy that was the subject... Orchids and fish raising. The guy who was the object, the orchid thief, that the book was, that was originally what the book was, adaptation was made out. Charlie Kaufman made the movie all about himself. But, like, rather than actually adapting the book, which is kind of the genius thing of it. But, like, there's parts of it that are obviously from the book.

And Merrill Street was the Jay, plays Susan Orlean, who was on Animal Talking, by the way, who is interviewing Chris Cooper, who's the Orchid Thief. And she's getting to know his background. I promise you on going somewhere with this. I know. And she says, so, let me... So, for years, you were like the number. one like salt water tropical fish expert in the world and you had like every variety and

hundreds of aquariums and you were like the man and then one day you just stopped that and started getting and now you're now you're now you're the orchid guy like how can you be so into into tropical fish and he thinks about he just goes done with fish and that's how you kind of feel like with the other like the one day I woke up and I was like done with yoblin yeah but it is hard to go again once that momentum breaks it's hard to go back even when the expansion came out The expansion? I did, but it didn't, it didn't all fall back together for me. I don't know why.

Maybe because I had to start a new character. I wanted to just keep playing my sorcerer that I already had, which I guess I could have done. But, like, I don't know. Once that momentum breaks, it's, it's, you know, expansions and things do, like, you see it right now. It actually with hell dive as a player numbers have gone way up. And they've done this big content drop.

People do come back, right, with expansions. But not everyone comes back and it's like, like it was. Like, sometimes it can never be like it was. Like, when you're in that golden age, you're playing a game. you're playing a game. If that momentum breaks, it can be hard to replicate that. Well,

that's my thing is like, yeah, I want to talk about Hell Divers, too. Switch over to that because, of course, that is what stopped Path of Exile to. And for my break,

I feel like it will continue to have stopped it because I'm still like, I'm back on my Hell Divers two grind of like, I got, I got 10 minutes. Like, I can't finish a mission, but I could jump in.

I can help somebody, help a friend of the friends list. We'll talk about that one second, though. First, I'm going to talk about the course, the fact, do what? I'm going to talk,

of course, hope you enjoy it. If you enjoy the insane amount of content we put out, we would love it if you picked up a kind of funny membership. You can get one on patreon.com slash kind of funny or YouTube. com slash kind of funny games. Of course, it would get you all the shows at free more than 20 a week, the ability to watch afternoon podcast live as you record them. And of course, get you a daily dose of me in like a 20 minute podcast I do called Greg Way. What's it about today, Greg? Today's about Superman movie memories. Hell yeah. Thursday, Gary. Oh, the trailer, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. You excited?

Yeah, I'm open mind. I'm open mind. did about it. I like Superman. I think James Gunn's very good at this stuff. And I'm excited to see his take on it. You're a big Hollywood guy. You're writing any DC movies yet? Come on. Not currently, no. Currently, huh? All right. I mean, aren't you buddies with James Gunn? Talk to him. I'll put your name in the hat. It's a hard, it's a hard space to be in right now. I wouldn't, honestly, wouldn't be champing at the bit to do a Marvel or a DC movie right now. Really? Did you know that today is a, it's my mind, because today's the eighth anniversary of Rogue One.

Oh, I didn't know that. Eight years ago today. And, you know, it's got me, got me thinking a lot about what working on that movie was like and what it ended up meaning for me, like, both career-wise and, like, mentally, emotionally. Like, there's a lot there. That's a whole other podcast for me to unpack all of that. But, like, it, those movies, those big franchise-type movies, whether it be Star Wars or Star Trek or Harry Potter or Marvel or DC, you name it, where there's so much scrutiny and, like, the successful failure of that movie can literally move the stock price.

of the parent company is a whole level of I did not take anti-anxiety medication before I worked on Star Wars I do now because it's a lot It's a lot

And so like you And so the next one of those That would come along If it came along I would really go into it In my eyes open about What it's not just writing a movie It's a whole other

It's a whole other enterprise It's bigger than just the script That you write It's a lot I'll talk you about in more detail Some other time Yeah that's probably A better podcast

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or visit MarvelSnap.com to learn more. Gary Witta. Yo. For a long, long time, you've had understandable beef with Jeff Keely. Yes, and he knows why. But even you can applaud the man for making this helldivers to omens of tyranny drop during the game awards, yes? Good for him he got.

I mean, it was highly relevant to my interest. I love that they got the actor from the cinematic to come back out and redo the thing. I never even knew if that was a real guy. I thought maybe that's all, like, maybe he was a CG dude or something. I don't even know who he is. Is he like a... Barrett took a class from him. He's a voice actor, yeah.

He's an, okay, so he's great in it, right? He's really good. Fantastic. And it was exciting. Obviously, we knew it was coming, right? because we had the inside track on it. We went to play it earlier that week. But it was still exciting to see.

And, you know, it was a, it's a big, we'll get into it, obviously. But like, it's by far the biggest update that the game has had since launch. For sure. Huge, huge update. Yeah, the Illuminate enemies are there, of course. This is the Illuminate, yeah. We get our first vehicle to drive around in. We get melee weapons.

There's new strategy. Yeah. So I guess the three big takeaways were obviously the new faction, the vehicle, which is not fully implemented yet, right? You can't eventually, I think when they bring, so right now what's happened is they had the Illuminate in for about a week, and now you'll notice that they've pulled them. Yeah. The Illuminate is not. Because they were defeated yesterday or whatever, right? We pushed

them back, but I think what's happening in reality, and that's the law excuse, but what's happening is they deployed it in a like, there was only one planet, right? minimal missions you could do. They're like kind of like test and make sure it, you know, this is their kind of like open beta, essentially. And now they've pulled it, I think, to probably

like, take stock of everything that, you know, pull all their data, all their telemetry on the game, figure out, like, what do we need to change and balance before we redeploy it? So obviously, the Illuminate's coming back, but I think they're just taking a moment to, like, pull it so they can work on it a little bit and then, and then redeploy it. Because it's buggy. There are some, there are some issues for the most part. I think it's terrific.

I think what they've done is amazing. But, yeah, it's, it's, the Luminate right now is currently offline. I suspect we'll be back very soon. The vehicle is something you can only find in the environment and drive around in. It's not a stratagem. But it will be. You'll be able to, you'll be able to, you'll be able to drop them into, into the environment the same you can of mech or any any strategy and they're really fun like i we we were

describing it a lot as um like pub g some of the most fun you could have back in the golden days of pubgy some of the most fun was a job was jumping into a shitty car and driving around in it right shooting out the windows and because you would flip it over and crash and roll it reminds me so much of a gta where i used always be have you fallen a helicopter yet no okay you're flying the helicopter because it would just be insanity when you try to get it off and going do the vehicles hold four people Yeah, so there's a driver, a turret gunner, and two passengers, but passengers can shoot out the side with their own weapons. Hell yeah. And it's, again, if you remember going back to like some of the most clippable moments in the PUBG days, it was rolling vehicles and crashing into stuff with a car and people flying out.

And they know that that chaos is part of the fun, so they've implemented it in the same way. And one of the things I love about hell divers is they make nothing easy, right? Very little in hail divers is automated, right? You've got to do everything the hard way. Yeah. And that's by design. And so when they showed us the thing about the vehicle was like, you'll love this.

You know typically when you've got a vehicle in a game like that, if you just like hold the breakdown, it'll then go into reverse. No, no, no, manual transmission on this bad boy, you have to use the bumpers to manually, like, when you crash into a wall and you're like, fuck, back up, back up. You've got to like manually shift into reverse. And also to go to top speed, I think there's a first and a second gear. So there's like park, drive, second gear, reverse.

and you've got to like cycle through them. And that of course leads to, like, we literally had like a moment of chaos like that where you drove us all into a wall. I'm like, right, back the fuck up. And you're like, I'm trying. I'm looking. You're lucky they didn't put stick shifting in because I feel like that would have been

the something else. Can you imagine? It's actually almost like a like a strategy. Like you've got to end up down the right to shift into the right gear. You know they thought about it. That would be a bridge too far. But no, it's fun. We were driving around in a vehicle just last night in a, in a game.

And it was down to the rims, like sparks when the tires were fucking shot. And at that point, like the maneuverability steering is crap. But it's just fun. Of course. You roll a vehicle. Yeah, you know, I jumped in and me and Mike did the night one there, played a whole bunch. And then, yeah, over the weekend I've come in.

He didn't even invite me. First off, we did. We made it very clear that you were invited. I kept saying on the stream, Joey should stay too. Yeah, and you're good at Hell divers. Yeah, exactly. I remember when I would come in and play, Joey, was like the secret weapon. Exactly.

But so that's where I want to go with this one conversation is an update basically from you. Because you've never reviewed Hell Divers for us, Gary. No. You've played a lot of helldivers. I'm happy to be your resident helldivers expert. How much hell divers have you played? It's over 1,000 hours at this point, probably about 1,0,0,020 because they just passed it recently. I hit the level cap a couple of weeks ago and hit 1,000 hours shortly after that.

Is that 150 or 250 now? 150 is the level cap right now. I think they are going to raise it because players like me are maxed out on progression for the most part. The new war bond added some new things to grind for, but I pretty much maxed that out already as well. Players like me that play and play and play are going to grind through content very, very quickly.

So that's my next question for you then is like, has it ever waned for you? Or is this like every night you're on there for at least an hour? No, it's like I don't think I've ever gone. Since the game came out, I don't think I've ever gone

like more than a couple of days without playing. And I play almost every day. Are you playing solo or do you have like a crew that's also in it this deep with you? Come and goes, when I, when we first started playing, there was a hardcore group of us

that would play all the time. It was me, Naomi Kyle Adam Nickerson Johnny Vee which I've discovered right on the game words

this year by the way So I have Johnny in my phone as Johnny Vee Yeah And so when Siri reads out a text She thinks he's called Johnny the 5th So I'm gonna

I'm gonna change him to JVig or something I don't know I'll give him a cool new name Um My brother-in-law Aaron Who last Did you buy him a PlayStation for this?

Yeah I bought So I was at his wedding. And he was like, oh, tell me about this, Helldivers. Like, oh man,

you got to get into it. Because I don't have a PlayStation. I have an Xbox. And I went to Target and bought him a fucking PlayStation 5. That's an obsession. I said, Lee, we didn't get him a Christmas gift yet.

I literally drove him to Target and bought him the fucking PlayStation 5. Bought him Helldivers. And a extra controller so we could play with his wife. And the headset. Yeah. I got him the whole set up. Kid it out. Kid it out.

And I played with yesterday. He's still playing regularly. He's sending me. he text like he was actually the one that told me about he played the Illuminate like when it dropped before he goes oh the he sends me like major order incoming message from Super Earth like he's really into it now

so we were playing it who else and a couple of others Kyle would also play we had a regular group and then they all kind of drifted off and I kept playing and for the most part I've mostly played with pickups which is fine like pickups are generally good very little toxicity in the game because it's BVE you usually get a good group

are you talking or you just using Pings I read it you know it's interesting I read a an article the other day, not just about Helldivers, but in general about how voice comms in games have kind of fallen off. It used to be, everyone was on voice,

right? And now, like, very few people are. Like, games in general, like, it's rare to find,

like, when I drop into Hell Divers, like, you might hear one person say something every now and again, or if you say something, like, other people go,

oh, are we talking? Oh, they're fine, and then they'll jump in. Like, I would say 80% of the games that I've played, no one says a word. Yeah,

it's because, I feel like, It's because of Discord as well. I think everyone's in their own world and their own voice chats that now they're not in that. But yeah, if there's one person that kind of just says,

hey, I'm here, then like somebody's like, oh, oh, we're talking. Exactly, exactly right. And so sometimes I'll, I'll do that. My personal experience for jumping in because what I did is I put out

my friend code way back in the day, so I have a, you know, in game friends list feel with kind of funny best friends. And I would say nine times out of 10 when I jump in, I'll get a text message in there because I'm usually not comms either.

I'm tired. I just want to say like, oh my God, Greg, I'm a huge fan. I don't have a mic set up, but I, hey, is you,

why they said the thing, and then we just play it. You got to talk to the controller. That's why it's there. That's the whole thing is like, why I don't think voice comms are a big deal. That's the thing. I'm sitting there and chilling out.

I don't even need any other hardware. The controller is your head's in your mic. That's so interesting that this is a change because I've never played with voice comes on, mostly because people are dicks once they find out that you're a girl. I was, I was, I know.

I was talking to go along her about that. There was, that it's kind of popped back. She's got a double bad, though. She's a woman and Australian. Well, I was talking to, like, because I did the Helldivers thing on her game of the year stream yesterday, and we were talking about it, like, prior to that, and she was asking me about my experience with the game, and she asked me if I'm on voice.

And I said, oh, I have to send you this article. I don't remember who published it, but, like, it was the verge or one of these, or a polygon, one of these type places. It was an article about how voice comms have just kind of fallen out of fashion that. It used to be everyone was on voice and now much less so, for whatever reason. And Alana said, I wouldn't know, like, I'm never on voice anyway. And I was like, yeah, of course. Well, of course not, because you're going to get all kinds of shit.

Just because you're a woman. And it's nice to have conversation. And with people are chatty. It's fun. But I generally try to talk on comms just because it's part of being a good player. Like, if I'm calling in a cluster bomb or something, I'm going to say cluster bombs, get the hell out of there. Because you can't always rely on people to see it coming in. Right.

If it's something that has like a big spread of, like a cluster bomb will fucking wipe out an entire area if you're not, if you're even, if you think you're far enough or even rip, but you're not. And I will generally, like, Napalm or anything that's going to have like a wide area effect, I'll say cluster bomb get back. And I'll do it like before I throw it. So give people time. Yeah. Because people will, that's one of the few things people will complain about. Dude, chill out with the fucking, you know, widespread, you know, burst weapons. Because you will kill, I get killed by other players almost as much as I get killed by the enemy in that game.

Because they just indiscriminately, like, they don't check their fire, you know. So I'm vocal on voice comms, not necessarily because I want to be sociable, although that can be fun if you find a good group. But just because in that game, you have to fucking let people know what you're doing because you can kill them, right? If you're not careful about what you're doing and they don't know what you're doing. So for the most part, yeah.

I have a question. So you're jumping in a lot, Gary, of course, your max level. You have a lot of hours in this. You're jumping in with randoms and Phil. You're jumping in with your team. What is the normal jump in? Is there a certain mission that you love doing?

Is there a planet that you like to jump to? Like, I know Greg and Joey have heard that I kind of get bored of just doing it repeatedly over and over again. That's a heartbreaker that Mike. Mike will play with us, but it's like begrudging me. It's like when I used to get my parents

to play Sega Masters. That's every game that I like to play with Mike. I just don't love it. So like, do you notice that you do a certain mission over the others? Are you just open to doing them all? What does the normal flow look like? So I generally,

I mean, one of the valid criticisms of the game, certainly something that I would say is I do think the game needs more mission types than it has. They have introduced a couple of new ones with the Illuminate missions, but more variety in mission types would be nice. But the ones that they have,

like, I'll, like, somebody said recently, oh, the game's so repetitive. I'm like, yeah, but like, if it's, if it's fun, it doesn't matter. Like I said, I probably shouldn't have, I said in Alana's dream, masturbation is repetitive. Like, like, how has that evolved over the years? But you still do it because if it's fun, it's fun, right? Great argument, though.

It doesn't need to change. You did stun the panel. Oh, did I? Like, we don't really have, like, a rebuttal for that. It's like, that's the, that's the same matter as when I was 12 years old. Yeah. That meta does not fucking change. Doesn't change.

Um, So, and this is the point I made. The fundamental, like, shooters, to me, come down to the fundamentals of, like, the gunplay, the combat. How does it feel, the movement? Do the weapons feel meaty, right? Do they have a good, like, sound designed to them? Do you, you know, pumping bullets into something? Do you really feel like you're that visceral feel?

And Hell Divers nails all of that. The sound design's amazing. The weapons all feel great. Like, they're so, like, you really feel like your fucking shit up. What do you run right now, or do you switch up a lot? Depends on the mission. But, like, if I don't even know what I'm doing, I will bring either the exploding crossbow, which is sick, or the scorcher for my primary,

because the scorcher is good against everything. Napalm or cluster bomb, machine gun sentry, because they're really, really cheap, 77 second cool down. You can drop them all day long, and they'll cover your retreat if you get swarmed, and they'll get 20, 30 kills at a time. And then for the last one, probably the spear. The spear used to be broken. It's basically their version of the javelin.

You know, it locks onto a target, and then flies in and then comes back down and hits it from above. That used to be really broken. It wouldn't lock onto anything. Now they've fixed it. It's probably the best heavy weapon in the game for me. And then the new anti-tanking placement, which I just unlocked this week, it's in the new war bond. Yeah. It's phenomenal. Okay. Harvester's, um, tanks, the, the factory striders, you'll take anything out. Okay. You've got to drop it and then it's this big, slow thing that doesn't move and you usually would want someone covering you because you can't defend yourself while they're in. Yeah, of course, you're out. Um, but that, anything, anytime there's going to be like, I would not do a

Illuminate mission without the anti-tank gun at this point because the fucking walkers. The war of the worlds. They're officially called Harvisters. But everyone just calls them tripods or strikers or walkers. Those things are terrifying. That's another thing I love about this Illuminate campaign. It's the first one where it's legitimately like scary. Like when you're being chased down by a tripod and like those things take so many hits.

The Atomaton's not scary. They are, but the Illuminate are so much fucking worse than that because I think one of the things Arrowhead's trying to do is encourage like more cooperative moment to moment team players. So, because like all the other

enemies in the game have their weak spots and you just, you damage them down and that's it. The tripods are shielded, right? Essentially they are the war of the world Spielberg tripods.

They make that, ooh, that scary fucking noise. And like, when you hear one in the distance, you're like, oh, my fuck, there's a tripod out there somewhere.

And like, some of the cinematic moments, one of the things I love about the game and I think, White popped off so much in the early days, is it just so many clippable moments of like,

you look like, you look like, because you feel like you're in a fucking action movie. Yeah, it's chaos all the time. Tick-Tocks are so good coming out of it. Nothing blows up as well as in this game, right? When I, that's how I got into it. I watched TikToks of like, shit. I was, is that in a game?

And I've got to go try this. And that's what it is. And I think, real quick, I want you back to you. But that's why the, oh, the missions are repetitive. It's like, well, yeah, but you never know what's going to happen. Like, it's, sure, I'm raising the super earth flag again. Or, yeah, I'm saving these civilians or whatever. But it's like what is going to be the crazy thing that happens?

Or we approached the wrong way or we got recognized or this is, I'm using a different build. You're using a different build. I don't know why I didn't do this from beginning, but I finally set up a macro last night in the NVIDIA app so I can record, like you press a button, you record like the last 60 seconds of gameplay. But this is like, oh, I wish I'd have to clip that.

And now I'm going to finally start doing it because it creates so many great moments. Great news for your PlayStation can just do that, yeah. Yeah, but then I wouldn't have any draw distance. I play with people on PlayStation. I'm like, I'm going to go get that thing over there. I can't see that. Yeah, because you're on a fucking PlayStation. I've got a 40-90, I can see that shit

over there, maxed out to ultra-super-sampling. So, shielded enemies, I think, is intended to encourage more cooperative moment-to-moment team play, because you can't just damage things down. The tripods have these shields, right? Just like the War of the World shields. And shields

and the actual armour and they respond differently to different kinds of weapons, right? So you generally need two different types of weapons to take them down, and the shields regenerate really, really fast. Like often fast and you can reload. Like I can knock a shield out with a spear. But before,

but the time I can reload the spear and lock onto it, shield might be back up. So like when I play with friends and you're on, this is way where voice comes, comes really handy, but you coordinate. So I'll play with Naomi and I'll say like, okay,

I'm going to take the shield out and then be ready to hit it as soon as the shield. Like five seconds apart. That's cool. Knocks out the shield. The second one comes in and takes out the tripod. And then you feel like you're doing like team play. That's what the game is all about.

That's what it felt like it was based on. It was like, you're going to get four people in here and you're going to work together and you're going to overcome all these obstacles and you're going to laugh and they'll be chaos but yeah it's all about working together truly terrifying moments

like those cinematic moments like I would say like probably five out of the top 20 cinematic moments of heaven in the game have come in the last week because these tripods are so epic like you're dropping is that thing where you drop like the 500K on it and you're like and it's all he sees

it's a massive fire at explosion you go surely that fucking killed him but then it fucking comes out of the fire and it's still up how about um so now you get dropped into the world and yeah you're playing and having fun with the different missions. How about the side activities?

Do you notice that you and your team are taking in the whole 30 minutes and doing the side objectives? I always noticed that when it was me and the crew, it was like we'd get the one mission done and we kind of just run right to the extraction. Are you doing a lot of side stuff? It really depends on who you're playing with and then what the circumstances are.

Like some players want to clean up everything on the map and they'll get angry if you call an extraction or they've got every little thing off of the map. But it also depends on like, Like, there's literally happening last night. We're like, okay, we're done with the mission, right? We can extract now if we want. There's still a few bases to take out.

At that point, that's when you look at the clock and you look at how many reinforcements you've got left. This might be tight. Because what you don't want to do is get stuck on an extraction after the Super Destroyer's left because then you've got no air support. So you generally look at it and go like, yeah, we've got time to do these last few things. Or somebody really wants to do it. We can try.

Or you'll split up and do it. Yeah. You know, I think generally encourage to stay together as a squad, but sometimes the fastest way to clear a map is like, like one person can go off and, like, clear that face and clear that place. Again, harder now, because it's the same with the, they have these warp ships, these parked motherships, that spew out enemies.

Yes, of course. And they're essentially the Illuminate version of the Automaton fabricators. Or the hives. Yeah, but again, they're shielded. So someone has to take out the shield, and then someone else has to be ready to pop a grenade into the, you can't destroy them. You can drop a 500K on it, but you can't just damage them down.

You've got to pop the shield, and then while the shield is down, And again, it's only going to be down for a few moments. Someone's got to go up to that front door and toss a grenade in. So again, more cooperative clay. Harder to do things by yourself. And I think that's deliberate. I think they're like, no, you need to team up on some of these enemies. So this brings me to an interesting question.

Barrett, can you throw up the kind of funny review scale? Gary, I want to know after a thousand hours what you would have given helldivers too. And then after, it sounds like a hardcore weekend of playing omens of tyranny, what you would give this expansion. I mean, a hell divers overall. I mean, I have to give it a 10. If not for Warcraft, it would be the most hours. I don't remember how many hours I had in Water Warcraft,

because back in the day I was in a hardcore PVP rating guild, and I played that for years. I was really cat-assing that game for a long time. So I'd probably have more hours in World of Warcraft overall, but in any single year, this is the most I've ever played a game. Dude, that's like 40 days out of the year. I see, yeah, no one in Hollywood's working. Like, what are you working there?

There's no jobs at there right now. I may as well just play this fucking game. but no I mean I'm not going to tell anyone it's the best game ever made I'm just going to again I can only speak for myself

it's the most fun I've had playing a game maybe ever I just it's just so like dialed in for me so like when I was first playing it I think I discovered why it appeals to me so much like Leah was at that time that TikToks were popping off

and like she was sending me like they were hell divers widows because like oh my gosh this guy all he wants to do. Gen Lee did that too whenever I get into it. And so Leah was like,

so what is I did with this game? Like she's trying to take an interest. And like I described it. I was like, okay, so look, you're a super fucking elite space commander, right? And you're dropping into these like hot war zones on alien planets. You've got to fight giant insects and robots,

but they can, you can drop nuclear bombs on them. And like, you realize, like, I'm basically like describing the shit that I drew in my school, but when I was 12 years old. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you're talking like, oh yeah, but you can kill the robots. But then the giant enemy bugs will spit acid on you, but you can burn them with flame throw us. And it's like,

This is what video games are all about, right? It's a fucking video game where you're killing shit, and it's hugely, like that drop animation, I looked at, for Alana's stream, I did some research. I've dropped 1500 missions. I've dropped in that game now. And that moment when you, like, when you pull, and you're fucking strapped,

you're basically strapped to a bullet. And that music is playing, like, every time, it's like, fucking go! Like, 1,500 missions, and I'm still like that. Like, that game has got something. It's got, it's got that secret source. So then, omens of tyranny from what you've played, which sounds like all weekend since it's been going,

you've been playing pretty much? I think it's a fantastic edition. I, you know, it's, I, you know, I said to me, is this going to be like a $10 deal? It's all free. Yeah. Like, they're just going to continue to add stuff for free. I think they're, the impression I got is they would prefer to never charge for anything ever. 100%, right?

And I remember I bought, I upgraded to the, um, I got a code originally and I upgraded to the, um, I got a code originally and I upgraded to the Super Citizen edition just because I wanted to support the developers. Yeah. I got to give them something. Do you buy every warbon to? Yeah, but I have so many super credits, I've never paid cash for anything. Right?

Yeah. And so, and I've bought things off the superstore, but everything is buyable with in-game currency. There's nothing that forces you to spend money, which, again, is very nice of them. Obviously, it's hard to say. The Illuminate has only been up for a few days. It is very buggy. There's a whole new slew of bugs that have come with this update. There's some graphical things where, like, if you go up to, like, a vehicle in one of the urban environments, that's not their best work.

These are very basic. Some of these are very basic assets. I think those will get better. The game, for the most part, looks amazing. Like, especially considering it was built on this whack-ass, like, auto-death-type engine that no one uses anymore. You know, there are times in that game when I will stop and, like, look at the God rays coming through.

Like, I go, man, this game looks fucking great. Like, the lightning is so good on this game. It's incredibly good-looking game when it's, like, on its moment. So, again, it's hard to judge it. Right now, I think the Illuminate is exactly what the game needed. Like, right as people are going to, going, give us something new, give us something new. Like, we knew the Illuminate were coming, right,

because I'd been teasing it for ages. It was always a third faction. It was in the first game. But now that it's happened, and I was, and again, this is a community like any community that loves to complain. Like, I don't go on the Reddit anymore. I don't go on the Discord.

I joined their Discord the other day. Yeah, you had the preview of it. They were like, oh, we take the most of our advice for Earth. Well, yeah, because I said to, like, where do you get your community? Mostly from the Discord. So I, oh, shit, I didn't even occur to me. You know, discord.

So I jumped in there. And the very first person said, hope you're ready for lots of complaining. And like two days later I left because that's all it is. I don't know how they put up with it because you never, you never hear any positive feedback. And ready is constantly complaining. But I've been just with the players that I've been talking to the last few days,

people are asking, like, what do you think of the Illuminant? And everyone said, oh, they're fucking great. This is awesome. Like it is a really good new enemy. One of the other things that I like, you'll notice that typically when you finish a mission, you'll get like three, 400, 400, maybe on a good day, you'll get two, 300, 400 kills. Yeah.

On the Illuminate missions, you'll get six, 700 kill. because there's so many more enemies. Like the majority of the enemy are just what they call the voteless. Right? The other kind of the mutated humans. My brother-in-law sent me a message last night. He said, this is so fucked up.

Because they're really creepy, right? The zombies, space zombies are weird and creepy and they're coming up to you. And, like, you shoot one of them in half and, like, the top half of this door kind of going towards you. And my brother-in-law texted me last night, and it was really, he said, they're so fucking creepy, dude.

Like, you can kind of sometimes, I haven't seen this yet, but this is what he was telling me. He said, there are times when you can kind of see that they were once human. He said, it was a, they looked kind of confused,

they don't know where they are. He said, I shot one yesterday, and the last thing they did before it dropped over was it saluted me. I'm like, that is fun.

For freedom. For freedom. How about the urban warfare? You know, I talked with Greg, when we jumped in early, he was like, hey, this is a new thing.

They want to kind of build this out. And I was looking for more like a giant city. It felt like more like, hey, here's little areas on the map that have a bunch of kind of urban. Yeah. So they still,

the planets are still these, these shit hole planets, right? These kind of like rocky environments, but now they've got cities on them because these are the colonies that are closer to Super Earth, right, but they're more built up. Typically, it's just like

these little outposts and stuff, but now you have actual cities. But they're not like big skyscraper type cities. I'm able to, Johan, like two, three story buildings, but like it definitely, like it definitely feels like like street urban combat.

It does. And you'll get chased into a dead end. Oh shit, the street doesn't go anywhere and now you're like, you're stuck there with like, voters coming towards you. Urban environment, which is one of the things.

I really wanted. Because I feel like sooner or later we're going to be fighting on super Earth, right? And then maybe they will do like even more built up environments. I'm sure they've got like models for like big skyscraper type cities sitting somewhere, ready to deploy that down the road. And this is like the first step towards that. And of course the other nice thing about it is like it does actually factor into gameplay, much like the forest canopy planets, much harder to call in strategies because your

airstrikes and stuff will get caught by the geoff by the topography. Like I was playing like in the Degabur type planet biome. night and I called in a napalm strike and like it just all got caught in the forest canopy and nothing actually hit the ground and you've got to, before you drop something you've got to look to see like, fuck like is this going to get caught? Or am I in the open enough to call in something?

And that will happen with the, like if something's between like two tall buildings, unless it's an orbital that's coming straight down and like an airstrikes come in like this and it will just hit the side of the building and miss. So you've got to be constantly aware of your environment. I like that. I have so many questions and it's interesting. I also want to know, I have a lot more questions

for you. One, I'll ask about you personally. How do you feel, Gary, like, now that you're maxed out, talking about that progression and that ding, that carrot at the end of the stick, how do you stay engaged with this? Is just purely the fun of it? Or like, are you looking at me going, Mike, I need something. I'm not grinding. I touched on it earlier.

I was on the, again, I don't go there anymore, but recently I was on the, the, the, uh, helldiver subreddit, and someone was, this was before the Illuminate drops and they were complaining about how they're maxed out, right? There's no point. I will still collect samples and stuff because they count for everybody. But I don't need any more. samples. I'm maxed out on samples. I don't need any more

XP. I'm maxed out on, I hit max rank a while ago. I'm maxed out on super credits and everything. Collectibles and things like that, there's not really any progression left for me. Again, there's a new war bond, but I'm almost done with that. Oh, I've got to, the anti-tank gun that they brought in, the...

is fucking sick. Probably the best new weapon in the game that they dropped in. We talked about it a moment ago, but when that thing drops, you can just murder things. I just picked that up recently. Can we talk about Also, they're adding stratagems to the war bonds now. Yes.

How do we feel about that? I mean, I think that's been in there for a little while. They've been there. They've been there. The super store is when people get really cranky. The ship modules. There's the ship modules that allow you to add. But there's nothing, there aren't any new strategies that have been added yet.

I suspect the vehicle will be the next one they add. But the point I want to make is about like, why do I keep playing? Because I said earlier, right, the fundamentals, the moment to moment combat is so fucking good. Of course. The dumbest comment, or one of the dumbest comments that I've ever seen online is somebody was complaining about this reason. They just said, I'm just playing for fun now. And I'm like, yeah. Remember when that used to be enough? That's what we're playing for. Yeah, yeah. If you're only playing because you want the next shiny trinket or trophy or whatever, you're

fucking doing it wrong. Like, play because the game is fun. That's great. And the game is fun. And I honestly, it would be nice to continue to like max out, to continue to progress and stuff. But like, I'm enjoying, what's more important to me is, am I still enjoying the game? And I enjoy the game so much that the fact that there's not really any progression for me doesn't matter. That's how good it is. Right? This is the one thing, and this is so hilarious, because what I've always complimented for, arrowhead for, with hell divers too, Gary,

is how unflinching they are in their vision of it and what it is, right? And you talk about stratagems and calling them in, and it's got to be complex. We talk about now shifting the car and manually, it's got to be complex, it's got to be obtuse. Like, that's what hell divers always has been. Always. And one of the things that I find a personal hurdle is how slow you level in hell divers.

It's that thing where it's like, you know, It's my most, no, second most played game of the year, right, behind Diablo. And it's, when we turned it back on, I was, what, 36, 37? I was like, you're only 36, and he's like, Mike, it's difficult. And it's that, and the idea, what usually gets me is that I want to play with my friends, right? And so it'll be, like, when we were streaming or it'll be jumping into a random game last night. And I'm jumping into their missions, and they're playing on medium. They're playing on three, right?

And, you know, it goes all the way up to hell divers and suicide and all that jazz extreme. They're playing so low that the game is fun for sure, but I'm not getting the carrot on the end of stick of the next level, the next thing, unlocking the next name. And it's just such a minor gripe of myself, but what I struggle with with hell divers as much as I love it is I don't have a life right now that can be appointment viewing. That can be, I'll see

you tonight at 9 o'clock, because inevitably that'll be the night, Ben isn't going to go to sleep, and I'm not going to tell Jen, well, I've got to go play my video games. You know what I mean? So I'm always jumping on late, and then it's I'm trying to talk something on the East Coast like my friend Sean or whatever, doing this thing. It's like a pain in the ass. And that's why I do the random drops. Just remember, dude, I'm always on. Okay.

So you can always play with me. See, but then I'm going to feel like I'm holding you back. Because there'll be a lot of chirping. You're going to teach me high level play. I mean, honestly, if I'm trying to like, look at the silver lining, one of the nice things about hitting the level cap is I don't care what level of difficulty I play. Because it's not like, oh, I want to play higher levels because I want to rank up quicker. Yeah.

I'll play anything. I'll play anything. I don't care. And I guess if you hit the max on everything, you're like, doesn't really matter. Steven Sporn was telling me that they've done some work on the accessibility. He wants to start playing. He said, will you come in low levels and play with me and teach me how to play. Yeah, of course.

I'm happy to like to do that. I generally do play I'll play bots on bugs on 8, 9, 10 bots who are harder on like 7, 8, 8, 9, sometimes 10, and then Aluminate still figuring that out. But like, they start to get seriously hard after 6. 6, 7, 8, they get brutal.

And 9s and 10s. Like, Naomi and actually finished the level 10 Aluminate mission the other night, but man, it was fucking, like, your heart is pounding. When that pelican takes off, you're like, Jesus. We made it. We did it.

I want to talk about retaining players and bringing them back, right? Because that's what I'm always interested in in the live service world that we live in. And we talked about Greg and yourself with Diablo, right, coming back and finding that fire and finding that player base, right? All time peak here on the steam charts, right? Only PC was close to half a million players right there, right? And then right now their average player base is about 75,000 peak at the past 24 is 132. This is just PC. And that's just PC.

We're not counting next. We're not counting PlayStation, right? But like, how do you get that fervor, that audience back again from what we remember in February where people are printing this logo on T-shirts? We had girlfriends calling out on TikTok. I need help because my boyfriend's lost his marbles, you know. Is there a chance that this could ever get there? Do we think after this weekend there will be a larger player base coming back or is that just the way of it?

Well, I mean, it goes back to what we're saying about Diablo, right? Sometimes when when the momentum breaks. it's hard to get people back. The best way to get people back is with like a major drop like the Illumina. But this is a new, like, fighting these enemies is like a new game. This is something very, very new. I haven't looked at the style. I'm guessing there has been an uptick since the Illuminate drop that players are coming back.

Big uptick. I mean, we're talking peak players, 56,000 in November and then here in December, because of that on December 13th, it's been up 148,000. So a lot of people have come back. And again, if they can keep that momentum going, whether there's another faction down the road or, again, fighting on Super Earth, like, there's still. so much they can add. Again, I don't want to say anything that Johan said to it's in confidence,

but like their roadmap and their ambition for it is like, there's, you know, there's no horizon. This seems to be supportive for a long, long time. Yeah, they want to keep it going for a really, really long time. And, you know, long may it continue. I fucking love this game. Like, it's just, it's just so fun to play. It is the game that I still think about.

Like, before you called, I was going to go play out of the papers. Oh, shit, I guess I'll come in and talk about it instead. At what point do we bring it to a Xbox or Switch? Is there ever going to be that conversation of, hey, this game is great. I mean, we're talking beyond good. This is great. He's one of those games where you want to have it.

Eventually, the player base will start to slowly slow down on it. When do you give it that shot in the arm and go, hey, let's go out there and make a ton of money over on other platforms and ecosystems, right? Is there ever that conversation? Of course, they've had to have had it, right? We're talking about big million dollar businesses. These people have talked about bringing its other companies.

If it was up to Arrowhead, I'm sure they would love to put it on Xbox. I'm sure they would love to put it on, this switch, but the next one, right? Which will be viable to play on. Mac, why not, right? High-end, you know, the new high-end Macs, you know, $500 Mac Mini can play these games down.

Your iPhone could probably start playing some of these games. I mean, maybe there is a mobile version of it down the road, like a simplified version or something, I don't know. But if it were up to Arrowhead, I'm sure they would love to put it on Xbox. The problem is, you know, PlayStation know they've got a hit on their hands. It's branded as PlayStation Studios, right? It's not just a third.

What is the relationship, Greg? Arrowhead is their own developer, but PlayStation don't own them, right? We're old, so we would call this second party. Okay. Where Arrowhead is an independent studio. Like Nordy Dog or Insomniac? Huh? Like Nordy Dog?

No, no. Well, like Insomniac before PlayStation bought them. Oh, right? But Naughty Dog, right? Because they... No, they're owned PlayStation. Oh, they are? Yeah, yeah.

But Arrowhead are not. Correct. Okay. They're an independent, standalone PlayStation does not own Arrowhead, but... But did they, like, fund the development of it or something? Right. I think they don't hell diversly. So, it's that idea of them... So they've got...

So Sony obviously has some ownership of it. And I think, you know, Sony is not, you know, Xbox seemed to be very kumbaya with the whole, like, yeah, we'll put Indiana Jones on PlayStation, maybe even Fordso one day. Like, who knows? Like, they seem to be more, like, open about that. I think PlayStation, like, when they've got something that's theirs, like Last of Us or Spider-Man or ratchet and clank, whatever. It's easier to count the ones they've done, right? The show. I think Sony just have a different view.

They don't want those on Xbox. Obviously, MLB forced them into doing that. A thousand percent. Oh, yeah. MLB was the one, yeah. Oh, yeah. But no, I think as long as Sony is calling this, here's the sad thing, I think as long as Sony is calling the shots, which they are going to be for the foreseeable future, I don't think you're going to see it on Xbox. I really don't. I don't either. I think it would be like, you know, you brought up the Steam charts, right? I haven't pulled up here and see that peak here. I think it's when you see those, the peaks for these big drops get smaller and smaller to where it's like, hey, we have the player base. We have, we have, we have the player base we have, now let's talk about putting it somewhere else. Because then, yeah, if that came and it came to game paths or something stupid like that, like you'd have such an uptick, right? people jumping in and buying war bonds. I mean, you're seeing in the first three months, we're talking 274,000 average players, right,

during the first three months. Now we've dropped down to 41, 23, 25, 30. Now, even just this little uptick for the past 30 days, there's only 31,000 average players, right, which is an amazing number, right? No, again, double that because of course PlayStation. But, yeah, add and switch and Xbox, right? When is that number so low when you do that? I mean, maybe it gets to a point when it makes, you know, again,

Sony constantly balance. you know, how do we make the most money? If it gets to a point where the injection that this game needs now is to be released on other platforms and bring in that. I would love to see it on Xbox. Again, not that matchmaking is ever a problem. I press QuickPlaying. I'm in a game in like 10 seconds,

but it's not like there's no one there. But it would just be nice to have those people in the mix as well. There was a member at launch. There's a lot of people go, oh my God, like bring this to Xbox. But like outside of MLB, where Sony didn't get to really make the decision and not counting PC,

which is kind of a neutral platform, has there ever been a game that Sony had at least some degree of ownership, but it's on Xbox it would be completely unprecedented, wouldn't it? Yes, right? Because you figure the Lego Horizon game is a Switch one, not a... They wouldn't even let the fucking Lego game go to Xbox. So Sony is very possessive about the things that, you know, a part of their brand.

So, you know, sadly, I don't think you will see it. It's impressive. It's a great win. It's a great game. It got a lot of love at the beginning of the year. I've always been... James points out Death Stranding just being over there. Oh, Death Stranding's on Xbox now?

Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. that was an interesting one with the publisher and stuff. But yeah, a great game. I'm so glad to see people still loving it, continuing to love it. Got some love it. The Game Awards would like to...

I was glad to see... Yeah, the Golden Joysticks 2, console game of the year. Let me just see, too, as it goes on. Next year, is this the best ongoing support? Given that it was such a stacked year, I'm glad to see that it got what it got. You know, I think it should have won... I think it should have been in the mix more for sound design and music,

because honestly, that stuff is phenomenal. nominal. I listen to the soundtrack in my fucking car when I need to get like psyched up for something. That and the challenger soundtrack have dominated my year. But my always question is, did they miss not putting this out sooner? Right. I told Greg for me, it's like, I need this kind of content updates sooner. It's been nine months since the game released in February to now where we're at. Should this have been a June, July during the E3 season drop? And then we have another one. I'm sure they would have loved that. I mean, we talked to Johan about it. I don't forget. There they're a smaller developer, right?

Arrowhead is not a massive team. I think they did get blindsided by, you know, because Johan said something to me that was like, as a creator, very relatable. Remember when he said, like, when we put out a game, we're just like, we're happy if it's just not a fucking catastrophic failure. Like any level of success we're grateful for. And so the fact that it blew up the way that it did,

it's something you're playing catch up, oh shit, this game's really successful. Now we've really got to like engage. And like whatever roadmap you have, like throw it away and make a new one because now it's super popular. and there's a different level of expectation. It's a small team.

This happened with Mediatonic and Fall Guys, remember? Of course, yeah. What now? Oh, my God. How do we catch up? And it took them longer to do things than they might have liked. I think Arrowhead shipped this as quickly as they could. You never stop making a live service game.

You've got players complaining about, you know, fix these bugs, fix these bugs. You've got all these like, we have to do this today. Hot fixes take priority. Then maybe we can get to this. Then maybe we can get to that. And then in the background, they've got a whole other team working on the next big, the Illuminate stuff. right so it's a lot and i don't know if they've been scaling up or hiring or whatever but

you know there's only so much you can do with a team of this size with that many hours in a day so i'm sure it would have been better for them if they could i'm sure they would have loved to have launched it with the illuminate right with all three factions from the first game but you can only you can only do so much and i think what they're doing now is if anything the opposite because they've learned them and say let's try not to do too much too soon don't be too ambitious the way that they um deployed the illuminate i think makes a lot of sense they put it out in a limited way gave players a taste for it and then pulled it back so they can rebalance,

do any tweaks, and then, you know, they'll be back as soon as that's done. They'll be back before you know. I'm looking forward to next year. I really can't wait to see the second year and beyond of like how long this goes. People can't wait to see you and Gary back together. Super chat from Scarcely Relevant says seeing Gary Wooden stone like Mike side by side again

just made my day. I love my day. I spend time with Gary. He's the best. Nightlife, the super chat says, Mike, where's the backflip of 24? Friday. Tune in. Jesus Christ. Holiday party. Back to Helldivers, too. CJ splits on.

Are you guys having a holiday party? Yeah. You want to come by? What? You'll be on the stream Friday. It's not like a party. I mean, it's like,

it's a kind of funny podcast. You're asking me, because you're back into a corner. It's less special. It's not like, I mean, you can just say, and then knock on and say, you didn't put it.

No, we're not. I don't know. I don't think. I don't know. Okay. So, now how is raising Keyes? Because I want to check it out. Delicious.

It's bad, Gary. Bad, Gary. What's it comparable to? A less good Starbird. Starboard's the best in city. Flavorous chicken tenders. Get the bread and get the sauce. The bread's great.

Sauce doesn't. Sox sucks. CJ Splitson says thoughts on the Killzone Warbond leak. Did you see this, Gary? No. Yeah. Sometime last week. The next war bond, do you mean?

They don't say when it is, but a Killzone Warbond graphic. Oh, the crossover thing. I don't care about that, though. Oh, you're fucking psycho. I'm so stoked. I'm so stoked. That's obviously aimed at the launch. At the launch of King.

when Hell Divers was so big, I was like, if they're not making war bonds for every PlayStation first party gone. I know, but like, there's a dead franchise, right? Oh, but you know how the kids love Killzone. Oh, yeah.

All the kids. Hey, listen, if you love or hate Killzone, you got to admit the Hellgas look cool. And to get that out there, the cool. Yeah, I'm sure all of that hell know the Hellgast. I mean, look how cool this would be as your character. So does this mean that the hell, it's all like the same universe now?

No, it just means there's cool armor and shit. Who cares? I mean, a fucking Joel and Lerlin. Like a destiny stuff. How far do they want to go with this? There will be an uncharted naughty dog war bond at some point. It will be dope as shit. Get the fucking armor,

but it'll be the Joel like plaid. Oh, yeah. I can't wait. I mean, it's a fucking game where I'm killing bugs with my friends and getting blown up. Give me as weird as crossover as you can.

I mean, yeah, it's never been a game that's taking itself too seriously, right? So why not? Yeah. And then Lucid Dream says, Greg, we got you the Diablo four platinum.

Let's get you the Hell Diver's two platinum. Again, I would love that. How far are you? 1500 hours in, I'm sorry, more than a thousand hours in, I still don't have every Steam achievement, because there's a few that

are really hard to get, and you can only get them if you play as, like, everyone has to decide they're doing it. No, I don't, no, cross-progression. No, you're not. No, I don't, I don't think we're going to see it anytime soon, either. That's wild. I would love to play on my PlayStation as well. I have 45% of the trophies for Helldivers, too.

I think I have, like, 35 out of 30. You get to, like, kill it with fire, kill 100 enemies using fire damage during the same mission. I'm just not rocking fire damage. If I want it to tonight, I can turn on the floor and go do. But it's, but it's like that thing of, I'm playing hell divers in such a way that I would love to platinum it, but I'm not, I need to be on the baron.

One of them is, you can only do it as a squad. You have to have, like, everyone on the squad has to have like an orbital bombardment going at the same time. So that's something you can only do if everyone agrees to, like, load up, but you can do it. Yeah, the only way to be sure have six orbital barrage strategies in the same place at the same time. That's it, yeah. And that's hard, right? Because there's only four players,

so two players have got a double up on him. And the cool down, I'm sure, is probably significant. Yeah. But if you just all agree to do it at the same time. I mean, I have dropped into games where people are like, guys, I'm trying to get this, this trophy. Can you, like, can we do this? I'm, yeah, sure, whatever.

See, that's the thing where it's just like, there's an alternate reality where I never met Jen, so I'm just single. And it would be, I would have the crew. We would have the crew where I go home at night. And I'm like, this is what we're doing for the next month until it's done. That sounds like, that's my life. That's Mike's life.

The guy who really knew someone to, the podcast is like, I just don't got 50 hours to play metaphor. That's quite literally my life. If you ever need, um, someone to get your last few. I know her trophies how important they are to you. Thank you. I appreciate that, Gary.

So, you know, I'm saying, like, we should, we should figure something out and get serious about it. Like, it's another, but it's that thing where this goddamn company. The fact, well, let's stream it today. Oh, we got to do a charity stream now. One of the things that I, that I love it for me. You have to pick today to shit on this.

One of the things I'm really glad about this. Friday every once in a while, right? It's brought so many people back, as you say. But, like, it's also brought back, like, my old crew that fell off, right? So, like, Naomi and Adiomie. Adam and Aaron and Johnny Vee, they used to play with a lot. Yeah.

And, you know, all kind of, are now back. Like, I was actually played with a full squad of friends for the first time again this week. And I was,

oh, man, I forgot how much fun this is when you play with, you know, your own crew. It's good. Well, Gary, thank you for your comprehensive review. Do you want to give Oman's a review score?

Or do you just saying 10 overall for all those. I think it's early to say, but like, based on what I played right now, I would, I, you know, I would give it another, no,

I'd give it a nine because it does have some wacky bugs, but like it's it's a terrific update it's exactly what the game needed at this time it really does feel very different as as the bots feel from the bugs in terms of how you have to fight and engage with them the illuminate is like a whole other vibe it's not just a different like meta a different yeah we have to fight these guys in a different way it's just a cruelly like the illuminate are just fucking creepy and there's just something very like the sound design everything's designed to just like kind of like creep you out a little bit and weird you out i've heard somebody play saying these guys are fucking creepy and then they are and you know and you know and you know and you know and

Again, we've only seen this glimpse of them, so I imagine we'll see more as they go. Okay. Well, thank you for filing your report and rushing in here. We appreciate that. Happy to do it. Everybody, thank you for hanging out with us. Remember, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every weekday four, sometimes five. Best friends together on this table coming to talk about video games, reviews, previews, and the biggest topics in the games industry.

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and get a daily dose of me in a series we call Greg Way. For now, we're not going to play Helldivers. We're going to raise money for charity. Whatever. But until next time, it's been our pleasure to see it.

Oh, if anyone from Sony's listening, send me that fucking Helldivers controller. I am getting up.