Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Ghostwire: Tokyo Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: March 21, 2022

Go to http://cutsclothing.com/kindafunny for 15% off the Only Shirt Worth Wearing. Go to http://luminskin.com/kindafunny to get your free trial of Lumin Skin products. Visit http://joinhoney.com/KINDA to get Honey for free. Greg, SnowBikeMike, and Blessing come together to talk about if Tango Gameworks delivered with their PS5 exclusive Ghostwire: Tokyo. Time Stamps: 00:00:00 - Start 00:00:30 - Blessing is Killing Chaos 00:02:05 - Housekeeping 00:04:55 - Ghostwire Tokyo Review Epic Creator Code: KindaFunny Follow The Kinda Funny Gamescast Team On Twitter: Greg Miller: https://twitter.com/GameOverGreggy Blessing Adeoye: https://twitter.com/BlessingJr Mike Howard: https://twitter.com/SnowBikeMike Barrett Courtney: https://twitter.com/SadBoyBarrett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast review of GhostWire Tokyo. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Forbes 30 under 30, aka the future class of gaming, aka the OK Beast, blessing at Eoie, doya. Kill Chaos. Kill Chaos. Are you killing chaos right now? I'm killing the hell of chaos. It's the wrong video game, but it's the only one I've played. I've been playing a lot of Final Fantasy Kill Chaos for the last few days. I've not touched Ghost Wire Tokyo, but I'm excited to hear about it. Yes. Like, I am, I'm,

I'm shocked. I am utterly shocked by final things you're a mixed bag out there for impressions right now. I mean, it's good if you're coming to it for the right things.

I think the gameplay is actually fantastic. Like the story is whatever. The graphics are whatever. It is like a lot of like the, I think the quality around like the aesthetic of it is kind of forgettable and generic. But the actual gameplay loop of like the gear system and collecting all the gear and equipping your build

and switching between builds and try to level up your skill trees actually surprisingly engaging. And I'm having, I'm having a blast with it. Like, it's really fun. Okay. I look forward to more of your thoughts. Maybe I'll piece.

I love you about it. You know? Yeah, I'm not to talk about it over there. All right. Good. That's what I like. Rounding out our trio, of course. He's the host of the kind of funny X-Cats.

But more importantly, he's the master of hype. It's snow bike, Mike. Greg Miller, what's good? Blessing. Great to hear you out chasing chaos. I will say me and Greg, we've been chasing ghosts all around Tokyo. And I'm excited to talk about GhostWire Tokyo with all of you.

Mike, I can't wait because, of course, you know, you got here a little bit earlier. We were hanging out in the room and we have not talked. You beat this game last night. Last night at 4.30 a.m. this morning. Okay. Jesus. Jesus Christ, dude.

I did appreciate the slack I woke up to. Yeah, I guess I woke up to it. I looked at it. It was like, you're stuck in this thing and it was the exact same place. I got stuck with a bug. I had DM Jordan Midler over at VGC. You DM me, but then we both ended up doing the same thing. They just restarted the game and it fixed the thing.

We'll talk about that in a second. We'll talk about that. A little bit more. Our opinions. Everything under the Ghost Wire, Tokyo, Son, because this is your Ghost Wire. Tokyo review on the Kind of Funny Gamescast. If you didn't know each and every week, four, sometimes three, best friends gather on this

table coming to talk about video games they love and sometimes they don't love all for your amusement as the Kind of Funny Games cast. If you want to support that, you can go to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games where, of course, you can ride it to be part of the show. You can get the show ad free. You can get it with the exclusive post show. And usually you can watch this record it live, but we are still in review season. So embargoes are keeping us from live broadcasting a lot of our thoughts and opinions on these games.

But the rest of the stuff stands. And of course, you can watch this record the PSI Love You. You could record the Xcast, talking like her grandmother about these shows all of a sudden. However, if supporting isn't in the cards here right now, it's no big deal. Of course, you can get each and every episode of the Kind of Funny Games on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny games, roosterteeth.com, and podcast services around the Globe each and every week, sometimes twice a week, more on that in a second. And of course, if you wanted to support Kind of Funny, one other way without actually giving money directly to Kind of Funny while you're on that Epic Game Store. Use the creator code Kind of Funny. When you do that, you make purchases through the Epic Game Store and they kick us some bucks.

Of course, if you're not using the Epic Game Store, you could still use the kind of funny code in Fortnite, Rocket League, and Fall Guys. Some housekeeping before we get into the meet of the show, we put up, WW2K22, eight-man tag match, or an eight-man match, sorry, on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Plays. It is completely AI controlled. It is all the kind of funny characters that Olive Party had already made, and they are battling for the kind of funny world title. There is no commentary. It is just the AI playing. I at one point had to come in because my PlayStation 5 was going into rest mode. I had to get in there and stop it. Everybody's freaking out to Twitch chat.

I was bouncing my son around upstairs, trying to put it out. I was like, oh, got to go down there and do this. You can see the chaos and anarchy go here because latter matches go for a long time to begin with. And then the AI isn't necessarily at to win every time. So they were in it having a great time. It was a really fun one. A lot of the commentary on that and on the Reddit have been, of course. You guys should do this and you should commentate over it.

I will reiterate. That is the plan for Kind of Funny Wrestling. We do want to do a KFW where we let the AI play. We, of course, commentate over at me and Snowbike, Mike, and do a bunch of stuff. But we're going to continue to evolve that concept over on Twitch.com. combe, kind of funny games this Wednesday. If you want to come join us and watch some WWE 2K22.

I digress. As I teased the front for housekeeping, there is a second Gamescast review coming this week. What is it? When is it? I can't tell you because of embargoes. But as many of you I saw in the suburb are, you're quite clever.

But if a game's coming out, that's probably what we're, reviewing. Of course, there's many games coming out, so which one is it you can engage in your own healthy debate, but look for another games cast this week. For now, I thank you, I will thank our Patreon producers, Gordon McGuire, Fargo Brady, Pranksky, Dan, Golden Spider-B. Tyler Ross, Delaney, first responder, ND, Julian the Gluten Free Gamer, James Hastings, Casey Andrew. I also want to thank our sponsors, cuts clothing, lumen skin, and honey, but I'll tell you about that later. For now, let's review Ghost Wire, Tokyo. Snow, Michael, Michael.

you've beaten it I've beaten it blessing in it touch it but we want a blessing to come in for the sex appeal number one but mainly then it can be the voice of the audience and ask questions and be a part of that so thank you blessing for making the time to be here with us thanks for having me I'm very excited excited here about this because like this is a game that from the first trailer I very much identified as a blessing game for how weird it is the sure I guess at the time we didn't know it was an open world like far cry type of game where you're going through and clearing out all of like the checklist type items which can't appeal to me sometimes especially coming off of dying like too and Horizon. Like I'm kind of in the mode for that kind of game right now. But just stylistically and knowing this studio, I've been looking for an entry point into playing something from Tango GameWorks because even within kind of passed me by. So I've been super excited about this up until your preview that you did about a week ago where you unsold me on the game. I was playing to play the game. I was going to play some of it for this review. And then you talked about it on kind of funny games daily. And I was like, oh, that doesn't sound as fun as I thought it was going be and so I'm very I'm very curious to hear like from you Greg and from you so like Mike like

should I be resold on the game like have your impressions of the game risen since then sure uh yeah I'll start up to do the official quote unquote kind of funny review so my score speaks for the company on this one I don't think yeah you should be sold in this game no I gave it a three out of five I think it's okay it's an okay game uh it doesn't do anything egregiously wrong I just think that it doesn't do anything so right that I have to say it I think I said to my thing Right. Like I ruled credits in 10-5 hours, and at no point in that was like, wowed. At no point, it was like, oh, my God, this is so cool. I can't wait to do it. There are cool things in the game. There's a slew of things to do.

But I think the most damning, you know, in a nutshell, I can give it the top before I want to hear with Snowmike mics in a nutshell at the top review, right? Is that, bless, you know, that I am an open world fiend. If I, you know, when people ask me what my favorite kind of game is, I always say, you know, open worlds. I talk about Ubisoft games. I talk about action and adventure. I talk about that. And that's what this game is. It is an open world thing, chalk full of side quests, Tori Gates to remove fog of war, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I did the 10 and a half hours, and then I was like, all right, now I'm going to go through and keep playing it. The platinum is attainable. The platinum is not impossible. I need stress the imagination. It is just go through and do everything. And I cleared all the Tori Gates, which are like the towers and assassins created. They show other icons on the map thing.

I cleared all of them and then started doing side missions. And I was just like, why am I doing this? Like, I just, I don't want to play this anymore. And I just put it down and walked away. Mike, where are you. You beat it this morning. What is your synopsis? What's your score for GhostWire Tokyo?

Greg Miller, my snowbike mic review would be three out of five as well. I think this is a good game. I don't think this is a great or phenomenal game. But I do want to preface it with if there's there's a certain subset audience out there that is going to find this a four out of five game, a great game, in my opinion. I think if you're really into Japanese culture, if you like horror, if you like Yo-Kai, if you like anime, that kind of mix kind of speaks to you. I think you're going to get a little bit more out of this game than the general audience.

Looking at this right now, I had a good time. And actually, it's interesting. You talk about the open world. I got lost in the open world. That's where I really felt at my best was the collectathon. I loved the side missions and how they really built up the theme of the game, which we're going to talk about in just a little bit. I think the side missions were actually some of the standout moments for me in this game.

But on the flip side, one thing I do want to touch on is I don't think this will go down. as Tango Games Works' best work ever, right? Like, we talk about evil within and evil within two, and those are held in high regard in the horror world. I don't think this will be talked about years to come at all. I think this will kind of come and go. But like I said before, for a certain subsect of audience, I think people are really going to vibe with this.

On the flip side, the general audience, this is a three out of five. Just a good game. A lot you said there, a lot I want to piggyback off of. I see Blessing's hand goes up. But the one thing I want to get in before anybody else gets the chance to, in terms of, you know, how many people are going to talk about this for years to come?

I think people will talk about it in a year. I think, of course, we were talking about the fact that Bethesda, since they announced this, got bought by Microsoft, became an exclusive studio, and that we've all, you know, okay, well, this is going to come to game pass, obviously, when it finally comes to Xbox. And I bet at that point, expectations will be so low that people will play it and be like,

I don't understand why people didn't like this more at launch. And again, I drive that it's not that I don't like this game. I just don't think this game is moving the needle. Yeah, or I think there are so many, I can point to so many different games that are like, oh, this is a better open world, or this is better hand-to-hand combat, or this is better first person, or this is better, you know, the verticality, all the stuff I want to talk about. Blessing, your hand went up.

Yeah, my hand went up because, you know, Mike brought up the idea of horror and also brought up the idea of, you know, in the long run, will this be the Tango GameWorks game that we go back to in terms of talking about that studio and the games they put out. The, I know people really love The Evil Within, right? And I know, like, when they first revealed this game, I got excited for it because that original trailer was the thing of the game seemed mysterious, right? Like the the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the themeing around the trailer

scene, that made it seem like a thanal snap situation where you're in Tokyo and everybody's disappearing away. And it is a, what the fuck is happening? Like, what's going on here sort of thing? Is this a horror game? Like, would you guys describe this as a horror game? Because as I look at the gameplay, it looks very action, right? It looks very first person shooter, except you're not using a gun.

You're using your fingers kind of thing. Mike, you shook your head, no. Yeah, Greg, I think it misses the mark on horror for me, actually. There's zero to no jump scares, moments that were unsettling. I think back of other games we played. Greg, you and I, we played the medium just a little bit ago, right? And that was one game. It wasn't phenomenal, but it did find its horror knits in the unsettling market, right?

Where something's behind you, something's whispering to you. This game in particular never gave me those moments of horror at all, right? There was never a time where I was scared. I was worried. I was looking over my shoulder and kind of fearful. I think what they get away with here is the ghost, the urban legends of this Tokyo district, right? I think you see the yokai in different forms and those are cool, those are novel, they're scary. But like, nothing ever speaks to me as a horror genre where it goes, oh, wow, like, I'm actually fearful right now.

So for me, it missed the mark on the horror side. Yeah, and I don't know if it was shooting for that mark. Like, I think it is, I think, I think you come with that baggage. Of course, you are Tango Gameworks, Evil Within 2014, Evil Within 2, 2017, right? that's what you're known for. And so, yes, I also think that we're dealing with ghosts and monsters from the other side that are trying to come over the world. But that's part of the game's problem, I think, is the fact that I played on normal difficulty.

I could have cranked it up, but I never did because I wanted to play through on default. And also at some point, I was just like, I'm not really enjoying. I'm not hating this, but I'm not loving it. I just want to go through. So why would I try to take up the challenge now kind of thing? So I was never challenged I felt like that. And, you know, Mike, you're talking about the open worlds being the star of it and stuff. And I do think the open world's beautiful.

And I do think there's a lot to do in the open world. I just don't think the open world's interesting. What I would call the open world, right, is profoundly empty. And what I mean by that is, like, it feels like you are walking around a set. And you are walking around to run into set pieces. Right now, it's showing if you're an audio viewer, you know, a battle in the streets. And it's like, the streets are not chock full of bad guys. It's not like you're going to run every block or every intersection run into a bad

guys. There would be plenty of times I run to the other mission that I want to get to and don't see anybody or see them so clearly far ahead that I take an alleyway or whatever and don't engage with them at all. And so it becomes this very lonely game. And again, yes, everybody's disappeared. Of course, it should be lonely. But it's lonely in a way that feels Disney, if that makes sense. I don't feel like it's wrestled enough with it. I saw, you know, the can you pet the dog Twitter account put out a clip of, you know, you can read the thoughts of animals in this game with the power you're given by the spirit that inhabits your body. And like,

it read this, one of the Shiba's thoughts. And the Shiba was like, oh man, where'd Dad go? Dad disappeared. And it's like, that is such a cool,

like, moment to look at and see. But when it's also, when it's surrounded by running through and not having Akiko really talk about that, not having KK, who's the power inside you, the voice in your head,

the guy who's kind of bonded with you, the spirit that's bonded with you to fight these things. Like, they don't double down on any of that. They have these cool themes that they only, that they only meet at surface level.

And so, like, now we're at a point where I think we can talk about the story or the open world stuff. But I would, you know, if you want to go with the story, I think it is like, by the book, it is at face value. Where it is,

and I, we're gonna, we talked about this beforehand. We're gonna do a spoiler class, a very short one, quote unquote, as the post show for this on Patreon. com slash kind of funny games if you want to come over there.

So we won't spoil things for the review here. But like, everything is face value in this game. Every character's motivation is at face value. I'm doing this because of X. that's why they're doing this. Okay, the bad guy.

I'm doing this because of that. All right, cool, that's the thing. Like, you know, and it's one of those where there are lots of collectibles and, you know, pieces of scraps to pick up and read and all the stuff. But it's one of those where I started doing it early on. I'm looking. I'm like, well, it's just about the world. It's world building.

That's fine. But like, I don't fully grasp how the guy did this to get the power to do the thing, try to merge the world. Like, I understand his motivations or whatever. But it's also like, cool. It's the guy in the mask that's on the box, right? Like, the mask is on the entire time. That's the dude.

that's what's happening. It's like, okay, let's go after that guy and do it. And like, you know, then it's like, oh, well, we need this to do it. All right. Well, we need that to do it. All right, we got that thing. Let's go. And so you're doing this thing and you have KK's voice in your head. And obviously, Akiko is talking to KK. And you're getting conversations that way. But the streets are empty in a weird way where you run into these spirits for the side missions. And they are just glowing blue outlines of bodies there that, you know, hover there and give you a mission. And like, I found the side, I've seen by no means, is. Mike alone in saying that he loved the side missions and found them intriguing and stuff.

I did not have that reaction to any of them. I thought they were all incredible. It's funny, I put in the TikTok review I wrote and recorded for Roger, right? Like they are the same blue ghosts. In hour one, you're getting the same blue ghosts. You're getting an hour nine. And they all give you these very simple fetch quests. And so when Raj gave me the initial editor of the TikTok, he didn't have a ghost.

And there was like, oh, let me grab it for you that you have something. I went to a random ghost. And he was literally like, oh, people are getting scratched up by this thing. And KKs is like, oh, that sounds like. this guy or whatever from that I used to hunt as a kid. And it was like, all right, let's find him. And so I opened the map. There's the green circle for the side mission in the woods.

I dropped the marker in it. And this is all of 30 yards from the guy who just gave me the quest. I run over there. There's the weasel. The weasel ghost takes off and I follow the weasel ghost. And then he stops. And I get the thing from him. I'm like, this isn't fun.

You know what I mean? There was one ghost that needed toilet paper. I was like, all right, that's more interesting. But it's all the same thing of talking to these nebulous, just blue ghosts that are happening. And they expand that out in the same way of, like, what I always think you see usually in indie games, where it is like, man, we don't have the time or budget to make multiple character models. So people will communicate to you via phone or note or whatever. And it's the same thing here where everybody's this nebulous blue ghost, with the exception of like, I think it's one character, maybe two. And then other, like, they'll tease that you're about to meet somebody.

I'm like, I'm not meeting this dude. Sure, shit, I'm not meet. The dude's not there. And it's like, all right, like this is a profoundly empty world that you run around. And it has the mechanics and the machinations that I would think would make me, Greg Miller, open world guy, really want to go through and do it. But it's just like, yeah. Well, when you're talking about the machinations, right?

Like, it reminds me a little of what we talked about when we reviewed Horizon, where that was the thing I really praised the game for, where you go through the list of activities to do, right? And it is, here's the main quests, here are the side quests. Here are the melee pits. Here are the hunting grounds. Here's, like, X, Y, and Z thing. and there was a long list of various sorts of activities, and none of those lists overstayed their welcomes.

There's like five, maybe four melee pits in the game that you'd go through and do, right? There's like a limited number of hunting grounds and the way that they parts that stuff out and the variety of them made that role continue to feel interesting and fun to play in. How is that list of activities in this game, right? As an open world, you know,

you're talking about the main story stuff, you're talking about some of the side stuff you're doing. Do they divvy it up in a way that makes it feel engaging in the gameplay loop itself, like outside of even just like the aesthetic that surrounds the gameplay loop. Mike, I want you to take it. Greg, you know, to answer blessings question, because I have a lot to go off from you,

but I'll answer blessings question. I think there is a wide range of things to do. Some of them good, some of them kind of generic and buy the book boring right there. But it is tough to say because really a lot of this stuff, when you see the open world, there is, I did 33 out of the 40 side quests available to me, right? So you have side quests there.

You have these fat Don Vito looking cats that run the shops and the stores, and they want you to find, like, hidden objects around the world, right? That you can go find and then bring back to them for money. They'll be able to buy special items. Then when you go through each territory has its own special yokey, that kind of oversees the territory that you can either go battle and or catch. There's also a gang of raccoons that you need to find 25 raccoons.

Chinookies, sir. Tanukis. To get back with the, you know, the mob boss leader of the Tanukis, right? And they are very difficult to find. It took me about 20 minutes just to find the first one. And it was supposedly five feet away from me. So that's one for you. But like, I don't know.

I mean, for the open world stuff, the things, the taskless to do, it is endless. It feels like there is activities that happen spur of the moment, right? You'll be running down the street, as Greg said. And all of a sudden, you'll see four cubes going up in the air. And that is these wanderers that are now trying to capture just spirits. need to go to pass on and you can like fight them and free the spirits and go get them. There's thousands of spirits to get. I collected total spirits, which are just these kind of floating nebulous spirits.

Yeah, I was going to say explain that to you. That you can. So these are like, this is the collectathon that I got addicted to, right? It's as you go through the whole open world, you're just going to see a blue kind of just floating blob up in the air. And you can collect these spirits to help them pass on by going into the phone booth and calling up Ed, right? And you're going to get money and XP for just collecting these.

spirits. Nothing really crazy about them. There's a couple of different gameplay features, whether they be locked up by like a chain, right? And then you're going to use your PlayStation Dual Sense touchpad to play around with a cool little feature to unlock them, capture them, and bring them. Or in the open world, you'll see

these random events happen where these bad guys are trying to capture them into cubes and send them off to the big bad guy, right? And you can stop that, save them and unlock them. As of right now, after 13 hours, I have 45,000 total spirits transferred out of 240,000 spirits. That's 18%.

Probably saying, Mike, that's a lot of spirits. It's like there's like four, seven in each pack that you get. So really it's probably a couple hundred, right? But it was something that kept me going. And the verticality that Greg talked about, right, is now I'm looking for the yokai that flies, where I can grapple onto him, get up in the air. And now I'm up on top of the rooftop collecting.

I'm finding them from there. There's dogs to meet. There's cats to pay. the dogs will take you to different areas, whether it be a hidden area, whether it be some treasure that's dug underneath the ground. There is a lot to do open world checklist style here with various diffing activities. So it's like middle ground. Some of them are very engaging.

Some of them are kind of boring and whatever. So it's really up to you on how you explore and engage with them. Yeah, and I think that's the takeaway from it. Because again, you know, for me personally, I didn't, I thought that, especially, you know, coming off of last year platinum Far Cry 6, but this year coming into Horizon. We're talking about a million different open worlds

we're playing at any time, right, Eldon Ring for you guys and stuff like that. Dying Light 2, yeah, right, exactly. That's my big critique of the verticality,

but I'll get to that later. For me, again, it's just that I feel like they have a lot of cool ideas in here, but they don't do it with it. Right? Like, again, what I put into what I've talked about

when I talk about this, like it has these great ideas that I think in hour one, an hour two I was enjoying, but they don't iterate, rate on them. And what I mean by that, of course, is that when Mike was like, oh, there are, you know, random events. I was like, he's going to talk about the boxes in the air, right?

Because that's the only thing that's not on the map. Like, in terms of, I guess there's the trees, too, where you shoot the little thing and you get more spirits out of it. But that falls into the spirit thing. Like, that's the one doing it. It's not like there's a ton of random events happening. There's not a ton of things going on. You mentioned for the, you know, the magical cats, what are the, the necomatas right

or whatever they are, whatever. The cat, they immediately when Akiko's like, this is a talking flying cat, KKK corrections him, but I'm not familiar enough with the folklore. Anyways, they're a little side quest, right? Those get marked on your maps and you can just drop the marker on it and then you run over there and then you can use your spirit sense and you see the thing you need to get. And so it's like, it's not even like, I feel like that would have gone so much further if you would have had a mini game for that. You get there and it is hot, cold, you know, it's giving off a sound, it's doing whatever. Like I'm using the spirit sense. It's not just to

see the thing and go to the thing. Because it's just like, okay, that's when this entire game becomes fetch quests. And like the Chinookies, I thought, I thought, I thought, an interesting idea at first where Mike's talking about like, oh, you know, they're easy. But it's the same thing of like, when you upgrade your spirit vision, you ping, again, where you know they might be. And I knew where they might be, I think, because I kept at prayer boxes, I was always like, show me a Tanuki and it would put Tanukis on my map or whatever, stuff like that. But again, all this ever is is running to the thing, pinging, going to the thing, getting the thing, and you're done. And I feel like that's how the ghost quests are. That's how the two Nukis quests are when you know them.

That's how the objects are. And then it's also the same thing of like, for me, the one thing we haven't talked about, and there's so much still to talk about. I guess is the actual combat of it, right? Where you are, like Mike mentioned, when you sometimes find the spirits in the air. And this is, if you watch my preview, the spirits are what I was talking about being very crackdown, like,

where crackdown had just an unlimited amount of orbs out there for you to go get, right? This is the spirit thing. And it is awesome and distracting because it is that thing of like, you're up at top of the building. You're like main quest that way. Oh, there's three spirits over there.

There's some bad guys getting them, so I'll have to protect. You go off and you get distracted and go do it. But when there's the thing walking down and you have to use the touchpad to do like a you know you know the line goes on screen and then you have to trace back what the line was and kind of remember what it was again something i thought was cool but not used enough and not needed enough because what combat boils down to is that you're given three attacks four if you caught the bow but in terms of these spells right three

attacks which are your uh green blue and red right green being i think what we've seen a lot of it's that rapid fire pop pop pop pop pop pop pop you go off you can hold it charge it up then unleash a bunch at once. Blue, I thought of more of like a shotgun attack. It's kind of a, you know, it's a short range, but it goes out in a wave and can attack multiple people. And then the red's kind of like a rocket launcher, right? One big attack that goes out and explodes to it. When I unlocked all those powers and the bow, I never used. The bow I ever. Early on, they gave me the bow and it's like, okay, cool. Clearly there'll be a gameplay mechanic for this. And it was like, oh, I guess I could shoot the trees from afar. Like there's these spirit like purple trees that grow and infect the world.

Usually they have the ghosts around them to protect them. You have to shoot you spirit sense. you find the weak point, you shoot the tree, there'll be a bunch of spirits for you to collect after you beat the bad guys. I early did that, and then eventually upgraded my green to have whatever, like 40 bullets, for lack of a better term, 40 uses, I guess. And I was like, well, I'm never going to go to the bow again, because the bow, again, is stiff and I don't think fun to use. Anyways, though, once I got all these things, I was like, okay, cool, I'm excited to see

evolve and what this becomes. And there is a skill tree, you know, you're going through, you're collecting the spirits, you're depositing them via the phone, which has this cool little like ghost trap thing to, that it gives you XP, that you're getting XP as you play, and you level up and you get to go use it to upgrade these things, right? Like, they just become, okay, you're shooting faster.

Okay, it's more powerful. Okay, it takes less time to charge. At no point did these go beyond what you're already seeing. And for me, that was a huge disappointment. And again, where I'm talking about hour one of gameplay, feeling just like hour nine of gameplay. Where I was like, okay, I also, I think the game has a big problem with,

feedback, player feedback. And I mean that visually, because the dual sense is awesome. I think the dual sense use with the tracing, rad. I think, you know, when you weaken their cores, when you weaken their chest, their cores are exposed. And that's when you do that cool, like, leaving where you send out all the different things and you pull it in. Like the dual sense is vibrating like a motherfucker at this point.

And that's really fun. It's really neat. I like that. That always felt satisfying. The problem was the buildup to it being satisfying. Where I think this game could have gone so much further into, great, this enemy's coming at you. and they are only weak to red or they only weak to the green spell or whatever.

I have played now probably what, 12, 13 hours of the game. And I still struggle of like, I don't know if the attack I'm doing to this bigger enemy, because the small ones you've seen, the head of the school girls, the guys with the umbrellas, they're like just your whatever, goons that are on the street,

they don't matter. But occasionally you run into like Carmen San Diego in a hat or whatever, and you got to fight her. And it would be this thing of like, I am giving you so much of all the spells. And none of them seem to be doing that much. more damage to you. And then sometimes I would use the red on her and get her in two blows. And I'm like, I don't understand what's happening here and why I'm right or wrong or if you have a

weak spot I'm missing or whatever. And again, maybe it's buried in a menu, but I did go and read her database entry. I was like, what am I missing? And none of it was there to be like, this is what's going on. So it does become that I'm just pumping, pumping, pumping, throwing things at you. And it's like, okay, now you're weak and I can do it. And that's not fun. That's not engaging. Like there's no, you know, I'd walk into certain areas because there's a couple, again, something I think they should have done more of where you go to the other side. You go through a Torrigate and you go into the spirit world or whatever. And those were more like arena survival battle past kind of, not battle arenas, right? Where you go in and there's a number of things there that I have to beat to then do whatever the objective is.

And there's trees there. And it's like, okay, cool, this is a challenge room. You're giving me a bunch of things to try to figure out how to fight them. And that's interesting. But it's also not because I'm just trying to pull agro on that one main. person get them to follow me all the way out and fight them one on one. Like, again, am I doing it the right way? Am I not?

I don't know. KK is not telling me the game doesn't feel to be really educating me. Mike, am I wrong on that? Did you feel that? Did you feel like you had certain spells for certain people or was it just? Whatever. I'm very similar to you, Greg. Actually, the combat is my biggest negative of this game and my biggest critique, but not

in the way that you're putting it. Mine actually is the feel of combat. I don't think it's tight enough, especially in the first person. First person shooter genre. When you zoom in or you try to move to another character to switch on and off of things, it's just kind of slow. It's lackluster. It doesn't ever feel good.

But, you know, when you talked about the combat being the same from hour one to hour nine, I totally agree, Greg. It's going to be the same three finger blasting moves that you're going to do the whole time. But what I did enjoy was actually how much better I got at it, right? And using the touch pad to switch between each move. in concession and it felt good to run into those Carmen San Diego characters and be able to go from my green pistol switch over to my sniper rifle in red and give a big rifle blast

over to a shotgun once he gets in close and like when you dial it in and you feel like that it feels great but it is the same over and over again and some of the moments they're not an upgrade system where you keep mentioning it feeling the same as hour at hour nine as it did hour one right like Is the upgrade system bad? Like, is there not really a tangible fuel when you, do you upgrade your character? The upgrade system right now for Ethereum weaving, which I'm looking at live on the stream, the first level for most of them is how fast you can shoot the fire rates. It goes up by 15, 30, 50%.

So your pistol will shoot off faster and faster, right? On the water shotgun side, they'll shoot off two waves instead of just one. On the piercing sniper rifles, what I call that, mixed with the rocket launcher. if you hold it down, right? It will be able to pierce through two or three people or their umbrellas, which are their shields, right? So it's not changing the way you use these. It's not adding a new effect that's like wowing at all.

It's just, oh, my gun shoots faster. Oh, my gun can shoot through people now. That's it. And the thing about it, especially for blue and green, because going through people and making that more powerful, I felt like there was a good feel to that. For green and blue, but mainly green, I would say. I think the problem is that sounds cool,

but it's more the fact that it's it's starting you rather than at okay this is how the gun should feel it's start or your blue your green spell should feel it's not starting it this is how it should feel it's starting as like oh this is sluggish and not fun and then it finally as you upgrade it gets to okay this is how i think it should have started and then it gets a little bit faster but again it's not a power fantasy at any point right and the way the game works blessed right again with it being an open world I don't think they took into account how big their world would be. Because when it does, when it is sluggish and it's not that great, I'm not sitting there running around the guys trying to get the time.

I'm backing away. And again, like I talked about earlier, right? It is an empty world. So it was that like, oh, finally, some guys to fight. Oh, they're running at me. I'm going to slowly walk backwards and just fire away and fire. Like you can get so much distance that it doesn't feel like I'm really having to engage with them. Again, the Carmen San Diego lady eventually shows up, right?

and she's a little bit faster to come to you, but you can still get away from her pretty easily. And then, you know, you talked about combat being, you know, one of your big drawback or the big drawback for you, Mike, right? Like, again, what I said in the preview is how stiff the game feels

and how I felt like I am clearly a camera on a stick. Like I don't feel like I am a person in the game. I feel like I'm a camera on the stick. And that stiffness goes to the way he climbs ladders and it's like magnetized hands of it and stuff. And things are like, that's such a tiny complaint. Don't even bother worrying about that.

That's why I'm not enjoying myself as much. The combat itself, though, like why isn't there a dash? Why isn't there a sidestep? Like it is this thing of like, this is not a fun way to engage what's going on here. You have a block sure that can also be a parry, but like even that doesn't like stop them as much.

Then it's like, okay, they're coming at me. I'd love to just be able to go to the side a little bit. But no, there's no button combat for that. Okay, and that's whatever. And then again, yeah, like I talked about it in the preview, right? Like the verticality was unexpected for me in this game. And when I got it, I was like,

this is going to be awesome, right? Like there are enemies up or not, Well, there's enemies up in the sky, but then there's the spirits to collect up in the sky. There's the hidden objects that'll be up on top of buildings. It's not up of the sky, but on top of buildings. It's up to the top of Tokyo. And again, I think a lot of games, I'm speaking out of mass to an extent, but a lot of games put us in Tokyo. And I'm probably just thinking of being like, you know, a persona fan or a yakuza fan or whatever, right?

Or put us in a Tokyo-like area. Few of them, I feel, are like, cool, it's free roam, get the hell up. You can get on top of the building in two seconds kind of thing. I was excited for that experience. And, like, you were talking about, Mike, there's the helpful ghosts up there that you can then tether to use it to shoot up like spidey kind of thing. Eventually in your skill tree, you can, if you want to, unlock the ability to spawn one of those whenever you want.

So you can just do it to any building you want rather than it be, you know, these like very specific areas to go to. But like from the moment I did it, like you shoot up there. And again, it's like think of a camera on a stick being you, you shoot the thing up, and it's you travel in a straight line and drop. Like, you know what I mean? I feel like, Barrett, I know this is such a goofy. Can you come back to me for one second?

Like the pen is the character, right? You shoot the thing. You go up there and then you drop straight down. And it's like imagine like that's how stiff you feel. There isn't like, ah, yeah. And again, these are little things. But again, it's such a, it's such a comparison to dying light two this year where it's like, if I like right now as an open world fan, is somebody who loves to, you know, beat the game and then go out and get everything, I will not play Ghost Wire Tokyo again.

I will play a dying light again, even though I can't even get the platinum because they have some ridiculous trophies. But like, even to the point of just mantling to get over something in Ghostwire Tokyo, right? because you have this cool move where you turn into a ghost and then can just travel like a little bit until you can upgrade it to go further and further. But you know, you run and you jump to the edge or you do that and you hit the edge and it's just like this. And it's just it doesn't feel like, it doesn't feel like this was a mechanic they thought they were putting in the game. It feels like something they like later on like shit, we had to put this in the game. And then it was, well, let's build around how the game already feels.

Does that make sense, Mike? Does that, do you agree? Yeah. Yeah. And I want to piggyback off that verticality, right? It's like at the first moment, it is cool. You're like, oh, wow, I'm going to get up on these skyscray. I'm going to go see what's up on top,

but there really isn't anything going on there. There's a couple of Tori Gates, maybe four at most, right? And the only time you're ever going to really look to get vertical is for missions that are forcing you to get up as high as possible. Other than that, really going up there is not going to give you anything besides a quick ghost encounter and possibly some spirits. So I totally agree with you, Greg.

I think the verticality was a miss, but I will talk about the open world because I do want to bring some hot activity to that in just a moment. But I want to say something. The shooting, Greg, to make it feel better, do not play in quality mode. 30 frames per second is absolutely awful in this game. You have to play on performance mode because if you want to talk about clunky and the game already feeling like that in performance mode, you play in quality mode. You are moving.

You are chugging across the game. It's crazy, Greg. I want to get to your positivity, Mike. But first, I want to get to Patreon. Remember, if you go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games, you can write it to be part of the shows. You can get the show in the exclusive post show. doing, which is going to be a spoiler cast for Ghost Wire. And again, I don't know.

I've told you my thoughts of the story. We're not spoiling much. I think we're going to give out more specific examples of things we liked or didn't like. And of course, you could go there to watch shows like the Xcast and PSI Love You record live. However, you're not there right now. So let's talk about one of the other benefits at free viewing. That's right, Jack.

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All right, Mike, bring some of that patented positive. Yeah, you know, Greg, we've been jumping all around because there's a lot to talk about it is a big open world. And, you know, you touched on the world itself, the open world and how you felt about it. And I wanted to take a moment before I jump into the story and talk about that as well. It's like, I actually liked the open world. I thought it fit the theme well of Tokyo being snapped in a way, right? And you're left with just yourself, the roaming cats and dogs, right? the Donvito cat selling you stuff, the Tadu Kis, and these evil spirits, right?

And I really did like exploring the different districts of Tokyo. And I think that's where the theme fit in well for me and where I kind of got into the game was, like you said, you're not seeing enemies around every single corner. But when you do, I think they do a really good job of playing with the world and some of the different images that you're going to see. Because when you're playing normally and nobody's around you, all the streets later lit up just like you normally would. And then all of a sudden, if you get seen, it will turn yellow.

And if you get into a fight, everything will turn red on the streets. And I thought that was really cool use of like the world itself. You know, we talked about the verticality, but it is a nice little extra touch when you're running around. Each district is different. And so when I started, all of a sudden I became obsessed with, I got to collect all these spirits, get them over to add, help them pass through the other side. And I think what really builds into the story and the world building in the open world

is the side quest that you and I touched on, right? And I actually really enjoyed the side quest. I liked that they were short, simple, easy to digest, easy to get done, right? You go to this spirit that needs help pass into the other side. They're having the issue of, hey, this is my baggage. This is what's holding me back. And you talk about that. And when I think they do a really good job, it's like playing into some of the urban

legends of Tokyo, right? You talk to them. And one of them is like, hey, did you know at this train station, there's this hidden door where you can go underground into a shopping center that was once built and this evil spirit is killing everybody inside of that, right? Or, hey, I have this incredibly beautiful wall that has this dragon on it, but it was painted with the blood of this guy's enemy. So it's now, you know, has a really bad essence to it. And then you follow this dragon all around these really cool side streets and you close up the gates to get the dragon to stop. But I think that's where I was

really blown away with was the urban legends and the storytelling through the side missions and I liked that they were short and simple. Like I said, I did 33 out of 40, and I would have done all of them if I didn't have to make sure I could do this review with you. But that's where I got lost was like learning about those, getting kind of chills of like, oh, man, you were the only person on the subway and it took you to a stop that isn't a stop, right? And all these lost souls got stuck there. And it kind of gives you goosebumps. Like, ooh, that's scary because you're in this Tokyo all by yourself, right? And there is, that's kind of the chill, factor, the horror factor that they have going on. And a big one for me as well that Greg brought up

is they're just blue spirits, right? You're not getting any sort of like crazy detail. But the biggest detail for me, and, you know, I'm a new when it comes to anime and I watch a lot of things dubbed was switching over to sub. And that is the biggest game changer here is you got to play this game in the Japanese language, do subtitles on, because the voice acting gets risen to the next level. When you do it in English, it's a disservice. It's not good. It's not great. It's actually, it's like, oh, this is bad, especially with the yokai and the spirits, they kind of get this generic high-pitched squeal voice that really sucks. I think they play around with that a lot better on the Japanese side of things. My only critique is, of course, is on the UI, even on the largest font size

for subtitles. It's still very small. And at the bottom of the screen, with action happening, it sucks to try to blend the two to read it, but the voice acting in the world that it created with that was much, much better. So I did really like the open world of the theme of what was going on in the world. I liked the side missions of how easy they were. Go 30 yards that way. You're going to complete this simple task. Come back or just finish it there. I like that. And I liked some of the things they did, right? Like the girl who had the haunted piano, right? This guy was like, I can't do it anymore. Please tell this girl to stop playing the piano. Well, it turns out that her piano became haunted and the tune changed, right? Because she was this child prodigy and she was like

being haunted by this crazy ghost that didn't want her to outshine him. And it was like, oh, man, that was really cool. And it is scary when you walk up there and the music is playing. So for me, I did like the open world. I think the verticality is skippable, but some of the touches that they did was really, really special. And I think a couple of them, you won't see in the main missions. but really the show-stopping piece of this game that is used very minimally, but used very powerfully is when you go into a mission, you can go into these little areas of these buildings, right? And at the snap of a moment or at the drop of a beat,

the whole area will change, right? It will go from like a cool little convenience store to like a blood red newspaper all around the wall or you're up in the skyscraper and everything becomes glass around you and surrounds you. Like they did a really good job at like switching up the imagery and making it powerful in certain cases like that. So I wanted to highlight some things that I really liked because I did enjoy some of the open world stuff like that.

I think you know it there at the end of like the stuff where they do the PT hallway and then there's paperwork and you're jumping between realms and worlds and suddenly like you're up in the sky like walking through Tokyo even though you're not but you're in this is like that shit was awesome and it's totally underused. They have so many things in this game that I think are awesome but underuse. That's underused. The drawing, you know, to do your own spirit casting is underused.

The ability of going to the other side is underused. Like they have all the things. these great things on the board that I just don't think they make use of. What you're talking about, first off, I 100% agree with you that the Japanese voice acting seems, I mean, I don't, speak Japanese, seems more intense, seems more better active, serves it better. I'm right with you though, like, I went the opposite where I was really enjoying listening to the Japanese, but it was that KK and Akiko are having these conversations. And so I switched it to English so that it was a detriment to how it was being performed, I think, but I could actually keep up and not

have to not be stopping while I'm in the middle of the fight or looking at what's going on. wanted to be able to understand a glance kind of thing. But yeah, I just, it's this weird thing of the side missions where I just don't have that relationship with them that you do, where it's like, I think you've done more. Like you don't have a, there's nowhere to list it, right? Did you just count your side missions on the side missions? I've counted them, yeah. So I have like, I don't know, a lot, not 30 by any stress the imagination, but I'd say

20 that I've done or started or whatever. And it's that thing where like none of them stand out. And I think it's presentation of the spirit just floating there. Because again, like when you describe it, Mike, and the emotion and passion you have for it, it sounds awesome. But then what it is just this blue thing being like, oh, this is what, like,

I remember the one with the like grandma whose daughter was, or maybe son or grandson was, grand kid was trapped inside the thing by like, what looked to be some kind of pedophile or torture or spirit like that. And I was like, even describing it, that sounds cool. But what it boils down to is blue thing, bunch of punch text, bunch of text, go inside, find the little heart thing, shoot it,

which is like the heart on the tree and then free the thing. And then it talks to the other spirit. And then that's it. They disappear and I get a bunch of spirits. I'm like, all right. Yeah, I think there's a blend of that,

right? I think like 50% of the missions are kind of like that. And then there's like the cooler ones where they go a little bit beyond that, right? Where you go into a certain section, you'll see that flip like you talked about. Or like me, right, you'll be chasing this incredible dragon through the city streets and like trying to shut down

these gates. So there is this really weird blend of the side mission. Some are standout. Some are skippable, right? but I don't know. I guess I kind of got lost in the theme of it once I really hit on the final night of playing it of like, okay, like this is the theme of the game, right? This is why everybody got snapped.

This is why the big bad wants to do this, right? This is what we're going towards. And like to think on these side missions, that's what built up this story. Because when you and I do talk about the story, I agree, Greg. I think it's a paint by numbers. I think it's fine and generic, right? But I think the side missions are what actually really elevate that to really build up this theme of like what's going on here with the spirits.

How does KK and Akito actually like play into the bigger picture and what Akito has to do, right? Or like what KK has to do, what the big baddy wants and needs to do. It's like, I think that really did a good job for me of how that built out. And some of them are good. Some are skippable. But those are the things that I think you should not miss if you do get into this game. I like to kick it over to Forbes 30 under 30.

For the folks that do want to play the game and are very interested in it, would you say then that it's not a game worth mainlining whatsoever? Like, if you're going to play GhostWire Tokyo, you have to do the side missions to enjoy it fully. I think you should get lost in this world, right? Because right now I saw the GhostWire Tokyo team over on IGN. They had a quote of like, it's going to take you 25 hours to beat

and then like 30 to 40 to like 100%. You clearly hear me and Greg, right? Greg did it in about 10. I did it in 13. So like I think you did worse side missions than mine. Exactly. I think you should get lost in this, right? What's 13 hours in an open world if you're interested in it, right?

And I have a lot of other things to still do. The side quests are just a small piece of that open world stuff that we talked about before, Bless, right? Like, you can go hunt down the, you know, native yokies to that each area and see what those are all about. And there's some really cool ones. Like you walk up to one spirit and he's like, hey, this girl keeps looking at me from around the corner.

What's her deal, right? And he's like, I followed her and then she killed me, right? And you'd look over. And it's like this. scary long-necked ghost looking at you, and then you follow her around, and you, like, follow her around these corners. And it is really cool. So there's really a lot of cool stuff to do if you're into this. And that's what I kind of got out at the beginning of, like, I think this will be a four out of five for a certain subject or subsect of people that are really into this

kind of like theme and the whole world itself. Other than that, it's going to be a three for most people for sure. I feel like this just always a pivot. Like, again, like it was just like, I run into the blue go sitting there. I lost my daughter. We got separated. All right, I'll find her. Then I'm see it on the map. Run to the thing. I kill a bunch of dudes. You know, the same, same umbrella people

I've been fighting forever. The wall falls down. She's right there. I'm like, are you lost? Oh my God, my daughter. All right, we're done. And I'm not saying there aren't cool things like you're saying. It's just like that. I think that's the half and half like we talked about. There's some that are good. Some are skippable for sure. Does the game create space to like have big moments happen

in the game? Because like when I, when I'm thinking of the open world games I've played recently, right? Like, I think of dying light too, and I think of clips that I've actually sent to Greg and Janet of, like, me getting to a cutscene and going, oh, shit, I didn't see that coming. Like, I didn't see that twist happening, right? And I think of Horizon and getting to a certain location that's like a big city that I was like, oh, shit, this looks really dope, right?

And I think of Eldon Ring and my first time stepping into Caitland or my first time stepping out of Godrick's castle and looking over the vista and saying, like, all that's available to me, right? Like, I feel like, in the open world games that we've gotten over the last few months, those games have found opportunities to give you those memorable moments that you're going to take away from the game and go oh shit this is my defining moment of playing this game does ghostwire Tokyo have any of that is there a thing that you're going to take away from

oh man by the end of this year when we're talking about the moments of gaming ghostwire Tokyo has x y and z thing that i'm going to remember i have five total that i've counted out my head five moments four a good one is bad so i'll start with the i'll start with the bad one there's this moment in this game and i won't spoil it we'll do it in the spoiler cast. But I literally out loud said, is that that?

What is this man about to do? And sure, shit, he did it. And I was like, that is not what I was expecting here. That is totally different from the whole entire game, but all right. But then on the good side,

the moments that did stand out to me, right? When I go down the list, I've brought up the standout side quest. Like there are moments with these side quests and what they do visually, like Greg said, the PT snap of a dime and the whole world changes.

Those are the standout. Wow. factors, right, where they're few and far between this, probably only five to 10 maximum that you'll find, but you will say, oh, wow, that was very cool, right? Then I go into another one. You'll say it's cool. Are you to talk about at the end of the year with the best moments in video games like Blessings talk about it? No, but I'll talk about it when people ask me about this video game. Sure. Okay. That's what matters, right? Is the Tango GameWorks team what they could have created? I think a lot of us go into this going, oh, it's a horror game, right? It has

horror in the description, but it's not that scary. But I think that it's, think those are the moments that they build up into the horror genre that will stand out. And that's what I'll talk about for sure. And I don't think we've seen many games do it that well. So maybe I will talk about it at the end of the year, but we won't talk about this game at the end of the year, probably. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. To jump off of Bless this question, absolutely not. There's absolutely not those moments for me. I don't think you'll have. I mean, again, like you're talking about this dragon quest. It sounds really cool. You should tell me the name of it after this. I'd like to run it. But it's like, yeah, I even, because even like, I don't even feel like the districts have their own feel to it.

Like there is a visual difference, but not enough where I'm like, man, I'm in X, Y, or Z. You know what I mean? Like there's the big crossing, like the Shabuja crossing or whatever that, like, I get that that's, you know, the technological hub or blah, blah. But like, in general, I feel like the game is a lot of the same stuff over and over and over again, which works against it. And I think that's why it's like, we're here going like, it's okay. And yeah, fans of the genre might enjoy kind of thing, but like, I don't think so. I think they're honestly blessed. Their biggest miss in terms of being memorable would be the bosses.

Because you have the old mass dude. What is it? Hanaya. Hanayah? I can't pronounce it. But you have the mask dude, right? And he's got his cronies that they introduced earlier. I'm like, oh, mini bosses.

Got it. And so, sure, shit, you know, you run into them. And, you know, they pop off their masks and become these grotesque, hideous creatures that you're like, yeah, this is going to be a fun fight. And then you remember the game you're playing. Where it's like, cool, right. I can't dash to the side. So this is going to be me running in very straight lines to do things and get around. And most of them I thought were incredibly, I thought I had, I thought that I had to think

harder to fight Carmen San Diego woman that I did all the bosses except for one that I thought was a complete bullshit fight where I kept getting destroyed. Because again, it's like now the boss is smashing the ground and there's waves of, you know, energy coming at you, jump over them. And I'm like, this is like the least, this is such a stiff game. and you're asking me to jump, and I'm like, sometimes I would land the jump correctly. Other times I would just take both blasts. I'm like, what the hell is the problem?

And my favorite thing about it was, I was, it was like, I don't even know. We'll say fifth time, I might be being generous and I might be being conservative. And I was like, man, God dang. And I screwed up in the very front after, you know, having screwed this up. And like, because I was doing the thing where you're like getting so close and losing. I was like, all right, fine, this, whatever. Let him kill me. And I ran up underneath it because he turns into like this giant creature.

I ran up underneath his chin, looked up. and I just sat there and wailed on him and beat him that way. And I was like, not by design. This is not the strategy to beat the boss. This is like, oh, this game is, I don't know if I'm technically glitching it out or whatever, but like, underreys, he doesn't have a short range attack to stop me. And again, this is not the design of how to beat this boss because I'm clipping through a million things.

I'm clipping into his head and I can see the cores I need to rip out. I was like, oof, even a worse setting. And there was another boss that was like, oh my God, it's this crazy thing. we're going to have to hide from it and like, you know, get it when it's not looking or whatever. And it just becomes the easiest fight. They're just like, all right, cool. Whatever. The boss designs are standouts.

The boss fights themselves are definitely just too easy, not anything special to think about it all. There's a couple of moments story-wise and like that blend in with a couple of side quests that build into the larger story. The reveals will call them that I did like. You know, there's stand-out moments in that with the reveals where you're like, oh, snap, he did. what to what? He did this to this. Oh, they are connected this way. Like, I thought there was some cool moments with that for sure. For sure. Sorry. So it sounds like in the open world conversation that we've been having the last three months between, again, Pokemon, Dying Light 2, Horizon, Eldon and Ring, like all these open world games. It sounds like this one is bottom of the

total pole. It sounds like this one isn't doing anything to stand out. And like, do you think somebody, if somehow all those games that I listed, right, they bypass them, none of those, like, none of those intrigue a certain player. Do you think that player might come to Ghostwire and feel something fresh? Or do you think like, nah man, just go play the other open world games that are available to you right now? I'm a gna man

on that, yeah, I would say go play other stuff. I'm a nah man. This is a middle to bottom tier of the open world games. I don't think it does anything fantastic, but it does very paint by numbers, generic stuff, just like every other open world, right? We can give a pass to the other ones, but they do the exact same stuff as this, just maybe with better gameplay,

and better visuals. So I think it's middle to bottom tier for sure. I think that's the thing is that so many other, like if you for some reason are a Ghostwire Tokyo fanboy, you've already pre-ordered the Deluxe Edition. You're all in. You're like, it's the usual thing in the comments for somebody who, these guys don't even know their time.

It doesn't look different. Look at this screenshot or this screenshot, blah, blah, blah. Like it would, and then I think the main thing you'd go back to is like, every open world is rinse and repeat of the same kinds of side missions, blah, blah, blah. I think this game just does a worst job of hiding it seems. of like like again Mike says oh the random the boxes the blocks we're talking with the blocks right there's no other random event too and it's like the fetch quest it's only 30 yards away like that's

just silly and what are we doing and then the bot and there's so many things here again that are like oh man that could have been great that just don't turn great and again I don't think this makes for a bad game I just think this makes for a bland game an okay game like this is a game that for sure like 10 and a half hours if you're interested in why not you take a shot at it which again to the top of what I was saying at the very beginning, right? It's why I think it's going to get more praise when it comes to game pass.

Because I think with GamePass, you're not investing the $70. This is a full price of $1? They're $70.60 or $70. What I saw up on the website, they might be $60. It's definitely like that thing of like, there's enjoyment to have,

there's visuals to be had here, but like I just don't think it's worth in this climate where you're at this price point. You're telling more than anything when there's so many other games to play. But I bet when it gets to game, pass and people jump in and they put two, three hours in and they get distracted by something else.

Like, yeah, I could see that. I'd be like, oh, that was interesting. It was fun enough. Whatever. It was whatever. It reminds me so much. And I know I've actually been using this too much lately, so I wanted to back off it a bit in this review.

But it does remind me so much of like when I was at IG and just starting. And like those PS3 360 games we would get. I was going to say, like everything you've described about it makes it sound like a PS3 game. It reminds me of those AA PS3 360 games we'd get, that weird Viking one. And like, you know, these games. They're like, even, you know, I actually like the dark sector too much to compare this to dark sector, but similar of like, here's this weird game.

It is a weird game. It is an interesting idea. They take a lot of chances in it in terms of what they're doing with it. And I think they strike out more than they hit a home run. But I'm glad it exists. I'm glad they tried and it's there to try if you want to. But yeah, in a year already where we're talking about, well, this can be game in the year. This can be gaming.

Like, there's just so much other great shit to play that I would never recommend this. Even though, again, I don't think it's bad. I just think it's okay. It's fine. Yeah. It's a fine video game, as I always put it, this is a on sale video game. Even if I think,

even if I think you're interested in it, it's an on sale video game. There's the diehards that will buy day one. For most people, this is going to be skippable to, hey, find this on sale, you're going to have a good time. Or as Greg said,

in a year from now, you can go check that out on game pass. We'll have another conversation about it, but it's a fine middle of the road game. You think Gary Wood will be there in a year? You know, Gary Wood is my man. You know what I mean? in a house.

What does that mean? What is that mean? Ladies and gentlemen, that's our review of Ghost Wire, Tokyo, a fat three out of five. Okay, from Kind of Funny. Of course, let us know in the comments what you think of it. You haven't played it, but I'm sure if you hate us, you got an opinion about it. There'll be more conversation, I'm sure, for GhostWire as we continue in this review season. And remember, of course, there's another games cast coming up this week with more stuff in it.

And alongside a PSI Love UXOXO, X, a new kind of funny Xcast. You name it. We got it along with Kind of Funny Games Daily each and every week. weekday. We have a post show to do on patreon.com slash kind of funny games where we are going to talk. Spoilers. Spoilers. Spoilers. Spoilers about Ghostwire, Tokyo. So you can come hang out there if you want to see it. But if not, remember, this is the kind of funny games cast each and every week. Four, sometimes three best friends gather on this table coming to talk about video games with each other. If you like that, head over to patreon.com slash kind of funny games. Support us there.

But if you got no bucks to toss our way, YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, podcast services around the globe. You name it. We're there and we're ready to hang out with you. If you use an epic game, story use the code kind of funny if you're having fun on fortnight use the code kind of funny and if you want to just take a have a good time go to kind of funny.com subscribe to everything go follow blessing on Twitter follow mic on the Twitch have a good time with everybody out there we got to talk about ghosts so we're going to the post show but until next time it's been our pleasure to serve you go show go show oh fuck that's good thank you god damn fuck