Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Greg Played WWE 2K25! - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: February 5, 2025

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What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Wednesday, February 5th, 2025. Of course, I'm your host, Tim Gettys. I'm joined today by blessing at E. O'Yea Jr. Good day, Tim. Roger Percorney. I hear voices in my head. They talk to me. They understand. They talk to me. They talk to me. I knew there's going to be one more for the big daddy himself, Greg Miller. Hello, Timothy. How are you? I'm very excited to talk to you today about WWE2K-25. you went all the way to Indianapolis. That's right.

That's right. To play this game. Went to New York for south of midnight, Indianapolis for WWE. Yeah. And then there was one more, right? Those are the previews? I'm reviewing about.

Reviewing about, okay, a lot of fun, exciting Greg Miller. If you want Greg Miller, everybody, you don't want them too bad. There's other channels. Exactly.

But if you like him, we got them all the time here because this is kind of funny games cast each and every weekday. We get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews, and topics in 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 or YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts, so many options to get the shows ad free. Watch us record them live and you get a daily exclusive show. For a chance to be part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube

Superchats as we go. So, if you have any questions about Greg's time or experience with WW2K25, please write those in. I know I got a lot of questions. I don't understand this island. I need to know about the island. A little housekeeping for you.

You already got the resurrection of rooster teeth discussion on Kind of Funny Games Daily. Congratulations to Bernie and Ashley Burns for reacquiring their baby. Very cool. What was your reaction this morning? Disbelief and then just excitement and then immediately I go into Tim business mode. What does this actually mean? Luckily, they had a 10-minute podcast that explains it all very clearly. And I'm like, okay, cool, this is all good news.

So exciting stuff all around. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, Carl Jacobs, Mega Buster, and Karen Lidner. If you are a Patreon supporter or a kind of funny member, you can also get today's Greg Way, which is Greg talking about how cool it is

that Bernie got RT back. Today we're brought to you by our frames, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's get into it, the topic of the show. Greg, hi. You were at the Rumble. I was. Before we talk about the video game and all and stuff,

I haven't talked to you about your experience at the Rumble. Sure. Yeah. Let's talk about the Rumble. Yeah. What do you want to know? Were you in a box? Like, was it a good view?

Like, was it cool? Do you get to feel the energy of the Yeats? Let's talk about that aspect of the room. There is a whole Greg way up about this. So, but I can. The condensed version. The condensed version is, Kevin, if you want to go to on the document I gave you, if you go to the very bottom, Jack previewing the game with us,

I was a late addition to the Royal Rumble, right? Jack and Po, of course, Poe, my best friend from Forever, you know that, Jack his son, who you all know from content here, kind of funny. They were already going to go as a father-son trip. So when I found out,

hey, I'm doing this thing, I hit up 2K, and I was like, hey, can I bring Jack to play the game with me? He loves wrestling. We have this thing where we go back and forth. It'll be content. They're like, yeah, sure.

Because I'll click one over, Kev, and you see Jack playing the game at his station or whatever. Click one more over here, Kev, and you see us up in the press. box. Hell yeah, dude. Because even though Jack and Po had tickets,

you know, we're on there with 2K, so they were like, all right, we're going to put you where we're going to put you. I'm like, all right, sounds great. So we put, we don't know where we're going. We don't have real tickets. We come in the media entrance. We do all this stuff. We get wristbanded.

We go all, all the way up Lucasfield here, or Lucas Oil Field, right, to the press box and walk in there. And there's the buffet of food laid out. There's the multi-tier. We immediately go to the glass, if you want to go one back, Kevin, to the glass and get our seats. and there's this immediacy of this is very nice.

This isn't the Royal Rumble. Yeah. What are we doing here? You know what I mean? I'm like, this is like, it was all the press. So like,

there were people from the press being like, a lot of people up here today. I didn't say anything. I'm like, yeah, we're all video game Jibronis. They just are up here. You know what I mean?

Because they're writing and they're doing their actual thing. But we're up there and it was like, you couldn't, it's glassed in. It's soundproof for the most part, right? So like, you don't feel the energy.

You don't have the stuff. and like great view amazing view obviously you can see the entire ramp the thing screens everywhere right but like when Stephanie came out to give her thing you had to like really crane in to hear through the glass or whatever and like so we're like what's the play what's the plan I'm like

here's the play let's do the women's rumble out here we know that's first we will do that from this perspective see how it is make sure we're feeling the right vibes here and like a fourth the way through they turned down the speakers so you could hear Michael Cole and everybody but it's still like now I'm just watching wrestling from a glass to inbox

And so Pose, like, what, as we're going, like, what's the move? And I'm like, here's what we know. We've done, I've done this a lot. I know what's up. Down there, hard cam side, those are the comp tickets. I see that row is pretty empty. That row is pretty empty. My math says that would be like 144 in terms of sections.

We go down there. We know Mike. We just walk. I know Mike. Not that anyone's ever going to ask you in these questions, right? So that's what we did. We did the women's rumble. We went all the way down, walked out, walked to 144, walk down.

And then I was just Greg Miller, mayor of section 144. I walked in and like, we've all been there. Somebody enters late and you're like, what is going on? And then there's, it was like in between matches so people got off to go to the bathroom. So I immediately went to the row. I'd been eyeing, walked in. There's a dad and his son there. And I'm like, hey, how are you?

I'm Greg. We were up in the press box and like, it sucks up there. No one's chanting. You can't hear anything. I know these are comp tickets usually like, like overload of information. And the guy's like, yeah, no, no, no. Like, I think these two are taken, but those three are open. And then like two rows up, some guy had heard the whole, like everyone's listening on the conversation.

Like, oh, no. come here, man. There's all these rules. It was just a party down there. That's awesome. So we were there to be it, feel it, scream it, do the whole thing. I mean, how was the J winning moment? Insane, right?

Because, like, you talk about, like, we haven't talked about the wrestling aspect of it even really, right? But, like, when punk dumps Seth and Roman, I'm like, all right, punk wins. And then when Logan Paul dumps punk, I scream, no! I'm like, oh, Logan Paul's going to win! No! You know what I mean? And so then, get down to Jay and John, you're like, fuck, okay.

Like, I don't know, it's like, watching the arithmetic of the match go, you're like, all right, so Jay's going to win this, right? Like, this is a weird thing for Sina to beat Jay. Like, what, and so then when he did it and the place went crazy. I mean, dude, I feel like us watching it here, we didn't, I don't think any of us had a thought in hell that Jay was going to win. Yeah. Until he won.

Yeah. Like, we were like, oh, they're giving it to John. That is a weird call right now. And then Jay, one, there was a second. of like, wait, that just happened. Yeah. I think you feel that in the arena too. And even in John's reaction, right,

seen hits the floor and does the, and everyone is like waiting for it. Is there going to be a Muguffian? Is there going to be a restart or whatever? And then, and Jay, and then, okay, okay. And what's crazy about it is,

I have gone to a lot of wrestling in my life, obviously, walking around on Friday, getting ready for Smackdown, because I did Smackdown as well. But like just walking around Indianapolis and Friday and, of course, into Saturday.

I have never ever. ever, ever seen so many matching shirts. Everyone is yeated out. Everyone was in a yeat shirt. And like I've been, I've lived Austin 316 in DX. And like I, you know, I'm not saying like I haven't seen popular. But like in terms of moving fucking merch, Jay Uso is untouched. So like, you know, his entrance, let alone then the celebration of it.

Like it was, it was crazy out there. Yeah, yeah. It was incredible. But you weren't there for the rumble. You were there to play a game. To do some work. That's right. So you got to play.

2K25. I sure did. What do you have to say about at top level? What should we prepare for? So top level, there's one question. Everyone has asked me today, even though I've been back for multiple days. But like today, oh, it's WWE day, right, cool. Did you play the island?

What's the island? How's the island? And I'm like, they didn't show us the island. They did not show us the island. I think IGN's preview, I went and listened to it today. It does a really good job of being like, you know a lot of questions about this and that. We didn't do any of that.

Like, this is very much a nuts and bolts. WW 2K-25 preview, which I'm not against, but is in a year where you are like, hey, this new thing you've never heard of and we don't really know what we're doing with it yet. I'm paraphrasing. I'm sure the 2K knows what they're doing. We're not showing that.

We're not showing that. We're not talking about that later. We're going to talk about that later. So this strictly was what I got to play. I would say very bare bones deal, right? We were, I had said earlier, like when 2K was inviting us out, I was like, oh, well, you know, we won't do interviews. and then when I was like,

Jack's gonna be, Jack could interview people like, oh, like we're all booked up pretty much so it'd be too hard. I'm like, don't worry about it or whatever. And they were doing busted open there. David Ligrecker was there.

I nerded it out, but I never got a chance to say hey to him. You know, O'Shea Jackson Jr. was there. He was doing his podcast upstairs. Got to say hey to him and said good podcast. Awesome. But it was this thing of like,

once we, like, I played a lot of WW2K25. And then I was like, okay, I've played up, I'm not doing interviews. What happened? Ted had weird things on the screen.

You just want to make sure he knows. I hit Control Plus plus and it made all the windows giant. Okay. You know, I was there and so it was like when it got to a point of just like, well, I'm going to, I'm not doing interviews. So I'm going to leave. I've played enough of these because it was like that thing. It was, I think good of like, hey, get in here and play the matches and immediately start seeing the little new things. But this is a preview that's first part because I want to talk about the island and the second part.

I need to know about the island, Greg. But the first part of this preview is going to be so incredibly nerdy. going to be so about just the little things. So Kevin, can you show my first link there where I wrote? If this doesn't excite you, this preview isn't for you. And I said, Kevin, please show. Like, this is a tweet I put up out there. And it's like, one of the first things that jumped out at me when I'm playing, right?

It's like, oh, cool, I can screw up the LED barricades. I can smash him in and break the barricade. And then, of course, this is documented, but now you can climb on the barricade and jump off of there, right? And of course, like, the balancing act there for Jay Uso and then just coming down with the double axe handle. Not an impressive maneuver. but hey I'm on the barricade I'm doing the damn thing

and then here even more deformation deformation right of smack it into the thing like that's the level of detail I want to talk about in WW2K25 right of what we got to play because that really is what this is as I've gone on record talking about 2K25 multiple times right

I am of the firm belief that WW2K24 is the best wrestling game of all time and I know I would have fought myself years ago what about no mercy What, I mean, what about Russell May 2000 for some people? What about SmackDown? Here comes the pain.

I think there's a lot of nostalgia glasses on there, right? And when you sit down and play 2K24 is slash was doing what those games did. The amount of fun we had at the launch of 2K24 of I'm playing and reviewing and Raj pops down like, let's play a match. We can play a match and then, okay, let's do a giant stream. We'll all do ladder matches. And it's, it is that idea of simple to understand, difficult to master. You can get in there and you can be crazy and you can do millions of reverses and you can

take on Roman Reins on legendary and yada, yada, yada. But you can also just jump in with your friends in play. And I'm talking about the core experience. If you want to go beyond that, beyond, when I, you know, immediately got my steam deck and allegedly got no mercy on it, right? And I was like, let's get back into this career mode. I was like, wow, this is not exactly what I remember it. And you can jump to, you know, my first job out of college, having the big tube TV.

So my ex at the time or my girlfriend at the time could watch stuff on it. And then I had my little TV. So I could play. Here comes the pain and do, you know, the careers and the GMs. yada, yada. Like, that stuff was all great and there was a lot of options there. But I think, like, this is trying to be WWE and doing it so well. And so I, more than anything, coming into 2K25 in this nerdy-ass preview they gave us of letting

us go and play for a long time, am happy that it's more of 2K24. Like, you know, I feel like for a while there, especially in the THQ days, every time we would come out with a new wrestling game, they were trying to recreate the wheel. They were like throwing stuff out that worked just to come. Then we would get excited three years later when they'd be. brought it back and it's kind of one of those of like, oh, you have it, why I keep fucking with it? Back to my hit blessing show of why

WW2K should be a live service, I think, is that incremental changes like this are great and I think could be implemented and keep you engaged all year long, but that's a different thing. Yes, it's a roster update, 300 superstars, you know, more than ever. 300? Yeah, that's what they've said in their press release, more than 300 superstars in this game. What, what, ish was in 24?

I don't remember off the top of my head. Because I would say, like, it would feel like 50. You're going to have like 10 Undertakers and lots You're getting that You're getting different versions of people Yeah That's wild

Yeah They're making a big deal about And think about it And think about it next year When they have access to TNA Come on now Come on now son We got some good stuff

Yes we do But yeah Very very limited In terms of who you can play here What it was But it was the idea of Get in there Get in there

Get on sticks See how it feels And see the changes And so yeah Like I said there For me One of the big nerdy Things that pops out

Is a barricade stuff Right Because that's the level of immersion you're getting, right, and what they want from this game. And again, catching up to it, right? You have it where when you play at a paper view, guess what? Prime bottles on the center of the mat, right? We were waiting for that.

The Prime hydration station is there. You can't throw people into it. You can beat them with the bottle. Yes. I mean, it's like one of those. Like, all I ever want is wrestling to look like wrestling when I play it. And like, there's a big part of that. And I think it'll be interesting to eventually talk about the island, right?

A tease for that. I'd done a call where 2K ahead of time. it's gone through, like after they put up the press release information, a real quick Q&A, very top level. And one of the designers on the island, when somebody asked them, like, so what, like, what are we talking about? They said, you know, the way the 2K games in the past have brought wrestling to video games, the island is going to bring video games to wrestling. I want to focus on the first part of that of wrestling to video games, right, where it is like, I do want the prime.

I hate, I don't like the prime logo. I don't like Prime, but I do want it to represent the, feel like the product I'm watching. So I like that it's in the center of the ring. I like that the hydration station's there. It'll be fun to put whatever logo you want in the center now and kind of funny sponsors, whatever thing we're doing out there on our not really being in order to me. So that works for me and I like that idea of it or whatever.

The other big thing that everyone's talking about today because it is like preview day and launch day or embargo day, so I'm talking about, is the return of intergender matches. This is something people have been wanting for a long time. It used to be in the series a long, long time ago. now it is back. Again, it's not

everywhere you'd expected to be, right? So there's no inter-gender in my faction or GM, but everywhere else there is. There's also no blood in intergender match. However, women's matches do have blood this year,

which it didn't last year. Men's, of course, have blood as well. It comes default off, you turn it out. Men's don't have blood. They're like, listen, we switch our round. One in one out.

We can only put so much blood in this game and it's like next year it's a big bullet point that it's back kind of thing, right? Blood is back. Kevin, if you want to toss up for the inner gender ones. Actually, go back to the one that I had there. If this doesn't excite you for this preview,

you can scroll one tweet down from that, and I have Nia Jax beaten the shit out of Jimmy Uso, which is Jack's footage. Jack did this. Jack is playing as Nia Jax, whaling on Jimmy Uso, and then eventually you'll get to a finisher here and stuff, right? Your preview was a selecting superstars?

It was. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did not have access. It's ridiculous. By any stretch of the imagination, this was incredibly limited. who you had. I think it was like you had Naya, you had Ria, you had Valchari, you had Jimmy, you had Jay, you had the fucking Samoan werewolf. Oh, let's go. Come on, Jacob Fattu.

And they're she's going to drop it on Jimmy. Hell, you know what I mean? Like, come on. That's a lot. You know what I mean? My Jax would kill Jimmy Usom. You might not walk out the ring in real end. Yeah, so intergender's here. That's a big thing. You know, the match I went out there and ran. I think I did, of course, just like everybody else. to do Ria Dom. I had to just let her destroy Dirty Dominic Mysterio.

Did, felt good. She looks great. I mean, that's the thing you'd expect from these games, right? I think the character models do look really good. I thought the contrast, maybe it was just, I'm playing on I think Xbox Dev Kit looked really great in terms of like sharp, really rich colors. I like that a lot for it. There's the little stuff that I found interesting.

One of the things, another big talking point for them is the return of chain wrestling. If you're unfamiliar with this, you don't remember it from previous games. In previous games, what it would be is that you would come out. If you both went for the grapple, it would go into a mini game, similar to what you saw there

for Anaya and Jimmy throwing punches, which got added last year. This is submissions, Kev, but thank you. Chain wrestling is you both have your stick up there as a sweet spot. You try to fill it. The sweet spot will change. When you find each other's sweet spot,

it fills in. You can jump around between collar and elbow headlock, get into specific places. Very much like trading blows, which they added last year, which I rarely ever see in my games, I saw this in one. match. You can go in, you can turn it all the way off. You can turn it up to happen, I think,

every time if you want and stuff like that. So it's there. It's a start of the match thing. It's one of their tossing in. I was never the biggest chain grappling fan. So it's there. It looks like people are happy with it beyond it. Beyond it. Kevin, do you want to toss the other one up? The submission system is going back to what it's been like in the past as well, rather than just tap buttons and have that thing go back and forth between it. This is one where you can imagine if you're playing Devon Dudley, you have the blue bar, Raj. If you're offa, you have the red bar, maybe the opposite way around, but you both are spinning your bars, trying to, if you're the attacker, cover the other person's bar to fill it in to make them tap

out, or if you're the person in the submission hole, try to get away from your attacker. Again, turn it on, turn it off, go back to the old system if you want. This was a welcome return for me. I think it speaks to what I think the out-of-the-box game should be, where it isn't about, like, how fast can you tap a button? Here's a... I like that. I'm getting a little bit pie in the sky button, but here's like a mini-game.

like Mario Party, right where it's like it shakes it up you're doing something, you're both, there's a little bit more like, oh fuck, how do I do this? Yeah. Eventually, obviously you'll do it a thousand times and you'll understand how to cheese the system and beat your friends. But still smashing the button is still there or is that just... Yes, you can go back. Yeah, if you turned it off. Gotcha. But by default, this is where places... Yes, this is out of the box.

At least from what I understand, I think, since they're making such a big... You don't have, you only get those fast fingers. Kevin, I'm going to jump down to entrance camera. This is an interesting one that I didn't expect or heard about. So obviously when people are entering the arena, Tim, usually we watch their entrances play out. This year they're adding in third person mode and spectator mode.

So if you can click on your... Turn it down a little bit. It's so loud out out here. We're using It's Macho T off of this. What? I don't know. It's so goofy. Well, he eventually spins the camera

and does other stuff with it, but it's the idea that now you're in control of the camera. Oh, that's cool. So you can do whatever you want, it's set on the camera. So it's like, yeah, maybe Dom isn't the best example. I've seen the Jacob Fattu entrance when he gets over to the ring stairs in the post.

That's fun. That's fun. That's fun. I mean, this is rad. Yeah, this is rad. Yeah, it's another option for you, right? It's the same idea, too, of, I couldn't find in my footage or online yet,

somebody having spectator footage. I think actually in work, Kevin, you can tell me if we're on. I think our box is covering it because when you get the entrances in the lower left, there's a little, um, he hasn't clipped off. There is a control thing letting you know how to change it. But Spectator mode, there it is. Yeah, spectator mode kicks you all the way up to the cheap seats. So you get like you're in the arena.

sitting down looking at it. So cool. I didn't get in, I personally didn't think to go into it, but one of their press release beats is, of course, that you can do different camera angles when you're playing the match too. But I didn't tweak that.

I did notice on Jack's footage, he had moved it to, rather than being on hard camsign, he went to behind the announcers for all his Royal Rumbles. So you can see the entrance way there. And I think last year they added that too, but it's never been one that I've tweaked,

but it reminds me obviously of the old N64 in Smackdown games, how they used to be. what else did I like that was new here oh you know one of my big complaints because I'm a big dork was last year of course they introduced ring announcers so of course Samantha and the other guy whose name I can ever remember sitting there right

but it felt like it was a very late edition right almost a reaction to how they filmed content and so we were always behind the announcers back so you never saw their mouth and I was always like this is a weird presentation they fixed that this year this year when they have the announcer and they're doing the championship setup they're on them Lip sync not great. You know what I mean? Lipsing not great. But again, do I need that? I mean, I would love that. But again, that's not a nine-month development cycle, I'm sure.

Yeah, when you do the championship belt thing and they're in the ring, do they do like the thing? Like in the... The little challenger. I want to say they did where they popped up for champion. I didn't see a challenger, I think. But it was one of those, you know, I didn't... Do they do the thing with like the camera moves from them? It's on it, but I can't, I don't want to confirm or deny that. And I didn't have that footage. Thank you very much. That's what I need with you. of shit. Yeah, of course. I think, I want to get little things

before I get to a little bit of bigger stuff, right? They've gone further with backstage brawl. Obviously, those have always been there. You know,

always lame as shit. Let's be honest, right? Like, you just beat each other up until somebody's knocked out. It's always like, this is a weird thing. But like,

they added more, and I think to make it more interesting, they added two new areas. The NXT parking lot, so you're outside, there's cars and stuff like that. Weapons on the ground.

Cool, whatever. The cooler one that I've seen a lot of jazz about two online today, is WWE archives. So it's you fighting in like the WW warehouse where they keep everything. Oh, that's sick.

So like the ECW's stuff's over there and they have the smackdown fist up there and a giant wrestling. Hell yeah. That's so sick. And there's Bray Wyatt references and there's footballs and mics on the ground and stuff like that.

So it's like an Easter eggy thing. I think there's a lead to cut out if I remember correctly. That's super cool. There's all the stuff you can interact with, you know, get the scalability of climbing up to fight up there to throw people down

and frog splash down on them and stuff like that. I still have always thought a backstage brawl match is stupid that it should just be a eventually and Michael Cole is oh we're cutting away I don't know somebody rushes out to rather than it be a

you're knocked out from a frog splash that was one of the ones I thought either on macho t's or somebody else's footage today maybe IGN's it's like why why not make it like WWE where when clearly somebody's won people rush out and stop them and push them apart or whatever or the dream would be one day

we can figure out the one shoter right where we can go to the back yeah I feel like that has to be one of the first I feel like that's got to be coming. Yeah. Right, yeah. And it would be, yeah, backstage we'll start backstage. I'd really be interested to see how they're going to tweak that going forward.

I already talked about this. I talked about that. But Kevin, while we're here, just, I have this one. I love Jacob Fatu. Throw up Jacob Fatu's. This is smack talks. I want to, the thing here. This is this where it goes to?

Yeah, that's... Scroll down, scroll down. There's going to be a video of Jacob Fatu. We'll tell you one to click on it. A lot of creators out there with a lot of different stuff. No. Keep going. Keep going. Just a Twitter video here of Jacob Fatu. That's the shield entrance. There we go. That one. They're right there. No. One up, Kevin. One up. Yeah, click on that guy. Thank you very much.

And thank you smack talks for having this footage. Again, nothing. There's nothing here that's special other than I just love Jacob Fatu. Yeah. I just fucking. Come on. Jacob Fatu now. So him coming out to fight the rock here. He could be a bit beefier, I feel. I feel like he's a bigger boy than this. But still, just nice to see him in there. So exciting. Yeah. Getting his thing. Getting his do or whatever. and the Simone werewolf like everything else. Kevin, if you want to go one more down, you can click on Jay's entrance from IGN. Hopefully that clicks onto the IGN Twitter page. He needs to be way wetter. That's what I'm saying. Way weather.

But here's, of course, Jay Uso and Yeat were in the game last year, but I feel like there's more pop and circumstance to it here. My one issue that I've seen so far is, I just wish that for this entrance in particular, that the crowd work was just a little better because we need better syncing on the eating, you know. When it gets in the center of the ring, it's not bad. I don't know.

You think it's bad bad? Yeah, it's just like it's really distracting because it doesn't like when you look at it in real life there's always a ton of people off rhythm but like this I never keep it going It's painful every single time I watch the Jay-Uzo insurance nobody's on me. I sew the

Michael Cole of it. You know what I'm trying I was having a good time. I'm just moving out of I'm eating that there. Kevin you want to fast forward when he gets up on the ring post that would give us a better look at the audience and stuff that's super offbeat. Yeah, but I love it. But again, that's like real WWE.

Right here, right? Like, that's what, like, that's exactly what it looks like. That is exactly what it looks like. This is way worse. For me personally, as somebody who has such low, has such an low opinion of the audience in any wrestling game, I'm still impressed they made it work, period. I'm still impressed they made it work fucking period at all.

So go get them, guys. And then the other, so this is, you know, we can run through, we can play all this stuff. We can do a few of the matches, like I was saying. The other one was showcase. Of course, showcase We're big fans of around here, right, Timothy? We are, Greg, but I don't want to hear about that right now, okay?

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Don't forget to mention that we sent you to show your support for this show. Terms and conditions apply. All right, Greg, now you can talk to me about the Bloodline Showcase. Thank you, of course. You know, their showcase what they're pushing this time around. is create change, relive. So, you know, showcase matches if you're unaware, but I imagine if you're this deep into a WWE thing you know.

But, you know, in the past we've had Ray Mysterio, right? It's go relive the best moments from his career. Last year, four orty years of WrestleMania. So is go live all these crazy WrestleMania moments stuff. We like them because they're great moments. They're cool video packages, right? And face is always blurred, which sucks. But there's been a bunch of criticism of them for a myriad of different.

different reasons that 2K's trying to address this year in some ways. I will satisfy everyone, of course not, but maybe not. Probably more. I'm interested. So a lot of people have had complaints about where, I think they call it a slingshot, where you're playing the match, and then it goes from the gameplay into the footage, and then hangs on the footage too long, and then comes back, and it's actually kind of, like, jarring in terms of, well, you come there, but the ref's face is blurred, you're having this great, blah, blah, blah.

Inside of the match now, that doesn't happen. Instead, they will take control away from you to have Roman Spears somebody or do whatever, but it's still in-game, in-engine. They've recreated it there. So rather than you have to watch the video that is jarring and come back to it, it's there, which I'm appreciative of those, right? The other thing they've added now is, you know, I've never been the biggest showcase guy.

I like the intros, but then playing the matches, I get kind of bored with the checklist-y stuff. Oftentimes I get a little bit annoyed, right? I'm trying to get you into a very specific scenario. Still that way, it seemed like there was fewer in terms of like, hey, we're giving you nine things to do. and one of the things they've added this year are optional objectives that have a timer on them.

Cool. So it is, okay, you have 35 seconds to whip them to the ropes and do this thing, blah, blah, if you don't do it, it's no big deal. The match rolls on.

But if you do it, you then get a, you know, a reward for it, a cosmetic, you know, a new skin or whatever. So that was a nice little addition.

Looking at this here, so it's bloodline showcase, you're saying, but like all the notes you have don't seem to be bloodline focused. Well, it's bloodline focused in the way of like, you know, hey,

here we go in terms of like the bloodline edition and where we're jumping in. And the only three matches we have, right, are Naya Jacks versus Valkyrie, Seth Rollins versus Roman Raines and the Wild Samoans versus the Dudley Boys, right? You can see reliving Nia Jacks versus Valkyria from Queen of the Ring, 24. Seth Rollins versus Roman Raines has changed, right? This is Royal Rheombo 22. iconic thing, right, of Roman choking Seth.

Seth grabs the rope and Roman's so fucking mad he won't break the hold so he gets disqualified, right? This is what if he did break the hold and then you keep fighting? and then Wild Samoans versus Dudley Boys, right? We're off to the races there of it. So it's like it's bloodline of what they're doing or whatever. But the real kicker to it and what's amazing about it, right, from these three is Paul Heyman. Paul Heyman coming out and just fucking destroying. Again, like, since there's no video in the match anymore, you get a lot of the video in the video package before.

And so it's Paul Heyman delivering and telling you why this match matters, telling you who Afa and Sika were the Wild Samoans, right? and what they're them planting the seeds that would become the bloodline, the family tree and all this is, right? The run through of that and then, of course, at the very end being like, so like, you know, since this is creating, like, what if they went up against extreme Dudley Boys, right? And you have a tables match with them. Very cool setup to do this, right? But, like, I love Paul Heyman. I'm a Paul Hammond guy. Everybody knows that.

I think he's just delivers so well. I did the Wild Samoans, Dudley Boy one, like I said, starts very, as you'd expect. Here's why Offenseika rule. here's the thing he's just delivering and you get all the footage and it's great and it's great I feel like there was less blurred faces so maybe they worked around it a little bit more there are blurred faces which I hate anyways then he went there was the Seth Roman Raines one right and this one was amazing like a fucking amazing of Paul like he's delivering him all down camera but for this one he breaks he's like I'm not gonna do it he's like I'm not

gonna do the schick I'm not gonna I'm not gonna talk about your tribe my tribal chief and it's like then he goes on this rant to the side camera about like Seth and like Roman and the shield and how we got here and what that did to Roman Ray blah blah blah blah and so then he gets in the very he's just fucking promo it's just Paul just promoing you know what I mean just going going going and he's like

you know the next time so I'm not going to do your schick I'm not going to do this little setup because the next time Seth Rollins steps in the ring with your tribal chief it'll be the last time Seth Rollins steps in a ring and he does that it's not a it's not a prediction

it's a spoiler it's like whoa it's like So fucking hype to then go into the match and, you know, bounce off the rings, build up my three finishers, do the Superman punch, do the spear, take them out, win the match, get out of there and stuff. So it's like, I think the showcases live and die on their presentation. And so with Paul giving those presentations, I think it's going to be so good. I mean, that's a little cheat code using Paul Hayes and intro shit. But that's what I want. I want to be hyped for these ESPN 30 for 30, whatever you want to call these things, right? Yeah, super cool.

Yeah. I'm excited for that. Yeah. And like, honestly, I would say that's the big stuff I covered. I wrestled a lot. I did it, but we all played a lot of stuff. I guess the one thing I left out that I thought I was new here was now early on in the match, obviously, depending on, I think, your momentum and your health, right?

When you try to kick out or whatever, there's a new section of the bar. If you're using the bar, I'm sure if in the tapping, there's one there. But, like, I was using the bar. There's one to tap it out into reversing the pin into a pin. So, like, kind of getting those, like, chains of pins together. I like that a lot. but again, that's me. I like all this nerdy little wrestling

because again, I think 2K24, 2K in general since, obviously, the bad time, has done such a great job of being like, all right, cool, we've got something here. Like, let's add to it every time. We got a couple super chats I want to get to here. Alex J. Sandoval says, WWE, learn they put Greg's loud ass in a box

so we wouldn't have to hear his voice during the broadcast. Didn't work. Love you, Greg. Didn't work this time. And then BJ Bernardo says, did the chain wrestling feel less confusing? And did you see anyone interesting? on the roster.

Chain wrestling, I only got once, and I was fucking lost. I was like, what the fuck do you want me to be? So I was super confused by it. No, I did not feel like that. I didn't, I, you know, I'm at a preview event. The thing popped up and it was like, okay, whatever. I'm sure four chains in, I'll do it when I get my review code to actually work with it. But in terms of a first glance blush, I did not know what was going on.

But I also feel like, even though it's way similar, we all had that with the exchanging of blows in the beginning of first time too. I was like, wait, do I tap X? Oh, hold. I fucked it up. Okay, what? And then you see any one interesting on the roster? I mean, no, these were all the people you'd expect right at this point. It was more like who was there.

It was like, oh, man, no punk. Like, we know punk's going to be in the game. Put punk in this preview, but I'm sure they're, you know, spacing out all their beats for what they can do. And then also at the Royal Rumble, how was the Joe Hendry entrance? Oh, amazing. God. Are you kidding me? You know what I mean?

And it was like hilarious of like, where Poe's like, who's this guy? And me and Jack are like, you don't know Joe Henry? You're a jack. Damn. What do you mean? I don't know Joe. That's awesome. Trying to explain his crazy, you know, the year of Joe Hendry of like, if not more than that.

Yeah. That was a great entrance there for Joe Hendry. And then Joe Ferrelli says, silly question. But if I've never played any of these and I have a growing curiosity, what's a good comparison for how they play in terms of fighting games? Oh, interesting. Bless, that's more your territory than mine. I don't know there's much that plays like wrestling.

It's funny because the comparison I've been giving, for the last few months is Dragon Ball just in terms of the kind of game that it is. Not in terms of the way it controls, but I think even hearing you describe the showcase and stuff, I'm like, man, a lot of that sounds like what I like out of a Dragon Ball, like story mode.

That's so true. Yeah, I just thought about that, yeah. Yeah. But in terms of gameplay, like, that's the weird thing is, I guess like maybe the UFC games in a weird way. Like when you're talking about the,

like, the submission stuff, that brought me back to like one of the UFC games like the last generation had the exact same kind of submission system. Yeah. And so like when you get into the intricate systems like that, I could see maybe the comparison there, but really like wrestling games or wrestling games. And so like it is kind of its own genre that because WWE is WWE has that whole thing cornered, right? Like the last time it was a wrestling game that wasn't as what vendetta? We're talking about like non-WWW wrestling games. And so they're kind of their own thing. But um, rumble roses. Remember that? I don't know what rumble roses. I remember rumble roses. It was just like a bunch, uh, it was just a bunch of girls. Steam kids would be into it. Steam kids would be into it right now. Yeah, for sure. That's good way to put it. I would say that the wrestling, it's way more simulation than Arcady.

You know, I feel like that's the thing is like most fighting games are by definition Arcady type gameplay. And this is, it's way more slow-paced and kind of like hold-based, I would say. Even even in terms of button pressing and stuff, I feel like it's really kind of transitioning from like section to section as opposed to like combos and beating people down. Yeah. I mean, it's simulating WWE television, right? So that's why I think it plays and looks the way it does.

And to that point, yeah, you know, what you're doing right, your weak grapple left stick move or whatever is going to be different throughout the match because you're going to wear down your opponent, which will then make it different on what's going on in that. Because you're building to signature finish having the wrestling go home moment. Yeah. I think it's as much of a fighting game as it is of a, hey, let me just express myself through playing through these matches kind of thing, right? Like, I am going for the finisher. Like I am like, you know, putting this guy on the turnbuckle and then superplexing them off and doing all this stuff, all this stuff because it is like me living my dream of being a wrestler. And again, in the same way of like the Dragon Ball Z games, right? Like I hop in there and I am, all right, how do I get, how do I simulate my dream match between Goku and Vegeta?

It's basically the same thing, but like it's Jay Uso and Jacob Batu, right? And to the point of, I think when you talk, get into the fighting game conversation of it, like your moves. set for WWE really is well like a light strike I think heavy strike and then like you have like a light grapple and a heavy grapple and like again with the Dragon Ball comparison a lot of those are just simulating cutscenes

in wrestling it is quicker because you're not going you're not fucking you know knocking somebody to the moon and knocking them back and doing all this shit right it really is you that's got to say doing a suplex yeah yeah you'll get there but like doing a suplex or doing a like body slam or whatever the move is it is kind of that same frame of thinking

of go in do your move your moves your moves going to take longer than a Tekken move because you're doing a grapple, but it's the same kind of ideas of light attacks, heavy attacks, um, parries essentially because you will do like, you know, grapple reversals or I think you have strike parries in there as well with some more complex systems built in, but I don't know. I think if you see on screen what's going on and you're like, oh, that looks fun. It is as fun as it looks, in my opinion. Yeah. I thought, I found myself disappointed with all this a little bit, not necessarily because like all the little stuff is great, right? like the intergender stuff is great.

Like all the throwing the into the LCD screen like and it breaking. Like all the little stuff is fun. But as, because I came into WWE 2K as like a fresh new fan last year, right? Like I was just into it. That was part of your rise. Exactly. Yeah.

Exactly. Right. So it was, that was a fun time to be in it and playing it. But then now I'm so into it that I'm like, oh, they're adding the prime hydration station. That's already gone.

Yeah. You know what I mean? Like, oh, where's, I remember last year being such an issue of like, I want to play the fucking WrestleMania 40 arena And that took like three months

for them to put that in there, right? So it's like, I think you spoiled me with that whole blessing show you did where I'm just like, I could see the world where we just update this a little bit more. I mean, it makes me sad. It makes me bad. Where it's like your raw arena

isn't going to be the Netflix raw arena. Like you know what I mean? I mean, Roger, you're me in 2007 playing Smackdown versus Raw 2007 where I'm like, man, where is Jeff Hardy on the roster? Like, why can't I pick Jeff Hardy's 2007? Yeah, it just kind of makes me a little sad like saying all this.

I mean, I'm going to have a good time. Also sports games. like that's the whole genre but like this moves so fast like to me this is not WWWWE 2K 25 this is 24 like this is the stuff that we missed last year

the fact that we're finally going to get the final boss even right yeah exactly like punk is not DLC he's going to be part of the game like I just I just keep on wanting like okay well I'll wait till next year I guess for all the stuff that I care about right now right I'm not gonna get the up there

I will give a huge shout out to the the WWU creation community who does go absurd every year with this stuff of like they are going to make those people and have a CM Punk that rivals the DLC, but they'll have it day one where you can go get it. And same thing with the raw arena. You're going to have that ready to go.

And I know I'm not making excuse like. Also, video games are hard. Doing a, you know, following a product that has no offseason is hard. I get all of this. I'm not trying to make excuses. But it's like I'm very much of the, they should. I don't understand why they don't have a video game person at WWU who is saying we need to do this. There's so much money in those hills to be able to have a live service that does this, that gets that.

but talked about DLC at all, right? Because Sleepy brings up a great point. Like, can't wait to play as Penta. It's like, is that going to be at launch? Like, fuck no. There's no way. Again, on the phone call where I was in, somebody brought that up in terms of that. And they did the deep side.

Like, we know, you, you haven't even seen the people on this roster, but we hear you because there was somebody asked by TNA or, yeah, yeah, TNA. And they were like, ah, well, you know, like, but then you know, if it's a thing of, like, they can't help what's happening on this thing. You know what I mean where they go. Yeah, I imagine Pence's DLC, but they have not announced any DLC, specifics other than they're doing the LC's advocate on the business side I'll give

is that the next year of WWE is marketing for 26, right? Like, oh man, you know you miss Penta? Guess what? Next year we're going to have Penta in the game. Right? Like as you're living through the rest of the wrestling year, you're going to be those things where I'm like, oh man, I can't wait for them to add that. I can't wait for them to add this and then the next game is going to have

all that stuff. But it will be missing whatever new wrestler is out in 2026. And this is always always so fascinating about. out a game like WWE, and maybe just fascinating about this game specifically, but it is the idea that everyone comes at this a different way. Like before we were going live, somebody in the Twitch chat, I forgot your name, I apologize, was like, oh man, I really wish they'd send somebody hardcore, like me to a preview event like this. I'm like, what the fuck you mean? And it's like, I play

my universe and I have this many hundreds of hours. Like, all right, yeah. That is a different thing where I like, I never touch my universe. I've tried it every time, never do it. You know what I mean? I'm doing expeditions, exhibition matches. Exhibition matches. is I'm doing my rise, but even then burning out on that. I'm playing with my friends and I do 60 to 80 hours at launch of all this stuff, right? And then I move on where it's like, I, I, there's definitely different angles for it. And it's what walks as having into this conversation this year. Like, what is my island?

How, I love, what is it, Greg? I love my faction. I love my faction. I love my fashion. Like, what is the island of relevancy? We're going to need to know Mike in here, I'm sure at some point. From the press release that came, I pulled two paragraphs. All right.

WW2K25 also features an ambitious addition to the franchise for players on PlayStation 5 and Series X and X. The Island, an interactive online, WWE-themed world that provides an immersive experience, allowing players the option of focusing on a single-player experience with the ultimate goal of earning a position in the bloodline or interacting and competing with other players they encounter. The island, this is a separate graph later on, the island, interactive world made up of a series of areas built around different WWE themes. The island offers players the opportunity to explore and challenge other players while vying for while vying to earn a WWE contract impressing the original tribal chief Roman Reigns. By completing quests, taking on challenges, competing in live events, earning unlockables and upgrading and customizing my superstars throughout multiple storyline chapters.

The island allows players to step outside of the ropes and quote unquote rule beyond the ring. I'm so intrigued, but like this is going to be horrible, right? I mean, Mike, how's NBA 2K the neighborhood or whatever it's called now? The city now? It's a whole city. It's a whole city. It's exciting. Yeah, we stepped out from the street to the neighborhood.

It's bigger now. I don't know. The press release that Greg reads you is all exciting. You're like, oh, man, like this sounds crazy and exciting. So, yeah, there's a piece of me that's, I mean, I love NBA 2K my player, right? I loved living out that dream in the neighborhood. I liked running around and going and play two-on-two, jumping into the pro-am, what it brings to the game.

But of course, it's the microtransactions that I think everyone gets caught up and worried about. So, yeah, that's why I'm kind of here to burst your bubble a little bit and bring back some reality of like what could be. But I'm excited to see what they could do here in a positive way. So I'm just confused. Like baseline. Like what is my neighbor? My thought.

What are you doing in this? It sounds like my thought and tell me where I'm wrong, Mike. But based on those two paragraphs, which is all we publicly know, unless there's something I missed, feel free to super chat in a link or whatever. It sounds like we're creating a. character. We're bringing the character of this island and then I

assume we are wrestling matches both against AI and against people to earn unlockables and this and that and try to do the storyline to get the contract from Roman Raines. I would assume I like this. You're as you go, you're earning attribute points. You are building on your character. You are becoming more powerful.

You're doing these different things as you play this mode designed to get you into a PVP experience. Okay. And I assume that will be... Can you pull up some foot. footage of NBA 2K City, please. Yeah, I was going to send him some. But yeah, Kevin, if you could look up NBA 2K

the city. Because when I just heard the relevancy island, I thought it was going to be like, I think it's Mortal Kombat Annihilation or deception or whatever. That was the only one I played. Where you play through and you get to the top and you beat Roman Raines. Like that's what I thought it was going to be. Like it was just like you're beating all these other superstars. Yeah, exactly. You're beating all the

battle royale to the top. Yeah. Well, no. But. Yeah, well, not that. But yeah. So we're looking at it right here, Mike. So now you're starting to look at what could be, right? So this is your city. This is areas that you create your player and start running around the neighborhood.

There are different buildings that have different offerings from the traditional park that you'll see. You'll have pro-am. You'll have training ground. So it's different ways to play with your my player in this large shared universe. We talk about trying to capture your audience, get them to hang out in different ways for longer periods of time. no better way than creating a fun little like hub world that you've always dreamed of of running around together. So I'm a little concerned that we're watching this

and the question I had is like how does it look to walk around the city? And that's not being answered. It never looks good. If you can get real gameplay, Kevin, like maybe someone else's, it is always stuttering. Somebody will unlock a skateboard or a new like RC miniccar like Greg's son and they'll zoom by you, but they'll also like do this, you know? And so it never quite looks right, but it is cool to see everybody look different.

This is NBA, though, you know, WWE, they got, they got, this looks like a Yato. Noe t-shirts, tight pants all the time, you know. It will be a different vibe, right? And so this is what it looks like. Oh, my God, I can't wait for this. It's going to be horrible. It's going to be fucking trash. Oh, shit.

I can't. Oh, my God. Huffboards don't work on the sand. This looks like infinite wealth, and I mean that derogatory. Like, imagine this, but it's Roman Rains on this keyboard. I don't know. That's all I need, dude. The OCC are going to be on a skateboard.

It's going to be your bitch ass. Whatever fucking tie and prime shirt you got for free for entering a code. Oh, my God. This sucks. We'll start with the concerns before we get to the positives, because I think there is some positives to definitely shine a light on to try to sway you in, like, the excitement side of things. But like huge.

Oh, yeah, bro. The city's massive. The city is like Grand Theft Auto massive. As we look at this, what year of the city slash this cycle are we on? Is it the third year, fourth year, fifth year? Yeah, we're like the fourth year. So imagine how much smaller the island's going to be. The island's their first time doing this.

I don't expect the island to be humongous and have all this stuff. So, yeah, just top level, I'm so curious about this because as long as it doesn't affect my other modes of WWE, the ones I care. What does it matter? But I do expect it to be hot trash. Like, I do expect it not to work well or be great. And I think it's going to be weird as fuck because, like, I was saying earlier, right, of like, the same way the series brought wrestling to video games, we want to bring video games to wrestling.

So what are the mini games we're doing in this? Am I? I don't understand that. Like, maybe I'm dumb. Like, what does that mean? Let me,

here's what I got for you. All right. Again, a bunch of content's wrestling much. A bunch of contents up, right? Uh, yeah,

and this is from Nathan Birch over at WCCF tech, all right? The same shit. Nathan over there has an interview with, uh, Lionel Jinks, right, from the development team.

And he's asking a few questions, right? I'm going to jump into a paragraph I haven't fully read, and then I want to get to three questions I did read about the island, right? With the introduction of, this is obviously WCCF Tech, with the introduction of the island hub and things that you don't necessarily see on WWETV, like Intergender Wrestling, it seems like 2K25 is moving in the direction of letting fans live out their pro wrestling fantasies,

rather than being more straightforward sim. What's the thing behind that? Lionel comes in and says, we always try to listen to our users, and we've noticed what people are doing online after our game comes out. kind of breaking the game in unexpected ways by doing things like allowing intergender matches. We can see it's something that people want, right?

We also know it's a totally different element of the game as far as matchups and replayability. And also, you talked about the island, which allows us to scratch that itch of fantasy. We're already grounded simulation and representation of what you see on programming. I was surprised because we asked WD and then they go on it. Let me get to the section here

where I actually get more questions in. Back to WCCF Tech. You said the W2K25's Island Hub will have a storyline, line, but the My Rise story mode is also returning. If you're booting up WW2K25 for the first time, why choose one story over the other? Lionel says, like we've talked about, it's the difference between WWE program versus fantasy, where MyRise is based in the WWE world, what's happening right now, dot, dot, dot. The island allows us to kind of just lean into more fantasy.

Back to WCCF Tech. I know you may not be able to get deep into the island right now, but broadly speaking, what kind of activities can fantasy expecting you engage in there. Lionel. Just traditional quests that you would expect from a mode like that. So literally this 2K stuff, right?

The thing. WCCF is a bad answer. The NBA 2K games have been doing these kind of hubs like the city for a while now and there have been complaints about how heavily they're monetized. How much of a grind is built into them?

What's your approach to monetizing the island? Lionel. We're obviously looking at other games in this space and how they hand it and trying to learn some of those lessons. So I think we've hit a good sweet spot similar to what we did with my faction and persona cards where it's like, yeah, you can pay money to do these things, but also you can kind of grind and do things in a way that sometimes might be harder, but probably it'll be fun too.

Yeah. Probably get into. You'll learn it. You'll learn it. Real quick, Mike can talk all the ways they fucked up 2K NBA or NBA 2K, right? For my faction, like, I love my faction. I play my faction and I don't buy packs. I don't give them real money, right? When they do have these persona cards where it is the, I'll buy the pack and unlock that card and that would unlock another outfit in the game

for every mode or whatever, which I'm like, oh, that's a neat thing because I don't care about having every Dominic Mysterio skin or everything. Like, I can understand where people would be like, that sucks. I'd rather just buy it. I get all that.

I get all that. But I don't think it's egregious in my faction as a WWU player. But again, I play WWU my faction my way and don't worry about it. Mike, back to you. Because it's egregious in NBA, yeah? Oh, yeah, it's real.

bad in NBA. It's not the best. But of course, remember, just like any PR answer, you can earn all of this. So if you want to grind, if you want to put in the time, you can't earn all this. You don't have to spend any sort of money. And there are people out there that will tell you, no, I've grinded, I've earned this, right? And then there are people

like me who's like, I'm not looking to put in a second job. I just want to jump in, have fun with my friends, and I need to be able to play at a certain level that makes it fun, right? Playing an NBA 2K, for example, right? If you are 60 when you just jump into the neighborhood and Blessing is already

85 or Rogers 90, you are not playing at the same level as them. And it is not a fun experience. Corey Petrieu says I typically spend about $200 on day one of NBA 2K to start my guy off at an 85 overall. Yeah, it's about... Every year.

Yeah, I brought up the micro transactions on my phone, but you will need probably about 200 VC to get you up to standard level, which is minimum $50, but you're looking more at the range of like $50 to $100. there's some big question marks that I have for this wrestling one. Of course, getting your player up to

whatever rating that is going to allow. They won't let you go up to 99. You have to earn that, but you can buy VC to get that. You have to level up. You will probably spend, I bet you. If we're going off for 2K standards, you will spend anywhere between $5,200

day one to jump in to get your player. You absolutely will. See, here's what we're going to talk about. I think they're going to do it differently. I don't think they're going to hate you with that hard of stuff because it's year one. We want to kind of get you to bite onto the hook. It wasn't that bad. I gave him 20 bucks.

But like, yeah, I don't think they're going to start you off NBA 2K standards after 10 years of doing this, but I think you will be jumping in. There's some worries, right? You talk about your character that you create. Now, when you look at NBA 2K, you also have all of the clothing that you'll wear along inside the

island, right? That is in match clothing. That is outside of the match clothing. So this is all VC. that you can, of course, earn or pay for straight up right there and then. Then on top of that, you also have animations. In 2K, they sell all of your animations in VC. What does that mean? Of course they do.

Think of, like, doing a layup in a different style. So that means you would do a suplex in a certain style. You'd put a headlock in a certain style. These are all things because you want your player to be you, right? You can earn them and do that or you can buy them. And so they are monetizing, but technically it's free. but like they are monetizing down to like the way you walk, the way that you strut they're going to probably do,

the way that you throw someone off the top of the ropes, they will try to get after. I want to just say this right now. I'm Greg Miller. So many of you have followed me and my entire 18 year career and you've known I've reviewed wrestling games that entire time and how much I'd love wrestling games before I ever got in here. We got to draw a line in the fucking sand everybody, all right?

We got to look at these goddamn NBA sickos. They say that every year. Say we will not do this. They say that every year. If they steal animation, from create a superstar and hide them here and I got to put, we're not doing this, everybody. Don't give them the money. The amount of belts they're going to put in this bitch. It's going to be crazy, dude. It's going to be awesome. When you, you know, there's of course

three different editions of the game, right? Standard dead man bloodline. It is what it is, right? They got, they have the breakdown as you have to have, right, to make sure this all makes sense. And for whatever, one of the things you get would be the white six pack, right? They have the island cosmetics there listed as Uncle Howdy mask, Nikki Cross mask. The Dead Man Edition would give you in the island, The Undertaker 95 mask. The Bloodline Edition would give you family above all hoodie, OTC shirt,

yit tank top, hell yeah, yeat sunglasses. So all listed as cosmetics. No move, no nothing, no whatever. So we'll see. Well, yeah, you buy all the animations to that. But like, how cool is that? I wonder what they're going to start you out of us, because we always make the joke in NBA 2K.

they start you out in a full brown outfit and they say that you're working for UPS. so that's like always the fun joke. So it'll be interesting to see like when you make this character and you arrive at the island, what is the generic outfit that you will be wearing? It's going to be so fun to wear.

You're going to be a shirt. I hope it's obscene like you were at an event and you got bonked on the head and you woke up in the island. That is a good point. I wonder how much Lauren's story there's going to be to this island. Like the idea that they're taking the island

of relevancy, a turn of phrase, and turning it into a literal place excites me to no end plus. Like, this sounds so fucking bad, and I can't wait to see, like, if it's fun bad. I've never felt so deflated, right? Because I truly thought that this was just a little

single player, fun little thing that was going on here, and then Mike's coming over here with a mic, tell me, like, oh, no, this is, you're going to spend hundreds of dollars, you have two options. You either go into my player and you commit to the city, or you go into Ultimate Team. There's people who play, play now and enjoy that, but like there are two lanes

in these 2K games and you either go with I'm going to buy card packs or I'm going to spend money on my player and I'm going to go do that. We have to have a lot of the sand. This can't replace the fucking goddamn career mode. I want my normal career mode.

Back to 2K, that's what's happened here, right? They've morphed the two of them together and you've lost that traditional story which is what you're thinking of with my rise. It's just become my player which is shared with the city. That's why you see people running around with Jake from State Farm

and BFab over there giving you a mission, not the wrestler BFat. There's another BFab in NBA 2K. They were giving your mission. And you're like, what's going on? Sponsored missions? Oh yeah, Jake from State Farm wants you to run around the city and drop Oh, you know, you know, Logan Paul's going to give you some prime. Yeah. Not a chance.

They won't pay him enough to do that. And so, Kevin, I'm dropping into assets. Jake from State Farm is basically like what sub, if you've seen community, there's like a character named Subway, who's basically like the brand personified. That's Jake from State Farm. Where he just shows up. at NBA games and he's hanging out with Drake. Can we get some volume on this one?

Thank you, I love you. Hey, neighbor. Jake from State Farm. Oh, you hang out here, bro. Yeah, hey, right next to the course. That's what looks like. This one we play every year. You're gonna be in a good neighbor.

Like to welcome to the city. Very excited to have. This is a city, baby. I am such a bad person because I can't wait. And I'm there every year, baby. This is like, when they sold the horse armor and Scott in the... Oblivion.

Back in the day. Like, this was... This is basically like the nightmare everybody was afraid of. Yeah, exactly. And we're in it. The best part is, like,

of course, you want to be you. So, like, I would love him to call me, like, Mike or, like, sick nasty or anything else. No, because we've morphed the career, now you have to go off of their names. So that's been freak for frequency. They've now made...

They've just given up, making up names for him. So they just call him MP, my player. So they just say, MP, MP, MP, what I'm MP. you're like, no, just let me be my name. So is there a boss in this situation? Because they're doing the thing where Roman Reins is like the boss of this area. You got to impress them.

You got to impress them. You're going to impress them. Get your WWU contract. So here's the fun part. Let's talk about some of the fun stuff that could happen because the catch is like, you got to remember that my player is exciting because you get to create your own player and play as them, right? But going to the city has always been exciting because you get to play that kind of street ball nature

that you don't get and play now or playing traditional game mode. right. So we loved going out to the city to play two on two, three v three basketball. How will they equate that to wrestling that's normally in a ring? I don't know. I bet you maybe it's a beach brawl and you're beating each other up on the beach. You know, and then on top of that, I think what the cooler part is is, you know, I came from the NBA 2K community where there was community pro-am tournaments where they started to organize and make their own 2K teams that would then compete on a nightly basis. I know I've seen on TikTok there are people that have a big fan base for WWE that will then create

inside of this where it is my island every Tuesday night you can come out and compete in Greg's big wrestling event or whatever it is. That every single week they will show up and they will probably put on their own little mini-hour show of different wrestlers coming in

they'll probably cut promos live on the mic and do that like there are cool things that you can create inside of this as the player to make this experience. I know it is all overwhelming and it sucks and trust me it's not fun to play when you're doing that but when you actually play it is fun in a good time it's just a lot of baggage

what you're pitching there at least a little bit I see the future of it right? Like I can see a world where they, hey, you start from the Indies right and they're had a lot of, WW has a lot of connections now with Indies or other promotions, right? I could see that world, right? But like I don't understand this with an island and with Roman rains and like I think it's going to be something as goofy as you got bopped on the head

the boogeyman put a spell and you went through a portal and you ended up here. Like it's going to be some, again, they're talking about it being fantasy. And again, they are saying at least this year, you still have my rise. Like, you're the WVW. You're the missing branch of the bloodline. You don't even, like, you're the bastard child. Yes, exactly. Secrets revealed.

The Rock is your dad. The Rock has a secret son. God. Hold on, real talk. Do we think Jake from State Farm is going to be on the island? No, no, no. Jake took a lot of hate for that one. Did he really?

Jake and State Farm, they took a lot of hate. for that one. I don't think. Like, that's a, they actually do a lot of NBA sponsors. Yes. You're going to get, it's going to be the fucking cricket wireless. Oh my God. Those guys are going to be there. It's going to be snapping into slim jims and shit. Like, it's going to be on brand for that. Yeah, it'll be cool to see like what, like, of course, we always talk about like the Jordan brand Nike, Puma, Reebok. Like, what will be the clothing brands in this? W.W. Shop. Yeah, to just jump your, W.E. generic shop. Like, they have to add more to entice

me and Roger to give them $10 to then spend on. I was going to say, what could they put in there to get you to spend $10 on this? I'm not fucking spending no $10 to this, yeah. A fucking light hit you on the head and you woke up on the island. Just know that they have their best people on this job right now. They will figure out the code because they have to figure it out. The way you're speaking about this is like kind of a Roger coded thing, right, where it's awful, but it's also kind of great. So like I fuck with it.

So I'm going to fall in love with it. Because I don't think in year one, it's not going to be the dystopian NBA 2K experience I'm like he's talking about here. My faction in WWE doesn't feel overly monetized in the way that when I hear about Ultimate Team in NBA 2K or in FIFA, like that shit sounds like a nightmare. We're not there yet. I think 10 years from now, we will have Jake K. They are too. They're selling you the same character, but just in different outfits. They're getting there.

That is true. They are finding their rhythm here right now. And you're seeing that live and in person of like FIFA and NBA have the excuse of there's thousands of players. It's easy to do that. wrestling, there's not as big of a pool. So it's like, okay, now I've got to sell Tim five different ways. And it's like, oh, man, like, now we're getting into some

scummy territory here. Oh, man. This is fun stuff. I can't wait. So, Greg, when do you think, when does this game, so it comes out March 14th? In March 7th earlier, right? Holy shit. Wait, that's so close. Yeah, they've got a new cycle going, man. I love the new cycle personally. I just want

it after WrestleMania. I just want the WrestleMania shit in this. I just can't. It's weird. Oh, I see you're doing. Yeah. See, honestly, I feel that and I understand that. But I love it right now in the buildup. It's part of the road of WrestleMania. No, those storylines are part of it. You know what I mean?

Like, that's the issue with it. But that's, I again, this is strictly a personal thing. I'm just like, yeah, well, I'm watching those on TV. I want to play the thing. I'm doing my rise to see what Xavier Wood sent me to the wrong arena. I don't piss at them. You know what I mean? New Day's new intro is not going to be there.

You know what I mean? Like it's just like all these things that I've watched the game though, you know? Yeah, yeah. Get hype for 26. All that stuff is old. When they get a new new thing, yeah. It's funny because if I was,

you know, if I was an actual WWC superstar, if I was doing things with the company and entering, anything, I would have like a lock where I'm just like,

oh, we ain't changing shit. I want to be in the game as accurately as possible. So I am not changing anything until this date. Like for a new day to be turned this late,

it's like no. Fuck that. I don't like that at all. So Greg, when do you expect to that we're going to first see the island itself? Oh shit.

I mean, this month. Launched it. Right? This month. After lunch. Yeah, after launch it. W.

W.W.E. Oh, not W. 2K has confirmed. I guess IGN confirmed. IGN has a first on the underground,

underground, underground wrestling. Have you seen these clips yet? No. Kevin, can you click or do I give the IGN video preview? I don't think I did,

actually. If you can go to the IGN video preview and scrub to the end, they have footage of the new underground mode, which is the ring, no ropes and people surrounding the ring,

like pounding on it and stuff while you brawl inside of it or whatever. And that's the, next that that what Kevin it's a bad match why?

Because they got a switch no no sorry buddy I'll link you go to IGN's YouTube Is that a thing that in real life is that like based on a real match

Yeah they've done A lumberjack match But without ropes No no it's not a long I've never seen a match about ropes I gene Rudy

Have I seen a match Without rope It's like the way I imagine it too They're like chanting Yeah Oh Oh

Hold on And then you're there Kevin's on The ring is all red There's like a lava pits. H because yeah, right here, there you go. Perfect. What?

Oh. Fuck is happening. Okay, this is less exciting than I imagine. Well, I mean, they're doing introductions right now. There's just a bunch of random. It's like six random people just around the ring. That's like I get a handle. Real quick, has the table, have you been able to light a table on fire?

Oh, for a long time. Yeah. That's pretty cool. Anyways, I'm not, my point is that IGN says they have an exclusive on that. I think on Saturday. the next few days, something like that. So it's like, that's a beat already. So you figure Island next week, the week after,

they're gonna finally have to get into this thing. Or they hide it the entire way. They're just like, we got a really cool thing. There we go. This is it. Oh, fuck yeah. This is the fantasy. Oh.

That looked exactly like this idiot. Kevin, go back and give me a freeze frame on this. Go back a little bit. Yeah, yeah. This is sick. This is actually kind of sick. You're going to be running around. underneath that and that's gonna be the main event.

You see two guys. You see two two dirt guys right there. Fuck yeah. And there's gonna be different. I'll do the hall of fame over to the left there. Yeah. I thought with Rowan rain so heavy that like I might

I might have to get into this. I might beat the island. Listen, we love IGN, right? But like give us the first next time. Give us the first. Give us the first. What did you give us?

Why did you give us? Why did you give us? Today, Roger's like, do you have any clips? Like, oh yeah, I guess I brought home two memory cards. I'll cut stuff up, put it on Twitter to get our footage where we need to meet.

Greg, any final words on this? I'm excited as always. Again, I like this placement of it in the run-up to WrestleMania. We're all juice, we're all jazz. This is going to be fun. My main hope is that this island thing is there. Good, bad, or otherwise,

and it just doesn't affect the other stuff. I'm hoping it's good. I like goofy as shit. Again, like, if it's, I got hit on the head, I'm at Smackdown with my sign, and a light felon hit me. And I wake up on the aisle like, yeah, okay, cool, let's go. I don't mind that.

I got my rise. I got, just don't take away the things I already like and think you do well. But also, I hope the island doesn't hamper the progress of them. Like Mike's talking about of like the playground taking over the story mode or whatever. Like, let's not do that. Let's keep that going. And to close up the episode, we have a super chat from COBA that says, my business teacher at ISU claims that she's the one who got Jake into 2K. She did this.

Yep. That's awesome. Good for her. Good for her. The most underrated aspect I think of Snowback Mike is how good you are as a microchransaction correspondent. You have so much knowledge. I'm telling you, I just hope that it's fun and dumb because I look forward to our stream

where we run around and laugh at all of this, right? And I do think they have a possibility here of making it awesome. I just don't know. I'm not a big enough wrestling guy to understand how you can make wrestling in that kind of world, right? Because you have street basketball. you have the pro-am normal circuit. I just don't know how you can do that.

I think it's like you have to be in a ring and you have to tap. Okay. How do we do this? I mean, I think it's way simpler than you think it is. Like, and I, My Rise does it already. The My Rise stories if you don't play through them are actually very interesting because it is like, oh man, I watched out at WWE.

So I'm going to go to the UK. I'm going to go to Mexico and you wrestle in these new arenas and all these different things that have been in locking for the game. So it's like in this, especially the way it looks, right? There's themed areas. If it's the Hall of Fame, I'm sure in the Hall of Fame, there's a ring and you walk in there. and you get chalding.

He's waiting. Hey, you want some beer, you boo? There's a booing mini-gay. I really hope they bring the Gatorade training facility. Y'all don't know about that, but you could actually train your character. Like, think GTA blast back in the day. You just smash it and you do myself girls. You can, like, run 40-yard dashes in there.

You can do squats. I mean, they'll have that with crime. That helps you recover. And then you're ready for your... See, I think that's part of it, where it's going to be the rings to fight PVP. Because you PVP and the other thing, yeah. So it's PVP for that. you probably do PlayStation Homeit

and get your own area to have your own thing to set up your own maybe maybe that's down the line not this year but I think that it's going to be yeah like what do you do in wrestling

right? So yeah all right who can go through this obstacle course to climb this thing like you'd climb the ropes as fast as possible like who can there's some spearing mini game you know what I mean

impressed Roman reigns it's kind of like this so you got to step we're brainstorming it we're building it right now and I say I'm sure you right now two kids like oh great idea

great idea this is it bro this is fall fantasy seven Rebirth, man. This is the kind of shit. Yeah, I mean, like, working out is part of being a wrestler, sadly, right? Interesting to note that sadly.

I'd be such a great wrestler if I'd have to work out. I miss my calling. You look at earthquake and typhoon. You're like, damn, why wasn't I a wrestler in the 80s? I could have done whatever I want. I could have done steroids. Bastion, booger. Interesting to note this isn't on PC.

The island isn't on PC. Wait, what? Yeah, the game is, but not the island mode. The island is strictly on PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X and I'm playing on Steam. I'm playing on PC because I want to monitor. So you're going to miss out on the island, I might get two codes. You know, I'm all, we'll try it out of the island, but that I also, you know, I want to mod everything.

I want to get in there. I want to get in the kernels. And I need you to get in the comments. Let us know, are you hype for the island? Are you going to have Roman raids to acknowledge you? Think about it. Like, you know, I mean, it's like, oh, man, thank God I came up when I came up, because obviously, YouTubeing and podcasting and talking about video games.

But if I had it, I'd be fucking be earthquake. I'd be out of there right now. You mean, doing what to the earthquake? Bless you, I sent you in important slack. I saw it. I like it. He just sent me a slack with the Roman Rain statue. That's that high-res from the press kid.

It's very moral combat. That's what I'm saying. This might be my new laptop background. Well, everybody, we're going to hang out. We're going to keep today going. We're going to get some fun streams for y'all. Do you know what you're doing? Yeah, we're playing the headliners.

Oh, check that out. That's going to be a lot of fun, everyone. Until next time, though, it's been our pleasure to serve you. Goodbye. Yee!