Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Greg Played Hell Is Us! - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

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What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Friday, May 30th, 2025. Of course, I'm your host Tim Gettys. I'm joined by the nitro rifle, Andy Cortez. Good morning, Tim. Good morning, Andy. And Big Daddy himself, Greg Miller. Good morning, Tim.

Why are you talking like that? What's your fucking problem? What's your fucking problem? He's all worked up. Yeah, like cram before the test right before this episode started. He's like, don't talk to me. I'm prepping the show. No, right now.

Don't talk to me. No right now. Have you seen that one game of the quarterback? I forget who it was, but like who's looking at his, I think it's Sam Bradford where he's on the sideline and he's so stressed out because the game's going horribly for him. And he's looking through his notes of like, he just throws them. He's like, fuck this. I'm going to be out there and chuck it.

Just chuck the pill. Just fling that pill, baby. Yeah, we didn't get to the fucking point though. You know, that might happen on the show. We might see that live. We might. I hope not here on Twitter. I'm locked in.

Don't worry about it. Greg Miller's locked in everybody because this is the kind of funny. games cast where each and every props for a game preview like each every weekday we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics and video games live on YouTube, Twitch and

podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, please support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify or Apple Podcast to get all of our shows. Add free and a daily exclusive Gregway for a chance to be part of this show though. Submit your thoughts and opinions as you

YouTube super chats as we go. So if you have any questions about hell is us, please send them in. Little housekeeping for you. We're an 11-person business, all about live talk shows. You already got a banger episode, Kind of Funny Games Daily, with Greg Miller and Stephen Tatillo. After this, it's going to be Karate Kid in review. A little bit of a two-for-one.

The main in review is Karate Kid Legends, the new one. But we're also going to do a little bonus sliding in there of Karate Kid 2010 featuring Jaden Smith. Jack it on, check it off. There's a lot of that, Andy. I do remember those parts from when I saw it. 20-10? Yeah, way back in the day.

Yeah, so much jacketing off. Today, after in review, the best souls gamers that kind of funny are currently not, that are currently not out of town are taking on Giant Bomb in an Eldon Ring night range. Showdown who will score the most points. Good job rising to the challenge. You know, Giant Bomb challenges you all to do this and you're like, you know what? Blessing is gone.

Mike's gone, but Andy's like, I will still do this. I will get a motley crew together. who have not touched the game really and they will play. Barrett hasn't, or a blizzard has not suttered it up, but they also couldn't do it next week, which is when I tried to reschedule. I said, actually, you know what, Roger and Mike are back and, and Grubble's like, I'm flying to L.A., and then also the guys have the bomb cast. So I was like, all right, fuck it.

We'll do it Friday. And we're going to win. Every mini boss, one point, every, the first night boss, five points. The second night boss, 10 points. If you beat the big Knight Lord at the end of Night 3, 25 points. So 1.30 p.m. Pacific time. After Games Cat, or after in-reel.

It's going to be kind of funny versus Giant Bomb. Eldon Ring, Night Rain. Drop it, everybody. Now, Roger may not be able to join. We may have to get somebody from chat. We need some ringers. Yeah, Roger was like, I got to edit a thing. Oh, fucking Roger.

Fucking Roger. Yeah. Also, I have platinum delton ring. Just saying. Barrett, I'd like to offer you my heartfelt apologies. I thought it was still Joey. I apologize. Yes, you are, you're fine. You guys got this. Jeff Greta doesn't know a fucking sink from a light socket. You got this.

I definitely trust Bear it more than Mike for sure. Oh my God. Thank you. Who's playing from the Giant Pump side? Do you know? If it's anything like our Monaco Speed Run competition, it's going to be probably Manati, Jan, and either Grub or Reichert. I think it's probably going to be Grub. Are you going to like just completely kick their asses? No. Really? They kicked our ass for the Monaco Street. Monaco, like Souls? Okay, but here's the thing.

Here's the thing. Like, I am not a hard carry. I'm okay. I'm pretty good at these games, but I'm not a hard carry by any means. And this game is just so hard that it's going to be like, I was trying to divide, you know, figure out the points that's going to be like,

how can we find a way where the teams can't exploit the points and be like, well, we're never going to beat that boss. Let's just quit out of every game and keep on taking it on a mini-bosses. or whatever to try to like up the point score we're not going to destroy them like Mike Manotti is a goat gamer shit okay Mike Manotti there's a there's a good of Mike Manati destroying Doom Eternal on like the ultra nightmare difficulty

and he's just like like this just there's he also was the one who helps you all with the the Shadow of the Earth Tree final boss right he did help us with the yeah with the dang okay so you got it with your ass kicked I'm gonna get our ass whipped yeah I've always for giant bomb yeah never been against Giant Bob like that kind of

All right. Then next week is going to be so much freaking fun. It's summer game fest. It's the switch two. We've been talking a lot about it. But now it's time for y'all to lock in and understand what the hell we got going on next week. Because starting Monday, it's just banger content after banger content. Monday will be our summer game fest. Tuesday will be our Xbox showcase predictions for summer game fest. Then Wednesday night, we're kicking off our all night switch to kind of funny launch party. We are. are going to just be having fun. We don't know exactly what it's going to look like. But starting in the PM, probably we don't know yet. Stay locked into next week for official locked in details, but probably around 8 p.m. Pacific on Wednesday night all the way through to the next day. And God knows how long. We're going to be unboxing our switch twos, playing Switch 2 games,

hanging out, just having a great time. So you're going to want to hang out with us, whether you have a Switch 2 or don't all night long. Then Saturday, we're going to take a little bit of a day off. Sunday, we're right back here. I'll be at SGF playing games. Oh yeah, Friday even. There's a summer game fest we got. Don't forget about it. All the, we're going to be live reacting to the show itself.

Then Sunday live reacting to the Xbox showcase. And of course, doing our gamescast breakdowns afterwards of everything. So it's going to be a great time. Hang out, Twitch.tv.com slash kind of funny games. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. It's going to be like Dick Clark's Rocking Eve night. Night Eve. It's going to be that.

It's going to be that. It wasn't in my mouth. Did you have something to say? It weren't in mine either. No. you pointed at my turn that upside down i want a laptop out of this guy you put it on my laptop and i thought you were like check your laptop no no i was acting like i was dilly down like okay i thought it was one of those like checks like i thought it was one of those like checks like hey we just got

a code for elder ring two or something oh my god i'm really saying dang dude today we're brought to you by mood our patreon producers are carl jacobs and make a buster delet twining the kind of the greggway is all about if you should go to sgf in person or not uh but great does know how long it is because he hasn't recorded it yet. Doing it on the way home. Do it on the way home. For now, let's start with the topic of the show. The video game, Hell is Us, was initially announced in April 2020,

by publisher NACON with the 2023 release date planned. But later resurfaced during Sony's state of play event in September, 2024, and is now scheduled to be released on September 4th, 2025 for Windows, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Series S. This is one of those games that looked unbelievable, that felt way too. ambitious to possibly be real. 100%

but Greg Miller's now played it. I have three hours of it. Three hours of a real video game. Hell is us. Of a real video game called Hells Us. I traveled to Montreal to do it right before Pax East. And I want to hear all about it. That's what's shocking to me is that this game has been gestating.

Is it real? What is it? Should we be excited? Should we not blah? And I came back and granted I was the keynote speaker at Pax East. Co-host with Ben Spino Star. But no one asked me about what I thought about the game. And like that's, I was like,

Like, that's interesting. You know what I mean? Because when we see it in presentations, we see these different things. We're like, oh, is it good? Is it not? The fact that I went up and did it, I expected one of you to ask me about it. No one asked me. I think enough time passed.

Yeah. It was weird timing. Which is great. I did ask Danny Pena how he liked it because I did see him at the Liza P event. And that was more like kind of in my mind of like, oh, yeah, Greg posts that little story on Instagram. I saw that. I'm appreciative that I haven't had a chance to talk to any of you. about this because it makes my next words

all the more powerful. Oh no. Hell is us is my most anticipated game for the rest of the year. Wow. I don't think it's going to be a 10 out of 10. I think it's going to have, you know, it's false and this and that, but they're doing something very special. From the three hours I play, maybe it all falls apart, maybe it doesn't do

what we want from there. But I have never previewed a game that I think speaks to so many of us here for entirely different reasons. It has the Perry copy stuff that Andy and Bless Love, right? It's got

the combat in general that I think you like so much from your action eternal like and control. Yeah, exactly right. It's got this exploration that I am all about. It has the puzzles to make blessing happy in the Resident Evil way of you find this crest. You know there's

another one for this door. You're going to go on and do that. It's got the Kajima shit we all love. You saw the very open there this fat man. Talking to our character, right, Remy. Um, this game so far, based on three hours is very, very, very special. And I cannot wait to play the entire thing and get super, super deep into it. Now, the biggest hook about this, though, was when we were sort of seeing more of that developer deep dive and less of the, just trailer.

Because the trailer always looks sort of, you know, whoa, this looks really pretty. And while they're going for all these kind of different things, this looks pretty damn hype. But then when the developers talked about it, they said, this game. game doesn't tell you anything. This game is designed from the ground up to be all about exploration and all about you sort of seeking out your own curiosities. This isn't a, and obviously with a lot of open world games nowadays, you'll have those little settings in there that'll be like guided mode off, but those games weren't necessarily

even designed to have that. So you still may be like, where the fuck do I go? But how much does this game feel like, oh, they really want. you to look at signpostings and things like that. I mean, that is this game. And it's why I think it works so well for me jumping into a gameplay style I'm not great at. We'll get to that though, right? At the presentation, one of the things, JBBB, who's the guy you always see in these things, Jonathan, talking about, was the idea that this game is 50% combat and 50% exploration.

Like you are, as you've said and they say throughout all the videos, which I encourage you to go watch, right? there are no magic compass there is no quest marker in the distance you talk to people you listen to people like Rebecca here in this thing and Barry if you could roll it back just as we walk up to Rebecca I think one of those things were in pause

it right as we approach great give me a pause so I can point it out before we get there you talk about what you're getting with this game and a handcrafted game from a smaller team which I do want to talk about a second but as I got up here and I found this and this isn't my footage this is the B-roll they sent over

you approach over there watch Rebecca react so let hit play now and when you approach her she's this little girl underneath a blanket if you're an audio listener looking out at you

before you even enter the conversation as you approach she closes the blanket over her which I think is such a small thing you see it right here and we covered a bit but she shrinks it down right because she's scared of you

that is such a little touch but this game is all little touches and before we even get to more of the, there's nothing there. I think that is what, if they nail this, which I think they're going to, I think they've got head on their shoulders

and they clearly care. What we're building to right now is going to be a 2025 narrative about the incredible power of small teams, passionate teams. Rogue factor is 50 people. They have done everything in quotes in-house.

Obviously they have voice actors like Elias, two-faxis, of course. Oh, cool. In there, he's the main character that you play here is Remy. I think I knew that. But, like, they have their own composer on staff.

Like they, they're handcrafting it to that level, doing this thing. There's 50 of them making this game, right? And they are all so incredibly passionate about it when you're up there talking to them. I've said before, right, my favorite part of this job is talking to the developers of these games,

whether it's my kind of game or not my kind of game, because how much this is what they do and what they love and what they do. And they gave such a great presentation laying out this, you know, calamity that you're in, this civil war you're involved in, this fact that it's set in 1993, right? So you're there with this retro E-tech, but it's future tech as well, because of course you have a drone on your shoulder

doing all these different things. Like the environments you see are as interesting as we wanted from the trailers. The storytelling involved there is as dynamic as we wanted from that. You know, you've picked up a map here, right? Now you understand a little bit of where this envoy from the peacekeepers is gone and it's part of the whole narrative, right? But you don't have this, like, giant map to pop it into and look at.

The map that you just pulled up there that had like the red arrow. Yeah. Was that a red arrow that's just on the map that when it's given to you? Or is that something that kind of like is a game UI thing that like fills in once again. That's on the map that's given to you. That's the information that map is as to tell you. This isn't about getting you deeper and deeper into it or whatever. I think what they're doing here is such a breath of fresh air.

It's funny. I read Dan Reichert's preview. He was at the demo with me, obviously. And he had literally the exact kind of experience I had leading into this, which was right now, I'm in my open world RPG bag, right? I just came off of oblivion. We just did Outer World's Review. Starfield's got new stuff going on.

I started up New Vegas on my ROG. On the plane right over, I was doing Oblivion, and so was Dan. And so when you play these kind of games and you drop the marker and you pick up the quest and it says exactly what to go, do, right? It is that enjoyable experience, but it's also kind of brain dead of, you know, you're hoping for what we was talking about, those dynamic moments on my way to the quest that throw me off. But inevitably, you're going to get there, you're going to turn the thing in, you're going to do it, right? You know where the next thing is. There's a, even if you're in a

less guided thing, right? Fearful fiddler. He's awesome. Everybody's got a story here. But they'll be like, you know, the ring that you know you need to search for the thing in this thing. The fear for fiddlers are a great example there, right? Of what I think traditionally would be a side quest, right, but they don't really term it or show that or do whatever. But you walk up to this fiddler involved in this Civil War. You're behind enemy lines. You're in the place, right? He has been commanded by the people, the army camp that has them to only play their

ethnicity's music, right? And he only knows one song. And so that's all he says, right? So you know, oh, if I ever find more music, I should bring it back to him. But there's no ping, there's no this, there's no that, there's no go over here. So an hour and a half later, I'm looting through something. And I find a derelict piano and I find the music. And it doesn't immediately say go turn it into the guy.

I'm like, oh, fuck, yeah, I'm going to go do this, right? Another great example. We already saw Rebecca, the little girl in the top of the attic there, right? I get to the new town. I meet the general there. Again, I think what's interesting to take a pause, you can tell it from the art style of how serious the game is and dower to a way it is. It needs to be called out how long.

much they're leaning into that and I think in a very unflinching way of like yo this is a civil war so the story behind remi your character is you were born here but your parents got you out as a baby they wanted you to have a better life but you've always been like i need to get back i need to know why they did this and so he becomes uh excuse me he gets involved in the military uh eventually when the civil war breaks out he sees this is his chance to get in right so he joins up with the peacekeepers knowing he's going to hop the wall and go in and figure it out all he knows is that his dad was a blacksmith in this small town, right? So even getting there originally, it's like, where is this town?

You have to try to figure that out. When you get into this and you find this Civil War, right, it is grotesque and horrible. Like one of the first things entering towards the town you're trying to get to, you come around a corner and there is a mass grave, but they're not buried. It's just a pit of bodies, just dozens and dozens of bodies, not in body bags like the division, nothing like just fucking bodies.

And there's one dude there, I think it's his wife with his daughter's corpse in front of him, sobbing. And you stop and talk to him. And it's a similar thing of like, it's a quest, obviously. He makes a reference in the dialogue as he talks to you of like,

he would love a personal moment. Their religion, their ethnicity, right, is the whole thing of like, you need to bury them with something or a cherished item or something to that effect. So you make the mental note. And there is a tab.

It's not like you're completely lost. There is a tab of like, uh, not quests. There's an exploration tab that's good deeds, mysteries. They're on there, but they're like grit, artifact images. It's not like, go do this for this guy and get the thing, but it's the tell that you do it, right? And so, you know, I don't set this as the main quest at any point.

So I eventually make my way through town and as I'm going through all buildings, trying to figure my way out, I find this letter from the wife to the guy. He was out of town when everything went to shit. You know what I mean? I'm like, oh, it's that guy from the thing. And bring him the thing. He's like, thank you so much. I'll be able to bury them properly. devs told me after the fact, of course, if you ignored that and didn't, you know, time moves in this game, you would come back and they'd still be buried, but it'd be different.

There's something else would have changed. Oh, that's right. There's that level of narrative storytelling going on here. But then to get, sorry, just to finish off my point here of like, unflinching, you get to this town that the one sect of military is taken over, right? I'm going to call them A and B. I haven't been here, but I don't think it matters for the story. Team A is taken over, right? And they have these fucking, there's a tree outside with all the other people hanging from it.

And you come in and they have all this graffiti. on the walls, mocking the people who are dead in the tree and mocking the town kind of thing. And so then you're talking to them and like, it's literally like leaning into every horrible fucking thing. Like they aren't people. We need to exterminate them. Just straight up cold saying all this shit. Eventually I was working my way through and I come into a house and I go into a kitchen

and there's a woman splayed out, not like opened, but like just spread eagle on a table dead. And then her kid crouching dead in the corner of the cupboards. and it's like Jesus, like environmental storytelling of like how fucked up this place is and I'm not even getting into the calamity and the monsters walking around there are these hollow people. Sorry, back to you. There's always a scourge, there's always a blight,

you know what I mean? Was, I think this may have been the same game you mentioning about that time passes or whatever. I think this was also the one that not only they mentioned you know, that this game is all about exploration and it's never going to hold your hand, but like you can just straight up miss side quests 100% you can just

select a think you're on a side quest but then if you get distracted it's like no time pass and now that opportunity's gone I don't know about that part side quest you can totally skip and move on the thing I saw right I was watching they put up the one of the gameplay dives we've been talking about is narrated by JBBB and maybe mixing it up with it he's talking about the fact that like this game rewards you for being curious they want you to be like

if that looks entertaining and interesting it should be entertaining and interesting. It should lead to the next thing. But if you wanted to, I'm just out for this thing, that's what I'm going to go do. You could do that. I think a great example is the girl in the attic, right, Rebecca again, where I bump into, and once I get in town, they have a basically, you know, chained up priest that was from the town before, from the other place, right? And he's just being left out in the middle of the town square or whatever. I talked to him trying to get some information about the blacksmith. But he mentions like, hey, if you could check in, I do have a niece here.

Her name's Rebecca. She's in a house with a tree house outside and like a red roof, I think. Maybe I'm making that. Maybe it's just the tree house. But again, it was like, for me, that was a cool. I'm going to go check in on that. The conversations give you the, oh, that's an interesting breadcrumb to chase. I could have just gone.

And he gave me, I think, enough to figure out where the blacksmith was. Oh, there was that. Barrett, if you could rewind just a second. There's the family tree thing I'm talking about on the wall right there. See this right here? Oh, right. civilian family tree with everybody hanging from it of like them being like that's how

intense this war is and I actually am kind of confused I forget if it's this is what the soldiers have put up here or if this is what the other people put up here and that's why the soldiers are being so mercilistic killing them but it doesn't matter but then it was like cool I'm going to go find this treehouse and so it was me just wandering around town looking for it there's a tree house right there spoilers

but I was in a different section of the city when I heard about it you know what I mean so it's like that's what they're driving for here but on top of that it's the puzzle stuff of okay cool I'm in this area fighting all the monsters, you know, the hollow, right? The hollow, no, I got hollow night of the brain.

That's not. Let me check my notes. Hollow. Walkers. They look like a spot. They look like the spot? Yeah. Cross the Spider-verse.

Uh-oh. Greg has props. Greg did. First off, they sent over their whole, like, little press tour presentation we got to start it. So I was like, I'll print that off. I love that. Cool.

Why not? Then I thought this was neat, too. They made like a little newspaper thing for what is. Again, this is all stuff that just the 50-person dev studio did that they were like, we want to, and then Andy, I thought you would like this the most. Ooh. It's that hell is us mood book. So they made this just for the press tour.

It's not like stuff from the game, but it's all the stuff that inspired the art of the game. Yeah, it's like a Pinterest page. Yeah, I got the little, I got a little hollow walker in here. Oh, good fonts, chat. Great news, good fonts. A little cheeby holler. Oh, that's cute. I got to re-gluing me broken transit.

Yeah, anyway, I don't do it. Anyways, though, those guys are out there, but it's the idea of like you're, you know, you're walking through these areas. Like, there was a dungeon I played, but more like investigation areas. And it was like, all right, cool, I've got to get out of here to get to the APC,

which is my way to travel between zones. It's not one giant open world. You're broken up by zones, right? And a vast semi-open world is how they're described. Thank you very much. Thanks for looking at the documentation there. But it was the idea of, okay, cool, I pass a door,

and it's like the Resident Evil thing, where there's two, you know, indentations. And I had already found maybe like the lamb's head coin or whatever that I put in. But I needed another one. I was like, okay, well, I went through, didn't find it, got all the way outside, whatever, did whatever, killed somebody, and then looted him and found it there. And I was like, oh, shit. So I, you know, beat fate.

We could go all the way back, put it in, open the door, get the treat inside. And the dungeon, which we did, they dropped us way later in the game, was the same idea of, all right, cool, you've got all these different keys that you need to figure it out. but there's a weird combination, but, you know, the drone translate this, translate this language you don't know. So you're keying in on like,

or fire, ice, or this or that, trying to figure out what to do. It's going to be very interesting because I think this game is going to be speaking to all these different gamers like I'm talking to, but such a ride for the souls lore people of like, what was going on here?

I have this key and I have this thing, but it didn't get used here. So what am I looking for? What am I doing? How do you, even when they dropped this in the dungeon. I was running around like an idiot for a hot second. Like, or they dropped us outside of the dungeon. And I was like hours later. How do I get this? What do I do? And then when I finally opened up

the thing and this like reflecting pool moved and all the water poured in and this giant like, you know, cylinder staircase where you go down. It's like, oh, this is fucking cool. They're doing really cool shit here. Man, this looks unbelievable. And I'm, I saw somebody in chat saying, man, my 80, I think it was Pages Inc. said my ADHD cannot handle a game like this. I have completely sort of turned the corner where as a way to sort of, you know, stream these games and try to retain anything because it's, you know, it's one thing when I'm sitting, you know, at home just playing a game by myself off stream. I do a way better job than when I'm on stream because it's way tougher to concentrate because you're always just trying to like entertain and you're reading chat, getting distracted. But bringing up my little notepad doc during Dark Souls to. and making jokes of, you know, different characters.

But, like, I love the idea of now that I got this little Zelda, but I can't wait to be drawn all over the time. I love to see you, have your little notes all that. It's very, very cool. I want to be talking about a lot of things. But before we do that, there's a word from our sponsors. This episode's brought to you by Mood. Let me tell you about the online cannabis company

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Again, that's Mood.com, promo code, Kind of Funny for 20% off. I have three questions. for you, Greg. Yeah. The wildly different. Sure. I want to start with.

Is there a seemingly linear story to be told here? Or is it all Eldon Ring style kind of lore, dumpy? Definitely a linear story. So again, in the first trailer, I think Barrett show that popped up today, you see this basically fat man, right? This Kajima guy who's just humongous smoking a cigarette. The game opens with your character after all, everything that's happened, and being interrogated.

So you're doing the, he's like, how did you get in? to Hedia, you know what I mean? You have to explain. So then you go into the game and play through it that way. So you're playing through your character's recollection of all the events and stuff. The persona 5 intro. So there very much is a, yeah, there's a thing, like I said, like the main objective when we got there, or the whole objective for the game starting is find your parents, right? So when you get there, you talk to a guy, he gives you, you know, your first push off on the thing.

Again, somebody who's coming off of all these Bethesda Obsidian Open World RPGs, coming in to talk to that first guy, it was so refreshing of like, okay, cool, like, for, when you're looking at the screen, left side is like main mission stuff, right side is this and it's jumping in, and it's not immediately going, do, do, do, do, d' exclamation quest added. You know what I mean? It's like, oh, I'm listening, I'm actively involved. I feel like one of my deficiencies is playing all these open world things is even I will eventually get to, like, I hit the question, but I look at my phone. You know what I mean? Where it's like, all right, I know you're going to tell me something, and if it matters, it's going to go, do, do, do, and I to go to the being here actively listening figuring it on and he's like oh head west i'm like okay and i got this compass or whatever that way um but yeah getting in there fine you get you know i knew my dad was a blacksmith where's the blacksmith shop piece it together okay the blacksmith isn't there where did he go okay piece that so it's like you could do it that way and have a golden path and again to what they said in the uh the preview from uh jbb it was the idea that yeah you could not speed run it but you would miss so much stuff if you're not out there exploring and being interested.

Do you know the vibe of the other people that got to play? Like are people as high as you are on this? I read Alessandro over at IGN and then Dan Reichert over at GameSpot today. They were both high on it. They liked what they saw. I think they're being a bit more tentative. But, you know, I'm just an excitable guy, I guess. But like, they were both like, this was fun and I'm interested to see where it's going,

whereas I'm like, I want this game now. Like, this game has re-contextualized. year in terms of like, oh, I can't wait for September and I need to play this. And as well, Dan Reichert being somebody that has now played this and Death Stranding too. So I feel like the perspective there is interesting. But for you,

everything you're saying here, this leads me to my question number three, which is... Let me read you, Dan's closing preview. Because I have his thing up here. This is Dan Ryker over at Giant Bomb. Well, he's from Giant Bomb, but this is not game. After three hours with Hellas us, I'm certainly more intrigued than I was coming in. It's a unique game in ways

that can't easily be communicated via a short state of play trailer. I feel like it's bound to be polarizing. Some players will thrive on the level of player agency hell as us offers, while others will butt their heads against it and quit in frustration. I'm leading towards the former. This is a game filled with bold, confident, deliberate design decisions on the part of rogue factor, and it'll be interesting to see how players react when it's released September 4th. I'm clearly very much in that camp. I want something different, and again, as much as we beat our drums here about smaller devs, to have a year now of hopefully this, knock on what it lands,

Claire, obscure, uh, blueprints. Like, we're talking about games that are coming from very small devs that are very passionate and most importantly have a vision. We talk all the time about, oh, it's just another open world game. Oh, it's just this. It's another live service. Like, I love the idea that this will be polarizing. I more importantly than anything, love that it's 50% exploration that I am all

about in 50% combat that I am dog shit at. And that, that's me the thing is, I'm worried about you, Greg. It's because like, you're into this and you're, you played three hours. and your highest anticipated game for you now, but it's like, are you going to stick with this? Because I'm seeing a lot of combat. You're saying 50% combat. And where does this combat fall?

Is this Greg Miller-style combat? No, it starts off very much Greg Miller-style combat, where they talk about it's all, you know, intense melee action or whatever. And so when you're in these one-on-one fights and I'm doing it, I'm like, oh, this is like every other third-person action game. I adore a ride of like, you know, charge it up, hard attack, knock them down, do the thing, kill them.

Great, cool. It's when they started introducing more people. I needed to start parrying. I needed to start... What do they call it? I don't want to screw it up. They have a... Regain your health system

called the Healing Pulse. I saw somebody in one of the previous today compared to Neo. So you hit these guys and you'll see particles around them. As you hit them, you do more damage.

You're accruing more of it. And then there's like a mini game that you'll catch if it's in the footage up in the left-hand bar where if you ping it, you see all these white sparkles going off. If you hit it at the right time,

you can take all that and heal for as much damage as you've done. Now, you'll love this as you see right here with the bar, even if you want to pause. Pause right there, Barry, if you can, bite that you, okay. This is good. You see your health and stamina are up there, right? Health is red, green is stamina. Stamina dictates what you can do.

When you take damage, your health bar shrinks. Your health bar dictates how big your stamina bar is. So the more you get hurt, the less stamina you're going to have, which means you need to do the healing pulse. Again, in action, you'll see that black, open section of health and stamina flash white and that's when you need to hit the healing pulse to take back

the health from these people. For me not being that kind of guy it was very much I'm trying to parry but then I'm trying to learn that and then they introduce these fucking linked enemies right there you see where it goes so simple as you saw before with just all right cool there's the the hollow night the hollow night Jesus

the hollow walker that's just a dude super simple then they introduce hollow walkers that have these linked enemies which are you have this weird like tendril coming out that has this glowing red green thing that attacks you you can't hurt the hollow Walker until you knock that back into their chest but they're still attacking you

so I'm just it's a rub your head pat your stomach thing I was doing of trying to figure that out while also then getting introduced to these guys with their giant metal arms who of course have a different thing when you should be paring them they're all doing interpretive dances you got this big thing you got a fight he does a different pair so at the end when I was talking to the devs and I might screw this up now because it's been a while.

But I was basically, I'm trying to figure out the thing and I was doing it there. And like, oh, no, no, you don't do it there. You do it here. I was like, ah, I was trying to parry

at the wrong point. I was trying to find the move for you. And I forget what you did. I'll have to ping them, I guess, to remember again. But yeah, go.

This is less about the combat, but more just about what you're combating. Sure. Watching this game seems a little bit weird. Seems a little bit adocrinistic looking at the, okay, cool, you're in this civil war

of having these real serious, like death and bodies and babies dying and all this stuff and then you're fighting the nobodies from Kingdom Hearts too like it does that does it make sense in context or yes so the idea is that Hadia is the country

and they are a hermit nation so it's like the world doesn't know what's going on in there what is that just a bunch of crabs no the world doesn't know what's going on there so they know a civil war broke out but it's you know the peacekeepers I was talking about If memory serves, like, they don't, the whole big deal here is that, you know, you jump over the wall and run in.

The peacekeepers are on the outside. No one knows what's going on inside. So when our boy, Remy goes in, right, he learns really quickly like, oh, this isn't just a civil war. There's been a calamity. There's these weird monsters going around. There's all these, there's a portal over here. And I don't know what it does. There's dungeons. There's this. So clearly, they were up to some ancient shenanigans over here that have backfired. But the world doesn't know that yet. In this art book, I already saw two different melee weapons. What does progression look like? What does item discovery look like?

We didn't get super into progression on the weapons. There are, I believe, I don't want to speak out of turn. I do have a good screenshot of it here. I believe when I'm going through your weapons level up as you use them. So the more you're using it, the more, yeah, there's a grade on here. It goes up. You're also finding different things. They're inflicted with different things.

You know, you can, a little bit head-swimmy, even for, like, three hours of, you know, how you're doing this. As you look in here, right, like, you have your equipment, but then you also have your inventory where you're going to be able to put on limbic spheres, like all this different stuff. So there's all these things you're putting on. Little passive. There's equipment. Exactly.

There's equipment. There's active relics. There's passive relics. There's defensive gear. There's usable items there where I have, like, I do have a compass. You can pull up a health pack. And then that way. So it's like there.

Just imagine like the Liza P or a Dark Souls menu, but holographic. Like, you know, it doesn't look, you know, archa. cake. Everything has like a little neon. But it does look like, you know, like what we all thought the computers were going to look like forever, like that 80s. Like, D-D-D-D green text and stuff with a little, I like that a lot or whatever. So yeah, you're leveling them up as you go. You're finding different ones. I wasn't finding a ton, but like when I think when they dropped me into the dungeon, which is hours after what I've been playing, I believe I had more to play with. And you've

seen it there where there's a big battle axe. There's a sword. There's a bigger sword. There's a dagger. I'm not sure how much we'll be shaking it up. But again, that wasn't what spoke to me. So I wasn't really running through. Does it feel too ambitious? Hard to say. I think on paper, can I just say one more thing before we got out of combat?

Keep that one. Put a pin in it. For the combat, so again, dog shit at it, figuring it out. What I found interesting for me especially

was that I already love what I'm doing so much that I wanted to get better to the point that you'll, I hope you appreciate this, Andy. I was like, all right,

fuck the main mission and fuck the side missions. I'm going to go to a group, with just three dudes. You use the drone to distract the other dudes so you can fight one on one, but even when there's so many it's hard, but I'm sure I can upgrade the drone.

The drone is attacking? No, just like flashing lights and distracting or whatever. Oh, okay. Agro. Yeah. Anyways, though, I killed the other two dudes, got it down to one dude and then I sat there just to practice pairing and practice trying to get this thing. It's like one of those of like, for me, especially as somebody who isn't that guy,

I want to get better at. The other wrinkle I think's really interesting to it and I made notes about this, right, is that they have I don't want to say difficulty settings what I do but it's not like an easy medium hard thing

they want you to go in and customize this they're not trying to if you are a traditional exploration gamer like me and you're not good at pairing you can go in and turn stuff down so the death system reads like this right

upon defeat any conversation datum discovered or puzzles completed will all be preserved regardless of save points used however enemies eliminated weapon progress and loot gathered from enemies will be reset to the state of the last safe part right

but when you go into your menu and stuff they have death penalty right when players defeated all enemies killed and XP gained since last safe point will be reset right you can turn that on off so you can do that you can go in there and give yourself I think it was like 150 health and them you know less health and less damage

right you can go in there and really he's already broken Ben broke him you can go in there and really set this up to figure it out in the back when I was trying to figure it out right I was doing that where I was like you know what go in here let's crank all this up I want to see what I'm doing and how I can figure out. So like I'm, am I going to see it through, you said, or whatever? I will turn it off. I don't think

it'll turn me off because I'm committed to getting better at it. Hopefully good. But even if it didn't, I feel like there's enough things in there where I'll be able to be competent enough to dial it down and be able to go through. But I don't want that. Like, again, blood-borne. Come on, man. I have beaten bloodbore. But it's that idea of like, for real to take it away. Like, I know like we lean into characters and archetypes here where it's like, I'm not drawn to the Souls game more than anything, not because of the difficulty. I did Bloodbourne and I beat Bloodbourne. It's more the fact of just like, I don't vibe with the world or the story they're trying

to tell in their own way enough to then want to sit there and run a boss seven times until I get it or more, right? Whereas this game, I'm so into what they're selling so far. I'm into it. Are their bosses? I believe, I mean, I didn't run into any that I can remember off the top of my head, but I think there's going to be, I mean, the way they built it up, I would assume there are. But I could be wrong altogether on that.

But to your question then of, is it two? ambitious, right? I would have told you based on the trailers we watched that it was too ambitious. But I would have said that about Expedition 33 as well. And Expedition 33 proved me wrong and us wrong. And now to be here having played three hours of it, like, it doesn't strike me as they nailed the vertical slice of this game. Like we started from scratch, right, and played what it would have been two hours, hour and a half before they jumped us to the dungeon, maybe more, maybe less. Like, I don't think that they've then fallen, apart. This team, Rogue Factor, seems to have such a vision for what they're doing. They seem to be,

and that's one of the reasons I shared all this with you is like, I really think it drives home. Like, they know what they have here. And again, to Dan's closing paragraph, right, I feel like there are uncompromising on what they have. And so the idea that that's spread out through X amount of hours is super exciting to me. And I want that. And I don't think, yeah, they fuck that up. Because again, I think if you're keeping it to these zones of activity like that and you're trying to, again, have every one of them be as chock full of secrets and puzzles and story beats. I don't think you'd then not realize you're fucking that up as you're fucking it up. And for anybody who still may be a doubter out there wants to get a vibe of it,

there will be a demo June 2nd through June 16th. That's awesome. For a game like this, I was not expecting to see any sort of demo availability. I know how busy we are, but Andy, I would love, love, love to sit. down with you on a stream and you figure it out and then you teach me how to parry correctly hell yeah hell yeah very cool stuff we got some super chats here cj splitzland says the characters are uh-go can you customize uh no i think the dude is the dude the dude is the dude he does look distractingly like todd howard dude's the dude we've talked about that before he looks so much like

like todd howard where i mean i will be role playing as todd howard so i'll be jotting down little notes as i play yeah they have a they have a fascinating kind of character design look like everybody's like almost looking human very kind of stylized exaggerated proportions this doesn't drive home

how much he looks like Tata when you meet him originally like he I don't think he has the hat he's in the peacekeeper outfit and he looks way more like he looks like a Hollywood actor he reminds me I'm Hayden Pierce

Samuel Jax Aidan Pierce Fives for sure dude how the performances awesome like I all it's one of those where I forget

I think in the the extended game the first the new trailer thing I gave you of extended gameplay uh Barrett if you wanted to dial it to Rebecca and if we could listen in I think her performance is really good I forget if that shows if that has the guy

crying over the dead bodies of his family they're really good and Elias like if you don't know Elias 2Fex is from uh dayus Sam Cohen Starfield like Elias is great like he's great period I think he does it really well here and I think especially the range he's able to do here of

talking to a little girl who's super scared versus a general versus a music man who just wants some music. All right, let's listen to. I've been hiding here since the attack on Jova and the bombs fell from the sky. I was playing in the tree house with my baby brother. Parents ran out and screamed at us to get down. My baby brother ran to them. That's when the bomb exploded.

So I'm looking for the blacksmith. Do you know where he is? That's good there. I don't know him. I like that delivery, obviously, her brother's death and her family's death and her going up there. That's tough. Yeah, yeah. Anyways, do you know where the blacksmith is?

Oh, that's, that man, shit happens to everybody. Have you seen my dad? My dad might still be alive. But I think that's what you're getting here. And I like that. That works for me. Obviously, it's video gamey. It's exposition.

It's monologue. Yeah. That didn't make me feel like, oh, this is great. Oh, I like, I love it. I guess it's because I'm so used to just other RPG phoned-in conversation. It's very Bethesicoded, for sure. Gotcha. Yeah, it's just, for me, it's more just like that her, I'm Rebecca. It's like, that's I'm prompted. Like, even if you're asking me, who are you? It's just spotted that way. A little weird.

But I didn't play it. So, um, what else? What else we got? And we're wrapping up here. Any can't wait. I mean, I think I was again, really impressed with it. A enemy variety and challenges there. Like I said, it opened up very much. And I was like, oh, okay, it's like any other game where I'm going to slash slash dodge roll slash dodge roll, get around the backs of these guys. But then again, they start adding so many different types in, so many different versions in. A lot of mystery. Some things were not allowed to talk about out there that I'm interested to see more of and how they play out on them.

But the dungeon was incredibly hard and very complex. So I'm looking forward to be good enough. What did the dungeon remind you of? Like, you brought up Resident Evil a couple times. Does it feel kind of like a Resident Evil? It feels like that in terms of some of the puzzles. Yeah, but not in terms of like what you're doing in there. It's you're going deeper and deeper into this place and more and more creepy crawlies are

coming out. and I'm trying to find the keys to use them here, but there's also a language to the keys, not even the ancient language, but a language of how to use them that I wasn't picking up on you. Got a couple more super chats. CJ splits on once again says,

is there good loot, armor, cloaks, weapons to find? Yeah, loot's a part of the game, obviously. I didn't feel like it was like overflowing by any stretch of the imagination, but I also didn't feel like how we were talking yesterday of outer worlds of like encumbrance or anything like that. You know what I mean?

It is more like, I'm looking forward to getting a cool poncho. I'm looking forward to getting a cool weapon, applying a cool status of back to it, making a build that works for me, which clearly will be getting as much health as possible. I was going to bring him to Calcast as punch, yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Gen ZFC says, Andy, the goat moder, Ui just uploaded a Night Rain mod for two people in Nexus mods. Telling you, man. Andy knows all about it because you listen to games daily like you should. Mods are where it's at. Monta where it's at. And then to end the show, Michael Lemos, super chats in, saying I was watching the KF podcast that we recorded yesterday

that everyone else should check out when you were talking about the Tomorrow War. I immediately stopped watching the podcast, sorry, and put on the movie. Holy shit. What a movie. So good. I've been yelling and crying. Thanks. I love that we're going to be the Tomorrow War.

Joey is the show ready. And listen now. I like the Tomorrow War. I like the Tomorrow War. Oh, man, everybody. Well, yo, hell is us. Another one to keep your eyes on. Very excited.

I love to hear that. Demo in three days. Demo in three days. Everyone, check that out. Thank you for joining us. We have a full day of fun stuff ahead still. We have a karate kid in review coming up in just a few minutes. And then we have a super fun gameplay stream after that.

I already forgot what it was. Oh, it's the Giant Bomb kind of funny, the Eldron ring thing. It's a Night ring competition. We're facing off against Giant Bomb with me, Blessing. No, me, Roger and Barrett. Roger may not be there. We may need somebody in the chat to step in. But Barrett's already, Barrett beat, he beat Securo like in a week.

or something. Less than a week. We're goats, you know, like we're going to beat them for sure. Armored Court 6. I did all the different endings. Oh, man. Yeah, too many ends.

We're ready for this. Let's know in the comments what you think about ends. Love y'all. Goodbye.