Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Stray & As Dusk Falls Reviews - Kinda Funny Gamecast

Episode Date: July 18, 2022

Go to http://expressvpn.com/kindafunny to get an extra 3 months free.  Go to http://meundies.com/kindafunny to get 15% off your first order plus 25% off your first membership item.  Go to http://athleticgreens.com/kindafunny to get a free 1-year supply of Vitamin D and 5 free travels packs with your first purchase. Today is a double dose of new game reviews! We review Stray on PlayStation and As Dusk Falls on Xbox! Time Stamps: 00:00:00 - Start 00:04:50 - Housekeeping 00:05:42 - Stray Review 00:39:36 - As Dusk Falls Review Epic Creator Code: KindaFunny Follow The Kinda Funny Gamescast Team On Twitter: Greg Miller: https://twitter.com/GameOverGreggy Tim Gettys: https://twitter.com/TimGettys Andy Cortez: https://twitter.com/TheAndyCortez Blessing Adeoye: https://twitter.com/BlessingJr Mike Howard: https://twitter.com/SnowBikeMike 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. Of course, I'm Tim Gettys and I'm joined by in a brand new jacket. The Nitro Rifle, Andy Cortez. Welcome, everybody. Glad you're here. Glad to be here, Tim. You know, I like to fight for the people, Tim. And I like to say, Twitch, when are we going to get a better revenue split?

And I'm protesting in the streets. But I will cross the company line if they ever sell a cool jacket and buy it with my own money. So it was a price. Give me a 360. Let me see the whole thing. It was a prime day. Prime day deal. I can't.

The chairs are here. My chair's right here. You say five to the people. Are you the people? I feel like you're the one who's been out. Go lay on the bed. Go lay on the bed and put on the bed. I'm,

oh no, and my feet? Yeah, right, dude. I'm not going to give them a wiki feet score right now. You're kidding me? Do you wear socks inside, Andy? Are you a barefoot boy?

I have to wear socks inside. With the amount of, hell yeah. With the amount of crumbs that I get on the ground. Yeah. You just a sleep. It's a problem. No, no, no, ants.

We do, we do have ants that definitely live in the bones of our house that come out when it's one of the one. General. When there's rain, you get the little picnic ants, they come up like, Mike, I'm wet, help me, Mike. But I'm pretty sure, like, they live somewhere in the bones of the house, for sure. The bones of the house. God, what a way to start this adventure. Wait, real quick, we're all, it's a Sunday, we're recording two reviews back to back here. Show of hands, who's barefoot right now?

I'm not most of the time. I'm not most of the time. Yeah. I was not a monster. No, Mike? Blessing and myself, all barefoot right now. Surprised. Mike, is that a normal thing for you?

Are you a barefoot boy? Hell yeah. Oh, yeah, man. You're in your house. Be relaxed. Enjoy yourself. I got a splinter like five days ago. That's been changing the game for me on the barefoot thing.

I've been wearing socks ever since then. Today I'm like, I'm back to feeling a little bit comfortable without the socks. Sure. The tan is wearing down. You're forgetting. Yeah. Yeah. It was not a fun splinter.

Wow. I'm always, unless I'm sleeping. I am always wearing socks that you can get on me undies.com slash kind of funny. Wow. Joining us today as well, we have the new face of video games blessing at a yo-e-Jr Jr. So like I was worried, right? Because the splinter was really small. And it was one of those ones where I tried to get it out.

And when I tried to like poke it out, it broke in half. And so like half the splinter was still inside of me. And I tried my hardest. Couldn't get it out. And I was like, you know what, man? I'm going to let it ride. See what happens. Might it get infected?

Might it not? We'll have to see in a few days. It seems like, though, that's a splenance is part of me now. I think it's just a part of me. It's your origin story. I had a basketball coach in fifth grade who told some horrible story about getting a piece of metal in his foot that then got in his bloodstream. He had to go to hospital. Wolverine.

No, not that. It wasn't cool like that. It was like if it got to his heart, he'd die. Oh. Shit. I don't think I did, though. He was still there at basketball practice. I think this is an old story.

I don't think it was one of those in the middle. But I was a kid, I don't remember. The voice you hear right now, of course, is the big daddy, Craig Miller. Hello, Tim. How are you? I'm good. I'm good. How are you? I'm good.

Do it okay? Overall. COVID's all over this house, but we're living, ladies and gentlemen. We're still here. And I'm proud of you. Proud of you, Craig. And rounded out the group today, a rare appearance, but a very valued appearance of the kind of funny games cast Snowbike, Mike.

Tim, I'm here to talk about Xbox games. Thanks for having me. You know, we're about to talk about Stray. We're about as does Falls. But before we get into all that, as does Falls, this weekend, you went down to LA and you hosted your first ever live kind of funny event. besides prom, but your first ever as a full-time member of kind of funny hosted event. It was supposed to be Greg Miller.

COVID hit the Miller household. So you and Joey had to step up. You had some help from Paris and Janet. How was that? You know, it was an experience of a lifetime, Tim, as I like to say. We have a really great team all around us from Greg and Team Xbox and then Janet and Paris for stepping in at the last moment. But we had a plan.

We stuck to it. And we had a really great time with the kind of funny best friends down in Hollywood. It was a really special event, a really, really fun time. And you know what? We had that theater rocking and that's all that matters. Hell yeah. Did you say yes to adventure? Oh, Greg, we said yes to adventure.

All right, I was on an LA rooftop for a little bit. Then I went down to this cool little grove like cafe, chateau. It was a good time. It was a good time all around. I had such formal seeing the pictures of the rooftop because like whenever there's a rooftop involved, that means there's a good time happening. Oh yeah. And then of course above us was the new resident evil

billboard for the new TV show with the giant liquor on it. It was pretty dope, Andy Cortez. You would have liked it. No, I'm good. Thank you. Of course, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every week, we get together to talk about video games and all the reasons that we love them. Of course, you can go to YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roosterteeth.com to watch it.

Or if you wanted to get it as we recorded, if you wanted to get it ad free. And if you wanted the exclusive post show, you got to go to Patreon.com slash kind of funny. games just like our Patreon producers, Fargo Brady, Delaney Twining, James Hastings, Casey Andrew, Gordon McGuire, and Al Tribesmen have done. We appreciate you all so very much. If you don't have a buck to toss our way on Patreon, that's totally cool. You can go use our Epic Creator Code kind of funny anytime you're on the Epic Game Store buying games using the Fortnite stuff or the Rocket League stuff, all of that. Use Epic Code. Kind of funny. And it helps us out. But enough about all of that stuff. Today we're brought to you by ExpressVPN, Athletic Greens,

and yundies i want to talk about that later i want to talk about stray the cat game or andy how would you describe the genre of this game it's a cat platform it's a cat former cat former everybody there you go there you go uh going around the table what is everyone's play status of stray andy done bless done greg greg done mike i did not get a review code so i did not play this game so there you go there we go so we're going to get some mike gives it a two out of I mean, he hates it. Who's doing the official review of Stray? I'm kind of funny.

Who's doing the numbered score? Me, baby. Me. Oh, Greg Miller, then. Let's start with you. What did you think of Stray? And what score did you give it on the kind of funny scale? Timothy Getty's back when I worked at a place called IGN.com.

I wrote video game reviews. In there, when I would sit down at the keyboard, I would always say, what was the most exciting thing about this video game? What is the thing that I want to talk about the most? What is the thing this game does the best, right? Or what is the headline? I guess out of this video game. And for Stray, for me, the headline is that this is the most accurate cat video game I've ever played in terms of being a cat.

The game is gorgeous. The cat is animated incredibly well. It has all the emotions of a cat. You know, jumping up on tables and knocking stuff over is very cathartic and normal. And that is where what I think about Stray ends. I found Stray to be a meh game. It's not a bad game. It's a pretty game.

It's a game that works, so it's not bad. It's not broken. It's not something like that. But it's a game that struggles with the fact that, you know, we always talk about, you know, show don't tell. This is a game that tells you everything and doesn't show its work for any of it. So I think it's a game that when you're playing it, you know, or at least I felt like I knew what emotions the developers were trying to elicit from you, what they wanted me to feel in a certain scene. But the problem was, I didn't feel like they backed it up with the gameplay or the moments that got us there for. for it's actually matter.

So for me, you know, my save is a five hours in like one minute or whatever. And at no point when I would put down the controller and I was doing something else was like, man, I can't wait to get back to Stray. It's, again, a perfectly competent game. I'm sure people will play this game and they will love it, but I did not. Like, I find this game to be one that I find hard to recommend and I think it's just okay on the kind of funny scale. So on the kind of buddy scale of one to five, you would give it a three?

Three. Okay, okay. And Dikortez, what was your experience with Stray? I'm a bit higher on the game than Greg. I think he nailed everything, though, as far as, like, the amount of mocap for this cat that went into work. Like, there are so many great details, and there are so many little moments of little moments that just make you smile.

Like, there's a lot of places around the world that you could just go lay down and cuddle next to something. And then we'll start a little, almost like an idle animation you follow. sleep and the camera just zooms out. It's very peaceful and serene. There's so much that comes through your dual sense too. Yeah, there's a little purr in the dual sense. There's so much love put into this game. I'm definitely a little bit higher on it than Greg, but I do think that it's missing a couple of big wow moments and there's a couple of moments in the game where I think the story is going in a certain

direction and then we strayed from that. We went in a different place and I think at the end of the day, like, Like, I still really, really enjoyed the story beats and kind of these, um, these moments of like, hey, the world isn't all terrible. We're supposed to kind of, uh, get some feelings of, of positivity and, you know, the world isn't completely fucked yet. You could still do something. Um, but at the end of the day, I don't think that it really lived up to what,

a game like inside does story-wise. And I'm kind of with Greg. Like I we get to these moments where they want you to feel a certain way about these things happening. And it's like it's right there. It's so freaking close. And I'm not exactly sure what it's missing. I wish I could like, I can give you a laundry list of what it's missing, I think, in terms of pushing and pulling, right? I think one of the great things that again, the game nails like I was talking about and you agree with and we're all there is this cat simulator, right? When me and Bless did the preview event, that was something they drove home during the Discord of like, you know, we want this to be the most accurate cat game of all time. And one of the things you called out, right, is this, you can nap around the world.

There's these little beds for you to sleep in. You get there, you start purring. It's a very cute, very sweet. It's almost like chill beats to vibe to. You know what I mean? Where you do it and like this camera angle changes a bit and there's usually a song playing behind it is really pretty and great. And there's a trophy for sleeping for more than an hour in the game, right? That is great. And I feel completely disconnected from the narrative they toss at you and they keep giving you of this is no spoilers it's in the description of what the game is right you are a cat that gets separated from its family falls into this robot world and you are trying to get back to the outside world the robots you meet in this robot world keep saying that to you you're an outsider you're trying

to get out you want to get back i understand blah blah at no point as the cat all i need here is the cat to look longingly at a photo of other cats for and i know this sounds so stupid, but remember we're playing a cat game. It's just that I don't feel like there's stakes being the stray cat. Where it is that like, you're there and everybody's like, oh, you've got to get home. You want to get home so bad. Oh my God, blah, blah. And like, this cat doesn't give a shit about getting home. He's totally

chill living here. The cat's not a, it's not a character whatsoever, right? All the characters are you meeting are all the robots, but like most of the stakes are put on the cat for oh yeah, I'm trying to get back home, but you don't feel that all through the cat itself. There's like there's a moment. You're right about that totally. There is a moment that is like, I think, like

the crux of my issue with it, right? where is this incredibly, it doesn't do it, but you can feel it. Like the music swelling, this monologue from another robot to the cat talking, blah, blah, blah, blah, laying it all in the line. And, of course, they play it the way they want to play it, as if this game is shown all of its work to get to this point where this robot matters to this cat. And the cat's sad or like, you know, has an emotional reaction to what the guy says, right? I was ready for the cat to, after this incredible monologue, which is, of course, just text prompts. There's no actual VO here. It's just a text you're reading.

I was ready for the cat to look at the robot, look at the camera, blink, and just walk away, not giving a shit because it's a cat. Like, this is a cat. It is just a cat. Like, there's no personification of the emotions the cat is going through. So again, it's going to be interesting as this reviews and gets critiqued. And I can't with you. Or bless us.

But, like, for everybody, of what you put on this cat, spoilers, literally 10 minutes ago. I'm sitting down. I'm getting my stuff ready. And I look at my phone and it's Janet Garcia. And she's like, stray though, right? And I'm like, oh, God, no, you like, she love, you know what I mean? Like, we're going to have different vibes on what you put on that cat, I feel like. I think if it was another simulator for another animal, I mean, you open up TikTok, you're going to find a video of like some animal crying over its dead brother or some shit.

You know what I mean? Like, you know those nature videos that always tug into your heartstrings and it's like an elephant crying because of this and this happened? Or there's like a lion that's like gone into a depression because one of the members of its pride like died recently. and like you feel that emotion. You and I have very different TikTok algorithms. I mean, I was the most depressing algorithm all time. Well, it's that and then it's like a half naked lady. So I was going to say, mine are all these women who don't understand their shirts and they go,

and the shirt pops off. They jiggle a lot. Yeah, that's crazy. But yeah, the, like, I do need some of that emotion. And yeah, you're right. At the end of the day, this is a cat that does an emote similar to what you would expect from a cat. But I think that would have driven the point home and made me feel more. in those moments.

Yeah. And it's the same thing, too. Like, you know, you don't know what they would have done to make people care more. I think for me, again, if it's going to be whatever you bring to the table

and project onto this cat gives you that experience, I do not. I went in our Discord call, people ask like, oh, man, can you customize the cat? They were like,

no, this is the cat. This is what we wanted to look like for everybody has the same experience. I think that's a huge miss. I think if you could have gone through and picked from five, seven different styles of cat, and then giving it a name.

Because again, there's no VO in this game. There's no, like, if we could have even gone that far to give it a little bit of personality for me to sit there, be like, oh, okay, it's gizmo. It's my old cat. You know what I mean? And I'm playing through this and I understand it. And like, I feel like that would have helped me get lost more in the experience. But the whole experience of it being like, you're astrayed, da-da-da-da.

And again, like I said earlier, I don't feel like there's stakes for the cat. Like, you fall down into this alien world and it looks like you're hurt. And I'm like, oh, somebody's going to come along and they're going to save us. And you had nurses. No, like, you limp for a little bit and then you start walking again in like the next scene. Oh, okay. later on you fall somewhere else you walk a bit okay eventually there's those little head crabs from half-life chasing you and it's like oh we've seen in gameplay footage and stuff the head crabs chasing you eventually you get in like a UV light to blow them up I'm like oh man that's gonna be a great change to the game no you get it it's like you use it a couple times but it's never like bam this is the shit this is why you're playing I've been ranting I'm sorry blessing what did you think real real quick real quick Andy what would you give it out of five are you still at that three or do you like it enough to give it to the four no I'd still give it a three out of

of five because I was really hoping that the story went in a different direction a la inside when you kind of have that big twist that kind of just flips your world upside down you sure I'm trying to take a minute I'm sitting right there you know um hey about the prince of belayer there you go yeah I would still give it a three out of five it's close to a four though I would say like I still recommend it I think it's a completely competent game um I do think there's some really clever puzzles and I had fun exploring the world I took a long time to beat it because I wanted to talk to everybody. I wanted to hear what everybody had to say. I loved talking to these NPCs that seemed pretty fleshed out in a lot of moments.

Again, the attention to detail in this game, it doesn't feel like it was made lazily in any way. Like there's a lot of cool detail, a lot of awesome characters, that there is a moment where you have to steal something from a shop owner. And once that happens, if you walk by it again, there's a the shop owner arguing with a cop outside and he's like getting pissed off because something was just stolen it's like I didn't expect to see that sort of thing happen and it's completely inconsequential but there's a lot of love poured into it and I just wish it had a bit more kind of story and emotional residents emotional residents and some gameplay elements to kind of back it up a bit more real quick Greg said that he was at five hours one minute

You said you played longer. How long was your runtime? I'd say close. Well, I'd say I was around eight, but I did leave it idling while I was eating a couple times. So I would say maybe more around seven, but I did. I struggled really long on one puzzle. Then when I figured out what it was, I'm an idiot.

It was right. What was I thinking the whole time? I was thinking it would be way deeper than what it was. But I did take a long time trying to capture a lot of the collectible type stuff in the game. There's a couple of things that you can go around and collect that took me forever to find. Blessing. Yeah, I tend to agree. I think for me, Stray is a phenomenal cat game, but an okay video game for all the reasons that I mentioned. One thing I do want to shout out is the game looks and presents phenomenally. I think graphically or reminded me of playing CyroPunk 277 in the

way that as I was playing that game, I was like, yo, the set dressing in Cyropunk is incredible, right? Like, the way they decorate the environment, the way they decorate the environment, the way they decorate the streets, the way that everything screams Cyropunk in that game very much comes through, and for me was one of the most stylish games of that year. Stray does a very similar thing for me where as I'm exploring the streets, I can't help but to like pan around and look around. And I feel like it is, I don't think it has a photo mode, but I think it would be the perfect photo mode game if it did have a photo mode. It is phenomenally looking. And then also in terms of its soundtrack and the way it sounds, I think that stuff is done

ex parte as well. Like there are so many moments where I was like, yo, this soundtrack is off the chain, the way they use bass, the way they use different types of synthi music, right? Like if you like that type of thing, if you like that cyrpunk look and the cyrpunk style, I think there's a lot there. But then in terms of gameplay, I'm with Andy and with Greg, I think it lacks substance.

And even in the stuff that it's trying to do with puzzles and it's trying to do with platforming, I find that even inside, I feel insider witness or any other sort of puzzle exploration game, there's way more to grab onto. And and more to, I don't feel satisfied with if that makes sense, right?

Like, I feel like a good puzzle game makes me feel like a genius when I solve the puzzle, and I did not have that once playing this game. That was one of my things here is like, I, this is, you know, maybe not recency bias, but matching things up, of coming into this one after Escape Academy, I really didn't even feel like there were puzzles in the game. Like a couple of them I kind of walked into totally by mistake, where there's one like, I don't want to spoil it, I guess, but there's one thing where you have to like basically find a guy in the city. And I didn't have that question yet.

I didn't even know I needed to do that. I just found a guy in the city that I fucked with and then followed him back and the puzzle was south. And I was like, oh, okay, well, this would have been a thing, but here's my way to get in and get what I need off of this thing. Like, it is such a weird low stakes gameplay thing of what you're doing and how you're doing it and very straightforward. It's all very, I feel A to B. When we left the demo and we talked about it on, I guess, PSL of you, maybe games guys. but it was the thing I remember talking about like, oh, there's this guy with sheet music.

Like, I'm really excited for there to be side quest like that. There aren't any. Like, that guy is pretty much it in terms of like he needs sheet music and you can either do it or not do it. You know, I guess maybe for one of the things you do need to do it. But it doesn't matter of like there isn't this world brimming with stuff. You find people and they need you to do stuff because it's going to help you on the main, your main mission to figure out where to get back to the surface.

So what is the gameplay of stray? It's, I will say that. The gameplay is much more interesting than what I would have given you credit for. Like if you told me it's just your cat exploring a city, trying to find clues and talk to people, that sounds inherently uninteresting to me. Like there's no combat. There's in certain sections, there's moments where you have to kind of evade. And they're more of like a sneaking type mission.

If you get caught, you can kind of like figure out ways to help yourself. escape or whatever but on its surface the idea of just climbing around a city and trying to find clues and talk to people seems pretty uninteresting to me but again i will say that unlike greg i was like itching to get back to it i wanted to find out what the next story beats were going to be what this npc was going to say once i found this and that you know i think the game is like just insanely gorgeous enough to kind of explore and I'm with Greg though on the part of like there's a that one MPC with the music notes you think it's going to be you think you're going to get a lot more of that and there's a later in the game there's another

hub world that you feel is going to be as kind of expansive and you get there and I'm saying man there's so many roads and alleys here wow oh okay I see how it's like yeah there's two and a half roads Yeah, it kind of feels Which is more confusing, which I was still like, why don't I have a map of some kind? Yeah, like, you know, Tim asks like, what is the gameplay? Part of the gameplay is that, right? Once you get into those more expansive, explorable areas, it is get lost until you figure out the puzzle you need to solve and then solve the puzzle. Like one of the clips that Barrett had up earlier was the clip of the cat approaching the fan that's spinning that you can't get past.

And then going back, getting like a bucket to then drop down the well to then stop the fan and get through. Like that pretty much is the gameplay. Are these short, sometimes longer environmental puzzles that you're trying to get through to then finally get back up to the servers because you're playing a stack. Lots of verticality. Lots of verticality platforming to get up and get rooftops and find out and take a different look and figure out what the next step is and what you need to do. And to that extent, like I don't even feel like platformer is an accurate description

because you're not really platforming, right? It is magnetized. It's just a good pun from Andy. It's a great pun. Yeah. But in terms of the kind of game it is, I'll probably describe it more as an exploration puzzle game, like exploration narrative game,

something along those lines. Go for it. It reminds me a lot, Tim, of the sort of non-combat NPC missions you'd find in a Zelda game. Hey, man, I wish I had a device for this thing, but fucking, it's broken. And then you happen to talk to another NPC that says,

oh, I know about this one thing, you should check this out. And those NPCs don't really, have anything in common with each other. They're not on this mission together. It's just you happen to find the McGuffin that that one person needs and you go Figure out exactly how to do that. So it's a lot of missions like that that kind of help you progress Where it's just it much like Greg mentioned sometimes you just stumble into these solutions and Sometimes you are seeking them out like I was where I'm talking in every MPC and like fuck where where was that one person that I miss? Oh yeah, yeah, they oh, oh, it's

oh, they were down there and they had this one item that could then lead me to the other item that would help out that one person. It's a lot of little, again, not necessarily, it's just problem solving. It's not even necessarily puzzle solving, you know? In some ways it reminds me of the latest hitman games where you step into a level in those games

and it is, here's this big level that you walk around, you try to figure out what different elements can interact with each other to solve the thing of, oh yeah, this person is a gardener. They need a garden hose to, like, do the thing. If you get them a garden hose and they might do the thing, that this other person slips and falls and kills them. Like it's that kind of you're going into a level,

kind of understanding what the, not even the scripts are because I feel like script, like that's almost too advanced of a way of putting it, but more so what are the elements laid out that I have to solve? And I think what's the B to get to see? You're at A, what's the B to get to see? And I think to their fault, a lot of them are so on the nose.

Yes. Like I'm exploring the rooftops. All right. And like, there's these guys tossing paint buckets across the thing to each other. Like, all right. And like, whatever, 20 minutes later I came through on the lower level and I walk in and there's the thing I need to get from this guy and the guy's like, whoa, get out of here.

Or he would even talk about the thing. He was just like, oh, I hope you're not one of those guys throwing pain up there. And I was like, oh, okay, go up there. Figure out what they need me to do to piss off the guy downstairs. Okay, there we go. Let's keep going. Sorry, back to one of my complaints off that exact thing, right? Like talking about how a lot of it is, oh, yeah, what's the A to get to be to get to

see? There would be times where I would get to be early because I was not even lost. I was just doing the thing that the game wants me to do, which is explore around, figure out the lay of the land, and then figure out how to get the A to B to C. If you've already figured out B or you've already gotten the item to figure out B, you're then jumping from A to C. And in this game where it is short, right? And like these instances are, what, maybe two or three times in the game

where you have an area like that that you're exploring. Yeah. For me, that felt like it took the wind out of a lot of the sales of, okay, cool, no, I already have the thing that they're asked me for because I just happened upon it. So I'm just basically skipping through this puzzle. So it kind of sounds like entitled Goose game a little bit, but just a different like look, but it is just kind of like a bunch of just to explore this area and figure out the different puzzles and stuff going on. Is the the, what are the controls like?

Is it literally just move around and then jump and then an interact button or is there anything deeper than that? There's a meow button. You can use the shoulder button. I did it everybody. A lot of sharpening your claws, a lot of sharpening your claws. One thing that was cool about the meow button early on that I was really sad. that they didn't keep doing was you're doing like a linear section early on right and you're kind of being guided by a robot that wants you to get to a certain location. If you press meow,

the lights like the lights in the world would then light up in a certain order that guide you to where you're going. And I was like, oh, is the meow how they're doing the HIN system? This is genius. This is awesome. They did not do it after that. They did not do that. And I felt like such a lost opportunity. When I had it where there's a one section, Tim, we were asking what gameplay examples. There's one where it's like, all right, cool. I'll help you, but you need to go find the four notebooks that we all had. I have mine, you need to go get three. And I got, I did one of them.

And then I got tired and I went to bed and I woke up the next day. And I'm like, fuck, which one did I already do? And I'm meowing and nothing's lighting up. And I'm going to places. It was cool because these areas had hidden the notebook really well. So it was all of a sudden like a needle in a haystack thing of really fucking up this guy's house. You know, moving shit all over as a cat, looking for things, finding things. But it was like a map would have helped me here or the hint system to where I had or had, you know, the meowing would have.

I thought move some of the frustration from it. Now, of course, you sit down and you just knock them all out in a row. You're going to be fine and not feel that. But there's like weird things of that where fucking up the house to find the thing I enjoyed. Later on, there's another house you go into. And, you know, there's like a cipher on the wall for what the code is, for the whatever. I think it's for the safe. But you have to go around the house and find the different pieces off of the little drawing she did.

That was fun. Like I liked the needle in the haystack stuff trying to find things that way. I didn't, you know, necessarily enjoy the other ones that were so, here of just like, ah, the paint bucket people, all right, paint bug, all right, cool. And then I get it out. I'd only say those moments were half baked because I wish there was more of those moments. I wish there were more of the knocking off the picture trains off the wall to get the code from behind it.

Like there's a couple of things like that. And you think that maybe the core gameplay is going to be around disheveling a house to find a clue that may lead to the next clue. and they're so few and far between and that was kind of the biggest bummer about it. There were some puzzles I really like, going back to what is the game. Parts of it reminded me of things I liked about Hellblade where if you played Hellblade,

basically half the gameplay in that game, the non-action portions are these environmental puzzles where you are trying to, like, stand in a specific location to figure out how to line a thing up to then open up a door to do the next thing. I love puzzle games that make you really pay attention and erect with the environment. And Stray has moments of that. Like one of my one of the puzzles I

really liked in the game was, uh, not to, not to spoil it. So I'll put in vague terms. You get like a postcard that on the back of it has like symbols written. And you have to talk to people to figure out like, okay, what do those symbols mean? And then like after you do that, you then get like a, you get like a loose. Oh, this is this, this is this, this is this. And then you then have to look around the, the little city area you're in and try to find, okay, where is this symbol at? And Because the world is so pretty and I think really beautifully designed, it was actually fun for me to go, all right, this symbol looks like an end with two dots on it. Where can I find this? And looking up and there's a lot of looking up in this game since your cat, looking up and figuring out like, all right, where is this thing?

Once you find it and then figuring out like, okay, how do I get to this floor? How do I get to this door? Those puzzles at points I thought were really well constructed and were satisfying to do. But for me, they were few and far between. A lot of them were just linear. Okay, obviously I got to trap this guy here. All right, let's do that. By the way, that's very obviously telegraphed.

And then you go on to the next thing. Andy, I know your hand went up before mine, but mine's so simple. The same thing with, like, there was a safe in an alleyway that I saw early on, and I was like, oh, man, and I saw numbers on the wall, and I was putting in combinations and they weren't working. And then it was like, I don't even know. It's not that long of a game. So 30 minutes, 45 minutes later, right, found it.

And then I was like, fuck, yes. But then it was the whole problem of the game where there's no map. And it was like, which alley was that? And I ran around. I'm kind of frustrated, but found it and opened it, and then it was nothing. And I was like, still, I wish you did more of this. I wish there was that kind of things, Andy, back to you. And I'd hate to kind of compare to a game that went above and beyond with sort of problem

and, or not necessarily problem solving, but just mystery solving with a game like Tunic, which also has an in-game language that is made up. This game, Tim, has an in-game language and alphabet that's kind of reminiscent of Star Wars sort of alphabet, the way that they're. There's sort of alphabet looks. And I kind of expected something along those lines where there's a couple of moments you're in early on. You enter an apartment and you see writing on the wall. And immediately my mind goes to Tuneck and I go, oh, I bet you there's stuff you can figure out in this world.

But I bet you this in-game language is going to be like the key to finding all sorts of other secrets that aren't even story. you don't have to you could beat the game without solving all this other extra stuff this is going to be really cool and exciting and it just never it never explores any of that unfortunately

and I thought that those were going to be the extra sort of world building puzzle solving stuff that you would find in Tunic and it just it never went anywhere close to that far unfortunately in some of the gameplay that Barrett was just showing earlier I saw like there was like a neon light

that it was like a sign for some building and then H-E-L-P, like, lit up, but there was, like, other letters that were blacked out? Like, is that the type of stuff you're talking about, Andy, or is that, that is more, like, specific. So there's English and other languages. Oh, yeah. Man, that would be cool if that kept happening.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. And, yeah, there are, it is English and other languages. It starts off so strong. Like, yeah. In that moment, that's near the beginning of the game, and I think the game starts off incredibly well and presents incredibly well. And it kind of just,

it loses a decent amount of steam as it keeps on going. I think part of my complaints with it, to bring it back, because I don't know if I rigged my score, I agree with Andy and Greg that I'd give it up three out of five. And it also took me about four hours to beat. I wish it went in either the direction of being slightly shorter. Because by the time I finished it, I was like, all right, I get what this game is. Like, I'm, I think I'm done here, right? I wish it was, hey, let's tighten up and just have it be this super linear two and a half hour,

two hour experience from point A to point B and not even worry about trying to, imply an extensive, extensive world, or even worry about the exploration stuff. Let's just make it like inside where it is totally linear. Let's focus on the puzzles. Let's focus on making that stuff satisfying and let's lean into that. Or I wish they went the opposite direction and made it a bit more expansive and actually went there. Because I think my biggest complaint with it is that at no point with any of its elements,

do I feel like it goes all the way in a way that any of these things blow my mind? Like the only thing where I'm like, oh, this is fantastic is one, how good the game looks because it is gorgeous. and then also how good the cat stuff is in terms of the cat mechanics, knocking things off shelves, how good the cat animation is hopping onto a thing. And just the gate of the cat.

Just the way it walks is I'm like, oh my God, this looks so much like the cats I had grown up. Exactly. But, you know, in terms of the puzzles, in terms of the story, in terms of the expiration, none of that stuff goes there in any way where I feel, like I felt like it was worthwhile to explore.

I felt like it was worthwhile to collect everything. At no point did I feel like I needed to do that. This is a weird question, but like, do you think that if you guys had cats that you were like really attached to now, that it would, that you would find more meaning in it? Like maybe like with Janet, like she seems to be higher on you guys are. She has her cat. Like if this game was about a Pomeranian, I'm sure I'd be like this is the best game of all time. We'll play Tokyo jungle right now and tell me. Oh, no, I played that and I don't, I don't think that's the best game of all time.

But I can't wait. This is more of like, that's on a Pomeranian simulator. You know what I mean? I can't wait for my first. friends, actually all our friends, Belinda and Yusuf to play this game, because they're my my cat people. They are my friends that own cats and they love their cats so much. And as I'll, throughout my time playing this game, the thought that kept coming to me was, oh, they're going to fucking love this as cat people who I know adore their cats. Like, you know, say, oh, whenever

the cat does anything in the house, right? Like, this game is going to speak to them so much. And I do think that, I don't know if it's the fact that I don't have cats that's taking things away for me, but I do know if I did have cats, I would appreciate, I would probably, I would, I would, I would, I would forgive probably a lot more or appreciate a lot more just purely in terms of, oh, I fucking love this little creature running around this world. Like Greg, you specifically, you've had cats before, but like, I feel like your attachment obviously was way more to Portillo. Like, if it was a weiner dog, do you think you would have enjoyed this game differently?

That's one of those where I've thought about it. And it's impossible to say, obviously, because your gameplay would be so much different. If it was a weiner dog, namely your inability to jump to anything. It would be a little lower game. Yeah, exactly. Or if you did, you just hurt yourself. I don't know. And I think, I forget, I'm sorry, I forget if it was Andy,

your blessing who said that it's like a great cat game and not that great of a video game. I think that really is what it is. Because even me, that's like my compliment to it. Like, I think the cat is cute. Like, I think stray is cute. I think it is, you know, it was fun to jump up on it and knock stuff off. Like, I think all that's there. But then I wonder if that becomes like, oh, this is so cute.

And it's something you play for an hour or two hours and then put down and never come back to it or whatever. And come back to it that way. If that's the grading on the curve, I think for us in particular, like, you know, we can walk that line and give, you know, the, the bias if we're a cat person or unbiased, non-cat person. I just think as an overall video game, there's so many other things I'd recommend to play than this. Are you going to apply to it? God, no.

No. When I was playing it, I looked at it and I was thinking about it. And then it kind of slipped past me that there was one on here that is beat the game in two hours or less. Got it. And I was like, no, no, no, I'm sure that's not hard, but I have no desire to run through and play the entire thing with a gun to my head like that. of like, ah, do I, I, I've blown, I wasted time trying to find that other notebook. Now am I screwed or whatever?

No, I'm good, thanks. Either of you guys interested in 100% of it? No. No, I've never been the trophy person anyway, so. Takes a certain constitution, Andy doesn't have it. Andy, give me your final thoughts to close out the straight section. I'd still recommend it as a game to check out. I know if you have the PS Plus essential, whatever the hell.

hell level that they're at. Extra. Extra. Extra. If you're at that level that you can get the game and try it out for free anyway. So definitely give it a shot, because I think that it has a lot going forward. It just fell short of what we are all hoping for it to be.

And we're going to take a word from our sponsors, but we get back. Ask me, ask me too. Greg, what's your final words on strike? Is it a five out of feline? Of course not. But is it a catastrophe? No. Here's some sponsors, man.

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He brought me back in on that. Now that we're back here, now that we're back, I want to talk about as dust falls. Mike, I want to get you off the bench. You've been sitting here. You've been real quiet. I told you all let me turn off the camera, you know. No. I was on the camera.

He asked a question about the cat game. He's like, is there a plug in it? There's no puns. You're excited about that cat game, Mike? No, not at all, actually. Actually, hearing from everybody, I was excited, but then when I saw the platforming was not as free-flowing as I wanted it to be, kind of took away my cat dream.

So that's probably a skip for me. No big deal. I'm sure people will play it and enjoy it. Well, moving from the PlayStation side to the Xbox side to the Xbox side, We got AsDusk Falls. You got to go host the event for this. Greg, you want to give the top level kind of...

Hey, everybody. It's Greg Miller from Kind of Funny. As you know, Mike went and hosted an event that I was supposed to go host as well. But that was just the start of a bunch of as Dusk Falls sponsored content and kind of funny involving me, Mike and Joey. We're also streaming the entire game, starting on Tuesday, ending on Wednesday, and then we're doing a spoiler cast as well.

So, heads up. We're going to talk about as Dust Falls in a review sense. Blessing played it and is involved in the sponsored stuff, even though I think he wants to come on the spoiler cast, which I'm totally fine with. But just a heads up, if you want to take our opinion with a grain of salt, we want to make sure you understand what we're doing ethically and in front of you, so you're not worried about it. There's the salt, Tim sprinkling on it.

But of course, have I ever fucking lied to you in 15 years? Has Mike ever lied to you? Not a chance. So, Mike, don't lie to me. What did you think of as Dust Falls? Kim Gettys, I was very apprehensive at first about as Dust Falls. And if I would be into it as I'm not big on the Choose Your Adventure narrative-driven games, unless it is the Dark Pictures Anthology.

but after playing through this game, I had a great time with it. Honestly and truly, I really, really enjoyed As Desk Falls. And I didn't think I would like the art style. I actually fell in love with the art style. I found myself melting into the couch and just enjoying this as if it was some sort of,

like, mature AMC showtime drama where I would watch and then I got to put myself in the show and make some of these choices. And I had a really fun time with this. I really, really enjoyed the ride. It's about six hours long. each episode that you're going to play is about an hour.

And so I really recommend this, maybe playing this in short bursts, one chapter a night, one every two or three days. So you remember the story. But also one thing I did learn from talking with the development team over at Interior Night and something I agree with is you should play this game with the loved ones or with friends. This is a game with every decision. You should have a conversation with somebody because it is great single player,

which I played all of my time with except for over at the event, which I'll talk about later. But when you play it single player, you bring yourself into it and you kind of make choices off of your real life experiences and what you would bring to the table, which is great. But having that conversation with somebody else

is really, really cool because you kind of see where you blend the lines, where you both are on different sides of the fence with these. And I really, really encourage people for your non-gamers in your life, people that love those shows that they get lost in the Fargoes, all those kind of dramas. of the motorcycle people, the Ozarks,

the motorcycle jerbronies. Like, this is the game that will bring them. You know who they were. And so this is the game that will bring them onto the couch and sit down with you. And I think it's a ton of fun. The art style will catch your eye, right? The decision making is fun.

And she, the interior design or interior night team, I asked them, how do you keep me involved? Because I felt like I was melting into the couch and just watching this as opposed to playing it. And it is really interesting. Because their mindset was every 20 seconds, we want you to make a decision. And you feel that as you're playing, right? There is a steady beat to that where you're watching, you're watching,

oh, get up, you've got to do something, whether it be a quick time event or go explore and make a decision. And I really like that where I enjoyed the ride and watching it. But I also did enjoy getting up and making those decisions. And boy, howdy, there's a ton of decisions and there's going to be a lot of outcomes. So the spoiler cast is going to be pretty dope. But for me, I had a great time. with this. I was truly blown away. I didn't think I would like it as much as I did, but it left me on the edge of my seat every single time one of those episodes ended all the way

up until the end. So for me, it's a four out of five for sure. Wow, a great from Mike. Greg Miller, this is a Greg Miller game, if I have ever seen one. You are kind of opposite of Mike here where you play all of these things. You're very well worn in the territory of this type of decision-making gameplay style. What did you think of as Dusk Falls? I'm still working my way through it. For preview, we played two chapters and then review code came and then I had a back end problem because my preview build and review build, yada, yada, and then everyone in my house got COVID at once and my baby was really sick. So I still have two chapters to go. So I've played, if you're keeping track, four of the episodes, I have two left to go and I can't wait to get back

to them. And so like my tentative review would be to agree with Mike on a four out of five and call it great. I don't see that falling apart down the line. And I think for me, what is the, again, you know, come to it, what's the most exciting thing to talk about from a review, especially for a game that is so if I was talking about a story, it would be spoiler. Because the story is great. What I think is so great about the game and what it does so well is the fact that it has a myriad of interesting choices. When I play, you know, I'm just going to throw a bucket out there of, you know, your telltales, you're walking deads, or whatever. Any of the choose your own adventure games, right? Anything from Quantic Dream, yada, yada, yada, yada. Usually when I'm presented with a choice,

I feel like it's pretty clear what I want to do with what I'm trying to do for that playthrough or who I think the character is. You know, I usually get in my head about, this is, this is my Lee, right? Or this is my robot in Detroit,

become human. Like, I have a, I have my own narrative Bible for these things and what they would choose. They would never do this. They would never do that. What I was,

last time I'm playing, it would have been chapter three or four, right? And there was a moment that came up, and I was playing as Vince, who's the guy who looks just like Alex Van Aiken. And, you know,

the choice came up and it was like, it was like seven different things to say. And I sat there, being like, oh, man, you know what I mean? Like that this is, I'm between these things and I'm in this moment, but I'm also calling in like the relationship I have with my wife based on this. And I'm like trying to weigh the, you know, likelihood of my daughter, but I want to know more about what my dad's doing. And it's like, that I think speaks to the quality of the writing in this game

and the storytelling they're giving you in a way that most of these games I feel like don't for me. Most of these games are I play it and I put it down and then I'll talk somebody else about it. maybe I'll, you know, it actually drops, go look at like the different kind of endings. But this is one that when it, I, when you end that chapter, you then get the giant timeline that I always go back to Detroit become human having it. Of course, you know, the CEO of Interior Knight is a former quantum dream person. She left started this working on this deal now. And you jump in there and you can see all the choices played out. You can see the branches where you didn't go that are then just empty spaces. But you also get this amazing thing where

you make a choice and then it's a dotted line going to do-da-da-da-da-da-da-d-d-d-d-d-d- and then it goes all the way over to show you, this is the decision that this choice, or yeah, this decision influenced this event later on. And so it is this really fascinating thing of, you know, you can go back on that timeline and a very specific, but like also a lot of them, parts, click on it and replay from there. And I'm so excited to play this a game again on stream this week because I'm hoping we make different choices. And of course, there's a whole, Mike, we haven't talked about it, but I assume we're using the Twitch functionality, right? Thank you. Yeah, Greg, I was going to take a moment just to steal it from you and talk about

what they did with the multiplayer, right? Because we talked about single player and playing it on the couch with a loved one. There's also couch co-op where you can have up to eight people choosing and making these decisions. And then they also brought in the integration mode of broadcast mode where up to eight people can play on the same couch, all of us making decisions. But also, if you're a Twitch streamer, you can link your Twitch account with it, which is just an easy type in the name of your Twitch account, and then the chat can actually vote on the decisions too. So you have this really cool pull and push where we did it live during the big event, where the chat was involved with us, and it was really fun of like, you could win the chat

over with you or you could see what the chat sides with. And we also had really cool moments of there can be a coin toss, right? If the chat goes 50-50 with you, it goes into coin toss mode and it will actually just do the flip and choose for you. And another cool moment that they had was for the players who were actually on the controllers, you have an override button that you can use either one time per chapter or you can set it to whatever number you want. And so if you don't like what the chat or your friends do,

you can override that and pick it yourself, which I found was really, really cool. But you can override the override if you wanted to and go back and forth. But it's a really fun way to have others involved in a game that we normally think is just single player. Greg Miller by himself with his headphones on. I love that we're becoming a little more social with this, especially with a, such a mature title and the darker themes that this has,

it's a lot more fun to look over and be like, man, Greg, you would choose that because I'm not choosing that, you know. It's kind of wild like that. So I want to hear from Bless, the one person not in big Xbox's wallets at this point, all right? You are the official reviewer here at Kind of Funny for this game. What are your thoughts on it? What would you give it on the kind of funny scale, Bless? So I'm giving it a four out of five, similar to time Mike and what Greg mentioned. this game is so serious and so gritty

and it took multiple chapters for me to not see Alex Van Aiken in Vince because like if you know Alex Van Aiken he works a game informer now, we used to all keep used together before I was that kind of funny. He looks so one for one like the character in this game that at a certain point I was like I don't know if I can keep doing this. Like such serious things are happening in this video game and I keep seeing Alex Van Aiken in this character.

It's almost as if they like they did it on purpose. But for me this is a game that There is. There's Vince in the game, not show a photo of Alex. Just like Vince. This is a game that takes me back to my first time playing Walking Dead or the first time playing Heavy Rain or my first time playing Life is Strange, where playing this feels like narrative, interactive, choose your own adventure games being taken to a new place that I really

appreciate. And I think a big part of that for me is the art style, which I think is phenomenal, but at times I do think can be a detriment. I think when it works, it looks phenomenal. I think it looks really pretty. I think it looks really unique. And I think it gives a really unique energy to the game. But then when it doesn't work, it does distract me more than immerse me in the game.

Like I had multiple moments where I was like, I'm having to strain my eyes a little bit because for those who are unaware, right, as this falls, art style is very much a hand-painted stop-motion style, art style where it is like frame by frame, you see the characters kind of like, you know, not moving because they don't have animation. So it is, you know, image by image. But then the actual environments a lot of the time are 3D rendered. And so at times it's really cool when you see this like hand-painted dude get out of a car. And like the car door swings open in real time.

But then like he animates out in a way that's like picture, picture, picture. I think that stuff was really cool. But then yeah, at times I was like, oh man, this is kind of taking me out of it. And so I'm kind of swing back and forth on that. What I do love is the story. You know, I think in terms of choose your own adventure stories, this is the most I've ever felt the tension of what my choices are. there are so many moments where I had to press pause because I had to take a moment and breathe and think like

ah shit all right do I want to say this or I want to say that similar to what Greg mentioned right where you have you'll have seven seven choices pop up and it really is ah fuck I got to take into account everything that that's going on here and for this kind of story that is way more grounded and way more serious than what we've had recently with things like the quarry and all the supermassive games that feel way more like yeah characters are going to die but like if they die

they die, right? Here I'm like, oh no, if this character dies, what happens to the rest of these characters? Like the rest of the stories, like how are they impacted? Like, how do these characters get out of this? I really, I really felt the tension there. I really liked the relationships between different characters and how they connected characters that at one point probably wouldn't have ever come across each other in life, but then now they're in the situation together and you really have to consider actual relationships and how they feel about each other. I love how they do that stuff. And yeah, overall, like, I was enthralled from beginning to end, and I can't wait to either be on or listen to the spoiler cast, depending on how my week goes, because I have no idea if I'm going to be on the spoiler cast or not. But I can't wait to talk to people in general about how their stories landed.

Because for me, there are multiple points where I was like, I cannot imagine this not being core to the story. And then I texted Joey. And I was like, what was what happened? And she's like, oh, this happened. I'm like, what the fuck? Then how does that impact? Like, how does this character end up here? it is so good about its results

and I think the story is really intense really gripping I was enthralled throughout and yeah I think this is a great video game Andy what would make it a five out of five for you bless for me I wish that I had more

connection to the characters in terms of there's a whole cast that they introduced one of them looks like one of your best friends bless one of them looks like Alex van Aiken but there's a whole cast Barry just pulled up an image of Vince with his hands up I don't know what Van Aiken's doing in his life day

That was Van Aiken right there I was Van Aiken I'll pull up Ben I'll pull up I don't know how Van Aiken hasn't dropped everything he's doing To take screenshots and recreate them Like I would be the first thing I would do For me So this game is similar to the Quarry And the Supermaster games

In the way that it bounces around Where you're playing as different characters You're not just playing as one character The whole time and I found that later on there were certain characters that I wish I cared more about that they're putting you in the shoes in

and I wish there's a handful of characters that I wish we got more from in terms of their overall story and their backstory but then also in where those characters go later on and also just in terms of resolution

like the game leaves you wanting more in both I think good and bad ways where I finished it and I was like damn I really wish I had more of this I really want more but at the same time I was like oh, this game could use a little bit more. Like I think the game maybe could have used maybe another three chapters to try and tie up a lot of the things they set up later in the game.

And I think some of that is probably hinting towards, oh, maybe you'll get a sequel or maybe you'll get DLC or something that'll fill in those gaps. But by the time I finished it, I did want more of that stuff. And then also, I think the art style to use some better execution. I think it is, it pushes the boundaries. It is different. It is unique. And I appreciate them for going for this art style.

but I don't think they nailed it 100% of the time in terms of keeping you immersed. I did feel at some points like it was, oh man, I can't look at this for too long because now I'm thinking about the art style and not what's going on in the story. Those are the two things that do bring it down for me. But I think those are the things that if they make

an as Dusts Falls to or some kind of like, if they make a new game, a new IP or whatever, I think they can smooth those edges out and really make a phenomenal video game. What about you, Mike? I'm actually very similar with Bless on the art style, but for me, I actually fell more in love with the art style because, you know, we always say the saying a picture says a thousand words. I liked this art style because I got to kind of pick

apart what's happening in the foreground, the background, what are the emotions that they're conveying? And I think the hand-drawn art style allows for better emotions to be shown than what we saw was super massive, right? Where when you're playing the quarry and then that girl gives you the awkward look with way too much teeth, you kind of get drawn out of it. I think in this, when they have the hand-drawn style and you see all the different emotions, you kind of put yourself in there and you kind of show what you like and don't like or what you can pull apart from that. And they do a really good job with the art style.

I will agree some moments I like, some I don't, but in all honestly, I became more in love with the art style as I played through it. And as Bless said with the story, it feels like every single episode ends with a big cliffhanger. Even when we were in live in the event, when episode one ended,

everybody screamed and wanted more, right? and that's how it ends and left me wanting like, okay, give me a season two to the season one television show we just played through, right? Like, I'm ready for more like Blessing just said. And so I don't know. I could easily say this is the best narrative game that I've played. Out of all these games that I've gone through from Telltale to the supermassive games, this one had the story, the art style,

the good, quick time events that didn't pull me out and make me feel like, oh, I'm playing some actual like first person, shooter video game, it felt more relaxed, but also at the same time kept me on my toes, like I said with the pacing of it all. But this is the best one I've played so as far. And I think it does go to the more mature adult themed storyline, right, that we have here. There's a lot more to get involved in a lot more of yourself being projected in there and also playing, man, what would I do if I was this character?

What should they do? And that's what I'm excited for about a lot for when we played on Twitch is maybe going the full chaos route and like bringing in nothing. but bad vibes into this and seeing what we can draw out of it because of course I became good Mike after chapter one where it's like I'm going to save everybody I'm going to be the best I can be I want to go the opposite direction and do the things I wouldn't normally do because that's a cool one after you finish every single episode before you get to the big pulled out spider web that Greg was talking about they show you these three traits and these traits are about how

you the player kind of got involved in the story and so I got a lot of traits about like you're loyal or like you're a family oriented type of guy or like you did all the quick time events really really well and i like seeing the traits kind of flow and change each and every episode but i kind of had a through line of like being more loyal sticking to the script that i would normally do as a human being and i want to see what those other traits look like i love when you go to the spider web and they're going to have the global breakdown of it with the percentages and i love seeing oh mike you chose with only 28% of the group like what did everybody else say over there. Like, I want to see those

too, and it is really cool. I think that was another big shining star was the spider web and showing all the different outcome. A thing I'd like to see from the game would be more ebbs and flows in terms of the story progression. Because I'm with you, Mike, for me, in terms of narrative video games,

this is the most a game's narrative has a game's narrative has gripped me in since Life Strange True Colors. But I think I like a lot about Life Strange True Colors is that it had a lot of moments to let itself breathe. And I think parts of that is the fact that in life strains, there is exploration, there is walking around. There are those moments between the cutscenes, and Asdis Falls doesn't have that.

Asdesk Falls is all cutscene. And so, like, you are only interacting with the game when you're making choices or when you're doing quick time events. And I think it works for what it is, but also the game is a roller coaster throughout. You know, you are tense throughout. There are not many moments of, hey, let's sit down and just have a talk between characters. or let's chill out. Like, let's explore a bit of what's going on through these characters' mind. It is go, go, go, go, go.

And it is a roller coaster all throughout. And I think that makes it suffer just a little bit in ways where I'm like, I would care. Like, there are moments toward the end of the game where they are trying to go for. All right, now let's settle down. And I feel like if they had built up more of, you know, what's going on in these characters' heads as the story is going, maybe I would believe that stuff a bit more later on in the game when they do try to do that.

But that said, right, it is such a good roller coaster. It is such a good ride. And if you're looking for a game to make your heart rate go, like on, like on from zero to 100 throughout the entire time, like this is the game for you. Like this is a game that is a, it's a narrative game that will have you worrying about any single character in this game. It's like playing uncut jams. 100%.

I just wanted to throw out real quick before Tim goes that for audio listeners wondering about the art style. The art style is essentially, if you've ever watched like the making of a movie where they show you really, really well done animatics. It's essentially just like the highest production storyboards you've ever seen in your life where the only movements you're seeing of the characters, the background is all animated. It's all moving fully 3D modeled, fully like just decked out.

But the, what you're seeing from the characters moving wise is their key frames. Like if they're sad, they look sad, then they explode and they get really big, but you don't see any of the in-between animation. So that's kind of like what they're saying by it, maybe taking it out of the end. experience every now and then. So yeah, jumping out that even with the art style of it. So everything

I've seen from this game has just been those kind of dialogue choice seeming things where you're you're making choices, those conversations and the different art is changing. Is there actual gameplay of walking around and doing things like, no? So it is all 100% just decision choice based stuff. No. There is swiping and there is mashing of a. Oh, there's cute but there's he's talking about exploration walking around. My apologies. I thought we were saying is the only thing. I thought Intam was asking the only gameplay is decision-making. There's more than that, there is that. And there are scenes where a character walks in a room and is like,

oh, I need to grab these things and you can choose which things they grab or which things they interact with. But those, again, are very few and far between. And those are also choice-driven in terms of you just picking whatever the character is doing. And what I wanted to toss in is one of those things about the QTEs, which are swipe-up, swipe-down, it's like left, mash-A or whatever. for me, I think earlier, like, what's, you know, it's a four out of five,

what keeps it down, right? For me, that's one of them, is that I feel those are all too easy. The windows are too large on those where I'm like, oh, I, sometimes I don't even feel like I'm matching a good enough. So in five and six, Greg, those will ramp up. I want you to know.

So there's going to be a couple. I don't throw it in my face. Oh, you haven't finished the game. So you can't even say, right. I'm just saying there was a couple. I thought that at the beginning too. I was like, oh, they're very nice with the timing. This is great.

You choose to actively miss it. if you really want to. Yeah. And then there was a couple at the end there where I was hustling and I missed a couple when I was really trying because I think they really ramp up a couple of the moments right at the end there. Okay. For sure.

So keep an eye off for that. But also, you know, going to that, you know, talking about the accessibility features, they have a lot to work or a lot that they added into this to really elevate this. And one thing I did like was when we talked about going to those rooms and kind of having the moment of like discover where these items are hidden, you know, when you're first looking at that painting, nothing is on the screen except for the first one. And you kind of page through and look for them, right? On the accessibility features, you can actually have those pop up and stay there or have

them right from the start so you don't have to kind of fumble and look around. And I think that's a good one for my mom to have when we play it together. It's like, oh, they're all on the screen. Just choose what you want, mom, instead of shuffling around trying to look for it. Let's get that. Let's play. I mean, my mom playing this, she would freaking love this game. She's going to love this.

And that's the thing, I can't wait to play with friends. who might not be super into video games in the way that I'm sure people do that with the Quarry and other similar types of games as well to sit down and go, all right, we're gonna watch this story, watch this narrative,

and we're gonna interact with it. And we can vote, like it reminds me, it takes me back to playing. I played Hidden Agenda when that came out. That's a supermassive game that was a bit more lower key because that was part of...

PlayLink. PlayLink, yeah. PlayLink, baby. Yeah, where PlayStation for like three months we're trying to push an initiative where you can play games with your phone. And so, yeah, supermassive made a game

that was this, cop drama where you and your friends would sit and vote on what to do with your phone. And it was similar to this game, it was all cutscene, right? No exploration. And I had a blast playing that were friends. It wasn't the greatest game or story. But I think just that experience of being on the couch and going, oh, no, we should do this. Oh, no, we should do this.

And then in Hidden Agenda, they had a button that you could press to override everybody else's choices, which I wish more games would do that. I think this game would thrive off of something like that, where you can override people's choices to then make the choice yourself. That stuff is fun. Yeah, they have that. You'll see that when we play that. So when you play multiplayer up to eight people locally or you can have the Twitch

involved, you do have an override button. Each and every person that's actually playing the game has that. So you'll be able to override certain people's decisions. They can override your override and so forth. Another cool one you bring up the phone, right, that I want to mention is they have a companion app that drops with the game. And so if you're playing on the couch with eight people, let's say, right, you're all in the same home and you don't have enough controllers.

actually the phone companion app can become a controller right then and there. So for my mom, instead of giving her a controller, she can feel a little bit more comfortable on the phone. And it will have, it's not the actual video in the screen, but it will have the decision she can click on

and be like search over here or vote for this option, which is really, really bad. That's great. And then for the Twitch people, all they have to do is, so like every decision will have a number next to it. So it will be like, hashtag one,

hashtag two, hashtag three. And all they have to do is type in hashtag one and you'll see a really cool one for the Twitch streamers is the names of your Twitch chat will pop up as they vote. So it'll be like Tim Getty's voted for this and then like over on the other side, Andy voted for this and it will keep cycling through everybody, which is pretty rad to see live and inaction because we were calling on people teasing them and making fun of them as they voted. So it was really, really cool.

One thing we've not talked about is the actual premise of the story. I don't know if Mike or Greg wants to do like a quick pitch on what the actual story of Hasnes Falls is. Dustful. Well, I can do the non-spoilery thing. The trailer that Barrett already showed shows that I'm still waiting to happen, but there's a time jump here. Your story as Dust Falls is told in two parts, ladies and gentlemen,

two books as they'll call it. But the idea is two different families intersecting in life and getting into the crazy circumstances that'll happen after the fact. You have Vince and his family. They're moving across country. Vince is in her marriage, and they have a daughter named Zoe. and then his dad's there and he's a complete jerk, but it's whatever, he's fun.

Maybe he'll turn out to be a great guy. I doubt it. A lot of things are teasing that I still haven't seen Deliverinon, haven't seen Deliverin'on in my game yet. I can marry questions I had at the end of chapter two, still have at Chapter 4? Have they peppered in things for me to go, what the fuck are you doing back there,

Vince's dad? They have on a very, very sad to see that reveal. But anyways, they're moving across the country. I like how this feels like we're doing an interview real thing. I know. It's not energy. Vince and his family are moving across the country after Vincent's job totally went to shit.

I don't want to get into it because that story stuff you'll get into and it's interesting and how you want to do it. Then of course we run into the Holt family. Three brothers who are just not, they are near do wells, Tim. They are, you know, your typical white trash, whatever. You know what I mean? And we meet them as they are

about to pull a robbery in a house. It's chapter one. They're going to rob a house. And then when guess what, that goes pear-shaped, they smash in to Vince's family. And then we are afoot, ladies and gentlemen, basically a hostage standoff. off at a hotel and that's where basically your game kicked off. That's where Dusk Falls.

Every episode has a little breadcrum like Greg said where you go, what's happening here? And I loved that. Every single time, there's a story beat and you're like, oh man, like what? And then like you want to learn more about it. And maybe you will,

maybe you won't. And I like that depends on your choices, right? That's the thing is like, and that's another thing that I really appreciate about the game and the choice making is that when given those opportunities to chase story threads, they feel like they pay off or at least get me closer to the payoff. Like as I said, right?

And I talked about this in the Xcast when I did the preview of the first two chapters. Like chapter two starts with a flashback and it's a conversation between Vince and his wife. And it was one of those that once I wrapped it up, I reloaded and went back and I wanted to see what happened when I played it the other way. Like it does end in a, not in a different spot, not dramatic, but different. And I was like, all right, that's awesome. Like I want to see that. And I, even now, I'm like, oh, man, like the game is, I don't want to spoil anything. The game is real good about you interact with things like we were talking about earlier.

They're not even on the screen, but then you go and find them if you want to kind of thing. And it can look like, all right, cool, I'm reading this piece of paper about this guy's daughter, you know, being in trouble for smoking. What's it matter? And you put it down. And then it's like, oh, conversations later reference information in there. And it was like, shit. How closely do I read the fucking piece of paper? And the guy, you know, they're asking your questions.

you're like, fuck, you know what I? But it's like so fucking smart. And that happens a bunch of times in the game so far. Of like something gets referenced and you're like, all right, whatever. And then it comes back like, what about it? And like, oh, fuck, right. Shit, fuck, fuck. I love that.

I love that. Any final words on as Dust Falls? Shout out to the soundtrack. Music is really good in the game. This is a game that honestly, if it was on Netflix, I'd watch it, right? Like, I think the story is that good. And it's that engaging. If they ever adapt it, one, I don't think they need to adapt it because the

game does already a really good job of its story. But if they did adapt it, I'd be ecstatic to actually watch it through again to see how they would translate that story. Because what they have here, I think, is again, very engaging. One of the things I enjoy, which I didn't enjoy about Beyond Two Souls, a Quantum Dream game, is that in Quantum Dream or in Beyond Two Souls, everything's kind of told out of order. And so you jump in and you're like, cool, this is happening here. Next scene is happening here.

And everything's kind of spread out in a way. that when playing Beyond Two Souls, for me, was hard to keep up with and made the story feel disjointed. And by the time I would get to certain things, I wouldn't feel that same level of tension anymore. This game has similar stuff going on in terms of jumping around in timelines of here's what went down a few weeks ago.

Here's one went down years ago. And they have that happen a lot in this game. But it never took me out of the tension that was going on. Even in places where they were really pressing things happening in the present, when they would flash back or forward, I would still be like, oh no,

what's happening here is also really interesting, so I need to see this through. And then I get back and I'm like, all right, cool, now let's deal with this. And I think they do such a good job of pacing and piecing those things together in a way that feels way more natural to the story. And jumping into what I assume

maybe your chapter four thing was, it's the same for me, where you're playing something like, all right, this is cool, why am I playing it? And then you get to a thing and a decision and it's like, oh, and then it had a dramatic effect

on where that was like a flashback, then it has a dramatic effect on where the main timeline is. And I was like, that's fucking cool. But I don't understand how that would be if I wasn't, what happens in the story if I didn't do that thing? And I'm like, I got to find out. Yeah, for me, I mean, day one on Game Pass for PC, cloud console, right? It's going to be on Steam.

It has crossplay. You have multiplayer with locally. You can do the Twitch integration. There's so many things that build in to making this a really fun experience. And like I said, again, you should play it with someone, whether they're a non-video gamer or a gamer, you should play with someone to have these conversations with, and it will really go far for you to have some fun.

I think the mature themes and the story that they did and the writing is really well done. The best that I've experienced in these Choose Your Own Adventure games, there were few to none that I can remember had moments where you said, like we talked about in the quarry with the big old fuck you back scene, you know what I mean? That just didn't federal rights. But, you know, it was really cool to be able to host the event

and get to know Caroline, who is the CEO and creative director of Interior Night and the story of this team and how she got to this point of creating her own studio, leaving Sony and working on this game for eight years and being able to pitch it to Microsoft and where we are today is really, really awesome. You know, we try our best to talk about the developers and the people behind the scenes who create this art. It was really cool to be there firsthand and be able to ask her questions to talk to her about her background. It was really, really wild and see the passion that they put in and how much people really engaged with it live and in action. It was special. So, yeah, this is a really cool game.

I really recommend you all trying it out, especially because at the time, game pass. It lost it. It only six hours, an hour each episode. Give it a try. And I bet the first cliffhanger will grab people. Greg. One thing, and I'm sorry if it went over when I had to run away.

I just want to give flowers to the cast. I think the acting is great. like Elias 2, Fexes, who of course is Adam Jetson, yeah, you know, DeiSX. He's Vince. He plays Alex Van Aiken. He does a great job. And I think the rest of the cast does as well where, you know, when I previewed it on Xcast, I complimented the art style like we did here too. And Gary was like, oh, man, I didn't like it.

It really took me out of it. And for me, it's jarring at first because it is so different. But then there are moments where I'm like watching it. I'm like, oh, you're not even animating right now. But I'm so lost in the scene as you go back and forth, right? as the character Jay goes on his journey. It does all these things. I thought it was so impressive.

Super cool question about the cut scenes or the quick time events. Are they forgiving in any way? Are there options to make them easier? Because Mike mentioning this is on cloud, I'm like, wow, that could be neat. But I don't know if maybe you run into issues with quick time events with cloud based on, you know, it's sort of response time. Yeah. Yeah.

In the accessibility settings, you can turn off the timer for quick time events to give you a little bit more there. There are some in the later parts where it goes from just a flick up or a flick to the left or right into more of a spinning motion that I did get caught once or twice on. So yeah, I would definitely look into that if it's catching you or if you're having latency problems, maybe just turn off the QTEs and the accessibility options there.

But nothing too outrageous. And I think there is kind of the makeup moments afterwards of like, you missed it the first time. We're going to give you one more time and you do it all again. So there is chances to get. get it back. I noticed a number of times there. And I do, talking about the actors, we got to give a good shout out to our four-legged friend, Jesse the dog, who does Zeus. Really cool that they actually made a big statement about

Jesse the dog and gave them the flowers they deserve for being the dog in the game, which is dope. You'll love to see it. We got a whole bunch more as Dust Falls coming up later this week on Tuesday and Wednesday. We're going to be doing the stream that Greg was talking about, playing through the whole game. So that's going to be fun. But there's so many different variations. so you can do your own play through and then come back for the spoiler cast that we have coming out later this week as well. Thank you all for hanging out today.

Bless, what's up? I wanted to ask one last question on AsS Falls. Story of the year. Is it sort of the year? Until the day I die. I wasn't prepared for this question. I'm not done yet, so I guess I can't even. Oh, that's fair.

That's fair. I mean, yeah, probably for me. No. Yeah, like, as we were talking, I was looking through my, like, my top games of 2022 list so far. Are you on GG app as well right now as I look at my list? Try to find that one. Had I even played this?

Honestly, I think it's up there. You know, like I, and I honestly, in terms of the game of your conversation, I right now have a top five and I think it could elevate, seeing like with subsequent play playthroughs saying like how different choices diverge and all that shit. I think this game could honestly be top five. You need to play citizen sleeper and also Kirby. I did play.

I did play Kirby, but I got to play citizen sleeper. Oh, I love the Kirby love, everybody. We will be back next week with way more fun video game talk. But if you didn't get enough today, patreon.com slash kind of funny games is where you want to go. Because we're about to do the exclusive post show, another thrilling episode of Bless Who, kind of feudy. Until next time, I love you all. Goodbye.