Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Monster Hunter Rise Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 67

Episode Date: March 31, 2021

Imran returns to preach the gospel of Monster Hunter Rise. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Gettys, joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. I'm glad we're in a safe space today without Andy because I don't like how good he looks at the standing desk. And I appreciate we're all just sitting here like slubs, all right? We've worked a full three hours today. We don't need to stand. We don't got to impress anybody blessing, all right? We're going to sit here.

We're going to talk about video games the way God intended it. I was just about to say it would be great a blessing just started slowly. standing up with the I'm sorry he's off this goes up like what's up

the new face of video games blessing at a area junior doesn't need to stand to impress me with that haircut man

oh thank it's a good one yeah I'm glad that we're in a safe space without Andy Cortez so that he's

not being so funny all the time because I feel like he's stealing all of our all of our shine

all of our thunder when he's here cracking jokes about the dash mechanics and the parries it's like I like dash

mechanics of and paris too but you make it sound funny and cool and so fuck that guy And making his return to the kind of funny games cast

It's been way too long The Dawn Imran God I think standing is for cowards What you really need is like those like Those like giant ball things that you sit on And like you can't be taken seriously While being on them

But they're supposedly good for the core Dude those things I don't trust them And I know I probably should just trust them Because like it's one of those things It's never burned me And I don't know anyone it's ever burned But I'm always scared it's gonna pop

I'm just like, I don't know, man. I don't know if all of this needs to be on all of that. Are we talking about the exercise balls? Like the big ones? Yeah, dude, I've seen kids getting taken out by those things. People have definitely been burned. If you not see like the- Take it out.

Okay, I was going to say, if you're not seeing the YouTube compilation when you're sitting down, oh, yeah, of course. One of the most classic online videos of all time is that guy opening the door, the ball just being thrown down and fucking them out. I love it so much. Imron, how you been? I've been doing well. I feel like every time we have you back on the show,

we need to have a whole update on your life and how things have been going. My entire life, so basically I've been, I got my vaccine or my first shot of my vaccine. Hell of yeah. I've been like, I've been ultra paranoid and cautious since then because I don't want to be the idiot that gets the first shot of the vaccine

and then gets the like COVID. It's like, shit. I did not get the second shot. So I've been doing nothing. I've literally just been like, for the past month and a half, I've just been working on one feature, and that's all I've been doing for the entirety of my time. So it is nice to like, as I am approaching the second shot later this week, I'm like, okay, I can finally start doing stuff again, like leaving the house for reasons other than food.

So yeah, that has been, I've got nothing to report. So like when you ask me, I'm freaking out because like, there's nothing exciting. My life seems so boring right now. I can't have nothing to say. Yeah, you know, Greg and I were just talking a little. while ago about just like what a weird place video games are in right now you know it's like it's like it just seems like when it comes to kind of funny games daily when it comes to like everything it's there's not that much to talk about or it's kind of just iterations on a lot of the same things like next gen launch

was so exciting and now it just kind of feels like everything is either something's delayed or hey this game's getting an extra patch that may or may not work right yeah or cyberpunk i saw i saw the headline this morning was about uh for kfgd was about comic on and i was like wait a second that's not video game news like Hey, man. So much video game news happens at Comic-Con. You know, video games happen at Comic-Con, you know. In a very small way. I've been to the video game section at Comic-Con,

because I was looking forward to it. It was my first Emerald City Comic-Con. I saw they had video games, and I was like, oh, sweet. Okay, right there, full stop, get the fuck out of here. That's not the same thing. Emerald City Comic-Con. It's still a Comic-Con. I'm not talking about the time I, you know,

when I went to the suburbs of Glen Ellen Comic-Con. Emerald City. That's in Seattle. That's in Seattle. We're talking about San Diego Comic-Con. We're talking about the Colorado. where you say Comic-Con and you know what I'm talking about. Now we have to say, I mean, Emerald City Comic-Con.

Excuse me, everybody. I always say of LA Comic-Con. But I guess San Diego Comic-Con is the bigger one. That's a wonder con now. It's also Chicago Comic-Con, I'm sure. Or is that C-T-C... There used to be Chicago Comic-Con, then it became Wizard World, Chicago. Come on, because you can't call it CCC.

That's just dumb. It's a good point. Yeah. Because this is the kind of funny games cast. I guess that's the same way. We get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You could watch this show.

as we record it, ad free with the exclusive post show by going to patreon.com slash kind of funny games, just like, oh, so many beautiful, beautiful Patreon producers did. The nanobiologist Tyler Ross, Joy Joseph O. Yousuff, Trent Berry, Mizuki, Man Bear Paradox, Julian the gluten-free gamer, Alex Jay Sandoval, Sanchez, James Hastings, Elliot, and Casey Kern. Thank you all very much. But if you don't have some dollars to toss our way, that's absolutely cool. we love and appreciate you anyways. You can just go to YouTube.com

slash kind of funny games or roosterteeth.com to watch it. Or if you want it as a podcast, search your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Games cast. It will be right there for you. Today we are brought to you by FitBod, Hello Fresh, and Gabby,

but we'll talk about that later. I want to get right into what we've been playing, what we've been thinking about, video games, video games, and I want to start with a little bit of a continuation from last week where we were talking about the PS4 to P. PS5 upgrades, the Xbox one to the Xbox series upgrades and all the complications one way or

another. Last week, I was telling you guys that I was extremely excited for Tony Hawks Pro Skitter one and two remake to, oh, wow, wow, Barrett. Look at that. Dude, I'm on it, man. I'm fine. Shout out to GameSpy who made this cool feature that I watched the other day. Hell yeah. They, the update came out last week, came out a late Thursday night. And as I've been talking about, I've been playing the hell out of this game. I have, I'm very excited to tell you, Greg, that I have somehow hit the point where I'm definitely going to platinum this game. Wow. It's going to take forever and it's 100% not worth the investment of time, but you know what?

I'm having a blast. Having a blast doing this over and over and over. But there's a lot of interesting things. This is almost a PSA to the people out there. Be careful upgrading this game. Just like every other video game out there, there's a lot of issues. And I'll tell you what the issues are right now. On the Xbox side, it's just broken.

If you update the game, you're fucked. There's like a 90% chance. It won't even load. You get the series X version. You start playing black screen. It just straight up won't work. You also can't fix that. Hopefully soon.

You can't update from a disc on the Xbox version. It is only digital. If you have a disc, you just have to buy a new copy. Mm-hmm. So a lot of issues on the Xbox side. Then on the PlayStation side, there was a big scare that I had, Greg. And this, I had a moment. I don't like anything you're saying.

what it might be like to be Greg Miller. To care so much about the dozens of hours I've put into this game working. Chip it away at some of the bullshit trophies in this game. Just the sheer time that you have to put in, right? Can you imagine the feeling I had when I was saying last week like, oh, they already put out the update. You could already upload your PS4 save. They're going to make this whole process easy.

They totally did. It was super easy. You upload it from the PS4, download it from the PS5. All of a sudden I'm seeing my character. I'm seeing all my stats. everything's great. Sounds good so far. One issue, Greg.

Yeah. No trophies popping. Yep. No trophies at all. And I'm like, well, that's really not good. Yeah. So I started looking into this and I'm like, okay, well, I have so much of this game I have to play still that I'm going to repop most of the trophies anyways.

So that's not that bad. But then I realize there's a couple trophies that you can only get once because it's like you get a trophy for unlocking this character. I already have the character unlocked. Exactly. And I'm like, oh, my. God. Like if this is what ends my attempt at this trophy, like I'm going to cry. But the good news is there's a way around it. It's annoying as hell, but there is a way around it. Okay. Layna. You need to upload your PS5 save, your new PS5 save to the cloud. Yeah. Then you need to go back to your PS4 version, redo the process of uploading the PS4 thing again, downloading it again on the PS5 and then update your from the PS5 cloud save, and then the

trophies pop, and everything's okay. Hold on, you need to write this down for us. You need to write this down. So I, you asked earlier in the day, blessed, like, what games are you even playing for games? I totally forgot that I did do the whole Tony Hawk save thing. I've been playing a little bit of the PS5 version. And the issue that I had at

first was I kept trying to get into the PS4 version of Tony Hawk. And I like kept doing the thing where if you're playing it on PlayStation 5, you have to press options, and then you go to game version and you switch to PS4. I kept doing that. and it wouldn't open up the PS4 versions for some reason. And then I figured out that it was because I was opening up the app too fast after I switched it.

And so you had to switch. Yeah, you had to click. At least for what I was doing it, you had to click on the PS4 version. Wait a second. And then click into the game and then it'll process this PS4 version. And that kept fucking me up. But then I did do the thing where I uploaded my PS4 save. Downloaded the save on PS5, trophies didn't pop.

I just assumed that it was fucked. And so I just didn't. I'd even try. Yeah. there is a solution. So it's like, it's nearly April. The PS5 came out in November.

Shouldn't this thing be better than it is right now in terms of like firmware and features and all this shit that just were still problems like five months ago? Well, I mean, the problem right, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that these problems will persist the entirety of the generation and it's not the developers, right? It's the PlayStation.

Right. The fact that they didn't figure out a way to make your saves just look at them. Oh, like, oh, Avengers PS4 is on this, unit, there's an Avengers PS4 save on this unit, great, you still need to upload it to play PS5 Avengers on this unit. Like, what the fuck? How does it not know to look for that? How I'll get to Avengers later, but like the thing I'm talking about is like stuff like Blessing talk about opening an app too quickly or like I still get crashes on that thing. I still

get like the weird stuff where it will just not download the right version and will show me when it won't play the right version by default. It's stuff like that like, okay, you guys, I can understand that thing coming in very, very hot in November. I'm really, real confused why it's still a problem today. Yeah. I mean, it sucks. And like, honestly, last week on the show, I was talking about Crash Bandicoot and Avengers in a couple of these other games. And I was like, I am two for three when it comes to deleting my PS4 version too early.

Yes. Remember? I'm now three for three. Because of this Tony Hawk situation, I thought I was good. I thought I was covered. I was like, my save is downloaded. I'm fine. And then I realized the trophy thing. And I'm like, well, I already deleted the PS4 version. So, I have to fucking download it again. God damn, guys. The thing with the Avengers one is like, I had the PS4 version already installed. I'm like, okay, I'm ahead of the curve.

I'm good here. Hit upload. Then for some reason, I was so sure this would work, but I went ahead and deleted the PS4 version to download the PS4. No, it wasn't I was so short is I didn't have the space.

I didn't already anything else. So I was like, oh yeah, Avengers should go. Deleted it. PS5 was like, there's no safe here. What are you talking about? I don't see anything.

What are you talking about? It did, to its credit, work the second time. But that was already, like, I spent at that point, like, 60, 70 gigs just downloading Avengers. For a game, I'm really not that interested in playing. I just wanted to see. And, like, I don't have a... Thank God, I do not have a bandwidth cap here with my ISB. If I did, I would not have been more pissed about, like, every single aspect of how much all that stops.

That's, like, 60 gigs away. And it's like, dude, that's 60 gigs out of 1,000 gigs that I'll probably have for the month. And that's a lot. especially when you're working in video games or you're a video game fan and you're downloading a bunch of shit in a month because there's a bunch of game releases and updates.

But bless, besides all the saved and trophy and all that nonsense, like what's your experience been with the next-gen version of Tony Hawk? It's been fine outside of that. Like, I've just been fucking around. When I played the game when it came out last fall, I mainly stuck to Tony Hawk Pro Skater 2

because that's the one I have the most nostalgia for and the most memory with. And so I played all my way through that. And I think I did like the first level or so of Tony Hawk Pro Skater. Skater 1, but then bounce off of it to play something else. And so this time around, I've been jumping back into Pro Skater 1 and I've been enjoying it. I don't know if I'm going to stick all the way through it.

Like, it's that, it's that fun thing of the, like, the game still plays very well. Like, Tony Hawk Post-Cator 1 plus 2 is a very fantastically done remake of the original games. But I talk about Tony Hawk, Tony Hawk's Underground 2 all the time. And I still have that weird thing where I'm like, man, I wish I could get off my board. Man, I wish I could like, what they call it, skitching, like on the, on the, on the back of a car where you would like hold on to a car to drive you around. I wish I could like you know take objectives from Ban Margera.

I still have those weird things in me where I'm like okay this is fun but man I kind of wish this was Tony Hawk Underground too. Give me thug and thug too, baby. You know what? We had that dream blessing but then you know, vicarious vision it's not really a thing anymore. Yeah they're not doing that thing anymore. The dream is dead. Wait for Skate to come save you. Oh my God, I can't wait. But Skate will not have

Eric Sparrow. That's the problem. Yeah, skate would have um, what's his name? The, Pauli, Paulo? Steveo, Steveo, Steveo. Oh,

Polo. Because Pauli is the kid in the wheelchair, right? Polly's the kid in the wheelchair who's like all bandaged up. Yeah, and then Steveo is the guy who, we all know Steveo. I'm unfamiliar, please. I hope he's still alive.

Steve was the one that actually got me to play a Tony Hawk game where I tried Tony Hawk, you know, way back on the day on people's units. I was like, ah, this is, this is for me. And I remember in college,

somebody playing thug in their room and I remember watching me like oh this is amazing I went to GameStop that or EB that day and bought it Yeah Thugs awesome Remember when you did the McTwist

Over the hotels in Hawaii And then Eric Sparrow fucking claims credit for it I do God fuck there Dude what a great story What a great skateboard story in that game Fuck yeah

Beautiful I've been loving the update for the PS5 stuff It's all the things you'd expect Like the faster load times I will say that after last week talking about Avengers and all that stuff. I'm a little let down that it's not that much faster.

Like, there's still a load screen. I kind of was thinking for something like this, it was going to be just kind of instant because Avengers shaved off like an entire minute. Greg, you had a question. Yeah,

but if you roll on, you just come back to me. You talk about the Xbox crashes and stuff. I hadn't heard about that. Did they fix that yet? Do they know what's causing that? As of last night on the Tony Hawk subreddit, it looked like it was not fixed.

Okay. Yeah, I haven't seen today. So maybe. But like, yeah, that's just fucked into it. just won't even work. That's crazy.

Yeah. But the interesting thing is like it looks, it does look better and it runs a little bit faster and stuff, but it already ran really great and looked great to begin with. So I'm not really noticing it. But it's the haptic feedback stuff that really dramatically changes how the game feels. And I don't know that I love it because the R2 button, there's so much resistance. Yeah. For like, uh, you do the revert and shit.

For anything for revert or just switching or anything. And it's like, Tony Hawk's not the type of game that I want to fight the control. on, but it also does make it feel more like, oh, shit, this is an engaging, immersive thing. And it's like, definitely next gen. But it, to me, is an example of third parties using the haptic feedback, but not to the measure and, like, success of an Astro Boy or a first party title that they're putting out. So it's like, I'm excited that other guys are using it, but I don't know if it's going to work out.

And, like, it been a couple years if they're still going to be doing this, because it does feel really gimmicky. Yeah, like during Avengers, I was like, okay, it's so cool to like have the Ironman hand, like give some resistance to some vibration or have like Clint like do that. It makes it feel like you actually shoot an arrow. But after like an hour, I was like, I don't need to do this anymore. It kind of hurts my hand. You lasted way longer than me. I got like, like, I don't even know, five seconds into Hawkeye and I was like, oh no.

And like I went and I was like, you know what? Yeah, I just went and turned off, Paptic feedback. I was like, I don't need the tension to feel the bow in this. as much as I'm shooting, you know, I'm feathering attacks, I feel like, is Hawkeye. Yeah, you can turn it off in Tony Hawk as well. Oh, of course, yeah. It feels like with, like you mentioned, Astros' Playroom, that game had such a light touch with it.

Like, it was, it was constant. But it wasn't bothering me in anything I was trying to do. With other stuff, like Avengers, and I assume like Tony Hawk, it's cool, but I have a main goal that it's interrupting. Yeah, for me, it was either Fortnite or called D.D. BlackOps Cold War. I can't remember which one, but it was definitely a shooter that I was playing where I, it was probably call duty because that's faster pace. I wanted to get the drop on somebody who I saw, and I went to shoot, and there was that resistance for a second. And it was this weird brain thing because the PS5 still feels somewhat new that I didn't register that like, oh, wait, I can press the button.

I just got to hold it or press it harder in order to make it actually go. And yeah, like, I'm with you guys. that I think there needs to be some sort of, I guess, growth and development with developers working with the dual sense and understanding how it works or how to use it best, because the PlayStation first party stuff, I think, has had more of a delicate touch with it. Like, you look at Spider-Man Miles Morales, and in the way that that factors into the web swings, like, that was done in a way that you wouldn't, like, you would pull in the R2, but it was at the very end of your pull-in where you would have that little bit of tension that made it feel a

bit cooler but didn't stop you at all. Like it didn't really, it wasn't like a pull through thing. It was more so of it. Here's like this extra level of texture to your button press, which is a really cool thing. And it kind of reminds me a little bit of, I guess, the touchpad with the dual shock where a few years in, you saw developers here and there start to find cool ways to use it. And I don't think that ever reached full potential.

But in Witcher 3, I think if you swiped up on the touchpad, that would open up your map. And if you swiped another way, that would open up a different menu. And for me, that was a great use of that. then I wish we saw way more developers used in their games. I remember Days Gone did that pretty well too, where every direction you swip took you to a different section of their menu.

Yeah. And I wonder if we're going to see that a few years down in line with the dual sense where we find really cool ways that developers are like, oh yeah, we can use triggers in order to indicate this specific thing or in order to let the player know this specific piece of detail in the game that is going to clue them into something cool. And now that Astros and Miles Morales are out. I'm hoping that developers can see that and go,

okay now we get it we didn't have like full documentation or a full grasp on this before but now we know what ideally this should be yeah totally last we were talking a little bit about spider man and the update what was it called it wasn't performance wasn't fidelity it was the RT performance RT performance uh and since then it's like insomniaX added even more things more stuff to Tomolz Morales a new suit and plus the the ratchet update is out for 60 frames for a second shout out to insomniac man like that's just it's so awesome. And like, I'm excited for Rift, I'm more excited for Rift Apart now where I wonder how they're going to deal with the, the haptic stuff. Like, is that going to be fun? Because I can imagine with Ratchett's arsenal of guns and all the different weird effects and things. Like, it's going to be pretty cool. Yeah, I'm right there with you. They're kind of carrying that console right now. I cannot wait to, because I started, I started playing Ratched and Clinic. I think Greg probably started to you for PSLW because it's our book club this month. And I use the right name. The, sorry, the hashtag PS, we played this this month. That, I think.

Yeah, I think that's it. No, you're right. You played this. P.S. We played this. And I started playing about the first three levels. And the game looks awesome still, like, even though it's a game that came out in 2015, but there are things here and there around, like, or 2016.

There are things here and there around like, oh, man, okay, this is, this texture isn't as hot. Or, like, this scene doesn't look as good as it probably felt in 2016 when I first played this game. And now that they've dropped the 60 FPS patch, and, like, they dropped it early, I'm super excited to jump into it and see how it looks

because I think that's such a dull thing. I was playing this afternoon because we had had that conversation right and yeah jumping into it like it feels and looks way way better just with that a little minimum of one upgrade right whereas when we were playing before we were like okay yeah this feels like a 2016 game like just putting that level of polish on it I think really helps should they drop it today yeah yep it's already out shadow drop you know and they said they'd get to it in April but here it is

so cool how about that Hey Marron do you have anything you wanted to add about Avengers Oh boy Yeah that game's still not great Like I've relitigated this like in post and over Twitter And stuff like that But like over I think

What really comes out at me Even after that update is the fact that They can't do anything interesting with the levels Because everyone has to be able to do the levels Right so I'm playing like this Kate Bishop stuff And the Clint stuff And like it would be cool if I don't know what exactly they would do But if they had a level based around the fact

that you are two archers that are able to do these things that other characters necessarily cannot do, but they can't because other characters have to be able to go through them. And I think that's what ultimately is limiting that game for me is that it's not going to be delivering on the fan service angle because they, like, you can't get all those voice actors back in for every single update.

So the fact that I'm doing this campaign that Captain America has nothing to say about at all, even though his entire thing is, I wonder if I should go back to the Avengers and the leader of the Avengers is right there just not saying a damn thing like that doesn't do little for me on fan service the gameplay

isn't really doing it for me anymore like the game is improved but it's not improved enough and I think I'm I'm still there for like at a neutral unbiased party for Greg Miller's 2021 bet about whether at the end of this year Avengers will be in the game it's pretty good

we'll see but like as of this update it's not there yet for me Greg, I'm sure you've been playing Avengers, but we don't need to talk about that. You've talked about it a whole bunch. I want to hear about a game called Cozy Grove. Cozy Grove. We're going to get Joey Noel to pop in here.

You've got to get Joey Noelle in here. She's been playing in the chat, of course. Right now, when we were talking about Ratchet, Joey says, of course they upgrade everything in Ratchet and Clink when I only have the final boss left, lool. So the first thing we will do is sell Joey on going for the platinum as soon as she gets in here. I'm excited for her to face that final boss because that's a really fun final boss too. Yeah.

Hello, Joey. Hello. Joey, so we see in the chat here saying you only have one boss left in Ratchet and Clank and you're upset about the 60 frames. Platinum it, come on. Okay, so here's the thing. I was trying to platinum it and then one of the gold bolts just totally like I went and got it. And then I went back on the map in the little section where it was isn't there. And it's not popping and I can't go back and get it.

And it's really upsetting. So you guys start over, then platinum it. 60 frames per second. You know, I don't go twice as fast now. Twice as much to play it twice as like that too. Joey, are you going to come on our hashtag PS, we played this? Sure. Our book club.

PS, levy. We're recording Monday. Come on over on Monday. Okay. I have to finish it by Monday. Joey, instead of that, let's clear the mechanism, talk about something a little bit more friendly. Cozy Grove.

How far are you in Cozy Grove? I've been playing. I know you've been playing. And if you're not watching it right now as it goes through, the easiest way to describe it is Animal Crossing, but the resident, the villagers. or ghosts.

Yeah. I'm on day seven or eight. Nice. I think. I just got a little badge thing. It's very, very cute. I love the art style for it.

And then, yeah, you're this cute little Spirit Scout and you go around and you help do all these tasks for these little ghosts. And it's so cute. I love that it's made to be,

you only get like a certain number of tasks the day that you can do. So I like that I'm not just thinking like hours and hours and hours into it. And that gives me something like, I just get really excited to play a little bit more every day. I think it's paced out really well. If people have played Spirit Fair, I feel like you're really going to like this as well

because it has kind of similar vibes of like doing little tasks for spirits and stuff like that. There's no like travel mechanic like there is in Spirit Fair where you're going across them like a huge sailing ship map thing. But it's really fun. I just kind of started playing or I started looking more at like the badges and stuff of like all the cooking that you have to do and crafting and all of those mechanics. And it's really fun.

Yeah, I'm having a blast with it too. I like that when you, the more things you do like the more obviously filled out the map gets and the more colorful and stuff it gets, which I think is really pretty and cute. Yeah. So again, if you're an audio person, what I think is interesting about the art style that you can't see is yeah, adorable art style. Overlay that reminds, especially the clock and day you're on reminds me a lot of Animal Crossing.

and the gameplay in general reminds me a lot of Animal Crossing. But the idea is that, yeah, you are the Spirit Scout. You come to this island of lost souls, and as you start talking to them, and they're all bears, is you do their tasks, right? Their hearts fill in to advance the story, but then they also fill in with color, which then spreads out around them.

And you can craft or unlock these different lanterns that you can put there to kind of string together the color to make it go, but it is this idea of trying to bring color back to it, but also send these spirits on their way by helping them with their tasks, which are they range person to person. There's bigger tasks. Like today, I'm sure you already have it too, Joey.

The pirate gave, or not pirate, one of the other guys gave me a grog cup that I don't know what it's for, but the game is very clear and its objectives of, hey, this is a thing that'll be a quest item. Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. Some of these take place over a longer period of time.

And again, the game is also very upfront about, yeah, they want you playing 20 to 30 minutes a day, and that's it. Like, that's the, you turn it on, You go in, there's a campfire in the middle of your campsite that you talk to and you do things with, obviously. And not obviously, we do things with it in terms of burning things, in terms of it being your portal to put things into your tent, you can upgrade your tent as well. But one of the main things you're doing is going through and getting spirit logs, which you get for completing one of the main objectives of the day. And so when you go to the thing and you toss in a spirit log or just talk to the fire, the fire's like, awesome, I can sense that there's two more spirit logs around here.

And as you go around and knock out, you know, this guy wants this thing or wants you to go craft this thing, which means you have to go get, you know, these mushrooms or this wood or these branches. When you come back and drop it in, it counts down, and eventually he does go, all right, cool, those are all the spirit logs for today. Like, make sure you come back tomorrow. And then for me personally, that's when I turn it off and go play something else. I either start or end my night with it usually. And what I find endearing about it is that you could sit there. You could grind. You could go and pick up seashells.

and there's there's a leaf piles and little things little holes to dig up that would give you you know a potato exactly you could go and grind out these things that you could then sell to the guy in town who you know gives you coins for your stuff and then you could buy more stuff you could you know go and craft all that stuff into things but the idea is that the game isn't meant to be played that way and i'm i'm day six i think joe and it's one of those i'm not feeling the pressure of i need to hoard everything it was very much today day of like, okay, cool, man, I got way too much lettuce. Let's just sell a bunch of lettuce and get this trophy to pop and then chill out and come back tomorrow. Yeah, Reb described this game to me,

too, say, like, she described it as more story, less capitalism than Animal Crossing, which, like, that makes sense from what you're describing of, you don't have to do everything. You don't have to, like, min max your time. You have to just, like, enjoy yourself, and that's it. Yeah, it's very much about building out, like, you know, your own little campsite. And like, my campsite is still super basic. I've just, the things I've unlocked, I've plop down there and then I had that little table and I'm like I should make a chair but I haven't actually gone through the trouble of running around to make the chair yet. Barrett can you bring up the picture that I said to assets?

I love Joey's character so much. It is so perfectly Joey. Yeah. It's so cute. I bought the glasses. I bought the little pink hoodie. I love it. I have new glasses now and now I have a cute little poofy earmuffs that are very cute.

Yeah, mine was obviously just trying to make a Taylor Swift. the best I could and go through and do whatever I could to make her look like that. But I like your outhouses there, Joey. Very nice, right? But it's the same thing where stuff just plopped everywhere. I haven't done like strategic placement. And that's the thing. Like, you know, I feel very much about it, especially in the way it's working of these

short bursts of I put it all, I'm getting things and I'm just throwing them down. And the more things I throw down, the more I start to envision what I'd want to do at the campsite or the world and go spread that out. But for me, it is more about right now. Still getting the feel of what the daily grind is going to be for and of running through it. Yeah. What I do appreciate about it is that if if, if, because I know that I get stuck in the thing of like, oh, I've just gotten into the groove and now there's nothing left to do, but it does give you the options to like go fishing or forage and like do all of the side like crafting all the

or cook all the recipes or crafting all the little items or submitting things to like the pseudo museum and stuff like that. So there is more stuff to do even though you don't have any like main goal objectives. But I don't feel like he's breathing on your neck to do it, right? Like that's the thing where I feel like And, you know, one of the things you and I complimented Animal Crossing on during our review time was that, you know, Nook Miles were a game changer, where it was like, cool, even when stuff shut down, even when I can't do anything I was expecting to do, I can still go and grind those miles out and do that. And like, okay, go, go, go, go, go. And like, you know, Imran, like, a Reb was saying, like, right of the capitalism angle of it, a crew, a crew, so I'm ready to do something. Here I don't feel that pressure. And even, like, the music track for it is so chill. Like, the game is so, exactly. Right. Exactly, right? Yeah, he only can turn it up and try to get up to the microphone. But the game is just so chill about, like, what? Like, just hang out. You know what I mean?

I like this. Let's just walk around this island and talk to some bears that are ghosts that, you know, one's mixed up with a seagull, and another one thinks he's made a wood. Awesome. Let's do it. You know what I mean? Cozy is a good name for the game. And that's the idea.

And, like, you know, oh, I guess I should have said this a long time ago. My apologies. Pop Agenda doing PR for this, obviously. My wife's company, I obviously don't like most of their games, usually. So this is, like, I'm not, this isn't some weird payoff for it or whatever, right? But it is the idea that like, hey, take it with a grain of salt, I guess. But like, as soon as I started it up, right, like, I literally turned to her at character creation. And I was like, I love this.

Like, this is checking all the boxes for me in terms of like a cute art style, cute character, ghosts. Like, let's go. Like, let's just go out there and be a part of it and put as much as you want into it. Yeah, I'm really, really digging it. And like, you know, blessing, one of the things we were talking about on a piece, I love you about it, right? was like the length of time to go with it. And it's going to be fascinating because Animal Crossing is that thing.

I binged and I don't even want to say it burned out on. I just binged it, right? I mean, I went on for like, I don't know, three months I'd say really, really, really playing that just about every day, if not in the first few months every day. And this one, I love the idea of just the check-ins, right? And the trophies I was looking at, I couldn't see them before, but now they're up or whatever. And you could see them technically, but I wasn't really looking into it.

But like play on multiple days for punctuality elite is like play on 90 days. And then it's like the trophies for playing multiple seasons of four, like, you know, waiting to come back. Like I really do see it being something I leave on my hard drive for, for not forever, obviously, but for a really long time and do just check in. Because again, like, it's not a time commitment. It is that thing of cool, I'm getting ready to get into Outriders or I'm getting ready to play whatever I want to play tonight. Or I'm winding down and want to go to bed, but I don't want to start something new and I don't want to get into a bigger mission. Joey, do you have any closing thoughts on this? It's just turned into like my nice little like morning routine where like I make coffee and I play cozy girl and I'm like this great.

I've been needing a game like that and I feel like Animal Crossing has been a little too much like now it's like I haven't logged into Animal Crossing in like months so I'm like I don't want to turn it on because there's too many things to do and this is just like really accessible and not overwhelming and I appreciate that. You get a warrior costume Joey. Yeah that's not really selling me on anything. The bunny. Oh the bunny's back. He's back and all the eggs and I don't know. I bought all my, I bought all my Mario stuff.

Yeah. And I was just like the bunny pop back up. I'm like, I'll be, I'll come back later. I don't need to do this guy. Oh, we've got a real anti-bunny agenda here,

but all right. Dude, you don't know. All right. You didn't live through bunny day last year. You didn't live through bunny day last year. He's so creepy. You try and fish,

just eggs. You try and catch balloons. Just eggs. Just eggs. So many eggs. Joey, thank you for joining us. Thanks.

Bye guys. Bye. Blessing. Yo. You've not been playing Cozy Grove. No, I've not. But you have been playing Nerita Boy. Yeah, I have been playing Nerita Boy.

So Nerita Boy came out today. It's on Xbox Game Pass. And this is a game that Snowback Mike actually put me on to. This is one that was part of the ID at Xbox presentation that was going down late last week. And it's a Game Pass game. And so I downloaded it there. Basically what it is is a side-scrolling 2D action game with Pixels. art kind of reminiscent of Katana Zero quite a bit because it has the fun neon colors, lots

of purples, lots of blues, lots of like trippy sequences that it does with this art style and it has like this focus on like going digital and a bunch of shit. I've played only a few hours now and I am very confused about what's going on in the game. It has one of those narratives that's like filled with jargon and it is it very much puts you in its world. as I understand it, you are in this digital space and you're trying to get to the bottom of what's going on with like a certain character and figure out like, you're trying to unearth their memories and try to understand a bunch of shit. But you get in there and it's it's like it has kind of a Metroidvania kind of set up because you go in and you you explore this world

quite a bit. You talk to different characters who are telling you about all this shit about the digital world and they're like, oh yeah, you can fucking, you're, you're, you're, you're, You're a son of the trichoma or like, you know, pray to the fucking, like, pray to the zeros and ones. It's a bunch of shit that is like mixing in this digital ones and zeros kind of style that it has with a bunch of other kind of cool shit. And aesthetically, aesthetically, even though it's kind of all over the place, it's pretty cool. Like visually it is one of the most beautiful hot pixel art 2D games I think I've played. and then also from soundtrack-wise

the music is bumping and like just from a pure aesthetic standpoint this game is incredible if you're looking at it right now if you're watching the video version right

like you're seeing the character you're seeing him wave his sword getting into fights dodge a bunch of shit and that's pretty much what the game is and I really love

how the game looks and sounds the way the game plays I'm not as big of a fan of because I would say from what you see when the character swings a sword right your main character he swings his sword

and he gets into combat the comment the The combat, I think, looks way cooler than it actually feels to play. When you actually get into the mechanics of it, like the combat very much is, all right, you can press square to slash. You press R2 for like a fun like shotgun blast move. Hold it. You could do like a blast across the screen.

And then it's like LB to dash. And so Andy would love this game. And like the mechanics honestly don't go that far beyond that, at least for where I'm at in the game. They haven't, they haven't looped in much. more yet. And I can kind of feel that they're probably building up towards more because it does have this Metrovania is set up. But so far, the combat does feel kind of simple. Like the enemy design is cool, but they all kind of attack the same way. And when you're hacking and slashing, it doesn't feel

like this fun dynamic thing. It doesn't remind me of Katana Zero. Kutana Zero, I think, had a fun, like, you know, one hit and you're dead and you're going fast and you feel like you have all the power. I feel like this game moves way slower than that. And it doesn't feel as satisfying when you take enemies out. And then for what the exploration has been so far. The game gives you objectives. If you press the select button, it'll bring up a number of objectives that you have.

But they're very unexplainative of like what is it you're really supposed to do. Like it's stuff like go talk to X character so you can open up X environment. But you don't really know who that character is

and you don't really know where that environment is. Like it tells you to go places and you're like, cool, where is that place? Because there's no map in the game. at least so far for where I'm at. I've not had a map, which I feel like is very not good for a Metroidvania. Like, I've backtracked back and forth in this game.

And I've, I've gotten into the place quite a few times where I'm kind of running in circles. And I'm like, I have no idea where I'm supposed to go because the game is not really telling me where to go. Or even giving me the option of pulling up, pulling something up to figure out where I'm supposed to go.

And so that's, that's been somewhat frustrating. And yeah, like I'm, I'm into it because, I'm into it because, again, I'm feeling the vibes of the game. I'm feeling the aesthetic. I kind of enjoy what they're doing with like the weird, weird narrative that they're thrown forth.

But gameplay-wise, it's not captivated me too much. Like, I'm kind of in that weird middle space with it. You don't seem to be to, like, other, I was looking up other reviews while you're talking, and you don't seem too out of the ballpark how other people feel as well. IGN gave it a 6 out of 10 from Mitchell Saltman, who I trust with these types of games. Oh, yeah, Mitchell Saltman is a very good review. Yeah, he's great. Salt of the Earth.

Yeah. And then PC Gamer gave it a 7 out of 10. I watched a video today. It came up on my Twitter feed of like someone saying, this is why I could not finish my review of Nameda Boy. And there's just like a level, like a runner level that looked like honestly really terrible. Of them pointing out everything that was like, you can't see the enemies on this thing. The obstacles are like blend into the background and you have to jump over them.

But if you jump or if you jump, you'll probably hit an enemy because. because they're all weirdly placed. And, like, that was the kind of thing of, like, I could see myself playing a game up until right this point, and I'm giving up forever. Yeah. That sounds like Battle Toads a bit, like the endless runner level in that.

It sounds a lot like Balotodes. And a Balotodes is a game. I also should have given up forever halfway through. Um-Ran. Are you giving up a game called Everhood? I have finished Everhood, so I'm not giving that game up. I... Okay, so I feel like I'm going to be talking mostly the blessing on this one.

Blessing, have you played Everhood yet? No, I've not. I don't even know what Everhood is. So it is the newest and a long line of Undertale likes. Oh, I do you know what it is. I've seen gameplay of it. It is a game where the overworld is very much like a slightly more high fidelity undertale. And the actual, like, when you get in battles in Undertale, you are in small heart dodging attacks that are like often set to somewhat somewhat set to music or

like at least make it, the music makes the actual battles a little bit better. They take that idea further in Everhood to the point where it is basically a guitar hero or like a audio server what was that? Yeah, that kind of game.

You're speaking about language. The note highway track. And every single battle is a different one. It is a, like, they all have different songs. They have different patterns. It's a really, really neat idea because it is the same Undertale style thing

of you're not actually battling. You are just avoiding our attacks. And it is just a left-right pattern. You don't have, like, the main thing in the game is you're just trying to get your arm back. So you're going through by people who are, like, trying to stop you for some reason. There is a,

can I put this? There's very much an undertale style twist that changes that game up quite a bit. I'm not going to talk about it. Is it a pacifist thing? It is someone along those lines, yes. Okay. I have, I did an interview with the developers that is like going to go heavy in the

spoiler, so like I will, I'll advertise myself and say that's coming in the next week or so. But like, where can I get that? You can get that on fanbyte.com where I write. But yes, like, it's, it's basically a, here's a bunch of, it's a cast of very odd characters that you were kind of just coming into this world and like it is extremely, extremely influenced by Undertale. Yeah, it seems like they're leaning into it. That last shot with the group, with the group,

shot looked very undertale. Right. It's like it uses, what's the font name, Sysfix or whatever, to like, it's the Undertale font, basically. And it, it's basically, if you play Undertale and went, okay, I kind of wonder what

would happen if a different choice was made. Like, that is what Everhood is. It's a little, it's a little short, because basically you do that four hours of like, up until like the midgame twist and then you do another four hours, it's a very similar. But that game also, it says a lot of things about transhumanism and death and Eastern philosophy that I think are interesting.

And I'm not sure I recommend that game to people as like, hey, if you loved Undertale, you'll love this. But if you found Undertale interesting, you will find this game interesting too. How's the music? It's from a bunch of different composers. So there's no like, unlike Undertale, there is no like cohesive one thing. for everything that like it gets built upon and like stuff like that but there's a bunch of good songs in there and some of them don't quite hit quite as well as the others but some of them are like okay this is not only fun to play this is fun to listen to so i i enjoyed most of the

tracks in that game there's some that are like i don't want to say duds but didn't fit for like my musical preference it is not on game pass i don't think but it is on it is on switching pc yeah i would suggest the pc version like Run well on Switch? Not really. I've had numerous things where it either hard-locked or I thought it hard-locked and then it skipped like to the end of a cutscene or load screens that were like 20 to 25 seconds. So like PC apparently fine.

Switch for like they said they're going to clean it up. They also said they did not expect it to become this big that they just made. It's like a two people in like ones in Spain and once in Sweden, I think. So like they thought it was just a small product they were doing. doing like it kind of came out of I think it came out of a game jam but like there it's also kind of ripe with typos because they did not again didn't expect to be that big so I saw them on like the steam community forums that were like yeah no we're gonna fix all this we didn't expect this game to sell well so yeah it's like it's getting like overwhelmingly positive reviews and like

a bunch of people are talking about on steam yeah it's of the undertale likes I have played I think this is probably my favorite so far I've yet to play omori which I also here's a very good one but like this is a really cool one and I wish it went a bit harder on the themes it was talking about about like there's a really cool aspect of transhumanism in it I'm like okay I want to explore more of it but then they really don't really talk about it much more and when I say it is undertale like the end just straight up copies and like it is oh this is just no different this is exactly the same thing in your your balance system so it's a it's I don't think think they have any illusions about what kind of game it is.

The fact that the main character is just Gino from Mario VG on Red. I was just not to say it was like, this is Gino, right? Like, yes. I don't think I've ever seen the characters like this blatant a copy. Yeah, it's they're, they wear the inspirations on their sleeves very much so. So

like you go in knowing that stuff and to some extent it does like it does move past those inspirations pretty well and to some extent it also gets caught into them. So I would suggest blessing you give it a shot. But yeah, This might be an interesting experiment for me because I remember, I think it was like a week or so ago. I saw Reb tweet out a screenshot of this game.

And when I saw it, I thought Toby Fox had released Tultaroon. I was like, what the fuck? He would. He would. I was like, when the fuck did this come out? Yeah. He would. He would.

I was like, when the fuck did this come out? Why didn't anybody tell me? And then I realized it was a different game and I moved on from it. But it would be a fun, fun experiment to try out to see like, all right, did I love Undertale? Because it is this fun pixel art RPG that's a throwback. to Earthbound and RPGs that I like. Or, you know, can another game come through and do the same thing

and pull me in, right? Like, part of me thinks I'll go into Everhood and just be like, nah, this ain't it. This ain't Undertale, therefore I don't like it. But I'm down to try it. Like, it looks a lot like Undertale. Yeah. You can beat that game in a weekend, and I suggest if you do start playing it,

get to at least the middle to see how you feel about that twist. And then once that happens, then you can try to, like, go like, okay, either I'm feeling this or I'm not. You know what? I'm going to download it. Yeah, I'm extremely into this. I'm also going to check this out. There you go.

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Now, I'mron. The main reason we brought you back today is to talk about Monster Hunter Rise. Huge game. I've been complaining on Twitter how you guys have not been talking about Monster Hunter-Her-R-R-R-R- Haven't said shit.

We needed you. You're the man. I wasn't in the mood for this one. Amron. It didn't hit at the right time for me to even the mood for it. I made a character. Well, let's talk about the game then.

Let's go. So I've been playing this game. for about 100 hours. I did play pre-release, so like a lot of that is not just all been crammed down in the last like five days. It is,

I think I've been playing, so I've played Monster Hunter. I've played a little bit of Monster Hunter over the years. I got a decent bit into a Master Hunter try, really got into 4 and really, really got into World. Like World I played honestly

up there at about 500 hours. I think this is the best Monster 100, this best playing Monster 100 game I played. Wow. Why? Because, you know, I was big into world. I liked the PSP ones. Why is this one set it apart, set itself apart? So it's a lot of, like, when you start these games, there's a lot of learning curve of what is actually different here. And there's a lot of me resisting that learning curve of going, no, this works fine for me. Why do I need to use these new features? Like, I've been, I've played world enough that I can just go up to a monster and slap it on the head of the sword and like, that's it.

But once I start doing those new features, I can't go back. anymore. So the two things that really differentiate rise are the Palamute, who is your dog-based companion. Previous games had a cat called the Palico. The Palo mute is, he is way dumber than your cat. He does not do a lot of stuff, he or she does not do a lot of this stuff your cat does. However, they also have new features. Like, you can ride this thing into battle or during battle or around.

And it will also just like, it will attack for you. it will do various other things a lot more aggressively than the cat does. So like, it kind of works like a dog. And a dog will, like, is your man's best friend.

So like, for example, if you and Monster Hunter Rise are just slashing at nothing. If you just have your dual blades out, you're going crazy like this, there's no enemy around. Your palico will look at you like,

what the fuck are you doing? Your dog will just slash an air with you because it is your best friend. It is going to do what you want. So, like, I think that kind of, it changes things up, so it's no longer about,

the hunt, really. You, when you get into a map in a Monster Underworld, assuming you've seen the Monster already, even if you have it, it's not hard to deduce. Like, you get it on the map immediately of, this is where the monster is. Just hit right, click, then it'll highlight it in the map. You just right under Palomute right there. It takes, for Monster Hunter World, I would say it took about four to five minutes between accepting a quest and actually getting to the monster because of load times and it's a big over-open world and all that stuff. And you're like, you were actually walking there. In Rise, I would say it takes maybe

40 to 50 seconds of how long it takes before, like time until monster head sword thing. Like that is, I think one of the biggest changes for me is they realize, hey, you're on a portable system. You don't have time to sit there

and like track your monster or waiting for the spirit bugs to like glow in the spirit of direction. It is get your ass over there, go hit that thing right now. And I think that works out super well for how it's no longer about the hunt. It is now more about the fight. And I think it's one of the more useful things about it. And in that vein, the other big feature is the spirit bug, which is a, our wire bug, I should say, I don't know what I'm saying

a spirit bug, a wire bug where basically you have new moves that involve this like bug you can throw out and then attach like a Spider-Man web to it. So you can, because the maps are now a lot more vertical, you can now climb out spaces that you could not climb up before. If there is a monster between you, like there's a mountain ridge between you and a monster, you can just go over that mountain ridge instead of just walking all around it or some other method of trying to get there a little bit faster. If you, if there's a monster is like charging at you, you can dodge out of the way with these wirebugs. They also have individual weapon skills that make things a lot different of making, like, if you don't understand your weapon, as long as you understand the skills,

you were getting a lot, you're going to be able to get the most out of your weapon that you could not before. Like, they start you off in the long sword in this game. The long sword is the best beginner weapon. It's also needlessly complicated of like charging up the spirit for it, of like making sure it charges up three levels. And after that, you can unleash a big like combo and stuff. And that's cool. It's also very difficult to do because charging it up three levels requires doing smaller combos along the way. And if you're not used of that, and it could also just be like a monster

just kind of walks out of your way when you're trying to do a combo, that can really piss you off. If you just use a spirit skill to basically samurai slashed through it and then it'll like do that thing where it just hits it a thousand times, then it raises you up one level immediately.

It's not hard for newcomers to figure out like, okay, I think I see what this did. I think I see why this is important. And it makes the fights a lot more interesting and dynamic because then you suddenly have like four people, people all doing their skills and trying to balance out, okay, I just did mine, but I should save this because this Magnamalo has a status effect that I need to use the web for, or I should

just say this because if this thing goes crazy, I need to get the hell on the way. I'm going off like on a big tangent here, but what I'm saying is all these things add up in a way that like I went back and played world because there are bosses I did not beat in the world, like the behemoths and things like that. It feels very slow in comparison. It feels like I'm missing things. So my question is, uh, Imran. Khan. You talk about it's about getting you to the fight faster, and that's because it was portable. I remember reviewing the PSP monster hunters and stuff, and one of the big things was, of course, tracking your monster, right? Even when you got to it, you fought it, then it would be a paintball,

it would run off the map, you'd have to run off the map, there'd be a load. Even, and I'm obviously talking about a game in 2008, right, 2009, when I'm reviewing these on PSP. What is it now? Is it, you're talking about getting to the fight faster. Are the fights more compact? Are the monsters still taking off and you need to give chase to them? they will take off like you will show them but there's no need for a paintball once you see one it is always under map period

so like you will see let's say Azuros which is a bear which is a it's a funny bear because like if you have honey in your inventory it will steal it and just start sitting there and eating it which is hilarious

bears especially as you hit it in the head with a hammer for taking their honey but like let's say you see in Azuros you start fighting it at some point it's like I'm gonna get the fuck out of here because like I do not like being hit with a hammer in the head so you just like

you'll either get in your palomite and start following it and start like dogging it literally by hitting it with a with the dog's like co-and-eye in its mouth or like fly off your dog and go hit it and something like that and just chase it somewhere else or like you can let it be and one of the so in previous bunch of hers you would like eat food to get your set up grades and once you fainted those set up grades would be gone for that quest here you can eat food the set up grades are not as big but they will still like they will not be like they will not be go away once you die. The big thing is there are endemic life around the map that once you pick up either become permanent or temporary buffs for your character for that quest. So if you don't feel like immediately going to search for the monster or if the monster has run away and it happens to run through a path that there's like there's some endemic life you can pick up, the next time you're there, the next time you're fighting it, you will have these stat upgrades or the stat buffs that make you stronger. So it doesn't feel like you're ever losing anything.

You're only getting stronger against it. Nice. Okay. It seems a lot faster pace, like, even just, like, watching the footage that Barrett was just playing. Like, I didn't play World, but, like, watching Greg and them play. Like, even the battles themselves seem a little bit more, like, actiony, like, platinum games, almost.

Like, does it cross over that level of you being like, but this isn't a platinum game? Like, it's close, but it's not. The wirebugs make a big difference. but no, like, a lot of stuff still lose you on mobile, and it's still at its heart a monster hunter game. So if you were having, you have a big sword out there, you have to put that sword away before you start, like, running

or dodging extensively. Oh, dodging, you can still do whatever, but like, before you start running away from the monster or trying to get a bear angle and stuff like that, it's never going to feel exactly like a character action game or like how God Eater does, like trying to mix character action and monster hunting,

but it does feel a lot faster. It makes, I would say, this is this is this big elite from world as world was from the previous Monster 100 games. It does feel like even if you were a little tired, or not tired, but if you were a little intimidated by how

immobile you get, it's the ramp up to learning how to deal with that is a lot like less steep and more it like so the actual story mode of this is like they call them Village Quest or Hub quests and HubQuests are like the

go in there fight a monster it has a ton of HP Village Quest have like slightly more of a story but like it's mostly the monsters are easier they tutorialize you in how to fight them and I think that's unless you're a big like a experienced Monster Hunter player it's usually better to start out with that and then like try and figure out

okay this is the pacing this is the weapon I want this is the way I want to play this game and I think it's a smarter idea of how to separate that stuff out it's not like in that terms it's probably the easiest monster hunter game I play but once you actually do go into like the HubQuest

and the higher rank and stuff like that, it does get harder. That said, and this is the thing that like people know about now because like the game is out, but when I was playing it pre-release, I was really surprised at how thin the end game was because this game is just straight up not done.

It is the inverts of cyberpunk where it is polished to an absolute sheen, but the content is all there yet. Like there's going to be a big update in April that has like a bunch of new monsters. there's going to be a bigger update in the summer that has like literally the end of the game. But like if you were going to like, oh, this is, if you thought for a second, this is, they were going to start this game where world ended in terms of content, nope. So how many, how, I mean, like I know you can replay stuff and grind and go for armor and all that jazz.

But like, what would you say you've done hundreds of hours? But when did you run out of new content, I guess? I would say at about, I started, I fought the final, final end boss of the Hub quest. at 60 hours, maybe 50 hours, which is a little like a decent amount of time. But if you were the person who like, if you, if you like me, we're in Monster Hunter World for 500 hours,

you were not getting that from the jump here. You were getting a much thinner experience that I assume at some point is going to be like fleshed out and all that stuff. But for right now, if you were going into this thinking, okay, yeah, this is just going to be World Reportable, not quite, not yet. For this type of game, for Monster,

specifically, do you think that that is a good idea? Or do you think that they should have came out kind of more content heavy here and maybe lighter updates along the way? Because to me, it seems like 50, 60 hours. That's a big chunk, especially knowing that April is not that far away for the next update. I imagine that this was probably a combination of COVID financial years and Nintendo saying it has to be out by March.

Like those are probably the most logical reasons why this thing is. is as thin as it is. Because, like, yeah, April is not that far away. That stuff probably should have just been in the game. I'm guessing it's like, well, we just can't. It's not going to happen. It's just this ain't happen. Yeah, so, like, there's new elder dragons, a bunch of new monsters.

They've teased, like, the Monster Hunter for monsters, like, title box monster will be in the game. Like, it does sound like a bunch of new interesting things. And the fact that there's like, so World didn't have insects. World only had two kind of skeleton types, wyverns, and like beasts that were on four legs. They got rid of like a lot of more interesting animal types that were like skeletal types in that game

because it was just like that was, it was too much for them to do with that new like engine change, I don't not end change, but like new framework they were working on. So this game, it reintroduced insects, which makes you think like, oh, they actually have more skeletons available that there's going to be like a bigger chance

for different types of monsters to appear. So I'm looking forward to that that like there'll just be more variety in what they put out next. So even though it's thinner, like I may just be forgiving this because I like this game so much, but even though it's thinner, I'm looking forward to them being able to like flesh it out way more because I bet they're fleshing out looks a lot more interesting

than what they were able to do with a much runner world. Besides just amount of content, are there things you preferred in world that aren't in this one or that were changed? I think, okay, this is like the the shitty arguments switch owners aren't going to want to hear

but the fidelity thing does make a difference like it just doesn't world is a beautiful game world is an absolutely fucking beautiful game RISE is great for the switch like it is it's still it honestly boggues my mind sometimes looking at some of these character models like

how the fuck did you get this to work on the switch but it's still like we're looking at like a 1080P game that doesn't always look like there are monsters you can see the distance that have that dark souls frame rate thing going of like they're missing every like five frames so they kind of look like they're flapping in a slideshow like i i get it i get why they had to do that i get that this the switch is not the ps4 or the xbox one much less newer consoles but boy i wish that i could have this at 60 frames per second in 4k or

you know that kind of i it's such a technical achievement that i feel bad talking about it but Honestly, there's some part of me that's probably going to buy this game when it comes out of PC too, because I want to see it run its absolute best. I think that is the one thing that kind of, it makes me wish there was a little bit more technology to the game. And again, this is a completely unfair criticism because it is doing everything with that console that it could possibly do. But man, going from world to this, you will notice the bump down of fidelity. I moved from my big OLED screen to my computer monitor for this one just because it's looking a little too blurry

which like, yeah, that happens sometimes with Switch games and I wish it didn't. Hopefully a Switch pro. If that exists, does fix that. Because I get tired of the Jaggies on the characters. Like year one, I don't know what happened by it. Like I didn't notice it, right?

Like I think it was because the Switch was this brand new thing and I was so in love with all the games that are on it. But by 20, by the time Hyra Warriors came out, That was the one for me where I was like, I don't know if I can do this anymore because this game is running at five frames a second. And this game does not look great. And I know if this game, I know if I push through it, I'm going to have a really good game here because I love Prophalal. And I know people love the Dynasty Warrior Muso games.

And I've heard a lot of people say good things about Harrow Warriors. But man, yeah, where the Switch is at with Fidelity, I think, is kind of getting into like a place where it's not dire because the Switch is a Switch and it's going to sell. And I don't think that's too much of an issue for Nintendo's a company. but I really hope we get the Switch Pro late this year because I think it's time. And I feel like this is the game is going to sell switches.

So having a technically improved version whenever they do release the Switch Pro would sell more switches. Like there's a really good commercial in this for Japan where, so like, I assume the reason they made this game is they want to like kind of hit that PSP thing of people who played the game portably

on the train and stuff like that. You can't really do that currently. because obviously gatherings, public transport, all this stuff is kind of fraught. And the Japanese commercial is they show people playing the game on the PSP as teenagers and then showing them all logging online and talking to their friends,

like, yeah, let's play the new Monster Hunter again. Like that's kind of what this game does for me is like world nostalgia, probably not really a thing yet. But this does kind of hit back to me like Monster Hunter Portable 3 was that like Japanese themed Monster Hunter? And one of the things they did with this one

is they, it's Japanese theme again. and they take a lot of like Yokai and spirits and Japanese legends and make monsters out of them. I think they do it so fucking well. Like I don't know, you don't know need to know a whole lot about Yoki to know like

that one fucking umbrella demon that's in every game that like is an umbrella with an eye on it. They basically take a giant bird and put it like a bunch of feathers around it and that that's the monster they made out of that like a myth. I think that's, it's such a cool idea like looking at the stuff like, oh, this is like the myth of the evil mermaid.

So it's like a big a big yellow monster mermaid that like cracked shells on its chest so it like blinds you with them. Like it's stuff like that that details about this game

that this series gets so well that I just I at this point I can easily see Monster Hunter Rise being my game of the year. Wow. I don't like we'll see how the rest of the year goes but like this is one of those things of

I've played this game for 100 hours I can easily see myself playing for 100 more. Wow. One of the big things that I think hurts it from you personally, but puts it in the same conversation of what you're talking about in Ron, is that if we were at the office, I think I'd be playing it. Where I, it strikes me the same way you're talking about it, where I'm like, I sit here and I have the giant TV and I have the new systems and they're all doing 4K or whatever.

And it's that idea of me, like, well, I could, I, you know, I already put so much into world. And obviously, I never came back. I didn't come back for Iceborne. Maybe I should do that if I really wanted to. but even that I don't feel excited to go do. I'm very jazz for Outwriters this week. So I'm like biting my time with that. Whereas if it was, we were still going to the office,

like Mike's playing it right now. You're playing it right now. I feel like if we were going to the office, it would be akin to how it was for PSP with me. Where it was that at IGN, there'd be a few of us that sat around and played and sat around and went and did a hunt and went off, like for Peacewalker like, you know,

me and Mike would go to the bar, right? And play missions there and do stuff there. Me and Caleb will go do that. Like I feel like if we were there right now, I'd be able to sell Kevin on playing it with us. And I think there'd be, you know, Mike would be playing and like we'd probably get somebody else to fall in with us. And then it would be the idea of like, well, I'm playing whatever. I'm playing outwriters. I'm playing whatever at home on the big TV on the big console.

But when I'm at around the desk in between things, we're going on a quick hunt. We're doing it something like that. Yeah. I imagine a lot of people like got swept up in Monster Hunter World and that like that is their experience for Monster Hunter at this point too. And like I understand that reasonably. But I, my, my plea is if you played Monster Hunter World, and you want more of that kind of game. Rise, I think, makes enough improvements

that it's very difficult to go back. So I would suggest at least giving that game a shot. I know, like, a lot of people, if you don't have a group of friends, it's going to be extremely difficult to, like, stay on that game. And luckily, I do happen to have some that, like, do want to play.

How is online? It is just as good as world in terms of, like, it's a little, you can't do it from the pause menu anymore, but other than that, it's almost identical. Okay. And they don't have the same thing anymore where like you have to wait for a cutscene to finish before somebody else can join

like they're just entirely separate multiplayer quest so you can do your single player and then go to multiplayer ones and play this like do some hunts with friends and you can do it like whether they've seen it or not so it's a really good system that like capcom has learned their lessons from world which is surprising because when iceborne made a lot of the same mistakes

it was like maybe they don't really get what changes people made here or wanted here I think here they really this proves I actually actually did understand. And like, as someone who was like, I played the demo and I really, I didn't really dig it. I thought it was like, oh, this is fine. I think it feels like they're maybe going a little bit like older school with this. No, no, the full game really just changed my mind.

Do you think that the next one, presumably, let's say it's on PS5 and Xbox series X, do you think that it is going to be more in line with Rise, even though Rise is based on the Switch's portability? I think so. I think these are probably all like QOL changes that are going to be like done through the rest of the series. Like there's no reason to go backwards from this stuff. Like this I think is this sets the new standard for what a theoretical world too is going to be. Very cool.

Well, everyone, this has been the kind of funny games cast. Imran, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for talking about Monster Hunter Rise. A lot of people have been asking about it. Now, you got everything you know right there. You should play it. Go play it. Let us know in the comments below if you've been playing it.

And Imrod, where can people find you if they want more of the dawn? You can find me at fanbite.com, where I do writing news and podcasts. Hell, yes. Of course, blessing and Greg, I love you both too. Barrett, you as well. Thank you for writing the shows. We appreciate you so much. Oh, thank you.

When you said Don, I thought you said Dong, and I was really concerned for a second. Donctober is going to be You guys have to do it again It's coming back Yeah we gotta decide what game we got to play though Now guys We're gonna play DK 64 again Why not?

Yes I've been thinking I was like I want to do a Tony Hawktober Just because it sounds good Oh my God The problem is I don't think the game streams well Because the music is so much of the game Yeah

That's a good point But eh We'll figure it out later Until then I love you guys and remember if you're at patreon.com slash kind of funny games silver or above supporter you get the exclusive post show that we're about to do right meow