Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Marvel's Avengers Review (So Far) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 36

Episode Date: September 5, 2020

Tim, Greg, Blessing, Imran, and Andy discuss their thoughts on Marvel's Avengers so far, Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Guys, welcome back to the kind of funny games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes, joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. I've been saving this Busan coffee for this Avengers review, but you guys had a review move on. But now it's go time, Andy. How many times could I crush it now, Andy? Keep going. Just keep going. Crush it later.

If I crush it one continuously time, that's once. Yes, that's true. We have the nitro rifle joining us for a very rare kind of funny games cast appearance. How are you doing Andy Cortez? I'm doing great, Tim. Haven't eaten, but I'm doing all right. Well, you'll get there eventually. It's been a rough way here.

Kind of funny because Mulan came out and we're like, oh shit, we have to watch it, review it, and now Gamescast, but it's okay. You can go watch Mulan and Review 2020 edition over on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny. Check it out. Please, we need the views. We also have Mr. Okay Beast, Blessing at Aeo Ye Jr. Blessing, I saw your tweet. I saw me.

You sit here. You've been here what? Fucking nine months now. Mr. Professional host, Blessing, still fucking up your intro. I've never claimed to be professional once. I don't know why you would put that on me. Honestly, though, that's what makes you a professional is having enough experience to fuck

up your intros using your last place of employment in your info. Exactly. If you don't know what I'm referring to, go check out Blessings, Twitter. At Blessing Jr. Yeah. Game over Gregi. Blessing. Game over blessing, yeah. If you go there.

Basically, I was doing a video for a friend that was like, hey, like for our outlet, we're doing like a thing to get people to go vote and stuff. And so if you can record like a minute of you talking about why people should vote, that'd be awesome. And so I start recording it. And within the first four seconds, I'm like, oh, what's up? My name is Blessing at ELA from OK. And I was like, oh, fuck.

Mid OK Beast. I was like, fuck, man. It's been nine months. Nine months. I can't shake. I miss him. I miss him. I'm going back to you, Greg, for a second.

Thank you. Hey, everybody, it's me, Greg Miller for kind of funny.com. How many years has it been, though, that we've been gone from IGN? But how many times do you still say IGN? Be honest. Say it? I would say once every few months, maybe once every six months. However, writing something and writing IGN, when I mean I N, when I'm trying to just write a word all the time. And then when we talk about IGN saying we, as if I still work there.

That's where I'm at. It's like I wasn't on camera enough at IGN to, like always have that intro kind of embedded in my mind. But the we thing is still very true. Right. It's like the Manson family over there. You never get out. And it blew my mind. I mean, you know, I don't want to directly say away from what you just said into what I'm about to say. Stop looking at the camera. Stop looking at the camera. I'm just saying a lot of people need to still pay attention to the Manson family. I think we've forgotten about them.

Oh, my God. Boots on. Everything I'm saying. It's just like I want to separate just a little bit from that. But I want to give a shot to IG because, They just did their gamescom coverage. And, you know, IGN has been kind of intrinsically connected to gamescom the last couple years of doing all of the post Jeff Keely game award side of the whole thing. A little too connected. Yeah.

Let's be honest. You know what? You're saying they've lost on their objectivity. All right. They deserve the props. They put on a good show. They did a lot of good work, especially this year, all from home and all that stuff. But they put a credits line in.

the end of the show this year. I don't know if any of you saw this on Twitter, but I want to give a shout up for that, because I think that's huge. And I think that us are kind of funny. We value every single member of our content team equally. And I hope that we talk about cool Greg just as much as we talk about Greg Miller. You know what I mean?

Like there needs to be some type of system here. But the real talk though, it's like I feel like I enjoy this level of giving credit to the people that are behind the scenes, in front of the scenes, all of the different scenes, all of the different scenes and seeing this credit list for my gin, I was like, oh my God, this is kind of heartwarming where it's the first time I've ever seen a, uh, games outlet put that type of credit to the people that are doing the video editing, the people that are doing the social media coverage, the people that are doing all this other stuff.

And I was very, very impressed to see it all. And I was also very shocked to see that I recognized very few names on that list. And that's the thing that made me realize, like, damn. I can't believe I still sometimes fuck up saying we when it is so much not a we anymore. Like I am so not a part of even the DNA of what that used to be. Yeah. Sure. Whoever they are are doing great work, but it's like, damn.

Anyway, shout out to you guys at IGN. But to be very clear, making the point. Yeah, IG is doing a great job and we don't know them anymore. So if it turns out one of them is like the new Manson family, we didn't know. That's just what we call a friendly court. Winky-nink that I'm bringing it up. And it turns out, Zach Ryan over there is leading the new cult. I don't know.

Frank, fun fact. One of Paula's distant relatives is one of the Manson girls that got arrested. And you can't trust her, am I right? Can't trust her, no. Thank you. What a great segue. Ladies and gentlemen, let me finally introduce you to the former and former. Imrock,

you can't trust him. You know what I mean? With all of his industry secrets. And he won't tell us. shit. You know what I mean? Was the implication there that I'm one of the... I could be part of the Manchin family. Hey, I'm not trying to say shit. Look at that beard. Yeah, the beard doesn't help my argument, honestly.

Red walks by and these flowing white robes. How are you doing, I'm doing good. I've been thinking about the Mario thing. Oh yeah. You've been thinking about what? The Mario thing a lot. Like that that fair, that farce scarcity bullshit they're pulling. Like that's, that's been my last. two days to think about like, why would they do this? And every answer has been like, not good ideas, but like generally pretty bad.

Like they want people to spend money right now kind of thing. There it is. Tim tried to get around. or kind of funny enthusiasts, people that are here that understand our brand in every single way. If you're just listening to Kind of Funny Games, you don't listen to the other content. I'm going to say right now,

go listen to the Gamescast episode from Thursday, or sorry, Games Daily episode from Thursday this week, where I gave my full review of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. You can listen to my impressions there. Instead of doing them here, listen there, it's all there. Me and Greg talked about all the Nintendo buffoonery

that is going on with this Mario 3D All-Stars business. And I don't want to go too deep Because I want to keep the church and state separated When it comes to what these shows are With PSI Love You Kind of Funny Xcast Kind of Funny Games Daily, Kind of Funny Games Cast

This is very much going to be The Avengers review so far But to open it up, Imron I do want to give you a platform to speak On the Nintendo buffoonery That is Mario 3D All Stars. Please go. It's so, like, I can understand

Most of that stuff, but like I was just saying on Twitter Like, I don't understand why they're doing this until March 31st. And everyone just kept responding like, it's an anniversary product. They do that. But that doesn't make any sense. Like, no, you don't do that for anniversary.

Like, just because you've done a dumb thing before, it doesn't mean you keep doing the dumb thing. And that excuses the previous dumb thing and this current dumb thing. I've tried that. It doesn't work. So them doing this for Mario, it's just so confusing to me. They should have stopped it on March 5th, and it would have been 3.5.

Like, oh, that's why. March 10, March 10. March 10th. Mario. Oh, sure. Yeah. Yeah. Like, that at least makes some weird, dumb kind of stuff. What better way to honor him than ripping his games off? You can no longer play them. On your birthday, people pretend you're dead for a day. That's what they should do for Mario. Get back to the toy box old man. It makes no sense, dude. It feels the thing of like, oh, yeah, we're producing physical only and we're going to only produce so many copies or whatever. That still wouldn't make sense. But that at least get a little bit closer to me being like, all right, I guess I get it. collector's item, whatever.

But like, and I tweeted this, and I feel like people didn't get it when I tweeted it. But still, like, how are you going to limit something that's digital? Like, it's not like you have a limited amount of downloads people have for this thing. It's not like you don't own the IP. Like, it's Mario. They made a limited amount of keys, bless. They made a limited amount of keys then, you know? Gotcha.

Did you say that people ignore you on your birthday? No, I was saying that should be what you should do for a birthday is like, pretend someone's dead. Like, just give them their, like, Tom Sawyer Funeral. thing. That's what we should do for Mario. Holy shit. That sounds like a lot of fun. If you want, if you guys want, I'm totally down on March

3, 2021 to hold Mario's funeral. Yes, let's do it. Okay. Yeah, that sounds great. Here's the question. Can we get it trending? Like, that's the thing. Can we get like if hashtag Mario is trending, he's either canceled or dead. Can we make it so that he's dead and not

canceled? It's just we're going to it's just going to be hard to boil this part of the conversation down into something that's digestible for somebody at a glance of wait, why are they doing a funeral? Oh, because on September 4th, 2020, Imron said that birthday should be treated like funerals like Tom Sawyer. I've got to figure out of catch your way to explain that. I'll tell you what, I think we can, now since he doesn't work there anymore, Reggie Fisa May could possibly be, maybe he could do a utilize me. He's got a dual- Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah.

Tim, what do you got? You got something thing? No, no, no, no. No, I'm in a weird place where normally I'm in one of the white screen so I can throw my hands up like the I don't know face I have more room but like sure square I got to go like here you're like it looks like I'm raising my hand but I'm not because this is the kind of funny games cast each and every week right here on youtube.com slash kind of funny games we get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them you can support the show by going to patreon.com slash kind of funny games just like our Patreon producers, of which there are many this month. And thank you for that.

Muhammad Muhammad, Tom Bach, Skin tight salmon, Jeffrey, P. Long. Pee, Pee, Pee, P long. Exactly. We call them Pee long stockings, don't we blessing? Yeah, we do. Julian the gluten-free gamer, Sancho West Gaming, and James Hastings. And I don't want to forget, get healthy with Hiram at gmail.com. Hiram is spelled H-Y-R-U-M.

So get healthy with Hiram at gmail.com. I got more and his email address. Why did he want his email address? I don't know. I don't know. You might need to email him to ask him. You know what I mean? That's a good question.

What Joey gave me. So I feel like he wants that extra special shout out. Here's what I'm going to say. You have to get a new email now. No, I'm just saying right now, I'm putting it out there. I love this. And I'm looking for a best friend to up the ante in October. I want Tim to read a full phone number.

brought to you by 630 or like a human like profile URL I want to social security number at some point Greg you just said you just said October and I thought to myself oh I think these are like quarterly things right and for a second I was like oh we're in May so the quarter I guess it ended up man oh my gosh

you just like fuck my head right there my head was Fember right now Like, how crazy is that to you guys? I thought we'd be back in the office in March. It was supposed to be like two to three weeks, yeah. We are still home from new consoles. Yeah. It's exciting.

Dude, it's really probably. Yeah, we'll see. I mean, I believe it. I believe it. Ostensibly, yes. I don't like that my, I throw my hands up and no one sees it. They just see my fucking weird ass dumb. Why are you wide screen?

What's going on? Why are the lights off in the back? What's happening in there? You look like your broadcast. from an emergency shelter rather than your nice thing. That's a good question. I didn't realize the lights were off. What colors do you guys want right now?

What's a vendor? Don't you feel like red and blue? Yeah, red and blue, yeah. Tim, you're getting the widescreen treatment. Sorry, Ma'amon. You've been relegated. All of minorities up top in the fucking small squares, dude. Yeah, minorities on top.

It's a message, guys. Learn to hear the message. Younger Greg Miller would try to make a lot of jokes about this right now. Older Greg Miller learned to be quiet. Tony Greta Miller to sit here and think about Bousson coffee. There we go. There we go.

There's the red, white, and blue for you guys. The white coming from the size. Even though Tim's framing is really bad, but it's awesome. Yeah. And Kevin, that's not your fault, though. I'm blaming Tim. Yeah, but he's going to blame me. In the shot, okay?

Tim was like a real funny. You know what's funny? Is that this is because Andy made the frames on the bottom small again, which is fine. Andy, I think this is the right size. Did I? Well, right? Don't these match?

He wanted them even longer than this. Otherwise, I would include the light. I've had too long a day, ladies and gentlemen, to fucking deal with this shit right now. Here, just take your foot off the gas for a second. I don't want to be part of this fucking show. Okay, Kevin? Thank you. Just two things to bring up.

And this isn't about you anymore, Tim. Just kick your feet up. What I really would want to do is punch all the way in on. Tim's face and I think it would make sense because then he would look like Modoc in this review. He'd be all fucking right there in this square. You know what I mean? I made that joke. You could scale it wide.

You could scale it wide as well. You didn't talk about zooming in though. Okay. Every audio listener is be like, what the fuck are they talking about? And that was my other thing I wanted to call out is that earlier when we were really getting off the rail when I was crushing a cannon screaming and shit. Tim was like, hey, hold on a second. If you're not familiar, I was like, oh, that's a smart call.

This is going to be titled Avengers Review. probably going to bring it a bunch of people who don't know who we are. And Tim just instead used it to promote the kind of funny games daily about Mario. And then we are our bullshit. If you've made it this far and you're a new listener, you're a kind of funny best friend, fucko. You can't get out now. It's too late.

You love this shit. Don't call it fuckos. I'm sorry, everybody. I'm so sorry. No, let's talk about Avengers. You already know the rigmarol that I didn't get to. Watch the show, listen to the show. I don't give a fuck.

Do it. Jesus. We are having it. Some of these fosters right now on going to easy allies. Somebody's like, I'm not enough. I'm going to go here with

Braden Jones has to say. Let's get serious. Okay. Stop. Tighten it up. Tighten it up. Who here is beaten Avengers? Raise your hand.

Nice, Andy. Andy and Greg both raised their hand. It's not that long, y'all. I'm almost there. Okay. Blessing, where are you? Like, what percentage do you?

think you are what i would say what i always say the easiest spoiler-free way for somebody who obviously you're going to play is all the adventures in this game so i say the spoiler-free way is that yeah what's the last hero you unlocked blessing i have all the avengers perfect okay yeah so i think i honestly i think i'm like right before the last mission because jarvis was just like we're about to go on our last mission which makes me all right there oh she's that happened all right Because we're going to do a spoiler cast next week, where we go a lot deeper into the story elements and all of that for Avengers that's out now. So this week's more top level, what we're thinking about the game,

how we feel about the story ideas and the gameplay itself. This is an end game next week. Exactly. Exactly. I am, I just got Black Widow. Okay. Kevin, where are you? Because I know you've been playing this a lot as well.

So I have been playing this a lot, but I haven't gotten too much done. I think that I've played a couple of the Ironman missions. Like that's how, like I, that's the last person I unlocked. But I'm probably close to unlocking the next person is what I'm saying. Gotcha. I think I'm in the exact same place that Kevin is. So I'm right there. And the reason for that is Tony Hawk has taken my life.

Fucking plays. Sure. You've been going to see. What an amazing remake. that is. I don't know. I don't know why I thought we had to beat it. But like I plug the way in it, and granted, it wasn't very long. Like I, I, I feel like I put in around maybe 10 hours. Yeah. But I did totally main, main path to everything. I did not do any of the side stuff, except for, I guess you're kind of required to do one side thing before the final mission. They're kind of like,

hey, we need some resources to do some stuff. And you go do those things. Hey, you want to get us the stuff to do the thing? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So again, we're trying to stay spoiler-free. And I mean that kind of nebulously for this because Avengers- We're not going to go into story spoilers. Yeah, exactly.

It's like there's certain things that we're trying to like, you know, don't spoil people on. But I want to start with Greg and Andy here. Specifically, Greg, let's go with you. Hi, how are your thoughts about Avengers? You've beat the game now. I know going into it, you were kind of like you were higher than I would say any of us were what i would say yeah the way i describe it coming in is that coming off the beta you know some people came off the beta and were like oh my god this is just a button masher oh my god this isn't

when i want to play at all obviously there's plenty of technical problem no you were you you had your little earworm you put into andy's ear and he's like yeah you're right it is all the same and then when i played with a or when andy came back for the next part of the preview or when we did the stream he's like i had played more i was just doing the same mission over and over again that's on me um coming into it yeah i thought that it It was hard to say because looking at it and playing it and all that other stuff, we were all looking at it going like, okay, this isn't a nine out of ten. This isn't going to be a game of the year candidate, but I was having fun with it.

And I wanted that kind of experience. And I think the big question was, how is that story mode going to be? How are they going to us into the multiplayer? And then what is that going to be like in an endgame fashion? And now that what, I beat the story Wednesday morning after getting the code on Monday evening, and then I've played multiplayer since then. So what? I've got to be,

we'll say pushing 30 hours of the total game right now, 20 of that being, that sounds a lot, but I have been playing literally if I'm not on a show, I'm playing or talking to my wife. So yeah, like for me personally, the takeaway from it is it has exceeded my expectations.

I love this game. However, there is a ton to criticize and a ton of different things. And it did launch I think every game's a service we talk about. It launched with a whole bunch of stuff like, they really didn't think of this.

They really didn't have more hallways for these aim things. They really didn't have more mission structures for how we're going to go through and do this. Obviously the stuff we've talked about from the beta of not having a radar, not having a ping system, all these different things that get there. But that said, none of that has stopped me from playing it, or wanting to play it, I should say.

Like, you know, before this, I was playing with my friend Sean. after this, I'm probably going to cook dinner, but after that, right back to playing. You know, Jen and I, she's, of course, it's the fucking quarantine. She doesn't want me to die of a heart attack from sitting around here like a slug. She's dragging me out of hike in the morning,

but then I've told her 1 to 7 p.m. I'm playing Avengers tomorrow on Saturday. And then when you go to bed again, like it. Greg, can you answer me one question. I sure can. When you go on a hike, are you driving somewhere to then hike or are you just hiking immediately? God damn.

It depends. It depends on where we're hiking. We're staying in the city tomorrow, so there's no car needed. Okay. Does that answer the question? Yeah, yeah, go ahead. Okay.

Do you think why? Do you think like, do you think like I should hike to the hike? Is that you, you think it's like, there's definition of urban hiking, you know. I wasn't sure if you were like, I wasn't sure if you were, yeah, urban hiking or if you were like, go for a walk. Obviously there's a lot of like steep hills in San Francisco. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

You're driving to a hiking spot then doing the tree in the dirt. Yeah, all that stuff. Exactly. The big part for Jen is to get out of the city. Got it. She's a country kid. She wants to be surrounded by. nature whereas I just want technology

and I basically want to be those creatures those people I guess you call them from up that sit there right no way no what's the one the row about that's not up people I guess Wally Wally Wally that's the one I confuse it all the time I was like that bugs I just wanted to sit in the chair and go up the stairs

anyways back to Avengers um I like don't get me wrong I you know I think it's been this is another conversation I'm going on too long I guess but like long and short of it. I love it. It's been fascinating this week

to watch the different reactions to Avengers from I think Games Press who weren't going to give it a chance before or weren't, I shouldn't say weren't going to give a chance. Saw the beta, saw reactions from her like, not my cup of tea and then how great the single player is to bring them in. I think it's interesting, you know,

in terms of, is it a button masher or is it not a button masher? You know, the more I play it and I'm main in cap right now, the more I'm drilling into these skill trees and I am having to sit there and go, okay, well, I need to catch my shield better and throw it back in a different timing to actually get the chain that I want. Like, it's all combo based and very interesting to get your intrinsic meters up and your Herox going. To get off of me and get onto somebody else, right, like, it's awesome for me. It's awesome for what I want.

I've seen, I was reading, you know, I read Game Informer's review from Reiner is up full-fledged right now, 8.75 over there. IGN, Tom Marks is still doing a review in progress. His day three one is scathing of just like, I'm, 30 hours in now and holy shit like I'm so like why would I keep playing this game? Yeah to prevent those sticks for IGN which is bad like for what he's

playing. Sure. Yeah yeah. And then GameSpot was in between those two with their thing. I'm way more in line. I don't know how much and I'm not trying to throw stones here. I'm not sure how much Reiner's reviewed and go super into his end game experience. So I'd say I'm more into where the game spot thing is. I'm

enjoying it or whatever but even that aside of a touchstone to it like for me, this we talked about this with a when suicide squad dropped the trailer for it or they actually the tease when it was just going to be Superman and it was clearly we're going to try to kill him and I was like that's not the fantasy man the fantasy is being a superhero for me and this game is providing that and I understand people's critiques of why am I grinding for this gear I'm getting so much gear like but I'm not changing my looks to it it's not like it's that big of a deal to get it for me I entered into this process with the Marvel heroes Diablo's mindset of

I'm not going to see in my character. And then also the set of, and I know this is such a fucking Fran thing to say, and I'm so sorry, but the game doesn't start until I hit level cap, where people are like, I don't, why am I to pay attention to these things?

And I'm like, for me, I'm paying attention to the buffs and debuffs and what they do. And like, this is better for shock. This is better for fire. Planning on when I get to level cap with cap

and get to level cap with Kamala, that I'll then have to build out sets for those different things. And, you know, to have those sets of abilities and blah. I know, I know you're trying to pass the buck, Greg.

Yeah. I know, in one second, but I do have a question for you because you said that you think that the story is great, that you think the campaign is great. Yeah. I mean, I'm hyperbole why you want to get that you want to have a move start a discussion there. Just a bit more like what do you think this game is? Because like I do think that for everyone listening, the narrative of this game has been like initial trade like teas like back in 2017, whatever the fuck it was. Holy shit, this is awesome. I can't wait for it. Reveal of the game. Exactly. Reveal of the game like, oh no, this is a multiplayer

game. I don't want a part of. Yeah. And then the beta came out or before that there was, you know, more previews or more like things they showed and it was like, uh, no, this is destiny. This is not Avengers that I want. The beta came out and it won some people over, lost others. Like the beta was kind of confusing, I think. But then this came out. The final thing got into reviewers hands. and the Twitter narrative is, oh, man, the campaign's great. Yes. What are your thoughts? I mean, I love the campaign.

It's just in the same way of the game. I think there's plenty to criticize. I think it is unabashedly Marvel comic book cheesy at times, which is a turnoff to some and totally a turn on to me. Like, I think that entire opening A-Day segment that leads into the bridge demo, we've all seen multiple times, we've played multiple times depending on a few of this stuff. Like, I think it's so. well done and set the stage so well of and granted part of it's the pangs of like oh man i remember

packs i remember going to things like this or wanting to be there but putting that as the first thing putting it all through the lens of kamalakhan and then jumping five years and putting us into her shoes and having us go off from there again i think that there i mean during the eight a segment i teared up at the end of the game like the literal last cut scene before credits i teared up at too like i think they do so many great storytelling things in there. I think the things I talked about leading into this, being hopeful that, well, they're getting a great voice cast, hopefully they have great performances and great stuff there in story. I think that is there as well, where I think every one-on-one interaction the Avengers have with Kamala is great. And I think it's touching and I think

it's cool. And I think there's this narrative that's there that does get me invested with them and helps me build who the Avengers are in this world. That said, I think there's plenty of stuff that's weird and it seems like stuff's been cut out and the fact that the guy who's modoc goes from I'm just a I'm a guy to then calling himself modoc and everybody's like he's whatever we're mad at you and then I was playing with captions on and there's spoilers those spoilers okay well I'm this isn't spoilers I'm just saying I'm just saying in case you go down that road that's fair that's fair thank you very much but there's captions on for the character who's talking to him when he's like I'm modoc and he's and and he goes the caption says oh you're calling you're calling you're calling you're

calling yourself Modoc now, and the character never says that. So, yeah, this is the thing I've noticed. I'm pretty sure that it's copy paste of the entire, like, old pre-rewrite script onto the subtitles. Because I've noticed it's like, oh, this doesn't fit or it's like including narration where it doesn't make any sense in like the scene you're watching. And it's like, okay, this is not actually helping accessibility. So I don't, there's a lot of ways this game feels like it came in hot.

That's one of the more. Oh, totally. Again, what I'm talking about with criticisms, like, that is all there. I think the last, I would say three, but one of them I'm counting multiple waves of.

The last three boss fights, two of them are just like brain dead. And like, it's like that, it's back to where we, we start with that Golden Gate Bridge segment we talked about before Tim, where it's like,

oh man, like, this isn't an accurate representation of how these characters feel when you play the open world start for the multiplayer stuff or even later on levels, right?

And you get back to a giant fucking tank fight, right? And it's just like, wow, all of a sudden not only might not be being challenged by any of this like this is just boring and then you go on into the final fights and it's like you do a bunch of stuff

and the final final fight's fine but it's more of a cinematic thing than it is this. There's another one where it's just like you're back to that Golden Gate Bridge thing of like all right Iron Man do this and it's like oh this kind of sucks like this isn't what he would do but that's all I mean there's plenty of to sit here and criticize

and do stuff with I still think the overall story was great. Andy you're the other person that beat the game What are your thoughts? I think it's good, not great. I think it is held up by really awesome voice acting, voice acting and character interactions. I think the story is pretty cool.

I mean, it reminds me a lot of, like, well, no spoilers, no spoilers. But the story is interesting enough to sort of that kept me going along. It doesn't remind me of really any sort of story that's been attached to, I should say campaign rather, a game-deservous game. Where I played this fully solo, I never felt the need to ever ask any of my friends for help, which I think is great because I just hate like, where are you at? I don't want to inconvenience too. You're probably ahead of it. Like, I just hate that whole back and forth. And the fact that I play this from start to end completely on my own, you always hear developers say, guys,

don't worry you could play the campaign on your own and you always kind of roll your eyes like okay yeah whatever like i'm sure you're going to require some multiplayer stuff later on but it's totally true i played start to begin or start to end uh all my own and i had fun with it i again i would if i were to put a number on it i'd give it like a seven out of ten uh because this game feels like it's held together by fucking bubble gum and duct tape at times like a lot of the time i would say rather where this game reminds me a lot of Jedi Fallen Order, where just give it six more months, six more months, let it cook a little bit more,

let, you know, QA a little bit more, let's get some of these bugs out of here. The frame dips are just egregious at times, man. And I know a lot of people, performance mode or resolution mode, it shouldn't fucking matter. I shouldn't be dipping to 10 frames per second on performance mode.

For me, it was every time I bought, I'm the same way of Andy, played the entire story mode solo, didn't have anybody in it at all. But I'm having the exact same technically problems as well, where it would be that I would pop out to the PlayStation home screen. I would pop

back in, whether it was I paused it or whatever, I was doing a message. I'd come back in and it would do that thing you sometimes see games do where I restart the cut scene and then it's like, it's almost like it's spinning its wheels where it got really, really framey, and then it would speed the fuck up out of nowhere. I would

be playing the game totally fine, come in. The audio would completely cut. Like there'd no audio. I would have to quit, come back out. I was in one of the hub worlds and I was sneaking around. And as I got to the final thing, I passed the guy, talked to one of the guys. And then they were like, oh, well, watch out for the next dude. And I think he activated where early. But since that guy was talking, I couldn't talk to that guy. So I couldn't get past him. Like, it was just like, okay, that's bad. I had to restart the checkpoint, come back in, do it all over. Yeah. There are moments that you could tell that just weren't fully thought out where there are

tons of character interactions with just NPCs in the world where you talk to them and they are kind of either jumping into the future or back into the past based on where you are in the story thread where you went to go do this thing and they'll be like, oh, make sure you talk to someone to go do that thing. It's like, I already I already talked to her. I guess I needed to talk to you first. And that happens quite a bit. I had Kamala Khan several times where her hair was just missing. I think that was like from the beta as well. But I also had this crazy sequence that was funny and I'm going to clip it out because it was funny on stream.

I was I had unlocked Black Widow and I'm fighting off waves of enemies. By the way, Black Widow probably my favorite of control. Her and Cap are like so much fun. Legitimately like having a lot of fun finding what my combos are going to be. And like I don't know, she's just a blast of playoffs. But I had a whole like two. enemies that are really, really highly shield

played completely in slow motion. Not frame drops, but I did a final move where slow motion, cool thing. I'm like, oh, that was cool. And the whole rest of it is for like two enemies. And I'm sitting there on, and I'm playing this on stream.

And it took like maybe five minutes to get through all this. But all of it is slow motion. is like this is fucking nuts. I hope it ends. And luckily when I beat the final because I was wondering the whole time, am I going to have to just restart this?

Is this life now? Am I just fuck? Yeah. But luckily I beat the final boss and it cut back to a real time. And Laura Bailey was like, oh, it took you long enough. And I was like, wait, you were in slow-mo, Laura Bailey. But yeah, I don't know, man.

I had enough fun with it to where I could say this game is really good as a camp. I wouldn't say really good. It's good as a campaign. I enjoyed it. I love the characters. I love all their interactions. And the gameplay is definitely not just button mashy for me.

I found a lot more intricacies in chaining together combos and making stuff fun. Like I think the combo, I think the combat in this game is as fun and intricate as you want to make it. Yeah, that's a great way. And I had a blast with it with a lot of the characters. I would say my favorite are like Black Widow Cap, Iron Man. I didn't like Thor and I thought I would I was pretty bummed out I didn't like using him and Hulk would probably be at the bottom

Kamala's near the top dude she's kind of fun to play with hell yeah bless what are your thoughts on this I think this game is somehow good against all odds like it's it's crazy how many nitpicks and how many genuine issues I have with it but I've somehow ended up

truly enjoying it and I did not think I would coming out the beta like this is a game that I stress like I very much wanted to like this game. I very much really, I really just wanted this game to be good. Like, I really wanted this game to be good. Coming out that beta, I didn't, I, I kind of lost all hope. Because I think what they had in the beta just wasn't great. Like the missions they had were, I think those missions from the beta were a display of the repetition that you see people talk about, like especially like Tom Marks in his review. He talked a lot about how like, yeah, in the post game,

the game kind of loses itself and kind of becomes very, uninteresting. And that's kind of how I came out of the beta. Like, I was just like, yeah, at a certain point, these missions do feel same to me. I don't care about pretty much what the missions are, right? Like, Hulk's iconic mission versus whatever other side mission where I'm defending a thing. At a certain point, like, it all kind of boils down to the same thing to me of like, hey, yeah, go and beat up some robots and like hold down a fort or do whatever. That stuff still exist in this game, but I'm surprised that at how much heart that this game seems to have. And that was not a thing I was expecting from going into it.

Like, we talk about how so many people have good things to say about the campaign. That campaign to me is the savior of this game. And mainly Kamala Khan. Like, Kamala Khan is such the savior to this game. When it comes down to pretty much any of my critiques, right? Like, one of my big critiques is that these Avengers very much seem like, uh, cosplay versions of the MCU Avengers. Like you can very much tell, like,

Hulk reminds me of Mark Ruffalo a bit. Iron Man reminds me of Robert Donnie Jr. And I can pretty much take that and apply it to any one of the other Avengers. Kamala Khan kind of being that connecting piece between them and her being that unique, unique character that we've not necessarily have seen a huge portrayal of on screen. Isn't it just Spider-Man? come on oh i i guess so but i feel like camal con even more that's my critique of it is like it's just spider man and like she's dope which spider man you mean like tom holland come home i don't even even i mean

oh man the worst's putting hairs here and this might take it in a different direction feel free to stop me tim but even then i think that that's tom holland getting to see that moment and have those moments with rdj right as iron man like i think it's different to see kamala of bounce off all of them in that A-Day thing. I think it's different to see her five years later and have some of them remember her how it all plays out that way too and be on the team with them.

I think, I mean, it's that weird thing where I think she's more wearing her fandom on her sash. You know what I mean? Like she's wearing it at right there ready to go. She clearly is addicted to the Avengers in a way that even though I think everybody in the MCU who was a normal person would love the Avengers,

I don't think Tom Holland shared as much of. And I think that the key difference is Tom Holland in the MCU, you could tell that there was a little bit of an annoyance there as far as like how the Avengers would react to him. Specifically like Tony Stark was like, oh yeah, I'm going to bring on Spider-Man because he's powerful. I need him on my team.

But like Tony Stark didn't really want much to do with Spider-Man at first. Even happy, it was just like, all right, kid, I'm here to watch over you because like you need to be washed over. This is the heartwarming one, right? Where yeah, like she, yeah, I mean, again, no spoilers, but she makes quick connections with all these Avengers. to a part where they do start mentoring. Like everybody here pretty much immediately loves Kamala Khan.

And like, that's because her character is supremely lovable. And yeah, like she has personality. She's basically the main character of the story, which is a thing that I didn't expect going in. Like even coming out of the beta. They didn't say, yeah, like they didn't mark it at all. Which is, I don't know how intentional that is. I don't know if they thought people would be turned off because Kamala Khan,

but she is the best part of this game. 100%. Like, it is, it is, it is, how much her character then made me love the other characters. Like there was at a certain point, there were probably, there are probably scenes with her and every other character that made me go, okay, cool, I like Tony Stark now.

All right, cool, I like Hulk now. Cool, I like Thor. Like, and that's because of her interactions with those characters that then granted those characters, their own personalities, that to me at first read as, okay, yeah, you're basically copy MCU Tony Stark. I'm surprised that they're able to break that barrier with me. But even, even past that, in general,

there are so many story moments that I found myself either getting chills or being like, man, I can't believe they're doing this. I can't believe they're going here. I can't believe they're having this arc with this character. And again, that shocks me because again, that was another question we had coming at the beta of like, all right, what do we expect out of the story? Do we expect like that A day mission and then just a bunch of random missions and then like a central cut scene and then a bunch of other random missions? But no, like the campaign is actually a pretty good for the most part like strung together well-paced collection of cutscenes and gameplay in a way that didn't make the gameplay feel repetitive which i think would be very easy to do with the gameplay

in this game like the way they paste out the campaign i'm actually shocked they're able to pull it off in the way they did uh because it does feel like moment to moment you're you're doing different things like either you're exploring the forest with kamala and hulk or you are uh you know having the sequences that we saw in the beta where you're exploring the quenchette or whatever um The way they string that stuff together works really well, and it's just really well-paced, and that helps it a lot. Outside of that, playing the non-campaign stuff, I had probably a good few hours playing yesterday with the friend Rihanna from What's Good Games. And at a certain point, I was just like, yeah, like, this is, this is take me back to how repetitive it can be and take me back to how much I don't necessarily care about just the core gameplay. I think the brawling aspect is fun,

and I think Andy's right in the sense that you get out of the combat system what you put into it and what you want to get out of it. But at a certain point also, like I don't necessarily care about gear. I still have the complaint that, yeah, like gear doesn't show up on your character physically at all. And also combined with that, there's the fact that you're collecting new gear so rapidly that I find it hard to care about any single piece of gear I pick up because it really does feel like, you know, I find new things after admission,

I pause, hold out to auto-equip, cool, that I move on, and I'm not really paying attention to it in any sort of meaningful way. Along with that, there's also, and I'm sure if I was in the 30-hour mark into the game, I'd care more about this, but there are also moments where they introduce you to different types

of systems and different types of specifically, like, gear, and equitable items that, like, just went way over my head and seems like a thing I can totally ignore, but even just looking at it, I'm like, I don't, who's, I, I can't tell like what, at what point I'm going to be fascinated with that, because the way they introduced it feels so random and so destiny-esque in terms of like, oh, yeah, like, if you, if you want to go to this vendor, like, they'll be able to sell you this stuff, if you collect this

stuff and do these missions for them. It seems very, you don't like the 19 different versions of currency in this game. Not at all, but it seems so deep. And I'm like, all right, if we get to the point where I start to care about that, that's going to be amazing. But I don't feel like what the game has in it right now fits with those systems that they want to promise you in terms of, yeah, those different types of currency and those different types of items that you can equip. I don't know if the game's at that place yet. Maybe if I get to the point where I'm at Mission Power 50 or whatever, I might change my mind

because then I'll realize the true, like just the true meaning of all that stuff or the true usage of that stuff, but yeah, like, it felt weird in the way they introduced some of that stuff. They force it on you. They do it in a way that doesn't make, like, it doesn't make you care about it at all. No. Okay. Now you're trying to start, go introduce yourself to these five people that all have like different

faction rewards or whatever. Look at the stuff. It's like, okay, well, here's, it's all the same image. It's a picture of the arm. It's a picture of like, whatever. It's like, okay, I don't. And I'm like, okay, what's a faction? Like, I still don't know what a faction is.

Like, they don't, if they don't need to talk about what factions are. or what Imron's takes are on this game, which I'm very excited about. I want great to tell us about our sponsors. This episode of the Kind of Funny Games cast is brought to you by Lumen Skin. Here's a cold, hard truth, guys. Your skin has needs.

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Prescription products are subject to medical provider approval and require an online consultation with medical provider who will determine if prescription is appropriate. See the website for full details and see. safety information at forhams.com slash kind of funny back to it amron what are your thoughts on this game this game has been a roller coaster of up and down for me like the eight-day stuff was great because that's legitimately a part we haven't played before because it was every time we did a demo or a beta or whatever it always started with the the golden gate bridge exploding and all that jazz so that was cool but then it started slowly rolling out a tutorial over things that didn't make it like

the stealth sequence of Heroes Park, I hated that. I hated it so much. Because you would mess up and it would load for like 20, 30 seconds. And there's like, how did they not playtest that in a little bit? Or like go like, okay,

maybe this shouldn't be an abrupt thing or maybe it's just like reloading at the beginning or whatever. Like, it's things like that that may be like go, okay, they didn't work out all the campaign kinks before they released this game. I'm so glad you tweeted that though, because I was like,

I'm going to one shot this shit. And I, it. That's just that made me go like, I'm not feeling. Yeah, I was really worried about it. But now, granted, a lot of the falling parts, I did just fall off the cliff and again, loaded, reload, and reload. It sucks, man.

It's like, it's not fun. And, like, this game is trying to aim to be fun in those points. And it's just like, oh, I'm loading again because of something that seems like wasn't in my control at all. Yeah. Like, I enjoyed the mission where you first get Iron Man. But then immediately after there's another mission where we have to, like, do a King of the Hill section as Iron Man, like, in front of a building to open it up and it's the worst section I've played in a long time. Like, I legitimately died there like maybe 10 to 15 times just because here is a character

that is almost entirely based on long range attacks and you have to put him in a small circle against all these enemies surrounding him. And like, because of the place where the game checkpoints, by the time I was, I could go to that section, the Hulkbuster armor wasn't ready during the entire time. I'd have to just sit and wait for it to happen. I know exactly which one you're talking about, because I remember dying a bunch during one of those portions as Iron Man. It's a single circle in the building.

I know it's so small. It's like single players, so you can't like bring in friends to come help you with it. And it's like, okay, these are where the multiplayer hooks are trying to infect this game a little bit. And then like we talked about the faction stuff where I hate, go ahead, Kevin.

I'm sorry. I shouldn't have interrupted, but that was where I was stuck yesterday. remember Greg? I kept saying like, I don't understand. They're just destroying me. Yeah. I do remember that. It's not great. Like, Iron Man isn't meant for that kind of thing. He's meant to be like the character that flies in the, or hovers in the air and shoots, like, picks out people or like grabs them out of the balconies or whatever.

He's not meant for, like, just standing there. And then the faction stuff, I don't like wandering around the chimera. I don't like wandering around the Anhill. Like, none of that stuff is fun to me. And introducing myself to all these people who aren't Marvel superheroes who aren't all the things. interesting to me are is like boring i just want to be i want to punch things and i want more things like more kamala con sections more like superhero sections all that stuff the where i last left left left left off was i just got black widow and i think that is the most fun i've had with this game so

far because she is legitimately fun and like she feels like a character action character and i realize one of the reasons i'm not having fun with this game is they don't tell you how basic every single character starts off. You need to go down that skill tree and you need to buy a lot of things. And often they don't give you points up or up front to actually like choose what you want. So things like the leg sweep really makes a difference

with like Widow that I really like doing that. That adds something to those fights. But if I didn't buy that, if I bought something else when I went down guns or just like bought something without being able to really try it, then I might not have enjoyed that section. And I think that's what's been happening with those other sections too. But I bought this thing that like, okay, maybe this is cool.

Maybe grabbing, like, actually, this is a bad example, but grabbing stuff with Kamala is cool, like, grabbing the enemy and, like, swinging them around. Yeah, it is. But if I thought, like, the thing that's just a strong attack from the air, would that have been as one? Would that have been, like, if I bought that instead, would I just be not enjoying those parts?

Dude, no joke. No joke, Aaron. I was, I was streaming it, and I saw that part where you could unlock the Kamala grab somebody, and then you could drag them around. And my immediate thought was, that seems like it has a high probability of breaking. Yes, it does. And something fucking up.

And I don't want to risk it, dude. Literally what I do is I pick people up and just drop them off the stage and then they're gone. Oh, that's cool. That's cool. It's so stupid. That's the kind of thing I like about this game. And I think there's a kernel of something really good here. But it feels like they, I don't want to say they rushed it out.

but it feels like the game didn't quite get where it was supposed to be. And maybe like that changes or they keep going further into the campaign or whatever. But like the, as the games as service hooks keep coming, like infecting single player, I'm just kind of rolling my eyes a little bit like, this could be better, but you want to set up multiplayer so badly. You're not letting it be there. I feel like I'm exactly where you're at. And I, you brought up the roller coaster with this game.

and I am right there with you. Playing the beta, I was so high on this. Where I was like, it looks like I'm actually going to get a campaign out of this that I am very enthralled by and there's going to be enough of switching from character to character. The moment in the beta that we switched from playing as Kamala to Hulk,

or to banner, I was like, oh shit, wait a minute, the crystal dynamics that I'm expecting from this is going to shine through. And for as far as I am in this, somehow this game is that even more crosses in the road like forks in the road than I expected where I was like oh is this going to be spider man 2018 versus destiny now we're adding

spider man never soft from 1999 to it where at moments like a day I'm like oh my god they fucking get it like this is so great I'm loving Kamala I'm loving everything they're giving to me as a comic nerd slash as someone that is not that deep into comics but wants to know more. Give me the weird characters. Give me the modocs. Give me like a dope-ass backstory to teach me and educate me on these weird things that these comic characters can do that I'm not familiar with. But somehow this game feels at a crossroads where it's MCU, but it's not.

But here's Kamala as a different entryway into this. But it's not that different. And every time I'm invested in her story, we're going to introduce this stuff that's clearly multiplayer that we're putting into the single player because we have to because that's what the real game is. And I keep being distracted from what the real game is, which is the end game. And that bothers me when any time I'm like, oh, man, Kamala just did something that's so endearing and I love it, then all of a sudden she says something that I'm like, that doesn't feel in line with this character at all. this feels like the Neversoft Spider-Man game that is purely a comic book game that is like, we're going fucking all out and we're going to throw everything at it and it's going to be ridiculous. Like she has a line in this early on where she says,

if I could only have just won that fan fiction contest, now look at me. I'm a freak. And I'm like, what the fuck? That is some comic book shit that you just translated now into a triple A video game that looks and sounds and feels like it's presenting itself as bigger than that and those moments keep happening they're then doubled down on a like oh it's dark terogen literally the acronym for this is d a r k that i just get dark anyway like nobody actually acknowledged it's an acronym at all it's weird to me with as far as i am where i'm just like you're doubling down on sorry what

acronym what do you D rk terrigan yeah D.a. a dot R.k. Terrigan. Oh. What does it stand for? I don't know.

They explained it in one of the early cutscenes in some dumb ass way of like that's the thing that gives them the cure. And it's like, okay, you're bad guys. And look, I'm not against that. If you're presenting the game that way,

which Spider-Man Neversoft did, right? But this game looks like Spider-Man insomniac. Yeah, like they don't, don't give story stuff time to breathe. And that is a little frustrating. Like, there's a scene where Kamala is, like, really distraught. Like, am I the only inhuman that wants to, that, like, is, wants to stand up?

Then literally the next scene they solve it. Like, they didn't need to commit to that at all. Because it was, like, seconds before she got the answer to that question. It's, you bring up a good point to me when you mentioned, like, oh, this is the, actually, this is the MCU. Well, Spider-Man is just Spider-Man. That feels like it should be involving more character. than it does.

Like, there are a character, like, I fought an elite sharp shooter as, like, a boss, as like they had a little cutscene introducing him. Why was that not just bullseye? I like, or whoever, or somebody, like, why is Modoc the main character or the main villain? And that's just it.

It's the Avengers. You could wrap more people in. Yeah. And that's how you get into the thing. The nation told me on that in the beta. And that was the thing I was like, oh, shit. Like, they're going to do that.

And, like, again, I am not too much farther. so I don't know if they do. But from how it seems like it's going, it's like there's been less abominations and more, I'm frustrated trying to open this fucking box, getting my camera right exactly to open this thing. No, yeah, 100%.

I think that speaks to one of your criticisms of the, what the game really is shining through at points when you wouldn't expect it. Like I think you're both correct, Imron and Tim on that of like getting to the end. And again, yeah, no spoilers. Modox's the main villain.

We've already talked about abomination. and then Taskmaster, we know, taskmaster, she's like, can talk. We know from the Golden Gate Bridge, right? And guess what? Those are the main villain bosses you see. Yeah, there is no bullseye. There is no Dr. Doom.

There is no whatever. And if I had to bet why there isn't, right, it's because they want to put those out in six months, a year, whatever. There's going to be a big story arc they'll put out, which is awesome for somebody like me who's like, oh, cool, I love grinding and I love doing this and I love the world. But it also is that. All right, cool.

Who's the big boss? giant spider robot all right who's the big boss one of the fucking adaptoids all right well this is who we're fighting it doesn't have that here you go it's the entire universe the way something like marvel ultimate alliance three does right because marvel ultimate alliance three expansions nonwithstanding is hey we are telling you the story so let's go all out let's bring everybody in let's do this in this one for better or worse is hey we're telling you this story of the avengers getting double crossed the rise of aim modox the bad guy so who do we put his underlings under there, but not too many.

Obviously, if we bring in, if we bring in Daredevil one day, God, I hope so. We want to probably bring in Bullseye and Electra to be in that storyline, so leave them over there. And what about, we can reference Captain Marvel, but would we want to bring in anybody like that? Probably not. Do this. Well, it's like, it's a weird situation now where like

Avengers and Fortnite, Fortnite has higher stakes in their Avengers storyline than Avengers does. Sure. I will say, I will say, I want to give props to the voice actor from Modoc. I thought he was awesome. Yeah, he's really good. I, there's that one, he has a really, really good monologue that just reminds me of typical villain monologue

comparing my situation to when I was a kid and this and this happened. And it was just really good. I think he's a damn good actor. Yeah, as far as the other villains, I was kind of bummed out that for the most part, it was just variant B and then variant C of this thing and then variant D of this. other bigger thing and they all kind it all did get a little bit samey or whatever but i will say shout out to the just the combat design team in terms of you know creating correct uh characters movesets because i i guarantee you there was a discussion of if cap throws his shield at a robot's

legs should the robot be taken out at the legs because that could very much just be a lock on throw hits the body nothing happens but the fact that like that sort of the fact that that sort of mechanic is inside of a games as a service shared universe game, shared online multiplayer, whatever you want to call it.

I think shows that the combat team probably fought for a lot of these decisions and won a lot of them luckily because or else they would get a little bit samey. I don't know if I'll play this game multiplayer. I'll be honest with you. Like I, when we are in these bigger rooms and all,

the whole team is together, I should have said smaller rooms when you're in smaller rooms it gets the same way as when we all played together where like parrying stuff I can't even tell when I'm supposed to parry I can't really there's so much happening there's so many colors and visual effects everywhere

and particles flying everywhere that I the idea of having a cohesive fight with an enemy seems impossible because it's how do you know when to parry or or Dodge or whatever, you're just kind of just at that point,

button mashing, you know? Honestly, that's one of the reasons I'm actually surprised the game is as good as it is because I feel like if you just look at it, this game almost feels like it shouldn't exist for what it is, right? It is a AAA, it's a AAA Avengers game where it has a single player campaign that has a story that is an Avenger's story that feels like it has the TLC put into it, but it also is this game as a service game with mechanics that are built around

multiplayer and built around using all these different characters. in a roster that is going to be ever-expanding, right? So you're going to add Hawkeye. You're probably going to add Black Panther at some point. You're going to add Spider-Man and all these different characters, and you're going to have to, for them, they had to build a system that worked for an ever-expanding roster. And along with that, like, they also have to make a game

that works a single player. They have to make a game where you can have gear and have these RPG systems. And to what you said, Andy, you have to make a game to where the combat actually feels good as a brawler. And so when you throw your shield is cap, you're sweeping people at the legs. When you're throwing your hammer as Thor,

you're then, like, you're aiming that and like, in calling it back in specific ways. When you're using Iron Man, you're electrocuting enemies and all that stuff has to work. The fact that they're able to pull this off this well is actually surprising, even though I feel like the end product is definitely rough around a lot of the edges.

I do want to give them problems for that. And also want to echo Andy and shout out the voice acting because I think the voice acting is off the chain. And I will also say that in terms of abomination and Taskmaster, I didn't really like any of them. Like, I think Modoc was good, but abomination, and maybe I'll see Abomination again before the game ends. But like for the fighting or the fighting. Well, just the character, like the writing for Abomination and Taskmaster. Like Taskmaster, I think I've seen once maybe.

And like even, even, I mean, honestly, even bringing his voice acting into it, I was like, that's not how Taskmaster is supposed to sound. Like, you sound. Lastmaster was pretty non-existent. I felt like. I feel like both Abomination. Like Abomination felt more existent than Taskmaster, but even for Abomination, I feel like I've seen him twice now.

And like he's not really had an impact on the story, really. Like, really, it is just Modoc. And it's kind of disappointing, but also at the same time, I get it for what Greg said, right? Like, they want to build the roster in the story over time. And so we're probably going to see Thanos at E or five or whatever. But even still, like I kind of wish we got more out of that. It's weird for me because you bring up the crossroads thing, where it's like this game is at a crossroads.

And I think that in so many ways to go off on a joke for a second that I legitimately mean, this game does remind me of Fast and Furious Crossroads, where that's a game that so much love has been put into in terms of character and story. And the people that made that game gave a fuck about the Fast and Furious universe. The people that made this clearly give a fuck about these characters. And Andy, to your point about the combat design, it's like, damn, seeing Hulk move, it's like, holy shit. That's how he moves in the MCU movies. Like, that's what we know of Hulk, like the way he jumps up and grabs things to propel and like shoot himself off.

The way that Tony's like kind of like doing his like combos. It's like, holy shit, this is so MCU. And like, yet the game feels out of. crossroads where it's looking at itself like, but we're not MCU. It's like, but you are in the ways that we enjoy the most? And otherwise, I'm like, I'm so in the story. I love the story. Like, I want to see where this is going.

I can't wait for the DLC campaign stories. Like, that's the weirdest thing for me where it's like, for as much as I'm not enjoying this game, because like, real talk, I am not enjoying this. I am enjoying the plot. But I'm constantly asking myself, why? am I playing this instead of just watching this. And I think that that is an issue, but it's also a compliment. Like they made a good story so far, at least that I played.

I'm here for it. I want to know where everyone's at. Like when I met up with Tony, I was like, I'm in. I get it. Like I love the way that they introduce his character and the way that he comes back. I'm just like seeing you interact with Kamala, it feels like a good animated show. And that's why it's like when I question some of the writing on it, It's like you're presenting this game as if it's something that it's not, at least in the campaign.

You're presenting it as if it's this multiplayer game that is what the game is, but I don't want that. So when I have to do the gameplay stuff, like we get to a thrilling moment as Iron Man that like, to me at least feels like the AAA moment of the game of here's the Iron Man set piece where music's playing, you're going through. There's a fun moment. And I'm like, I'm not having fun. like this this kind of seems like a huge missed opportunity that literally swinging in spider-man insomniac feels fun doing the moment as iron man is kind of like yeah i know what's

you're talking about yeah i felt the same way like it was that moment felt to me in a game that has so much heart the aspects they took from the mc u and to be clear they absolutely took this in the mc u whether they say otherwise or not they're lying but The part they took from the MCU, they feel cynical. And those are the things that I look at those like, okay, you did the thing in the movie,

but you didn't do it as well. And like after the Avengers beta on PS4 last time, I went back and I watched Civil War. I watched Infinity War and Endgame. And God, those movies are fucking good. And then I come back to this. It's like, this isn't hitting me the same way.

I'm not sure it's because of a lack of familiarity. I think it's because it's too familiar. It's too familiar, but not quite there. And that's how like, I wish they had just gone full hog on the Kamala Khan story and told that story to the fullest potential rather than like going, okay, but no, we know you guys love MCU, so we're going to throw a little bit of that in there for you. I like how low Tim's gate is. So he goes like this and then talks, but you can't hear him. Oh, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I just said, yeah. Yeah, whenever you were doing the Iron Man repulsors that I always gets muted at. Oh, well, you're better than I am. But, Corey, I definitely want to see a giff of that. Yeah. I can't wait for these new.

New mics are on the way. They're lost. The shipping is stuck in Hong Kong. And at some point, they will be sent to us on all on Andy's mic. It'll be fantastic. But until then, until then we're stuck here. So any closing thoughts right now on Avengers? Yeah, I just don't think I'll play the multiplayer.

I know I said that earlier, but I just feel like it'll get, it'll be a bit too messy. and I didn't really ever utilize these vendors. Like I probably should have been using them in the campaign. And I know they're there and I know you're supposed to want to use them and upgrade your stuff. But are you? Like, because here's in the you tell me, actually, I guess you're not, you and I are kind of the same level of destiny players, right? Yeah, exactly.

We play them bounce or whatever, right? Like, I mean, this, when I came in and was like, oh, you just ripped off destiny's loot system and everything. and gear vendors and everything else. To me, that immediately meant, cool, I don't need to pay attention to these fucking vendors in terms of what they're selling, in terms of getting the assignments from the different factions or whatever.

That I knew was important. That is obviously helping you level and do a bunch of different stuff. But I saw the vendors and I was like, oh, and it's been interesting the amount of friends who are starting to play this and like, hey, hitting me up and like, I know you're into it.

I don't play games as a service. I'm like, don't pay attention to any of it. They're like, well, the gear and the buffs, I'm like, do not pay attention to level cap, don't even worry. Right now, just go ahead and hold L2 and let it auto assign the best stuff. Don't worry about that. And I think it's going to be so interesting because what you're talking about, Andy, if you're not coming back to it from the single player, I think that's going to be the majority of the peers that we see on Twitter. I see so many people talk about how great the story

was and how it caught him off guard. I don't expect them to hang out and get to power level 150, right? You know, level 150. So it'll be interested to see how many people get into the minutia of what the multiplayer is slash endgame and if that matters to them or if they play their 10 hour campaign and a few things with the few of the iconic missions which I think have interesting storylines attached to them play those and then bounce and just go okay cool that was cool and then do the thing which I think is totally justified like Tim's talking about of all right cool now the Kate Bishop storyline drop jump in play that bounce out all right Clint drop drop and play that spider man's out let's jump in and play that and bounce and then they'll be the people who are whether it's me or

not grinding at 150 and trying to do all these different things. Yeah, I feel like that's where I'm more at, where story missions will bring me back. And I can't believe how on the other side of the spectrum I am with this compared to games like Destiny and Borderlands where I could give a lesser fuck about those stories. Like they don't really. I don't, I'm playing those games with friends because I don't need to listen to the story. And I'm sure they're good. I'm sure like a lot of lore people out there love them.

But I'm just having fun of my friends shooting shit. And this game, it was like, I don't want to play with people. I want to just concentrate on the story and not have, not be, because you know, you know what happens. You join up with friends. Absolutely. Fucking around and making jokes and you lose the whole threat of the plot and everything. So it's crazy. I thought I would want to be in for this for the multiplayer.

And, yeah, just not really. Well, that's what's been fascinating for me on the other side of it, right? And what I think is interesting where we've talked about with, oh, well, when they drop a new hero, everyone's going to want to play as that hero and it's going to fuck everything up. like you know you can't do it or whatever what i found interesting is when i beat the story and started in on end game it was only me and goldfarb who that i knew that we're there and we're ready to go do that kind of stuff and so i started doing all the iconics by myself which in an iconic mission is like a story like a premier story uh a quest structure multi multi mission quest kind of

yeah thank you i don't know why i struggled not so bad and uh for me personally not all of them i think thor's thoris is the best example when you beat the when that becomes available go play that to get a taste of it because I think it opens really interestingly. You see like, oh man, they could tell interesting stories in these outside of the campaign, right? But when I did it, I went and played it by myself and I was like, oh my gosh, this is really, I'm enjoying this. This is cool. And I played a Thor and I had that like, this is my experience. I'm in this moment.

This is a single player mission, which it wasn't. I could have played with other people, right? And then Sean beat it last night. And so today we went and I was like, do the Thor mission. And he obviously played his Thor. And I jumped in as Kamala, right? And it was that I'm now leveling a different character, bringing her in here. I'm also trying to stay quiet, trying to have a discussion with him about whatever

bullshit around and do this. I understand everything of the repetition that people talked about. And I understand the criticism I was seeing Tom Marks at IGN level of like, like, if it's just the same environment and the gear doesn't matter like what's the big deal and why does it work? Like for me, the experience I'm having with it of replaying things I've already played, right? I'm like, oh, Goldfarby going to do this. Yeah, I've already done it, but no big deal.

Jumping in there and doing that. It is that idea that I do like the combat and I do really appreciate, I do want to chase levels and I do want to make I like playing it with cap my main and seeing like what what it's like to be a level or power level 65 or whatever it is and do all this different stuff and then starting at the next day with Sean and playing as Kamal and being smaller and working my way back up to getting my third skill tree thing which is mastery and doing all that stuff like there's that kind of campaign to it but I totally get where people are like that's just Andy's like I'm out after this film this feels like a strange criticism slash suggestion but I feel like the game needs some

sort of competitive aspect to it. And I know they can't do the destiny thing of have, they can't do death match, right? Because that doesn't necessarily make sense in this game. But if they did have it so that you are competing against friends in like a brawler type mode where you are getting out of Bc's.

Yeah, like trying to get like a higher score. I feel like it needs something like that. Because I think that is the thing that is, when I compare this game to my experience with Destiny, I kind of have a weird inverse kind of thing where Destiny, I couldn't give a fuck about the story. I do not care about the story of destiny at all,

but Destiny 2 has some of the best FPS mechanics I played this gen. That is some of the best experience I've had with a game for like a prolonged experience of time this gen, right? Like this game, that game was incredible for gameplay. This game is the opposite thing where I will play the Hawkeye thing, I will play the Spider-Man thing. I'm very much looking forward to the story that they have to tell in this game because I really like what I played a story in this game.

But on the gameplay level, that's where I start to be like, all right, yeah, I just don't care. And I think one of the things that Destiny has is the fact that I can interact with it in different ways. I really, I spent half my time playing Destiny, probably in competitive, having a great time. I feel like if this game had something along those lines to vary, very up the ways in which you're interacting with the game, that goes such a far way. Because at this point where I'm at, I feel like it is, every mission comes down to punch things. And by that is this game. I can't really take that away from it, but at the same time,

you know, I think for me and for a lot of people, that becomes boring at a certain point. I literally got a mission prompt earlier today that was like, Punch the lock. I was going to say, it was four hours ago.

I was about to ring it up. You put up the tweet video games and it's a mission line, to stand alone, punch the lock mechanism. Yes. You guys are talking about like, okay,

when Hawkeye comes out with Spider-Man comes out, I'm either to play that. And that's true. I want to play those characters. But also I'm like, there's a part of me that goes, okay but what if it's just the same aim hallways again and that's what's going to bother me

and like I think this game would benefit a lot from Destiny's expansion style stuff of like okay this is a new story expansion idea and if it doesn't have that if it doesn't go like we're really changing things up with this season where this new expansion for this year is going to be like this is like this is like Thanos is this one

or Dr. Doom or whatever that's what I think this game needs and if it's not that I don't think I'm going to stick around that long like I will play it I'll probably enjoy each new character for the, I want to say an hour of view content that probably offer, but I don't think I'm going to go like,

okay, well, now I've done this, I'm going to take Spider-Man to the multiplayer, because every fucking person is going to be Spider-Man anyway, so probably not going to be. I just want to clarify. You can be the new character and I'll be somebody old, don't we're. Okay. I wanted to clarify that I I'm not excited for the new characters

just so I could play them. Yeah, it is hopefully the story content. Sure, the narrative that comes with them. Yeah. Like whether it's like two, three hours of whatever, I'm totally down to do that. Just because it, because exactly, exactly. We're going to take game blessed because I mean,

they've shown that despite, despite this game being as problematic as it is, they could still come through and tell what I think is a, a neat touching story. Now towards the end of it, it gets fucking weird as shit. And I was really kind of, you know, I didn't love the ending of this game. But the final moment, just like, great guy. I hate hearing that. I hate hearing that.

Oh, no. You'll be fine. I had a weird thing with the iconic missions where, like, there's a point in the story where a character gets, let's say they're no longer involved in, like, the main villain part of it. And, like, you actually have a mission that involves that character, like a side quest for Hulk's iconic story.

So I went and did that while that character is indisposed, and they're still in the mission. And it was like, okay, but you knew, when you guys were writing this, you knew that this character we get captured, and you also knew that the side mission has to do with that. So why didn't someone just go, no, no, no, stop one of these. One of these can't happen, because otherwise it makes no sense.

If this, then that. Yeah. And like, the game is weirdly a merge and breaking. Like, there's a mission who have to go on as Kamala. And the game just auto-populates Iron Man in there, even though it doesn't make sense for Iron Man to be on that mission. And they don't say anything. He's not like in the story at all.

He's just there. And it's like, okay, but why is, is he not talking to this other character who he knows and they would have dialogue there? There's a specific Iron Man costume that they give you that exposes his face. It's one of the first costumes they'll give you for Iron Man. And I automatically equipped it because I was like, I really like this costume. But in cutscenes, they register it as he's in his masked costume. And so there was a moment in my story where I'm playing as Kamala.

Iron Man floats to me and says some things, but his mouth doesn't move because they didn't animate his mouth to move. Now it was a moment where I was like, yeah, I know what this is. I know how you try to attach it to that. I've definitely had fucking Captain America whose mouth's always exposed not move his mouth when he talks to me. And we see, well occasionally just like stop talking for me. Like I'm moving. The guy in the newscast when you go to the break room, he'll show you.

He never animated for me. And I thought like, and I thought maybe this is what they're going for, like a minimal thing where they're just showing a character kind of move and his mouth's not sinking to the dialogue. Maybe that was the point of this, maybe that best direction. And it happened like that for the first like four times. And then when I went back another time,

his mouth was animating for like a split second, then stop. I was like, oh no, it's just broken. Yeah, yeah. With that, I had it so that I was walking by the TV.

And they're like saying some stuff and I was like, whatever. And as I was walking past, I was like, wait, no, this is actually interesting. And so I backed back to it to see what the TV was. And they just like stop talking. And I was like,

oh, bang. All the time, I have really good dialogue happening. And then, like, a fight will start happening. It's like, oh, well, I guess I just missed out whatever that, like, banter was between Miss Marvel and Iron Man. Yeah. Great game. Honestly, I appreciate how much conversation there is about this game. Like, there's so much good.

There's so much bad. Like, I don't think we've had this type of game in a very long time. Like, can you guys think of an example? Death Stranding. Something this divisive? I honestly stranding. It's weird because I don't

think this game is divisive. I think everybody's kind of on the same page that like this game does some good stuff and there are some things that they really should fix

about this game. But it's not like Death Stranding where there are people that are like this game is a masterpiece. I think a more interesting well,

sorry Amrae you have something to chime in this. I was going to say it's like simultaneously more than some of the parts and less than some of its parts depending on like the way you look at it.

Yeah. Yeah. I think the interesting thing is like coming out of the beta the conversation there and the conversation now, I feel like I've now, ascended to, like, one of the most,

the more positive people on this game out of the group, which I was not expecting. Like, it seems like that type of game where it depends on the day. You play it. You might feel good about it. I think that's what you're doing when you have, and I don't mean this as offensive as a little sound,

but as a Frankenstein game. That is two very separate things put together and done well in some examples and done horribly in some examples, right? Where it is this really compelling, player that's doing something interesting, but then the multiplayer parts will jade some people on that or throw them off. And then the multiplayer section that I'm super stoked to go through, again, a guy who had fucking Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 and spent an entire flight to New York as Ms. Marvel's

doing the spin kick to earn XP to try to get everyone to 100, right? Like these are very specific things that I, as somebody who was high on it from the betas and excited for it, right? And again, knowing what it was, I'm shocked. So many people are into this. I definitely thought when I was going to be like the odd man out of like I really like I like it a lot and I want people it's cool that people like it but it is this thing of like I get why people would like it for one thing and not for the other and then how do you ever get to the point that it feels more than this or that you know what I compare it to what's that Andy Greg I compare it to the plant base and nugs we had the plant based chicken nuggets no one liked those sounds disgusting no no but they were they were

fine tasting for the fact that they weren't chicken and that's my thing with this The fact that this game even does anything good at all with the campaign is really shocking for me. Yeah, okay. Okay. Because of everything else. Because it's, again, it is a Frankenstein. There's so many moving parts. There are so many things that you can't do perfectly this one thing because everything else is going to suck.

So you have to make kind of all these different aspects of it just good enough. And to me, it is just good enough. And it's enjoyable to the point where I would say, yeah, I think that. this campaign is absolutely worth playing. It is a, especially if you're a Marvel fan. Like if you're a Marvel fan, absolutely fucking play this game.

The other day, I think we do get so jaded just in the positions that we are and the amount of games that we play. But whenever I raid people on Twitch, I always try to look for somebody who's like really has a low viewer account. Let's go make this person's day. And this guy was playing this game and he like freaked the fuck out. He's like,

guys, this game fucking rules. If you're a Marvel fan, you're going to fucking love this shit. And it's like, and like, absolutely, I couldn't agree more. When I heard him say, I was like, you know what? Yeah, if you are a Marvel fan, this game fucking rules, dude. You get to play as like all these Avengers and they have interesting movesets that are not feeling samey.

And there's still like this compelling story and it's heartfelt. And yeah, dude, like it's, it's so shocking to me that this game is, like the campaign is good. I am very surprised by that fact. And again, the plant-based nuggets. It's not great, but the fact that they're not chicken, it's like, you know, not bad. You know, I can't pull it off. Bride food. Go with any show.

If all the chickens disappeared, it may not be Marvel Spider-Man or Spider-Man PS4, but it's still fine. It is still fine. It is still fine. And ladies and gentlemen, with that, we're going to end this episode of Kind of Funny Gamescast. You can stay tuned to the Patreon Post Show. If you're a Patreon, Silver member, or above that we're about to do right now. But until then. Tim, hold on.

Before you go, before you tell them, you love them and sign off, I want to know if I can propose my question so they know what I'm asking, and we can talk about that in the show. Oh, go for it. My question is I want to have a conversation of how this is starting as a games of service, and is it starting stronger than what we've seen before? And what do you think, can you extrapolate that out to what that looks like, right? In terms of how a destiny originally started, how Anthem originally started,

obviously Anthem sucked. But you know what I mean? I'm like, since we're all going, like, all right, cool. Yeah, there's something here. whether you enjoy it as much as me or as little as Tim. Like there's something here that we're excited for to come back for content. Do you think that extrapolates out that multiple years from now? It's fucking awesome.

That was my question.