Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Nick's Thoughts on Star Wars Outlaws - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 30, 2024

Nick Scarpino has been playing a ton of Star Wars Outlaws, what does he think about it? Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Nick’s Thoughts on Star Wars Outlaws So Far - Ads - Nick’s Final Thoughts on Outlaws - Midnight Murder Club Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the final week you have to hear us remind you about the Kind of Funny membership drive. All August long, we've been asking you to show your appreciation for the content we make by tossing us $10 on patreon.com slash kind of funny or YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Y'all have shown up and we can't thank you enough. Gotten Gregways on the weekends, weekly happy hours for all, and even the ability to be part of the shows. Thank you so much. And if you haven't pitched in, please consider doing so before the end of the month. Oh shit. Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast at having it. the day, Nick.

Did it really? Yeah. Tim pulled to Kevin? On Gives Daily. Yeah. The cold open happened. It just zoomed in on Tim's one. And he's just there on his laptop.

I was like, Tim. Welcome to the camera. It was a fantastic day. That is the best. Hey, everybody. How are you what? This is the kind of funny games cast for August 30th. Friday.

TGIF. It's Friday. The long weekend. Oh, Monday. Monday off. Yeah, everyone has on. But don't you have to do labor that day? Yeah, you have to do labor that day.

That's when you, if someone's giving birth that day, you go in. You help. You help out. I got to help. I'm a helping hand. Let me know where I need to be. Where, where, where, could I put a little ice chips? A couple of little ice chips here.

In your what? In the mouth. Oh, oh. Don't let you drink too much water because you pee all the time if you drink water. Oh, I didn't know that. So when you're giving birth, they just, they just rub ice on your face to get it into your face through osmosis. I have a human body. It's a beautiful thing.

It's a really beautiful thing. Physics. Hey, I'm Andy. This is Nick. Hey, bud. it's kind of funny games cast it's a you know we're really we're really bringing our best today we're really you know

we're down and not a whole lot of people we there's four of us in the office yeah and it's always a weird vibe when it's not hustling and bustling there's been some some stuff that's happened unfortunately that we've had to to scramble with namely

a chief among them I'm not sure we talked about Mike or not earlier today. Mike was supposed to be here to talk about his awesome experience at Call of Duty next. And you learned who Abraham Lincoln was. He did. He went on a long as track through D.C. He tried to get into the White House. They tackled him. It was a whole fun thing. Yeah. Everybody's on vacation right now. You know, Mike went to D.C. for four days and played a video game for one of them. Just your normal old work trip, you know, just vacationing across the country. Roger and Blesser and week two of their month-long John in Tokyo. They're having a fantastic vacation over there, hanging out with Kojima, seeing the sites,

just a little neat little free paid vacation. And just me here. It's me and Nick and Barrett's running the show. And let me tell you, I can't tell you how happy I am that companies are, that these game companies are going back to wasting marketing dollars, sending Blessing and Roger all the way across the world to go and visit Hideo Kojima. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't tell you how happy I am because some of my happiest trips were when they flew me down to hang out with 50 cent and G unit for no reason. The best.

And 50 didn't even talk to us the entire time. Oh, no. I mean, he kind of looked at. He was like, hey, what's up, Curtis? Okay. Was he upside down the whole time? Yeah, he was doing upside down. Yeah, yeah.

What do they call those? Sit-ups? Oh, yeah. But I guess if you're upside down, they're just sit downs. Yeah, something like that. And just to be clear, Roger, because I know chat. confused because they're going to take you too seriously, Andy, because you're just too good at doing your dry humor.

Roger and Blessen aren't actually gone for a month. Oh, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I just, you know. But we're not sure if Mike's ever going to come back. We're all getting paid. Well, that's fair. That's fair.

It's just, you know, everybody's having fun. Everybody's getting vacations. I don't know if you would call them vacations either. You know, next week, Nick, next week I was supposed to go to an event, and I was like, hey, there's a free hotel stay. Let me do that. And then I got to watch this fucking beetle juice, beetle juice movie. so I can't stay at the hotel

I just got to go play the game and that's like you know Oh you have to do a screener Yeah I got to do the screener So I can't stay in the hotel Which is like the biggest sign of luxury to me Is it out of San Francisco Is it out of town?

I was going to drive over there Why don't you just go see it And then go stay in the hotel Because like it's a You know You gotta get to the hotel You want to You can't have a late night hotel

Walk in there You have to walk into a hotel at around 2.30 p.m. You drop your bags off. You get in and it's like, oh, let me turn. Is my room ready? And they say, sir, it's not normally ready until three. And they go, you know what?

Your room is ready. You know what? Get in your sucker. Get in your sucker. You put down the AC to about 67, 67, 65 or something like that. You get out of the covers. You take a nap. You wake up like at 5.30.

And then you go out and you like hang out with whoever is kind of around in the town. I can't go to a hotel at 10 p.m. or whatever, whenever this stupid ass, it's a bit more depressing. you know it is yeah you get there it's just like it's like the whole day's over it's like i'm you know so like can't do the hotel stay unfortunately um so yeah yeah you know um not doing not doing anything cool here nothing nothing cool's happening here uh on my end of things well you still get to go to an event that's nice um yeah and the event is in fucking um Tim Buck 2.

Oh, no, wait, it's like 40 minutes away. Like, it's not a cool... You know what I mean? Like, I'm not... I'm not going to Japan. I'm not going... You know, I'm not going to go stay in the mansion with 50 cent.

It was pretty cool. It was more like a condo complex, but sure. I'm sorry for you. Greg's in Seattle right now. Everybody's vacationing right now. I think Greg's working. I don't know if we would call him vacation. It's just the dream vacation that everybody's having right now.

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Super chats as we go. And housekeeping, you got me and Tim and Kind of Funny Games Daily. And that was a show. And the stream after this. Nick, you're going to be a... playing some of that call duty. We're going to jump into the Black hole six beta.

And I don't know how long I'll play for. I definitely want to check it out. But, you know, multiplayer on a Friday after a long week, we'll see how that goes. But if I'm not feeling that, I might actually take my toe out of that pond and dip it back into Star Wars Outlaws.

You're going back to a galaxy far, far away. It doesn't feel that far. It feels pretty near near. Well, is it because you're kind of just in the, like you haven't really seen any anything really alien yet, but you're kind of getting there, I feel like. No, it just feels exactly like the, uh, what was it, Koboo? Bobo?

Cobo from a Jedi Survivor. Oh, that's right. So it just kind of feels exactly like that kind of vibe. Well, you never be Jedi Survivor, right? No, but I got to the very last level before the installer kicked me out. All right? No spoilers, but you got, you had like the twist and turns, right, by the end of it? Of Survivor?

Yeah. Yeah, I got to the last. I was on the last boss. Oh. I was like, I can't be this guy tonight because it was one of those late night grind sessions where it was like one o'clock and I'm like, I don't. have what it takes to do this and I don't want to drop the difficulty down I want to beat this guy like on whatever I wasn't playing on like ultra hard or anything I was playing on like moderate but uh I was like I'm

just not feeling it I'm not getting this guy's timing right now logged out it updated and then when I came back in the installer like the actual launcher the EA app the fucking EA app and I tried and they were like basically the fix was you have to uninstall everything including the EA app and then reinstall it and I was like I'm not going to do that like the fact that I I have to find my password for the EA app, an app that I use once every three years. It could have taken, whatever. It could have taken 10 minutes.

It's a quick, like, no thanks. But I was also like, I saw, I got the story of the game. I would have beat the guy. I got the gist. You know what I mean? You pull the snow bike, Mike. Survivor's one of those, like, a lot of those, a lot of these games I just like, that are so long, um, that feed me these intricate stories over the span of like 20, 30.

I don't fucking, I, I, I, I zone out after a while. I'm like, what colors my lightsaber today? How do I, I don't even think I used 90% of the moves that you could use in Jedi Survivor. Oh, I thought you meant the lightsaber like customization. Of course I did. Yeah, okay. A lot of cool colors.

Mine was spotless, by the way. You pick up that lightsaber, it's like you just bought it from the Apple store. No, I don't like that. Yes. It has to look worn. It has to look like you've existed in the universe in the galaxy. If I walked through one of the hallways and a Star Destroyer with that light saber, people would think I belonged.

Oh, because like the shit, it's glossed. You don't think like Al is actively. taking care and cleaning and maintaining his lightsaber in? Here's the thing. No, I just want like, I want it to be battle damage a little bit. Bear, can you zoom in on my phone case? Like if I, if, if a rock hit my little water thermos right here. Do this? I could clean

it, but it would still look damaged. Do this right here? This is this phone case damage. Beautiful. It's such a small phone. This is just worn down. This is unacceptable. I'm going to buy a new case today. No, you're not. This is unacceptable. Feel it. Feel that edge. Gross. It is kind of gross. It's slick when it should be a little sticky and sticky when it should be a little slick.

I don't like that. When I'm fighting the Sith, you better believe everything's going to be slick. Well, Nick will be getting back to Star Wars Outlaws today. Probably. Because he's enjoying it. Yesterday, I was supposed to stream it. And we had a sponsorship thing that didn't happen. And I just assumed, yeah, I'd be playing it.

You'd be riding shotgun. And Nick was like, no, I want to keep on playing this. It's fun. I mean, I am enjoying it. Are you playing keyboard mouse or controller? I am playing keyboard mouse. It has some intricacies to a little, a couple eccentricities to that. Namely, you have to turn off a pro tip if you're playing on PC and mouse, turn off the mouse control on the speeder bike.

Otherwise, it'll just list. It'll just go around in a circle because it's too many left and right controls for the actual input, I think. Oh, see, I only use the, uh, we'll get to it. We'll get to it. We'll get to all the Star Wars outlaws news. Okay. If you're a kind of funny member, you can get today's Gregway, which was supposed to be Mike. I don't know who it's going to be now.

because again Mike went to DC for a four-day event where he played a game for one day. I can take over. He wrote a doombuggy yesterday. So cool. Who do you think is more lost right now? Blessing and Roger or Mike? Mike 100% at all times. Yeah, I got to assume that the amount of panic that sort of like yesterday he posted a video of him

riding these lime scooters near the, near the Lincoln Memorial and stuff. And he was kind of, and it really felt like he was just trying to cope with the fear. Because, you know, Mike's admitted many times that when sometimes when he gets to the airport, he'll sit in his car and be like, I'm not going. Yeah. You know, so like when he got those flight cancellations, I think that what we saw was a cry for help on those Instagram stories where he was just trying to deal with the fear. and the worry of like, will I ever make it back? I got some texts from him last night that were overly confident. And when Mike's overly confident, there's an urgency behind it that's very insecure and like this is terrifying to me.

Yeah, but we'll be good. I'll be fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm holding up at the base. You know, a lot of good, positive self-talk in these texts. And I was just like, don't panic. Just go to the hotel. We cover everything. Don't worry. You know what I don't worry. about it. We're going to get you home. Yeah. But I think he's never had this happen to him before. And it's scary. It's like, oh my God, I'm going to be stuck in Washington, D.C. And, you know, Mike's probably already looking for jobs in D.C. Yeah. He's that's where his brain is. He's already working under like a local diner. There's just no way he's in his brain when that flight got canceled. There's just no way he's getting home. It's just easier for him to get a job over there.

Yeah, exactly. Like he's not going to tell us. He's all sloppy. I'll remote it. I'll remote and. You know, I'll do that sloppy. But I think he was legitimately a little shaken by that. And rightfully, so because having your flight canceled due to, I think it was weather, inclement weather, whatever it was. It's a little freaky-dicky, man. It can push you off your game, but it'll be fine. I think he's, I think he finally got a flight back, so I think it'll be okay. Yeah, I mean, I'm surprised he didn't get injured on the lime scooter in the rain because he was out there, limboating. Oh, he's very athletic. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twining.

Thank you very, very much. You're the best of us. Appreciate you all this support. Today we're brought to you by Dragon Age Vows and Vengeance podcast. We'll tell you about that later. For now, let's get to the topic of the show. Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots. Can I ask a question before we start this? Please let me hear it. It's the topic of the show.

No, I just answered it. Tots. Accordain. I thought it was going to be, I thought it should be Tops or topics. But then I looked at it and I said, no, that makes sense. Tots. It just came to you in the moment. Well, because it's technically topic of the show.

Yeah. It's one of those things where when you use the O, I feel like you should use the the, the, but should be taut, tauts? Well, it's just topic of the show. It's just, you know, we don't say the topic of show. It's just topic of the show. Topic of the.

Oh. No, I guess you're right, yeah. The is the T. We're really bringing our best. We really are. We really are. Tots of the show. Yeah, that makes sense.

Okay. The topic of the show. The topic of the show is us talking about Star Wars Outlaws. Because we had our Star Wars outlaws. There's the thumbnail right there. Nick's thoughts. You like that? You had a different thumbnail up, though, all morning on your laptop as a red herring for me.

And you just changed it. Yeah. On this. Demon hacker in the live chat says, are they stone? I'm just tired. I wish. Yeah, I wish. Obviously, you heard Barrett and Greg talk about Star Wars Outlaws and how it didn't hit for them in a lot of

of different ways and I got to play a little bit of it and wasn't super in thrall. I think the game starts off really, really, really weak. Like it does not put its best foot forward and kind of make you go, holy shit, what a cool set piece. Like I think Jedi Fallen Order had a phenomenal start. And this game just doesn't really quite do that. But it's the kind of game that is he kind of keep playing and, you know, doing what it's asking to do, however basic it may be, it can kind of think it's causing to you. Right. And Nick, so you've been playing it on stream.

Is this a game that you also want to continue at home? Is this a game you want to continue? Unless you get to a point where you're like, you know what, no longer digging it. But for the time being, it seems like you're kind of into it. Yes, I do think I'm going to, I would keep playing this at home. In fact, I wanted to play it a little bit last night, but I had a, once I got those texts from Mike,

I was like, okay, maybe I don't. Maybe we'll continue playing it on the stream. It's one of those games that I think is straightforward. It's a little easier. And granted, I'm only six out, five, six hours in maybe, if even that. Because when you play on stream, you know, you go a little slower or whatever. But I like how it's a little bit simpler than some of the other kind of games of its ilk are it's a shooter. There's no real mechanics you need to really learn other, like you had to with Star Wars, with with a Jedi Survivor,

or Jedi Fallen Order. You didn't really need to learn how to be a Jedi and all your force powers. You just get cool mechanics. You get a blaster to start off with and everything. You're either sneaking or shooting. And there's some, there's sort of a... A lot of sneaking, too. A lot of sneak in.

A lot of forced sneaking. You're definitely getting to some spots that are going to amplify this sneakage, I would say. Which I'm not against. And normally I'm not a huge sneaking mechanic, like, person. We've seen you play hitman. Yeah. It usually devolves into nothing, but this game doesn't quite allow you to devolve it into nothing. Yeah, because they continue to, you know.

I mean, and I think honestly at first I pushed a, back against that because I was like, why can't I just blast my way out of this? But obviously they're like, no, we want you to sneak into this Star Destroyer or sneak into this Imperial Base or sneak into this, you know, Pike Headquarters or whatever it is. And it really does kind of, I think, set the tone for you. But going back, I do, I want to talk about sort of the beginning of the game because I do think that was a missed opportunity. I think for a, you know, for a game that's supposed, you're supposed to be a scoundrel,

you're supposed to be a shooter, you're supposed to be a thief, you're supposed to be these things. starting you off in a very, I'll say boring way was a missed opportunity. You should have immediately started off in like a deal or a gunfight or something fun like that. But the game just sort of starts and you're just in sort of like a little bit of world building for a solid 20, 30 minutes before you get to anything even remotely fun. Go grab some money from so-and-so. Go bring the money here. Let me spend, you know, 40 minutes teaching you this world that you're not going to come back to for the next six hours. Yeah, which is kind of weird.

Definitely a miss opportunity. I think they... Because it is a shooter, it's an action game. So you should be starting off with, you know, you think of Jedi Fallen Order where you start with that incredible sequence where you're platforming around the destroyed imperial ship or whatever it is. You've got to go through the areas and jump and this and that. And then it's that wonderful sequence where you have to slide all the way down it and jump

and get saved and all that stuff. So this doesn't have that start. But it has a sort of straightforward simplicity to it that I think is really super. speaking to me. And I think it's kind of, um, I'm interested to see how, how much more intricate it gets. I've talked to Barrett a little bit about it. And he says, you know, there's, there's some redundancies to it where you start getting to the point where like, these missions are sort of samey. I have not gotten to that point yet. I just started playing Sabak though. And I'd be, oh, I'm pretty good. Fantastic. Okay. Yeah. So, uh, for anybody who has not played

the game, um, you are KVS. You are kind of watching the beginning. You are kind of watching the beginning of you becoming an outlaw and I think that's why we have issues with a lot of movies that are mainly just sort of origin stories because you kind of have this character that whose mother may have had a past in this sort of like crime world or whatever and you know being an outlaw but you still have to kind of see the character become that you can't just uh you know in some ways I kind of wish it it started off halfway through the journey and then we go and then we do a flashback yeah I would agree I would have loved to to have seen more of an exciting action first sort of segment in order to kind of get you,

give you a glimpse of what the game can become. But yeah, I think the game starts off pretty stale and pretty unremarkable. But I love KVS. I love this actress. I love her line delivery. I love her just her overall vibes are kind of exactly what I want from this like sarcastic kind of like character who's just trying to be an outlaw every once in a while. But also, kind of in over her head at times.

Like there's, there are several moments where you're talking to somebody, and it's clear that she's kind of like, oh, shit, I should be kind of pushy here and get what I want. Oh, you're not going to? Okay, well, sure, I'll take whatever you give me then. I like her whole demeanor. I like Nix as the little animal axolotel mixed with like a pangolin, which are two different animals. Yeah, of course. You know what a pangolin is?

I've heard you say that word a bunch of times. Oh, they're so great. Can you bring an image of a pangolin right now, Barrett? Penguins are one of my favorite animals, Nick. Is this real or is just like a mythical animal? You can talk about these unicorns you like. A penguin sounds like I just can't say the word penguin, but a penguin is like a...

We're all thinking. It looks like a, yeah, it looks like a little... Armadillo. Yeah, it's like an armadillo sort of thing. It's got a weird, cool looking tail, got some scales on it. You see Nick has like... Ugly as shit. No, what are you talking about?

Look how cute it is! There's an ugly-ass animal. Fuck you! No, it's not. I'll say it. I don't know what the chat things. Chat. I'm from my wrong.

I put a pull up. Yeah, put up a pull. Is this animal the ugliest fucking animal you've ever seen in the trailer? You're bullshit. I think the animal community is going to come after you. He's got rock hard scales. This is like the least pedible thing I've ever seen in my car. Look at the cute little eyes though.

Look at that one of the far right. It looks like it's like kind of like trying to barter with you. Look at the one of the far right. He looks like an MPC. Being like, what are you buying today? Yeah. So anyway, yeah, I love Nix. I love how adorable he is.

It's like kind of the perfect almost. little, a little animal companion. And a nice change, a nice change from the droids of being able to get in there and like, you know, say obviously same mechanic, but it's fun to have a little bit more of an organic thing hanging out with you. It was kind of cool. For sure. Yeah, I like this little sucker.

But based on what Dragon Barrett have told me, like, there's not a whole lot more evolution from there, which definitely bums me out because I, I, I love where we're at sort of in this story that, of course, it's not, you can't really have a bang and start. If you have a character who's kind of nothing right now, you know? Gilbert 12 asks, but is it a ground or normal type? Oh, God, Jesus Christ. Fuck, don't ask me. It's hard to have a binger of a start of a video game when you are kind of showing off how this character starts to become more kind of crime involved.

Yeah, I think for me that was a misstep for them. And I'll disagree with you on, I don't like the K of S character. I think she's a little too innocent and too, too, like, doughy-eyed the entire time for a person who has grown up. We've clearly seen grown up in this situation. I think she should start a lot closer to where, like, we find Han Solo in, you know, a new hope, like a little closer to that than where we find Solo and Solo, which I didn't think, why don't think that character works for that either, because you got to have a slightly sharper edge.

And there's moments in these dialogue trees where I'm like, that's not how someone who has had to live on their own for, what, she's got to be 25, 26 years, would be really reacting to this. And she's too gullible. She's a little too awshucks for me. I was hoping for a little bit more of a sharp rage and a little bit more sarcasm, honestly. Maybe I just really love the line delivery.

Yeah, I think the performance is good. I think what she's given is the thing that I would have loved to see more, and I agree with you, Nick. I think a lot of, you know, a lot of modern Disney-era Star Wars, you know, I think they're afraid of letting a outlaw be an outlaw, and it's always got to be an outlaw with a heart of gold. Yeah. And I think that just gets very tired and very samey after a while.

It very much does. And for me, I mean, again, I'm liking the game and I don't, you know, for me, it's more about the mechanics in the, and the world and just kind of jump on on the speeder bike. But when we do get into those dialogue trees, it, it, I, I need the character to be slightly more flawed for me to really understand that like, oh, we're into this, we're in this gangster underworld where there's three factions and I'm playing them against each other. It just seems really, really out of character and out of pocket when she's like, oh, okay, I'll double

cross someone. It's like, oh, I don't, you don't, you don't, you don't, you're not striking me as the kind of person that would do that. Well, I think that that also... It's hard for me to have her as my avatar because my fucked up soul is like, oh, you gotta have a little bit more, you know, grit to you and a little bit more middle grader,

a little more gray area to where your character's at, and she just comes off as very, very wholesome. And I'm glad you're bringing up the concept of this avatar that you are creating, because I think the game is sort of at odds with how can we create a character that is likable enough to want to play as, but you still have to make decisions

that may make this character unlikable. Yes. And it's one thing if you are the dialogue list, that sounds like a weird, it's one thing if you're a character who doesn't speak, is what I should have said. If you're just an avatar who doesn't speak, and you are just selecting, yes, kill him,

no, don't double cross him or whatever. That's one thing. But when you are given this sort of like, here's this character, she seems like she has a heart of gold. She's silly, she's fun She could be a dick at times if she wants to But

Those things are at odds with each other Whenever you are selecting the more Like evil choice of a decision Yes, and I think about I think back to our play through of Mass Effect We were We played at And we, you know

We made all the bad decisions Like all the evil decisions And we made our Commander Shepard The biggest asshole in space To the point where it was almost uncomfortable It was hilarious To watch him interact with people because you're like, it's like Larry David. You're like, what is he going to fucking say now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And that, not saying that Star Wars needs that, but there's no way to have this character be that, right? There's no way to have this character be a Boba Fett or even a Han Solo where they're morally, you know, kind of in that gray area. Kay is a good person. They want her to be a good person. They want you to know she's a good person, that you're a good person for playing as her. And, you know, it's fine. It just, it does take a little bit of the.

Yeah, we show some more teeth there. It's a little bit. Yeah. And I do want to just spoil like the first 15 minutes. Sure. So please go away if you don't want to be spoiled. Until Andy's done talking. For the first 15 minutes of this game.

I will raise my hands when I am done spoiling. Okay. Good. There's a character that they kind of want you to have like, hey, you guys have a past, right? Here's this, his name is Bram. He's the dude who owns his bar or whatever. It's clear that you all have some sort of past, but it's not clear enough to make me really care

and think that like, oh, this is like super well set up in a way that I immediately care about this dude, right? And I could see themselves making this game and not wanting to pull the Jedi fall in order moment where you immediately kind of get to know this one MPC and then you start talking to him. and then MPC gets shot and you go,

no, what the fuck? You're like, whoa, this game. You know, and I could see themselves at odds with that because there's a moment where they're coming after you and they're coming after Brahm and they're like, Brahm, where is she? She did some bad shit.

Just doing some crimes. Where the fuck is she? And he's like, I don't know where she's at. And they're like, well, we're going to find it. He's like, actually, no, I can help you find where she's at. And at this point, Brahms, at this point, Brahms has already looked at you and he's been like, go get out of here yeah this is that moment in the movie that we've seen a million times and it's such a

movie trope or just storytelling trope of like go go ahead i'll stop them i'll i'll you know i'll try to like take their attention away and brahman's like you know what i can't help you find k and the guy goes we don't need your help boom shoots him and he shot him in the thigh and the guy's like ah fucking leg damn it he crazed me he looks and it's like oh actually he just Actually, you just tore my pants. It didn't punch. Oh, it didn't punch. That's great for me.

It's really hot. I might need a Band-Aid, though. These are old pants anyway, though. Is that a scar? Oh, no, that's an old scar. That's, never mind. That's when I, that's when I rose bush kind of cut me. It is like, again, I understand them not wanting to pull the same move the Jedi

Fallen Order did. Yeah. But right off the bat, that shows me that, like, the weight of stakes are so minimal. That stays that way. That immediately shows me that you don't really want us to worry or care. It tells me that this world is not going to be that dangerous. It's very odd. It was such a weird call.

There's no stakes. And it doesn't, and even the character itself doesn't feel like it's, you know, it feels like we're playing it safe across the board. Well, actually, no spoilers aren't done yet, hold on. It just feels like we're playing it safe across the board.

Yeah. And, and, you know, that's totally fine. If you want to make a Star Wars game that's like G rated or PG rated or whatever, it's going to be as far as, like, you know, if it were a movie, I totally understand. saying that, but, you know, it's different for me. I'm bringing my life experiences as a 44-year-old man into this.

And, you know, I don't mind every once in a while. I don't mind looking at some darker shit. Yeah, Kay walks up and he's like, are you good? He's like, ah, I'm Bobby fun. Also, like, and I hate to say this, but like a lot of the characters, and it kind of, we dipped into this a little bit with Fallen Order. What's the main character's name of that? Kyle Katasas.

Kyle. Kyle Katar. Kyle Johnson. I know. We had a good little bit. about it. Yeah, it's tough. Because I was, Blessing didn't know about him. I was like, Blessing, what if I told you you could play as Kyle? He's like, what the fuck? Yeah, the guy named Kyle. Yeah. There's a dude in Star Wars named Kyle. Cal is the other one, right? Cal is Cal. We dipped

a little bit with Cal too, where Cal just comes off as like this, kind of a choir boy. But that makes sense because he's sort of, we're pulling along the path of the Jedi, right? And we're trying to, we're trying to have those moments. But yeah, with Kay, it just, it's a little on the boring side. Immediate sort of missed opportunity. That's very one-dimensional. So yeah, anyway, that's, those are some Star Wars thoughts.

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That's kindof funny.com slash dragon age. We're back. Welcome back, everybody. Yeah. I'm going to say one more thing. Yeah, let's hear it. And it's a tough one for me to say because part of me I'm saying it tongue and cheek, but the other part of me is a little serious.

Just, hold it, real quick, just boom. We're in the break. The ads play and it goes, I really shit the bed on that tots thing, huh? Well, you know what it was? I saw it, and in my brain, I'm like, no, that makes sense. Like, the topic of the show, right?

And then, but I kept looking at, I kept seeing it and thinking it should be spelled like Lord of the Rings does where it's like, you know, sometimes you'll see, like, Loder, but I guess it's always capitalized, but my brain, it's like L, little O, Lord of the Rings, right?

The R's a big, yeah, yeah, because you wouldn't count. capital, you know, because you don't capitalize those in the title. And so my brain, I'm like, oh, O, T is like, the. Yeah, yeah. But I forgot there's an S on it. It's Friday. And I'm not normally on this show.

No. For good reason. Here's what I'll say about going back to, um, here's what I'll say going back to, uh, to Star Wars outlaws. And, and obviously this is a very Bush league sort of criticism of it. But you know, I'm roaming around this, this, this area. And I'm joking around. And I'm like, you know, any day now, I'm going to come across this vendor that's going to give him my lightsaber.

And of course, you never get a lightenamer. Yeah, you're not a lot. Because you're not a Jedi. You're not a lot. And it's, I'm right, Skywalker. It's not to say that they can't make a great Star Wars game. I've played many great Star Wars games where you don't necessarily have Jedi powers. Can't think of one.

Right. Don't need to. But I don't need to. Don't quiz beyond it. I guess. I guess. Maybe Star Wars Battlefront, maybe. Well, even Battlefront, you can unlock Jedi.

Dark Force is Rising, maybe. back in the day that was a fun shooter but it is there when you play you do have I have this distinct like feeling of

of there's a void that needs to be filled with that with that lore and to not kind of come across that and again I'm only five six hours in so maybe you do come across

a Jedi at some point or a cool bounty hunter or something like that but to not have a Star Wars property sort of center around that to me is it's difficult

that kind of it's like it's like it's like watching in a football game, but they're like, you don't really need your quarterback in there. Well, we kind of do.

We kind of need someone to throw the ball occasion. Really, you, you, you require a Jedi in your Star Wars. I want a Jedi. I want to be a Jedi. That's where we're at with Andor. To me, that's where we're at. We're at the crux of it. To me,

all of the world of Star Wars doesn't, it's all based around the Jedi. And so if you don't have that, like, that's the special thing in the world. If you don't have that, then you just have sort of a so-so. I don't want to watch the Al, show if Batman's not going to really be in it or not I mean they had that they had Pennyworth and I didn't watch it because I was like why do I care about I mean

again a little this tongue and cheek you can obviously write a great story if you write a great story that's going to be great right but in video game form you want to wield a lightsaber and be a Jedi if I'm going to play a sneak a sneak and shoot

kind of game there's others that are better out there so if you're not going to occasionally give me a cool fucking laser sword to play with I'm going to be thinking about that in the back of my brain I think of time. I like that. If this game wasn't a Star Wars game,

if it was like Borderlands and it played like this, I'm like, yeah, it's fine, it's a shooter, whatever. But, you know, we're in the world. Occasionally, just give me something like, I guess when I'm talking about fantasy fulfillment, if you and I were playing Star Wars,

we're in the Star Wars universe, right? We're Nick and Andy, the baddest of the bad. At some point, wouldn't you go, we should try to get ourselves a lightsaber and play with that, right? You know, like, you know, like Mike would have a lightsaber.

Slappy, I bought this lightsaber. It doesn't work. So when we did our games cast episode of Build Our Dream Star Wars game, Barrett gave us a bunch of different parameters and different games we might want to take certain, like, like what's the story going to be like? What might the protagonists be like? What is the style of game?

What genre is it, right? My dream game is like, it's a mix of what Jedi Survivor, Survivor and what this game is, but I, what I said is like, I basically just want Mass Effect, but Star Wars. You want Coach 4-3, but with active combat. But no, but no lightsabering. See, we're just shooters. And one of the dudes that you can recruit, Nick, you know, you know, Mass Effect, you can walk around in town, you meet a dude, and he's like, Hey, man, uh, fucking, there's some crime happening over here. Do you want to come check it out? And you go check out the crime and you become friends with that dude. And he's like, you know what, man?

I've been looking for a crew. And you're like, you know what, man? I've been looking for a crew. like dog hey I'm your guy here's your application fill that shit out we'll get you on board we'll get you set up

with 401k and all that and you go on the ship and then he becomes one of the dudes on your ship and one of my dreams was like you you're recruiting a bunch of different cool

different characters but one of them is also like a force sensitive person so they're not a Jedi yes but you know if they tried hard enough

they can get a person to float and be like oh fuck I mean and that's their cool down so they're not this op. Jedi. That's on your squad. You know what I mean? And like I just want that so bad. I want a ship that I can run around. How much Starfield did you play? Oh man, maybe like an hour, maybe two hours.

So one of my favorite things about Starville, because I fell in love with the ship creator and ship modifier. Yeah. Like I was like you're making whatever shape of the ship you want with the different gun manufacturers that you want. And this one I'll put lasers there to knock down the shields and I'll put rockets here or whatever and it's this shape and I'll make the hole actually much larger so I could like have more people on my ship and as you walk around in different bars in Starfield you're not walking into like important NPCs that are going to be like going along with you on missions but you'll come across a dude who's like hey man I'm I'm a I'm an engine engineer I work on engines I make them work super super fast and you'll look and you look at his stats and he's like

I can make a ship this much faster. I cost this much to be on your ship. And it's like, hell yeah, you're hired. And he'll be on your ship and doing that. And like, I just want that. I want that simulation so bad. I want that power fantasy of like, I'm on this ship. I got all this crew around me that people are in the brig.

People are in, you know, playing games and they're sort of like break room or whatever. I just want to run a ship, man. Let me do that. Let the man run a ship. Let me run a ship. What are we talking about right now? I think that would be fun. And I think that's how you sort of,

I think there is a way to balance sort of the Jedi mechanics with the shooter mechanics. And I'm going to get the name wrong, but I want to say it was like Jedi Knight or one of the original games that was on PC, where you, maybe you did play as Calicatara. Maybe that was the character that I'm thinking of, where it was predominantly a shooter, but you had a lightsaber as well and occasionally would have to go up against.

You were learning Jedi powers. You'd get force powers, but it was maybe 60-40 shooter to lightsaber combat. And the lightsaber combat wasn't great. but it was good enough that you could like, oh, if there was an opponent that was long range, you could pull your lightsaber out and, like, deflect it and use all like the basic,

basic, basic, basic ass, like Jedi one point O, return of the Jedi style stuff, right? Run a little fast, jump a little high. That's pretty much it. You're not doing all sorts of other crazy stuff with it. Wasted bandwidth nails it. It says, Garris in the back doing calibrations. I just, I just, I want, I want Barrett in the break room.

I want Nick in the fucking, uh, maybe he's, maybe he's in the kitchen or something. Just like the ship, it's a really big ship. What if I told you, Andy, instead of that, you could recruit people for a heist and barely have any interactions with them after you recruited them, and they're just kind of hanging out on your ship? That sounds kind of whatever.

That sounds less cool. That sounds less appealing, unfortunately. But God dang, let me tell you. Bear, can you bring up my... Can you bring up my Threads account? Threads? You ever heard of... You ever heard of Instagram Threads?

Are you still on threads? I like posting more personal stuff to thread. I started getting more, doing more personal stuff there as opposed to like, here I am advertising my streams or my kind of funny videos or whatever. So threads I started posting some screenshots because good Lord. Give me a second. I got to log in.

Yeah, this game looks freaking fantastic. As you keep on doing that, I might just try to download them. But I was just so happy with the way Ubisoft and their snowdrops engine has been operating lately. The Avatar game, again, it's James Cameron's Avatar. Take her to leave it. I think you really actually like the Avatar game. Really? It plays like Far Cry. Okay. It's a first person shooter where you're just a gigantic avatar and there's tiny humans running up to you shooting it. You could just kick them and you, that's kind of fun. You like, you know,

when did this come out? It came out last year actually, but it's like December. One of the most stunning games ever visually. Like Digital Foundry was like, this is one of the best games that's ever been made visually. Wow. So I took some screenshots of how amazing the ray tracing looks on PC. And then there should be two others underneath that. But I am just so blown away by how good this game looks and how awesome their tech team has been killing it with all of the stuff sort of like pushing the envelope.

The next photo, by the way, I mean, is this not like the best environmental story? Like this story tells a, this picture tells a story right here, Nick. That's pretty amazing. There's a gun on the ground. There's a dead dude in the front. Pretty sick. Kay's hacking a little terminal. I'm just really, really, I love this thing.

Most of my time in this game has been in the photo mode. So that's maybe why I'm a little bit easier on it than Barry and Greg. Honestly, but I mean, I'm kind of with you, right? I think that going into this, and I had the luxury of listening to the review that you guys were doing right before I went in. So I lowered my expectations on it a little bit. And I think that's a good thing. If you like Star Wars, if you want to play around in a fun Star Wars universe and you don't mind spending the money, I think you're going to have a fun time with this for six to ten hours.

I don't know that you're going to put 60 hours into order of 50 hours if you can. But to me, there's something special about, you know, seeing the Imperial Greats that you have to climb up. Yeah. There's something special about the overall aesthetic of Star Wars is very, very unique. And I love it. And honestly, it's, you know, there's enough fun stuff to do in this where I'm like, if I were, if I had nothing to do on a Saturday afternoon or if I was not going outside of night, fire this thing up. play it for six hours and have fun and just wish the speeder bike controlled a little bit better and that's it.

It's not great. But hey, you know what they do? And I think they knew that. I think they played. I think they were like, man, the speeder bike just is not that fun. So they let you fast travel right off the rip everywhere you go. It's just like very, very smart. You don't have to learn that ability ever. So here's the key to controlling the speeder bike.

Only don't use the mouse. Only I turn my mouse off. Only the A and the D turn, but then you can hold in right click to move the camera. So I, that's interesting because my camera still moves. I just can't control left or right movement.

Because there's a little button in the controls that says turn off mouse steering. And if you do that, you can still rotate the camera, but you can't move the bike. You can't even rotate with A&D? No, no, no. So A and D and Wazda, still control, like, left and right and like, and then your shift is the boost and your turn. But the mouse itself just controls like a, a, basically how you're looking this way.

Oh, okay, gotcha, gotcha. I guess vertical. I should probably turn off mouse steering then. Turn that off and see if you're like. It's very, very simple, but it makes, it makes the controls for the speeder bike just like, well, what I freaking hate is that the camera is sort of stuck right behind your character when you're on the bike. You might. Yeah, that might not be.

So I end up looking at it. So I end up holding right click and I'm holding it the whole time I'm driving because I'm able to keep the camera at more of a sort of top. Let me see everything that's in front of me as opposed to just. So I'm pretty sure if you turn off mouse steering, you can, if you pull the camera, well, sorry, let me re-invert this for you. If you push down, it'll go, it'll adjust that. You'll re-invert this for you. Yeah, sorry, it'll adjust that for you. I think that's what you want.

Okay. Because that was the big hangout for me because I kept, I was like, why is this thing fighting itself? And it was because I was turning my mouse left as I was pressing right. And it was, I think it was going like, hey, you got to have one control, one input at a time. Yeah. So it was like it felt like I was, you ever have a car, like you ever get a rental car? something like that that has that weird lane assist where as you start going over the car pulls itself back and like why is the car fighting me yeah that's what it felt like uh there's a there's a moment

in during one of these sneaking missions where you can command nix all over the places you little pet friend and i just learn nicks can steal shit from people he can steal people he can like attack them and then you can go melee him for the final shot or whatever but there's a moment where uh i saw a little like a little set up display of guns So I was like, Nix, go get that. And he brings back a sniper rifle. I was like, yo, fuck, yeah, that rules. And I snide to everybody, and I was like, this is awesome.

This feels great. And then you have to continue the mission by going down a ladder. And you get to the ladder and you drop the sniper. You drop that fucking gun. And I was like, no, I want to keep that. It's area specific. So I went down the ladder, and then I went back up. And then I said, I got to the top of the ladder.

I was like, Knicks, grab that. And I went down the ladder in hopes that he would bring it. And he didn't bring it. Why would you take away the cool thing? I want that. I, for the life of me, don't understand it again. I haven't played the game a lot.

But I don't understand while you're not allowed to have a blaster and a pistol. And you can't, when you go down anything, it just doesn't throw that thing on your back. It's fine if you're gonna limit me

to like two guns. I'm totally okay with that. That is a normal mechanic that you have in a lot of these shooters. It's clear they want this blaster to be your lightsaber. They want this to be your pistol. Sort of like,

this is a character almost. And it's cool. And you get the ion. Like I just got the ion up so you can actually affect things. And I totally understand that. I'm down for it. Me personally, I hated the sniper rifle

because I can't stand and you have to hold it to charge it to shoot it. No, you didn't. Really? Because for me, when I hit it, it doesn't do anything. It doesn't do anything. It doesn't do anything. Oh, no, I didn't have to do that. Really?

Yeah, I was just clicking heads. It was great. You got to come take a look at this. I got my settings all out of back then. I look at your setup, yeah. But yeah, that was the weird thing to me when you pick up a stormtroopers blaster and it's dope. And I'm fine.

It's like, hey, you can't reload it. it just has a few shots to it. But when I went to pick up a viola to heal myself, it drops the blaster of mid-combat. And I'm like, what are we doing? Yeah, yeah. Why is this the thing? Yeah.

That's just dumb. It prioritizes dropping the weapon, which is very odd. For any sort of action, you can't even mantle. You can't mantle with the weapon. It drops it. So if you're in deep combat and you want to get an elevated position,

Asta la vista to that blaster. Yeah. Yeah, it sucks. You're back to your little ion handgun. It's a, it's a, but you're going to keep playing it. I think I will. I'm thinking it for what it is right now, because I think there is a lot to existing in a world that you love and kind of seeing the things that you love being brought to. I think such, like, the authenticity here in this world is like so well realized.

Yeah, at this point, and again, I haven't, I really have, I've scratched the surface. But I think that some of the review scores that I've seen that are around like a six, five, seven out of ten, I think that's fairly accurate. This is a, this is an okay game. I don't feel like I'm wasting my time I woke up this morning I was like I'm gonna play some black ops but if I'm not feeling black ops I'm like I don't want to go back to Star Wars

and keep kitten out my speeder bike and having fun in that world again because you know what even even even even semi okay Star Wars is still fun Star Wars I like that well when we when Mike gets back there's a lot of different games

we should probably check out one of them I also want to check out is a game that we got a chance to play when you weren't here. It was Midnight Murder Club. Oh, I want to play that. Yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool. The game is like back up in some sort of beta or some sort of form.

And that game was a lot of freaking fun. It's basically just hide and seek. Yeah. And you have a flashlight and a gun and that's about it. And it's such a simple concept. And they can only see you when you have your flashlight on, right? Yeah. And you can hear each other proxy chat. I'm going to be, I know we're probably about to end. But to pat a little time today, because I'm not the best at talking about video games. I prepped a bunch of games that we've played throughout the year that I really, really enjoyed. One of which I thought, I put lethal company on this, but I was like, oh, no, actually, I think we played that hill end of last year.

Yeah, probably, yeah. But I'd tell you what, the invention of proxy chat for games like this, like really the utilization of it is so fucking fun. It adds such a great level. It adds so much to it, specifically because of one human being in my life. Yeah. And that human being's name is snow bike. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm fucking on fire!

That's all I would hear across the house. And again, the game does such a great job with spatial audio. And if they're above you or if they're behind a wooden door, it sounds like they're behind a wooden door. They're behind a concrete wall that sounds like that as well. Do you think that maybe, I don't know who the, who is the studio that did this game? Do we know off the end? This is the same team that made the Dodgeball game. Knockout City.

Knockout City. This is the Knockout City, folks. That was a really fun game. So what I'll say is this, hey, Activision, maybe buy them and have them do the sound for the next Call of Duty game for the next Warzone. Because that would be nice.

It would be nice to know when someone's coming like four feet away from me running up on me with a fucking SMG. Yeah. So I can actually hear them. Somebody's stomping. Somebody's big ass boots. You got a guy that looks like a dragon

from fucking, you know, world of warfare running up on me. With flames coming out of his head. I can't hear a dang thing. Well, you got Snoop Dog We'll see if that's changed at all, Nick Because you're about to hop into Some of the Black Op 6 beta right now

After this and then likely hop into some Outlaws after that because you can only stand So much. Okay, stop. Kabab says maybe stop firing a gun all the time. Kababs, are we listeners or are we shooters? And what do shooters do? Shooters got to shoot.

You don't listen. They got to shoot. Thank you for watching this episode of the Gamescast. It's been a great Friday. We're about to have a great weekend. We're off on Monday, so expect no shows on Monday. But we'll be back on Tuesday with the usual run of show, with games daily, with gamescast, probably a kind of funny podcast, maybe some sort of other in-review or whatever.

All I know is, oh, we got Beetlejuice at night. We're watching that shit at night. It'll just be sleeping in that hotel. Appreciate all you all hanging out with us. We'll see you on Twitch right now. But if you're on YouTube, you have to click the YouTube. new link. So go watch that new link. Nick will be playing Blackop six beta as well as hopefully some more outlaws. We'll see you then gamers. It really stands for a topic of the show.

Yeah.