Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Riders Republic & Mario Party Superstars Reviews - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: November 3, 2021

Go to http://upstart.com/kindafunny to find out if Upstart can lower your monthly payments. Imran Khan RETURNS to review Rider's Republic and Mario Party Superstars, as well as giving a preview of Shin Megami Tensei V. Follow Imran at https://twitter.com/imranzomg Time Stamps: 00:00:00 - Start 00:03:45 - Housekeeping 00:07:25 - What’s Up, Imran? 00:10:53 - Rider’s Republic 00:32:18 - Mario Party Superstars 00:52:32 - SMT V Preview Epic Creator Code: KindaFunny Follow The Kinda Funny Gamescast Team On Twitter: Tim Gettys: https://twitter.com/TimGettys Andy Cortez: https://twitter.com/TheAndyCortez Blessing Adeoye: https://twitter.com/BlessingJr Barrett Courtney: https://twitter.com/SadBoyBarrett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes, joined by the Nitro Rifle, Andy Cortez. Great afternoon to all the video gamers out there in the world. Andy, I was having dinner with my friend James Burke recently, and he was insisting that while we eat, we watch some sports, and we were watching the World Series. And I was very shocked to see that the Atlanta Braves were in the World Series, because I am totally out of this.

But I will say, I got very excited. I'm like, that's Andy's team. This is really cool. So congratulations, Andy. Your boys are in the games. Choked it away. Choked it away in the last game. Oh, so sad. It's Atlanta tradition to like be ahead and then lose it all for no good reason.

Tim, the first inning, a grand salami. A grand slam. We're up 4-0 and I'm like, dude, it's over, dog. And then of course it's not over. We ended up losing it. But we're up 3-2 in the series and I hope we don't absolutely just choke it away. Well, I'm rooting for you, of course. And we are joined by the new phase of video games.

blessing at aioje Jr. Andy, I was also going to compliment your jersey. You look great today. Oh, thank you, only. Appreciate it, man. I'm loving the color coordination with a shirt, too. If you're an audio listener right now, you're going to want to make the transfer over to YouTube to see what we're working with.

The undershirt is a heathered de Jorno shirt. Fantastic. It's even better. It's better by the moment. And making his return to the kind of funny games cast, it has been way too long. We have Imran, the Dawn Khan. I'm also going to join a couple of things. romantic Andy because Andy's just great.

Straight. Ah. Yeah. It's so true. Andy's fantastic. Imran, I miss her. You're the only one who ever compliments me. It's a beautiful thing. Imran, how are you?

I am good. I, uh, boy, it's been like, what, six months since I've been on here. Uh, let's see. Oh, God. You could have told me two months. You could have told me two years and it would have felt the same. I also have no idea because like the last month slash seven months of my life has been moving. And I say months less seven months because like it actually has taken that long,

but also I don't know how long it's taken. So like now I am in an apartment and I'm settled and like it's fine now, I think. But I've been crazy busy the last couple of months. I used to like drop into, I kept telling myself every time like there's a metal gear stream, I'm going to drop into that because I want to talk about some metal game with the kind of funny people. Then every time it's like, oh wait, I actually have like 15 other things to do so I can't. So this is me hopefully saying, yeah, I'm going to drop into more things theoretically. We're going to start for soon, so it's a

perfect time. And also, I'm trying to fight for a Dark Souls stream because I still haven't played Demon Souls through Dark Souls 1-3. And Imran, you'd be for sure invited to that because we had such a great time doing our Bloodborn stuff back when I was playing through that. We miss when you were less busy at Fanby. Because when you first got started, you were in our

streams all the time, and it was like, Imron's always going to be here. And it was just a It was a false sort of feeling I had in my heart, you know? It's like when he's still in the Slack, so every once in a while, his name will just pop up. And it's always just such a delight. It's funny because like, somebody will link something and I'll be like, okay, here's a better source of that. Or I've decided to now start up our rivalry with Tamur in the Slack. Because every time he links a GameSpot thing, I'm just be like, what if you went to the fanbite article instead that has more information?

And now Timor was like, oh, respect it. That's fine. Here's the thing, though. You have options. You can go to GameSpot.com. You can go to fanbyte.com or you can stick right here on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. When we do the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week, we get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You could also get it on roosterteeth.com or if you prefer podcasts, you can get it on your favorite podcast service. Just search for Kind of Funny Gamescast and we'll be right there for you.

If you wanted to get the show ad free, if you wanted to watch it live as it's being recorded, and if you want to get the exclusive post show. And yes, I can tell you today features. the return of Bless Who. I got a real good one for you. I got a real good one for you. Oh, wow. Look forward to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games. Just like our producers, Pranksy, Tyler Ross, Delaney, Twining, Julian the gluten-free

gamer, Alex J. Sandoval, techie Haas, James Hastings, and Casey, Andrew. And once again, Pranksy have done. We appreciate you all. So very, very much. Remember, if you don't have bucks to toss our way, that's totally cool. If you're out there buying games on the Epic Game Store, you can use Epic Creator Code, kind of funny on all Epic Store and Epic Ingame purchases like Rocket League and Fortnite to help. support us and it's very cool, very fun stuff that we can all do.

But now that all that rigmarls out of the way, I want to give you a little bit of housekeeping some fun stuff. This Saturday is Extra Life. Kind of Funnies, it's always an amazing event this year. We are doing a 12-hour stream starting at 11 a.m. Pacific on Twitch.tv. slash kind of funny games and ending at 11 p.m. We have a whole bunch of fun segments planned, including tentatively where we're at right now. Who the hell knows how this is all going to shake out. But we got Nick and Andy completing, it takes two? Is that the goal? We want to try to do it takes two.

We only have two hours to do so. I'm not sure how long we're into the game. It takes two hours. That's pretty good, but also Snowback Mike wants me and Nick to finally do the SATs, which was a goal that we hit apparently. I don't know. Mike just signs us up for bullshit. I don't know. Can you just get a copy of the SATs?

Is that a thing that you can just do? You can do practice tests? Yeah. Some release those to the public. Like, I haven't taken a standardized test like that. And over a decade, because what I was in, I was a junior in high school. And so, like, I think they gave out books. I remember, like, doing, like, some of the practice tests in a book.

But I did, do they just have them online? Can you just look them up and do the test? Because that sounds like, Google it. I'm sure we can acquire it. Yeah, we'll see. So, hey, know people. Mike knows people. Mike knows a teacher.

It takes two or do the SATs. I don't know. But either way, it's going to happen on Twitch. And also the finale for the kind of funny battle for CEO tournament. is going to go down in Mario Party that will feature me fighting for Joey Noel, Barrett Courtney, Nick Scarpino, and Snowmike Mike. Only chaos can come from that group of people. Does the audience know what's going on with Nick as well?

I don't know. Do I know what's going on with Nick? Because the time slot that we have scheduled for Mario Party, Nick is not going to be able to make. So I think the plan right now is that you're playing for Joey, but then Joey's going to be playing for Nick. I hate this. This is so stupid. Only a company like kind of funny would have these type of shenanigans for better or for worse.

Also, we're going to have the start of Metal Gear Solid 4 with Barrett and Bless and Imron. If you're available, it'd be kind of cool. We'll see. Weekends, this Saturday is real fucking busy for me. So we're going to see. I mean, we'll have a lot of Metal Gear Solid 4 streams, I believe, because I think this is the longest one that we've hit. And they've been pretty long streams so far. So you'll have plenty of Metal Gear Solid 4 to pop in.

You'll dedicate like you'll dedicate two cutscenes to one full three hour playing. Yeah, you will. And it's going to be great. There are 40 minute cutscenes in that game. So buckle in. I can't wait to have re-experienced Metal Gear Solid 4. I fucking love that game so much. And I just got to pretend I don't remember any of the bad stuff.

I only remember the hype good stuff. And there's a lot of that. So anyways, enough about all of that. Imron, I want to catch up with you a little bit before we get into all the games we've been playing. How has Fanbite been going? You leave us to do your own thing. You were a game informer before. But now you're leading up a big team over there, like making a lot of magic happen.

It's been doing real well. Like we recently, we brought on like Mike Williams, Michael Higham, like we're, we're hitting that like that Final Fantasy 14 pervert. Mike quota for sure. Yeah, the Mike quota. The Mike quota is real fucking high. We're going to hire Snowbike Mike next. Just, you know, he's not going to do anything.

You're just going to sit there and like a hype man and everyone else stuff. Make him right about Final Fantasy 14. Let's see. I am at some point, I don't know that I've publicly announced this, but at some point I'm going to start what I guess is kind of a KFGD competitor of like a morning news show. Hell yeah. It's, it's been a little bit delayed because I have been moving and stuff, but like, it's not going to be at the same time as your guys stuff.

It'll be probably leading into your guy's stuff. Bad move for you. No news drops until later in the day, but you have the news early because you're fucking ever on the dog. No, I will wake up in the morning. I'll be like, yeah, this is good or now. See, the thing is, I figure what KFGD needs less of is standards. So if I just followed that, then I can just do whatever.

Damn, if you think that's the success. Oh, shit. No, you got people like dressing up for that show now? No, you'll be lucky if I'm... Only if I feel like. Here's the thing. I said I was going to wear polos for KFG. That lasted for a strong three weeks.

It was real strong, though. It was a real strong three weeks. It was a real strong three weeks. And then October hit. And that was my excuse to start wearing the Halloween stuff. And then like November is here. And I thought about wearing a polo this morning. And I was just like, no way to remember.

I'm just kind of wear a regular shirt. That's the tradition, though, because, like, Greg had the thing where he wore, like, the button-up shirt and the tie, and then the second work from home started, you never saw that again. Never again. Never again. Will it return to the new studio? No way. Not a fucking chance. I'm going to bring it back to the new studio.

If I, I'm going to do it in the new studio for a solid three weeks. And I got three weeks in me. I think you might be encouraged to do so as well because we'll have air conditioning. And it's always one of those things, like, when the lights are on you and you're wearing a tie and your knicks. and all like, oh, it's hot and it's itchy. No, no, no, no, we'll have the AIS down like 4 to 3 degrees at least. I saw a comment once that was like, why did they drink so much water in the studio? It's because it's so fucking hot.

Yeah, yeah. And also, I just like LaCroix a lot. But I was, I was at the studio a couple days ago to get a little update on where it's at. It's progressing. Not where I wished it was, but it's progressing. But the one thing I will say is there's actual walls now. I was able to walk into our rooms. And each and every one of them, if you look up, there's just a beautiful fucking hole.

And one day out of that hole is going to come nice, cold air. And Eddie, I can't fucking wait. It's really so exciting. When you were describing that, I was like, where is Tim going with? Like, is there going to be like a fireman's pole down there that everyone could just drop into their offices? I wish. That's where we had secrets up there. It was like a little loot.

It's like a waterfall in video games. I can't wait. I talked to Kevin about getting snuggies and like blankets and shit. And I'm like, it's going to be a great office. I can't wait to actually do this because I was only in the kind of point. office for like two months before everything went down. So I didn't even have time to make that space my own. And this one, I'm playing to make my own.

I'm playing to like bringing a rug. I'm going to bring in like, I don't know, art to put on my cubicle or whatever. I can't wait. It's great. Let's get to some video games. Bless, you've been playing Ryder's Republic and you seem to be really into it. Please tell me more.

I'm very into it. This is one that I've been obnoxiously anticipated. just from the standpoint of when Ubisoft first revealed it during their Ubisoft forward. It was one of those ones where it's like, oh, this looks interesting. It's a follow up to steep seemingly, but a little bit more wacky and has way more variation in terms of the type of extreme sports they're doing. And so leading into it, I've been anticipating it because this is way more up my alley in terms of the kind of extreme sports games that I like.

Like, I like the downhill snow stuff, but steep for what it was, the downhill snow events weren't doing it for me alone. and so Radd's Republic was speaking to me on that level, along with some of the things they were showing in that original trailer. You know, I know Tim recognized it, but like they had like a graffiti from Tony Hawk-style game in there. They had like a lot of events that seemed like they were going to have like a lot of people. I think we're comparing to fall guys at a certain point in some of the trailers.

And so I've been very much looking forward to this, but I've been looking forward to it with tempered expectations. You know, this is the type of game that speaks to me, but also knowing the type of game it is and seeing that it's coming from Ubisoft, And knowing that like, knowing the level that steep hit, I wasn't necessarily expecting greatness. And over the course of the last week, I've been playing it. And the more and more I play it, the more and more I'm like, oh, not only is this for me, I think this is a legitimately great video game.

And it's not perfect. There are a lot of things that I think this game could improve on. One of my big complaints is the, the tutorial takes quite a bit for you to get you into the game. It takes a couple hours. And in those hours, there's a lot of dialogue and a lot of cutscenes. And most of the dialogue. in cutscenes in this game are terrible. It feels like it's written by a computer.

Like, it honestly seems like, you know how life is strange of that weird, hey, we're adult man writing for teens thing? Imagine that, but like a million times. Like, they use words that I'm pretty sure are not words that no teen or anyone has ever said. Yeah, as I was playing this right before this episode, you know, I was hanging out on the Discord call

and like playing and trying to get, trying to nail one of the events. As I was going into that event, there was a call I got from one of the characters and they're like, if you nail this, you're going to be a cult classic. And like, I had to think about it for a second. And I was like, nobody would ever say that.

That's not something that people would ever say. I like when people say corny shit. I like saying corny shit all the time. This game goes beyond a level that makes it feel like, oh, not only is this game unhip. It feels like it was written by a computer or another. They're leaning into the cringe, you know, because that's what Ubisoft is best known for, you know. Maybe. Like, that's what I, honestly, it feels like cringe to an unnecessary extent.

But outside of that, the actual events and actual like game of the game is really fun. Like I'm pretty impressed by the amount of different types of events that there are in this game because there's the there's like the snowboarding events. There's the skiing. There's a lot of like air events. And so you'll be doing rocket wing stuff and wing suit stuff along with other types of flying extreme sports. You have like downhill biking. You have a mixture of like racing and then also like a lot of trick stuff. And so it's like that SSX style, I'm going to go for the score.

I'm going for the high score. And with every event, you have like three secondary objectives that you can go for. And so it's things like, nail a trick that has 52,000 points or get like the special, like, camera token or collect the five balloons on the course. There's stuff like that that gives each event kind of its own, all right, cool, I have something to go for it here, but beyond just getting first place or beyond just getting the highest score. And so that stuff is fun. That stuff in conjunction with, I think, the core. conceit of the game being this huge festival style, everybody's here sort of thing. I think the way they tackle it in this game is very interesting because this game is coming

out around a similar time as Forza, right? This game came out last week. Forza is coming out, I think, next week. I think it's this Friday for early access. And both these games are like festival-themed games, right? The whole thing with Forza playing Forza Horizon 3 and Forta Horizon 4. Both of those games go hard in terms of welcome to the Horizon Festival. You're in this place where everybody's celebrating driving and you're around a bunch of people and everything's hype and all this shit.

You're a cult classic. You're a cult classic. This game does a very similar thing and goes for a similar tone. In terms of tone, I don't think nails it as well. But in terms of the ways in which it reinforces the festival theme in this game, I think it does a really phenomenal job because it does the thing where when you open up the map, there are tons of icons spread across the map and tons of people. even when you're in the world, just doing their own thing. And there are other players, but I believe that for the most part, there are ghosts of other players.

And so the game is pulling ghost out of from hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of players at any given time to populate your game. And it really does make you feel like you are part of this big, everybody's here, you're playing together type of thing, right? In the same way that Forsa has their drivetars, but amped up to not only, it's not like 12 drivatars on the map or whatever. It's not just 11 other cars you're racing. you are playing in a map with what feels like hundreds of thousands or not hundred

thousands of thousands, but like hundreds and hundreds or thousands of people. And so like that's been really interesting and really novel because you'll have the thing of exploring the open world and seeing people do their own thing and like riding down, even in races, right, you'll be riding down like a 12 man race down a hill and you'll see somebody on a snowboard cross your track from like the perpendicular side and you're like, oh shit, there's somebody like, you know, skiing down or there's somebody in a wing suit flying in front of me. And I think that stuff is really cool and really, really hype. And are those people part, are those people part of a different event or are they in it with you?

Or do they just happen to be there? They, they just happen to be there. And so like for, and most of that stuff is in the open world. I get, I get the sense that when you're in an instance event, that stuff is more NPCs, like that's NPCs that are flying across. But in the open world, you get that same exact feeling. And those are actual people who were playing. in their own instances, which I think is very fascinating. It's kind of the culmination of like the thing Ubisot has been trying to do for like five games now with like Steve and the crew and all that is what, how do we get an open world racing game to really work and how do we do that with online?

And like they've failed multiple times at it. Not that like Steve was bad, but I will say the crew is probably actually pretty bad. But like they've been trying to get this to be both an open world game and a racing game. And they've iterated on it multiple times. It just hasn't worked. and tail riders republic where they I think the one of the big keys to it is that what they didn't hit what Steve was they didn't hit biome diversity this one you do you can change from like the snow sports the the bike sports to rocketing around like iron man at a moment's notice and the fact that

it's all that fast and you can just go like from beat to beat to beat that quickly is I think what makes this one work as opposed to the other ones that didn't yeah and it's very it's very like good for, as user-friendly in terms of, you can just open up your map and go to any event, and the game will fast travel you there immediately, and you have the freedom to freely explore the open world, which there's stuff to do in the open world.

They're like cool, like, stunt stuff where they have trial-style obstacle courses that you can go through on like a bike and like try to get to the end before the time limits up. There's landmarks and stuff that you can discover it in the open world. But if you don't want to interact with any of that,

the way I've been playing the game is, hey, I just want to I just want to do the events. I just want to do all the races. And I go into my menu and just I go from event to event. And like once I get a little bit tired of the downhill bike races, I'm like, cool, let me do a snowboard trick attack event. Cool. I'm tired of this.

Let me fly in a rocket suit. And all the stuff individually I think controls pretty well. Not perfect. Like it's not the best playing biking game or the best playing snowboarding game. But every single different thing is good enough in its own way that I've been having a blast and jumping between all the events and advancing all the different types of careers you can do. You know what reminds me of blessing that I did not think about until right when he said that? Pilot Wing 64.

Yeah. Honestly, that's a good one to pull. For me, it's between that and then also in a lot of ways, GTA online, just with like the amount of different types of events you can go into and I'm almost noticed. And a lot of it is very much like, hey, we're taking this open world and we are recontextualizing it to have this race go down this path. And it feels like a cool, like it feels like a cool customized thing that even like I know the game has user, user created stuff. that there isn't that much exciting user-created stuff yet. But in the way that GT Online, I think thrives off of a lot of the user-created stuff, I very much see this game going that same route,

because I think there's a lot you can do with trying to nail down what a specific path looks like. But, like, there's that. There's also the, I'll compare it to those two things, and then I would also compare it to skate. A lot of the reasons why I enjoy this game as well, or a lot of the similar reasons I enjoy a game like skate. And it's just the thing of fucking around and trying to nail tricks.

during the lead up to this podcast, as we're waiting in the Discord to go, I've been trying to do this same trick event over and over and over again. And one of the things that is one of the secondary objectives in that event is like score an obscenely high score on one of your tricks. And I do the same thing in skate. And sometimes in Tony Hawk, given whatever the objective is, I try to do the same trick over and over and over again and knowing I can nail it. I just have to nail this trick and then get the high score and then get to the end of the slope and I'm golden. And it's that trial and error thing that works so well about skate that also works really

well in this game. And so I love that. And then also I got a shout out the mass races, which right before this podcast, I tweeted out a video of one of them. And basically what they are are, these races that happen once an hour at the top of the hour, like everybody gets a notification. And if you go to where the event is taking place, you'll start match. making and it'll matchmake you into an event with 63 other players so 64 people and you were

basically doing the equivalent to the gta transformed races where you are going checkpoint from checkpoint and at certain checkpoints you everybody changes the the like quote unquote vehicle or like whatever like type of downhill sport they're doing and so it'll go from you're you're all skiing like 64 people at the same time almost fall guy style of too many people on the same slope you're all skiing at the same time there is collision yeah and so it's fucking crazy. And so you're doing all that at the same time. You go through checkpoints and then you reach a certain checkpoint and all of a sudden

everybody's in jet packs and everybody's going to the same time. And then at a certain point, everybody is doing like snowboarding. And then you hit another one and everybody's doing biking. And it's fantastic. And the fact that they limit it to like once an hour, I think builds this hype factor to it to whenever I see the notification, I'm like, oh, I'm doing a mass race because I can only do this every now and then. And yeah, like, it's really fun.

I think they nail so many of those festival aspects in the game. game right now Barrett's showing it and it has Twitter compression and so it looks terrible but trust me on my on my PS5 it looked really good. They get this idea. Is it once an hour real time or once an hour per player? Once an hour real time. I think I last time I checked I did it and it was at 2 p.m. So I think it's at the top of the hour.

I don't know if it's session by session. It's actually a really really cool idea like yeah. Have other games done that before? M.M.O. does do that sort of thing a lot. I don't know. I'm trying to think of games that aren't specifically online that do that. And I can't think of any. Um,

cool. Now, bless, with you doing all these races, I assume, you're doing it for rewards. Are you then using those rewards to customize or buy extra stuff for your gamer or whatever you call your,

your, your like main character, avatar? No, but what's the cult classic or? Oh, yeah. You're going to be a cold classic.

Uh, So this is actually one of my big grives with the game. The game does have a sense of progression where you're unlocking new boards and new equipment. And that stuff is, it affects gameplay, right? It is like you're basically raising the number on your gear. And it's very simple in terms of, we're going to give you a better snowboard, or we're going to give you a better ski, or we're going to give you a better rocket wing. And a lot of the rocket wings and skis and shit look really cool. And they have certain versions of that stuff that are like, here's the special version of a of the wing suit.

that like flies in a little bit of a different way. Here's like the one-legged snowboard instead of all the basic two-legged ones. They have dope stuff like that that I really like, and I like that aspect of the progression. The thing I don't like is the cosmetic stuff, which in this game, you know, the moment I realized it,

I realized how I felt about this was, what's today, Tuesday? Two days ago when I was streaming Ravish Republic, I went to the shop just to see like, oh shit, I've not been to the shop yet. I want to customize my character. because I see other people who will have like a cool dinosaur outfit or a cool, like a dope-ass emo. And I'm like, cool, I want that.

I go to the shop and there are two different types of currency. There is the in-game currency. And then there's the premium currency, the rider coins, which you have to buy with real money. The in-game currency will get you some basic ass shit. It's like, here's a sweatshirt that costs like a third of your money. Or like, here's some jeans and a T-shirt that costs a lot of money. But then you look at the riders coin stuff The premium stuff

This shirt says Ubisoft or some shit Yeah it's like no that's exactly that type of shit But then you go to the premium stuff And it's hey here's this cool ass Like school helmet that looks fucking dope Here's the big elephant suit that you can rock Here's like all the exciting exciting shit Here's a dope ass like beautiful colorful design

Do they get really whimsical in the way that You know maybe not necessarily just Hey this is a silly elephant costume But do they have like I don't know Every time I think of cosmetics, I think of when Assassin's Creed, you could ride the unicorn. It had the trail of the rainbow. Like, is there any silly shit like that? I haven't seen any silly shit like that.

So I'm going to say no, but I'm not like completely positive. Maybe once people get way further into actually like leveling up in like there's weekly and daily rotations on a lot of the cosmetic stuff that you can buy. I think maybe they'll funnel some of that stuff in. But so far there's not. But even for the stuff like right now, Barry's showing the giraffe outfit, which is really cool. And like on certain events, they'll just automatically, like, use it for that one event because they have special events like that. But if you want to unlock it just to use whenever in the open world and wherever you want to use it in the events, you have to pay real money for that shit.

And just the cosmetic teas, that's almost worse. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because you'll see it. Like, it is, hey, here are the items that you can use either Rider's coins for or the in-game currency. And then here's the Riders Coins exclusive items. And those are all the cool shit. And it's like, bro, I paid, or for the, I got to call for this game. For the most part, people are paying money for this game, right?

This is a full-priced game. And for them to kind of nickel and dime you in that way, I think it's kind of a bummer because I think it does take away from progression. I think right now where the game is at with progression, it's like fine, but it's not exciting to progress. The thing that's keeping me going back to the game is the fact that I just say I do enjoy the races inherently. I don't need a big level of progression to just keep playing this game because I enjoy it.

But I do think that I can hit that point. And I'm sure for many people, they will hit that point where they are, like, all right, what am I fighting for? Like, what am I playing for? I want to play to look cool, but the cool stuff is locked behind actual currency. So what am I actually grinding for? And I think that's a bummer. Which, like, at this point, we shouldn't be surprised by it with how Yovistovist designed a lot of their games in the last few years. Yeah. Yeah. But, like, that's probably my, that's probably my big complaint. And then also, like, the voice acting stuff. And I think there's general jank here and there with the game that keeps it from hitting

the level of polish of something like a Forza that I think you're going to get a lot of a lot of the same, like it's scratch from, you know, like, forces are very similar. I'm just, I'm just going to go event to event and have fun racing type game. And that game, like three and four and probably five, right, have an incredible polish to them. And like playing this game, this game does not have anywhere near that polish. But that said, it's a generally good time that I am fairly impressed with. But the different type of events and stuff, are you having equal fun, whether you're snowboarding or riding a bike. And if you wanted to just dedicate yourself to just one of those modes, is there enough gameplay there? Or do they kind of force you to switch around? They don't force you to switch

around at all. You can dedicate yourself. Like they kind of divide it into careers. And so if you keep doing downhill biking racing events, you'll continue unlocking downhill biking racing events. If you keep doing the snowboard trick stuff, you'll just keep unlocking snowboard trick stuff. They play it smart like that. The one thing I will say with that is that in the way that they categorize it, there are flying events. And you can do rocket suit stuff, which is super fun and super awesome. And then they also have wingsuit events. Those are categorized both under air.

And so if you do rocket events, you are unlocking wingsuit events, and you will hit the point where you probably have to do a wingsuit event. And the wing suit's not bad, but it is way hard to control compared to everything else. And so for me, it's been an uphill battle, even though you're going downhill in the wingsuit events. It looks like controlling Mario when you're flying through the rings. Don't say that. Dude, honestly, it is so hard to control, and I don't like doing these events nearly as much

as the Rockies and stuff. It looks more like Superman 64, almost, especially with the rings, you know? The Rings. The wings do the thing that it didn't steep where, like, if you're just walking around with it on, you can just fall over. Because that was hilarious.

You can do that. You can do the same thing with the rocket where if you press X, it'll just shoot you forward. And all the time, I just hit a wall on accident. Because I think I'm going to jump or some shit, and then I just hit a wall. But the dopest thing, Bear, I have this on my Twitter if you want to find it.

If you're rocking the rocket soup, the jetpack just in the world, if you press L1, you'll do a Superman jump into the air, essentially. And it is the coolest shit in this game. And whoever is responsible for this specific, like the animation on it and the sound design on it, it is fantastic. Like playing it makes me want to play a Superman or like an Iron Man game because it feels on that level of cool. Bear has it pulled up right here. I love the airplane

summer camp look here oh yeah and like it has like a NASA and like USA logo on it excuse the compression because Twitter is screwing me on that that is cool it's pretty damn cool

that looks cool than Anthem did with the same thing yeah yeah and I get continue to and I like fly to it or Amron take it back okay you had guns in Anthem okay they sounded cool uh...

look how cool this is like this is sick as hell this is honestly dope and like to some extent you know like once you do it you've kind of done it right like you'll fly around the map and it's like cool I've done that and like the rest of you can do

with this is just go through races but I think it's a really fun gimmick I've heard that load times are really fantastic but you mentioned jank or are we talking when you're in the game you feel some issues with connection or lag or what do you mean by jank? Like more

buggy stuff like those are the time where I booted up the game and the like skybox kept popping in and out like going black at random points and like the controls the controls I think are good but not amazing it Andy you were there when we were playing the Olympic Games video game right No I wasn't there oh you weren't there so like in that game because there's so many different

Olympic sports they standardized the control set to a point where it's like cool this is your turbo button and like every every game pretty much has like a comparable control scheme this does a similar thing where usually it's like L1 is your sprint if you're on if you're on the bike or if you're on like certain other things or R2 is to like go if you're you're like go if you're you're you're in the rocket suit or if you're in the skis or whatever. And so none of, none of these games individually feel as great as if you're playing a game that was solely a biking game or if you're playing a game that was solely a skiing or a snowboarding

game. Um, but for a game that has like all this different shit in it, I think everything feels good enough. But with that, I think there's a certain level of like drifting on the bike feels like it's almost too sharp. Um,

but it doesn't really take itself too seriously in that way. Like it's not trying to be it's trying to be like, same game, man. Yeah, it's like 60. 5% Sim and then like maybe like 35% arcade. And I think with that, you kind of take what you can get. Before we move on, let me tell you about our sponsors.

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Upstart.com slash kind of funny. And now that we're here, we're gonna talk about. I got one thing, Tim. Before we move on from Ubisoft, I watched Where Was It In the other day? Like, that, the movie about the Ubisoft game.

With Milana. Yeah. There's a fucking assassin in that game or that movie, and they just never talk about it. Like, that's a greed assassin? Yeah, there's a dude who uses a hidden blade. And then like they close up and on it and they show like it's an A, like for the Assassin's Creed thing.

And they just like never mentioned it again or it's never foreshadow or anything. Assassin's Creed and reviewed Sam, the one with, you know, Magneto and then this movie, we got to do it. Oh, yeah, dude. That's really funny. Damn. Mario Party superstars. We've all been playing it. We've all been winning in it.

Well, maybe not all of us, but some of us at the very least. But you know, the ones you matter, you know. Imbron, have you, have you been playing at all? Yes, I have because my partner very much loves the original Mario Party. So she dropped 60 bucks without like, sight unseen because like it has Peaches' birthday cake. So she had to. Yeah, yeah.

What's your experience been like? Because, I mean, you're playing a dangerous game here, my friend. You and your partner playing Mario Party. That could end poorly. As they're talking about. I'm DMing Imron's partner right now to see if she wants to play some Mario party. Just so you know, I'm wrong. Yeah, you were not incorrect because it was like, we.

playing last night and she was winning and I was very much not and I was getting like I'm not that competitive I was getting a little salty I was being like oh yeah it's great great you happen to just get all the good I know you moved bouncer to my side the nice coincidence there but like it's it's it's Mario party it is inherently bullshit but in like a way that can be kind like even when you're salty you're having a little bit of fun you're just being like okay I'm I may not be winning but like next time I'll get Wallyi's ass I'm gonna kick his ass next time but but So it's interesting with something you just said there about like, you know, like you are actually having fun. I'm starting to question if that is true.

And I don't know if it's just the fact that we are streaming it and like making content. There's a it's not just the people we're playing with that are annoying, but there's the added level of, you know, we're kind of to an extent playing characters and, you know, making up bits as we go. But then also the chat is antagonizing us as well. There's something about it that I'm finding that one by one, people are kind of funny, legitimately seem to be upset when I bring up the words Mario Party like it started with Joey right

but now it's always been Joey it always has been Joey legitimately it's getting to a point that I'm like it is such good content there's such gold there it's so much fun to actually play but I feel like the fun is actually going away and it's like is that just because of what we're trying to turn Mario Party into

or is that just what Mario Party is I think it's like Squid Game is a fun thing to watch the TV show boy, it would be horrible to watch in real life. And like, that's Mario Party. Like, if you watch it as a TV show, great. If you're participating in it, no, that's, I'm not into that. Mario Party is like, it's a, it's a bad game disguised as a good game.

Disguise is a bad game. Disguise is a good game. It is, I was talking to Moore about this over the weekend, and he made the really good point that, like, Mario Party is essentially, like, Nintendo having a genius idea of, what if we looked at every good aspect of game design and through that shit, out the window and deliberately made a game that was just not about skill that would that and if you try to be skilled at it the game would screw you screw you over for it and in a way that's kind of genius because it did lend to what would end up being like a fucking phenomenal franchise if you

want to look at it that way if you like marri party you're not like marie party that's where i disagree blessing because i don't think it's them being del i think it's them being earnest and like like that's what's so funny about it that it's them being sincere like what if everyone had a good time and nobody really won or lost because it doesn't matter. And like, I think that's what Mario Party is and in that sense and is a fucking hilarious because no matter

how hard you try, what like again, bring on Walloichi because the computers seems to favor him for some reason, but like Walloichi's going to get a star for being like biggest fuck up and that's why he wins is because he what like lost the most coins. I don't think it's Nintendo talk doing anything

game design wise. I think it's them saying let's study the human condition and test the human will. That's really what it is. Mario Party just existed and they like harness it. I mean, it's funny to bring that up because like I do think there's actually a really interesting conversation here about the game design of Mario Party and especially Mario Party superstars, which I really appreciate the level of customization.

It allows you. I love that they're going back to basics. It kind of is a dream Mario Party game for me where it's the greatest hits in terms of the original Mario Party 1 through 3 boards. hopefully we get some more boards with some DLC but in terms of the mini games I like that it's like a hundred of a collection across all the Mario Party games

or at least all the classic ones not just N64 so it kind of like is a lot of the best ones and on top of that the options of play classic or play with the new type of randomized rewards at the end like being able to turn those on or off and all that stuff

I think is good in turning this into just a board game which is what this is. It's just a video game version of a board game. And board games are just as random. If you're rolling dice and how... Borg games are just as bullshit. And I think Mario Party just leans into that and video game...

Video gameifies it more. And that's why, like, I've never had a problem with the game. And, you know, I always feel the fun no matter if I'm winning or losing. Because it's all just bullshit. It's like playing Monopoly with my dad as a kid. Like, it's all just bullshit. It's like playing a D&D game where the GM is like, I think all of you need to learn a lesson and how fucking stupid

It's like, I need to equalize this every five turns. My question is, have you guys, have any of the board game turned off the bonus stars? No. No. Because I'm not either. And I can't eat the bonus stars. Like, after Friday, I was like, I'm never doing this again. On Saturday, I played the game again with a friend.

And I saw the bonus stars. And I was like, no, I'm going to leave it. Because it loses the Mario partiness of it if you turn them off. Like, Mario Party is a game that you can't final destination, three stock, no items. And I think that is partly the magic of the game. And like, I, this Mario Party is the one that is, I guess, broke me and opened my eyes in terms of, it's broken me in terms of knowing and understanding that Mari Party is complete bullshit. But also, like, this Mario Party is maybe the best Mario Party that I've played at least. Like, I love the original Mario Party.

And I've loved, like, some of the last few Mario parties. And this one, I think, does such a good job of, like, harking back and leaning into the nostalgia factor. Like they do such a good job of like, hey, the mode select screen is going to be taken right from the N604. You're going to go into the pipe. And as you're falling down, you're going to choose the things. We're going to, when you go into one of the maps, we're going to take a screenshot of the original N604 map and show you that for a second.

And yeah, like to Tim's point, they choose a lot of the best mini games throughout the whole Mario Party franchise. And it makes for what I think is honestly the best Mario Party. But also it makes for, I think the best Mario Party is going to be the most bullshit experience in terms of this video game, like this video game at its best is gonna like take you down to your worst essentially in terms of we're gonna screw you at any point.

And I don't know, I think it's fun. I think it's cool, but also, oh man, like it's frustrating at the same time. I am so impressed by the functionality of it all. Especially, and now I say that when we are streaming on Friday after our stream because I decided to do to play again for some reason. The same day.

same day. Real quick, Andy, I just got to say, I played that game. I was spent. I had so many, I had to cancel a business call after that. I was literally like, I need to lay down because I am going through some shit. And I won. It was rough. I decided to play again.

And somebody in chat was like, how is he online? I was like, you know what? Surprisingly pretty good. Immediately my game kicked me out of the mini game. But I was able to enter the game. And no issues were had. We were able to recover the game that we had lost. It saves every turn.

Everybody quit out. We were able to find the game. And it was like, here's the game. Here's the time that it was last played at on this date. And you were on turn six. Oh, cool. Perfect. We all hopped back in immediately.

Didn't have a problem. When I talk about online issues, I mean less of getting kicked and more of just lag. And general, you know, the general rules that we're used to with Nintendo. online games. And this one I think works pretty damn well. You got to account for a little bit of lag here and there, but it's nothing like when we played Super Mario 3D World. Nothing like that. Yeah, totally. It's crazy. I mean, Andy, what's your experience been like playing the game? Like, are you over it in the way that I'm talking about? Or are you just like, I get what it is. No, I have fun. I still have fun with it. I want to play more. I want to stream more of it.

it's been a lot of fun. A lot of it is kind of coming from a background where I didn't really play a whole lot of Mario Party. I was just more of like the Mario Cart and Smash Bros. Guy back in the early days when my friends, I was playing all my friends

Nintendo 64 consoles and my friends GameCubes and all that stuff. I have fun with it. I think it's bullshit in a lot of ways, but it's really great to make content for. And I think a lot of the frustrations you see Tim is because we are on camera and blessing and Mike are the biggest assholes I've ever

and ever experienced and I've played games with Nick before and like I think a lot of it is that and I think if we were all just playing offline and there was mild shit talking it's whatever because after I played you know the later on that night like I didn't have any issues did you play like with people or by yourself I played with Snowbike Mike Play it by themselves. I play with Sondbike Mike and our friend Washburn and JD. And so a lot of it was just like, yeah, we're having fun. There's casual shit talking here and there.

There's laughing. There's a lot of like, what the fuck am I doing in this mini game? I think it's a lot of fun. And I think it, I think the mini games more, way more often than not hit. And I'm still glad I don't have a deal with bullshit JoyCon minigames anymore from the old version of the Super Mario Party Switch. I'm enjoying this a lot more and I'm glad they're kind of it seems like you and a lot of people

who are familiar with the franchise are like these are the hits they brought the hits these are the boards we love these are the mini games we love and that's the thing go ahead go for it everyone

it's like I was going to say it's like you've been assigned a work project with like a two year old and a cat and you have to like you can't engage with them logically you can't go like okay this is what we got to do

we're going to delegate like this you got to just accept the fact that you're going to play by their rules and whatever gets done gets done. And that's how I kind of like accept Mario Party at this point. Just try to win the minigames is kind of like what it is. Yeah. And hope that there's a mini game bonus star at the end.

Because I'm with blessing. I think the bonus stars at the end, much like the prior Mario parties have been kind of bullshit, but I still like him and I like that random chaos. You could win with them. So you're never willing to give that up. Yeah. I mean, that's the funniest thing is the way, if I remember correctly, the way the classic bonus stars worked is they were very contingent on whoever got the most coins in the game or whoever won the most mini games.

Like it was always the same parameters. It wasn't like the random shit fast that it is. And that allowed for a level of strategy. Like, and I remember I like always beat my friends because I was the only one that went on gamefax.com and like saw the one thing of like, yeah, yeah, just go for these bonus stars. And so I always just went for coins and no one else thought to do that. So I'm guaranteeing myself a coin. Is that some cheap ass cheese shit? Yeah, but you're going to hate on 10 year old Timmy?

You fucking better or not. I won't hate it. But it's funny. I love these new, the bonus stars where it is random because it does add that level of like, yeah, you people like me should still try to collect as many coins as possible because we know that that's one of the parameters. But you can get totally screwed out of that. And it's just at that point, it's fucking fun. I love it too because I think there's a general understanding of what the bonus stars are. So like when I'm far into a game and I'm like, okay, I'm one star behind, but I've won the most mini games.

There's that level. It is like a gamble. It is like a lottery. It is like prices right when you spin the wheel. And you're like, I could, I could win right now. I've landed on the most Bowser spaces and got fucked over the most. The most, like, that could reward me at the end. Like, I've moved to least spaces.

And I was like, what the fuck? Because other people were winning and like, that put me in third is that somebody else got landed on the most Bowser spaces. I will say the spaceship level sucks. Not a fan of that one. What? Oh, that's such a classic, man. Getting the keys to, like, unlock the door. Like, no, this is an extra level of stuff that I don't need.

That's, Andy, that is on every other map besides the first one. I'm letting you know that now. My favorite level used to be the Yoshi Island level, and Friday made me hate that level when you played the game. I love it. It's so brilliant, because it's so, such a great design where it's not just a simple square. Like, having the two islands and the understanding of where the star is is such a brilliant mechanic for chaos.

And yeah, like to Andy's point and to Barrett's point as well, it's like the difficulty ratchets up after for the rest of the courses. And they all just add even, I think the space one is like level two. Yeah, that's only the second. It goes Yoshi's Island, the space level. Then I think the horror one. I think Princess Peach. And then there's like a jungle one.

And then the horror one is the hardest one. And there's just more and more gimmicks that you have to kind of. Yeah, and those, I think those are the things that kind of annoy me the most, and I'd rather just play the more basic levels. And I think the gimmicks just add an added layer of not even frustration, but just like it just feels like they're throwing shit at the wall with a lot of those later levels. And I know these are the maps that everybody cares about, but when I encounter stuff like that,

I'm like, I just want to care about the mini games and like fuck it with my friends. And like when random shit's happening, I'm like, I have no. context for what's going on right now. I think Princess Peach's cake will probably be your favorite than Andy if you ever play it. Because even the Yoshi one does have the element of upping the price between going between islands, which is Roger, the big mistake Roger made at the very beginning of our game, where he brought that up to 30 at turn three and really just targeted himself for the rest of that match.

But with like Princess Peach, it is like very straightforward with like what you're doing on that map, which I think you would. personally dig where it's like it's less about thinking about the gimmicks and it's more of like all right like who can get the most like out of their die roll and where's the star how am i gonna yeah exactly i do think there even though i i i hate on how bullshit and random maria party is i do like the amount of strategy that is available on the maps that i've played so far in this one because between the yoshi one and between the the horror one as well and a couple of the others i've I've hit the place where I'm like, cool,

if I do this, this, and this in the next three turns, I can steal a victory. Like in the one we did on the stream on Friday, like a lot of the strategy there was, all right, if I stay on the right island, I can continue to just take advantage of boo and try to steal other people's stars,

even though the stars on the other side. And there's like a legit strategy there that you can play. Or I can up the price of the bridge by like 30 coins or some shit that nobody did. But we all had in the back of our mind. In the horror map, there's a they have the same boo thing but there is like one king boo where if you go to it if you if you spend 150 coins you can steal one star from each of the players and so you get three stars and each of the players

go down oh i forgot about that god that's a good one and i was getting exodia in yuio like that's like the you fucking won and it almost happened i was playing it was me and a friend and we were playing with two mcc's one of the mpc was at like they're at like i want to say like one star and everybody else was at, I want to say like three stars. And they had about like 145 coins. And they were probably about six spaces away from that King Boo slot on the last turn. And it was the thing of being in the last mini game and us going, whatever we do, we have to make sure that this NPC does not get enough coins so that use one of their dyes so that they can actually get to the King Boo and spend that money and screw over, screw over all of us. And I-

All lost to our NPC. Well, no, that, we did, we did win that one. But another NBC did Merk us. Waluigi ended up winning that one as an MPC. And for some reason, Waluigi keeps winning as an MPC. He's got to be stopped. It's weird how good Waluigi is as a CPU in this game. Yeah, it's crazy because I don't even think,

like there's no, it's not like AI in this game has like different, like things to it. It's not like, they don't have stats or whatever. Yeah. He has a passive, like, moral ability. No, I shouldn't, I shouldn't fuck over blessing. Yeah, like, I don't know why Waluigi keeps getting the win in this game, but it keeps fucking happening.

I will say critically, I'm very impressed with this game as a Mario Party title. I think it's kind of honestly, it's everything I've wanted for Mario Party for the last 20 years, which is just go back to basics and do it right. And I think they've done that. I'm hoping that this is just a foundation that they're going to build on. There's no news of DLC, but I really hope there is because I think that that's all that this needs to just kind of be the Mario Party platform that will kind of like keep us excited for years to come. We'll see us Nintendo.

know, but other compliments, I think the online works way better than I expected it to, and this game definitely needed that. The one major kind of criticism I have is the lack of being able to see the map when it is not your turn or just at all times. There should be some type of mini map of the board showing you where the characters are and where the star is, because the amount of times that we've had to like pull up the map and like scope it all out, like it feels outdated design-wise and it slows everything down and there's not really a reason that we shouldn't be able to just see it at all times.

You know what I mean? Yeah, I'm with you there. My other critique would be to change the button of the stickers because it is a creature on the analog stick. Yeah, the amount of times I accidentally hit that stupid ass button. I also want to point out that it was in February that it was announced that Nintendo was switching over their whole sort of multiplayer server systems to a different, they just completely overhauled it, which is why when we played Super Mario.

3D world. In January. In January, it felt like absolute garbage. We were constantly in quick sand. We were constantly walking through mud and we'd hit the jump button and it would jump a second and a half later. And I think that makes sense to why a lot of the games recently have felt a lot better. I will say pro tip, you know, like those stickers can be really important because that's one of the extra steps that they take into consideration is who uses the most stickers. No way. Are you fucking serious? If you look at the end of, next time you point, a game and go to the end of the stats, that's one of the things that they keep tabs on, is how many stickers each player uses.

Well, now I'm just going to spam them all the time. Oh, yeah. That's what I was doing during my, uh, when I was playing against, uh, Nick, Roger and Kevin where I was just like, I was doing it front facing for like the meme of it because Roger and I kept spamming it. But in my head, I was like, all right, but really how many times have I done it over Roger and stuff like that? Oh, no.

Yeah. There you go, Tim. There you go. Another great aspect of this classic game. We just had a very pleasant conversation about this game that I started like, do I hate it or do I love it? And I fucking went back to loving it. But Barrett, I think he just brought it right back.

And that's Mario Party, everybody. Imran, we have you here. So, of course, we're going to talk about some real hardcore nerd shit. Shin Magami 10, say, five. You have been playing it. You can talk about it to a limited extent. Please do. Yeah.

I love this to chime in. I love this too because I think we're able to give a preview and I've also played enough to give the preview and bear it has and so we can actually have a conversation about this. The preview covers roughly the first hour 45 minutes of the game let's say everything I say is within that period even if it really doesn't seem like it so yeah I've been playing that game for about 10 hours normally but for the preview the aspect this is a switch game where you were a Japanese teenager who gets pulled into a world of demons fuses with a robot thing

and then like you're just told hey go save a friend and get the hell out of here and that's the initial concept for it I think a lot of people who are like oh I like persona

I'll go try this game or I'm going to start it and be like what the fuck is this because it's extremely difficult even very early on and does not give you

any guidance whatsoever like blessing we were talking about this the other day you kind of bounce off is pretty hard. Yeah. Yeah, like after I played the, the, like, preview amount of the game, I was like, yeah, I think this is one that's not for me, because I am in that camp of people who's like, I really like persona, persona four and persona five, some of my favorite games. And I know,

like, they are part, a part of the Shinemagame Tensei franchise to some extent. And, like, I know they have, like, a lot of similar, like, characters and monsters and, like, set up in terms of some of the combat aspects. Like, that, that was the thing that made me somewhat excited to try this game out is knowing that, okay, the thing where you talk to your, talk to the monsters to get them on your side and you collect them and you're able to summon them and all that stuff, that sounds super cool. And the thing I knew about Shimigami Tensei going in is essentially like a really dark Pokemon in terms of like what you're doing. And playing it, that is what it is. But also like, yeah, I was kind of turned off by it because one, yeah, the difficulty is pretty rough. And then also,

it removes pretty much like most of the things I like about persona, which is like the character stuff and like making friends and like all like the social aspects are gone, right? Like that's not Shimagame Tensei. But like it seems like there's so little story and it's so hardcore on this is a JRPS JRP, you are going in turn base, you're fighting, you're doing all this shit that, yeah, this one wasn't speaking to me. Even though I will say that like the game starting off, I have we can say this game starting

off in like putting you in like a classroom setting. I was like, oh, this is an interesting choice. I wonder if they're like pointing to persona in any way, but they take you out of that pretty quickly. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of way it's always been like, summon degree of Tokyo and like the rest of it, like demon realm,

or demon realm Tokyo, et cetera. But like, I'm trying to think of things I can talk about for this game. It is, as I mentioned, extremely difficult. And I think that's going to turn a lot of people off. Don't be afraid to go easy on this game. Like, I, I at some point, maybe it was in the first hour, who knows, turned it down too easy from the normal difficulty because I just straight up could not be a progress blocker that was just totally in my way. And I think that's like, that is acceptable thing for the game to be that difficult, but I think it's also going to turn a lot of people just completely the fuck off immediately.

The game is also, as of now, a switch exclusive, there was that in video leak that kind of implied it might be on PC at some point, who knows. but it doesn't run great. It's like a constant 25 frames per second. No way. And the resolutions, yeah. But playing it on my like 4K OLED, usually I can take like switch games well with that. Like I think the upscale is good enough

that it's not a huge deal. This looks a very low resolution on that TV screen. So I had to actually move it up to my office so I could play it on a 10-ab monitor. And like I, I got used to it. I got used to the performance and like the resolution and all that. But like some things just run very slowly.

Like the menus are slower than you would think. And that can get very annoying. I don't know. Maybe there will be Apache before the game releases next week. But as of right now, I'm not super happy with the performance of it. And like if that goes on this one, or off switch at some point, it might be better in other versions that it will be in this one. Yeah. I'm right there with you.

And I think some of that would be helped if the art style or like the art direction of the game like made up for it. And I think the art direction of the game is like a solid good. The monster design is exactly what you'd expect, you know, from having like the same monsters as persona. Like right now we're literally looking at Jack Frost on screen from persona and you're having all those characters. But like, you know, like the UI like looks fine. Like it's nothing I can compare to a persona game in terms of the style aspect of it. It feels very much, no, this is a scaled back. This is RPG.

Like, this is a GRPG in terms of you're getting your, like, basic technical-looking UI and, like, a lot of that stuff, I don't think, really makes up for the performance in a way that I wish it did. Like, playing No More Heroes 3, I think I had a similar thing where that game, I had a lot of issues with how that game performed as well. But at the very least, the game is so stylish that to some extent, I was like, okay, I can forgive a lot of this. this game I

stylistically I don't think it does enough to like really make the performance like come up to par yeah I think they're very dedicated to it being an open world game which is like a new thing for Cinemagmi Tensei so like you are given an open region you can't really like do a ton like it's not like

saints for open world you can't leap over all of it but like it does things like here is your objective marker on the map and then there's I explored 15 theoretically I explored 15 different ways to get to that objective marker and eventually it's like, oh, no, it's this way. And I ended up fighting a bunch of demons

and finding other items and all that stuff along the way. So I think, like, that's an interesting thing, but I would bet that since this is an Unreal Engine game, they're using an older version of Unreal than compared to, say, Dragon Quest 11 or something. Because it really doesn't feel like they... It doesn't feel like it's the fault of the Switch. It feels like Atlas was not working with their best tech right here.

Have you played handheld at all? Yeah, I was going to say, have you all been playing docked? I've been playing docked. I played a little bit handheld where I didn't notice the resolution issues as much. And, like, I think the performance is a little bit better, but I couldn't tell, really. The things that you're saying, like, I don't think I've experienced as much in the preview time. I think it looks really good on the switch OLED. Okay.

And I haven't been, like, I'll notice, like, definitely because, like, the area that we, were opened up to you and stuff like that. Like there are like hitches here and there, but like it running in handheld, I didn't notice it as much. And it was one of those things where I was like, maybe it's just like the OLED screen, you know, with the pixel density of like a switch screen

where I was like, man, this game does like look really pretty, which is like I don't think that came across in any trailers that I had seen so far. So I was actually quite impressed with that. But I agree with y'all with like the art style and like the just like the presentation of it. all, which is what pulled me into Persona 5 was the presentation of it all. And whereas, like, going into SMT5, like, really reminded me of, like, trying to go back

to Persona4 Golden, where I was like, okay, so this feels like the, you know, the menu stuff and, like, all this stuff, like, really feels like an older turn-based JARPG, which is just never going to vibe with me. For me to really get into a turn-based game, you got to do something quick and different that feels fluid and is a really fun presentation-wise. That actually was a thing that I noticed pretty quickly in terms of the battle system. It has pretty much the same battle system from Persona. I think there's like a few tweaks here and there.

But the thing that Persona 5 did in this battle system that I thought was super great was everything is linked to a button as opposed to a menu. And so you press like X for like the attack moves. You press circle to guard. You press like triangle for a special attack or whatever. And that like that allows you to get really quick input in as opposed to have to like scroll through everything. And even like scrolling through things in Persona 5, I think, and like, just

the presentation and feel-wise, like, feel so satisfying to click through because it, like, it embeds itself into, like, the rest of the style of that game so well, whereas this feels a little more basic, which I know, like, people are going to fucking love, people love SMT, and, like, I know this is going to be a lot of people's sham.

So I think, of course. This was more of, like, because I'm such a Persona 5 fanboy, like, I wanted to, like, give SMT a shot for the first time because, you know, I've heard so many people talk about it. You know, persona spun off of SMT and all this stuff. So I was like, I want to give it a shot because it's finally like a, uh, this type of experience that's on the switch because I know people have been wanting persona 5 on Switch for years. It's never going to happen. So this is the,

closest thing you're going to get, uh, maybe Persona 5 strikers if you want to play that on switch. I don't know how that performs though, but yeah. I was just surprised they didn't like ape the like the button thing. Like not even like the style of it because of course is a way different thing. But it being Atlas and it being SMT, I think they could have easily done. All right, cool. Let's just switch from menus to doing the button input and have it work quicker. The way it usually works is that, like, SMT will do a thing, and then persona will iterate on that to, like, apply its own style and things like that.

So, like, I can see that this kind of open-world style stuff is probably where persona sticks is going to go or something, because they're probably selling the foundations for it here. But also there is a little bit of, like, that style and personality, but it's just, like, it's rare. Where, like, when you do a demon fusion, it brings the two demons on the screen and, like, Like, your character stands that it's like big blue room, and then this circular keyboard rises up around them. And they like start jamming on the keyboard and making organ sounds while the two demons fuse together. And that's fucking hilarious. That's like, it's not a lot.

There's not a lot of that. The game is very like, anti the accessibility that the other, like the personas and even just other JRP pages in general have been doing these days. Where like persona, for example, Proto 5 had demon negotiation where you talk to the demons and they have identified. identifiable personalities and like there's not that many of them and you can generally kind of figure it out. And if you mess up too often, like they'll, you can get your way through it pretty easily. Uh, Shinemogami Tsi-5, there are way more demon personalities. Also, sometimes like the phase of the moon, they'll be pissed off or they'll just won't talk to you, or they might join you completely so you never know whether to start a battle during the

ring a full moon or not. Or like, you can just keep, you could go through all three variations of an answer and they'd still say no to all of them. Okay. Thank you for saying that. Because I was very confused during a lot of these negotiations because the thing I noticed was and like correct me from wrong or if they do if they do this later on in the game, I guess to the preview extent that you can. One of the things I noticed was when you're trying to do the negotiations,

they're asking you questions or like they're asking you for responses. And in persona five, when you answer or when you tell them something, you'll see the icons. That is like the, I like this. I didn't like this. I'm in the middle of this. There's visual feedback of if you're doing something. incorrect. Yeah, I don't, it didn't seem like they have that in SMT, which was throwing me way off. Yeah, they, they want you to like mess up and fail and like have to deal with that and then come back with another try. And like, the easiest ways to get them to come to you or to like pay them

money or give them blood or whatever. And like, you don't want to do that because that's you losing resources. But sometimes it's like, I just don't have to be on this guy. Yeah. Like I don't. And sometimes you will do a successful demon negotiation. And at the end, the guy would just be like, now you're too weak. And then like, it's like, oh, fuck. What do I have to do now? In fairness, they do let you come back and like, you know, go, okay, you're the guy I talked to you before.

I'll just join you now. But it is, it can be extremely frustrating to go through all that and still lose out. And like, that's this game in a nutshell. It is extremely frustrating to do a lot of things. It's mostly a mess of just bad communication of the player and bad systems. It is intentionally obscure. communication. Yeah. And that's the thing is like interestingly enough because I was like fully expecting, you know, like I'm fully expecting like the hard, very hard mode of persona five

things being obscure and stuff like that. And surprisingly like that's not the stuff I was super turned off by. Like I was actually kind of like, oh, this is cool to like have a variation where it's a little more obtuse and like trying to figure everything out. And then like not even realizing that the moon phases were like that thing in the top left corner of the screen like until just now and Imron said it. Like, I kind of like that stuff. For me, the big turnoff and why I'm probably not going to continue this game at all is purely just the aesthetics and the vibe for it.

It just doesn't really appeal to me. So that's the last thing I really have to say is that I actually kind of liked the difficulty challenge because I think Persona 5, while I love it, is not a hard game whatsoever. It's just a game that you have to invest a lot of time in. Except for Okomero's Palace, which is obscenely hard. No, if, for no reason. If you know how to play the game, it's not hard whatsoever. Wow.

And so... It is 1,000% of it. Holy shit. Bless, on my second playthrough, I took him out in one try without even, like, really trying to prepare for it. I mean, one of my problems with that boss fight is that it's, like, pure luck. But, you know, keep going. It's not pure luck.

But anyways, um... Eric Gordon is no Joker. It's a... It's a... He's a great tutorial to the final boss fight in Royal. Anyways. Yeah, I'm surprised that it was actually not the mechanics. Like, I was preparing to get my teeth in and to not enjoy it,

but it was actually, like, those things that I actually really dug about the game. It's just, like, the, what we've seen in the trailers of, like, the whole, like, post-apocalyptic stuff and all that stuff, like, just isn't really my jam. And there's only, like, very little of that in Persona 5, like, near the very end of that game. And that part is always kind of, like, my most whatever part of that game. So, yeah, that's pretty much my thoughts on the preview and what we're. we can say now of like when it comes out I will probably not continue it and that that that sucks because I was looking forward to this but I'm glad I'd try it out for the preview at least to be clear

that preview was half an hour long I am 10 hours in so that should tell you how I feel about this game so far like I like it but I'm a I'm a weirdo so this one shout out to this lion bear can you bring him up it's like ice lion that seems to be hanging out in the desert with like a robot tail good for you lying you seem to be living your life right it's a surbris right yes Serberus, yeah. Yeah, he's a good boy. Yeah, there's also like, there's a lot of, like, monsters that are just kind of, like, hanging out there.

And when you see a monster that's just kind of hanging out and not doing anything, you know that motherfucker is just going to wreck you. I was actually going to ask, because I know there's some, like, like side quests you can get from certain monsters and shit. Is that shit interesting? Like, from a, I guess, like, story, character perspective, or is it just purely, I want to upgrade shit or collect shit? So, the ones you get in the first half an hour of the game,

not that interesting. Theoretically, maybe later in the game, there will be actually ones that we could talk about at a certain other time that are interesting. Well, everybody, with that, that has been the Kind of Funny Games cast for this week. We're about to do the exclusive post show for Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games members.

And remember, it's about to be a banger because we got another episode of Bless Who. Hell yeah. El yeah. Imron, thank you so much for joining us. Where can people find you? You can find me on Twitter at Imron Z-U-M-G or on my writing at Fanbite.com.

Hell yes, we'll hopefully have you back soon. Maybe for a Metal Gear Stream, maybe just for a Games cast, who the hell knows for what, but you will see more. Imran Khan will return. Until next time, love you all. Bye.