Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Gran Turismo 7 Review (From A Newbie) - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: March 2, 2022

SnowBikeMike joins us to review Gran Turismo 7 on PS5, and Greg gives his thoughts on Puzzle Quest 3, Martha is Dead, and the Razer Enki Chair. 00:00:00 - Start 00:01:47 - Housekeeping 00:04:13 - Gran Turismo 7 00:27:21 - Puzzle Quest 3 00:45:30 - Martha is Dead 01:01:51 - The Razor Chair Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. Of course, I'm Tim Gettys and I'm joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. Hello, Timothy. The Master of Hypes, Snowbike, Mike. Hello, Timothy. And ran out the group, the Nitro Rifle, Andy Cortez. Hello, Timothy. That was nice, guys.

I just want to let you know. I was having a good day. Now I'm having a great day. Wow. Afternoon here on the Kind of Funny Games cast. That's great for all of us. It is, it is. This is the show where we all get this.

together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. Of course, you can get it on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or bruceyteeth.com. You could also get it as a podcast by searching your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Gamescast and we'll be right there for you. If you wanted to get the show ad free, if you want to watch it live as we record it, and if you want the exclusive post show, you've got to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games, just like our Patreon producers did. And since it's a new month, that means we got new producers, everybody.

Gordon McGuire, Fargo Brady, Pranksy, Dan, the Golden Spider, Tyler Ross, Delaney, Twitting, first responder, ND, Julian the gluten-free gamer, James Hastings, and Casey Andrew. Thank you all so very much. If you don't have a dollar to toss our way, that's totally cool. You can use our epic creator code kind of funny anytime you're purchasing anything on the Epic Game Store, and that will help us out, and it's cool and awesome. Today we're brought to you by Guild Wars, too, but I'll tell you all about that.

later. We got video games to talk about. Isn't that right, Greg? Lots of video games to talk about, Tim. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. A couple fun things I want to get out of the way before that, though. Some housekeeping for you, Greg. We just had this amazing new Patreon print done by Seleche. You got to check that out. It is absolutely gorgeous art of us in the Avengers Endgame style. You can go to Patreon.com slash kind of funny games to figure it to check that out and get it if you want it. And some other cool things this Friday we're doing a super dope seafood stream. where me, Barrett, Blessing, and Andy are going to race through Seifu all at once.

We might set it to a world record, right, Andy? That's what I'm hearing. Well, I mean, we've definitely been doing a lot of time trials, Tim, and we've been kind of going back and forth and seeing what times we've got. I'm excited for this because, like, we kind of did some tests yesterday, and I was like, holy shit, you know, 100 hours of Eldering will change a guy. Yeah. And I don't know where I'm at, honestly.

Like, I'm going to predict, let's just throw a prediction out there right now. What are up there? I'm going to finish in third place. Oh, okay. And I think, I don't think that's true. I think, but also fuck you.

I think I want to say that, I wanted to say that Barrett is going to be first, but I think Blessing might upset Barrett, even though we all think Barrett might get first. But Barrett, this is where you, because I'm not putting, I'm betting on you a lot of money right now, so you're playing the,

you're playing with the, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like insider trading right now. Yeah, exactly. But here's the thing also, Andy, it's like, you know, I've been playing a lot of Eldon Ring as well, but not new.

really as much as you were blessing. So I think both of you are going to get really fucked on controls. And I've only played nine hours of Eldon Ring. And like going back to the seafood controls yesterday when we were doing the tech test, it was tough. It was tough. It was weird. It was tough.

Yeah. See, I definitely think that's the fact. I think they're too, they're too gonzo for Eldon Ring. And I don't think those skills will transfer over in the way they need them to for seafood. I honestly, this is yours to win. No, maybe, honestly, because the three of us are really into Eldon Ring right now, maybe. Yeah, yeah.

Maybe it's time to shine. He's smiling and blushing. He's just trying to pretend like it's not going down on time. I'm going to be honest. Tim's really, you're right. No, I'm just hoping I beat it. The most embarrassing thing would be, if I just get too old and die.

I've been thinking about that a lot. I hope that doesn't happen. But Greg, I'm really excited for you to see this because we were testing it. It's the first time we've ever done this. It is all four of our gameplay feeds on the screen at once with our cameras. And then Keb can switch to a shot that we've never had before. That's like one of our featured feeds and all of our faces like watching it. So it's going to be a lot of fun.

Twitch.com. This Friday is going to be a blast. But anyways, let's talk about games. Grand Turismo 7. We had to get our best and brightest on this one. We're like, who's the biggest PlayStation fan? I know who loves holding the dual sense? And I was like, oh, man, I guess Greg doesn't want to play Grand Turismo 7.

I guess Greg doesn't want to do it. Maybe not. Maybe not. Snowbike, Mike. You did it. Tell me all about it. Code provided by PlayStation. Man from Xcast and I'm here.

Yes, code was provided by PlayStation. So thank you so much for the support out there. Yes, Tim, I was invited to go hands on early with Grand Turismo 7 to bring in some of my thoughts. And it was interesting because I am a racing fan, but I think a lot of people out there know there's kind of two different racing worlds there. There's the Arcady racing games and there's the true sim that you're looking for. And I'm on the Arcady side, right? I like the Fort So Horizons. I like the burnout paradises.

I love need for speed underground, right? And so when I think of the track and the true sin, that's not really my cup of tea. But I was really excited because Grant Turismo 7 is coming to PlayStation. We've got a brand new generation. And I thought, man, I want to check out what's on the other side. And I see the PlayStation team over here didn't want to play with me. So I guess I will carry this right now and tell you my thoughts.

I say first timer in Grant Tarismo. Hey, it's my first time, Greg. Okay, so be easy. I appreciate that about you. You know what I mean? Like that's the thing about it where I think, you know, obviously this is going up with the review embargo for grant tourism and so you're going to have so many people who are die hard grand turismo fans out there and that is you know somebody who's covered playstation his entire career for 15 years and never given a shit about grant tourism these things come around and it's like you can't go in there and act like you know everything and i and i don't enjoy that kind i don't enjoy racing games really period outside like cart racers so yeah for you to be like we know i am interested in racing games and i've never played a grant terismo i think it's a great place you to start and a great opinion to have on launch this or review day. Yeah, I'm really excited because, you know, on the other side, on Xbox,

right, you have the Fort's Horizons, which is a little more welcoming to arcade erasers that aren't down for the true sim. But I wanted to jump over and try this. So here's some of my thoughts and my impressions after 12 plus hours with the game. And so Grand Turismo, 25 years of Grand Tourism. So it's a fun thing to jump in for your first Grand Turismo when they're celebrating 25 years. They call it Grand Turismo 7, the real driving simulator. And at first, I was a little nervous. I was a little scared of like, man, that's a big tag right there. I don't know if I'm ready for it. But after about hour number four, it really clicked for me. And I got my head in the right space. The first couple hours, I was like, man, I don't like this vibe, right?

It's definitely as a big kind of Eastern influence, you can tell from the cutscenes to the vibe of what's being shown on screen. It just didn't click with me, right? It's coming off a Fort's Horizon. I was like, man, I don't know if this is my kind of thing. It's all about elegance, history. They're showing the legacy of all these certain cars and brands. I was like this is. And what I'm looking for, right? Andy, I'm looking for like the, hey, turn on the dub step and just get lost moving through just random spots on the map. I want some drum and bass and I want to rip through trees, man. By about hour four, it really clicked for me. I was like, okay,

like let's change up the mindset. Let's get behind this and understand the track. And actually where it started for me is kind of their tutorial and learning section called the driving license. So in there, you have a multitude of different things. So you have for races, they have the license center. They have missions, world circuits, multiplayer, and sports. And I'll talk about all those in just a little bit. But I want to talk about the license center because it's kind of played into the game of as you progress through this like mini story mode that they have you on track with, you have to go to the license center to get the next big license to drive the fastest, the baddest cars. But the cool part about it, and at first I didn't like it.

It's a lot of text bubbles on the screen, right? And it's like, Jill from accounting is telling you what's going on in the hub world. Then you go to the cafe, and Luca is going to tell you all about the history of cars, which I've actually warmed up to Luke. I'll tell you all about that. Wow. But the cool part is. Good.

It's good to know. I knew you all would hit it off. Me and Luca, we've definitely connected. But in the license center, it's really cool because they actually have Grand Turismo pros here teaching you how to play. So at first I was like, man, what's up with this? Right. And it's like, hey, what's up? I'm John from Argentina and he's giving you a small little rundown of who he is. But throughout the training, there's 10 different sections of each license that you can earn. And they actually teach you like, hey, this is how you need to approach this curve, right? We want you to slow down on the snake turn and then it hit the curve with some speed.

I was like, oh, right, they hit the apex. Thank you. Andy. I was yelling at Andy last night. And so I was learning the flow of it. And as you go through the license center, there's like five different licenses that you can earn from the beginner to supercar. And that got me the grasp of like, all right, wrap your mind around being on a track and understanding, breaking to accelerating, when to hit the handbrake, when to move forward and so forth. And so I got to give a big credit to the tutorial section, which is the license center

because I'm a good fan of a big tutorial that can teach you how to play the games right. So moving forward then, you get introduced to the cafe, which has Luca. And Luca has these different sections called Grand Turismo menus, GT menus. And essentially, it's just like a small mission docket that you're going to do. I'm on Grand Tourismo menu 22 right now. And he's like, hey, I want you to collect these three cars. They're the Japanese hot hatches is what they're called.

And you're like, okay, what does that mean? And so you're going to collect three cars from completing three different races that you earn from going in first place. And the cool part is you go back to the cafe and he's like, hey, here's your reward for doing that. And now I'm going to give you a history lesson on these cars. And it's really cool.

He talks to you about, no, hold on a second. I got to stop you. You're saying this is really cool. You're still like Mike who skips every video game story ever, like to in a sacrilegious way. You're telling me you sit there.

You enjoy Luca telling you about, oh, man, this car, you know, it's, it was made in Tuscany. Uh-uh, uh-uh. Mike, Mike. Yep, tell him, if I'm going to tell him.

Right from tell, man, to tell him. This is the Age of Empires thing right here. Thank you. This is Mike. Playing Age of Empires not giving a shit about Trebysh during that first thing. And suddenly, Mike is a goddamn scholar and kind of he can go teach at universities now. I smell a lot of going. The hands-on docu series of Age of Empires 4 has kind of turned me around on this.

And so I was enthralled when Luca every single time I'd go back, he'd tell me about the different cars, right? of like, hey, here's the Ford Mustangs. Let's talk about that, right? And like, these are the Chevroletes and what that means to the world. And that's the big emphasis here that you're going to see on 25 years of Grant Turismo. And of course, the lineage and history of just racing in general. And that's the big focus point here. And I'm actually really impressed with how interesting it was to learn about them.

And then also, if you want to get even deeper, which is cool, you have 424 cars that you can collect in this game. and each one of them has about a seven-paragraph mini blog post that you could read about each one. And I got lost, right? And so one I pulled off for all of you that I'm going to read the first paragraph here, I'll keep it short, was about the Mustang. And it's really cool because you're like, I don't know much about cars. I'm interested.

America's premier pony cars celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2014, and Ford celebrated the occasion by introducing the all-new six-generation model. unlike previous versions of the Mustang that were only available in limited markets Ford decided to share the wealth and marketed the new car for more than 120 culture or countries and it keeps going and I'm like oh man this is cool so GT got me interested in the cars

going from Lucas Mini presentation to then deep diving on certain cars that I like so I was really impressed by that. It's like top gear and I'm into it right and so I got to give a shout out to how that kind of play on both sides because you get these missions from the cafe, you go over to the world circuit and you go onto these different racetracks. There's 34 racetracks around the globe. Each one of them has

multiple different races, different modes on each track. And so it feels fresh and lively every time you jump in, whether you're going with a new car or whatever. There's championship series. I go on to the mission. So over on the mission side of things, when you look at that big map, that's just a picture with small icons, missions have six different sages with eight, races in each one. So you're getting a really bang for your buck here on all the different stuff you can do. And then I kept going, right? I looked at multiplayer. There's head to head. There's lobbies you can create to race your friends. But then one that caught my eye and Andy Cortez, no, I'm all about competitive sports. I'm all about competition in video games. And a cool

one that they offer is called sport mode, which is like their ranked racing system. Those GT pros came up through this. And so you can jump into sport mode and there's daily races. There's also weekly competitions where you can rise up through the ranks and get better and better. And you're actually race with similar skilled racers. You'll race up and get even more points to go up higher and higher. So I was really impressed with the offering of the races. And there's even more to that guys. GT7 has a lot to offer.

And I loved it all. I actually was really into it. So a fun one that I know a lot of people like is the photo mode. And so they have a really interesting photo mode here that they're promoting called Skapes, which is its own little separate menu. And what essentially it is, is they have over 2,500, 2,500, 2,500 different, like, HD photos of locations

all around the globe. And essentially, you pick the car that you want and you kind of plop it on top of that and do you all kind of like Photoshop moments. And I'll tell you, when you do it with them, it looks really cool. When I did it, it felt like I just put an animated car on top of like a nice 4K New York skyline.

And so I'm sure my friends like Washburn who are really into that Chris Anka, they'll make it look cool. But it was really awesome to jump into that and be like, okay, so where is this? And I'm going through the globe, right? We're talking Germany. We're talking Australia. All of a sudden I'm in Brazil. Now I'm in New York, L.A., San Francisco.

And there's 2,500 different photos to put these cars on and make your own unique photos within the game, which I thought was really, really cool. And that's where you're going to kind of get like the 4K ray tracing stuff as well for those visuals. On the flip side, they have the showcase. Real quick there. Andy,

Andy, you had your hand to risk. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I just want to ask about, like, the, when you're playing in a lot of these tracks, are they talking about, like, the legacy of these tracks? Because you and I are similar. We don't know shit about racing. We don't watch, we don't watch F1.

We don't really understand a lot of, a lot of that. And I know that when you play golf games, I'm a golf fan, so I know that, like, oh, this tournament is at TPC Sawgrass. This one's at Tor. Pines. This was at Pebble Beach or Augusta. Like, do they have that sort of analog or do they have that sort of like similar thing for racetracks or it's like this is the one. This is like the one race track everybody kind of knows.

You know what? Surprisingly enough, Andy, it did feel that way. It did not. And there might be a menu that I'm missing to learn a little bit more. But it never felt like, oh, I'm going to Daytona. Tell me the history about Daytona. That was really reserved for the cars, right? I went to the Nureberg ring and they didn't talk about how special that track was.

to me to make it feel like that, which is interesting you bring that up because I never felt like that. And then, you know, let's talk about the looks and the tracks themselves. And so it was really interesting. At first, I was kind of off put because in my line of sites, I'm thinking of Fort's Horizon where you look off in the vistas

and you're wowed by the beach to the volcano, to the playa and to the, you know, the jungle and all this different stuff, right? But here, it's all about the track. And you've got to kind of narrow your focus into the track. Because when you start to look off in the distance,

it's kind of unimpressive, right? It's barren. It's kind of basic looks. The level of detail isn't outstanding on these trees because they're not on the track. You're flying by at 120 miles an hour. And so when you're in the track, yeah, the cars look good. The track does change over time with tire marks and so forth. And within that kind of tunnel vision looks good.

And I was impressed with that. Each one of the cars has its own unique look, sound, drives differently. And it's really cool because, of course, on top. of all of this. It's not just a basic racing sim. It's the big boy racing sim. So you can go over and upgrade all of your car with different pieces. They'll tell you what each one does and how it's going to affect your car and level that up in certain ways. And so it would be funny, I would race in my first couple races in just a stock car. And I would win the first one. I'd go to the next one. I'm like, why am I so slow? What's the deal? And I'd go over to the performance shop. I'd upgrade

the car. And now I'm whipping 90 past people and having a great time. And so really, really impressive stuff on the enhancements and the upgrades. Greg Miller. Talks me about the gameplay, because I think that's the thing that for me always put Grant Turismo into a, oof, I can't even like preview it. Because once I try to preview it in a sled at PlayStation and it was just, exactly, I was in the wall the entire time. The GT dev team was watching me try to desperately get out of the dirt. And like you coming from something like Horizon, right, for me, something like a burnout where it is like, get in the car and have fun. Don't, worry about it, blah, blah, blah. You talk about this being the big boy driving sim, this being the one

that is, you know, real racing or stuff like that. Did you have trouble getting the groove of, you know, how to actually be on the track after so much, uh, Forza? Yeah, I definitely had some problems. I think my stumbles were in that first four hours of wrapping my mind of, hey, you're not supposed to bang off of your opponent's cars and upon them into the wall, right? You're not supposed to drive off the track. You got to stay within the lines and really focus on that. Your opponents aren't a mean to like get to the next place. They always are for me, but it's not like that. But yeah, the gameplay, Greg, it's really interesting because it is that true driving

sim. But of course, as we've seen the evolution of these racing games, they've really done a good job at kind of welcoming and onboarding new players with different kind of settings for you to start off with. And so when you open the game, it greets you, it's like, hey, are you a true beginner to racing games? Are you intermediate? Are you expert?

And for me, I was like, you know what? I fall in the intermediate category. I've played plenty of racing games. I think I can do that, right? Not knowing if I'd get into it or not. And then the next one, of course, is the, hey, here's our helpful hand. Where would you like it?

Right? You can have it heavy where they're really going to break and they're going to work the anti-lock brakes for you. They're going to work the different shifting of the car when you're turning hard. They're going to work on you with the acceleration. You can meet in the middle and they kind of meet you there or you can turn it all off and just really experience what it has to offer.

And so I put myself in the middle again. And I was like, okay, let's see what it has to offer. And I actually really, really liked what they had. It was kind of unique and different from Forza, because when you were to approach these turns, Greg, and like you were saying, right, all of a sudden you're spinning out and you have no idea.

They do a really cool job at there's a line on the track that you follow, and we've seen that in other racing games. But instead of it going from green, yellow, to red, the cool one that I had on mine in intermediate was it always stayed yellow for me to follow. But as I approached these big turns, they had what they called the breaking area. And so when you start off on a. intermediate, it will automatically break for you within this breaking area. And you can see it go from

bright red to light red to non-existent for you to hit the gas pedal. And so I was learning of like, okay, big turn here. They're breaking for me. I can turn around. And as I started to get more and more into the game, I turned that off, that helpful hint of the breaking system off. And so now I would go into this breaking area seeing it's red, jam on the brakes. It would slow down and I would be able to turn. And I think that along with the license center, learning the ins and outs of it, really elevated my gameplay. But for this, this game is specifically for if you're a racing fan and you want to be on the track, if you want to elevate your times by cutting off seconds each and every time you go back at it, this is the game for you, right? For the casual audience,

I think you could have some fun, but this isn't geared towards you, right? This isn't, hey, me and my friends are going to play Need for Speed, Hot Pursuit, and we're going to have fun and last. This is, hey, you're into track racing. You like cars. You like the history of it. This is geared towards you and you should attack that. So, Mike, something that I'm most fascinated about with this is you said you're about 12 hours in. And how many of those hours were in one stretch?

Yeah. So I had a big weekend here of Eldon Ring took over my life and I didn't know where Grand Tourismo seven would fall. I didn't know if I was going to be into this. I didn't even know if I was going to play it before release. And on Sunday, I saw Greg. and we had a nice conversation about the game he's been playing and catching up. He said, hey, Mike, you know, have you played GT? What do you think?

Do you want to talk about it? And I told him, hey, I've played the first hour and it's just not my style, right? I didn't like the influence it had. I didn't like the kind of systems and the look and the vibe of it all. And I thought you were coming loaded for bear today. Based on that conversation, I was like, he is just going to destroy Grand Tourism. I wasn't happy about it because essentially GT took Mike away from me and our elderly co-op adventures.

and the whole time I'm on Discord being like, quit playing that fucking racing game and get over here and let's save the lands between. But then he eventually was like, I'm actually digging this. Like, hey, at first I was kind of like cold on it. Now I'm kind of into it. Well, that's the big so that...

Yeah, I left Greg on Sunday evening. And on Monday, I was like, you know what, Michael? Let's give it this college try. Let's see if we can get back into it. I started it at 4 p.m. I did not stop racing until 4 a.m. the next morning, this morning when we're recording this. Because it took over.

Like I said, all of a sudden it just clicked. I was having fun. I was into that gameplay loop of. Go to the cafe. Get your mini missions from Luca. Learn about the car. Have a damn tea.

Oh, Luca. Get a sandwich. It's funny. At first, I really hated. I really hated the text bubbles, y'all.

There was these text bubbles that would pop up. And I thought they would say dumb and weird things. But as you grow, you get more people in the cafe, right? So there's this looky Lou who's like, that's a championship car. That's so cool.

And I'm like, oh, Ben, you're crazy, bro. And then there's this other guy. who's known as like the car aficionado who will show up to the cafe and like you bring up a different car and every single time you bring one up he has a different text bubble about the car a little bit about the history his thoughts on it it's like oh man this is kind of cool i'm liking this whole thing and so i really got into the gameplay loop of race race race get the cars come back turn in that

mission be rewarded with you know of course gt points which we'll talk about in one more second you get rewarded with the history lesson and then you go do it again and i just like that and I really got a grasp of the track and I want to give a shout I know I said a lot but the license center really challenged me I liked the challenged I like hey here's the times for gold silver bronze you have to bronze everything to pass right and like I would be there and I'd be like two seconds off then I'd be a half second off and then I'd beat it by two seconds and I was like yes I'm liking this and so the gameplay loop took over for me and I just got lost in it for hours on hours. And the positive I would say is leaving this right now, I'm actually excited and eager to go back

into the game of GT7. So here's my question that you said like, you know, at the top, like if you were a casual fan or racing fan, it wouldn't be for you. But like, are you saying, do you think you're beyond that? Like, it sounds like you got hooked the longer you played, the more you got into it. I think I'm, I think I'm a little beyond that because of all the hours I put into Forsa and all the games before. And I also have an influence of like my friends like Washburn and Maddock, they like F1. They like the GTs and the actual forts of proppers where you're on the track and you're cutting down times. And that's never been something for me. But I think knowing that like my friends are into this and like I'm slowly coming into it. Now I think like, oh man,

I do want to play multi-player with them. And I actually like want to play the right way. Right. I don't want to bang into them. I want to see if I can like trade a little paints. Sure. Sure. Right by him and go forward. I'm super into it right now, which is fun to say. If you, would you put a score on it or do you think that you haven't had enough? I think this is a four out of five. I think this is a great game. Grand Tourismo 7 is a great game, in my opinion, after playing it for 12 plus hours.

I think if you are into racing games, you're going to get a great bang for your buck package, right? There's a lot to do, a lot to see. It offers over 400 plus cars, which of course, what you want to see right at launch. You have a number of things. This is a full package, which I'm impressed with. I think a lot of the conversations we've had lately is games as a service, getting piecemeal certain pieces of a game over time and kind of waiting on it. Right when I turned on Grant Tarismo 7, I knew I was going to get lost in a number of things.

And I mean, we're not even talking about the design of the library edition where you can put in the different car decals. You can customize your racer, right? There's so many things that go into this that makes this feel like a full package to me that I'm impressed with and really proud of to see and be able to play. Hell yeah. That's me playing GT7. It's a great time.

I'm really impressed with it. If you're a racing fan on PlayStation and you're looking for the racing bug, you're not going to go wrong with GT7. A little down on the music, but that's tough to compare because it's a different vibe and theme. As opposed to, yeah, as opposed to Horizon, right? But that's something you're going to listen to their music for four hours.

And then all of a sudden you're going to be on podcast or base nectar mode after that, you know what I mean? That's just how it goes. So that's me playing GT7. I'm proud of you, man. That's awesome. What a comeback story. Greg, you have reviewed two different games, one that you really liked and one that you

didn't like so much. I want to hear all about them after we hear a word from our sponsors. This episode is brought to by Guild Wars 2 End of Dragon. The third expansion for the award-winning and critically acclaimed MMORPG Guild Wars 2 and the culmination of the L.O.R. or Dragon Saga. There's no shortage of new shenanigans to get up to to explore the beautiful Canton continent, travel, fish with your friends and your own personal skiff, unlock nine new elite specializations, pilot the Siege Turtle combat mount, and way, way more. If you're

new to Guild Wars II, don't worry, their community of over 16 million players are ready to welcome you with open arms. If you're already at Guild Wars 2 commander, it's time to gear up for some new adventures. Like that Siege Turtle mount, I mentioned earlier. Yeah. It can bear two riders, one to handle the turtle, the other to operate the weapons strapped to its shell. That's awesome. What about the personal skiff I mentioned? It's your new home away from home on the waves. Ferry your whole party around to explore, relax, or drop anchor to fish over 200 unique species around Tierra.

You can check out the link in the description to get your hands on Guild Wars 2, End of Dragons available now. Do you want to start with the good or do you want to start with the bad, Greg Miller? Tim, what do you want? Do you want the good or do you want the bad? You want the good. I want to keep this good train rolling after GT7. What are you telling us on March 1st. And so we'll start talking about puzzle quest three,

which is out right now officially. Mobile devices, your phones. Andy, you got a phone over there. You got an Android. You got an iPhone. It doesn't matter. It's there. You can get it.

You can go get PuzzleQuest 3 right now. And Puzzle Quest 3 is also on Steam right now. I mean, I love this game. Like it shouldn't surprise you, I guess. I'm a huge PuzzleQuest fan. You know, I talk about it a bit in the TikTok review. of like 15 years ago, puzzle quest came out and took over IGN at the time, where like all of us were playing it, whether it be on Xbox Live,

whether it be on PSP, whether it be on DS. And I'm probably playing fast and loose with what platforms it was on at launch. But it came to all those platforms. Everybody was playing it. We all loved it. And so since then there's been a puzzle quest too. There's been a whole bunch of licensed puzzle quest. You might know, I know a lot of people today are talking to me about Marvel puzzle

quest, which I played and started. And for me, the problem with Marvel's puzzle quest, right, was that it was a bit too handholdy. I enjoyed it. I liked the idea, obviously, but I felt like it was never challenging me to an actual battle of puzzle quest. Because as you see on your screen right now, puzzle quest is about you facing off against an enemy. And so puzzle quest three is a return to the traditional RPG, you know, let's go off and fight some skeletons. Let's go fight some orcs and have an RPG adventure, which you can totally skip through and ignore if you want to, the text that pop. pops up with it or you could actually read and there's some clever funny things here and there.

But the idea is that you are playing an RPG, but all of the actual battles you're going into are decided via match three gameplay. So you go up one on one against an enemy and there will be often be you'll go up against one enemy and you see it at the top right of the screen that there will be an enemy and then two more after him. You have to beat all of them to clear the fight to continue the story to go on and do your thing. If you lose, you know, you die and you have to start over.

Or in this one, use some of the gems currency they have to get yourself back into battle once per battle. But the idea is that you go in, you match the corresponding gems, and if you match three skulls, guess what? You do damage. If you match some of the color gems, you then do a little bit of damage, but more importantly, power up the spells you have equipped below. And so that is what puzzle quest was 15 years ago. The changes here are that, of course, the board is less cluttered. It's a tighter board. There's fewer spots, which is good for what they're doing. At the top now, there's this meter that has two seconds on it. So when you make your first match, then it starts timing out. And you have basically that entire bar to make more matches if you

see them on the board, which is new, which keeps it going a lot quicker, which makes you never, if it's your turn, never stop. And also adds in for me a bit of strategy. This is turn base, right? So when I make my move and then get attacked by the enemy, the enemy no longer like it did 15 years ago in PuzzleQuest 1, they used to use your board. So they would then make, they would match gems. Those gems would disappear. They would do whatever to you. Now they're just doing an attack. you have your own board. So you have time to look at your board and be like, well, if I move that one there,

it's going to start a chain reaction where I could do this, I can do that. I can move these things around. You can move pieces diagonally now. And every time you match, by the way, you get a little bit more into that. You get a little closer to the two full seconds again.

It's really hard to keep it all the way going, not infinite, but you got a boost. You can keep moving around and doing it. So you're going through, you're doing this. That's the gameplay loop of playing it. But then on top of that is this RPG.

So you have 12 different gear slots. You have five different spell slots. You are getting new spells and new gear out of a chest that you're playing. And when you're doing the story mode, you're then going in and using resources to level those up to take them from, you know, the white common gear to green to blue to all the way up to, you know, I think the purple epics and all that jazz. Like it is an RPG in that sense as well of going through and making your gear count so that you can go into harder battles. At the very front of the screen, you know, it's telling you what your gear score is and it's telling you what the next story battle is ranked as. as far as the enemy score. And so then they just keep layering stuff on it.

Tim, go for it. Sorry, I'm ranting. Andy Gortez had a question. Are any of the enemy types, do they determine any sort of variables in the gameplay? They sure do. So if Barry can throw up footage if you want to, no big deal if you can't bear it and get an enemy on the screen at the same time. The ideas you're going is you can match any of the gems you want like I'm talking about, right?

And you go ahead and do it. But when you're up against enemies, you'll see at the top, Oh, this is like the polished trailer, right? At the top for this orc, there usually would be a circle above him that would say what he's weak against and what he's strong, what he's strong against. So it can be that you can match, you can see a whole bunch of red gems.

You could match them and it would power up one of your scales, but if he's got a little fired insignia on him, that means it's also going to power up his special. So he can use that on you because you'll see his special as a fire one. And so you have to kind of do that risk or reward of like, okay, cool, I can do this, but it's going to power him up. One of the big things that I find myself trapped in a lot.

There you go. Great job, Barrett. Right there, you can see, like, you know, the gems or the colors on that little, I don't want, what do you call his flying lady? I don't know what her official title would be. A flying lady. You see your little logo there and stuff, right? But one of the things you risk a lot in this game for me is that, okay, cool,

if you can make a line of gems all the way across the board, like, you know, from left to right, you stun them and they don't get to do anything to you. So a lot of times it's at risk of, I can stun them right now, but it's going to fully power up their spell. Will their spell knock me out? And you see the different meters there of like, you know, what you have a magic defense. You have a physical defense there before it gets right into your,

you know, your heart and what you're doing. And so there's that. And then it is what they're weak against and what they're not weak against, what spells you've equipped. You know, for all the gear you're going through Andy, like as you start leveling it up and getting it, it has its own buffs and debuffs to it in terms of like it's going to give you plus one to your poison.

It's going to do this for fire. It's going to be weak against this. you know, if you do it at start of every turn, you'll be able to do X, Y, and Z. Like, there's a whole bunch of stuff in there if you really, really want to get into the minutia. And I've been playing, you know, since I got it for like two weeks now, I guess. When I went to, I told you guys, I was all talking a great game,

talking a great game before heading over to Dice that I was just going to pack my switch. I was only going to pay Pokemon. I was going to finally get in there. And then the code for this came. And so this is all I played on the plane. This is all I played in the hotel room. If I wasn't rehearsing or taking a meeting somewhere, I was just playing. this.

I can't believe you lied to us. Tim, I'm sorry. I didn't meet to, Andy. I didn't mean to. Tim, what's your question?

It's a harpy, by the way, harpie. Thank you. Yes, that makes perfect sense. Yes, yes. So you put a bunch of hours

into this thing. Yeah. Like more hours than you put into a mobile game for sure in a while, right? So it being a mobile game, putting in that many hours, there's clearly role playing elements

and all that stuff. Are you seeing a lot of mobile game bullshit? Or is it kind of like, yo, this is a good example of what a mobile game can be. and rewarding you for content without asking you for money every five seconds. This is the big conversations happening online right now around puzzle quest.

And when I say big, I mean, literally there's like three reviews up. And one of them is from PCMag. And it's very much like, yo, this is a money grubbing, like stopping you and like slowing your progress all the time game. Then there's another one that I read today on Games Daily. And it's escaping me. That's like, oh, there's some of it. And it's not there that bad. And then I'm in the same boat of like, yes, this is not only is it a mobile game.

Again, you played on Steam. and which was worth pointing out, I think, that a free to play game, Steam and mobile, and it's all, it's crossplay, it's one account. So, like, I have my Steam version open right here. And even though I don't play on Steam, because I think it's a little bit slower, I like being able to touch and swipe, I can see all my stuff as I talk to you guys and I can make changes and I can manage. I made the kind of funny kingdom, which is like the guild, right?

So I've been admitting members off of Twitter and stuff like that. Anyways, to your question, yes, that stuff's here. It does pop up. Of course, you unlock one of the new companions. like there's a whole bunch of different companions they all do different stuff um you'll unlock them and as soon as you unlock them it's like cool do you want to buy a starter pack for them you know what i mean give them a bonus get more food to level them up uh you know the big thing of getting gear is to get it through chests you get chess when you get chess when you do that if you don't if you don't have a key to unlock

the chest it's like cool you can assign one of your minions to open it and they work on it and that's like a time thing on your front of your screen where it's like cool you have three free slots if you want to by the VIP pass, you could have a fourth slot. They'll sit there for, you know, I forget what it is, like an hour all the way up to like for like an epic huge chest. I think it's like it might be 24 hours or whatever. They'll work on it. And then they're also getting upgraded.

So they have different rarities, your minions. So they're moving faster or not faster based on what's going on. And then if you use them, then they have to sleep. There's stuff like that that I totally get where somebody would be like, oh, God, what the fuck. And it is obviously a mobile thing. For me personally, I didn't run into that being an annoyance. for me. And I think it's for a few different reasons, mainly because I'm playing and I'm also

gaming the system. I like it a lot. There are five different classes to play in the game, right? I have a Necromancer, Taylor Swift, of course, who is my main that I'm just like going through doing all my stuff with. However, eventually, and this is hours into the game, I didn't realize I was playing it wrong until I did this. I was like, oh, well, I should try out of the characters too, right? Because Necromancer has, you all, every one of these classes has a special ability that as you do a certain number of just gem matches, period, doesn't matter color, doesn't matter damage it then you know powers up and you can use it as you think so like necromancer uh when you hit it you can then make uh skulls in the board and so you can just like do massive damage if you want

just crush them uh and then i was like i should roll somebody else so i made a cassandra a warrior right i forget what it's what's its official title is uh but you know she's like looks dressed like a spartan doing all this stuff when i did that and went into her story that's when i was like oh okay it's starting from square one on her again but it's a shared loot pool meaning that all the gear I've been leveling up for Taylor that isn't necromancer specific can be put on Cassandra. It's then bound to her level, meaning that it's not like she's coming in doing 350 gear damage, right? She's a level one. It's tied down to that.

But it's still more powerful than enemies. So I'm beating the shit out of the enemies again. And then I'm getting those rewards again. So I'm getting more keys. I'm getting more shards. I'm getting more things that you can then use to in your main campaign unlock and do whatever you want with. And so there's this push and pull. There is this mobile bullshit.

There is a, you know, there's a battle pass. There's a free version and a paid version. There's, you know, a VIP thing. Again, there's free and paid where you can come in and every day and you get daily rewards for doing it, which are those keys, which are these things, you know, to go through and play it. I didn't run into it. And I think that I can say, obviously I've played a ton, that I don't think it's really screwing you over in any of these ways because I did a screenshot of my screen

before I redeemed the reviewers welcome pack they gave us, which was, hey, we're giving you some currency to play around with and we're giving you some keys and stuff. And so I screenshoted how much of the currency I had before I got it and then today, you know, long after looked at it again. I didn't spend any stuff that would have been real money. I didn't use any of the crowns, which is like the real money. I didn't spend any of that while I was reviewing. And then I use the blue gems, which are the ones if you fall in battle, you can, you know, use those to revive once. If you want to get a chest open faster, you can use those. Yes, you can buy those in the game, the stores or whatever. But I think the game,

actually really generous, at least for how I was using in the game. Because it was that I already had 500 some odd before I redeemed it. And now looking over here, I have 1131. Now you might say, well, he used the pass. I'm like, no, no, I burned off that stuff. Like I used that stuff and went through it. I've just been earning those. You earn them at like 25 a pop and then a revive if you want to use it as 50.

So it's not, I don't think it's terrible. I think it's fine. I have, if they gave me resources to level up or keys to level up because I can't obviously check that and it's not in the screen. I'd check. I definitely burn through those because I'm tapped right now for chest, keys for I think mid-chests or for gold chests or whatever. But again, it's not like I've been tapped for days. I ran through the keys I got today off of the free, hey, redeem it, and then I went to do it. Of course, I can go fight more things. I can go roll other characters. I can go through and do all these different ways and I'll get more of those keys.

There's plenty of ways to do it. And it's also a game that I'm not trying to put 60 hours into every day. I like the check-in. I like, you know, two hours maybe a night. or like I did when I went to Dice, played at both flights. I played it while, you know, Jen was taking meetings. I was in the other room playing puzzle quest three. I never,

I guess the easiest way, I never hit a point in this game where I was like, shit, I have nothing to do. I can't do anything unless I want to spend money. That never happened. That's good.

I'm sorry, your hand was up. I was going to ask if, Tim asks about like the mobile game bullshit sort of stuff. And is that something that's been, something that has caused issues in the past with the prior versions of the game. Is that something that you're sort of used to?

Because I looked at Steam and like, it's got mostly negative reviews apparently. Out of the 40 reviews, most of them are negative. And I wonder if that's like maybe, are these things that they changed for the worse or has this sort of franchise always been this way? Well, PuzzleQuest 1 and PuzzleQuest 2 were paid games. You buy them once and you have it.

Okay. So this is Puzzle Quest 3 and this is the first time. It's free to play. Now, you could go the opposite. Well, Marvel Puzzle Quest, you know, was free to play. They did like an adventure time puzzle quest. There's a couple. I didn't even realize until I was reading reviews today about it and stuff.

And gems of war even, which I know Jeff Ramsey was big on at Achievement Hunter. Like that's been there and they've done those before. I would think that like it's the traditional thing that I think people, even me and Gary were talking about this on games daily today. Like people in micro transactions and micro transactions in mobile games people hate. And I don't find these egregious. I've played games that are egregious money grabs and you stall and you can't do anything else.

I haven't run into that. But then again, I don't know, you know, everybody's individual experiences and what they're doing. Personally, I haven't done that. I want to keep playing it. And the kids, it seems that I've turned on that are joining the league right now, they're tweeting me saying they're having fun, that they're not, you know, oh, man, I can't do anything else today.

As somebody who knows, like, absolutely, oh, sorry, tip, go ahead. No, go for it. I was just about to wrap up. Go for it. I was going to say, as somebody who knows, like, little to nothing about this franchise, I keep seeing shots of those overworld. Is that you just traveling to different battles, or are you traveling to a location where there's going to be a series of battles?

You mean where the text is popping up and there's the two characters in front talking? Well, like, there were some shots of kind of like an overall where you're like kind of selecting the location of where you want to go to. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's just done for pizzazz in between to show you what you earn. So basically if you were to pull it up, it's your character in the middle of the main screen, then it's the gear, your spells and your story. When you click on story, it goes in and shows you all right, cool. This is where we're at in this chapter. we're going to this location.

When you beat it, you come back to that. It shows you all the gems and, you know, keys you've gotten from doing it, experience and gold. And then it moves you on to the next thing. Yeah. And as, you know, Barrett's got it up right here. This is like, again, it's, the more you play the game. And I mean, in level up, the more you unlock for it.

Like, you can't see it, but where it would be like, for me, there's tavern that is filled with all the people that are on my team now that all have their own side quest, that all have their own things to level up. You know, I go in there. And it's like, is it mobile game or bullshit kind of shit? Is it, I don't know, I mean, it's definitely mobile concepts, but, you know, like, I have this woman Bree in there that I just picked up in chapter four, I think, right? And her deal is that she's making food.

And now that I can go in there every hour, get the food from her. And I use it to a level up Evelyn, who's making the minions better. And then I go through and I collect this stuff. And then I can go to the blacksmith guy and give it to him to level up. He just got to where he can create rare armor for me instead of uncommon armor. Like, you can see the machinations of all this coming together. And again, I don't look at that and be like, oh, man, man, like they are slowly rolling the shot.

It's like Valhalla, where it's like, cool. I mean, you know, my town slowly expands as I go and I have to go get stuff. But I do understand that if you wanted to do it all in one day, maybe you have to go buy a currency or something like that. Again, I played, and I say that like, I understand how that could happen. It didn't happen to me. I played, I played a lot in terms of a day. And I was never like, shit, the only way to do X, Y, and Z is to go get this.

So with that, what score would you give? Oh, I give it a four out of five. it's great. You know what I mean? In terms of like things that are a knock against it, like there's a little bit, the mobile stuff like we're talking. But then it's like, you know, I don't know, like the character animations on the side are a little goofy. You know what I mean? I think it makes it look basic. I think it makes it the way the look of the game makes it look a bit more juvenile than it is. I think so far again, like I'm, you know, the game's huge. There's a lot to do. I'm level 13 right now as Taylor Swift. I think that 50 levels of it.

You know, there's all this different stuff with PVP and PV, of you going together. Me and Mike did a dungeon together. Those would be negatives. Me and Mike doing a dungeon didn't feel like we were doing a dungeon together. It was just, we had to talk about what was happening or whatever. I would not recommend it,

but I haven't gone super deep into it. Same thing I read about some reviewers for PVP is literally just like, well, who's got the better gear? Like there's no way for you to, if you were to come in, I'm going to clown you out. So that might be more like endgamey stuff, whatever, but that's how that is.

You know, the story, whatever. Occasionally I'll read it and it seems cute enough or whatever, but I'll skip through most of it. There's a dragon. I don't trust. I got to look into that at the one. He's up to a shenanon. There's one dragon who was nice.

There was one dragon who was nice. I sense a Luca situation here. I mean, yeah, exactly. I'll come back and tell you, yeah, the history of the history of the carts in town and then we'll go be all about it. Luca's going to teach you about a goddamn Camero. What I put in the TikTok, right, was like,

I think puzzle quest has been great throughout. And I think that even if you're like, oh, man, like, but jewel, like, who cares? Like, if you like video games and RPGs, I think it's worth trying out. And the fact that this one's free to play, like I don't think you've anything to lose. It even sounds somewhat interesting to grab

and just have a time waste on your phone that maybe you bounce on or maybe you get really into. Greg, you should download a loop here on Switch. I know, I know. I know I should. I know. Well, originally it was just on PC, right? And then if I came to switch,

yeah, that was the problem. You were all talking about it on PC and it sounded cool, but I never got around to it. So puzzle quest three, got it four out of five. Great. Yeah. We gave our first two out of five. bad last week.

And you promised everyone that you were going to talk about it on the games cast. Now you have to do that, Greg. Tell me about Martha is dead. Martha is dead as a bad game. And it's so bad that like I literally sat there. I'm like, is this a one? Is this a terrible game?

You know what I mean? Why don't I go to do this game until I saw your review? I want to start with that and you get like we work backwards and get into the, the broad stuff later. But like, what was that defining thing that made you go? This is a two, not a one.

When we originally pitched the scale and even though, you know, I mean, like, because we're trying to just be like, again, it's not like we're trying to be IGN here and be like super specific and scientific, but it was like, okay, an okay can be, it's okay, which doesn't sound great. No, it's okay. It's good. You know what I mean? Like, that's, we want all these to be conversation starters. And when we talked about terrible, we really did talk about like, it's a broken game. Like, it just doesn't work. Balance Wonderland is terrible. And it was that thing where like playing Martha is dead. I had a lot of bucks. I had like, I had the game just fucking free. and I have to quit out and come back in multiple times. But at the end, I'm rolling credits, and it was that thing of like, I put it down and Jen's there, and I'm just like, I want to say, I really didn't enjoy this experience. And so I want to say this game is terrible, but it's not.

It's just bad. She's like, yeah, I didn't say anything that was terrible about it. And it's like, yeah, okay. Martha's dead, Andy, you said you knew nothing about it, right, until I reviewed it kind of thing. Yeah, I saw the review. Like, I legitimately, I saw, I think I saw Martha's Dead embargo on our. calendar and I thought it was a TV show. I thought it was like some movie

you all watched. Well this is my, you know, I'm sure as... It's a 24 bullshit. Everyone, everyone out here will agree with me who's watching and listening. I think kind of when he's been fucking killing it in 2022. I'm so goddamn proud of this team and the content we're creating. And so the review season

you can smell in the air has been so great that you know, when we got to Martha is dead and we got to Puzzle Quest 3 and these are games that speak to me, Martha's Dead being a horror psychological thriller. I like those kind of games. Puzzle Quest, I'm a puzzle quest fan. It was great to not feel like, no, I have to go play Blank. I have to go play Eldon Ring. I have to go play whatever. Like, we have, you guys on staff that are those fans. Mike, you can go play Granthorism. I don't have to sit there

and act like I have something to say about it. Or completely, kind of funny as a company, I have to completely ignore it. So it's been so freeing this year of like, cool, I'm passionate about these kind of games or this specific IP. I can go do this. And so the only reason I would expect you to know Martha is dead before the review, Andy, is the fact that this is the game that got censored on PlayStation. If you remember, there was a news article that came, or news, I beat, I guess, where it was announced that content in Martha is dead is going to be censored and it won't be censored in an Xbox or PC. And no, they didn't say what it was at the time. It was just that was like, this kind of came up. I had heard of Martha's dead. We'd seen teaser trailers before and again

as somebody who likes a horror game. And for the record, as somebody who likes good, bad horror games. You know what I mean? Like I love horror in all shapes and sizes. And that means that I play and watch a lot of horror where I'm like, not traditionally good, but I enjoyed this. You know what I mean? Like I see why this was good or why it worked out. I was, this was already on my radar as something to play here in the review season. And so to get into it, I was just not happy with it at all. Like it's just like,

I'm also for the record. I'm going to go full spoilers on this. This is a spoiler cast for you as well just to get it out. Because like Martha is dead is this game. So the idea of Martha is dead is that it is 1944. It is World War II. You are in Italy. Your dad is a Nazi. He is a Nazi general.

And you live in a villa with him, your mom, and your twin sister. The game begins with you going to check on the cameras you've set up. You're a photography buff. And finding your twin sister dead in the lake. And you pull her out of the lake. You roll her over. She's dead. She's got her necklace on.

That's Martha. It says Martha. Why did you say that name? Get out of your system now. And you take it off and you look at it and your parents run down and you pass out. And like when you, the whole game storyline is told through letters. You are writing. Julia is who you are, who we are.

You're writing and then narration over them. It defaults to Italian. This is an Italian game. So it defaults to Italian, which I thought was a nice touch. Like, you know what I mean of like authenticity and stuff. Yeah, I'm sorry. Andy already. please tell me nothing

nothing of the story has to do with her dad being a Nazi like I would just I wish it would be hilarious if it was just like oh and your dad's a Nazi but like we don't explore that he's just a Nazi like why what I mean like explore would be such a generous

term for what they do with it and all this stuff because literally there's just like one part where like she's like her your oh god your friend who you kind of had a a boyfriend, girlfriend with,

whatever, is like, he was fucking your sister and she's pregnant with his baby. And you didn't know that, but he's working for the resistance against the Nazis. And so you then have to do this in like, the whole thing of her being like, oh man,

I'm torn between my family and my friend or whatever. And it's like, well, maybe in 1944 you were and maybe there would be something more, you could say something. We're in 2022, and Nazis can fucking suck it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm not going to sit here and, like, be at all upset about this.

And so, Andy, anyway, so. You got him. One of the letters goes, right? The intro to the whole fucking game is that there's been, they have, there's been a case of mistaken identity because you had the necklace. Your mom finds you. And she, she cuddles you and is like, oh, my God, it's okay, Martha. It's okay, Martha.

And you're, on the letter, you go into this whole thing of like, you've never been. loved. Martha was always the number one. Like you've always been second fiddle. Your mom hated you and was like abusive to you. So as you pass out and feel this love, when you come back to you're like, you know what? I'm just going to be Martha. And it turns out that Martha was deaf. And so now you just have to act deaf. And that sounds interesting, but they never really do much with it to the point that when we get to, hey, your dad the Nazi.

Was the title just a typo? no I mean no because she's really dead only we know that you know what I mean Martha is dead wink you know what I mean like that you know Martha is dead when you get to the the moment that like your the boyfriend whatever the resistance wants you to help out you have a thing of like well do I help the resistance and you know fuck over my dad or do I tell my dad that the resistance is trying to do this and of course I'm all about the fuck Nazi train but like I was like you know what I want to see how this plays out because of course the dad And this is in the dad's the polar opposite of the mom.

The, you know, you, Julia are your dad's favorite daughter. So he's like fucking devastated that you're dead. Again, they say this game is big on, man, we don't want to animate character models. So the parents are either asleep or dad's passed out in the chair or they're just not home. There's not home and we don't have to worry about it. Right. They occasionally get these weird little cutscenes of interactions between them, but it's not like even in game, what an engine. Dad is so upset about this.

It's all like, well, I want to see how this plays out. Like, obviously, to tell dad that this is happening, I have to give up the fact that I'm, I'm not Martha. I'm actually Julia, right? And what happens? I choose that. I just get, I just get text on the screen that's just, hey, yeah, I told dad and he said I should play along. And I'm like, what the fuck? Like, your dad didn't react to you doing this?

That you're like, uh, what are we doing? Like, why is it like this? And so you go and like, the game is just, the story is nonsense. and it gets more nonsensical as it goes. And I feel for LCA, who's the developer of this, you know, it came with a reviewer letter and they've been quoted of like this, like, they do the whole,

the whole like, hedge your bets of like, this game won't be for everybody, all right? This game's going to be, you know, this game. It's a lot of people going to love it. A lot of people are going to hate it. As long as you have a reaction, we appreciate it. Exactly.

And they're trying to tell a game that is like, what's real and what's fake and, you know, what's going on just in your head. But none of, like, all of the conversations. conversations and stuff like that I just described of like oh this should be a pivotal moment it all happens off screen it all happens through a narration none of it is I put in the TikTok right it's all work but no reward like I'm not getting there and so the gameplay you're left with is incredibly boring of wandering around the house the villa the running to the lake to get something then running back to the house but you're not really running you're just moving a little bit quicker they have the I think what they should have done is double down on the photography they make they really go out of their way to make photography feel like, hey, this is going to be a real mechanic in the game. You go off.

This game sounds insane. Like, did you mention photography in the last 10 minutes? Like, I didn't even talk about the horror aspect yet. What is this a horror game? They introduce a fucking ghost. They introduce a ghost that the nanny told you about who you never meet, but you talk to maybe once. You introduce this ghost story that you're like, oh, clearly I, that's what killed my sister

or that's what possessed us or whatever. This ghost don't show up for shit. And then I'm like, well, I'm going to go summon the ghosts on her island. I go over there. I bury some shit. I do this thing. I talk to her in the water. I then come out of the water on the other side.

Like the game is just all of these ideas packed in. It's a first person game. All of these ideas are packed in. The photography is like go take the photo. Then you take it in there. You have to align the thing, print the negative, make the negative, put it into the wash, take it out at the right time. So they're like Resident Evil puzzles type thing? No.

Oh, not really, no. But because there's that. And then it's like, all right, cool. Now go cut a telephone wire and I got to climb an electrical pole. It's cut the electrical wire. And then it's like, find the, cut the, you got to go pump the bike tire. And like the whole thing is that it's not, it's trying to be like body disfigurement horror. You know what I mean?

And because it's like one of the things is like, as we just keep getting more and more outrageous, It's like, all right, cool. Like, I need to prove to everybody that my sister had this affair and did this thing. And that's, I don't even remember anymore. I had to beat it two weeks ago. Like, why I'm doing this. But what it does is that I go into the family mausoleum, which, by the way, I had to get there. And I had to find out how to get the key to get the thing, to do their thing, find the past.

I get down the family mausoleum. I go down. They've got all the candles there because it's like the visual thing. They're getting ready to. I turn the corner. She's flanked by two Nazi fucking banners there, casket in there. throw open the top of the casket, and it's like, I'm like, okay, I know I have to take a photo of this.

I have to take a photo of this girl to prove the thing. What do I do, Andy? Bust out the scissors. Then you, I probably did this beforehand. Undo her dress. See a little bit of tities. Go down, undo the bottom of it. See a little bit of bush coming out of this thing.

Then take the scissors. Cut through her body to pull out the fetus that's inside of her. that just so happened to be disfigured and have like two heads, then put the fetus on her chest, then take the photo of that, then go up there and do this thing. This is, and this is one of the things.

The other one was, of course, you want to talk, I've talked about the cutting the things. I've talked about the photography. Another one that they introduced. Oh, oh my God,

I almost forgot all about, I'm sorry, guys, I almost forgot all about the other mechanic of this game. Morse code. Let's send and receive messages in Morse code, where I go to the telegraph. and they have this weird like diagram of how it is and I had to sit there motherfuckers and like I had to write out the first ones of like tap line tap tap line like and like I'm trying to decipher this fucking code to communicate with my ex-boyfriend who also got fucking killed now by the Nazis I had to communicate with them about where the tanks are that are suddenly okay cool that's one of them but then then then then like I don't my game clock says six hours on my same so like four and a half hour

in maybe five or whatever i finally uh well i guess i shouldn't skip this part i black out my father got killed but did he really get killed we're not sure are you sure you can black out the middle of this then i my mom is going to call my mom's going to put me an institution she's going to call me on my shit right but i got to develop this photo so i go downstairs where my mom was waiting for me guess what she fell asleep in a chair that's very convenient i have to have this actually greg i'm fast forwarding through the i g and gameplay reveal and like the first thing I clicked on is the dad just asleep in the chair. He's just crashed out in the chair.

No movement whatsoever. No breathing. Long story short, I black out with the confrontation with my mother because again, they don't show action in this game. I come to, she's been shot.

But then my game bricks out. It's a black screen. I'm like, oh, it crashed again. It finally comes back and I have a key in my hand. I'm like, of course, of course she would have the key to my childhood bedroom, which has been locked this entire game.

I go up there, I unlock it, I go in, there's a marionette stage. I sit down and then I have to do these marionette things that have failed states. They have fail states where I have to go through and reenact conversations that I think happen the way they happened or whatever. This all builds to me reenacting the conversation I had with my mother where she got killed, where I'm like, this is how it happened. And she got shot. And oh, my God, I shot it because I'm reenacting it.

And then I reenact pulling her body apart. What do you call that? Why am I blinking on it? When you cut off people's limbs? When you cut off people's limbs? Dismembering her body and bearing her underneath a bridge. And then we come out of that and I'm holding my mother's severed head. And I'm like, yep, that's how it happened.

I have my mother's severed head in my hand. That is what has happened here. This game is such nonsense. So, and then, oh, then I do another Mary. And by the way, what I was originally driving at there is that this Marionette fucking mechanic comes out of nowhere where that's what I'm doing. And then I do another Marriott eventually where it turns out she fed me my dog. You do Morse code with the marionettes.

I'm so sorry, Greg. No, I did it to myself. And I had, and at that moment, like, I was like, well, I'll keep playing this till the end. I was just like, wow, I do not like this game. I thought the game was the Marionette. Like I think that's like some of the only the only footage that I saw of it. So I thought it was like a like a little nightmares type. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, that makes sense. The only footage I saw was people's faces getting peeled off. Is that? Yeah. Yeah, what's the scene that got censored? Because you just described dismembering a woman, ripping a fetus out of a small child woman, you know what? It was the Nazi logo. Small bush.

What was cut out of this? So they made stuff on the PlayStation version. non-interactive. So what happened is the part where you cut off the face played out from me on PlayStation just as like not a cutscene but it's just, you know,

she cuts off the face. As well, cutting out the fetus was interactive, I guess, or is interactive on PlayStation or Xbox and PC. Then there was something else. I'm trying to remember,

I can't remember if I'm Googling around to find out what it was. I want... I feel like dismember should be another word for forget. However, some of the scenes have been removed or censored are much, much worse with content ranging from disembalment to gory sex references. Such a fuck.

So, yeah, it's just not a good game and you shouldn't play it and it's a bad game. Yeah. I wish I could dismember this whole thing. Yeah, it's tough to recover from that one. Let's do a pivot from that, Craig. I do want to hear about one more thing in your life. Sure. well you're sitting on right now oh yeah my razor chair so hold on oh shit hold on fuck hold on hold on hold on at game overgracking somebody so when we first came back you might remember i was like oh yeah i forget what it wasn't even a games cast i don't think it was uh whatever it might i think it was a podcast or just in general where i casually mentioned that i totally screwed it all up like and how hard fatherhood was and that i was like on sunday before monday coming back to work i'm going to build my new razor chair and then

Then, you know, I got distracted and then I was building a chair at like 1130 and I'd exhausted, you know, trying to be quiet too while the baby slept. And I made that reference and I was like, I got a new chair and I'm excited about it because I got, it's the Razor Inky Chair, E-N-K-I. And I was like, I kind of forgot about it. But what it reminded me about it was that after that podcast went up, Patrick Graves on Twitter. Patrick underscore Graves had tweeted me in any review that new Razor chair? I've been looking for one. It would love to hear your thoughts. No problem, Patrick.

So Razor had sent me this inky chair. you can see it. And this is, yeah, not an ad or by any stressed imagination, but they sent it for review because they had hit me up and been like, hey, we got this chair for review. Do you want a new chair? And I was like, you know what? Actually, the chair I've been using ever since the start of pandemic makes me sweat

so bad through my fat ass that, yes, I could use a new chair. And they were like, we'll send you this, we'll send you this razor ee chair. And you can try that out. So I was like, that sounds great. And I didn't really look into anything about it because it wasn't out yet or whatever. So they sent it over. And so I have the fact sheet. And the first bullet point is designed for all day,

comfort with special extended shoulder arches and ultra wide seat base. That's the first thing I noticed is that it's such a fucking great seat for my fat ass because I'm wide guys. And I was packed in before in the old chair. No offense to the old chair. And also that I had been in that old chair so long, which hadn't been that long but long enough. That's like in the corner of the room. Like no, no, not taken. I had.

Oh, he's long gone. One 800 junk hauled his ass away. I had smushed down the seat to where I had to buy a seat pad for it. and then the seat pad had nothing to attach to, so it always fell out when I got up, and it was always very annoying. I don't have to worry about that now because the Razor Inky, wide seat,

and then super comfortable seat. You know what I mean? Super comfortable seat. What are they optimized cushion density for softer base support and firmer back support. Don't worry about the back support. That's great or whatever. My ass feels great in this chair.

You know what I mean? I'm sitting in it perfectly. I don't overheat. That was a big problem too. I don't know if we ever talked about how hot I was getting down there. You know what I mean? Thank God. Benjamin was already conceived.

He did not have a shot at that and when my fat ass is making me so hot. It's got the stuff you'd expect. Adjustable arms and all that jazz. It's got the built-in. It's got the pillow there. It's attached real good. It's got that.

It's got the built-in lumbar support. Like they said, my old chair had one of those things he had a strap in. You know what I mean? I love a lumbar. Oh, my God. And it does the whole, like, you know,

goes real far back. I can raise it up to show that wide seat. You don't know what I'm talking about. Yeah, that's my wide seat. Tim, you ever have a wide seat? Oh, God. Okay, well, that we saw that coming. It's got the razor logo on and stuff.

So yeah, you know, and it, you know, it reclines. It does all the bells and whistles you expect. But mainly, like, I mean, jokes aside, even though I'm not joking about my fat ass. Like, I'm super impressed with how, why this is, how comfortable I am and I don't overheating it. And then, yeah, like, just in general, it's a really strong chair. I was also really impressed, like, you know, Tim, one of the things you and I like to nerd out about is product design for when you open up the package. And so when I opened up the package, I'd never assembled a razor chair before. It's my first razor chair.

They had little black gloves you put on, kind of like for an experience. Then they had like the one little key guy that turned and it made it actually tight. I didn't have to bust out the power tools. A little cup or Merlo. Interesting. But no,

and then it was in like, because the other chair that I assembled had been, and this is, you know, when the pandemic started. That was, I remember like a long process. That was way more,

more sweat was involved, snowmike, Mike. I like this chair. I would buy this chair. Four out of five. It's a great chair. There you go.

Everybody, you heard it here. I'm reviewing everything now. Mike, you're a five out of five. Thanks, Greg. I love it. If you want to hear more from Mike, guess what? Our post show is about to happen for patreon.com slash kind of funny game supporters, where Andy and Mike are going to talk a little bit about their Eldon-Brain co-op experience.

And some of the mistakes that Mike may or may not have been making slash continuing to make, because he is one of my favorite people in the world. But anyways, for everyone else, I love you all. Goodbye. Thank you.