Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Shinobi: Art of Vengeance Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 25, 2025

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What's up and welcome back to the Kindet Funny Games cast for Monday, August 25th, 2025. Of course, I am your host Tim Gettys. I'm joined today by Andy Cortez. Hi, Tim. How was your weekend? My weekend was okay. How much of it was spent thinking about playing or just dreaming of the little night, a little hollow night?

Oh, I wanted to restart it so many times. I wanted to restart that play through. But you didn't? No, I did. I was playing a lot of the king is watching. Playing a lot of this. That happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Shnobi Ard Vengeance, yeah. Getting this Shinobi video game done. And then what else did I play? More Dark Souls 2, almost done with that one. That DLC's real long, real chunky. That's a big old DLC. There's like three of them. Is this your first time, Dark Souls 2?

Yeah. Wow. Are you running out of Souls? Is this your last? Wow. Oh, shit. This is one I thought I'd never play. Yeah.

But if there's anything Mike's ever been right about, it said this game fucks. Yeah? Dark Souls 2 kicks ass. Ignore the haters. And I love that you're already trying to fill that void, right? You're coming up on your last Souls game. And so you're thinking, oh, man, what do I do?

Who am I after Souls? And it seems that answer might be 50 cent, blood on the sand. Oh, I beat that one over the weekend. Yeah. What was that like? A little three hour quick, efficient adventure. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, man.

Quick efficient adventure. You know, I got to play as Lloyd Banks. Good, classic. Yeah. One of my favorite members of G-Unit. Got to unlock all. all of the, the, uh, the voice taunts, which is nice because you, you earn money and then you get to buy the voice packs every time you go to a little, uh, telephone thing. And the voice

packs are really cool to like, kind of like, like, just talk shit to enemies. And, you know, you'll say stuff like, motherfucker fucking fuck you bitch. Wow. Wow. Wow. Yeah, those are the rare ones, right? Yeah. It was a really, really good stuff. Good game. Honestly, honestly, a fun game. always been the thing about that. It's like people legitimately beamed the game, but they're like, it's kind of fun though. No, like legitimately, I was so much better at it. Now, we did play on an easier difficulty, but shooting felt a lot easier for me on controller than the gears

games. It's like something about it. Maybe there's just a lot more aim assist here, but honestly, like, kind of a banger of a game. Yeah. Ridiculous, silly as hell, some funny bugs as we're playing on this old 360 sort of overlay or whatever. And I, our game kept falling apart near the end. I kept on trying to get back. I would always disconnect and I would have to rejoin Ray's game and I would disconnect again.

I had to keep on doing that. We're like, come on, we just have like, we're in the last chapter right here. And at one point, I legitimately spawned in to a dev room. Like, I didn't spawn into the level that we were just in.

I was in a, like a one by one cube of just tile all around me. And I was like, Oh my God, I'm not in the video camera. I'm not supposed to be here. It's like Fran. I'm in the Avengers.

Exactly. I'm in a dev area right now. This is not correct. But a big, a good banger of a game. Yeah. Yeah. My gun go off,

Tim. Huh? My gun go off. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I need to watch you guys play this. It's hilarious.

That's hilarious. That's hilarious. Remember, this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday, we get together to talk about the latest and greatest in video games. We do that live on YouTube and Twitch. And you can get it later as a podcast. or just watch the vaude on YouTube.

If you love what we do, please support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to get all of our shows ad-free and a daily exclusive show called Greg Way. For a chance to be part of this show, though, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube superchats as we go. So if you have any questions about Shinobi Art of Vengeance, please super chat them in. And he will answer as he can. A little housekeeping for you.

We're an 11-person business all about live talk shows. But sometimes we do gameplay streams, and sometimes they're extra crazy. Last Friday, we had one of my favorite streams of all time here. Roger and Mike put together an insane Mario Party IRL challenge where we played Mario Party, but we also did a bunch of party games out in the kitchen, and it was insane. We had to flip tortillas onto our heads while wearing flippers, and that was a lot more difficult than it sounds. You killed it. What are you talking about?

Yeah, what are you talking about? It was still hard. You know what I mean? We did it. God. I hadn't watched this back and I'm like, okay, I was just overshooting it every time. That's good to know now. Yeah.

Because like when you do it, you don't know what's happening. You don't know. It's like when an ostrich puts their head in the sand. It's like, you know, you can't see what's around you. And when I'm watching somebody else do it, I feel like I know how to do it. And then when I'm doing it, I'm like, you don't know where the tortilla goes. You know, it's impossible now. You don't know where it is.

So thankfully we did. And you can watch that now on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games, almost four hours. Unbelievable. Yeah, dude, there was a point I got three in a row. Like fucking crazy work. Insane, dude. But yeah, we did a lot of fun stuff. So please go check that out because it was a lot of fun to do

and we want to do more things like that if y'all want us to. If you're kind of funny, remember today's Greg Ways, 15 minutes about if the gamers are worse than ever. There's bad, you know, I would say it's that we're reaching highs that we haven't seen before, that we thought that it wouldn't have gotten. I unfortunately think that it's easily worse that it's ever been and there's no signs to turn it back. I don't know that it's possible to turn back at this point. Whenever meteorologist say this is the hottest year on record since, you know, 1903 or whatever.

Like we're kind of in those. Every year. Yeah, it keeps pushing it. It's global warming, but for hatred. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you to our Patreon producer, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Delaney, the Psalm-Twining. Today we're brought to you by X-Real. We'll tell you about that later.

For now, I'll start with the topic of the show. Shinobi Art of Vengeance. It's an action platform game developed by Lizard Cube and published by Sega, a reboot of the Shinobi series. It's releasing on August 29, 2025, for every console imaginable. Art of Vengeance was part of Sega's initiative to revive some of their dormant franchises. Sega approached Lizard Cube, a studio based in Paris, and recruited them as their development partner after being impressed by their work on Wonderboy the Dragons trap in 2017. and Streets of Rage 4 in 2020, both of which were developed under its license. The publisher, however, took a more involved role in Art of Enginesces development,

with the game's producer, Toru Uhara, leading a team to collaborate with Lizard Cube and encouraging them to create a more striking art style than what was initially planned. The first three games of the franchise were cited by Lizard Cube as their source of inspiration, though they also attempted to modernize the franchise by refining the game's combat and introducing a combo system. But was that all worth it? Andy Cortez. Have you beat this game? How long did it take you? And what would you give it on the kind of funny scale?

I beat Shinobi Art of Vengeance yesterday after 50Sem, the two back-to-back game completions. It says I have 16 and a half hours on the game clock. I did go for a decent amount of extra stuff, the extra not only combat challenges, but the extra platforming sort of, you know, tough challenges the real tough ones that you're like all right I should probably shouldn't be doing this right now I'm taking way longer than I need to so if I already guess it would take around you could probably mainline this in about

13 hours maybe 12 or 13 hours but there's a lot of cool fun extra stuff to do I I really enjoyed this game Tim I think that the combat is like probably my favorite since Prince of Persia lost crown in the way that

that not only like you're given a kit to start with, but then you are given the ability to buy new moves to add on to the combo sets that you already have. And that just sort of expands what you're doing and you just have so much player agency and just feeling awesome and trying to nail that one cool combo that feels so satisfying to do. Yeah, so the combat I think is like

just as top-notches you can get in this video game. I really enjoy the art style, although in some spots it does, you know, maybe I could see where some spots were rushed in some places. Well, give me an example of what that might look like. I would say, like, the normal door prop you see, maybe it gets scaled to like three times to just like be a big ass door. And it's like, okay, that looks kind of out of place and, you know, maybe it doesn't work here. And because of those scaled props, then the line art and the stroke of the drawing that you're seeing is also getting enlarged. So it just feels like, all right, well, this doesn't look like it really, really fits in the world. This doesn't look like it was drawn one to one with all the other art.

The art is phenomenal when it does pop off, but there are some moments where it does feel like it can look. I think the game looks like kind of cheap in about 5% of the time. the rest of it, it's just like super amazing looking. Again, because of hand animations and all that shit looks fantastic. I enjoyed the boss fights. You know, it can kind of get repetitive-ish near the end where you're starting to wonder, all right, how are they going to, how is this level going to stay long? And then, you know, because you're running into two of the same enemies that you just fought seven times or whatever.

So that's where the game can kind of start to feel a little bit repetitive. but by the end of it, I think you can get powered up enough to feel really awesome and to have some incredible combat challenges. I would say on the kind of funny scale, I would put Shinobi Art of Vengeance at an 8 out of 10, a great game. This is a great video game. It's, again, super fun. I don't know the price on it.

I think this is a $40 title. Don't hold me. to the fire. $27 on Nintendo E-shop. Holy cow. 27. Wow.

Weird. Weird number to go. It's at like a pre-order discount. So technically 30. Oh, okay. I was going to assume it was like a Nintendo

Labor Day sale. We'll take $3 off your game. Yeah. That's a really great price for this video game. I think there's a lot of content here. There's a lot of the extra challenge you can go for.

And again, the extra traversal platforming challenges are really tough. I still don't know how to do one of them and I don't I don't understand how it can be done and I need to see how it works to know like okay that's how you do it but there's there's a certain thing with your double jump and and while jumping and air dashing where it's like are they really trying to get me to double jump when I am at the pixel perfect apex of my first jump to then give me the most maximum height possible otherwise I'm like I don't know

how you want me to do this. This seems really, really tough. But I would say Shinobi Art of Vengeance is an incredibly fun game with a lot of good accessibility as well. If you're having trouble with challenges, you can turn down, you know, enemy damage and enemy health or whatever. There's a lot of different things you can do with environmental things that might hurt you in these traversal challenges. If you do want to get them done, maybe that's what I got to do in order to finish that first level or that first challenge. But yeah, it's got a real nice sense a progression that requires you to go back, or it doesn't require you, but when you unlock that one new ability, Metroidvania style, you go, oh, shit, I want to go back to see what's hiding

those other rooms where I wasn't able to do a ground attack. And now I can, and that ground attack will open that platform that are breakable now, or now I have the zip line. And I remember seeing those little zip line things in level two. Let me go back to that. It's got a nice sense of, like, you know, for the completion is I think it's really, really awesome. So you bring up Metroidvania. There are elements of getting abilities to unlock different areas and levels that you previously were. But this is not a Metroidvania,

correct? Correct. Yeah. I mean, in the sense that you're not getting a single world, you... It's level based. It's level based, but it's not only level based, it is you know, they'll give you two levels off the rip in

one bit, here, I'll show you an example and maybe you can kind of describe this better. When You beat the first two levels in the first, there's three levels in one diamond, right? And you can maybe do 10% of one of them and then go, I'll go to the other level. And you can kind of just switch off willy-nilly whenever you want

if you're having trouble with one of the levels in that group. And so that's, that worked to my detriment because I was playing this so on and off when I was back home visiting my family. What were you playing on? My laptop. The whole time. Oh, no.

Well, when I was back home, yeah. But then I ended up playing about 70. percent of it on my PC at home. Any Steam deck or? No, surprise. I never played on Steam deck because I mean, the king is watching has me. Yeah. Yeah, that's my Steam Deck game. But it worked to my detriment in the way that these levels are so free flowing that I was doing one of the levels.

I guess I got maybe about 70% of the way done. And then when I logged back in a couple days later when I was still on vacation, I saw that the next level was. was open. And it was open the whole time. I just hadn't realized that. So then I moved to the next level and I was like, all right, well, I beat this boss and I fully finished it. Why won't it let me move on? I felt super stuck. And I was like, what the fuck's wrong with me? And then they were like, oh, well, you probably didn't finish the level before it. I was like, oh, you're totally right. I'm an idiot. And I think this game is also great about quality of life stuff where you can fast travel

whenever and wherever you want at any time that you want. And that shit rocks because it was great for getting the, you know, for wanting to go for all these challenges. Otherwise, I probably wouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have wanted to go for these extra platforming challenges or combat challenges. If you had to play through the whole level to get to them. Or if it was even more of a pain in the ass to just sort of fast travel, like, I could get to a secret spot in level C, finish it up and be like, hell yeah, all right, Let me go back to World Map. Great.

Immediately it just auto saves. It counts that you did the things. Yep. Let me go back to Map D and then go to all the different fast travel points. I'll pick whichever one I want to go to. It's super friendly, player friendly in that way. And I think that that goes a long way for a title like this. Yeah.

So you give it an 8 out of 10 great. Obviously a great score. When you were first playing this when we did our Ninja Guide and Ragebound review a couple weeks ago, you sounded so high on this. And I will say that an 8 sounds. less than I expected you to give this game. What is the missing two points there for you? That's a great question, Tim.

And the reason why I wouldn't go higher on this is if I could wave the gaming magic wand from the gaming magic wizard, I would give this studio an extra year with an extra like, I don't know how many thousands or a million dollar a budget or whatever. Because there are moments where I really, really, really wanted them to go further with production, with cutscene, with animation. I think a lot of that stuff can get kind of basic looking

because they want to get you back in the gameplay, and that's the heart of the video game. But when I see the levels of production in Ninja Guide and Ragebound, with the cool little vignettes of action and even animations that you're doing, there's, I wish this game went the extra mile with making me care about these characters. because they really put an emphasis on the story and these MPCs that you're meeting and these bosses that you're trying to take down. But then there's enough lacking to make me not fully care about it. And, you know, there's a moment where you as Joe, you go back somewhere and things are bad and you're going through this dialogue and Joe and the characters the whole time are just in their like fighting.

put like I you know in the way that when I think of what nine souls did bear it with some of the production there were like you know they they slow down the cutscene and they do a cutscene as your little avatar on screen and maybe drops to his knees like I wanted just a bit more there from the production and is one of those examples of like everything looks so leveled up that in the places that aren't matching it if they kind of stand out more they stick out a decent amount more yeah I yeah I just I wanted a bit more I would say. And that would take this to another level because I, like I mentioned earlier, they really, really want you to care a whole lot about the story and about the legend Joe Musashi,

who's every line of dialogue is, hmm, it's awesome. He says nothing more than, that's not an exaggeration. And they really want you to care about the characters that surround him, but there's just not enough there, you know, either cutscenes cutscene wise or storytelling wise to really get me to that level, unfortunately. But the game is still, again, the gameplay is the king here. The gameplay is the core of the video game

and it is smooth as hell. It feels awesome. I do have a couple of complaints technical wise. I wish there was an option to not maybe automantle when you're near the top of a ledge because that really, really fucks you

on some of the traversal platforming challenges. There's a really tough platforming challenge where there's an item you unlock that lets you climb on walls that look this way. It's like a little crystal wall that you stick your, you know, wolverine claws into.

And that allows you to kind of wall climb up. And it's a really tough platforming challenges that, or platforming challenge that it's a, it's a box where you have those wall climbable things on the side of the box and on the bottom. but not on top and that top of the

box will sometimes go into fire and you need to be on the side of it and the amount of times that I would wall dash to the side of the box and I would be too close to the top that I would auto go up dude fucking fucking frustrating and I really think all it required

would to be like a setting in the accessibility that would say don't automantal let me hit A to go up if I want or whatever but really really frustrating in moments like that where it just, it was annoying enough to go like, oh, like this would have been perfect if maybe this option wasn't there. And then you just got to get good and kind of just know exactly where to go. But that's where the game would kind of frustrate me in some moments.

But yeah, the game's a banger, though. I think for the price it's going for on Steam, same price, it's 2699, 10% off. There's a lot of game here for that price. And there's a lot of just really fun combat challenges. that, again, if you are the type of person who wants to feel awesome while gaming, this reminds me of Avengers, Greg's fucking favorite Avengers game, the live service game, that, you know, where there was some video showing off how deep the combat could go. And some people were like, yeah, but you don't actually have to do any of that.

It's like, okay, well, you don't have to do anything then. Like, you don't have to do any of this, actually. but the level of depth that you can take the combat and like you feel so damn awesome it feels like a fighting game in a way it feels like a smash bros game in a way where whenever you take whenever you get to some of these little challenge at levels

it basically gives you like a final destination level or maybe battlefield yeah you're getting like just sort of like here's you know here's the floor level with a platform and a platform and maybe there's a big gap in the middle that's lava, or maybe there's gaps on the side of the lava, and to be able to knock that enemy up, knock him down into the lava, to go to the next dude.

Super fun, just an absolute blast. And really cool levels of progression that, you know, this game is very combo-based, right? So if you can go hitless and take your combo up to like 58 hits in a row or whatever, there might be a really awesome, I forget what they call them, maybe like, I'll call them a talisman or a token or whatever, but you can have two of them equipped. And one of them might be like, hey, when you're at a 40 point combo or a 20 point combo, you have way extra damage.

So you're incentivized to like, all right, I want to stay hitless as much as possible because I'm going to take the most away from enemies. Yeah. I love that we're in this place now where we're getting a lot of these 2D action games that have a lot of focus on your character moving around where you're like air dashing. And then you kind of have directional attacks like up, down, left, right, like doing different things and like being able to kind of, I mean, it is that smash. mentality of like the meteor spike down and all that stuff and um i haven't got to play too much of this because i'm reviewing a different game but i can't wait to get back to it just from playing the i played the demo through and uh i love the art style obviously loved the music was the music stand out to you here or did it kind of just feel part for the course at this point we're used to

just getting bangers from this stuff yeah i think the music was awesome for a good while like i would say near the beginning of the game and even during my preview when I went to LA to go play it, the music was like, oh shit, this whole soundtrack is about to be awesome. And then I think it started to stand out a decent amount less as I went on through the game, maybe around the halfway point where I wasn't even really noticing the tracks a whole lot anymore. And maybe that was me just kind of going through the gameplay motions of wanting to go back to that other level and unlock that one power up or whatever. But I would say that it started to be, I thought it was going to be kind of the star of the show for this game.

and it started to be a little bit less prevalent as I went on, especially because the boss fight songs are always the same. Maybe not the final boss. I don't quite remember, but every time you fight one of these large bosses, it hits you with a little splash screen of like the, it's a, it's a, you see the enemy with the font, and it's like, bam, here you're fighting this dude,

and it's Joe in the front of whatever, and it's, and it's that every time. And it's that every time. And it's still rocks, but it's that every time. How are the boss fights? Boss fights are great. A lot of cool dynamic attacks from them that have you thinking the way you would want to.

They're what I would want from a game like this. And that's why when I played Ragebound, I enjoyed the combat in this way more, in Shinobi Art of Vengeance way more. Because Ragebound, for as awesome as it was, felt more like I had mentioned, I made the guitar hero comparison where you see the, you see pink on the enemy, you want to hit the pink attack and vice versa. And here you just have a lot more player agency. You have a lot more creativity and freedom with the things that you are unlocking.

I wish it, I was able to find one costume unlock and that was it. Maybe, well, maybe there was two. No, actually, I did find two costume unlocks. I thought I was going to come across a lot more. and that's why I kind of wanted to keep doing the, you know, completionist thing. But they're really just color schemes because, you know, 2D hand animating different looking costumes would be a pain in the ass. So they are just sort of palette color changes. But one of them was called the blue blur.

And it's just, you know, it's a blue costume. Yeah. But Sega, I love that, though. Because we do have the DLC coming in 2026 with the Robotnik. Yeah, you get to fight Robotnik. Yeah, there's a couple levels where there's like a whole lot of Sega. love. There's also, you know, I got to assume it's a tribute to either the creators of Shinobi or maybe like the heads of Sega at one point, but there is like, you know,

you're in a cyberpunk level and you're seeing like just a bunch of billboards and cool little holograms all over the place. And there is a billboard that says the legends. And it's like three old looking dudes. And I'm like, ah, I bet you that's cool. I don't know who they are, but I bet you that's somebody, you know. One thing that I loved most about Ninja Guy and rage bound was it was unapologetically a 90s late 80s video game where it wasn't tongue in cheek kind of like pointing fun in itself it was like it took itself seriously that you're a ninja on a jet ski and that's that just is what it is it's not like ironic it's like this is why it's cool does Shinobi have that or like what what's the kind of tone and vibe of the game

I I wish it was more comedic and self-aware knowing that it's a, yeah, that you are a guy named Joe Musashi who is not only taking on demons, but an evil corporation and some soldiers and whatever. Like, I wish it was a bit more tongue in cheek with how it played, especially because, again, there's so much comedy to have there with Joe only ever saying, and it's whenever his subtitles pop up, it's just dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. and I wish they did more with that and there was certain times

where a character would talk to him and he would reply and I would want them to reply well said Joe or something like that like I wanted them to have more fun with it and it unfortunately didn't go that extra mile it took itself very very serious

even though like you know the writing's not particularly great I don't think the game is super you know I don't think the voice acting is awesome either like it's fine it does its job but there are some standout actors and there are some other ones that I didn't feel were as good.

You know, and it did feel like, you know, oh, you hit up your friend Carl who, you know, works it, where it's just like coming and do a voice. But yeah, I do wish it had a bit, I wish I had a bit more fun with itself because it is a silly premise. Despite, you know, the game kind of getting very serious in some spots, I wish they were able to have a bit more fun with the tone and the comedy and the humor of it all. Dainstah Super Chats insane. When I was a kid, my dad had the original 1987 Shinobi Arcade Machine. Playing the demo for Art of Vengeance brought me so much nostalgia.

I'm so pumped to play tomorrow. Hell yeah, man. I love that these games are able to come back and that like Sega themselves were trying to that initiative to like reboot these old franchises. So far they've had success with it. Like we'll see if they continue with the Jetset Radio and all that. But I do love that we're at a point now that there's a treasure trove of IP that can be modernized in a way. And especially in genres that I feel kind of had their time in the sun back in the 90s. And then there was like that retro boom of 2D platformers.

But where we're at now, I feel like it's cool to be getting these where it doesn't so much feel like, oh, it's the retro games. It feels like, oh, this is just the continuation of that type of gameplay, but made these days. And with both Ninja Guy and Ragebound and this, I'm like just. We're eating good. Like, it's a very good time to be, your boy, Tim Geddes. Yeah, the amount of times that I would pull off a combo and regret not recording what I was, like, playing. Like, it's so cool to be able to showcase your skills in the same way that that Prince of Persia Lost Crown had a lot of different ways to get creative. It doesn't take it quite to that level with the rewinding of, you know, you know, creating the body double and all that sort of stuff.

But it is, it is really awesome and how it lets you evolve. your move set. I think it may be my favorite way that combat has done that because Prince of Persia lost crown I think kind of off the rip already has amazing combat and then you are

adding on abilities to interweave into the combat. But for this to, you know, you start off with a fairly basic like slash slash with an up slash combo and then to whatever you get to these little item shops in the middle of

levels go oh shit i can buy i have this many coins and i could buy this move that adds a if i do slash slash if i do x x then the third x will do like a knee move a flying knee that does a lot of heavy damage for enemies with shields or whatever and that's cool so i'll add that to my repertoire and then now after that one spin move if i hit y one more time then i'll knock them back up into the air and like, holy shit, you can really start to unlock some cool shit in this. And it's not just for visuals and for flare, because every one of these moves is doing either shield damage or this one's really good for doing just, like, straight up pure damage,

but some of them are better for taking out shields as the heavy moves are. And it's really neat to kind of concoct a little, like, you know, let's make a little dinner right here and just really, really whoop this dude's ass. Spilling the Bean says Shinobi Art of Vengeance definitely is a game of the year contender for me. It's gorgeous. The action's flawless. It's a good time to be a fan of Ninja Games. Hell yeah, beans.

That's awesome to hear. I've been seeing you tweet about this too. So I can't wait to get back to it, man. This one's cool. Any final words on Shinobi Art of Vengeance? No, not really. I would say highly recommended if you're into 2D platforms or if you're into fighting games or, you know, or smash bros or just like combat period.

I'm stoked to see what the real good players can do because there's just a lot of fun to be had with not only the different abilities, but just expanding your combo set. Cool. We're going to take a quick break and get a word from our sponsors. Get your super chats in if you have any questions for Andy Cortez.

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They're amazing. What do you mean? What's up with them? The new one's better with the motion sickness. Should I get like, should I take a Diasopram or what's it? I don't know. I mean,

you could try out the mine. I'll lend them to you and you can see. You have the pros? Yes. They're great. Fantastic. Let me use. Yeah.

Because it's not something I could just do at work and something like, I need to be in bed for. Yeah, the actual real experience. I get that. The actual experience. X real. No, I freaking love these things. It's because I mainly use them for the traveling.

Like, that's like my, the bread and butter for me of like this is such a game changer means plane flights just go by but the second use case is laying in bed on the steam deck just no hurt neck yeah playing like shenobie art of vengeance i'm probably playing that's what i did with the that's what i was trying to do with the ex reals from like several generations ago that you let me and those were my my motion sickness just somehow didn't fuck with that yeah but i'm hoping we'll try these ones yeah yeah i would love to i want to talk to you about holl the night just a little bit that wasn't sponsor, by the way.

That's a genuine question. Because these things fucking rock for real. You're my little holiday boy. Thank you. And I wasn't on the episode last week for Hollenight Silk Songs. Release date announcement. We're a week away from this thing. So you might have already answered this question to some extent.

So I apologize. But what do you think Hollinite Silk Song needs to do differently than Holiday? If anything. Or does it just need to do more? Dude, I don't think it needs to. to do anything differently. I, I, maybe,

maybe be a little bit more player friendly with, with the map. Maybe. Because this is, I, you know, I think one thing that always kind of discouraged me was whenever I would, this is the game I started like three times on, on three different flights.

But, you know, at the start, you see that at a store, you can buy map markers. And I was like, oh, no, I don't want that. Yeah, that doesn't sound good. don't want to be placing down a thing to, you know, I think Prince of Persia lost crown was so great. Man, I'm just glazing that game today. I love. But, like, you know, that game with the screenshot system or whatever, I think that's, like,

going too far, because I don't want that out of this experience, um, because there is so much to the world and the exploration that when I'm playing Prince of Perci or Lost Crown, it's like, I don't, I never felt like, I'm uncovering this world. I was like, I'm playing a video game here. Yeah. I think Hollow Night is a lot more experiential, and I want to be able to walk into a new place and go, what the fuck? Holy shit.

All right. And that's why I want to replay the OG one and play the new one with a lot of note taking. I want to like go full in and... On the new one. When you play the new one, you're going to be not taking, or you're talking about with your replay of one. No, definitely on the new one, for sure. Because I want to know what the hell's going on.

When I played the first one, I played a decent amount of it offstream, but I did like the big, sort of moments on stream and largely did not know what was happening because I just like, because it was me just, I think it was Mark Starvaji.

Remember Mark Starvaji? He'd be in our chat and he'd be like, oh, you want to go here? I'm like, all right, I guess. So I was just like, just trying to get help from chat in any way possible. But I think maybe have some accessibility stuff that makes the game like 10% more user friendly.

And that's not really for me. That's for the people that may be discouraged to get into it. it's been really awesome over the weekend seeing a lot of people like people like Maximilian dude being like playing it for the first time like oh shit this game fucking bangs do you see that like the most

steam concurrences it's ever had yeah very very cool to see like congrats to team cherry so in terms of gameplay of the characters like do you expect the hornet to play the same as Hollow Night or do you think that because it's a different character like are you expecting it to have

no I mean the zip line traversal stuff is definitely a very hornet thing like good spoilers, but when you fight Hornet the first time, like, she very much throws out like these little, like, silk strings or whatever that she uses the zip, and that's going to be your, one of your main methods of traversal what looks like, which is awesome as hell. I, part of me was not wanting to be negative about this, so please don't think I'm trying to go there, but it's just like, I want to just open up your mind, Tim. I'm not telling you what to think.

I'm just asking you if he'd like to. That's a Dan Libbertard, that quote. But Silk Song, taking this song to come out with tons of hype, right? On the direct opposite side of the sort of spectrum, you have Shovel Night, which was an amazing game. That just kind of kept on coming out with, not sequels, but expansions, right? You got to play his plague night, play as King Knight. and like those just never quite hit

I hope that I don't have that experience I was literally going to ask you like do you think this is going to be a Sheldonay experience so it's very funny you bring that up because yeah like it having the gameplay there but the feel of the character being different can change your interest in the game and when it came to Shuffle Night like there were some characters I was way more into than than others so yeah with this do you what do you think's going to end up happening do you think that Silk Song is going to succeed in your eyes for

for you? Yes, 1,000%. There's just there, I'm really happy that they went the route they did with that trailer

to say 40 plus bosses is crazy. How many did the first one have? Ish? I don't feel like they were like 40. I don't remember. I want to say around 30 plus or something like that.

I may be way off on that. There's definitely like the major bosses and what makes these games special to me are the, the missable thing. So a lot of these will be optional that you won't even get to see the whole first play through because maybe you just didn't go that way or you didn't have this one conditional dialogue moment, or not dialogue, but that conditional moment where you went back to see fucking

Loretta the bug and she doesn't like it when people wear that mantis hat. And if you're wearing that mantis hat, oh boy, boss fight time. But if you didn't do that, then you wouldn't have experienced it the first time around. And it's all that stuff that makes these games, it must suck for developers to be like, man, Andy Thist. things games are special when there's things that take a lot of time that are missable. Like, because that's not great,

right? But that's the stuff that makes these experiences so special to me. Or it's like, whoa, dude, I didn't even have that happen. Wait, you can wear that one suit. And then now this dude is like,

actually, let's be homie. It's like, that's cool as shit. I love that stuff in video games. And I hope we get that in spades. It's all the conditional moments in not only Holo Night, but a lot of Souls likes that really make the game super special to me.

Yeah. Including every variation, there are 47 bosses in Hollow Night. Oh, nice. Okay. Cool. Yeah, I guess there's, okay, I see the word. I think there's like four or five variants. Okay, yeah.

So we're on that 40 mark as well. Natty 2332 says, I like that the whole gaming community will be playing it together. I do think that this is like such a special moment. Awesome. Yeah, next week it's like all the reviewers, all the backers, all the just fans of this franchise and like new fans to be.

Like with the stats on Steam this weekend of Hollow Night one like i imagine that two is going to be uh picked up by so many people like fans of all types of different video games and it being out on so many different consoles i think helps as well but it's so special to see that we're this far into indie games where the follow-up to a beloved indie game has this much eyes and attention on it where it feels like as big of a deal as any big triple a release right like this i i feel like the hype going into silk song is very similar to death stranding too in terms of how much it's going to dominate the conversation and just like the anticipation going in but it has so many unique factors to it of the like the long weight

that we've had but then the short wait from announcement of release date to it actually coming out like i feel like that this week period we're in allows for like a fervor of like hollow night insanity that's like very cool yeah it's absolutely nuts i i'd mention on the games cast i don't think for the rest of time we'll ever have a 2D size scroller game talked about as much as this like anticipated as this i mean it's probably true at this point no like no mario game no mega man game nothing like i think like no other two d platformer for the rest of time will ever be this like it's lighting in a bottle in every presentation well you know are we going to get it like it's it's kind of crazy the the amount of of of free marketing that they were able to build out of you know and it's it's

all like goodwill because the first game kicked so much ass and people love it and really just wanted to see what the next thing was. I'll let you know how it plays Tim when I get to play it this weekend. What's that? Pax West. Oh yeah. You're going to Pax? I don't know that. Oh yeah. Going to Pax. What does that look like?

It was just me just being like, I'm going to drop the bag. I'm going to go to Pax. So what are you going to do? I'm going to play Halloween. I'm going to play Halloween. I'm play Saltong. I'm going to play Pragata. Okay. I'm going to play Oh, Amusha. Fuck yes. I'm so excited for

to play all these. I'm going to... Are you going to play the most important thing? Kirby Air Riders. Because it's going to be playable there. Can you play it for me, Andy? I did email certain Nintendo people that we know... In hopes that I get an email back to...

Because Blessing's already going to be a part of one of these things. And I don't know if maybe an email got lost in the shuffle, but I'm hoping to join Blessing for one of those little... one of those little events. Not an event, but it's a, you know, a little preview opportunity.

Yeah, a little preview session. That's cool, man. Similar to what Xbox does with GDC, where, you know, the press goes to just kind of this little area and goes to play some games over there. That's what I'm hoping to do. Dude, when was the last packs you went to? It was the last one that I worked with before I joined Kind of Funny,

2016. Wow. I slept in Kevin's hotel room. That's right. Yeah. man god what a time it's crazy though like i haven't been to packs like i i can't even remember when the last one i was at was but it was it's been a long time so you guys are good so you and bless are both going to be there do you think your your pads will overlap at all for one of the things

yeah um and then i'm hoping for this nintendo thing if i can maybe go you know hang out there yeah just depends on details and getting an email down but yeah the first event we will be same thing because of how I sort of scheduled stuff out. That is exciting, man. Yeah, I'm pretty pumped. I also just want to just see what other games are out there on the show floor that I can hopefully skip the line and be like, do you know who I am? I was the kind of funny champion about four years ago.

Yeah. You know, give me my credit. Alex Fraser super chat saying, just beat the lost kin in OG Hollow Night. It took me five days. I'm so ready for Silk Song, but scared I won't finish in time. advice? Finish Hollow Night in time.

Ooh. The thing with me in Hollow Night is like I don't remember any of the boss fight names. I don't. I just remember who they are and what their fighting style was like, but I really don't remember a whole lot

of the lore and story. And a lot of that is because I didn't do like my VATI video lore breakdown afterwards. Yeah. Which is why like, I think it's okay if Team Cherry wants to delay this another month so I could fully play through. through Hollow Night one more time.

Langleyam Neely says is Hollenite that difficult? Yeah, it's a, it's a tough game for sure. Yeah. You can do your, you can do a whole lot extra to power up your character a lot with getting these extra little talismans. It has the system where, you know, if you have 10 points available and this one token costs four points and that, you know, and that gives you this much extra, extra strength and this one might be

a token that, you know, lets you heal quicker and that costs three points and you kind of want to like min-max your your, I guess, load out before you go onto these fights for sure. Dexter Super Chatsin saying, Andy, if I predict your top 10 for 2025,

can I have a pizza? Great show, everyone, love you. Sure. How is your top 10 feel? Let me ask you this. Shinobi Art of Vengeance. Do you think it'll end up in your top 10? Is it a contender? I think there's too many games. I think in a lot of other years possibly maybe not

I think the story would have I think there would have had to be more production stuff for me to be like yeah easy contender but yeah you can go ahead and guess it if you want I can Venmo you $12 if you end up guessing it well depends on how much

what sort of pizza you're trying to get I guess if you're trying to order square pie guys delivery that's like usually about $41 you know yeah gone to your head what's your game of the year right now. Expedition 33. Fuck, yeah.

I don't think anything will touch it. Yeah. Not even Silk Song. Not Silk Song. Not Yote. Wow. Those games would have to hit on a story level

in ways that we've never seen before. I thought Silk Song was just going to be, I thought it was just a matter if it was actually coming out this year for you. Like I thought Silksong would be your game of the year with a bullet. No, man. Expedition just not only was super fun gameplay wise, but did stuff story-wise that I will never forget

until the end of my days. That's the type of shit that, you know, I think a lot of games are super fun mechanically to play nowadays and it's not hard to find a game that feels great and is memorable for those reasons,

but I think it's really hard for a game that is doing story to really resonate with you and to leave a long-lasting memory and not a whole lot of games can do that and a lot try, and I think, like, Exspecies 33 did that in ways that I could have never imagined.

Yeah, I'm right there with you. Yeah, so we have Hollenite coming out. Do you think Hades comes out this year? Shit. As we get later and later into the year, I'm sorry to know, kind of wonder, because I thought this game would have been a lock to release like in March or April.

And the year just keeps going by, and it's really, you know, by the time you know it will be November, you're like, oh shit, Hades isn't out yet. Yeah. I don't know, man. Do we, was 1.0 the Game Awards, or was that when they did early X? That was early access.

Oh. I could, I could still see a 1.0 shadow drop at game awards. My thing about the Hades 2 is I think that in a similar situation to Silk Song has this lightning in a bottle moment, Hades 2 almost has the opposite,

where it is such a known quantity. We know this is going to be one of the best games, whatever year it comes out, because we've already played such a substantial amount of it, and it already is that damn good. And it being the follow-up to such a beloved game as well, them doing a sequel, this is super giant.

Like, we know that they can make bangers, but we haven't seen them do a sequel for them to double down on Hades, like, as their IP. Obviously, there's a lot going into this. I feel like they have the luxury to just get this game right and put it out whenever they can take as long as they need, you know, realistically, um, to,

to put it out. So I feel like more than most games, they have the luxury of finding the optimal time to release. And I do think that Super Giant cares about awards. Like they're going to want, if their game can come out and get a game award, they're going to want that. I know that sounds like,

oh, anybody would want that. But it's different here where it's like, I feel like they have the stuff. So it's just a matter of, putting it out the right time. And if they were to put it out as a shadow drop in game awards, you're not getting that. Like I think that it's going to be incredibly hard for the following year

to have people remember how good the game is, like not just recency bias, but at that point you're kind of just blending into a way where people won't want to give it the credit for it being that year, you know? I think we're running out of time. I think maybe Silk Song releasing in September is kind of not, a time that you would want to release your indie game i think supergiant's different obviously they're on a much different level but when we talk about how packed october looks and then once you get to

november then it's like november sounds right to me though because i i feel like with everything we know about the game so far and just like the kind of process of elimination of where we're at now having been through summer game fest and gamescom and all that and having silk songs release date having Grand Theft Auto's release date, like all these big questions that are like, these are the things we need to know to make educated guesses on stuff. I feel like the next Nintendo direct that has to be imminent. I know there was just on Games Daily a conversation about a rumor September direct,

but we're at a point now that we're going to get a Nintendo director this year because we have, we need to know what's up with Metroid. Like they need, whether it's delayed or coming, they need to say something. We need to know the next lineup because as of like a couple weeks from now, Now, we're going to have essentially releases of all of the games that Nintendo have already talked about at the April event, right?

So it's like we need that next round of games coming to Switch 2, First Party, Third Party. Otherwise, Hades 2 is going to be there. Like, I think that that is a shoe in for getting the Hades 2 announcement will be at a Nintendo Direct at this point, it being Switch console exclusive at launch, right? And I think that going off what I'm saying with the award stuff, November's the perfect time. if they want to hit this year's game awards it's you come out in November the recency bias will be in their favor um and it's it'll have been long enough since the early access that i think it'll just like have that fervor the question is do they want to go up against expedition 33 and potentially silk song and i think just getting mentioned in the list

really really like i i know wasn't heides won as well nominated like i think they want to go for the win. Yeah, that was the year last of us, part two, came out. I'm trying to think of what the other big hitters were in 2020. I think they, yeah, they obviously want to go for the win. But they're, it's crazy the amount of eyes that get put on games that, you know, once you're in that nomination list, the, even if, I'd say even if Astrobot didn't win, the amount of people that are like, why the fuck is this game here?

And then they have people go, no, it. rocks go play it and then they do and they go oh shit that's why it's on this list um i i think we get dangerously close to to game of the year or to game awards voting time though right like i mean the cutoff uh for is normally like november 16th or something like that so but the thing with hades because we've already played so much of it i think it coming out november 8th it's like we will know you know and it's like even if people haven't fully completed it yet but at that point of the cutoff date, but that's not the voting date. The voting date is

a couple weeks after that, even. So. I have 52 hours and the king is watching. That's a contender for me. Yeah, man, you are all about this game, and I love that. I love that there's just a random game that just overtakes one of us in a way that's like, no one's fucking heard of this shit. But now I've heard you say this constantly.

The king is watching. Are you still like, are you playing every day? Every day, every night. Yeah. Every day, every night. Wow. Voidbreaker rocks. That just hit early access, play that shit. Blessing played it and he was like, Andy, you're right. And I was like, give me the award for fucking, like, knowing blessings. Reckos.

Reckos. Blessing recos. Yeah. I mean, you're my guy too. I got a guy. I got a guy. Yeah. You are the one that, like, you only recommend me things when you're like, Tim's actually

going to really fucking like this. Whether it's TV shows, music, games. You're always right. You're smart. You're smart. Santon. New Spurs. Check out, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I do love their little outfits. They're little affid We've got a couple Super chats here. Living Legends, this goes back to the Shinobi Sub thing. Seeing Joe ride a flying missile on the helicopter chase is fire.

Cool. Yeah. It is cool. And in those moments, I'm like, when I talk just about the extra levels of production, a lot of times it's like, oh, that's, you know, that's just a, it's just a PNG of something. You know, give it, have it, move a little bit, but that's just me being a little nitpicky ass. Yeah.

Well, it's been a good one, Eddie. Thanks for having me, Tim. You and I hanging out. We're about to do the KF podcast. I don't think you're on that. No. I'm on the stream after.

What are you streaming? What are you playing? Mike had two options. One of them was Rainbow Six Sege. And the other, I forget. It was like the Siege mode in some game. Oh, it was PubG's news. 5 v 5 or 6 v6 mode, but it's not even

at first of a shooter, it's a top down, like tactical shooter where you can't see the other people around the walls and stuff. Oh shit, okay. It's called like Blind Spot or something. Interesting. I'd rather play your rainbow six each. Well, we'll see what they play after the kind of funny podcast.

It's going to be fun. It's going to be me, Mike, Joey, and Greg Miller. We'll see what energy he brings today. Andy, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for your review of Shinobi Art of Vengeance that y'all can check out later this week on every single platform known to man. Until next time, I love you all. Goodbye.

Bye.