Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Halo Infinite Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: December 6, 2021

Visit http://joinhoney.com/KINDA to get Honey for free. Go to http://expressvpn.com/kindafunny to get 3 months free on a 1-year package. Go to http://audible.com/projecthailmary and listen now. Sign up at Hbom.ax/kindafunnydec to start streaming on your favorite devices! Mike and Parris join us to give our thoughts on Halo Infinite's campaign. Epic Creator Code: KindaFunny Follow The Kinda Funny Team On Twitter: Tim Gettys: https://twitter.com/TimGettys Andy Cortez: https://twitter.com/TheAndyCortez Mike Howard: https://twitter.com/SnowBikeMike Parris Lilly: https://twitter.com/vicious696 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes joined by the nitro rifle, Andy Cortez. Finish the fight. Oh, you gotta love it, don't you? And this is a very special episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast, because it's also a Kind of Funny Games cast cross-Xcast crossover. You kind of got a love to see it. I'm Tim Geddes.

Of course, we got Snowbike Mike himself, the Master of Hype. Tim Getty's, thanks for having myself in Paris on to bring the X-Cast hype to this awesome games cast. Of course, six years in the making, Tim, 20-year franchise, and super pumped to talk about Halo Infinite with all of you and the best friends. Hell, yeah. And joining us to finish this fight is the one and only Paris, Lily. The missions change.

They always do. God, he always do. Of course, this is our Halo Infinite campaign review. I can't believe it's actually here, guys. I can't believe we're actually doing it. It's such an exciting time. You can get the show, of course, on YouTube.com. slash Kind of Funny Games or Rooster Teeth.com.

If you wanted to get it as a podcast, just search your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Games cast and we will be right there for you. If you wanted to get the show ad-free, if you want to watch it live as it's recorded, and if you want the exclusive post show that we do for each and every episode, you've got to go to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games, just like our Patreon producers, Pranksy, Tyler Ross, Delaney Twining, Julian, the gluten-free gamer, Alex Jay Sandoval, James Hastings, Casey Andrew, and Greg Miller returns.

the content next month. Nick should quit now. Thank all of you for your support on Patreon. And if you want to leave a message that we will read on every single episode of shows, you too can go to Patreon.com slash kind of funny or kind of funny games. If you don't have any bucks to toss our way, that's totally cool. You can use our epic creator code, kind of funny, on all of your epic store and epic in-game purchases like Rocket League and Fortnite

to help support kind of funny. We appreciate that too. But without further ado, we're brought to you today by Honey. ExpressVPN, Audible, and HBO Max, but I'll tell you about that later. We're talking about Halo Infinite. Now, Andy, you prep something really especially. You want to talk about that for a sec?

Yeah, I mean, a lot of other outlets were given the chance to record gameplay for it and put up a certain amount of limited gameplay that you could post. And there's a lot of, there's certain things you can post, obviously, for spoiler purposes. But up right now on this channel on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, I should have up about an hour long, 40 minutes of campaign mission stuff and about 20 minutes of just open world exploring around Zeta Halo. So go check that out. It's a lot of fun. It's pretty much like my first impressions of being in the game and experience it and having all those awesome hype moments with the cool music stings and the awesome chief one-liners.

It's a lot of fun. So go check that out. Yeah, YouTube.com slash kind of play game. So check that out after you check out this video, of course. But I did not get to play the entire game yet. I only did up to the preview content for the game. Andy, pretty similar to me as well. You've done it a couple, multiple times.

Is that correct? Yeah, the first time around, this was kind of an unconventional release, I feel. We got preview codes and then we got review codes. And that's kind of something I haven't really experienced. So we got the preview codes. I was like, let me fire it up on my Xbox. There's no PC codes. and I turned it up late at night just to kind of like check it out.

I just wanted to fart around in the world for a bit. And then I just kind of kept going. And I just kind of kept going and kept going. And it's it's so much fun that you just kind of want to keep playing. But I wasn't getting the full experience. And then we got the review codes a couple weeks later. And that's why I popped in the headphones and got like the full sonic experience. And God dang, it's incredible.

Absolutely. So yeah. So because of that, me and you will give our thoughts throughout the whole thing. But the mid event, of course, is Paris. And Mike, who would like to go first to talk about Halo Infinite? I'd like to go first. Paris, Lily, the floor is yours. So I did a complete run-through on the Series X,

and I also had the opportunity to play the campaign on PC, probably got about halfway through before, you know, this recording. You know, I've been pretty tough. Like I think Mike said it best at the beginning. This has been six years in the making. I've been pretty tough on Halo and three. 343 since Halo 5, just was not a fan of it. Thought they were taking the franchise in the direction.

I did not want to see it go. On X-Cast, we've really spent the past year speculating about what Halo was going to be on the multiplayer side, the campaign. And the theme that I've always said, and I've never wavered from this, this can't just be okay. It has to be great. And I think ultimately this comes up just short of being great for me. I feel it starts strong, very strong. I love where the story begins. I love where it ends.

I do feel got a little monotonous in the middle. And that was kind of my fear coming out of the preview was being on Zeta Halo and just the way that you're attacking, attacking some of these open world objectives, would it get a little monotonous? And it kind of did. But then it picked up again. And then it finishes very strong. And obviously, we're not going to spoil anything here. So for me, I mean, to keep this short, because I'm sure we'll have a bigger discussion, it is absolutely worth your time to play this game. I think 343 has finally taken the Halo franchise and made it their own. I've already said that to me, this feels like a spiritual successor to Halo 3. I think by making Zeta Halo semi open world giving you these various objectives where you have the main story where you can attack these things.

But there's all these other side things that you can do, which are absolutely worth your time because you're going to get valor, which gives you more experience, upgrade your fives. And obviously you're going to go chase the Spartan cores because that's how you upgrade chief and that unlock some of the cool equipment that you're going to do, some of those features. weapons feel good. I mean, for me, and I know a lot of people don't want to compare 343 to Bungy, but to me, this is the first time I feel like campaign-wise, this lives up to the legacy of what Bungy established through Halo C, Halo 2, and Halo 3 to where I think people are going to jump on

this and absolutely fall in love with Zeta Halo. But the one thing I have to ding them on, I absolutely have to ding them on. And I didn't think this was going to be an issue going in, but it turns out it absolutely is not having co-op at launch that's a problem and the reason i say that is i played the game on heroic my thing is i love to play on legendary with my friends halfway through my first play through i realize just the way that the sandbox is set up there's so many different ways you can tackle these objectives i want to do it on legendary with my friends

and knowing i can't do that until it sounds like may is a problem that's a pretty long wait to to wait to wait to be able to do that stuff in a co-op setting. So I do think some people will walk away from this disappointed because of that aspect. I think people will have fun with their initial run through. Then it's like, all right, I want to go do it again. I don't want to go do it by myself. I want to go do with my friends. And we have a pretty long wait for that. So like I said, I think ultimately this is a fantastic game, well worth your time, but it falls just short of that greatness that I was hoping for. But I will say one final thing. The story elements did do the job of making me care.

I care about these characters again. And ultimately, that's the most important thing to me. That's very encouraging. Yeah, totally. We're trying to implement something new here, kind of funny, with a review scale, a proper review scale for games. And it's four levels, whether pass on it, you should check it out. It's recommended we check it out.

Or this is a game of the year contender. Where would you put that? I recommend you check it out. Okay. Okay. Mike. I have some follow-ups for Paris, but let's go on with Max. Let's get my thoughts first.

I am a little bit higher on this game than Paris is, but we're going to be right there in the line of thought. I think Halo Infinite is a great game. It is truly the next generation of the Halo franchise. And this is the Halo game that I've always dreamed of. It's wild to think of I'm having the most fun I've had since I was a teenager playing the original trilogy. And all of the doubt, all of the fear,

all of the questions that we had is this the team. Can 343 really do it after Halo 4 and 5? I think they laid that all to rest. They absolutely nailed Halo Infinite. And I loved all of it from the open world sandbox exploring Zeta Halo to the story, which I think Paris nailed, right? It is a bombastic start. It gets in the middle.

There's some moments there, but then it's really backloaded. And I think they've done a great job at opening it up and allowing new players to jump into the Halo franchise that will understand the story and will have a good. good time and the veteran players like myself and pairs who want those questions answered that are seeking all of the answers that they want they're going to get that and I'm really really impressed with what they did I think this is a great experience and some of the most fun I had all year so when we look at our four points scale I would put this in between I highly recommend it to game of the year contender and if we're just going to put it there I'll just put it as this is a game

of the year contender this is one of the best gaming experiences I've had this year that I can think of up against all the other games we've talked about. But 3-4-3 nailed it. And it's been a ton of fun to be Master Chief, to have the endless opportunities to explore this sandbox, to come at it from different angles, from different mindsets. Each and every time I engaged with the fob or a stronghold,

I would take on the banished in different ways. And I really loved that, whether it be sniping from 1,000 meters away or rolling up in a scorpion tank. I thought they did a really, really fantastic job at giving me the power and the choice. to do whatever I wanted. And yeah, I agree with Paris in some way, right?

Co-op on day one is a big letdown. Not having that there. It's kind of sad. But I will say I had an incredible experience. It made me feel like Master Chief. I am the solo Spartan. I am handling business by myself. And I'll give them the pass on that because I loved playing heroic.

It had just enough challenge where I enjoyed it. But also, I think heroic might have been a little too easy at some points. And I was steamrolling things. And I want to see what legendary would be. I might be worried that I can't do it alone. And it is perfectly built for two players to go at this headlong and just have fun. And some of these story beat moments are going to make your jaw drop. And I absolutely love what they did.

If I could jump in, because I want to add to something that you were saying. So you talked about being able to tackle banish in different ways. And I think if anything, that is the strong suit of this gameplay loop of this sandbox of this Zeta Halo is the first play through, I played a certain way. The second time, I purposely attack certain strongholds and fobs and you go out, you have your targets. I purposely did them differently. And that's what's great about it is you get to play this the way that you want to play it.

The game is not forcing you to have to do it a certain way to get to your ultimate objective. And I think people are going to have a lot of fun with that. But that also brings me back to the co-op and why I find that a little. little bit of a disappointment because when you play with three other your buddies on legendary, you're purposely going to be trying all kind of wacky different ways to go after a certain stronghold or something. And that's part of the fun. And I think that, like I said, it's not a huge disappointment. It's just a bummer in that way that you know that element is there and you know it's coming, but we got to wait. Yeah, totally. I mean, just to jump in real quick and Andy,

we'll get to you in just one second, I promise. But what you're saying here, Paris, like it reminds me a lot of what I love most about Halo, both multiplayer and single player, is the exploring sandbox, playing with the physics, all of that stuff, the amount of times me and my friends would load up blood gulch and not even fight each other, just kind of like explore, try to make a jump with the ghost, like all those like dumb things. But then even co-op in single player, like going through and going on the different level, silent cartographer and everything and just like kind of trying to find different things going on and just having fun in ways that the game wasn't designed to try to make you do, but just allowed you to do.

I'm having a lot of fun playing through the game of the Zeta Halo stuff where it feels designed for people like me. They're like, hey, all those things are now part of the gameplay design. It's part of the loop for you to go out and, hey, guess what? Swinging on the zip line is just as fun as it is in multiplayer. But now you can use it a lot more and you can just Spider-Man your way across the damn level. And it's so freaking fun.

But it is that bummer knowing I could be doing this with friends and not being able to. We were like, had Halo never had co-op before, we wouldn't be thinking about it. Exactly. And it was such a core point of quality for the game and memories for the game. And now I'm having all these nostalgic flashbacks where I'm like, wow, they made what was old, new again, and better than it's ever been. But one of my favorite elements isn't going to be there.

So that it's interesting that it affected you that much as well. Okay, Andy, you've been waiting. What are your questions? I want to jump off of that really quickly. I don't mind co-op not being there at launch. I think this is all just personally. I think it's a much smarter decision for to have it at launch.

Obviously, that's like the ideal thing to go with. But I'm more disappointed that it's taking so long for it to come out. And that's my thing. Yeah, I knew that I wanted to play this solo at first. And the reason why is I've experienced those shared role shooter games when I wanted to care about the Destiny story, but me and my friends are just all farting around in a voice chat and we're missing the cutscenes and we're missing those important beats.

And a lot of that's just on us, but that's just kind of what naturally happens when you are just fucking around with friends. So I do wish that it would have come out sooner. I do wish a co-op would come out sooner. So you could tackle it immediately after you beat it by yourself and go, all right, let's all try to take on those missions on legendary and see what sort of experiences we can make for ourselves. The thing I wanted to ask Paris about the monotony in the middle of the game,

Do you think that's more of something that is created by you wanting to be more of a completionist and going after a lot of these fobs? Or is it just kind of something that you will run into regardless of the experience? It's twofold. It's from a story standpoint. And it is from just the way that the Zeta Halo is set up where I kind of felt like I was just hitting a routine of like, like you're saying, you want to go get this valor. you want to go get these Spartan cores because you want to upgrade chief you want to upgrade the grapple shot the radar the shield you know thrusts etc you want to upgrade these things because you want chief to be as badass as possible by the time you get to the back end of the game and

it feels kind of routine in that way like all right all right the weapons put some new objectives on there let me go do them lorence and repeat because i i need these things because i want to continue to upgrade uh upgrade chief but then even from a story standpoint I kind of felt like they were stalling a bit to kind of give us more exposition to things that I didn't necessarily think I needed. I kind of was like, I just want to go do the thing. Why am I going to go doing this? Like, oh, you, again, I don't want to spoil anything, but you'll see what I mean. Then once you get past that and you actually get to where I felt the story was going, I was like, all right, we're back.

Let's go. Let's go do that thing. I'm excited for this, right? And look, a lot of games suffer from this. So it's not like Halo is unique to this or, you know, this is that big of a deal. I will say ultimately, if you love the sandbox that Zeta Halo is, it'll be fine. But I just think you'll spend a few hours there where you're like, I hope I don't keep doing this because it kind of just is starting to feel routine. And then they shake things up and then you're fine.

One of my main worries with the open sandbox is that whenever we're, we have these large open world games, one thing that can break up that monotony is a visual change. You go into a different biome. You might be doing the same stuff, but this time you're in the snow, this time you're in a different area. I think we could probably get into spoiler stuff there,

so maybe we don't want to quite get there. But I think the game is very structured in a way that it's core story missions, which are sort of traditional halo-type things, and then open world stuff that kind of supplement those. core story missions. But I was kind of worried about the, that getting kind of repetitive of we're still sort of in this foresty wilderness area and it all kind of still looks the same to me. And that is one thing that I was worried about. Were there any fobs that kind of just mirrored

the other layouts of the other fobs, Mike or Paris? And I think that, go ahead, Mike. I think all the fobs look the same to me. I think what they did a strong point of was the strong. And I think Paris will tell you just like me, every single one of those from the fobs of the strongholds feels very same on what you need to do. Open up three doors, destroy three fuel depots. But what I was impressed with with the strongholds was each one felt unique, whether it had its own little story to it, whether it had its own unique look, right? Because some of them were research facilities with a really cool little middle area that you wanted to check out. One of them was a fuel depot, a garage they were building vehicles in. And I was really impressed that even though it felt samey on each. and every single one of them, at least on the strongholds, they felt unique every single time I went up to him. And I really liked that. And I think that was the saving grace as to oppose to do the same thing 12 times and knock the same thing out.

They did do a good job of making it feel different. Now here's one other saving grace that I would say to not, because I'm sure people are hearing, we're saying there's a lot of samey stuff in here. And it's not as bad as I think we're kind of projecting right now. The AI of the banished, of these breached, these brutes, the brute cheapens, the elite. Hell, even the goddamn jackals and grunts is so freaking good. Like, again, I played on heroic.

I don't know what it's like on legendary or normal, but it's so good to where they will challenge you. They will not let you just sit and cover. They will grenade spam you. They will push you out of cover and make you, and flank you and make you do things that you're not comfortable doing if you waste too much time. If you don't have the right weapon set on you, it can get a little tough because I know Mike, you mentioned before, heroic didn't feel that difficult to you.

It's interesting because my first play-through, it did. But then by the end of it, I started to kind of understand, you know, how to play the game or whatever. And my second time definitely wasn't feeling the challenge as much. But if they caught me slipping, they'll get you right, regardless. So that element is definitely still there. So, and this is where I say, again, you can have fun in the sandbox by purposely, like, doing different things. to like, I wonder if this will work if I go on with that one. I wonder if that'll work.

You know what I mean? You can do different things to see of like, oh, well, shit, that did work. Okay, cool. You know, or nope, that didn't work. Not going to do that again. Let me go tackle it this way kind of thing. So yeah, like I said, there's a few hours there where I kind of worried about the repetition.

But like I said, ultimately it's not that big of a deal. I think there's that sort of tough balance. Really quick. There is that sort of tough balance when we talk about wanting to complete a lot of these story missions because you want to keep on upgrading, thus making the game more repetitive. And I know a lot of people ran into that with Gosa Sushima, which I played this year as opposed to the year that it came out. And I fully played through it. I put like 70 hours into it. And I had a lot of fun with it. And I think it may be my game of the year from that year. But I think

a lot of these games can be as repetitive as you make them. Yeah. And that is sort of, I think, one of the main worries of at what point do you say, do I want to keep going for these upgrades? when really I just feel like I'm doing menial tasks. And see, what I love about that real quick is the fun factor of it all. Because to me, it is so far in what I've played. I know, I saw there as a Spartan core. I was looking at the map and I'm like, cool, these are the things I need to upgrade my chief.

I want to make sure that I'm upgrading my grapple hook as quickly as possible because I want to max that out. I'm really having a fun time using it. And I was looking at one and I'm like, oh, that's way too far. I don't think that the game wants me to be at that part of the map yet. And I was like looking at it. I'm like, I'm just going to try. you know and I start like walking over there and I haven't unlocked the banshees yet or I haven't had access to any of the aerial

vehicles which would have made this so much easier but instead I spent 45 minutes trying to trying to get across this chasm and I'm like I swear to God there has to be somewhere here I can jump off and grab just right and like kind of swing and keep pulling myself up and I keep doing the spider man thing you get what I'm doing uh but eventually it I got there and I get this core and it's just like one ability point and I'm like I just spent 45 minutes. Like when if I just waited and just like let the story play out a little bit more, I would be able to get this thing easy, pizy without any, any attempt at worrying about it, right? But I spent 45 minutes getting it and I had so much fun doing that. So that's the thing for me where it's like you go out of your way, but like the game just kind of allows you to like Andy was saying, these repetitive things you can handle in different ways. And as long as you're having fun, that's kind of like the point. And I think that the game gives you so many ways to have fun, that even if you're wasting time,

it doesn't actually feel like you're wasting time. I'm interested in seeing how that is going to play out over the entire length of the journey and stuff. But sorry, Mike, go for it. Yeah, no. I mean, when we talk about this, the fun is how you make this. And the cool part about upgrading the fobs

and following that fob, quote unquote, battle pass. I like to call it with the valor or doing the high value targets, as Pair said, right, is the load out you bring into each encounter. And the cool part is, is with the high value targets, you get different weapon variations. And just like on the Fob Battle Pass,

there's different weapon variations you can bring in. And so what I really enjoyed was after that first couple of hours, like Paris was saying where I started to feel monotonous, all I did was grapple hook left and right, and I'm just grapple hooking. When I finally said, you know what, let's open up the Spartan toolkit, right? Let me throw this shield down.

Let me thruster and go invisible over here. Let me grab this really cool cluster strike gun that has two clusters shooting out at the same time or cool banished hammer. It's like, man, the whole game is elevated and changed. I think the fun is how you make it when you go into these encounters. Because, yes, they're going to feel samey. But what they did with the sandbox and how the world feels so lived in,

where you could be walking from point A to point B, roll up on just a squad with ghosts standing next one, steal their ghosts and go to the next spot with a ghost in hand. It's really, really cool. And so you have to make the fun and you have the opportunities to make fun. And doing the extra stuff is going to allow you to really enjoy. a lot more awesome combat because you can go straight for the story missions only and you don't have to do any of the sandbox stuff Julian honestly it feels like that's kind of added on but if you do that you're really going to enjoy the fun of it all and I encourage everybody to try other things then that's just not the grapple hook I know how easy it is to do with the with the two of you with as far as you guys are are you incentivized to like I need to get everything I'm going 100% this I want to find every single thing possible yeah I am I I want to do that like I I I want to do that like I Again, kind of just going off what Mike is saying, and you, you're 45 minute story.

I probably got a dozen of those of myself where I'm going after something I probably shouldn't be going after right now, but hell, I'm just going to go do it anyway. Yeah. It is fun to go do that. Like going after those high value targets, I really enjoy doing that. And like they said, they all drop their own unique variant of a weapon, which, you know, you can go pick up again later from a five once you unlock it. But I'd like doing that.

I found myself the discovery on Zeta Halo is probably my favorite part. I was on foot a lot versus being in a vehicle or even being aerial and just you run into those propaganda towers. You know, you see a little group of like, oh, what are they doing over there? And you go over there and you wind up, you're in a firefight or I load up a bunch of Marines and a ward hog and, you know, we just go start causing shit for no reason, right? You know, just little things like that. It's fun.

So to collect the thon of it, and not everyone's going to be into that, but I am kind of a completionist kind of guy. I want Chief to be as bad as possible. So I want everything. But not everyone is going to want to do that, and that's okay too. You don't have to. And that's the beauty of it. If you don't want to upgrade the grapple shot to the maximum, you don't have to. You can still complete the game.

You know, it might be a little, you might, you're limiting your toolkit, so to speak. but you can still accomplish your goals without doing it. It's really up to you how you want to tackle that stuff. Yeah, Paris, you said it so well. Exploration is fun and exploration is worth it, right? It's really cool to explore what 343 created was Zeta Halo. It feels lived and it feels like I'm part of the Halo universe, right? You can clearly see when the UNSC held the ring and then when the banish took the ring

and then when the UNSC hid for their lives on the ring, right? And it's really cool to be exploring and you're going to explore a lot. lot on foot, right? You don't unlock that wasp for quite some time. So whether you be driving on a mongoose or on foot just grapple-shotting like Spider-Man across the map, you're going to be on foot a lot, and it is so worth it to go out and explore. And even the far reaches of the ring where nothing is happening, they've done a good job at still making it look very cool and having like banish just kind of sprinkled in there, like, oh, there is a group patrol going on over here that I can fight. And I'm in the middle of nowhere and nobody should be here. And sometimes,

the cool part about exploration is like you're going to get to the highest peaks and when you get on a vista three four three knows when to just slap you in the mouth with the music and that music is going to kick on and you're going to be like this is the absolute best moment around and you're going to take in this breathtaking vista and you're going to love it and so yeah exploration is so much fun and they made it well worth and it's really cool to see this mix of multiplayer cosmetics right you unlock these lockers and i don't know pairs what you think of those but I really enjoyed that thrill of like, oh man, I'm going to be able to show this off to Tim, Andy, and Paris on our fire team when we play multiplayer. The issue was, is I don't know what they actually looked like.

For us in the preview build, all we saw was a name and a word of what it was, and that's it. So it's like, hey, here's the Commando skin. Okay, I don't know what that looks like, but I unlocked it. And those are well worth it. I'll tell you this, I ended the game with 22 extra Spartan cores. I have every single Spartan core in the game. And so that shows you that if you want to fully upgrade your master chief, you do not need to go hunt down Spartan courts because they're going to give you enough

to probably fully upgrade because I've finished with 22 extras with nowhere to put them. So I'm pretty sure they sprinkle them in the story missions, enough for you to get pretty close to filling it all up. The skulls are well hidden. Audio logs tell an awesome story from the perspective of the UNC, the banished and other Spartans, which is really, really cool. So go check that out. and it's well worth your time to explore.

It is some of the best exploration I've seen in a video game because maybe I'm just a big Halo fan, but I loved it. I love so much that the pilot is just Pequot from Metal Gear Solid Phantom Pain. And the chopper's coming by and he's dropping you a new thing that you could use and he's essentially just in this big ship dropping you vehicles and kind of being your reconnaissance in the air. I'm so encouraged by Paris saying,

you know what? This game falls a little bit short of great, but the story moment still hit because I have cared about each subsequent Halo less and less as we go on. All right, let me say, I've cared about the chief story less and less, right? Like I think Halo 1, it just hits the hardest

because it's the first one. Halo 2 hits, I kind of care less, Halo 3. By the time Halo 4 comes out, I put two hours into it. I just don't care. Halo 5, I never even, I don't think I ever started the campaign,

to be honest with you. ODST and Reach, I thought, were really good games. But that's so encouraging to hear that those story moments are still hitting, and you are actually caring about these characters from the beginning to the end. I think that's incredible. That's exciting. Yeah, yeah, absolutely, because I think, like for me, I talked about it's a little bit in a preview,

and it is proven out true going through the entire game. We in real time have had a relationship with the Master Chief for 20 years. And again, I'm not going to spoil anything, for 20 years. and this feels like an infinite when we're reintroduced to him and just throughout the story I think this is the most I've learned about Chief in 20 years, right?

And you can tell he's been through a lot and just even from the banishes, banished standpoint, you know, he's the demon, he's this legend out there. There's just so much responsibility and so much that weighs on him for various reasons,

not to spoil anything, that you feel that. And I think that's very important from a story standpoint and works very well. I would say even the pilot. The pilot is us. We're the pilot. We're the like, why the hell? Why aren't we going home?

And Chief is like, because we have to do our duty. We have to be here to, you know, to stop them from doing the thing. Again, no spoilers. But the weapon, even her being the Quartana replacement as this brand new naive AI. and her navigating through this world and trying to understand the history and the legacy of Chief and this conflict with the covenant and the banished and all that.

There's so many different working parts from a character standpoint here that I truly enjoyed it. I really did. I really cared what was going to ultimately happen to these characters by the time the credits rolled. And I think a lot of that, Paris is, I think a lot of that is due to the performances.

Yeah. Again, I'm only a couple of hours in, but goddamn, what a love. character the weapon is and just the back and forths that she has with Chief, it's fucking adorable. The pilot is great. I love how much he just hates the situation and it's just like in fear of everything. I remember watching the Digital Foundry video when it first released and they talked about how the facial animations are at half the frame rate of everything else happening. And I can't not see that now. Whenever you see the mouths move, they're moving at 30

frames per second and everything else is 60. But that, that, you know, even with that being there, I think that the facial capture and facial animations are so expressive, whether it's the weapon in her sort of holographic form, whether it's the holographs of the banished characters, whether it's the pilot. The way that they are so expressive, I think lends a lot to making you care about them and having them feel like real people that you have to care for. well not even just them like all the way down to earlier paris was bringing up the the grunts of the jackals and i think one of the most iconic things about halo is the banter like them the enemies just kind of like uh talking shit or being scared of the chief and like all these things and my god i from what i played in this game i already think it's my favorite in the entire series there's so much dialogue there's so much unique situations and ways that they react to what you're doing i am so impressed with it i'm so impressed by the different vibes that each kind of species or whatever of the enemies there are how they they act differently they speak differently

to each other they they treat their own and others differently than each other does and i think that it's so cool and i love like the what the way they'll call chief demon or the way they'll refer to him i love that it makes the world feel so so real and lived in and like it's been going for 20 years andy i wonder at one point will that get repetitive and i'm sure mike and paris can talk more about that because so far it is fresh as hell and every grunt feels like they are a different person and I run into one grunt and he's yelling at his other grunt friend you could have saved him and then there's another grunt in the again these are all just little these are all just little lines being yelled by random grunts and I hear a grunt going hey uh anybody's second

guessing this whole killing every human thing like i like everything is so freest you fucking funny. And I'm wondering at what point will we start to see that repetitiveness? No. No, it never gets old. It never gets old. Matter of fact, and I can't remember the exact line. There was a grunt, you know, I did something dumb and I died. And the grunt was like, really? That's it? That that's, you know, like, in other words, like you're a scrub. I'm like, ah, F you, dude, I can't wait to get back in there. You're the chief? Yeah, yeah. That's awesome. Before we move on, let me tell you about our sponsors.

This episode is brought to you by HBO Max. HBO Max has kept my streaming queue stocked all year with all kinds of amazing content, including The Matrix Resurrections coming out later this month. I cannot wait for that. Of course, right now you can watch Succession Season 3 in Secure Season 5. So many great shows. Curb Your Enthusiasm, Season 11. Come on.

HBO Max has all your favorite titles available for streaming, and they've got something for everyone. Don't miss out on taking your energy. entertainment game to the next level. HBO Max is the streaming home of over 13,000 hours of addictive series, Blockbuster movies, and exclusive originals. You can start streaming on your favorite devices today. Sign up now at HBOM.m.aX slash Kind of Funny D-E-C.

H-B-O-M-A-X slash Kind of Funny D-E-C. It's like December. Kind of Funny, D-E-C at HBOM-M-D-X-S-S-H-B-O-M-A-X-S-E-S-H-E-E-S-E. Kind of funny. D, E.C. Next up, shout out to Audible, because you definitely want to listen to Andy Weyer's Project Hail Mary on Audible.

This interstellar science-based thriller from the best-selling author of The Martian is skillfully performed by Ray Porter who brings the already gripping tale to life with vibrant and witty narration. A lone astronaut must save the Earth from disaster in this epic tale of discovery, speculation, and survival

that's part scientific mystery, part intergalactic journey, and all edgier seat entertainment. This is one you don't want to miss. This Audible Studios production of Project Hail Mary is a number one New York Times audio bestseller, and it's continuing to top Audubles bestseller charts and getting all kinds of rave listener reviews.

You can hear what listeners are calling the highest order of Geekazim Metal. Get on over to audible.com slash project hail Mary and listen now. That's audible.com slash project hail marry. Audible.com slash project hail Mary. Next up, shout it to ExpressVPN. Using the internet without ExpressVPN is like going to the bathroom and not closing the door.

It's nasty, it's bad, and it's not safe. Your internet service provider knows every single website you visit. ISPs can sell this information to add companies and tech giants who then use your data to target you. But with a VPN, your ISP can't follow you around the internet. ExpressVPN creates a secure, encrypted tunnel between your device and the internet. so your online activity can't be seen by anyone. ExpressVPN is rated number one by Business Insider and Tech Radar. It works on phones, laptops, and even routers.

So everyone who shares your Wi-Fi can also be protected. I've been using this for years. Kind of Funny's been using it, and we are safe and secure, and it feels so good. Secure your online activity by visiting ExpressVPN.com slash Kind of Funny today. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-V-P-N-V-N-com slash Kind of Funny, and you can get an extra three months free. ExpressVPN.com slash Kind of Money. And finally, shout out to Honey.

We're all shopping online right now, hunting down those perfect gifts, so no one wants to spend their time hunting down the perfect promo code. That's work for Honey, the shopping tool that finds those promo codes for you and automatically applies the best ones to your cart. There's a bazillion holiday codes out there right now,

and Honey can get you the savings hookup. Honey supports over 300,000 stores online, and the best part is, Once you install the Honey extension in your browser, you never even need to think about it again. It just automatically applies to any time you're shopping on the internet. When you're ready to check out in online shopping, the Honey button drops down. It's got this cute little dancing coin guy. And then you click Apply coupons and you're saving cash.

If you don't already have honey, you can be straight up missing out on free savings. It's literally free and installs in just a few seconds. And by getting it, you'll be doing yourself a solid and supporting this show. I absolutely love Honey. been using it forever and you should be using it to get honey for free at joinhoney.com slash kinda that's join honey.com slash kinda. Andy, what about you when it comes to what you've experienced or the open world with the Zeta Halo stuff?

Are you like you, you've played a bunch of these types of games you're just even talking about ghosts. Like do you think that the halo hook is going to be enough to make you want to do absolutely everything? Or are you like, from what I played, I'm going to maybe mainline it, maybe do a couple things here and there. I think once you start to see the layout of what the open world game is doing and you start to understand the rules, I immediately felt the excitement of the weapon opening up the map and saying, oh, some UNSC people need your help over here. Go free them. And by the way, you can also

do this and go to this area and there is a high value target. All of that stuff just is just so my shit when it comes to open world games. And I seek those out. And I want to go help out those UNSC people. And I want to free them from being captured. I think it is completely, I know I'm going to want to kind of completion this because it just, it just feels good to play. I think that opening moment when you see the first fob, you free the first fob and

then you see, and we keep saying fob, and for those y'all don't know, that's forward operating base. you see a fob really far in the distance like extremely far away you need to go quite a distance to get there and it's downhill and I picked up a canister and I chucked it what felt like a mile and this fucking canister is just flying in the air and then it hits the gate

and I'm zoomed in on it it hits the gate way the hell down there and then I see the energy canisters that you have to protect lowering because they know they're being attacked and they are this thing is so far away like the the grunts are pixels large on my screen and it's just it's so cool the way how responsive the world feels and the way the characters and enemies feel uh paris is mentioning how great the ai seems and how they will pick up on your habits and make sure you aren't just camping in that area all of it just feels so responsive and real

And I think we saw a lot of great videos on Twitter over the first sort of weekend preview that everybody had where I believe Jeff Grub and Gene Park and Brittany Baumbacker from What's Good Games tweeting about how responsive the world really is and getting close to a forward operating base and maybe sneaking in if you can and trying to get a few stealth kills.

But once they're alerted, it really feels like the world is reacting to you. And I think that's what, makes the game feel like super special in that case in that sense. Mike, you are, you got all the cores, you got all that. Is there things that you're missing out in the world? Yeah. So the only thing I'm missing right now are the skulls and about six audio logs.

So I have completed everything that I want. The skulls are very hidden. I was lucky to find the two skulls that I have found. And that was purely by just chance. And I think they gave it to me, like put it on my mini map because they felt bad for me. but the skulls are very well hidden, and they are going to be tough to find. It will be fun to see all of the wiki guides

that show you the videos of how to get to them. And, you know, it's really, really cool to see the collectibles and to explore the world and have some fun just being Master Chief and the endless possibilities, like Andy said, right? I've had banished throw energy containers at me, and I've caught them with the grapple shot and thrown them right back at them, right?

I've seen enemies roll up from a sky drop and try to surprise me in the middle of nowhere. And I think that's that moment that brings me back to the high school days where all night I want to play Halo and then the next day I want to return to school or work and I want to tell stories of me on the ring. And the cool part about what 343 and Halo Infinite is is every single one of our stories will be unique. Right. They will all be very similar just like the Halo past of, oh, you did this, you did that. But now it will be like, oh, man, you went in as a chopper. I brought out a sniper rifle and I did this.

Or, hey, I snuck into this back cave. Did you know there's a cave that you can get into and you can kind of scur your way in and infiltrate it? Oh, did you just jump in from the wasp? And that's something that really stands out to me and makes it special of like, that's the halo conversation, the halo moments that I love the most. And I can't wait to share more of them with so many people. And I think that's why when I say it's a great game and what we've seen from the multiplayer and the excitement people have, they're going to go wild with this for that first couple of weeks doing crazy things.

But see, I do, and I hate to keep harping on this, but everything there's, you're saying, Mike, I 100% agree with, but all I can think about in my head is, I want to go do that with all my buddies on legendary and a kind of funny stream on a Wednesday afternoon. That's, that's going to be missing for a while. And I do worry about, I worry about that from a standpoint of, I think everyone's going to have a blast the first couple playthrus on this campaign. We're, we're honestly going to have that all done before 22. So what's going to be? What's going to want to fill in that gap and obviously there's multiplayer that's separate but from a campaign standpoint what's filling that gap until may and i understand this is infinite i understand potentially we'll see

some d oc content they'll be able to extend things out into the sandbox but it doesn't sound like any of that's coming anytime soon either so like i said it's it's a bummer that that's not there for everything that you just said because all of that would be enhanced with friends especially the skull thing. Imagine a Friday night, get three of my buddies, let's just go with skull hunting. Let's go find skulls. You know, you're just going to go do that, right?

That's something that we can't do until May. And it's just a bummer. And again, I hate to keep harping on it, but I do think that that is a fair critique, you know, with this game coming out right now. One second, Andy. So I agree with you. Totally Paris.

I think, first off, I think playing through solo on your first play-through is an awesome experience. Like I said before, you feel like your master chief. This is the one-man army that we all know and love. But on the flip side, Paris, I totally agree with you because I'm someone who I just said, I've almost 100% of the game. And when you finish the game, you go back into Zeta Halo.

You can't replay the missions. The world is now super quiet. So it's not like the first experience that you all have where you're out there and the banish have taken over. I have a UNSC run Zeta Halo. And when I mean, it's quiet. You jump into certain areas, and it is lackluster compared to what the first part was when you had engagements, right? And so I agree, there's no, for me, no reason to

replay this besides we had a preview bill and now I have to do it all over again. When I beat this, I jumped into that ring and it's quiet time. And I don't like that because now, like you said, I would love to restart the game and do a co-op. And yeah, waiting six months sucks. I think the first experience you should go at it solo and enjoy it and you will. But yeah, I agree. That six months wait is too long. This should have been weeks, if not launched at day one, with co-op. Because once you return, you're not going to have the same time. It's very, very quiet out there. Andy? I wanted to jump off on a different point. Did you all, how do you all feel that the year delay

effect of the game? Because from my experience so far, this game runs like a dream, whether it's on Xbox or on PC, I haven't had any issues whatsoever when it comes to performance or whether it comes to major bugs or anything that are kind of affecting my experience. You all played the full game. You've played way longer than I have.

What sort of stuff have you experienced and are there any issues that you ran into when you said, ah, you can't do that because when you interact this weapon in that area, it fucks up the whole thing and it crashes. The only thing I've seen, I've had a few, audio drops and I've noticed a little bit of pop-in a few times, right?

But from just a pure gameplay standpoint, it's been fine. And to answer your question, I think, and we've talked about this on the X-Cast many times, but the year delay was probably the smartest decision in the history of Xbox. And I don't say that lightly because I don't want to know what this game would have looked like a year ago. I don't. And I think if it would have come out hot and had a scenario that we've seen with a few other games recently, it could have done permanent damage to the franchise. It really feels like an industry defining moment.

Yeah, it does. It does because I think Halo, I'm now excited to see the next thing coming from Halo. Whereas if this would have come in hot after Halo 5, I would have been like, dude, really, I'm done. I don't need this anymore. where now I'm reinvigorated in the halo. I'm reinvigorated into that universe. I want more. Whereas you gave me a buggy game that was all over the place.

We're not having that discussion. And that not only is campaign, that obviously goes with multiplayer as well, even though obviously there's some issues, you know, with progression in the battle pass and all that, which, you know, they're going to fix. But, yeah, in my opinion, smartest thing they could have done was the latest game a year.

And that obviously took... I don't want to say courage or anything. That's too strong of a word. But, I mean, it took some guts to do that because it was clear that Halo was supposed to be the flagship launch title for the series X. And to delay that game an entire calendar year, really more than a year, says a lot about the leadership over at 343 and Xbox as a whole. Paris, do you think that they should have had the multiplayer come out on the 20th anniversary? And then do you think they should have delayed the campaign till co-op is done? or do you think that they made the right call with this?

Ultimately, no. I think as much as I'm saying, I wish the co-op was there, you are getting a full single-player experience from start to finish and you can enjoy it. Yeah, if the multiplayer was ready, absolutely put it out. May would have been too long. That would have just been too long of a gap.

At that point, I would probably say delay both, really, if that was the case, if you couldn't have the campaign ready until May to go with the co-op, maybe they would, should have just delayed the multiplayer as well. It's a tough call because I honestly see both sides of the argument, really. I mean, you know, that had to be on the tough thing. I don't think they wanted to push Halo, all of Halo into 2022, you know,

and maybe just having the multiplayer out with and happen to wait six months for the campaign, which you would have to pay for, by the way. that just maybe that's too long. No, they're striking at the perfect time. Halo is hitting a fever pitch right now after four weeks of multiplayer and the goods, the bads, whatever. People are loving what they're playing. And this is about the strike at the holiday season right when Xbox wants it to really drive game pass.

The game awards, they're going to be talking about it. Everybody online will be talking about this next week. And that's a big deal for Xbox and the team. So I think you've got to drop this right now while it's really hot. One thing I want to give a shout out to that I'm always a sucker for is the sound mixing. And this game fully uses Dolby Atmos. And that's a perk that Xbox has that PlayStation doesn't. PlayStation has its tempest, 3D audio, which is great.

But in my opinion, nothing can rival Dolby Atmos so far. And in terms of video games, Xbox and the first party studios over there are the ones really pushing that forward. And I think this is the best example we've seen so far. A month ago, I was praising Guardians the Galaxy, which I also think does a fantastic job. with the 3D audio design. But Halo, man, there's so much that goes into what makes Halo special. And I do think that the sound of the guns, the sound of the overshield, the sound, like all of the sounds matter so much, right?

And like being able to detect and define exactly where a noise is coming from is something that I'm having a lot of fun of in the open world, where it can feel so far away, but you can pinpoint how far away it is behind you and all of that. I think that they really knocked out of the park from a technical perspective and be talking about, you know, this, the delay of all that that could mean. I do think that for every praise I just gave from an audio perspective, it's backed up visually. This game is beautiful. I love how I've been playing it on PC in super ultra wide and I've been playing it in 4K on the TV. And both experiences are different, but equally impressive.

And just, again, the art style, everything about it, going back to the, the OG type of Halo look, I think that this game runs like better than I could have ever imagined it would. One thing I notice that I don't love and it's the tiniest nitpick, but the, the pilot's eyes are just not next gen to me. Yeah, there's a couple moments with him that don't look quite right. Yeah, the pilot, I guess he's the main character that I've actually seen in these cutscenes so far, a human character, where the the pupil is not.

concave. You don't have the, that it looks like he's wearing contact lenses. And he might be wearing colored contacts on top of his eyes. And that's why they look kind of like a bulby in a way. But I thought like when you play Guardians and you see

the camera turn around to the profile view of one of the human characters or even like Drax, you see like that's the way an eyeball really looks and it's structured. And it's one of those things that's the tiniest nitpick, but it definitely bothers me whenever he's looking right at you and it's like oh jesus like close your eyelids a little bit it's freaking

me out here pilot i i have three small nitpicks that i don't like about the game one of them i think plays in and you can tell this team was trying their best to put co-op in is there's a of course the pause menu but then there's the select menu as i like to call it that brings up your tack map your spartan cords your high value targets and for a game that is single player right right now this game is single player. I hate that when I click on that menu, the game is still running, like a Dark Souls or other games where a bunch will shoot at you. There is no, you're not pausing it in any way, shape, or form. So that is a little ding for me of like, that's weird, but you can tell that was built for co-op. So me and Paris could keep playing and I wasn't going to slow him down,

but I just feel like for day one, if there's not going to be that, it's odd that that game keeps running. Also, no stealth. There's this really weird mix of us being this open world and having an awesome opportunity to come at it with endless different angles and opportunities in this adventure. But the moment that I shoot someone, the moment that I'm seen from a mile and a half away, the moment you throw that barrel, you know, from yards away, everybody snaps onto you, right? There is no stealth. Even if you backstab somebody, really everybody knows. And it's this weird mix of like coming hot off of Far Cry 6, where I can stealth the whole base

and coming into this, it feels like the moment chief moves, it's on. matter what. And yeah, I like that, but it does feel weird. There's no stealth. Even in the, even in the first Halo, which like I dove into a few months ago, there were at least still some segments in that very first game where you could kind of take some some grunts out and kind of keep moving forward without being detected. So that's a, that's a weird choice. I get stealth is maybe in Viz. Is like, that's how they probably, probably look at it, right? Yeah, the moment you shoot, it's on and popping. So just go out there and kick ass is super dope. Finally, photo mode. You know, we live in this world.

where everybody really likes photo mode, and this is beautiful, it's Halo, it's open world, and there's no photo mode at all. So I'm just smashing that share button, but there are moments where I really wish I could go in depth and get a better piece of the scenery without the HUD and have a nice moment, but I can definitely, of course,

go into it again with co-op, right? They built it so we aren't slowing down the progress of play. But Gosa Shushaamah made a really great co-op photo mode as well. That was a ton of fun to use. So I would like to see photo mode eventually, implemented. But those are my three small, very small nitpicks. Overall, everything else was fine. And also, shout out to the composers. Shout out to my guy, Gareth Koker on the track, y'all. It's three composers, but I love Gareth. The whole soundtrack is unbelievable. They hit on so many.

And there's one I know Paris will smile, but there's a mission in the back half where you smile because that music kicks on and it's on and popping, y'all. And it's awesome to play. I want to talk about the missions actually a little bit. We spent a lot of time talking about the Zeta Halo Open World. all that. What about the actual campaign missions, the more traditional linear style Halo things? Were you guys kind of impressed by what they did? Do you think that it felt modern enough? Or was it kind of just revisiting old tropes? I think they did a great job because one other thing we haven't really touched on are the boss encounters, which that's where you're going to get those is during

the missions, where you're going to run into these many bosses and obviously, you know, spoiler stuff towards the back end. And I think they do a great job of kind of telling the story during these missions and you understand the purpose of it, what the stakes are as you go through. Yes, that classic halo element is there, especially early on that you see in the preview stuff. But even once you get to some of the later things, I think they do a great job of mixing it up.

So like we talked about before, it doesn't just feel rinse and repeat monotonous stuff. I feel like you're doing some things out of the ordinary, which you're doing. is good, you know, for a Halo game and not just repeating yourself over and over. Yeah, totally agree, Paris. It's just this fun balance of like, here's the next gen, here's that open world and like, we're trying something new. But here's the Trident and True Formula, right? These are guaranteed A to B linear structure missions with the story really being at the forefront.

And it's really cool to see and feel that, right? This is, if you're a Halo fan, you've played them all. This is what you know and love, right? This is that sandbox feel in kind of a smaller, you know, linear structure, but it's awesome to see the named enemies here. I'm really impressed that the named enemies really elevated the gameplay for me, especially when you listen to the story and you see some of them, right? Like some of them are going to wow you.

Some of them with their stories are going to be like, man, we're about to have a fight here and it's going to be super cool, right? And again, no spoilers, but that back half, there's a couple missions there that will make your jaw drop to the floor of like, while they created this, they did this, and I'm doing this right now, and it's cool. And like, yes, playing single player, which still great as can be. Like Pear said, if we were doing this co-op, man, some of these moments are going to be unbelievable in co-op for sure. But, yeah, the named enemies are really cool, mixed with the high value targets.

And then, of course, on top of that, your equipment, right? Like, don't forget that you have an arsenal of equipment. And there's some really cool stuff. Like something you've never seen before, of course, is the named enemies with the health bar. But if you upgrade that threat sensor to the highest upgrade, you'll actually throw out a threat sensor, and it will give you health bars for every single enemy out there, which is totally different.

You've never seen that before in a Halo game. And it is fun to be able to switch back and forth on the fly. And I am a little sad that it's not as fluid as I would like to combo the thruster into the Rapple Hook. And maybe on PC kids will be able to really get it. But on controller, I don't think you could map the controller a basic. controller good enough to combo these moves. And then on top of that, I did it with the elites. And even then, it still felt clunky with the back paddles, trying to go from

thruster to grapple hook to thruster. And even if I did link it up, it wasn't that wowing, right? But I love that each one doesn't have a cool down for just one use. It's like, oh, I use the grapple hook, switch to the threat center, pop that out, switch over to the barricade, throw that out, switch back to the grapple hook. And like, you can combo these in a cool way. And it gives you awesome opportunities to really change up the gameplay, which is so dope when you get into these encounters, especially with some of the named ones where you're going to want all of that. Are there any dynamic moments where maybe certain enemies will reference other mini bosses that you've taken down, the high value targets?

I don't think I caught any. No, no, I don't think anybody talks about that. Because I think, again, this is where it being open world and you can do those targets in any order you want from a story standpoint. It's almost how would how would that character know what character you took out at what time. So probably some back end stuff that they ain't trying to code. They're like,

I just leave it out. I will say, yeah, the high value targets know on the named enemies, the bosses and some of the missions, you will hear some of the grunts speak on some of the people you have taken down. There's a couple moments where he's like, oh, that's right. Oh,

he took this new down. Oh, snap. Like they will definitely say that. But that's like clearly story. A to B to see like they're following that and like one can right that's a script. Yeah. That's part of the script. Yeah.

The high value targets is something I was most I think all of us were most excited about when we we saw that earlier. And we're just like like whoa, holy shit. Like and from the one that I got to take down and what I've played, I was like this is really a kind of cool vibe. You kind of get to a part of the map where it kind of feels almost like a multiplayer designed level that you're kind of facing off against these characters in. Did it get monotonous over time? Are there a lot of these guys? And do you think that overall they, they nailed what they were going for with them? There are 15 high value targets. I wrote down, uh, I wrote a story about each and every one of them. And I think probably nine of them for me were all very basic. I wish they elevated them. But then there was a couple where I was like,

oh my gosh, that guy's in a ghost right now or oh, snap, I'm on the edge of nowhere. And this dude is out there, right? And he's got his little banished group out there, but there's another one where it's like, oh, man, you know, I don't want to spoil this, but it's like, oh, man, this is a crazy encounter. So I would say less than half were really special. A lot of them just felt like, oh, that's another brute or that's another elite, like whatever, and you murder them. But there's a couple where you're like, oh, wow, they did that. That's cool. And it made this encounter way more fun to go into. Andy? I was mainly going to ask that. Like, are we mostly looking at brutes. I know in the trailer we've seen Darth Mall elite. So I'm assuming that's

going to be either a boss or a high-bally target. But I'm really hoping that we see a little, a little bitch-ass grunt. There is. Oh, there is. There is. Oh, yeah. You get a couple of those. I just love the idea of a little grunt, just leading a whole crew. Yeah. I'm the shit, dude. But I would even say, and I'm looking beyond just this campaign in the store. Again, this is Halo infinite, infinite possibilities. So clearly they're going to add future content into the sandbox. When we talk about high value targets, like you were saying, Mike, that's their opportunity to add some unique bosses into the world.

And again, when co-op comes, even, you know, look, just bring Spartan ops back. How about that? I would love to see them bring Spartan ops back, have co-op specific missions, co-op-specific high value targets that are going to be complex difficulty scale just just a whole thing that encourages you to want to get a few of your buddies together to want to go after them i think that's something thinking post campaign there's a there's a great opportunity there for them which again adds replayability back into the game and once as you want to come back and play you drop some kind of unique weapon that that you get or whatever the case be right you know things like that that

That's what I hope post campaign we get to see. So you hope for that. Do you expect that? Do you think that the game was built for that? You can see the hooks are there for sure. You can definitely see the way this world is set up. They can absolutely add post campaign content in there. And it would make sense for them to do it.

Like what if there's rag tag crew abandish, even though like Mike said, you know, now it's all UNSC control. But there's this rag tag crew of banish that we didn't know about that now has decided to invade Zeta Halo and now you have to go investigate and it's this whatever his unique boss name is and you have to go take him out or whatever, right? Things like that. I think it's clearly built into the game to be able to do. But I mean, obviously we'll have to see what their post-launch plans are going to be. Yeah, when you beat and clear the world in Gosesusha to add that replayability, they do add in the factor that, oh, more enemy Mongols have taken over the camps that we freed. You know, let's kind of extend.

the replayability factor here. So that seems to be exciting that that's sort of an option that they can explore and add some more replayability there. Yeah, totally. And I'm excited to see what kind of weapons they can build off that.

We talk about the weapon variations, right? Like, not only can you build cool and unique encounters and different bosses, but like what crazy weapons are they going to throw in there, right? Because there's variations on every UNSC gun. There's variations on all of the covenant weaponry. And it's really cool.

Some of the stuff, right, There's a tracking rocket launcher, which is just wild to put in your hands. It's really, really fun to track things and have a different kind of RPG and different weapon in your hands. So I can't wait to see that. And yeah, I don't want to spoil anything. But when you beat this, if you look at your tack map, there's a lot of room to build off of this and do something cool with it. So I look forward to seeing what those post launch plans are. And like we always say with all games, when will it be turned out, especially with multiplayer and this?

What is the content roadmap? three months, six months a year, when will we get this? And how big are they? Right? Is it just three high value targets, one stronghold, two FOVs on its own little island and that's a little self-contained story? Is it a little bit of a larger story that might be six hours? I really look forward to seeing how they build off of this because we are in the infinite

platform and it'll be fun to see what's next. Do you guys have any closing thoughts before we wrap up the episode? Because I'm sure you guys are going to be answering way more questions. and giving even more thoughts with Gary Witta on the Xcast coming out later this week. But for now, what do you got, Paris? For me, I think kind of just to repeat what I said at the top, I feel like Halo Infinite is 343 finally owning this franchise. I feel like it is now in good hands.

I am excited for the future of where Halo is going to go, on a campaign side and on a multiplayer side. ultimately to me when we talk about that year delay it was well worth the weight because we're getting a very polished product it is a product that is absolutely going to be worth your time i think you're going to go into this you're going to have fun with it and when the credits roll you're going to want more and that's the sign of a good game right you're wanting more when the credits roll like i said again at the top i think it's just short of being great to me for some of the things that we've talked about over the past hour or so. But when we look at this game, probably six months from now, nine months from now, a year from now, I think it's going to be an even better place than where it is today. And that is a credit to everyone over there at 3-4-3 and all the hard work that they've done here over the last year or so getting this game into the place that it is. So kudos to them. I think people should be excited about Halo because it's back. It's back. And Paris says it so well. And of course,

I saw rea-a-rate. I had a great time with this. I really enjoyed my time with Halo Infinite and 343 put to rest all of my questions, all of my concerns and said, hey, we can do this and we're going to do this. And it feels like this game is about moving on. It's about moving forward together as a player with 343. And I loved that. And I felt that. And when the credits rolled, I wanted more. I was excited for the future of what the Halo franchise will be. And that is exactly what I wanted out of this experience. It's been 20 years of an incredible franchise. It's been six long years since Halo 5 and getting a new Halo experience. And this is exactly what I wanted and some. And so I'm really glad that we have a campaign now out. We have multiplayer co-op. Yes,

we'll be coming sooner than later. Later, really, I know. But this is exactly what I wanted. And I'm having a great holiday season with Halo. And that's all I could ask for. I'd love to see it. Let us know in the comments below how excited you are. from for Halo Infinite, which will be dropping imminently. It's crazy. It is days away from everyone being able to play this game. That is so damn cool. We're going to talk about it a whole bunch more, I'm sure, in the coming weeks and months,

as we discuss Game of the Year and all that stuff. You'll get way more of me and Eddie's thoughts as well. But until next time, if you want to stay tuned to our Patreon exclusive post show, you got to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games. But for everyone else, I love you all. Goodbye.