Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Monster Hunter Wilds Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: February 24, 2025

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Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Games cast for Monday, February 24th, 2025. I'm one of your host, Blessing, Adi O'E Jr., joining me is Christmas in February. Joey, Noel. It's me. We're also joined by WWE superstar Greg Miller. Hello, Blessing. How are you? I'm doing well? How are you doing? It's good. I'm good. It's good to see you. It's good to see you.

It's good to see you too. Andy Cortez, aka the Nitro Rifle. Good to see all of you, man. Good to see you, man. We were dominating last year. We were fucking dominating Monster 100 Wild's last year. Oh, you're playing monster. Last night. Oh, my God.

This guy running around. I can't find any dung. I'm under his guy. I didn't know you join. I was looking for caca on the ground. I was going to say you got to open your nose. Got a smell around. Of course, this is Kind of Funny Gamescast.

Each and every weekday, we get together and talk about the biggest reviews, previews, and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to get all of our social. to get all of our shows ad-free, watchers record them live, and get a daily exclusive show. For a chance to be a part of the show, some of your thoughts and opinions

as YouTube super chats as we go. Housekeeping for you, we're an 11-person business, all about live talk shows. So, KHD, right before this, was about the return of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater. Right now is the games cast. And after this is a stream with Nick,

do we know what that stream is? Avowed. Whoa. Nick playing some avowed, so go check that out right after this. video stream and now he's in, huh? Uh-huh. That's all it took.

He's still playing Outer Wilds. That's all he did one stream of that. Um, I don't know. I think he was more worried about streaming that and like, you know, it's a bit of a tougher game. But I'll tell you what, man, the magic and Outer in Avowed, I think I fucked up. I should have gone magic. Yeah.

Because holy shit, like all the cool spells. He's doing wild looking. It's more the fact that you ruined Outer Wilds for him. He was all gung-ho on it blessing until you were like, because he was going to build and play it and review it with you. And then you're like, I'm too busy. I'm not going to have a chance to. I mean, listen, was that wrong, though?

No, I'm too busy. No. I'm just saying. We've got to review Monster Hunter Wilds. We've got so many things happening. How much Wiles did you play? Oh, man. Which Wild are we talking about?

On Outer Wilds. Let me tell you, I'm 17 hours in according to my PS5, and I'm not stopping. I'm loving that game. But we're going to talk about some Monster Hunter Wilds in a sec. If you're a kind of funny member, you can get today's Gregway, which is... It's about how Monster Hunter Wilds ruined today's Gregway. Oh, okay. Love that.

You like that? I like that. I like that. I like that. I like that. I will. I just want to say that I got yelled at by my mom for your Gregway last week.

Which one? About why we didn't do the kind of funny podcast. Thank you. You know what I wasn't expecting to get there. I'm just saying. I'm driving in. I think, oh my God, they forgot the kind of funny podcast, which is bad enough.

Then I get here and they go, no, we all, we just agreed not to do it. And I said, well, did you tell anybody? It's like, ah, fuck, I don't know. We did. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Karen Lindener. today were brought to you by Greg Miller's Live Chicago show and BetterHelp,

but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with topic of the show. Monster Hunter Wilds. We've all played slash touched this game to some degree. I love that. Some of us more than others. But I'm very excited to ask you guys, talk to you guys, all about your experiences with Monster Hunter Wilds.

I think most of you guys are not all of you guys have played it more than I have. Super chat in with your questions about Monster Hunter Wild. If you have any questions for the crew that have played it, let us know. Before we get into it, to set the stage of what you can expect out of Monster Hunter Wiles, I'm pulling this from the website page. The fates of a people in nature entwined. At the center, a boy named Neda and the mysterious white wraith. Dynamic ever-changing environments, a story of monsters and humans in a world with two faces,

one in which the lands are harsh and unforgiving, or monsters fight for scant resources, and another in which the lands are vibrant and brimming with life. Get fucking hype! Come on! You play as a professional monster hunter, protecting the balance of the ecosystem and hunting monsters. Use the resources you gain from hunts to craft ever more powerful weapons and armor

in your quest will unravel the mysteries of the new lands. Experience the most evolved action and improved immersion in any monster hunter to date. Greg Miller. Yes, buddy. Before I join Kind of Funny, I would listen to Kind of Funny. and I'll hear you and the crew talk all about Monster Hunter Worlds. The previous big game, I guess, before Monster Hunter arrives. Correct, yeah, the last, like, major mainline entry.

What are your thoughts on Monster Hunter Wilds? Man, Monster Hunter Wilds is a 9.5 out of 10. I think this is an amazing game. This is the highest score I've given on Kind of Funny since we changed this review score to the 10 points. And it's the most passionate. been about a video game in a while. As you know, we play all manner of things here and we enjoy doing that and we love doing

that. But there's always that thing where there's that special game you get that gets under your skin that you can't get away from. It's got its hooks and you. You're thinking about it even when you're not playing. You're so excited to play it. That's Monaster Hunter Wilds for me. And to take it to that next level to get so close to a 10 from kind of funny right.

For me, it is the fact that when I'm playing it, I'm sitting there in battle. I'm sitting there on my secret running around, doing whatever, whether, you know, sharpening my weapons, healing myself, drinking antidote or something. I'm literally, cognizantly in the moment going, God, this is so much fun. This is so good. It is so, to seal Janet Garcia's favorite word from back in the day,

frictionless. I think it's going to be an interesting review cycle. Monster Hunter World, of course, broke open for so many different people, Monster Hunter. It really brought it to a well, spring of people who had never played Monster Hunter before. For old fogies like me, who reviewed Monster Hunter Freedom 2 in 2007 on the PSP, right?

Like, I remember after doing Freedom 2 and after doing Freedom Unite, doing like a op-ed for Aegean, and this is years later probably, but like what they needed to fix, how to make it big in the West. And World did all that. Monster Under World did all that. And I was like, holy shit, I can't believe they did it. To see them iterate on that again, I think people will jump. into this and still be very turned around.

Wait, what am I doing? And how is it? Like newcomers of the series. But once it's still the most approachable monster hunter of all time. It is the easiest way to get into. And again, it is frictionless in terms of how you want to enter into combat, how you want to craft, how you want to make your armor. What do you want to do here?

There's a lot to talk about. Lots and lots and lots to talk about it. I've played 30 hours right now is what my game clock is at. As a monster hunter sicko, that is nothing, obviously. You know, I booted up Monster Hunter World. jump back in there to go back and forth. And it was like, my save there is at 140, like 140 hours in Monster Hunter World.

I was like, okay, cool. So a little bit more to go on Wilds here. Hunter rank 25, you know, I'm in the end game. I'm deep in the end game. I'm working on X, Y, and Z. I don't want to spoil anything for you. But there's a lot to talk about here. And I think a lot they did incredibly well.

You know, what I think holds it back from being a 10 for me is that even as a Monster Humber sicko. And again, this is one of those funny ones. It's like, if you're a real Monster Hunter sicko, I realize my 140 is nothing. You've played way more than that. I understand that I'm not that like in the grand, to a Monster Hunter fan, I'm not a sicko.

But I think as somebody who reviews so many different games and talks about games critically and has been with the franchise for so long, there still is a lot of, even for me, you're playing. And bless is like, all right, cool. How do we team up? And I'm like, all right, oh, well, do this. And I'm following you, but you're like,

but we're in the same. Okay, Andy needs help, but we're in the same. Well, quit out of your, oh, you invited me. Okay. Well, you know what I mean? It's like, there's that thing and then like some of the stuff for, like, just minutia menu stuff. We're even, I'm going to eventually compliment how they simplified a number of menus.

But Monster Hunter is gorgeous. It is great to play. It is an interesting story. And I can't wait to go home and play more. Yeah. I got a question of what the biggest feature changes are. Sure. I want to get Joey and Andy into the conversation.

So think about that, Greg. But Joey, what are your thoughts so far on Monster Hunter Wells? I'm having a really great time. This is my first. dive into Monster Hunter, which is so crazy to think because it feels like a game that we would have played together before. Lauren and I were trying to figure this out too because she was like, if I didn't play with you, who did I play with? But it's really fun. I do feel like I got like a really big warning from Andy that was like, this is going to be janky. It's not going to be, it's not, it's going to play the way that Monster Hunter plays, which is not necessarily the way that you might want to play this. And it will forever, like, trip me up that role is X and why would I've never. That is not any way that I've ever played it. And I'm just like, I hate this. And you can't remit.

No. So I was like, let me tell you kids about when we did have a second stick. You had to have your finger curled over the PSP to claw it up to spin the camera. Yeah. I'm having so much fun for me. This is like definitely a game that like I think will get infinitely more fun when I play with other people, especially as it gets its official launch.

And I know that I'm playing it wrong in the sense that like I'm hoarding everything. I'm not crafting anything because I'm usually. like a guide person for like all of that kind of stuff and like I just know that I'm going to get to jump in with people and they're going to teach me how to play and then I'm going to have all of the things. So that's what I'm excited for. But I will say it is like pretty overwhelming jumping in by yourself for the first time. So I hope that the monster hunter community is nice and will help shepherd me through this. We're doing the marathon streams, Joey. I'll shepherd. I'll show you. We'll get you going. Andy Cortez. Again, the last part of this blur reads,

experience the most evolved action and improved immersion in any monster hunter to date. Is this the Oh shit, he's setting some stuff. He's setting it up. Is this the most evolved action and improved immersion that you've experienced in a Monster Under game? Yeah. Yeah, it is. I'm not as far into Greg. Far, oh.

Anytime you want. Anytime you want. Not yet. How many inches of venom do you got? I'm not 30 hours into the game. I'm about 17 and a half. There's a lot of previews. I knew Greg was going to be playing the most of it.

So I didn't feel compelled to like, I got to. get to end game like I do, usually for a lot of these reviews. And I'm enjoying it. I think it's awesome. I think it's so much fun. I think combat's great. When Greg said the word frictionless, I kind of went like, I don't know. I think there's a lot of friction in this game. I think in modern standards, I think if you try to change up the formula for what menus look like in this game, you will anger the larger Monster Hunter crowds.

I understand not wanting to do that. But I think this game is still really tough to kind of understand what you're doing in menus and what you're doing with inventory and all sorts of things. But when you're in the action, you know, I was warning blessing about this and warning Joey about this, where as a soul sicko, the way that I play, the way that I'm used to action games sort of operating, this game, Monster Hunter is very much like, honestly like a like a souls game in how they sort of operate where it's like no this is the way it works and this is how we do it here you will acclimate to the way our game is made right and at first when

the first console uh beta released uh or whatever it was test on steam when that demo released i was like oh this you know it it's hard to play i don't really fully understand i put like 30 or 40 hours in a monster hunter world, why do I feel like I've never played this video game before? Granted, that was a long-ass time ago. But then when the PC beta came around and also I was able to get a lot of frames and it looks amazing and holy shit.

Like this game just looks gorgeous so much of the time. And then in other cutscenes, it's like, did you bother putting a light source in here? Why is nothing, there's no shadows anywhere? Why is that texture the lowest rest of X? I've ever seen in my life? When that piece of beta came around, that's where I was like, oh, I get this now.

And luckily, Twitch chat was helping me out a lot with weapons and how to fully kind of get the most out of the experience. And so far, I have been maining the Switchax. Nice. I'm having just the most amount of fun. This game kicks so much ass action-wise. I love this weak point little thing now. you know, you focus in, you see where the weak points are on the enemy.

And like all of that stuff just makes, I'm surprised at a feature like that was never in the older games because it feels like it's so perfect. And like it fits into the rhythm so perfectly now. I'm having just an absolute blast with it. I love the visuals. I love the monsters that we're fighting. I love the hunts and kind of getting into the rhythm of going back to the home base, going to seek out the next thing. You know, I was trying to play with Mike the other day. and it was a bit tougher trying to like add a friend

and it's not the easiest thing. Trying to get Greg into my game last night was a little cumbersome, but then we finally got it going. And whenever I would start a mission, you would get notified and you'd be like, oh, do I want to join Andy's mission or not? One of the things I think that we are at a disadvantage for

is the fact that, you know, this is a game that relies so much on multiplayer and it's just reviewers with it right now. And you're on a trip. I was at Dyer. awards when we got codes you know everybody's playing it off hours so like i i have such a limited experience with getting in there and trying it like once i made the kind of funny guild barrett throw up the image once i mean the kind of funny everybody come join the kind of buddy

guild you can join i think it's ah shit i should written down i think you can join five different guilds or six different guilds maybe even more or whatever 50 people in each one so as you can see on if you see here if you're a video person i'll read i'll read out of you see kind of funny uh four f9 d 5km. That's the official kind of funny clan that I'm running you can go and join

on that I will add you when it comes out if you want to go full screen again though Barrett yeah there I put up there my Hunter ID is

8V4 and T5DX of course you can go watch the videos and you can please send me I want to follow everybody I want to be a part of it

I do want to call out this is not my actual armor this is not my actual palico armor okay this is that I was going to say you look mad basic here I wanted to take a photo

and they are very very worried about spoilers and where you can stop. So I was like, you know what? I will go just put on basic leather for this and just showed up. Greg did hit me up and was like, Andy, I'm going to need you to kind of go into the character creator and, you know, because when I created it, you know, I was kind of rushing through it. And I'd like for you to change up some of the facial features because I don't really look like me. And I was like, Greg, I had to break it to you. You can change your hair. You can change

makeup. You can change facial hair. But you can't change like the structure of. of the way your face looks later on. Yeah. Dang. I mean, I'm good enough. It's just like, you know what I mean? Like, I did it very much like, ah, well, Andy will fix me tomorrow.

All right, well. That's just how Greg looks in this game. Jump in here for me, right? Like, I love the character creator, right? Like, for me, that was the first impression of... Yeah, how much have you played? So I played about six to eight hours. And this is one for me to preface of,

I am so not the Monster Hunter person. In fact, it's to such an extent where I went with Greg to do the Monster Honor preview. And while playing while... I was like, all right, cool. I can see what they're doing here. This seems dope. I love the presentation, but this is dissuading me actually from playing more just because

it is, it felt like it was proving more of like, oh, yeah, I am definitely not the monster under person. It's the weird thing of it is such a specific game to what Andy's talking about. It is, we have a way we do things here. And this is what this game is going to be. But somehow, I did come back to it. Once we got the review code out, I think I was kind of like, all right, I'll give it one more.

I don't want to experience the phone mode, right? Like, everybody's going to be playing it. I want to try it out. And I think the thing I'll say in the hours that I've played this game, again, probably six to eight somewhere around there, the more I play it, the more I am feeling the pull of, oh, there's something here. Like, I am, I think there is the specificness of it mixed with, I don't know if I'll, yeah, call it approachable just in the sense that I am in the inventory. I have, I have no idea what I'm doing. There's so many menus. There are so many menus.

Once I open up the inventory menu, there's so much going on in it. I know I'm supposed to be eating food before I go out on these things and I'm not because I'm like, I don't even know where to get the food. I don't know if I'm supposed to cook. They keep telling me that there's a, you know, portable campsite that I can do and I don't know like what's the right time to bust. I just, there's just so much going on. Yeah.

I mean, to finish the thought, though, like, even though there are all these things about it that feels so specific to what Monster Hunter is and the kind of game that it wants to be, even though I say, I don't know, I don't know if it's approachable. It is kind of welcoming, though. Like, there is something about it. like, oh, I kind of just want to be in this world. I went and read some of my old Monster reviews before I got here. And one of the ways

I described it back then, because keep in mind, it was like still very new to the Western audience to a degree, right? Was that it's an RPG without a story, is how I was describing it there. And what I still, and I still think that DNA's here, and I think part of it is that at some point, I think, especially when I'm saying this is frictionless, I'm mainly talking about combat, I'm mainly talking about getting in there.

Yeah, yeah. But I'm also, I think, in the way of, and it's hard because I know what to look for. Yeah, excuse it however you want. No problem. Thank you very much. Thank you. I need that. But the idea here is that this, you are playing the role of a monster, a hunter in this

thing, right? And so there are the, okay, you should eat before you go and you know, there's the whole dramatic you're cooking and there's the whole thing and you're chopping up and frying. Like, there's all that stuff because that's the world they're building what they want you to do. And they do want you to slow down, right? And it is like, before you rush into that

next battle, go into your tent and refill your items and the things you put into your item thing, put them into your chest instead. All of that, I think, is overwhelming to look at and to dive into. But I think when you just go and play, that stuff kind of opens up as you go. Because you could just go. You could just go and jump in and kill things and whatever. And then eventually someone's going to tell you to cook or you're going to see that you have your barbecue grill with you all the time, your portable one, so you could just do it there.

And then it is that idea of like, oh, man, I know I unlocked a trap. Why isn't it here? So you go to your tent and see the difference between your item box and you. your actual item thing and then oh well i put the berry in my pocket and that doesn't really help me so put it into the like you get into this thing where all of a sudden i think the beauty of monster hunt when it's working for you because obviously this is everybody everybody's different but it is that idea of like okay cool killed the thing now i got it's time to do the meat drop off my stuff refill my stacks of and you know my potions or whatever and then head off on the next one like

there's that rhythm to the whole thing that they do that i really appreciate about it where you do i think in a very interesting not story way feel like you are role playing that character. Which is like you think the thing I am appreciating, right? Like I think the thing that's, that feels welcoming about it that I do like is that there's presentation around everything that makes it. That makes this world feel like, oh man, there is something big here, right?

There's something here that, I don't know, that is enticing. Like when you quit out to the main menu and it is the thing of like, you don't even realize you're in the main menu because the way they do a cut scene to have them, like a character. put down a pot and it is. All right,

now it's you hanging out with your chokos. It's so lovely. It's so lovely, right? It's you and your little palico and your chocobo. It's not a chocobo. Right?

Like, in your sacred. There's a lot of positivity to the tone. There's a lot of like hope in this. I mean, I think the first armor said you get is called like the hope armor set or whatever.

Yeah, so I totally agree with you. I think it is welcoming in that sense for sure. Like, like I just want to hang out in this world. Yeah, exactly.

And I think that for me, that is the gateway to eventually learning the mechanics, understanding the game in a deeper way, right? It's kind of in the same way that for Souls games, right? Like, I picked up Bloodborn and it started slashing shit, and I'm like, all right, cool. I know I'm not doing all the right things, but hopefully I get there, and then I got there, and then the magic spark.

And I think that's the thing about it as you go through this and play it is like the deeper you want to get into, the deeper you can, where you could just run through. I rolled credits at like 21 hours, right, in a 20, somewhere in there. Oh, you beat the game. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, so I'm probably close. I'm in end game doing all that stuff, yeah. Okay, cool.

Doing temper, doing high value or whatever, Hunt. and getting, I'm working on the other sets of armor and all that jazz. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But, like, I think as you go through it, like, they put you on a, not a short leash, but you are being pulled through that story. Yeah. To the point that me as a classic hunter,

like, it was very unnerving when it would be like, all right, I go in, I kill the thing, roll to the cut scene where we're talking about it. Oh, no, another one showed up, and I'm right in the fight. I'm like, I need to restock. Why? Well, that's just how this works.

Like, let me go to camp. I need to sit for a second. I'm like, no, no, you're right into you're right into it. My stamina is 60%. percent of what it should be because I just went through a really tough fight. I need to go, you know, I got to eat some fish. Yeah, got it. Or maybe I will go fish this time.

So, Greg, as a big Monster Hunter person, this way he's been playing the franchise in a very long time now, what are the big feature changes this time around that separated out from Monster Hunter World? So, again, it's iterating on everything World did. And I think, again, I remember playing World with Kevin, with Jen and being like, wow, like this has come so far from what it is. They've actually listened to the audience that are people like me that were screaming for X, Y, and Z. I think it's them iterating and doubling down on all that

and taking the lessons they had from what was the switch one that came to surprise. Thank you very much. Right. People loved having the grappling hook there or whatever, right? The way they've iterated your slinger here, the way they're going to. But for me, to get back to that frictionless thing,

I have so many examples of that happening here, right? Where SOS flares have always been used to, hey, I'm playing single player, I'm going to fire it off so any random can come join my game, right? If they're looking to help out. you can still do that here you can also turn it on to do it automatically so anytime you start a quest of a fire off which I love

but more importantly especially right now when we're playing with no one to play with if no one joins AI comes like the characters from the camp the NPCs that you've been working with come out and do the thing with you it's cool as shit yeah and they're helpful and they talk and they do this and I'm like man that's a really nice feature

again for one of these games I compare it to hell divers where when we review hell divers when I reviewed hell divers was like I love this game and it's awesome and so many people like, I don't have people who would want to play with me. Like this is a nice way to, again, ease you into that. Because you will get human beings that do it,

who will then probably invite you to the guild, who will then, you know, maybe you want to do the online friendship. Or maybe you don't and they leave and you just can run with AI. I love that about it. But it's those kind of fixes. The biggest one for me personally, and again, I think to make this frictionless would be the secret, the secret, whatever, the chocobo.

Right? Who's, I know, and I've spent 30 hours with it and have custom. the hell out of. I love mine. Kind of funny blue and the pink eye. I'm like Andy would love this. I'm doing it. I liked it. I liked yours. They have gone. It's my cup. I put it too close to Andy. I apologize. It's capped. It's fine. The sacred is like I think paramount to hey, let's make this game fast and fun and fluid. And what I mean by that is even when we played world and we liked world, it would be cool. I've put up the quest for going after, you know, this, Rathian or whatever, right? Everybody's accepted cool. We start in camp and then we just run. And we run, run, run.

You go wherever, have to go. And there's a few shortcuts or whatever. But like you had to move that out and you could stop and collect things or whatever, blah, blah, blah. Jump to wild, right? Where it is, cool. If you haven't set up any of the base camps around there, right, which are like, you know, get you closer to certain objectives if you have them set up in the right place, which I didn't.

I really, I've not fucked with it. I just haven't seen the point. You start in base camp, I immediately hit up in the D-pad. My sacred runs in. I jump on them. I hit up on the D-pad again. That auto moves to the, objective. So now I can take my hands off and what I usually do is hold down R2.

Text. What I'm looking to see what you. What I usually do is hold down R2 and then use the slinger, which you've had forever, but now there's the hook slinger, which is like a hook shot, right? So as I'm running through, you pass an herb, I pass whatever. It's like playing an on-real shooter. Boom, yeah. I'm just collecting all this stuff into my pouch, right?

Which is so helpful because before it would have been, run, run, run, oh, there's something I need or want. Run, run, oh, there's something I need I want. You know what I mean? Like, you're looking, I'm always looking for Spiderweather, because I use so many traps, right? To be able to just arrive through, see them on the HUD coming up, okay, bam, bam, bam, bam, like Spider-Man, collect them.

Fantastic. That then jumps to gameplay as well. And again, this is the frictionless thing of, in the past, you are in a battle with a monster, it starts to turn the wrong way, right? And you get poisoned. You need to drink your antidote, right? You need to heal up about it.

So you've got to run backwards. You got to drop your, you know, go out of weapon mode so that you're trying to run faster, try to dodge, get them. stop there, drink the thing, you see the monster running at you.

It can be obviously tense and fun. It can also be as annoying as shit, right, blah, blah, you get knocked down, you get killed, you faint,

you come back at camp, you got to run your ass back over there. Now, whenever I need to heal, whenever I need to use something on the item bar that's, and it's most of the stuff

you can, right? Immediately call on the sacred mid-fight, runs in, I jump onto the sacred named Cole, of course, my palikos,

Portillo, jump on Cole, and then just I ride, I ride in a circle, right? and I heal up there. I drink my potion while I'm on the sacred. So I'm a moving target.

So I'm not getting lambasted, right? Same thing of like, you beat them, or you finish a wave of the monster and it retreats to a different location because you move around the map to fight all these things, right? It takes off for me as a dual blade hunter, right? In the olden days, they take off cool.

I collect everything on the ground and then I have to sit there and I go to my wet stone and I sharpen my blade and I can't move while I do that. Now you can use the wet stone on the sacred, right? So it is, I am actively going to the next thing. I'm chasing the monster. I've beaten the monster there. Last time I thought I had a glitch.

Where I got up to the top and I was fighting a flying beast that will remain nameless. And I was like, I got up there and I was like, where the fuck? And then I saw it off in the distance and I thought it was like hung up because it was about to, it was like, you know, fucked up. So it was like, oh, shit, is it glitched out? It was like, oh, no, you're just so fucked up from this fight that you're taking that long to get to where you're going. I'm like, that's kind of nice. I like that. Again, you're just in, you're going, you're flowing.

You're not having to stop. you're not having to sit there and be like, ah, this kind of sucks. Like, it's cool to sharp my blade, of course, but it would be better to be able to walk into it. Whereas at least here, you're riding and you're going. And you're just, I feel like the game is almost constantly in motion. And one of the things that I know they called out a lot in their preview materials, and when they were hyping it up, I didn't touch much of it. Like, I'm still doing it a very traditional way of what are my quests, what are my things?

Okay. The game does a good job in end game. And no spoilers. This really isn't. And if your Capcom, calm down. This isn't a spoiler. But it is the idea of like, All right, cool.

Like, your objective right now is to get your hunter rank up and, you know, do expeditions. Like, so, and that means going to a place, seeing the creature, tagging it, doing, is creating your own. So I'm just starting to do that stuff. But one of the things they've talked about is the expeditions and how they do them here. Before in World, right, that was a whole thing you went into to go off and do it. Whereas now it's just like, walk out of camp and you can just do whatever you want in the world. And if you see a creature there, you can fight it right there. And the quest will start.

And then when it's done, you're still in that world and you can run around and keep doing that and keep exploring, keep, like, I feel like you're just in constant motion and not in an overwhelming way, almost in a way of, like, it feels nice to be here. It feels nice to be living this dream. And then there's a bunch of, like, quality of life stuff of like, you know,

when you beat a monster on a quest, there's the whole countdown for 60 seconds where you carve it up and you collect stuff, but inevitably, you're done with that in the first 15 and you stand around, right? Now they have a thing where you can skip it, but, you know, hold touchpad on PlayStation 5. If you're with a multiplayer thing, everybody has to vote on it and you can skip through it. And the quest

immediately. I saw somebody in chat a while ago ask a question that is not related. Just asking, is there crossplay? Yes, I was on PC last night playing with Greg who's on PlayStation. Yeah, great stuff. Um, you know, I think personally, especially compared to world, the monsters are a step up here. Like, I don't, sorry, go on. Oh, I want you to talk about that. I have many questions about the monsters, you guys' builds and a lot of things. But before we do that, I want to ask you, they go to patreon.com slash kind of funny and YouTube.com slash kind of funny games where you can get the kind of funny membership, which allows you to get shows at

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BetterHelp.com slash Kind of Funny. And we're back, and I want to talk about standout monsters for you. you guys. Who wants to start? Well. Spoilerie. Kind of right. They were very clear on what, did you look at the review embargo thing? Because they were very clear where you have to stop

talking. Oh, no, I did not. Well, I'm not even far enough. Yeah, I was going to say, you didn't get, so we already know because I helped you fight Rom, Po Polo. Got to slow down to say these words. If you're Greg Miller, you got to slow down. It's kind of happened. I called it Ralph

Ralph Polo the other night. Well, that's the one that I also played in the preview. We also saw a glimpse of it in the trailer a little while ago. That dude's probably my favorite, only from a, from a visual standpoint. It's a creative-ass-looking monster-bussing. This dude just looks like a weird kind of bird crow. It's always like in a wet kind of an oily landscape. But then when it gets threatened, it like inflates its body.

And it's like balloons around its body that like kind of get filled. with poison air. It's awesome. And then it sticks its tail into the ground. It'll turn it all like bubbly, hot oily and shit. And then the ground will, so you have to like avoid that dude.

But this thing looks so, it's such a creative looking dude. And again, I don't remember shit about Monster Hunter World, obviously, a world. Because I, as I was playing so much of this wilds,

I'm just like, man, I'd love to look back at myself playing that game back in the day because clearly I had no idea what I was doing while playing that video game. And I know that Monster

Hunter, the hardcore fans love seeing the big enemies return, right? They're always like, oh shit, this dude's coming back, nice. We haven't seen that one since whatever Monster Hunter that was out. And I know that's a big part of, it's kind of similar to like Final Fantasy having the summons, you know what I mean? Like, it's a very similar vibe. So yeah, that dude's probably my favorite. I think he just, it's a creative ass-looking boss, but I love so many of these. I have a freaking blast. My favorite was New Udura.

Have you seen this one? No. Dude, he's like this fucking octopus guy. He's fucking sick and his armor is sick. I am, in this game, I am, so it's funny. Actually, I should throw that up to do it. That's public. On Blue Sky, there was another reviewer who had bumped into me.

I was, you know, answered the call, whatever SOS went up. And they were playing, what means all this? Hold on. There it is. Matthew, Matthew Figg. He bumped into me. started playing with me and I was like okay cool and I thought he was just a stranger I didn't think anything oh I thought he was a video game reviewer I didn't do whatever and all of a sudden

he's like oh my god I can't believe I'm playing with Greg Miller and so anyways like he took a screenshot and put it up today or whatever of us playing which is fine this isn't where you probably where you think it is the first comment underneath it is Greg dot dot dot why is your armor like that and I look like I'm in the hangover for whatever where it's like something went wrong and I just put through on whatever clothes and rolled out of there right because it was like I when I'm playing right I am that's especially early on right you burn through armor really quick I feel in the game so it is stats stats stats and so like I'm throwing whatever up on it when I finally got to feeling where I was confident and I was like new udura was the first one where I was like

this entire outfit is so fucking sick that I need to I was just grinding that boss over and over again to get what I want there he is that's my boy right there right so I'm out there grinding it all and it was it was one of those that I think it was Barrett maybe it was Andy maybe it was both if you walked by and you saw me in the mask and everything like oh that's a fucking sick mask and it's like he's fucking sick as hell so he's my guy this is my guy oh no you know what I did run into this dude last

night say hey what's it um I mean I was like I think Greg loves you but he's but I know it's right I know some of that tentacles going I think I did run into oh yeah you see that bring that image back up real quick Barrett if you can please the dude on the bottom left rompolo that Rompopeo

This dude just exists. He's awesome. The way it expands and inflates is such a cool. I don't like his mouth. Look. I like this. That image you saw before where I'm mismatched. The top is his top.

Whereas you can see the bubbly things on my shoulder when I'm hanging out with Matthew. Yeah. I have such a freaking fun time fighting any of these really. I was like, so overall monster design is hidden for you guys? Monster design is hitting and then, because I'm similar to you. Now, World feels like it was a lifetime ago because we've played about 700 games since then. But it is that idea of even when I, I was playing world. I always felt like,

this is a little too dragon-based. You know what I mean? I feel like Narigante, Rathelos, whatever. Too many dragons. Too many dragons. This one's white. This one's purple-black. Whatever. So like to get here and find the variety. That's the thing about it. I shouldn't say that. I was Andy Waddydy last night. I was like,

hold on. I'm fighting two blanks in the sky right now. I was like, like, he looks so different than he who looks like different than that. And it's like, I fucking love that. Like, I love that variety of it. And then again, it is the theatricality of all of it, where again, for a world, I talk

about Narragonte, and it's because, of course, I ran him a gazillion times trying to get the best armor at the time or whatever. But it was, like, his fight, I remember having the lightning strikes and all sorts of crazy effects, and I was like, ah, this is a really cool fight. It stands out. All of these, I feel like, for the most part, have

something going on, with the exception of, like, you know, you run into that fucking dogface guy. You know, whatever, he's just running around the jungle. But when you're getting to the major ones, I'm down in the lava, I'm fighting this guy over here, and the poison. This one can cause ice. Here is the purple electricity. And like, it's almost like the fucking PlayStation 4 Mark Serney demo of like, here's all these like fucking little pieces of glass. We can shatter around and do it. It's like there's a whole bunch of awesome shit going on here,

let alone then when I'm in the throws of these fights and I do get knocked. And it's like, you know, there's verticality of the game. I get knocked and I fly off, right? And I have to whistle from my sacred who grabs me and we run up the side of the wall and up there. Because again, in the Monster Hunter switch game. Rise. Rise. Why can I now fucking remember that? I played it on PlayStation 5.

You know, you're grappling, hooking up all that stuff. The sacred takes the place of that, right? Where that's how you're using, you're scaling and going. And they have a whole bunch of different like shortcuts and things where you're jumping off rocks that are just floating in the sky for some reason, whatever.

Can you control the sacred to bust out its wings? Because when you jump off, I think you would be able to. I've played the intro a million damn times, right? With all the different demos. Yeah. And there's that, you know, if you've played the intro demo,

happens in the first five minutes of the game where Sacred does a big jump and it starts floating down and you can rotate the camera it's like wow this looks amazing yeah but but ever since that I've never seen the Sacred do that again and I've been dropping down like skyscraper heights in this game CJ splits on says hold R2

R2 on the dual son's yeah cool probably not available for PC I'm playing on controlling speaking of CJ splits on CJ writes in with a super chat and says what weapons are blessed in Joey meaning and that was actually a question I wanted to extend to everybody. Sure.

I'm playing dual blades. I saw people recommending dual blades before, before I even got cold for the game saying that that was pretty accessible. And I'm happy to report it is pretty accessible. I like using the dual blades, especially because of the new mechanic, the focus mode thing of highlighting the weak points. With the dual blades, you do like a cool-ass move of like, you like, you know, connect. And then you do like a fucking spin into the air and then like spit across the body

of the monster you're fighting. It feels pretty good. But then also you get a secondary weapon, which you can switch out while you're riding your chokobobo is not a chook-a-chook-a-a-a-a-s. your sacred. And I got a big old hammer. Haven't used it much yet. But like I took it to the practice area and was just trying out different moves.

And I was like, oh, I like this thing. But I'm typically not a big weapon user in action games. But I kind of want to try it out because like you got two slots. So I might as well explore what that is. And so I'm excited to try that more. Yeah. I'm using the bow, which I think is really fun. It's a lot easier when there's more than one person with me.

It's a little rough by your. especially like trying to like dodge and create some space and not be like right up in the fight. So I need to figure out a secondary. I think I just need to like run around with a bunch of different weapons. It took me a while. I was using one of the light guns. Light bow gun. Yeah.

And then that wasn't really working either. So I just might need to get better. I recorded me and Greg taking on the Zappdos last night. That's what we do. And it's just some of the cool shit ever. Now, I don't know if you noticed. I was trying to pull the Zapdos to knock down the mountain, the interactive stuff. And it was so close to getting this son of a bitch.

But I was trying to like pull agro towards it because I really love taking advantage of those moments. You feel like such a calculated hunter or whatever. The abilities to look at a cavern above you, put down a trap right below it, have the monster get stuck in there. look up and grapple the rock to then bring it down on the enemy and seeing that gigantic damage number, it's even more satisfying to an already insanely satisfying combat. And that's where the replayability I think comes in, where when you go through the first times, right,

you're just trying to beat it, you're just trying to survive. When you double back and suddenly you have traps, suddenly you have a trink bomb, you're working on this, and then also now you're way more accustomed, you know, for our 25 versus 5 of, oh, turn off my weapon, use my slinger to grab that to yank it down, and there's that. One thing I do want to double back to, because I think we were understandably glossing over it because, of course, yeah, secondary weapon, big deal.

Like, that's huge for how Monster Hunter works. Like, I have been dual blade since 2007 and it's just like, I know it, I love it, I'm great at it, right? The idea that with the sacred in battle at any point, I can hit right on the D-pad and they'll ride in, I jump up on coal, I take them, I take, you know, out of the bag, I take out my light bow gun and start using that. Like, that has been not a game changer, but a very interesting one for me. Question from Dean 8149 who writes with the Super Chat. How does it work if you want to switch weapons? If I spend most of my playthrough with one and decide to try another, am I grinding

back from zero? You're grinding, I mean, from zero, yeah. I mean, but it's like, especially for weapons in this game, like, I don't feel, I, I change armor like that all the time, right? Right. My dual blades, I, you know, very seldomly

move to a different kind of dual blade because it is such a, not mountain to climb, but it's your, you're, you're upgrading weapons less frequently than you are armor. So I, with my light bow gun, even right now, it's still just the Gen 1, light bow gun, maybe slot 2 gen, second gen bow gun. But I don't feel like it's so underpowered, it's not worth it. Because for me, it's a very different situation of, all right, cool, I have the dual blades

and I'm hacking it something, but somebody takes to the sky and they're up there for a while. Then I'm like, well, fuck it, all right, call the sacred, grab the thing, do all these different 12 damages to get them down. And I haven't even considered that. Yeah, yeah. that's a great call. That's what I do. What he does? Another super chat.

Garrett read and writes in and says, you can update your face after launch with free customization tickets in DLC. There you go, Greg. Got to pay for that probably, right? You said free DLC? Free DLC? They do the thing where they put it up.

And I think you get the daily login bonuses too. Like, there's probably something like that. Oh, okay. I mean, I'm hypothesizing. Well, that's all. I'll help you out then. You let me know whenever that happens. We'll do.

Also, Barry, can you bring up my hunter because he just looks so fucking good. You look really cool. You look really cool. Okay, Monster Hunter, thank you for allowing me to get the mustache and the beard disconnected, because there are two facial hair options, bless. There's not just one single thing where it's all encompassing. I can do one sort of chin strap beard, I can do one single mustache,

and then my three makeup slots I used because the facial hair here, probably tough to notice, but I perfected it, blessing. The facial hair is really just... How much time did you specify? on this. A long time because the facial hair here is only a chin strap. It ends like right here heightwise, right? So you have no cheek hair like I do in real life. So then I use the makeup and I went to the freckles and I used three different freckles to then... This is why you're the man man. You can also do, you can hit not parallel, but a symmetry.

So I've got two separate freckles settings and put them on the cheeks to make it look like cheek hair. Otherwise, this character creator kicks so much ass. I was going to say this. It was really fun. This looks like an actor is playing Andy Cortez in the Andy Cortez movie. It's John Snow. It's old John Snow. It's John Snow as Andy Cortez. I was going to say Gail Garcia Bernal, which is kind of a, you know, really tough reference that a lot of people won't understand. Oh, really? They're very famous acting. Yeah. Super famous. Oh, really? Oh, okay. I don't know. No, I was, I don't know what is. If you showed me, maybe I would know. Yeah, very handsome, dude.

Flying penguins writes in and says, Blessing, think of it like a fighting game, which I'm going to need more context than that, because if I pick it up and I'm not doing down-forward square, that's not going to help me flying penguins, but I appreciate it. And then I like this one from George Corona, the third, who says, how's the difficulty?

A few reviews mentioned that series fans may think it's much easier and streamlined than the last few games. Yeah, I think this is a great question. You know, I woke up this morning, the review embargo was 7 a.m. I was up long before that because of Ben, and I was just like, oh, every so often,

oh, is it time? Is it time? Is it time? I want to see, this is one of those rare ones. When we moved games, not rare ones recently, where when we moved games cast to the daily schedule, one of the things I was excited about would be, oh, you can read the reviews from your peers and then jump off it. And then it's like, the last three reviews I've done have been,

I don't know, it's being like, I don't know what everyone's going to say. We're recording because of whatever. So yeah, you know, IG gave it an 8. That's Tom Marks over there, who was a Monster Hunter expert. His synopsis reads like this. Monster Hunter Wilds continues to smooth off

the traditionally rough edges of the series in smart ways, reducing as much friction as possible that could get in the way of you grabbing any of its exceptionally fun weapons in planting them firmly in a monster's hide. But in that quest to make Monster Hunter more approachable, Wilde has carved a little too close to the bone in some places, trimming its challenge back so much that I barely need to dig into its in-depth equipment system at all at this time to become an apex predator. It's more flexible combat is some of the most fun I've had in the series, but like the blustering lightning storms of its gorgeous deserts. It burns brightly but briefly

until Capcom unleashes some real endgame beasts to challenge. I read that and I was like, oh, sure. Yeah, like Tom's actual review talks about the fact of like, I don't think I fainted once during the thing and I was like, yeah, I didn't either. You know, you get knocked down in a monster

under game, you get dragged out by your palika, you get dumped at your camp, you come back into battle. And it wasn't until end game stuff where and it wasn't even like, I'm getting my ass kicked. It was like, ah, I didn't climb on the sacred. I didn't listen to my own advice. I did this. I got poisoned and da blah blah. Whereas I think since it's only been, I've only been down twice. So that's a legitimate complaint for sure. It's not one I share. At no point playing it was I like, I really wish I was

getting my teeth kicked in right now. And I understand people want that challenge and want that thing. I do expect it to be here in the end game as I keep grinding for stuff. Tom said it wasn't for him where he was. He still doesn't have all the armor and stuff like that. But I think it's a reasonable a complaint. It's just not one of mine where that's not what Monster Hunter is to me. Monster Hunter is the gear treadmill. It is the stuff you have with your friends. It's me jumping into

Andy's game and helping you while I was looking for a dung pot or whatever. And so like that's there but yeah it wasn't it didn't and it's I think maybe also the different kind of gamers everybody is. That's not a downside to me. Like I was very much like oh yeah like they're right. I haven't been

pushed to the limit. I haven't had that gear check moment which you usually do. If you go in there you just go oh fuck clown instead it's like I've been on the open world and oh there's an enemy and I go to attack it at a monster and it's like oh you can't you're not high enough hunter rank because they're roaming the open world like okay

I kind of would have preferred to try to do it and just get stomped but not a big deal for me because again I think it is trying to keep you going in that stream of content that stream of water like they're talking about it reminds you of some of the claims that people had of Final Fantasy 16th combat system compared to something like seven remake or I guess seven

Rebirth hadn't come out yet, but a very similar thing where people were saying, yeah, it's super flashing and everything, but the elements don't matter. You know, in remake and now Rebirth, you need that electricity to hurt the robot things, or you need the fire to go against it, whatever. And I have found myself kind of feeling the same thing where, you know, a fight might be a lot easier if I have the equipment that's necessary for it, where if I'm going to against the big Zapdos dragon-looking dude that does electricity,

I specifically for that fight looked for armor, because I knew it was the one that was the hardest for people during the demo, fighting the Ray Dal, the sort of dragon bird or whatever. And I knew people had a lot of trouble with it.

So I was like, all right, before I go into this, I want to make sure that I have the right armor for it. And it was a little bit easier, but then I fought it with Greg without any of that armor,

and it was still, you know, just an easy time or whatever. So I would agree that I think that I remember my time with World having a tougher time, maybe just because I was way worse at the combat. But I do think this game doesn't feel as punishing for not being prepared knowing that, like, I'm not using water bombs to quell this fire enemy. Or I'm not using water, whatever, that it's weak to.

You can still kind of just beat it down. And one of the interesting push and pulls from this whole conversation is doubling down on Whirl. All right. This is the most successful Monster Hunter game that there's ever been. Correct me of wrong.

Was it the most successful Capcom game ever? I forget if it was the best selling game of all time. Yeah, I think something as far as sales success it did do very well for them. Let's just say it's a huge

breakout hit, right? And it is, where do you adjust those friction points for people and how do you balance it? I think Monster Hesikos like me and like Tom Marks are going to go through and I think I don't want to talk out of school, but I think Tom said he's put 40 hours

into it or whatever, maybe more, maybe less. I'm not trying to take it. Everybody in chat is saying you're correct. is Capcom's most successful game. It's that idea of like I'm having as I said such a great time that I'm and I'm in high rank stuff now right

and again it's more the gating of my Hunter rank than it is the skill checks or whatever but I'm expecting when you get the next that you when they do do do those updates when they do do those drops of like all right cool it's the G rank and it's this that you know what I mean like there's going to be things I assume where suddenly it is like man I really do need to have

you know a fire affinity on this weapon to fight this thing because I don't miss it now and I think one of the interesting Ruben M. said, to be fair, I found the Daschugama. I'm probably scared. I'm saying it's saying it. I can't say it. The guy who looks like a sharp hey that I love. Dash Huggahama.

Ashgama. Daschugahama. I said, right? Diffica. I found him difficult. It says Rubin. I think that there are, you have to pay attention in fights. I don't want to, I don't think Tommy was trying to say like, put it on your brain dead. Don't pay attention. Like I said, I've died in the higher rank after the fact here

because, are fainted, because I didn't go to the right place. rolled the wrong time. I was too, you know what I mean? Like, you do need to actively be thinking about it. I think that's it. It's not brain dead. And I wouldn't even say it's easy as much as it's fine. Like you're, I feel challenged by these, but like part of the replayability of it for me right now is going back and be like, how much faster can I beat this now? Like when I came back to and help to Andy, I'm like, all right, cool. It's been 10 hours since I was here. Am I going to clown these things out super, super fast? What's going to happen? I'm going to use traps. I didn't have before. Stuff like that. Like that works for me. I was expecting more.

hey, if you're going to fight that fire, dude, you need fire resistant armor. Or else you're going to be in for a bad time, constantly either, you know, drinking that little beverage that kind of cools you down whenever you're fighting fire enemies or whatever. I've seen that taken less, I guess it's not as like extreme as I thought it would be. And I do expect that to be there. I think a really fun, interesting, I didn't expect it parallel to this is Monster Hunter now. A game that I really enjoy the mobile version of Monster Hunter.

you know, it's from Nantic, it's, you know, walk around, fight the dame, but it's the same thing where, you know, I have a, what, I have a gun lance that I fucking love in that game, that's super high level. So I use it all the time and just beat the shit out of everything pretty much, right? But then they'll be the, all right, cool, here's the challenge for the day or here's the storyline challenge, and it is beat them with the affinities attach your weapon, where suddenly I, you know, I haven't cared about grinding for that, but I am like, shit, now I need to actually get on the gear treadmill to make that so I can get whatever, you know, a little, unlockable in this game. I'm expecting them to do that here where of course there are special quest and daily quest and all sorts of stuff that'll pop up in there and I'm expecting it to be like limited time things happening today, go fight this guy that does have in like oh shit I do need to actually work that out.

So I want to wind down this conversation but I do have more questions that I think are going to be tempting to get into long conversations about. I want to challenge you guys. I don't see Nick play a vowed. That's true. That is very true. No, I want to challenge you guys to give me quick fire answers. to these quickfire questions that are made

to be longer conversations. Before we get in there, I just want to shout out the story. Can I do that? One thing we haven't talked about or touched on here is what the campaign is for this game. We all joked around about when we were talking about trying to reminisce about world. And it was like, you're in a new world.

Kill everything. Got it. Thanks. And that's how Monster has always been. Back to the 2007 review of like, it's an RPG without a story. They go out of their way to give you a story here that I think works and doesn't to a degree where it is like, I kind of just want to go. There was nights where I'm like, I just want to go kill and get my under rank up,

but I'm listening to you, talk about the ancients and this, that, the other. Just skip the cutscenes. I know. I never wouldn't. I'm reviewing God damn, but I wouldn't. And I think I wouldn't and I didn't. And I think I was never annoyed by it or anything because I think the performances are great

and they do a really good job. I was shocked when it was the final quest, you know, clearly we're going to go fight this big boss or whatever. And we're like riding our chocobos. And one of the people's like, starts reminiscing. I'm like, well, when I first met you, I was like, damn, this just actually hit him because I went back and turned on world, right?

And the person, you're the person, you're, the handler, right? Like, that's all they name this poor person that was running with you, right? Whereas here you have Alma and you have Gemma and you have these people in your world that you're like, I mean, they're not like, I don't have attachment to them like fucking Ellie or anything, but I was like, oh, you're a person and I dig this

and I like this and there's this, I want to spoil, there's a great moment. It's like, I was like, damn, you did this really well. You know what I mean? And I think for some people, it'll be skip, skip, skip, skip, I just want to kill, which I get. But I think they need to be commended for doing this and putting it in there. And I think kind of what you're talking about in the beginning of jumping off and flying,

like really making it cinematic. I know we've all, not all of us, many of us have played the betas, done the demos, whatever. So it's like, at this point, you kind of take it for granted. But when I turned it on that first night and was watching the big TV and it was, I was like, shit, this is, this is good. You know what I mean? I love that you can replay the cutscenes as well. They kind of go into a library of cutscenes.

I am real close to switching into like a maybe like the Japanese. Japanese voice actors. I think it's pretty bad. I think the story's like fine or whatever. I think the story can get better, or has gotten better since maybe the start of the game. But I think any of the performances feel very much like they were meant to be Japanese voice acted. It reminds me of watching old anime back in the day when all the timing of the characters were meant for Japanese voice actors, so the characters would be like, you know,

the English version would be like, well, we have to go over there or else we're not going to lose. Well, then what's the point of that? You know, like, everything just feels really off. And I think some of the performances are not good as well. That's the part of it where if I already give it a score, a, you know, temporary score where I'm at right now, I'd go like an eight because I think the combat is so incredible, but that's the stuff that brings it down for me.

because I still think it's like a great video game and I don't necessarily go to Monster Hunter expecting the most incredible narrative with amazing performances but it's still there and it still bothers me enough to I'm like ah that's just not good I don't really like a whole lot of what's happening here

but back into gameplay and the gameplay rocks so quick fire performance how did it perform in the platform you played on Andy I got a really good PC and it's incredible Greg I got a really great PlayStation 5 and it was flawless. I had no slowdown, no problems. And even when I went to the Slim, because I was playing

on that and portals and everything else, like, Slim does not look as good as PlayStation 5, but it wasn't a go by any stretch of imagination. And like, no frame drops. And I wanted to call it Jordan Midler, of course, friend of the show at VGC. News. He gave it a 5 out a 5 out 5. And he called out PS5 Pro, the game runs incredibly smoothly and offers three modes, one prioritizing frame rate, a balanced option, and one prioritizing resolution. For those of you with 120 Hertz supported monitor, the PS5 Pro offers a 40 frames per second mode, which enables ray tracing and makes for a great blend of blockbuster visuals in responsive combat.

Doing a well? Not anything I ever pay attention to. What do you play it on? I played it on PS5. Okay, there you go. I didn't have like any major issues. And I will say that it ran way better than any of the beta stuff that I played. Like I had a lot of issues with that.

Yeah, even when we did the Capcom demo, it was like, oh, this isn't running well. But no, none of that here. And yeah, for me playing on PS5, I thought, I think it looks great and runs great. And again, like, it has those moments of presentation where I'm like, damn, this looks good. I'm liking a lot of like not just I guess graphically but also just in terms of art direction and design and stuff I'm like pretty impressed by it this time around next quick fire

Does it get anything wrong Andy I know you just mentioned the story No not the story but I guess performance of like the English voice acting Yeah I know what I just to clarify somebody asks So is the story bad or is the acting bad I think the story's fine but I think the character writing And the performances aren't very good

What I think it gets probably the most wrong is still being very overwhelmed with menus and you're going to get hit with a lot of tutorials and they're there to help you and it all kind of adds to the overwhelming noise I would say.

Yeah for me it would just be the cumbersome menus of I'm doing this friend thing for me trying to layer my equipment like I'm fairly certain at some place I had you know the codes we came got the pre-order bonuses of outfits and eyepatches And I remember seeing somewhere to apply that.

And now I cannot find that to save my life. Joey. It's hard coming into somebody who's never played Monster Hunter because I understand that their Monster Hunter games are played a certain way. But coming from the outset, I'm like, why can't I see a health bar for these monsters? Why can't you tell me how much I've taken it's now? How cut up?

How is he acting? Does he have the skulls floating around him? No, just give me a health bar. We've come up with the perfect way to convey that information via a graphical overlay and we should just have that in all the games. Only being like six to eight hours in, I don't really have anything big.

A lot of it is just that the, you know, Monster Hunter is going to be Monster Hunter, right? Like, it is what it is. And so I think that can make the onboarding ramp a bit steep. But the more play, the more I'm like, all right, cool. I'm understanding the gameplay basics of it so much that I can't wait to get to the place where I'm cooking and get to the place where I'm setting up my temporary tent

and get to the place where I am like, all right, this is the armor I want. and now I'm going to grind like hell to get this thing. Like early on even, there are some early dual blades from some of those first few monsters you fight where I'm like, ah, dang, I kind of like how that looks. Like, all right, cool, this is a short goal of just, I guess I got to beat this guy to get the dual blades and I do it. And I'm like, hell yeah, you know, I fuck with these dual blades.

But yeah, it can be kind of cumbersome a little bit overwhelming as far as what they're doing with the menus and all the stuff they're throwing at you. But I'm hoping that by the time I get maybe some more hours and that won't be as big of the thing for me. I think it's fascinating to see where some of the. the details in customization are in this game. Because these tents that you're talking about, bless, of like putting down little campsites around,

he'll be running around a random locale and you'll hear your... Oh, maybe we should put it there. Maybe we should set up a little camp here. And it's like, oh, cool, let's do that. And you don't just put down a camp. You can, like, fully customize the color of... And decals and decorations and fabric of all these little tents. And you could choose, like, up to four additional customization.

so like, well, let's put a little grill here. Let's put like, do I want the two seats here where we could just kind of sit down and relax? Or should I get the one with a table in the middle and the four chairs around? It's very odd where they choose to like go hard on the customization because you can also choose from a bunch of different decals and customize the size and scale of the decals. It's very, it's hilarious, but it's kind of awesome. Last one I'll throw you guys. Does it have the juice to last for you? Do you see yourself playing this game for months on end?

or do you think is going to be a week and done? For me, that's going to be like pretty heavily relying on how many people are playing. I do have the draw to keep playing by myself, but I know that that'll be exponentially higher when I have like people that actively want to play. So when it gets out, obviously you guys. But I feel like scheduling within kind of funny to play games together is insanely difficult, especially off hours and stuff like that. So I'm excited to jump in with the community, run around.

I feel some monsters. I mean, I see my hour count on this being in like the 30s or 40s, you know? Like a lot of these sort of games, you know, I don't think I'll stick around with it for the long term. And when I say long term, I mean like maybe three weeks. And you're still playing in December? I think, yeah, I think there's just a lot of stuff for us to already play. And it was hard for me enough to put the time that I put into it recently because of all the other previews that we kind of have going on. But yeah, I for sure see myself playing this a decent amount.

Yeah. Yeah, for me, it's a tough one where because of the way we play games where we want to play things for work and play a bunch of different things, right? Like, as we get into March and April and May, in the rest of the year, honestly, like, things are going to pick up and get busy. And so it's going to be tough for me to want to allocate my time into a game that I know is a bit more demanding as far as, like, you know, Monster Hunter wants you to get deep. Monster Hunter wants you to, like, chase that carrot on the stick and, like, go on these repeated expeditions and, like, spend time with it and all that stuff, right? I mean, I sound like a boyfriend that doesn't want to hang out. But, you know, it's like... I got to see my friends.

I got to see my friends. I got to play volleyball. I got to play other games, right? I'm hooked on magic. And that was the thing of like, you know, I just went to MagicCon. And like, I had the thought of on the plane ride back, you know, I booted up Magic Arena and was playing. And I started having flashbacks to only like two months ago where I was like, all right, I'm done with the long ass games. And now flash forward.

And I probably put in like 100 hours into arena already, right? And like, I, it's tough when there's so much, so many games that are, I guess, so much, right? Like, games are big nowadays. That said, like, I want to get to the place of maybe the Andy thing of getting 30 hours in. Because I'm also in a stage right now of wanting to understand the hype of things. You know, I played, I'm 17 hours in the Outer Wilds and now I understand the hype. You know what I mean? There's nothing better than the feeling of understanding the hype.

So I want to get there with Monster Hunter. But, yeah, like, I'm in that fork in the road right now of nuts. knowing if I'm going to be able to do that or, you know, is something else going to come through and make me shift my time there? Gregory? For me, I'll be shocked if this isn't my most played game of the year. I don't think it's all going to come at once, though. You know, we have, like I said, Thursday afternoon, streaming bar goes up. We're going to go from, you know, the usual streaming time until five. And then Friday, we're doing an all-day marathon stream. So I think that's Twitch exclusive because it'll be so long, right, Andy? That's how it works.

Yeah. But I got the night. I got the night off. You know what I mean from Dad Duty. we got Jen coming in, right? Yeah, maybe. We'll see. Jen had a conversation with me where the other and I was like, are you right? You want to jump in? She's like, I'm not mad. But like, you know, the way you consumed this game for work meant that I didn't get to experience it with you. So like, she's so early she feels, and I'm like, that's not how it is this time. But I'm going to keep trying to sell around it.

No, baby, that's not how it is. I had to do it for my job. Anyways, but yeah, it's a similar thing of big review codes are coming in at the end of this week. I don't know when we're getting WWE. Like, there's a million other things are happening. so I think it's going to be chip damage. But I think that actually plays into, I see this game being my Diablo of this year.

Where it's like, I don't, I think, again, the way they've brought down the friction of it, like, it has even Monster to World after playing so much wild, jumping in, and I was like, wait, what do I need to do? How do I stay? Okay, right, they did the quest this way.

It's more cumbersome there than it is here, whereas I feel like I can take a month off of this one, come back and be ready to go, be jump in. And like when they drop a big monster that I need to be geared up for, different conversation, but enough to get my feet wet and get rolling and go. So yeah, I'll be in this for the long haul. Like today's Gregway, again, how Monster Hunter or Wild's ruined Gregway is about the fact

that all I want to talk about was Monster Hunter, but I couldn't talk about Monster Hunter because we're in this weird thing right now where Monster Hunter, we can finally talk about yeah, but it's like we can't play with anybody until Friday? Like that's why can we throw back up my codes? Everybody friend me. Everybody do this thing, right? Like I want to play with you because that's what Monster Hunter is all. about. Thank you very much.

I guess one last quick fire, and this is just for Greg. Hi. End game so far. Thumbs up, thumbs down. Thumbs up. You know what I mean? It's doing the thing where the story's still going. They're still, you know, it's not like you're just like let it loose. There's like, okay, wait, hold on. This is happening. We need to look into this and that. And I'm still opening up new things and getting side quests that or opening up new things and stuff like that. Is this a game, sorry, where you, the end game is where things really. A hundred percent. Monster 100. Like that's one of the things where I think, you know, Tom's review called out how fast he got through the campaign.

And I think that's by design because it always has been that when you get out of the campaign, that's really when the game begins. That's really when the game opens up. All the, it's almost the way I was describing to somebody the other day, right, is like everything you're doing until credits is literally like elementary through high school. Then there's going to be this early part of the end game where it's like, cool, you've earned to you can now max out of this hunter rank and then you go up to that and you do some size stuff. Then it opens up the next hunter. That's college. And then eventually like, all right, cool. Now you're an adult go off and do all this. Which is why, like, the difficulty and all that stuff and the challenge, I can't speak to because I'm still in college right now. Got it. Thank you. Before we get out of here, I want to shout out some of the super chats. Marlene Soli writes in and says, found you guys during the pandemic as a new nurse. You guys got me through a very hard time. Just wanted to send some love.

Thank you so much for that, Marlene. Thank you for your work too. Thank you, Marley. DJ Spadatus, right? And it says, I blind bought the Monster Hunter movie as I collect physical media and watched it recently and really got me interested in the games and this review also. birthday tax as my birthday is the day after Andy's. Happy birthday, Happy birthday.

Did we, Is the Monster Hunter Hunter movie good? No. No, but it's not bad. Is it fun? There was a night where we sat down and Jen's like, oh, let's rent that. I was like, really?

Okay. And I was a monster owner guy and just a guy. I was like, oh, that's fun enough. Like, I mean, it's not, I, what do I remember about it? Oh, man, this has nothing. Oh, wow, there's Ron Perlman and Apalico and we're on a ship. What the fuck? All right.

I guess it is, Monter. I got one last one from Ghostyard Ursa, who writes in and says, me and a friend started a YouTube slash streaming channel, Ghostyard gamers. We've been doing Avowed and loving it. Would you recommend us swapping to Monster Hunter Wilds? I've been a fan since my freedom to. I don't know what Freedom 2 is. Monster Hunter Freedom 2.

It was my first review 2007. Not my first. It was my first Monster Hunter. I mean... I think you should play whatever you want to play. Yeah, I guess it depends on how much are you liking avowed. But you're multiple people. It would be fun multiplayer game to play together.

I mean, Greg wants you to switch from a vow to Monster. No, no, I had a great time with Avat. I would never tell you to stop playing a Vad. Like, no. Do whatever you want to do, but. Monternerner is going to be pretty massive, I would say. Yeah. Yeah.

If you're asking the question, just do it. That means you already want to. Yeah. If you're thinking about dropping it. Should we get a divorce? Yeah, get a divorce. If you're asking you to get a divorce. That is it for Super Chats, and that is it for our review of Monster Hunter Wilds.

Yeah, let's clap for ourselves. Good job. Wow. I did a great job. You guys are playing a game. I'm not waiting for this one for a long time. I love this game so fucking much. Of course, this has been the Kind of Funny Games cast.

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