Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Marvel Rivals and a Bunch of Game Reviews - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: May 22, 2024

Bless, Mike, Tim, and Roger come together to talk about Marvel Rivals, Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door, XDefiant, Crow Country, Thunder Ray, and Indika! Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping Thank you to our Patreon Producers: Karl Jacobs, Fargo Brady, & Delaney Twining -TOPIC OF THE SHOW: WHATCHA BEEN PLAYING? - Marvel Rivals - Mike/Bless - Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door - Tim - Ads - XDefiant - Mike/Bless - Crow Country - Tim/Rog - Thunder Ray - Tim - Indika - Rog Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Games cast for Wednesday, May 22nd, 2024. I'm one of your host's blessing. Adioia Jr. joining me is LaCroy Poppy, Tim. Ma, Boy, Gettys. Pleasure to be here today to talk about video games. Pleasure to have you, Tim. We also got two bottles sometimes, one, Mike Howard.

You know, blessing, I don't want to derail the show off the rip, but I do want to have a conversation with y'all. Did we get enough dynasty warriors? You know what I mean? Should there be more dynasty warriors in our life? Think about it. In the year 2024, where's Dynasty Warriors? I mean, they're just popping up everywhere.

They're just like branded co-labs. You know what I'm talking about? When's the last Dynasty Warriors game that you remember? But he's making a Gerson of five strikers. You think that's the latest entry? Not the same? It's like loosely. Okay.

It's not the same, but it's loose. It's like inspired. Listen, I was, I was against Mike because you was talking in general, but I was talking recently in the last five years. I'm talking about in the last five years. We haven't seen that many. Not that many. Dynasty Warriors game.

I mean, they were probably going down there in the PS2 era. That was a big deal. Yeah, no, but I mean, Fire emblem warriors, the High Rule Warriors, High Rule Warriors, definitive addition

to how and all the extra stuff. Where are they? That's three. They're popping out. They had like 15 or the PS2 era. Oh, man. There's so many of them, man. So many of them.

I bought that. Dynasty Warriors 9, 2018. That was six years ago. But since then, there's been all these other ones we just named. Apparently they want more than one a year? That was an adaptation in 2021,

apparently. I bought the, because I'm wearing my one piece. T-shirt today. So it's a one-piece one. And I bought One Piece Warriors for on sale on Steam because I didn't know what it was. You know what I mean? They started making all these options. Hold on, hold on, hold on. Here you are, by it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I bought it because I didn't know what it was. It was on sale and I was like, oh, interesting. Is this one piece but maybe Dynasty Warriors bought it? Haven't played it yet. I'll tell you. I'll give you the rundown maybe next week when I play. How do you review the buying it, though? I felt good. You know what I mean? For $9.99

compared to the $20. They were selling it for. I was like, yo, this is discount for a game that I might not ever play, but it's in the library. Yeah, you're saving money now. Here's the issue. All of these One Piece games are subbed. And I respect that, but I want them dubbed. You know what I mean? Because I want to jump in as a generic, you know, basic bitch listener. And I just want to, I want the story. You know what I mean? I need dubbed. Not enough One Piece video games are dubbed for me, the dubbed watcher and listener. Mike, what were you playing last night? You were up last night like midnight. I was playing songs of conquest. I tuned into your Twitch stream,

and I saw you playing a game I had never seen before. Y'all ever heard about Heroes of Might and Magic. You know about Heroes of Might and Magic? So Songs of Conquest is literally Heroes of Might and Magic, but 2024. What's Heroes of Might and Magic? Roger. It's just like point and click adventure game, but then it goes into tactical battles,

you know what I mean? And you build a base out. You recruit units. It's kind of like an RTS point and click, I guess is probably the best way to describe it? Is this a new thing? Is this an old thing? That's like,

oh, gee. That's like, gauntlet. Legends Day. Yeah. My grandfather played it. Those other B&D games from Not other... You know what I'm saying. But I would say if you like Heroes of Might and Magic

or you're interested, like Tim's eyes kind of lit up like, oh shit, I haven't heard that name. You used in a long time. Look up Songs of Conquest because it is Here's a Mighten Magic in 2024. Played it last night, Bless. Made Andy as my AI opponent. Okay. He whooped my ass.

I made some bad decisions in the midgame. We got to about round 30 and I was exploring the map. and what's really cool about this one is you can hover over the bad guys on the map so the whole map has all these different things you can click on from outposts to bandit camps to gold to wood that will all help you grow your base

and buy other things right but they have little bad guys all around the map that you can fight for resources or they open up different areas of the map and the cool part about this is you can hover over it and it will tell you like hey this is a risky fight or like you're not going to win this fight or oh you probably win this fight

and so I clicked on one it was like it was on the riskier side it put me in a bad spot because Andy showed up right after that round and I was like oh man I got nobody to fight in with I've never met so obsessed with another man it's just you know we have this friendship and like it's the perfect time for us to be playing games together ex defiant Marvel rivals call duty war zone of course now you have Eldon ring but he just won't play games with me yeah he plays games with you every single I know.

For work. He just wants more. He just wants more. We're also joined by the Locke, Roger Bricorni. What's up everybody? What's up everybody? Of course. Remember, this is Kind of Funny Gamescast.

Each and every weekday, we run you through not the nerdy news that you need to know about. Different topics that you need to know about. We get together and talk about the biggest reviews, previews, and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch, and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad-free.

watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. And for a chance to be a part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. Housekeeping for you today, after Gamescast, you'll get the real ass gamer tournament. Mike, do you have any teases for that? Yeah, today we will determine who is the best gamer in the office. Of course, this is our monthly tournament

to determine who will have bragging rights, who gets the respect when Tim makes sponsorship deals. He always says, well, you know, Greg is the best gamer in the office, so we should have Greg play these games. So your name will be up in the rafters. You will be respected as the very best. And I have a special one.

You know, this time I didn't tell anyone what the game is. Is that because I'm cheating and trying to win? Of course, Tim. Of course it is. So you'll have to find out after this to find out who will become the real-ass gamer. Well, there you go. And then also, if you're a kind of funny member, you can get today's Gregway, which is the biggest franchises Gregs Never Play.

So go check that out on Patreon. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Fargo Brady, and Delaney-Twining. Jerry brought to you by BetterHelp, but we'll tell you about that later for now. Let's start with topic of the show. Mike, you talked about your little game. Songs of Conquest. It's funny, I knew you were playing that because I had rated you on Twitch last night because I was up late because I went from playing Pokemon Stadium 2 right after our soccer game to them being like, I want to play some Elven Ring. So I streamed that and then I got off of that and I played some ex defiant.

Mad respect to my man blessed, who gave it is all on the soccer field. Got home at probably, I mean, if our game was at 7.45, got home probably around 9, 9.30, to a shower. Then proceeded to play games live on stream. Shout to him. Now, what did I do, Tim? Went directly to in and out. Had a double double. Friends fries. Oh, hell yeah. No, listen, listen. Right after the game, me and Katie did go to McDonald's. Good. You should treat yourself always. And I got myself with Grandma McFlurry. Oh, how is that? I've been looking into that. It's for a lot of research.

Great mom McFlurry. Yeah. Grandma. Yeah. It has like butterscotch in it. Buttercotch and like old people candies. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You just buy a peppermint in the bottom of there, it has a little hair on it, it's fine. And here's the thing.

I'm using, I was at Walgreens recently and I couldn't find the lactate, like my brain of lactate. So I got like a generic one that I'd never used before. And for good measure, I took two of those. Yeah. I'm, did not work.

I'm suffering right now. Yeah. And so I'm running on zero, or not zero six. I'm running on low sleep and I'm running on tum-tum-tum-thubly. A rumbley tumbly. I did do that and then yeah we played a bunch of games but I bring that up because right now it is a season of us just playing random ass video games we're all over the place and so this is gonna be a what you've been playing episode of the kind of funny games cast and I want to start off with Marvel rivals because me and Mike over the weekend got our chance to check out the game Mike I want to start with you yeah what are your thoughts of Marvel rival can we stop what is Marvel rival yeah I'll tell you all about Marvel rivals right now of course first big shout out to kind of funny

best friend, War Machine, who sent me and Andy a code to check it out. So thank you War Machine for that, because we didn't get codes here. But I was able to check it out. Marvel Rival, simply put, Tim, is Overwatch re-skinned with Marvel characters? So think of a hero-based team arena shooter

that is just like Overwatch, but instead of Overwatch characters, they are Marvel characters that have very similar movesets to watch characters. It's pretty amazing how close and similarity they are. But it's a lot of fun. I mean, you have push the payload, you will have control

the domination spots. It was playing Overwatch all over again, but with Marvel characters. And I think that was the cool one is, as someone who was big on Overwatch in 2015, who was 17, and they kind of died off of like, I'm good on that, I'm moving on. This was a nice

shot in the arm of like, I didn't think I was ever going to be interested in Overwatch again like that until I played this last week where I was like, oh, I would play this again tomorrow night or the next night. Like, I'm interested in returning to this because I think it does a good job of it is Overwatch at its core, but it has those Marvel characters that you know and love from the MCU that we've been caught up

in for the past decade. And now you want to play a storm. You want to see what Loki can do. You want to see all these guys and gal's abilities and be able to put them to use. And they do a really good job at making it all feel very balanced, but also at the same time being able to be strategic with team balancing of, hey, Tim, did you know that Punisher and Rock Raccoon can do hero team-up moves. So if you pick Rocket, I'll pick Punisher, and you can get on my back and give me unlimited ammo as I blast the competition, right?

Or, hey, you can play as Groot as the tank. I'll be Rocket, the healer, jump on your back, and you can get unlimited healing going on. Are those kind of team attacks based on just specific characters or classes? Characters. So it's all about characters teaming up with one another. So you'll see that every single time you go into the character select menu, it will be like, blessing pick Dr. Strange.

hey he's got cool team up abilities with Iron Man or whoever and so you'll be mindful of Hey do I want to pick that or do I just want to be the hero that I like playing as I had a lot of love for Storm which was awesome I really enjoyed Iron Man which we're seeing on the screen right now but yeah blessing I I I had a blast I want to get you involved because I know you played and you really liked it too I mean I'm I echo everything that you're saying I'm surprised by how much fun I had you know I was excited for the idea because I'm like you right where launch Overwatch for me is some of the most fun I've had in a video game And over time, as we've moved on into Overwatch, too,

I've started to feel myself stray away from Overwatch. This is, I'm not as excited about it anymore. And Marvel rivals playing it just for the weekend reminded me of playing launch Overwatch. I feel like we should also preface with, we didn't sign the thing that says that we can't, like, give our truth or like we can't give negative reviews or anything. I know that was circulating around in the news last week as these previews went out.

But yeah, like playing it, I was surprised by how fresh it felt. It is the weird thing where we are teetering, the line of, all right, you're taking inspiration from Overwatch, but some of this also just feels straight up ripped from Overwatch in a way. But the ripped stuff does work. You know,

I'm playing a Star Lord. And Star Lord's pistols or his weapons feel exactly like Tracer's guns. And it like has the exact same cadence, the exact same type of effect. But then like some of his other abilities are less Tracea-like. And so it's kind of like they're mixing

and matching between different characters. Yeah, it's really, I think that's like the cool driving factor of you instantly understand, right? Like a lot of these characters like Blessing Sedway, It's like, oh, that's just that guy's move from Overwatch and they put it on him. Or they're mixing all this.

But every single one of these characters you could play, Hulk, for example, it's just like Diva in Overwatch. Where Diva gets the meck and becomes the big tank. But if you destroy the tank, she pops out. Now Hulk just becomes Bruce Banner. And he's this puny little guy shooting a small radioactive pistol until he becomes Hulk again. And it's funny because they have Penny Parker in this game. Like Penny Parker, you look at that character and you're like, oh, this is going to be Diva. But they took that ability, turned that into Hulk.

And Penny Parker plays nothing like a Diva type character. Yeah. Interesting. Do you feel like they're in this, at least the small amount you guys played, like, they're trying to make like concrete differences from Overwatch? Like what are those differences, would you say? I mean, it's like Mike mentioned, the synergy stuff where it is, you can bounce off of other characters depending on like the specific characters you use.

That stuff. I mean, that feels fresh. That feels new. It being third person instead of first person is also an interesting difference. You know, I think you can, for me, I imagine that that is because they want you to see the heroes. That is a big thing with Overwatch where you got these skins, you got these. mostly got all this stuff, right?

But most of the time you're in first person, so you're not seeing the aesthetic of the character. Because these are Marvel characters, and people have a connection already. People have these preconceived notions of, I want to be Storm, I want to be Iron Man, I want to be Star-Lode, or whoever it is. I think that might be why they're going for the third person,

and it works pretty well. It doesn't... It works really well. It's surprising how much it doesn't feel... It doesn't feel that different being third person. Like, it works pretty well. And also, it allows you, I think, to have a bit more variation of options

in terms of how you want to get around. Because Iron Man is flying all over the place, right? Iron Man legit has a move where he does like almost like the anthem style, like jet forward and then he'll stop or whatever. You can like kind of sway left and right as you're flying around. But then Spider-Man has like a swing mechanic where you can kind of swing. And so I imagine-s-good. Yeah.

Better than Marvel Avengers. Oh, okay. Shout out. Yeah. I think that stuff is helped by it being third person instead of first person. I think that's another big one too. But then also I think there's just an energy here that, again, it's taking a lot of inspiration from overall.

Overwatch, but stylistically, I like it a lot. It feels fresh for even a Marvel thing. And I think nowadays when a Marvel video game gets announced, I'm expecting, okay, well, you're going to get characters that remind me of the MCU version of these characters or some other version I've seen before. So much of the characters in Marvel rivals, I'm like, oh, this, like, Loki, I'm like, this is nothing like the Loki that I know, which excites me, right? Like, this is nothing like the, you know, Penny Parker I know from the Spider-Verous movie,

right? But even this Penny Parker, I'm like, all right, cool. they're adding fresh things, they're adding a fresh style to these characters, and it all comes together really nicely. I like it, I very much like it aesthetically. Aesthetically, I'm looking at the maps and locations, I love that it's actual Marvel locations that they're at. From playing what you have, have you noticed, like,

are there a lot of fun Easter eggs? And then are there things really, oh, these feel like distinct fun areas to be in? Yeah, they all feel very distinct and very cool of like Marvel feelings. There's one map that felt more like a city, like maybe a futuristic Spider-Man that definitely had like, if you were to go around the science has a lot of cool Easter eggs in it.

This one being, what do they call the Asgard type vibe? You're not getting crazy like billboards up and everything, but it's super cool. And it has many destructible environments. I want to give it a good and bad. I love the destructible environments from bridges to maybe like some kind of like

overwatch paddy or overtop patios that you can be on that will fall down if people shoot at it. The issue is like there's this weird respond to it of like it kind of comes back almost immediately. So you don't really feel it of like, hey, we took down that bridge. That's a cool tactical advantage for us for maybe 30 seconds to a minute. It seems to come back a little too fast for my liking.

So if you were the person on that bridge, right, you're kind of on it. And then all of a sudden it gets this weird moment of like, well, we're trying to rebuild the bridge. So you're going to get shot up in the air. And now you're back on top of it. And it's like, oh, you could have just let that bridge stay down for a little bit longer. Tyler's new group says all the maps are combinations of two places

because it's supposed to be an incursion type thing going on. So a little bit of a PlayStation All-Stars Battle Royale type situation. Did you guys notice that? Does that feel very distinct in the levels? I mean, it wasn't something that I noticed right away. I'm sure now that I know that, once I go back, I'm sure I'm going to be like, oh, snap, all right, I can see it. But yeah, like, for me, I also, I played for maybe only a couple hours. And so I didn't get like a deep dive, deep dive here.

But, like, immediately I was just, the thing that I got was more so. I think the incursion stuff is very apparent. the push the payload objectives were very much oh yeah you're pushing oh it was like one of the Spider-verse Spider-Man characters they had to like get to the thing to then get to

another universe and when you get to the end of the stage everything kind of breaks open in that way they're playing a lot with that stuff and so yeah like I but I wasn't one to pay attention to like oh yeah the stage is Asgard meets you know whatever it is. For Marvel nerds like you Tim you'll see that's right like Bletting said

I didn't see I don't have the eye for that I can see the details of like Touchstones I know, but no, if you really knew Marvel, you'd probably see that. They've done a good blend as well. We've seen it in the chat of like combat is not only just range. It's also melee. A lot of melee. Was very interesting.

I didn't love the melee. Like playing as Peter Parker Spider-Man, the melee just feels a little wonky for me. But maybe that's because you play so much Overwatch and all these first-person shooters. It's like odd to be that up close and personal. But man, I'll tell you what, this girl, magic with a K, holy cow. When she starts swinging that sword at, you've been a kid out of there because she's teleporting all over the place that that's a cool character would you believe mike that ania taylor joy played her in a movie oh fuck yeah you're right

really mutants okay didn't see that i forgot i did not know that oh yeah they also i mean the cool part about this right is you have such a big diverse roster you can pull from blessing or he looked at me is like yo we got to get cyclops dude that's my thing is i'm surprised i think the character choices for the roster are pretty inspired like you have it is you're getting the mutants in here You're getting like the traditional Marvel characters that we know. But then, yeah, like you have Penny Parker as like a tank character. You have Magneto as a tank character, which is inspired. I'm like, oh, yeah, I guess that makes sense with what his move set is.

The characters that I gravitated towards, it's funny. I tried out. I immediately went to my favorite characters, which were Spider-Man and Black Panther. Yeah. And I was like, no, I don't like the way they play. And the characters I gravitated towards were Star Lord, who like my, again, I'm more into MCU than like Marvel Comics, right? And so, like, the Star Lord I know is from the movies, and I fucking hate that guy.

Like, I like him just as, like, you know, overall how they use him in the movies. But, like, Star Lord has never been my favorite character. But he plays great in the game. And I'm like, okay, this is what I'm going to stick with. And then also Punisher. Like, Punisher. And I think that comes back to the melee versus long-range thing where Punisher has, like, his traditional, like, automatic weapon, but then we'll switch to a shotgun when you need to.

And then also his ultimate is the Bastion style. I'm going to, like, lock in on a machine gun, sit here, and then fucking take everybody out. And I just really like that as far as playstyle. And yeah, I think there's so much potential you can, you have here with adding in new characters. Because, yeah, I'd love to see Cyclops. Yeah. I'd love to see them maybe even dig deeper into the X-Men roster, like a night crawler or something and see what you can do with that.

And then the costumes as well. I mean, you're going to have a killer store front. Like they had Storm X-Men 97 edition. I was like, oh, yeah. Oh, they do? I'm about to get that. And, you know, of course, it's going to have your traditional micro-transaction tropes, right? There's a battle pass.

There is the store. cool part was is when we were playing as tempted as I was to buy that Storm outfit. If you just played through the battle pass, you would earn enough credits pretty quickly to buy one outfit. So I was like, oh, that's nice. Especially when this alpha beta, you don't know what's

going to carry over, you don't know where you're at. It's like, that was nice to get that and do see it. Right? I think that's the potential, right? It's like, Overwatch characters, a lot of people have come to love, but now with Marvel, you get a new generation of people who are like, I love Marvel games, I love Marvel characters. You give me Rocky Rack,

and seven different outfits, yeah, we're about to spend money. And you know, the sky's the limit with, I mean, I imagine maybe the first characters we see, Deadpool Wolverine, right? Like, time that out. I don't know when this is officially going to come out for everybody. I imagine that maybe me and Mike were talking about a little bit. I think Mike mentioned like December, like end of the year. I'm hoping, yeah, I'm hoping that this year, because it's polished.

It feels very polished. There's a thing. This feels good. So talking about that in terms of the polish, do you feel like there's a lot of characters that are O.P. or underpowered? Like, anything that comes to mind immediately when playing this? When I look at the roster, Magic was pretty wild to see her move. But I felt like everybody was pretty balanced in the time that I was like,

there was never a moment where I was like, man, this person is too strong. It felt like, hey, when you, just like Overwatch, if you work as a team, you will overcome your opponents by playing the right way. If it's, hey, blessing just ran in, died. Okay, now Tim ran in and died. Me and Roger now running, you're going to lose. It is a team-based game. And I think that's the big thing.

It's like, you always have to work together if you don't. then you won't overcome that. People in chat are also mentioning that they said they're launching in 2025. But I imagine that we're going to get open beta. I drafted that. It did not do any research. Well, you know,

you just got to believe, you know what I mean, he's got to hope and believe. And the fantasy credit, and if we look down, I'm killing it. Jumping in here where we're talking about, like this very clearly seems to be an Overwatch clone.

And like, you guys are talking about it as if that is a good thing. Taking that even further, though, like, do you think that this game, like, has the stuff?

Like, playing it? Obviously, it's very early. You guys seem into it. But, that this is going to be a game of consequence at the end of the day? Or is this going to be another one of those? Hey, it's a fun week and then no one's really going to think about it again

except for the hardcore fan base. I think it has the potential to be a game of consequence. That's awesome. I think it has that polish is there. I think the IP obviously is there and how they're using the IP feels like the right use of it. You know, I think when you're talking about the things that are strong about Overwatch, right? It is the gameplay, it's the balancing, it's the modes and all that stuff. But it is also just the personality of those characters. The first time I played Overwatch, I was like, man, I really vibe with the characters and the stories that they're building, even though there wasn't even a story mode. Even though I'm getting that stuff to be like, you know, these two-minute short films that they're uploading to YouTube, I felt that

off of Overwatch. Marvel rivals so far, I think, is really putting forward that potential. And they just have the power of Marvel behind them. And so people already identify with Spider-Man. People already identify with these characters. I think, again, when we talk about the drops, yeah, like, year one, drop a Wolverine character. Year two, drop Deadpool, year three, drop, you know, Cyclops, there's so much potential with that stuff. So yeah, like I think there's something there. I think the big thing is balancing.

You know, Roger was asking about OP characters. And yeah, I think I go back to what Mike was mentioning earlier as far as melee versus long range and making sure that there's like a balance between that stuff and giving people more reason to want to be open into melee combat because, yeah, that stuff didn't feel as right to me.

And I will say I also saw a video going around on, I think it was TikTok, of like somebody playing Dr. Strange and Dr. Strange has like the portal ability and they went to like the opposite teams spot area did a portal and then made a second portal that's like leading off of a cliff. That can't be real right? Because that like I also saw that TikTok video and it was phenomenal but like there's no way that's real. I don't yeah I don't I don't know that was like a all we're going to play in this as a piece of content kind of thing. But if that's the case obviously the game's early right like it's not out yet. But that might be things like that might be worth looking into. I think you do that through doing a lot of open beta.

Yeah. What are the teams? Is it? 3 v3, 4 v6. 6. 6. 6. 6. How do you feel about that? I like that. You know, Overwatch recently went to 5V5, which was fine. I don't think it's anything different to me, 5v 5. 5.6 v. 6 v. 6. It felt fun. I'm excited to play it with friends. I think it's the big one, right? It was like 6 friends is great. You can get people in there. 5.5, Overwatch didn't make a huge difference to me,

but I'm not that pro meta player who's like, oh, man, now only having one tank shifted the tides. Yeah. I'm really impressed with this game with the amount of characters they have, and also the amount of variation with the combinations of characters. Like, that seems like a lot to like balance and figure out. So to hear from you guys that it's like, oh, this character might be a little strong. This might be a little, it's like, it's something crazy.

It doesn't seem like there's like, oh shit. Like this game is fundamentally broken or anything like that. I will say the beta was only for a short amount of time. Sure. Right. Like, what was it, like 10 days or something like that. I feel like big imbalances like that are things that you might discover over the course of maybe a month of the game being out

and people really stress. And having way more people stress testing it than the amount of people that were playing it. So I think in future betas we're going to really see, all right, how balances this thing really and will this work. I mean, dude, it's wild to look at this and like everything that we've talked about because it really does kind of seem like a dream game where it's like, hey, imagine Overwatch but with Dr. Strange throwing portals and with Spider-Man swinging and with Storm like actually doing lightning and all this stuff. It's like, oh, my God. I can't believe we're here. What the fuck? Like when they announced, I'm like, oh, yeah, this sounds exactly like something I want in playing.

And I'm like, yeah, this is exactly something I want. And so looking forward to it. Very cool. One question, that level, doesn't that look a lot like an Overwatch level? Like, I... Oh, yeah. No, they're not hiding it. And I wonder if...

I wonder if that stuff changes in the final release where they're like, all right, we're close to the sun here. Let's maybe add some differences or whatever. But it's also part of the appeal. Yeah, it's interesting, right? Because we just played X-Define and they have a push mode as well. Like, all these games now are so similar in, like, the game modes that we have. And, yeah, the maps might look a little bit of the same.

but like they all followed very generic paths of like, hey, here's a push game mode, okay? That's going to follow a nice little snaking path. And then we're going to put things on the side of it. It's like, okay, well, like, Asgard's going to look like maybe, you know, the Greek map in Overwatch. And so you're going to get a lot of similarity. I mean, it's a stylized art style.

Yeah, it's push modes. And so there's only so much different that you can do between that in Overwatch. But it is, I think they're veering close. But we'll see how that goes. Of course, looking forward to the launch of that game. I'm also looking forward to pay for Marr. The 1,000-year door. Because only one person at this table has gone to play it so far, and that is, Tim.

And it's me, which is in some ways fortunate for me, because I get to play one of the best RPGs ever made. But unfortunate because I am the only one here that's played Paper Mario with a thousand-year-door before. Everybody was just busy. We're all doing a whole bunch of different things. I could not recommend this game more. I've been saying this for years. Thousand-Year Door is one of the most special of the Mario RPG and adjacent series, whether that is Super Mario RPG, the original on Super Nintendo,

which was remade last year. And I would also highly recommend to everybody at this table to give a shot, but also the Paper Mario series and the Mario and Luigi series, starting with Superstar Saga going all the way through to,

I mean, I guess it's been a while since we've gotten a new one of those, but there's been probably 10 or so Mario RPG games and the debate of what is the best one. There's not really a debate. It's a thousand year door.

I feel like Mario RPG is the second place there and there are people out there that would rock for that one. I know Matt Roerbeck is a huge fan of Mario RPG and he was tweeting out should I play this game? And the answer is a resounding yes.

This game is fantastic. It is so funny. It is gorgeous. It takes the paper Mario style kind of as far as I think it needs to go in terms of taking the kind of paper aesthetic and not leaning too hard into it being the gimmick of the game

more just using it as a look that every once in a while has like some type of fun mechanic of him turning into a paper airplane or playing with perspective a little bit. But I feel like in some of the more modern games like Origami King, it leans just a little too far into that stuff where it can be cool. But I kind of just feel like it gets in the way of why these games are actually good, which is very fun characters and a super engaging battle combat system where you are in classic Mario RPG fashion. it's turn-based, but you're timing your button presses to enhance your moves, and it is satisfying as hell. What's really cool about Thousand Your Door in particular is there is an audience system where every battle is on a stage and there's an audience that is watching you.

The better you do, the more audience is there. Every once in a while and they'll cheer you on and it kind of like hypes you up and you get buffs and bonuses. But in addition to that, sometimes members of the audience will come and attack you. So you have to like keep your eye on the audience to see what's going And like there's just a lot of fun engaging things that they constantly throw at you to keep the combat feeling super fresh where I feel like a lot of turn based RPGs. It's like, all right, cool. I've done this once.

I've done it a thousand times. I get it. Every battle here kind of like has a really fun vibe to it. Um, and it's hilarious. The, the writing in this game, uh, was fantastic back on GameCube and in 2024, it still holds up. Um, I would definitely just, I would recommend it to people. Like this is, uh, this is a easy recommendation. Full transparency.

I'm not going to score this one. I'm only about halfway through, but it stands as good as this game ever has been. In some ways, this is the definitive version, I would say. It is beautiful to look at all the enhancements they made for the Switch version,

mainly the aesthetics and looks of it. You can apply a badge that changes the music from the original GameCube version to the more modern Switch version. Honestly, I'm glowing about this thing, and I could not recommend it higher to people. Is there any thing that brings it down? Is there any complaints that you have?

Not really. I mean, I feel like the most nitpicky, like, complaint that I can come up with, and this is a very Tim thing, but I stand by it. There's something about the music and sound effects and all that stuff to me that, like, you can tell what amount of budget or what team Nintendo puts on their different projects. And this is not the A team. Like, the just sheer sound quality of the music and the instruments and all that stuff. Like this game, I feel like if it was given the more like, hey, we're going to do the fully orchestral, or at least some orchestral live instrument type stuff that they do for things like Mario Odyssey, Mario Galaxy, those big things. But they also do it for some random other projects like Star Fox assaults on GameCube fully orchestrated. And it really made the feel more important.

Sometimes I feel like the quality of the audio doesn't match the quality of the visuals in the game. And again, minor nitpick. It's still fantastic. It's just definitely an area that I'm like, I'm hearing this and I wish it was a little bit better. Chats bringing up the 30 FPS of it all. How do you feel about that? Was it noticeable at all?

So that's the thing. Great call pulling that out. It is 30 frames per second. And for a game that is kind of focused on you hitting buttons to a very specific timed thing, I think that they did a great job of whatever changes they made. It never got in the way of the gameplay. And it worked.

Anytime I was like three, two, I need to hit it. I always felt like it responded the way I needed it to. It is a bummer, though. I do think that it is something that is worth pointing out that, like, this game should be 60 frames per second. And it's not. So is it chugging at all or is there, no, no, no, no, no, just a small sound thing. It's more just like, I feel like it's, it's clearly not 60 frames per second.

But there's so much style to the game that I feel like that it, uh, it, it, it runs great. So it's like, it doesn't actually get in the way of the game. It's more of just like knowing that it could be. is a little bit of a letdown because the game is so enhanced visually otherwise. But yeah, but honestly it won't get in your way. I promise you that. I'm so fascinated by this game. I really want to play it and I'm trying to like open up the time in the next few weeks to get to it because like I'm this is the one that I feel like I've been waiting for a decade to play. I wasn't a GameCube kid, but I was an S64 kid so I played the first tape from Mario and then I would hear the tales of how good thousand year door is and even watching this trailer, I know it's probably just a very well-cut

trailer, but scene for scene, it seems like no matter what is happening, there's something crazy happening on screen, which I love, right? Like, I think the Mario world is so, like, open as far as the things that you can do with it, because it is so undefined. And I love that, I love the fact that Paper Mario seems to be the vertical of Mario RPGs that are like, yeah, let's fucking go crazy with it. Like, let's do weird shit. All of them are all three verticals, like, are wild in different ways, though.

I think what makes Paper Mario specifically, a thousand year door, specifically special is there's an edge to it that I feel we don't really get often in some of the other things. Like the, the hub world area is kind of this like, this port town that there's graffiti and there's like, like, uh, like the bad guys are kind of stealing from people. And it's like, it's just a little different than the traditional like, Bowser's here stealing the princess and all that stuff. And the flip of the Bowser peach characters and story in this game is phenomenal. Peach in this game is awesome. And like, I don't want to spoil anything for people, but like the direction that they take her.

and her story. Anytime we pop over to that part of the game, it's just like, oh man, I want to know more about this. And the cast of characters of your, uh, that you,

you get as your party members are so fun, so weird. Um, but yeah, it's just, it's a damn good time. And like it's, it doesn't overstay.

It's welcome either. I feel like it's paced really well. There's a couple sections of the game, uh, even that I've played so far that I remember not loving in the first. And I don't necessarily love here either. Um, but they go by so.

quickly that it's definitely not going to get in your way of enjoying it. I want to give a shout out to Mara in the Super Chats that says, shout out to Vivian being canonically trans, huge W. Yeah, I saw that was a change they made, I don't know in what version or whatever, but then in this version they changed it back. Yeah, there was some localization things where they changed that in the original release, but yep, they fixed it now, which is very, very, very cool. Do you think, is this a type of remake that you think Nintendo is going to continue to do?

Like, are there games left that can get the same kind of treatment? Because this seems to be the peak, hey, you mentioned this. the A team versus the B team or whatever it is, right? But I think for the most part, in terms of what you want out of a Paper Mario remake, they've done it. Oh, yeah. A team and B team was specifically about the sound. This is not a B team in any way when it comes to what this game remake is. This is a fantastic remake of an amazing GameCube game of how do we take this and just make it even better for the Switch?

The answer is this. And Mario RPG last year, the same exact thing. Like I do think that putting the two of them out so close to each other is a, a peculiar choice. And I personally, the reason I haven't even beat this one yet is I'm a little Mario RPGed out having just played through

Mario RPG. So I think that that's a little bit weird, but the four horsemen, and if these are the horsemen, we're in a very good place. I do think Nintendo is going to continue to do this. It reminds me a lot of the Mario, Metroid Prime remaster that came out where it's like, hey, it is just

the same game. It's just better. And I think they're going to continue. They have such a deep library of games that they can go back to. Awesome. But we're going to move on and talk about ex-defiant. But before we do, I want to tell you about patreon.com slash kind of funny and YouTube.com slash kind of funny games where you can go and get the kind of funny membership, which allows you to get shows ad free. And speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.

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And we're back. And Mike, I'm bringing it back to me and me. Oh man, we're back again to talk more shooter action. I love that. Yeah, dude. We got to play ex-defiant. The game is out right now for everybody, free to play. We did a stream yesterday of us playing the game,

but then also I went home and I started playing again, after midnight. After I got off the stream, I was like midnight. I was like, you know what, man, I can play some ex-difiant right now. Mike, you're- Tim, the game is out. The game is out. I know you're wondering. I know you're running.

The game is out. Is it on Steam? No. Oh, no. Not too happy with that. Oh, sorry about that. Not so happy with that. I thought a big shooter would be on Steam, my bad.

You would think a free-to-play shooter that's everywhere that you want to have the biggest player base for, you would put it on the largest PC platform. I mean, their player bases are big already. The servers are having issues yesterday. It's crazy. We weren't able to get into games. Put that on Steam.

Mike, you're one of the FPS bros in my life. Yep. How are you feeling about Exdifiant after day one? You know what? We just talked about Marvel Rivals, and I think the biggest thing I can say about Ex-Difient right here in Marvel Rivals is I left my time playing Marvel Rivals,

wanting to play more, I left X Defiant being like, okay, cool, that's enough, right? Like, there's no desire for me to turn this game back on anytime soon. If it's to play with Bless or an Andy or some of the Gibroni boys in my life, I'll probably play it for a night. But, like, honestly and truly, I had my feeling. There's no desire to go back to this at this time for me. But I am excited to talk about it because there is some positives I do want to highlight, right?

I think me saying that I don't want to deter people because there's some cool stuff in this, but there is some negatives where I'm like, eh, You didn't hit the mark Ubisoft Let's talk about it, bless What did you like? What did you not like? I mean, I liked it

I had a fun time It's hard for me to pinpoint Why it's doing it for me though Right? And I think maybe part of it is that It feels like it's almost Throwing back to an older FPS type game You know, like it feels almost like

An early PS4 Late PS3 type of first person shooter In a way of how like Simple it is I pick up the recent call of duties And I am like man The Fidelity is here Like, man, like this is a fucking, like, I'm playing a movie right now with how good these games look and sound.

X-Difying, it feels just way simpler in a way that kind of just brings me back. It feels like I am playing a free-to-play first-person shooter in that way. And I think that's not going to be to its benefit, I think, in the overall case of things, right? I don't know how I can recommend X-Difine over other shooters, aside from the fact of, like, yo, if you're just in the mood to play a first-person shooter and you're like, you don't know what to play, I think X-Difine does get the job done. I think the modes are fun. I think the gumplay is fun. Like that's the thing is I go through all the all the checkpoints here. I'm like, yeah, gameplay, fun.

Character classes. All right, cool. You got all the stuff that you expect. I think there's a bit of flare there with the crossover aspect of it and you have bringing in these different Ubisoft games. I also think there's potential there. How big is the potential because you're working with just the Ubisoft library of games? I don't know, right?

It is the opposite where we talk about Marvel rivals, where I can see, I can see a five-year plan for Marvel rivals. Whereas for X-Fi, and I'm like, all right, you could add, I guess, another Rainbow Sixth. Prince of Persia. You could add maybe Assassin's Creed class here and there? But at a certain point, is that bringing people in? Is that like, you know, when you get six months down the line and the audience is starting to dissipate a little bit, is that going to be the big revival that the game needs?

Who knows? You know, maybe that could be in the gameplay as well. Maybe you could add more modes. Maybe you could add more maps. Maybe you could add more stuff like that, more different types of guns and stuff. But yeah, like I'm not excited about X-Difiant as a live service FPS game that I'm going to play for the rest of the year. But I am excited about it just in like the meantime, right? For like the right now where I talked to you, Mike, as we're playing yesterday, of man, I'm kind of in the move for first person, the competitive first-person shooters right now.

And it was getting the job done, right? That's kind of where I'm coming out with it. Do you think that that is getting the job done for you because you're not necessarily like a call duty person? You know what I mean? Like you don't necessarily come in with the call. Is this like the first time that you've like hopped in a FPS in a while? Yes. Yeah, I think I kind of took a break there.

Like when Halo Infant came out, I was super big into Halo Infant for maybe two months. And then before that, like I had my big moments of playing Overwatch. I had moments of playing Rainbow Six Siege as well. It has been a while for me. Yeah. So I think picking this up, it is bringing me back where I'm like, oh yeah, this is this feels fresh. This feels like I, it's a fun way to get back into this kind of game where I don't feel. I feel like call of duty is just too.

hardcore for me right now. It's tough for me to jump into war zone. I am not in a battle real mood. I guess that's another big thing is I'm just not in a battle royale mood. And so this being the focus on the arena modes, you know, capture that type of style of gameplay, I think that is

a big part of what's bringing me in as well. Yeah, I think Sancho West said it so well with us yesterday when we were playing it. It's like that double A first person shooter, right? You have that call of duty. And Jack can help me. There was a couple years ago when we had a medal of honor or like one of those games that came back and was like,

we're going to try to compete with Call of Duty. It's like, oh, you're kind of double, you're double A and it doesn't feel quite right, you know? And so my positives and negatives here is like, yeah, this is a team arena shooter, right? And it has hero classes almost, but a lot of them, to me, didn't feel like they mattered.

I think we're going to find the two character classes that mean the most and that's what people are going to do. And I think that is the one with the healing. And there is another one that goes invisible. But I find a lot of the other. other ones, their abilities, their ultimates just didn't really hit or matter during the moment to moment gameplay

and I worry that we're just kind of kind of lose sight of, hey, we got these cool factions and we're making characters inside of each faction that you know from Ubisoft and we want you to play as them as opposed to like, hey, we're just going to play as these two characters all the time. On the positive sides,

I really liked the maps. I think it is cool just like we brought up with Marvel rivals of like jumping into maps that like have that feel of the division, have that feel of Splinter's Cell. You're like, oh man, this, this is like a far cry world that I could definitely see. And so the maps are big positive. Again, the factions are cool and all, but I just don't vibe with that. Gunplay is good, not great, but it's good, right? It feels fine. Movement feels half a step slow. It's not as quick as I would want it to be. I'd feel always

just a little bit slower. It's cool to grab that one shot, hit scan sniper rifle and feel like Andy Cortez, right? Like, there's some positives here with some of the guns where it's like, oh, man, this is fun as can be and I'm enjoying that where I feel like I'm quick scoping and locking on to people like that. Game modes, the issue, of course, jumping in on day one on launch is it's just a mess server-wise. The things are melting. You can't get into a game.

We were able to invite people pretty quickly, and then we locked in with, like, domination. Like I said, there's an escort here where you can play that. There's a new mode called Hot Shot, which we didn't get the, try, but I am interested in seeing that. But yeah, this one just left me wanting a little more, but I think that's the issue when you step into the team arena shooter is you already have

the call of duties and the halos running that, and it's tough to stand out. When we talk about the hero based team arena shooter, like Overwatch, they kind of made their own area and made it their own. And so that's why Marvel rivals calls to me a little bit more when I have call of duty

at home right now that is firing on all cylinders and I'm leveling up guns. then play into a different video game, which is called Duty Ward Zone, and that's kind of where you spend your life in time. I think this game has the potential if a bunch of streamers get on it, if they're able to make the right moves

moving forward with seasons and content. But that's a lot to ask when we've seen this happen before. Do you think we get to that place with it down the line where it is exciting you and exciting the world in terms of what it's able to build up to? Because we talk about Ubisoft recently having the games that it feels like they put out something they abandoned, right?

Things like HyperScape, things like roller champions and other games, things like Rainbow Six Extraction, which I keep forgetting came out and we played it. But it feels that they'll put out these games that are meant to be these life services things, but then they'll move on from it. Recently, there's the news that they canceled Division Heartland and I think like another game as well

because they wanted to focus on, or no, I think it was just Division Heartland because they wanted to focus on this, and maybe another game. But with that, right, it seems like there's a dedication there and they've been working on this for a while. I remember playing a version of this game

like in 2021 or something like that. And then last year, there was like another beta that they did. And now we're finally here where the game is out for everybody free to play. There's a dedication here that feels like Ubisoft wants to support it more so than they have some of their other recent ventures. Yeah, I feel like they're at the right moment right now. And they have the opportunity for sure. Like, don't get me wrong. If you jump into this, you're probably going to have a good time.

The question will be, will you return week after week, you know, day after day. Like, we're all trying to fight for your time. And that's a tough thing to do. You're at a good moment right now in the middle of summer. where Ubisoft forward, the big E3 world, like great time to promote this game, maybe show off some new content to get everybody involved because we know the big dog call of duty

is looming right around the corner. So if I was in this office, I'd be saying, how do we capture this audience right now for the next six months and really drive this home as something you've got to play? My worry is, we've seen this team before with this company.

It just doesn't seem like they have it fully figured out when it comes to these live service games. I mean, they set the world a, a blaze with Hyperscape. And it just fell off the face of the planet. Everybody and their mother wanted to play HyperScape. They found a Battle Royale that brought

something new and different to the table with the speed and the quick reactions. And I think they had that. They captured that moment, which very rarely games nowadays do where it's like, oh my God, everybody's talking about this and wants to play this. And then it just kind of fell off the cliff. And I don't know if that was the longevity

of the game of we didn't have the vision. I don't know if it was just the skill of it all. That game required a whole lot of like FPS movement that not many people have in their arsenal, right? But it was something unique and different that Ubisoft hasn't had in quite some time. I think the lead up to HyperScape had that. But I feel like a week after HyperScape came out, I couldn't find people that were playing it and talking about it in that way. That said, though, like I think Rainbow Six Siege is the example of Ubisoft sticking with a FPS live service type game. That's true.

And really fucking nailing it, right? It launched. It had like a fine. launch or whatever, but it wasn't like, you didn't catch the world on fire or whatever. But then years later, we're talking about Rainbow Six Seed as being one of the mainstays, one of the things that everybody's talking about. I imagine they're looking for another one of those, and I don't think X-Fi is going to be another Rainbow Six Siege, but I wonder if they look at that, if they can look at that

as the model. Hey, we nailed it here. Let's stick with it. Let's continue to actually make content for it and make exciting content for it. And if any Ubisoft live service thing has the setup to have a pretty good one of those, it is the thing that's the crossover game where you're going to have all these different featured IP in there. This should be the one that they treat in that way.

I think the question is, will they? Yeah, it doesn't seem like the team arena shooters are the zeitgeist, right? You talk about the hardcore Valerance and Rainbow Sixes of the world. They're kind of their own lane. You talk about Overwatch is its own unique thing, battle royals and extraction shooters. You just don't get that big hype for a team-based arena game right now, which is just 4V4, 5. 5-5, same mode, same game

all the time, right? You have the call duty leagues of the world where it's like, people play that and the general audience gets excited, but they burn out on that because it is so samey. I think that's what leads to extraction shooters being fun of. It's different every time you go. The war zones of the world, the apex is the battle royals of

every drop is unique, right? And then you make your own path of, hey, we're Valerant and it's going to be like step for step for beat very difficult, and you've got to work as a team. I think that's why Rainbow Six Seeds has made it this far, for sure and then Overwatch is its own unique beast. But a game like this is always tough to sell of like, how do you keep the longevity going? Yeah, I think that Ubisoft is trying to see this as

being their potentially new For Honor, like a game that's just quietly in the background doing well. I just don't see this as like visually appealing enough or different enough to warrant that success, right? Like For Honor is just such a unique type of video game that like it created that cult following. I just, I just, I just don't see that. Because I see it being yeah, like that For Honor or even a Brawlahala. Yeah. Where from like the outside looking in, you're like, who's playing that? But then there's like a small fan base.

Brawala is like a unique situation, right? There's not really that many, you know, Smash Brothers clones that are free to play, right? And like, For Honor is for Honor. Here it's like, oh, we have like a dime a dozen. There's a million of these types of games, right? So it's like I understand what they're trying to go for, but like looking at it. I'm like, I don't think this is going to succeed. Roger, I want to get you off the bench.

Oh, finally. Let's talk about Crow Country. Both you and Tim have played it. Have you guys beat it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. Oh, tell me about it. Who wants to start? Go, Raj.

Yeah, Crow Country is a throwback, uh, horror game, survival horror game. Uh, Resident Evil like is kind of the idea. PS1 graphics is kind of the art style that they're going for. Uh, very puzzle heavy. That's like kind of the, my main takeaway from my experience, right? Like, there's a lot of horror and there's a lot of scary and shooting things, but like, you can just kind of ignore all that and just kind of focus on the puzzles mostly,

at least in my experience. Have you played Reson Evil? on the place. No, I've never played the original one. That's exactly what those games are. Gotcha, yeah, so you can give me the kind of like history lesson there for me. So this is like my first time playing like an OG

Resident Evil type thing. I've only played seven, eight. Those are the only Resident Evil games I played in the two remake. But yeah, no, it's, I would describe this game as just a really good time. I would give this a 7.5. I had a good time. I don't think there's any negatives necessarily

that I have, like super like, oh my God, they did this thing wrong or anything. I just, it was always a good experience and it never got to the great experience, but I was very happy with the time that I spent with it, right? This is a game that's made by two people. It's a super impressive video game.

Same team that made snipper clips. No, you! That's awesome. The Switch launch title. Yeah, that was amazing. But yeah, it's, it scratched that itch for me of I wanted to play a Resident Evil like game this year. I don't think we're going to get a Resident Evil 9 this year.

So I was like, okay, I'm going to check this out. It was at, I believe, Dave's. It was a huge hit. It impressed. Yeah, a lot of people looked at that. Yeah, it was like a massive line. So I was like, I got to check that out. When I saw the reviews came out a few weeks ago, I was like blown away.

I was like, I can't believe this game is out. Let me try it out. And yeah, I finished it within two days. It was a, I think, four hour experience, three hour experience for me. Yeah, super short. Four to five hour experience for this, depending on how much you want to do, which I think is the perfect time frame. In and out. Yeah, absolutely.

And the thing that I loved about this is that I was expecting this to kind of be a gimmick video game, right? Where it's like, oh, it looks like a PS1 game. Like, we get a lot of those. It looks cool, but like, what's the substance here? A lot of substance. the story was intriguing. And once we got to the ending, I was like, wow, shit. I was like, Colin Leander, like, Leander, this thing happened.

And this thing happened. Like a really great conclusion. I think in the middle it does kind of like, it's like, okay, we're still doing this. Oh shit, I got to figure out this puzzle. And it's not a great game, at least for me, of like, putting it down and picking it back up, really hard because the way that the puzzles are, and you can give me the history lesson on this, the way the puzzles are kind of created in this game is that it's not like linear, right?

Like, so you would find a clue for a puzzle that's like way deeper in the game. and you kind of have to keep tabs of like, oh, this wall told me to do this thing and oh, that connects to this thing. So, like, once you put the controller down, you come back literally a day later, you kind of look at it and you're like, I don't even know what I was doing,

where was I? Where do I have to go? So I did, at the ending of the game, have to go to a guide to try to figure out what I was doing. But other than that, I just had a good time, a very good time.

So 7 out of 5. 7.5 out of 10. Can I could not agree with every single thing Roger said more. I would also give Crow Country a 7.5 out of 10 here. kind of funny. I thought that this was awesome.

The way that they kind of nailed what they were going for, which is obviously a nostalgia play, but also what if we made a Resident Evil PS1 style game that plays the way you remember it as opposed to what it actually played like while still having a lot of the elements that make those games memorable and special. And taking the more modern vibe of like,

okay, but what didn't we like about those games? Like, obviously there's such a style to them that were nostalgic for this. pre-rendered background look, but it was always a bummer you couldn't control the camera. Well, guess what? You can here. And it makes the whole thing feel like you're in a very realized diorama. The design of the game, I think, is beautiful.

The one thing that bothers me is I don't like the look of the main character, Mara here. Like, there's just something about the outfit itself and like the look that I just not vibing with. I do get it, though, where they didn't want to go the more realistic type look. that they went for in Resonable one, two, and three. But instead, it's a bit more of the nostalgia of like a Final Fantasy 7 of going for like what Cloud

looked like in playing the original Final Fantasy 7, which also had that kind of pre-rendered background look. So mixing those things together, I get the call. I think it works for a lot of the different characters. And that obviously doesn't get in the way of my enjoyment in this game. There are some great things, too, of the survival horror

stuff. There's two modes in this game. You can either play through the normal way, or you can do what I think is called exploration mode, which there's no enemies and no combat. It's just figuring out the puzzles, which is funny because these games, like really when you break down Reson Evil, they're way more just puzzle-based.

It's more like a point-and-click adventure game just in a different look than you'd ever really expect. And taking Resident Evil 2 remake and 3 remake, even the recent ones, that's true too. Like all the puzzles are just very like, hey, here's a number that you're going to put on a lock somewhere to open up a thing like but then there's a lot of really engaging third person combat in between that that i kind of feel like makes every all that that stuff even if you don't like that genre

kind of feel worth doing to get to more fun combat stuff this game is leans full into you are just going around reading a note that will give you a hint to open up something else and there's fun there i do think that it's a little bit dated overall and i don't know that this is for everybody um but i do think that for people that have a nostalgia for those games at all, this game plays with that nostalgia perfectly. And the little details of you find like video game magazines,

like 90 style magazines around that have tips for you to read on where to go. That stuff's great. And some of the kind of bigger issues that I would have with those original games would be like, all right, I get that it's survival horror. But if I'm out of bullets

and I can't get any more bullets, this kind of sucks now. You know, Sometimes you get caught and it was a save that you're like, this isn't fun anymore. You could always go back to the very beginning and there's a car that just has infinitely responsible handgun. And they're very generous about giving you different anything. Like there's like these vending machines and trash cans that depending on if you're low on med kits or you're low on ammo, you go up to it and you open it up and it will give you the thing that you're lowest in. So it is it is very good about giving it to you. But again, you don't really necessarily need that.

even. Like you can, you can just kind of run around every single enemy if you really want to. Totally. And that's classic, Resident Evil style things. But I like that they give you the option, but you don't need to use it, which is nice. And then also, if you get just super stuck, there's this really cool system. It's like a fortune teller that it's limited. I think that you can only do it 10 times. But if you're stuck, you can go up to it and they can, they'll give you a hint that's context based on where you are in the game to tell you what you need to do. And it's not a hard riddle, but it's a bit more of a riddle. Yeah, there was one where I was very pissed off. I'm like,

I was one of these things. I'm like, that did not help me at all. I knew to do that. But yeah, there's a lot going there and I'm right there with Raj where like from the beginning of the game, I mean, let's just start off with this. The setting is an abandoned amusement park. I don't think that there's a cooler setting for a game or a horror game than an abandoned amusement park and they lean

so into that in all the right ways. I feel the beginning and end of the game are fantastic. It does drag just a little bit towards like two thirds through where I'm like, oh, we're doing this. Okay. But it's not bad. It's just kind of like oh, it doesn't kind of reach the highs. But again,

whole experience, four to five hours. Like, I totally think that it's worth playing. If you are at all interested in the original Resident Evil games on PlayStation, or if you just are like, yo, this game looks really cool, you should give it a shot. It's available pretty much everywhere as well. Yeah, no, it did feel a little weird playing the game on Xbox, seeing like the Xbox buttons or whatever. I'm like, this would be, this is a perfect PlayStation game to like fully go back in a...

I played on Steam deck. Oh, smart. Yeah. But a, uh, the one thing about like the two-thirds into the game, the thing that did frustrate me is that they start doing like environmental. things where like, you know, things are on the floor and then you walk into it and it explodes or whatever. I'm just, I'm just running into these things because it's like

the, you know, the way that the camera is and everything. And it's just, it gets a little bullshity towards that part, I feel like, where it's like, okay, we're really getting towards the end of our rope here with what this game is. But yeah, it comes together at the ending. Yeah. So, yeah. Yeah. And so one thing where they kind of like help you out in terms of like, oh, if you need more ammo,

you can do this or there's the fortune teller thing. One system that I really wish was improved in this, that I, I, I'm a little baffled by is the lack of a, hey, I read this note. I can just open up my menu and see what the note said. At any save room, it functions very much like the rest of evil,

where there are save rooms, anywhere there's a fireplace. You can save your game. When you go in there, there's a lot of ammo you can get. There's like a whole bunch of, there's like a binder you essentially can open that has any note or letter that you've read

throughout the entire game there. So you can always go back. And there's enough save rooms that, like, you can always get to one to refer back if you're like, oh, I found this lock or a phone that I need to input a number into or whatever, I know that I have

a letter that I saw a number that I haven't used yet. It's probably going to be that. That having to go to the save room, it's not fun. It just kind of feels like it's getting its own way. Like they clearly knew that this was going to be an issue by having them in the save room. I kind of just wish you had that in the menu.

It would have just sped things up in a way that I think would have enhanced the name. Or being able to like mark the ones that you have used, right? Like, because there's so many that are like, it gets confusing of like, did I use this one? What number is?

this for? Like, just being able to be like, yes, I use that number. I'm good. I'm good. I think this is a really good, like, start to a franchise. Like, if they wanted to continue to do this, like, they're going to kill. And, like, the fact that this is their first for away into something like this. And it feels so polished.

It feels like a game that they've been working on for a long time. Again, two people, which is insane. Yeah, and I'm very excited for what they do next. Yeah, it's special. Yeah. Well, that's cruel country. Now, Tim. Yeah.

Tell me about Thunder Ray. I got to talk about Thunder Ray, everybody. This one will be real quick, Ken. We gotta get a video with Thunder Ray because my God, this game is cool as hell. It is a punchout-like game. It's not new. It came out last September

on a bunch of different systems. I bought this and I never downloaded or played it. We saw it somewhere. I don't remember where it was, but we saw it in one of the showcases and we're like, oh, that looks cool. But I recently saw somebody post a video on Twitter of the gameplay and I saw it was out

and I was like, oh man, because I look at this and it seems like the type of game that we see, you know, like, oh, that's never going to actually be released, though. You know? Well, it's out, and it's pretty damn awesome. I would give it a 7 out of 10 on the kind of funny scale. I think it is good. And that is mainly because at the end of the day, it is style over substance.

I feel that the gameplay doesn't quite match up to the glory that is the way that this game looks and sounds. It is a punch out like in the sense that it is a boxing game, and it is very reaction-based of they are going to throw either. or left or right at you. You need to hit corresponding buttons to dodge the right way. If you mess up, you get punished. You got to wait for the right times to be able to punch back. There's more going on in terms of gameplay than there is in punchout where you have a lot more moves.

There's different meters that you eventually get to have special moves. And all that stuff's very cool. But I feel like the problem is with the style over substance is that the style of the game, the tells of the character's moves, which is the entire gameplay of the game, sometimes the animations are just so crazy that it doesn't feel accurate. Like it's kind of like you know what the tell is, but you hitting the buttons kind of doesn't feel as tight as it really needs to. Does not get in the way of my love for this game, though.

It is so fun, very short. You could beat this whole thing in like 40 minutes. And I would just highly recommend it to people because it is, that kind of sold me honestly. It is such an amazing 40 minutes of like, hey, this might not be the tightest game ever, but wow I'm having so much fun and this is just cool

they throw you right into it there's just some VO from your your trainer character just telling you like hey like you're the Rocky essentially and like hey the number one guy with the belts this uncle Sam dude let's see what goes on and then just boom you're right into the gameplay and then things get a little crazier

as you saw there only like seven or eight opponents so it's not that much there was some DLC that came out as well called a Thunderray Origins and there's a package that you can get on Steam and I imagine on the other consoles as well where you just get all the content for like

$10. 18. Yeah, they're selling it for 15 bucks and then you can get the Origins bundle for 1867 so not bad at all. And it's just a lot of fun man and again I think that the style alone and just like seeing it all happen is just like such a joy. I can't wait to see more of this.

I feel like there's just so much love and like as cool as this looks they pulled it off. It is that cool. It's just as a game I don't think it is as tight as punch out or as replayable as some of the other things that I feel like if they had a bit more modes or a bit more like game

to it, but it's a great time and yeah, Thunder Ray, baby, let's go. It says retro, oh, retro like gameplay, okay, how many, how many bosses you really think? That's seven or eight? Yeah, because they all look super sick. They're all super sick. Holy cow. Each match

goes by in like three minutes. Wow. You know? Okay. There's different difficulty levels as well, but It's, it's very, very, very cool. And again, I think that it being a like 45 minute experience. I mean, I like seeing it and hearing you talk about it because it reminds me of like back in the day when you would go on new grounds or you'd go on like a flash game website and you would find like, you'd find something that's so impressive because it's like, oh yeah, obviously this game is taking inspiration from some console game, but they're adding in like a fucking flashy art style, but it's like really short and it's flash. I feel like this is, we've gotten to the point. We've been here for a while.

But this is an example of where we've gotten to in terms of what you can do with how the indie market is grown and like how, you know, you can put something up for 15 bucks on Steam and make it a $40 game and make it like a flashy version of punchout. And it's going to reach the people that really want to play it. I think that's that's fucking dope. Yeah. I also, I think this game started at $15. Okay. So it's like they launched a $15. Is it cheaper now?

I mean, I think there's 15 on Steam and then with a bundle it's 18. Oh, I see. So they launched this as being a $15 game, which I'm like, hey, that's great. Because like there's not much content here, but the content that is here is like, oh. Sounds worth 15. Yeah, I think it was a great time. Roger, switching gears. Switching gears.

I want to close out the show with your thoughts on Indica with a K. Indica with a K. Yeah, Indica is the game that kind of blew up in the last few weeks, which has been talked about as like an A-24 video game. 24 were to make a video game. It is a game where you play as a nun who has to deliver a letter in 19th century Russia. And yeah, she leaves the nunnery for the first time in a few years. And she has a voice in her head that is kind of like her devil, like her personal devil,

like her inner dark thoughts that are talking to her throughout the entire game. And it's a narrative experience. It's about two and a half hours at most. And the way that that would describe this game is very indulgent. Like it is, it is an art house video game, right? The very beginning of this game, you are living the life of a nun, almost in real time. Like you are, you have to, at one point, spend 15 minutes just filling up a bucket from a well, and then pouring it, and then walking over, and then filling it up and then pouring it.

And they really take their time and it's like, you do the thing where you're like, I get it, let's move on, but like that is part of it. And the game does move on very quickly after that. But yeah, it is a very indulgent video game that is really bizarre, and throughout it I was going between not hate, but I was like, oh, do I like this? Do I not like this? By the ending of it, I was like, no, this is a really great experience. And it was a story that I was moved by. And like, it rocked me a little bit. And I did not expect that at all. It has really great themes of religion, of course, but also like the way that we all manipulate religion for our own personal. gains. And it goes to a weird place where she is going on this journey with this person who is an outlaw and they're kind of like, you know, learning about each other and kind of the things that the reasons why they're on the run and it's kind of like a buddy cop type deal. But I was really impressed by this game, of course, visually, right? The game looks beautiful.

It's a small Russian team that actually left fled Russia during the war recently to finish this game, which is really incredible. It's a credible story. You should look it up. But it's a small little team that made this beautiful game and it's cinematic right like that's the best way I can describe it like there are some shots here was like wow I've never seen this in a video game period uh the way that they play with like there's a shot where it's like um I guess I don't how to describe it's like the um like there's like there's like a amount on on the person it's like the first person like you're trying to like I don't know how to describe ghost hunting yeah the ghost hunting look like you they do that a lot but they also just have

incredible shots where they play this this yes yeah where they play with that the Blair witch type thing the train kid right yes yeah yeah Yeah. Shout to the train kid. I hate him so much. He's so excited about these damn trains. But yeah, no, it plays with the camera. And also, the interesting thing about it, you can see that in the top left corner. What's going on with this?

So they have an interesting, like, pixel art, like interstitials in the game, where every time you pray, you get points. And the points are meaningless. But it's part of, like, the theme of the game. And they do have, like, full-on stopping of the game where it goes into, like, a pixel art style, like, to, like, tell her past and everything. This is not spoilers. This happens, like, when the first.

first few minutes of the game. So there is this juxtaposition between extraordinarily real and horrifying visuals to pixel art utopia. So that's the cool thing about it. And you guys had the conversation yesterday about Hellblade too, right? Of like, should this be a video game? Is this even like worth it playing?

Right? This might be a better movie, if anything. This is a video game and I'm happy it's a video game. Even though it takes so much from movies and other forms of art. Like it is worth it to play and it was made to be a video game. And yeah, by the time I finished it, I had a great time.

This is a 8 out of 10. My biggest negative here, which is suck so bad, because I feel like this would have been an 8, 5, maybe 9. The sound design is really bad in this game. Like, I had so many moments where like the smaller things, right,

when you're walking in snow, it's the same looping sound effect that the crunch, crunch. And there's no music really in the game, right? Because it's a, you know, it's supposed to be a realistic journey. So you're just walking around, just hear the same thing.

It's like, okay, I know I'm a video editor. I hear those things. I'm going to give that the, pass, but then, you know, there was constant lip-sinking issues with my PS5 copy, a version of the game. I don't know if this has been updated, but, yeah, I've been playing the game, and, like, there was

multiple cutscenes where two seconds of delay between everything they were talking and doing and the actual sound effects, and that was like, oof, that is really rough. And also, again, like, I understand that this is a Russian game and this is a dubbed version of the game, you know, in English, but

the sound mixing, and not the voice I think is good, but the sound mixing of it all, there are moments where I'm like, ooh, that sounds like they're on a Discord call. Like that sounds like this person was recorded in their home studio and it's, it's peaking, and this person is in a professional studio and it just does not match up. It's one of those things where it's like they put a lot of work into the visuals, but in a game like this, you need to put an equal amount in sound design. And I'm not usually the sound design person.

I don't usually notice that stuff. So when I'm noticing it, I'm like, oof, that is something that they need to go forward in the next game and really focus on equally. But other than that, this is, I think it's their first game. What an incredible swing. Like, this is, this is a special game for a lot of people. And I think especially people that I think have a lot of baggage with the religion will play

this game and be immensely, you know, moved by it. But the ending of it goes to a place. I'm like, fuck. That is crazy. And I think a lot of people use like the A24 of it all a lot. Like they're like, oh, this thing is like A24. Like, this means a spooky little weird game or weird experience. This truly is like an A24 experience.

And if 824 had a logo in the beginning, I'd be like, yeah, that's a solid first game. Huh. Yeah. That's awesome. You should try it out. Like, hearing about like the yellow religious themes and it being about people who have, like, grown up with that. That actually really tells me. I really want to try it out.

Yeah, it's really good. Well, that's been Indica. And this has been the kind of funny games cast, and that's been all, what we've been playing. Let us know in the comments below. Are you interested in any of those games? Are you going to play Indica? Are you going to play Thunder Ray? Are you going to play X Define or Crow Country?

Let us know. Great games. So many. So many. These are so freaking cool, man. And we're going to play some cool video games after this. I don't know what the games are because we're doing the real ass game. Nobody knows.

We're going to find out who's the best gamer. We'll see. It better not be surmount. I hope it's not surmount. Next defiant. Of course, this has been the 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 on podcast services around the globe.

If you love what we do, support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon or on YouTube. Get all of our shows ad free. Watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. So enjoy the stream after this. Catch today's KFGD on YouTube or on podcast services. And until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.