Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The Best Survival Game of 2024? - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: February 28, 2024

We sit down to talk about everything we've been playing in between all the big releases! Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Tim’s Pokemon GO Update - Helskate - Penny’s Big Breakaway - Nightingale vs. Enshrouded (Battle of the Early Access Survival Games) - Helldivers - Final Fantasy VII Rebirth 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 am Tim Geddes. I am joined today by the new face of video games blessing at Ayo Ye Jr. Bellatro is life. God, so how much of life is it for you? Oh, it's all of life. Yeah. Yeah.

Any free moment I get where I just me and my Steam deck, I'm like, well, I guess I can do a quick run of Balacho. And there's no such thing as a quick run of Balochro. I'm there for like an hour at least. Yeah. How much you average in a day? Like real talk. Oh, it's not that crazy. Like, I mean, I started playing it, I think, last week.

and I'm about 15 hours in. And so, like, I'm pretty into it. I think the fact that I'm splitting time between it and Tekken is the thing that's keep me from putting in too much time into Balacho, but I'm also at this point probably approaching 80 hours in a Tekken. So we'll see. I think this is going to make up the rest of my free time for the year. Yeah.

Yeah. What a time to be alive. Isn't that right, Big Daddy himself, Greg Miller? That's right, Tim. We're alive and there's a lot of cool things happening. A lot of horrible things happening to. I'm good. Bringing a Coke?

Yeah, I'm having a Coke. Yeah. You know, recovering from raw still. Yeah, I mean, we screamed our throats out, you know what I mean? That raw throat? We got that raw throat. You know, yesterday, Woods and Kofi kicked off my WW2K24 coverage with an embargoed Let's Play.

We'll have up next week. So I'm working on that review, and then when I'm not doing that, hell diving. Ooh, I'm back into hell. Round out of the group today, of course, we have the nitro rifle, Andy Cortez. Great afternoon, gamers. Great afternoon to you all. But of course, this is the kind of funny games cast for each and every week. We get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them.

If you love what we do, please support us with the kind of funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad free. You can watch us record them live and you get a daily exclusive show called Gregway, where Greg talks about whatever he wants. Normally answering questions from the audience. What's today's Gregway about Greg? The fact that It's a 20 minute epic As I unpack Thought I've had for a long time

About what home actually is You know and how WWE is kind of home And going to arenas and things like that Or home Fun I love that Thank you I'm glad you do A lot

You guys can hear 20 minutes of that To it Just not watch it for once I know right Asgard isn't a place It's a people It's a people Of course

You can get gamescast for free though With ads and without the exclusive content On YouTube and podcast services Around the Globe What's that's also Andy? Did you... Oh, shit.

My bad. But he didn't ask me how it was. Yeah. You spent time on me and Greg. You just didn't spend any time on Andy. You gave me such a quick response. You know what I mean? You know what I mean? It's not about that.

It's not about that. Greg, I just want him to like... To want him to... I want him to want to know. You in your cool stupid sweater. Look how cool sweater is. I try out of that. I don't want to spend money.

Well, that means I'm spending money on it. They don't just come out of nowhere. Take it out of your budget. You got a little marketing budget. You got a little petty cash. But like I'm saying, you can get this on podcast services as well. And speaking to podcast services, shout out to Kind of Funny Game Showdown now being available there and being the number one video game podcast on all podcast services.

So thank you very much for your support over there. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Streaking Ain't Easy, and Delaney Twining. The absolute best. Shout out to the support. general. I sent you that screenshot. Yeah. It's not even worth ever tweeting about charts for podcasts. They're all fucking bullshit and based on yet yet. But it's still nice. Yeah, when I checked in and we had three of the top five video game podcasts on Apple and I screenshot it was game showdown. Then it was like the besties. Then it was games daily.

Then it was game scoop and then it was games cast like us. I like that. Love to see it. So yeah, thank you all so much for that support. It really does mean a lot to us. And if you want to support us and hang out with us all day on Thursday, February, 29th, the launch day of Final Fantasy 7, Rebirth, a leap year day, which is always very excited to me. I find more joy in that than I should. You can hang out with Andy and Mike. I want to read this because I really like the copy that somebody wrote. Was this Mike?

It was Mikey, yeah. Kind of funny in the world, celebrate the launch of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Our favorite party members, Mike and Andy, will be starting their journey into Rebirth with a marathon stream celebration, stopping to celebrate the big day and support the fun, as these two will venture into the known, just like Elsa is this kingdom hearts. One Twitch sub or YouTube membership adds more time to the clock. How long can we make these two best friends

play this game? Oh, I didn't know tomorrow. He must have edited that. I didn't see that part in the edit that I saw. I noticed that immediately. He must have added that in by the end of it. Oh, man. What an amazing man. So it'll be kind of a normal stream, but we want to push it and make it a little bit of

a jumbo stream. Nothing true crazy. It's Thursday. We're not doing a 24 hour or anything wild like that, but We'd like to go as long as we can without, you know, our parents get mad at us until we're going to sleep. Exactly. I mean, you toss dad a sweatshirt maybe that he took the other way. Exactly.

So this episode of Gamescast is going to be kind of another one of those catch-all what we've been playing because like we've been doing a lot of reviews, a lot of big things. We haven't been together in a long time. I walked in, I stared at the desk. I'd ask blessing where I sit. I was like, I forget it. If it's an actual core group, what is it? Yeah, because we've been doing a lot of reviews that kind of splintered

us off on two different shows or whatever. A lot of Final Fantasy stuff, which your boys have been thriving out here. And don't worry, we're still going to get some revert thoughts today because I need to know what Andy's been thinking with his time of the game. But before we get into all of that, I got a quick little one, two, three, bang of some games I've been playing that I want to talk

about. One thing I want to get out of the way, don't worry. I'm not going to talk about it too long, but I do need to talk about Pokemon Go because Did you catch him? Today marks my one-year anniversary of playing this game. Whoa. Hardcore.

Like, I've played every single day for an entire year. It does not deserve a round of applause. In fact, it deserves a lot of shame. You piece of shit. You loser. I appreciate you. Thank you so much. Why aren't you married yet?

Marry your fiance. Let me have a Christmas tree. But I do, I do just want to say, like, it's crazy. Like, how much I've invested into this game, like, money. But time and then an actual exercise and efforts and planning days. Like, many, many, many. days around like, oh, there's events happening and I'm going to do them. And it's just been so cool. I've talked about it a lot on Games Daily. But the community of it all is it blows me away.

Because I know in 2016 there was the big moment of everyone playing. But anytime there's a community day, I start looking around and I never would have realized how many people are playing Pokemon Go in the wild. But now that I know the telltale signs, if you see somebody walking with a charging cord, like set to their backpack about you're probably playing. You go. It's a bomb. Watch out. It's an electrode.

If you see, like, people walking and it's just, like, spinning their fingers. Like, oh, my God, they're going. And it's been a while. They're going, baby. They're going. And it's just been so cool to see the varied groups of people that are playing the game that I run into. And there's been a lot of people that I've run into time and time again now. Like, me and Goldfar have been making friends out there and, like, actually trading with people

that went to Korea. So they got like regional exclusive ones and came back and they're like, oh, you guys were looking for the skiddo. Do you still need it? It's like, we do need the skittow. So now we're fucking raided in skittos, baby.

It's awesome. But yeah, it was cool this weekend. I saw a family of like a multi-generational family playing this game. This old woman's playing and this five-year-old boys playing. And I'm just like, this is incredible, man.

It's like the T's at the commercials that they show you like to kind of make you cry. Totally, man. And you know, we all made fun of the Wii commercial or the Switch commercial. and then playing and it's like we've all been in those situations where it's like oh that kind of actually happened i feel that way about Pokemon go it's uh it's just absolutely wild uh what's great

you're gonna wrote down a message for me to read to everybody i get a skiddle in my shorts if i don't wipe too well do you like that It's who will be like that now. Talked at my video game podcast. Yeah, but what I... This is why we're number five. Oh, we're gonna drop after that. But I just wanted to give an update that I,

since I did cry in so impossibly hard, I am at level 46 out of 50, which is insane. Almost max. Levels 40 to 50 are like, wild. You've been there forever. When are you going to accept

the magic egg from Dylan's? Cyberbones. It's not the match. I don't even know what it is. It's just, that's the problem, man. It's like, you got a gift every day. There's so much back and forth. I'm good about it.

I'm, like, really good about it. But there's no way to message or communicate because it's a kid's game, so they're not trying to, like, have you be weirdos. Jim Ryan. So it's hard to communicate with people and, like, time certain things. Why did you drop a Jim Ryan?

Jim Ryan didn't want crossplay remember on PlayStation because he was worried about the kids. Well, no, video game fact, you should know that. That is all true. No, we need to figure that. It's just hard to coordinate that stuff. But if you're listening, just do it. Do it on your own time.

I won't need to worry about the experience points. You get them yourself. I'll probably be fine. But I'm at level 46 out of 50. I will get to 50. And the thing about this, Andy, when you hit level 50 in the game. In the game, you get a bomber jacket. And it's the only way to get the bomber jacket.

And now bless. Do they sell that bomber jacket? They do sell the bomber jacket. I thought we brought this down, where you originally said this, then go for our You talked you down and you'd get like 42 or three. Exactly. So I bought the bomber jacket, Andy. The bumper jacket's at my house.

But weird so I was like, but you didn't earn the bummer jacket. I don't have to wait until 50. Once I hit 40, I'll do it. At this point I was like level 26 or something. I had fucking breeze past it. I hit 40 and I was like, no, no, no. We're doing 50.

So you will not see me in that jacket until I have 50. Wow. But more important than the level, I have 819 out of 841 of these little flakers. God damn. Which is holy crazy that are available in this game. And it is, at the point out, so I have 22 left.

And they are all so hard to get. You always probably have to go to Egypt or something. What's the next most realistic one that you could get? There's a whole bunch of them, but they're all just like that. The skittow from Greg's bands. Well, I need another skittow because I need to evolve into go-goat. So, you know,

it's this whole fucking thing, you guys. Anyways, that's the update for y'all. I am wasting my life away. Skidoo with the rear, go-gurt. But one day you'll see me in a cool jacket. Moving on to other games. I want to give a shout to a game called Hellsgate. Audio listening.

They sent me a deck, which is really cool. Very, very Andy colors. Oh, that's beautiful. Yeah, a little kitty cat on there. I love that. Doing some stuff. Hellskate's awesome. Hellsgate is a game that is an early access now on Steam.

I have been playing, as you all know, a lot of games on my new Steam Deck OLED. I'm in love with this thing. I love seeing Tim log into five games per minute. I get my little notification on the bottom right. You know what I mean? No, but it's been awesome, and Hellsgate is one of those games. And Hughes was hard. I've been playing so much Final Fantasy, and I'm still playing Final Fantasy.

So it is more that I'm popping in a little bit. The big problem I have you guys is that I care too much about music and sound effects of video games. So I'm like, I don't want to play this game while I'm watching TV. Yeah, you got to get the full experience. So it's been a big problem for me for both Hellsgate and Penny's Big Breakaway that I like the music so much that I'm like, what I thought was going to be two games that I could just play at any time. I can't, man. So it's been rough.

But Hellsgate is, it's a rogue-like Tony Hawk game, which is kind of like, all right, this is amazing, right? It is very, very, very, very PlayStation 2 inspired. It plays very similarly and feels almost identical to Tony Hawk's underground. And so is that that's a plus or a plus or a major plus? And a big reason for that is a lot of the team that actually worked on that specific game, worked on this and are working on this because it is still in early access, but it just came out in early access like last week.

ton of stuff to do. I will say it's a little more barren than I would like right now. I'm kind of in that weird place where there's so much content, but I'm like, I'd rather just wait and like fully invest when it's out. So my question for being barren right now, right, is that because it's early access, do you think?

Do you think by the time this becomes a full-fledged game and it's ready to ship 1.0? It'll be great. Oh, yeah. And, you know, Baron might be even a little too aggressive. It's more the thing of like, there's so much here, but there's just, I'm like, I don't want to have to do all this again later, you know,

that type of thing. Um, so, but I'm, I'm having a lot of fun with it. It feels so good. It's that Tim thing of me being such a little bitch about this where it's a game that's like games that I love. And it's so close to being exactly it, but it's not. And so, like, there's no revert early so far. I haven't had a revert.

And that's really, it's really, you know, harsh in my vibe, man. Um, but besides that, it's a revert. A reverts when you can, they added it in Tony Hawk three. When you come down onto a ramp, you can hit R2 and, like, turns your border out so it extends your combo into a manual and you keep going. So not having that is a bummer for me because I really, really like that for combos.

The game doesn't need it though, because the game's more focused around combat, which is pretty funny. But the concept of it is, it's very similar to Hades and Tony Hawk, where you start the level out and you get to choose one of three different, like, buffs. And the buff can be more HP

or the buff could be, here's a special move that allows you to shoot fireballs bigger or something like that. Every trick you do is attacking enemies. There's enemies around the world. And as you defeat them, you move on to the next portion of the level. And as you go in there, you can kind of choose three, between three other things that are going to get you a buff in the next level. So very much a roguelike. And I'm enjoying that.

And the concept of a Tony Hawk like that, brilliant. And I would have never thought about it, but it's so good. The music is very Tony Hawk inspired. It's not licensed music. it has that, you know, I don't even know how you'd call it these days, but the pop punk vibe with some metal and some hip hop, but like that makes. I will say it, there is some, like, level of licensing to it because it demonetized my video. Oh, really?

And it was all like by the song owners or whatever. And it was, I don't know if it was multiple owners or just like, I don't know what it was, but it was like, hey, you can't make money on this video. So I chop that shit out. So maybe it's like, it's not, it's not ACDC. Right, right. You know what I mean? And then Goldfinger and things like that.

But I love it. It's like they're totally nailing the vibes I'm looking for. It's a little hard to wrap your head around the controls of it. Because like, like the reason I say it plays most like thug is because it reminds me of the getting off your board and thug, which I don't know if you remember blessed. It was not my favorite part of that game. Like it controls a little wonky compared to being on the board.

Adding the combat, you really need to wrap your head around. It's like, oh, this isn't Tony Hawk. It's very close, but there's different things you got to do. And once you kind of like get into the zone of it, it is so awesome. And you really just get into that flow state. And there's like boss fights or like bigger enemy encounters where like there's like a big dragon. And then you need to like grind along the dragon's back.

And I'm like, this is freaking cool as hell. So Hellscape's definitely something that if you enjoy Tony Hawk games at all, I would highly recommend giving a shot. It's awesome on the steam deck. It runs so well. And I'm very, very impressed with this thing. And I can't wait to see more of it in the. future. I'm happy that they're getting it out this way because I do think they're going to learn a lot

about the balance of the different upgrades to when the final product comes out. I think it's going to be something really special. So right now I would say if you enjoy Tony Hawk at all, you should definitely give this thing a shot. But I don't think that it's like going to like change your mind about skating games. But this is the closest to a Tony Hawk game, a non-tony Hawk games ever felt to me. So that is like a major, major, major compliment. So shout to them for that. do you ever I mean like this is a good holdover you said but it's you know the closest it's been

da da da da da da da da do you ever just stop and think about getting a skate soon there's just skate coming this is gonna be so great it'll come at some point Ben loves to go scooting and it's just the way his wheels sound on the sidewalk and we go to the skate park sometimes

I'm just like oh my god I can't wait for skate yeah yeah you tried skater XL I have not oh no I did yeah I did that one the first dropped yeah yeah you tried session yeah what was the little the cartoony one that bear like the lot Gatebird the sequel to All the All the World, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's not a few that have been there. This haven't been it. Yeah, and all those ones you name, a lot of them have great things about them, but none of them are Tony Hawk. And none of them even trying to be Tony Hawk. Sure.

This is... Well, Thug. What do you mean? I think there's a difference right between Tony Hawk regular and Tony Hawk Thug, right? Yeah, but in gameplay... Gameplay, it's still the same, though. The arcade-y...

See, what I want is get off the board, have stupid little challenges, you know, feel more than just doing combos and high scores. Yeah. I would still say Thug is more in line with Tony Hawk compared to a skate, which is very, it's way more sin. It's walking up to a dude. Hey man, a Walrus stole my CD player. How are you going to help you know that sort of thing?

Please walkie talk of me. Eat agents, baby. Oh, but that's another fun thing too, Eddie, is the, like the upgrades you get their tapes. So, like, there's a lot of Tony Hawk love in this. And so it's very, very cool. And the main character's name is Anton Falcon. So Tony Hawk. Ha.

Yeah. Hey. Another game I've been playing not enough of is Penny's Big Breakaway, which is from a lot of people that worked on Sonic Mania. I have not had the time to be able to just really sit and just play through this thing. And a lot of that has to do with what I was saying earlier about really wanting to give it what it deserves

because of how good the soundtrack is. Because the soundtrack is amazing. Just like we knew with Sonic Mania and other games, T-lopes and the crew have worked on. But the gameplay is finessexious. nominal, it just takes a long time to kind of like have it all click because it doesn't play the way it looks like it plays. Like bless you you were playing a little bit right. Like what are your thoughts on this one? Yeah. So I played it in like a preview form and then since that in the last week I've gone back to it on steam deck and also picked it up on PlayStation to see like how it would compare and contrast and in first picking it up I was having a bit what you're talking about in terms of yeah when you first pick up the controller the game feel not that the game feel isn't good but it's more so you have to wrap your mind. route it. Like it doesn't feel the way you would expect it to feel. It immediately kind of transported me back to very early 2000s slash late 90s 3D platformer because that's what it's emulating

a lot of the time. Like I don't know I don't know what the right comparisons would be like maybe a bit of banjo but a bit more mobile and a bit more like a bit more interesting traversal than that. Like there's a little bit of 3D Sonic in there. But I feel like there are other platformers in there that I just can't pinpoint. I don't know if it's like Glover or some shit that I didn't play. But there's like something there around like this feels rocket robot on wheels. I mean, honestly, maybe, yeah, actually, that might be it, because I did play a lot of Rocket Robot on Wheels. But yeah, it has, like, that sort of energy that I appreciate and enjoy. The art style of it, I really dig.

Like, as you saw, if you're watching the video version, a lot of bright colors, a lot of cool, like, animation. Like, the characters feel cartooning in a very delightful way that I dig. The levels are kind of what I, they're a good mix of, like, you know, the linear kind of platformy levels, if you like a crash or if you like that kind of game. but also they wind around and have interesting pathing at the same time. And so it's not like the straight up like, oh man, I'm just going towards a path. Like these are levels that feel a bit more alive than you'd expect from like that basic form of platforming. And I think a lot of the stuff that does so far that I played works, but I'm also just still very early in it. But even as I went back to it last week and started playing it again, I started to come around on it in a way that the tools they give you for mobility, I think are really cool.

And I can see them going really cool places. They give you a yo-yo that allows you do a lot of really cool things. And so you'll throw it out as penny, right? And then like if you double-tap square, you'll throw it out and then dive towards it. Right? If you throw it out and you hold square, you'll do like a little like swingy thing that'll allow you to like kind of get an extra jump in the air. And there's stuff like that I think is really cool and really neat.

It reminds me actually of something like Mario Odyssey or Mario 64, right, where the mobility is like part of having fun. Like how are you getting around the level? But not Mario Sunshine. No. never Mario Sunshine we'll have to talk about that later but yeah like I've been enjoying it so far for that stuff it's in a weird way

the yo yo thing kind of reminds me of when I was a kid I was playing smash 64 and like when I unlocked Ness had no idea what the fuck Ness was and I was like what the fuck game is this guy from playing Penny's Big Breakaway I think Penny's big breakaway is the game that I thought Ness was from before I knew what Earthbound

was hilarious yeah but yeah bless you're nailing it there it's like I feel like there's so much that this game has that I just can't wait to actually like really get into because I'm still very much in the, not tutorial, but like the early levels of them teaching you stuff. But once you get the yo-yo, which is pretty much instantly,

it's a weapon, but it's also a traversal mechanic. And it's a very momentum-based, 3D platformer. And it has the copy effect from Odyssey like you're talking about of like being able throw it to then jump on it and then roll and keep going. But what's interesting about the design of the game is the level design is the showcase of this all.

Like you don't have control over. over the camera, like the camera's completely guided. And that's hard to like wrap your head around because you're so used to be able to use the right stick to be able to see things differently. They're guiding you through this adventure, almost like it's a Star Fox type on. Is it an auto scroll thing? It's not auto scroll. Oh, like, it's auto camera though. So when you're, you're holding forward going, the camera just automatically is like showing you exactly what you need to see.

But once you get over that being just a little bit different, you start to realize it's brilliant. And you start to realize that the design is so smart at, like, showing you what you need to know to be able to jump off of a ramp to reach down and get the momentum rolling so you can jump up and get more error or whatever. And it starts to become this, like, beautiful rhythm as you're jumping around because the right stick controls your yo-yo. So if you're swinging it around, it just swings it around to attack. But then you can also like, bless with saying, like, jump and, like, use the dashes. when you land though you can use r2 to jump on the yo-yo and kind of like run on it so it like speeds up and it's just like the perfect move set for um both combat and just platforming getting around and what it is super cool is there's a lot of enemies you're just kind of like fighting but there's like

penguins that attack you in a lot of the levels they're not always there but these like little guys will just run and like one of them is not really going to mess you up but when there's like 10 or 20 of them on you, everyone slows you down and just like kills the momentum. And it gets really scary and claustrophobic. And if too many of them get on you, you eventually like you lose your life. Perish. It's just like it's this cool thing that it's just like I, it does, I don't know what it reminds me of, but it's like it's fun. It's like there's like a video game magic to it. It feels like something that it feels like something that is classic. Even though yeah, it's taking like a lot of modern influence or maruosity and stuff like that. Yeah, a lot of creativity to it. A lot of

those shots you were mentioning the camera kind of being fixed and it might be like in this weird orthographic kind of camera view are you controlling penny like it let's say the camera wants you to run like from the top of the screen to the bottom left are you pushing bottom left are you still pushing up to control penny so ah man it's so hard to explain this because like it just gets you so tripped up but the thing is it controls the way you want it to you just need to trust it okay that that's the thing that i think is hard to like get over but just do what you want to to do, the camera's going to go where you need it to and you holding the left stick the way you want it. Your character's going to go where you want. Okay, gotcha. That's the thing that I'm very

impressed by and like I feel like a lot of other games don't naturally do that because I think about something like ratchet and clank, which is a bit more or way more of like almost the third person shooter in a way. Right. So you're always using the camera. So you're just kind of like taught to do that. And even when you're playing Mario, like, even Mario 64, that's a bit more like you're always adjusting the camera to like set up your run. You just don't need to do that here. So it's like it's definitely weird, but then being so momentum-based and obviously inspired by Sonic. Like this game is them being like, what if we did a Sonic in 3D but made it good?

You know, that's really kind of like the thesis statement of the game. And I'm impressed so far with how well they've done that specifically because the game, if anything, I've already made a lot of comparisons. But the gameplay of it most reminds me of the quote-unquote 2D levels in Mario Galaxy, which is a very high compliment there. So can't wait for more of this. I definitely feel like people should give it a shot. It doesn't seem to be reviewing as well as I expected it to, but I'm having a blast with it.

I think there's something special here. Penny might be the second worst design platform mascot character since Astro Boy. God damn. You can't say that seriously, Tim. Come on. I don't know, man. I don't make the rules.

This is the guy who got five points off this game on fantasy critic. Don't listen to him, people. He's talking about it. I'm trying, all right. I'm trying. But anyways, that's my little steam deck adventures. Before we move on to other big things, though. Barrett, you have a steam deck adventure.

You want to talk about. Yeah, when I was finally able to pull myself away from Balatro, which was really hard to do, I finally booted up Ultros, which was kind of on our radar. If you remember, I forget, like, if this was at a PlayStation showcase or something. But this is like a really trippy Metroidvania that I've played, like, the only like the first hour.

of so it's just like first impressions i i'm really really digging it um really fun combat uh just something about it that just the flow of it is really interesting and i think there's just something that's hitting me with this game that um didn't with uh prince of persa that's like making me want to go back to prince of persia like i enjoyed prince of persia enough but uh there's like a lot of exposition a lot of talking a lot of explaining things is ultras it really just like throws you in

and you kind of just got to figure it out whether it's like gameplay mechanics or just like what what things you're picking up where to go

all that stuff there's just like a certain flow to it all that I'm really digging and appreciating and so I just really just wanted to shout it out as like

hey if you're new need for more Metroidvania's and you like really weird art styles and like really like Tim you said like an adult twin type of

inspired art style. It's really, really fun. Like, I'm a little past, like, the first, like, kind of tutorial boss or whatever. And I think it's a good vibe. Like, the only thing that I have, like, a critique about it is, like, your character walks kind of slow,

but that's pretty much, like, the only thing that I can knock it for right now. But, yeah, it's really cool. It's really fun. I'm excited to play more of it. So, yeah, if you want to play something Metroidvaniae that isn't Prince of Persia, there's another one out there for you.

And I just wanted to shout it out, because I feel like it got buried amongst all of the millions of games that have come out in the last three weeks. I know. Wild. Well, we're going to talk about more of those games after a quick word from our sponsor. This episode's brought to you by Avatar Braving the Elements. We know you love talking about all things TV, film, and pop culture with us, so there's another podcast that we think you're going to enjoy. It's called Avatar Braving the Elements and it's Nickelodeon's official companion podcast to Avatar, The Last Airbender. Y'all already know Barrett loves Avatar.

He thinks it's one of the best coming-of-age heroes' journeys out there that perfectly blends enticing action, great comedy and social commentary that's all backed by great art style and an iconic soundtrack. Each week, host Janet Barney, the voice of Cora, and Dante Bosco, the voice of Zucco, rewatch every episode of The Last Airbender. They're joined by special guests like the cast, superfans, and even the creators of Avatar, Michael DiMartino and Brian Kahn Itzko

for a deep dive and behind-the-scenes look into the Avatarverse you can't get anywhere else. Whether you're a long time bender or new to the series, jump into the epic world of Avatar with Avatar Braving the Elements. Listen to Avatar Braving the Elements on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Y'all need to check out Kind of Funny Game Showdown,

our weekly video game trivia game show. You can watch live on YouTube or on Twitch every Friday at 11 a.m. Pacific Time. But now, thanks to popular demand, Kind of Funny Game Showdown, is available on podcast services. Whether you're listening on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, I at Heart Radio or anywhere else,

please subscribe and rate the show five stars. It really helps us get Kind of Funny out there, and we couldn't thank you enough. We aim to make this a video-only show, so many of the games we best enjoyed watching on YouTube, but despite that, enough of you guys asked for audio versions, so we're making that happen anyways. Of course, that also means if you have the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon,

you will now also get the audio version of the show ad-free. No matter how you're watching or listening to Kind of Funny Game Showdown, thank you. And if you haven't checked it out yet, there is no better time than now. We're already many episodes into the show, so you can catch up now on YouTube or the brand new podcast version of the show. If you love what we do, please get the kind of funny membership on Patreon or on YouTube to get the show ad-free. You just want to support us for free.

Please subscribe and rate Kind of Funny Game Showdown on your favorite podcast service now. Andy Cortez. Hey, Dan. You want to talk about a battle of the early access survival games, Nightingale and enshrouded. Yeah, I've been getting a lot of questions about both of these games, which ones are worth kind of hopping into, which ones are worth maybe buying that may have like a better future and you just sort of wait for them because when it comes to early access games, I'm very much like, I bought Hades way at the beginning and I just waited and then it came out. I was like, oh shit, really, really awesome game. But so much of the feedback is so crucial to these devs to like make the game that ends up becoming Hades, right?

And so Enchrouted came out, same day as Power World, buried. And nobody talked about Enchrooted. And I was having a really good time with it. And then some people were like, wow, it really sucks a day. Powell World came out and just took all of the news. It's selling millions and millions and millions. And nobody's talking about Entrouted. And it turns out Entrouted still did really well.

I think it sold like over 2 million so far on Steam, which is kind of crazy for a Steam early access game. And Enchroaded, to me, is like, you could play multiplayer with friends. It is a survival game just like Nightingale is. But it's got this very single-player-focused vibe to it. A lot of players are worried about, can I hop into this with a friend? Do I need a group of people or will I be able to enjoy it alone? I pretty much exclusively played it in-trouted solo.

And I put about 20 hours into it. the building in this game is phenomenal. It's all voxel-based, just like, you know, think of like Minecraft where you could just kind of dig wherever you want. You don't have to find, like, certain rocks that are craftable or lootable or breakable or whatever. You can just kind of break into whatever you want. You can cut down any tree, build a house of your dreams, but it's got such a good single-player loop,

and it's one of the first survival games that's not procedural, that at least to my knowledge, that I've played. Like, everything else, you hop into a world, you might see like certain houses and little layouts that are familiar looking because that's how the devs kind of coded them. But the world is all handcrafted. And it's a massive world. And that may turn people off because you're not getting a different experience as everybody else. But it's actually pretty sick to experience this game.

It looks so. Because it's so designed. And the things you're experiencing are because the devs wanted you to find that thing in that area. And there's so many moments because it is Voxone. So basically you could dig wherever. You might see a spot on the ground and you start digging and suddenly you look down in that hole and there's a massive like kind of underground dungeon. You're like, oh shit, I want to go in there now.

And I think it's just got a really good loop to it. It's very soulsy type combat, but I don't think it's like amazing by any means. What's up? I have what I think might come off as a very ignorant question. But like I am not like a survival game person. And so this is a genuine question. What is it? Since you're talking about it being like very handcrafted and all this stuff, what is the

makes it survival and not just an open-world action game? Survival always go, whenever you throw survival in there, you got to assume you're going to be crafting and knocking down trees and breaking into rocks and minerals and finding a new, you explore far enough and now you found this really cool gem, these mine of gems that you can then craft and then bring back and make a new item with, whether it's a new weapon that you could craft, you end up kind of like organically finding different, um what do we call them like the the people that there's a guy who teaches you leather working and there's a woman who teaches you spells and so alchemy blacksmith yeah you find them kind of around

the world and they're kind of trapped you need to rescue them and then you can have them at your base yeah you kind of like spawn them in your base and um the the idea i think the things that are survival about it though aside from just all the crafting and base building is a a little bit light like I hate hopping into when we would play Icarus or Valheim and it can get a little extreme at times with my character's hungry, my character's thirsty, my character's about to pass out because he's not, he's super tired or whatever. And those games went super extreme with it. And I think in shrouded went the way opposite way with it. And it's like, you kind of don't have to worry about that. It's like, ooh, I thought I was going to love that. But I'm like, no, I kind of want the game to, to force me to, you know, eat that piece of chicken you cooked. man, and you'll get like these buffs. And I think it's a little too lenient on the survival side, but just exploration, moving towards these zones, the whole idea is that like there are these zones that are enshrouded.

And it's like this sort of red kind of gas that hurts you when you're in it for too long. And every time you enter it, there's a timer. You have like five minutes you can last in the shroud. And you level up your character and that timer will get longer and longer and you can kind of keep exploring. I think the combat is kind of its weakest point it's not bad by any means but it

So talk to me a bit about this Looks amazing When I look at it Looks awesome It reminds me a bit It reminds me I guess Just as a look of Kingdoms of Amla Reckoning

You say it's souls like this So are you talking It's more like dodge roll Wait or is it counter Is it? You have dodge rolls You have parries You have spells

You have you can find The magic person That lets you like Use your magic wand or whatever You have bow and arrows and all sorts of things like that. I think the Souls-like aspect is like having these predetermined movesets that you know, this boss is coming at you with this move, let me dodge here.

It looks awesome, you know, on paper, but I think it's like not fully realized yet. Again, early access, all this stuff could improve. But it's still fun enough for sure. I think I'm just more blown away by the level of quality in this early access title and discovering all these things about the world that, I guess I've just played a lot of very mediocre and sometimes below average survival games. I was just really impressed by the world here and the glider is like a squirrel suit. It's so sick.

You end up unlocking a grapple hook that you can't just grapple anywhere. It's just certain parts of the world have like little Metroidvania aspects of them. So now I can grapple up to that one spot I saw earlier in the world. it's really damn cool and so promising and one of those that I put way too much time into I'm like, similar to you with Hellsgate, I want to stop because I don't want to get burnt out on it right now and I know that they're going to deliver more and more

and I want to wait to see what more and more is when 1.0 hits. I'm so surprised that you're this into the survival games because it seems like it started with you and Mike and Nick and them just on stream just like having fun. We had a sponsor stream for Icarus. It was an NVIDIA sponsor stream where we played Icarus. And we were like, yeah, sure, we'll check out Icarus. And then I put in like 80 or 100 hours into Icarus.

And I just got really into the loop of it. It's just a super satisfying sort of thing. And, yeah, Enstrowded being one of those titles that was super highly anticipated and came out. And again, Power World dominated all the news. And some people were like, man, poor guys over and shrouded, just getting buried. And they still sold over 2 million copies. There's still a lot of excitement behind the title. So in Stroudet, I absolutely recommend it.

If you don't have a crew to play with, totally fine. Don't worry about that. Play solo. It is as rewarding and cool just to kind of explore the world. And it's very much like Breath of the Wild sort of vibes. I don't want to, it's like what someone goes like, this guy reminds you a LeBron James. It's like, well, he's, you know, chill out a little bit. It gives me the vibes of just walking around and going in certain areas and directions

and just seeing that next thing, digging into this area. the building is so phenomenal. The building is like probably the best base building I've experienced where you can you can like just put two flat walls of stone up but then you can carve in singular blocks

into the stones. It's not just like here's your set like window pattern. This wall has a window on it. This wall has a little like slot for the door or whatever because it's voxel base you can just kind of, you end up having,

like a little cube that you can like remove stone from this section or most it's so freaking awesome um there was a great a great video on ticot of some guys streaming this and he was building an underground kind of basement for his house and he's there after hours and hours and hours with this little just just just using a pickax just using a shovel and digging and people are like and the video the tic tic tic tics starts with him being like what do you mean i can do that yeah i'm using the shovel and then he scrolls and finds the, it's like, it's just like an invisible cube kind of icon. He's like, what is it out?

He's like, are you kidding me? And he just, he's just able to remove gigantic blocks from the underground. He's like, dude, I've been digging this fucking four. Three hours, I think is what it were. And you could have just like removed everything. It's awesome. Highly, highly recommend in Trouted. And what about Nightingale?

So Nightingale, I previewed it. And immediately was like, this doesn't quite have the stuff that in Trouted has, but it still is promising enough at the start. And then I think it seems very run-of-the-mill and super generic at first in terms of what a survival game is. And they throw a lot at you in terms of, there's this little guy talking to you, and he speaks very Shakespearean,

and it's really hard to understand. You know, he's just doing a lot of words. A lot of here-to-verb. A lot of henceforths and hear-two-fourths and shit like that. Is that a verb? Who knows, man? ask him, bro. But the idea of Nightingale is that

once you understand how the game wants you to play it, it really opens up and gets very, very exciting. And just like a game like in Troutter or just like a lot of other different games, it starts you off by showing you immediately in the tutorial, here's what you'll be doing. Not only are you going to be crafting things, but you will be portaling to different worlds.

and you essentially have a big gate door, all-powered, like, sort of like steampunk looking. It reminds me if anybody's watched Arcane on Netflix, the League of Legends show, very much like the technology there, kind of like it's magic, but it's like electricity and, you know, it's once the world opened up for me and I was able to get past that sort of entry point, you build your first realm and you hop into another realm and it looks completely different. It may be like a bit of a color change in some ways, but it's still really a need to experience when you are finally able to go to the first portal.

And you find new things in these new worlds that you can then bring back. And you bring back to your new place. And you are, it definitely feels very, very structured in terms of story. It isn't just like this hop into Minecraft and just kind of like have fun with it. Sure, sure.

You can do that as well. But it's very, it's very much guiding you. Like this is still a single player campaign that you go find, one thing I love about it that a lot of survival games don't do whenever you have like a pile of rocks and you're like, I just need to drop all this my character's walking really, really slow right now,

I'm encumbered right now. You can break it down and it becomes one of the world's main currencies. You can break anything down, similar to like breaking down a weapon and destiny or something like that. And you can use that inventory or you can use that currency

to then buy from essence traders. You break it down to essence, you go to an essence trader and the Essence Trader is selling the blueprints to build a fucking sink or a volleyball court. Not things like that, but you know what I mean. And it's like, oh, great. Like I do need it. I want that new door.

I have my house built, but I would love to have a different type of roof or whatever. Sure, making your own. And so the core gameplay loop is essentially going to different realms, continuing the story while seeking out, like, for me, new essence traders to see what else I can bring back home to like my, main spot. One really, really awesome thing about it that a lot of survival games don't do is like, when we play Power World, it's like, you're going to have to hop into our custom server that we bought from a website. Yeah. So like, if I'm offline, if we don't have a custom server, you can't play. Yeah. You can have to do. So Mike was able to play on his world, come to my world,

and have his character saved. Kid it out. Yeah, get it out. Make XP. Everything. And he's able to hop in while I'm not online. So your world? Yeah. Oh wow. So that's like something I've never experienced and I'm sure there have been some games out that that have done that. But it's just really rare to experience that where it's always the issue of, well, we're going to have

to get a custom server because I don't want to have to wait for somebody to hop online or whatever. Really, really neat that he was able just to hop into my realm and build his house on, I made sure that he built just far away from me. I don't want you near my stuff. But it's just, it's got a really, really interesting hook. to it. It's still very early access, much like in shrouded is. And I think there are some worries about maybe some like enemy variety. I've seen, I've just been seeing a lot of like Reddit posts that

are kind of encouraging because it's usually a lot of Reddit posts being like, why are people mad? This is like pretty awesome so far. I saw one Reddit post being like, hey man, I don't like this game so far, not super encouraging. I played it for 50 hours. had a great time. Now what do I do? It's like, well, dog, you got 50 hours. You kind of did it, right? It's Aaron Flynn, who used to work on the Mass Effect trilogy for Byware. This is his new team. And I think when it comes to storytelling, they're doing something really special. And that's why it's like, I kind of don't want to play it with friends because I want to experience what these MPCs are saying. But maybe I wait for the 1.0 release where characters will be voiced then or whatever.

but it's the it's the push and pool of like well buy it for 30 now buy it for 30 bucks now and get in early to support it or buy it when it comes out for 50 bucks in a couple of you know maybe in a year or so or whatever so that's always the the push and pool of early access games you can buy it cheaper at first but do you want to make that sacrifice and maybe get a game that isn't the one that you're hoping for but so far like it's so hard to say which ones I would recommend more I'd say I'd say I'd probably lean in shrouded, but Nightingale does so many impressive things that it's like, Nightingale feels like the more AAA approach to what a survival game could be as opposed to the usual, like, you know, a small indie team jank, you know. Yeah, very cool. Very, very good games. Yeah. So many things I like about both these games, but then it's the survival stuff from stuff. I just, I love that you're so into it. I think it's shrouded is the one for, you then. And shrouded is like that they're saying the end of the year right or theoretically this

year for consoles and a 1.0 right? Really? Ooh. That's exciting. That's exciting. Yeah, I think I think they're both very, very chill on the survival side of things though. Like they are nothing like my experience with Valheim or Icarus where it could.

Icarus it was raining on us every 10 minutes and we're like thunder would zap you if you're outside. Like this, these are way more lenient. and to the sense where you mainly only have to ever eat food to give yourself buffs. You always have like a set health bar, but if you eat that meat with these fruits

or with these berries or whatever, your health of buff and your stamina buff and things like that. So it's definitely not as crazy as you might think it is. I'm definitely in a place where I'm trying to figure out what my survival game is going to be because like I hear people talk about this stuff

and then also whenever I dip into a survival game, I tried playing Lego Fortnite when that dropped. And I'm like, so many of these things appeal to me in the way that I think, I think Zelda Brefflow Mountiers the Kingdom kind of like built up a lot of those systems for me where I'm like, oh yeah, I'm down to knock down a tree and collect the wood. Like I'm down to like fucking hit a rock and like get the material. Yeah, rock. And then also I put out a tweet as you're talking about Dark Cloud.

Just the fact that like Dark Cloud is a game that has like survival elements and then rogue light elements and then town building elements and they put up, if they put one out today, like that'd be such a hit. But yeah, like I'm, I think hearing you. hearing you and so many of people talk about these games and like, you know, kind of go from one to the next one and talk about Arc, but now it's Powell Road and now it's this, right? Like, I'm waiting on like the one that I'm going to jump into and put a solid 80 hours into and then like, you know, that be the one for me. I do get, I think on the Greg's thing, right? Like, I get exhausted hearing about all these survival games because I'm like, I want to put 100 hours into all of them, the way you talk about them, but I'm like, that alone sounds exhausting. So I'm waiting for the one, essentially. I think in Stroudet is probably the one I'd recommend. the most for players looking for kind of like this exploration game and nightingale is a lot less i think it's a lot less like just go in any direction it's a lot more guided um but it is really need to you're going into a new realm you opening up this new portal you walk through it really long

load screen by the way load time are kind of nuts but then suddenly you're in this desert world it's like, okay, what the hell am I going to experience here? And you see crazy fucking monsters and big giant walking, like, you know, Cyclops looking, he's like, dude, wow. Like, this place is kind of insane. And also, I've rather mentioned, uh, Nightingale's running

on Unreal Engine 5, it is stunning. It is so gorgeous. Having the, the light leak into your house and like, the side of your house is like kind of green because the green from the grass is bouncing onto. It's fucking gorgeous, dude. I like the light leaking into your house. I like

death phrase. Yeah. That's a verb right there. That's a verb, man. That'd be verbin. The game, the next Hello Games game that they announced that game award. Everything or whatever. Is that what it's called? No, but it's something. Everywhere, all at one. Yeah. Remember when Mike was Googling? Hello Games next game. That's a survival game, right? Yeah.

Okay. That's good. That seems to be like a you and your friends kind of... That looks neat. Like, I think... Sides of Earth. I think the same thing about No Man Sky all the time. I know there's a lot of people like, dude, you got to play No Man Sky, but I just like... As you were talking, I was like, do I need to pick No Man Sky back up? Like, should I try it again for like a third time?

Dude, I'm telling you, like, give in Troutter to shot. Light no fire. Yeah, light no fire. One of the reasons why I do love these games, you mentioning like Balacho being your just kind of chill Zen out game. You put 80 hours into Final Fantasy 7 rebirth. It's like, what can I do right now? And there's a very Zen-like quality to, I'm just at my PC I have a podcast on That's the thing is I want to build something while having a podcast

Dude oh man It's fucking perfect for that I want a game that doesn't need my entire phone Like I think in Shroudat's building Is by far the best I've ever experienced In a survival game And I'm insanely impressed I'd say Nightingale doesn't have the same amount

of things to build yet There aren't like a whole lot of You don't get like this forecast of Here's all the things I can build in the future. And it doesn't seem as enticing at first. But I think the level of customization that you have with in shrouded and being able to just, like, I wanted like much taller windows.

So I was like, oh, let me just carve like much larger, you know, blocks or holes into this big block of stone or whatever. It's just a lot more exciting with the level of customization you have. I think of this shit and like you're talking about all this, like, you know, the size of your windows. And I think I like when a fucking Fallout 76 made me build And there's just ramshackle house with like a fucking pot And I'm like doing it

That I hit the objective to move on, thank you I don't want to do this I don't give me shit what this looks like Well Greg moving on to you I know you've talked a lot about hell divers too I sure have But I remember last week you were saying that this was going to be your last weekend To be able to dive into hell

As much as you think you're going to want to Sure did you end up doing that Yeah no the obsession with hell divers continues I'm in the mid-20s right now with my leveling of my character, PlayStation clock on the, you know, the front there I think says 45 hours in, maybe it's 50 now.

And it was very much, you know, with Woods and Kofi in on Monday to play some WWE. I was kicking, I kept being like, I got to go play 23. I got to go play 2K 23, get my C legs back. And every time I would sit down,

I would do it. But the first time it would be held that. I was like, well, Caliph is on. He's just him. I can jump in and help him. And then everybody would join us.

we'd play for a while. You know what I mean? I would like Sunday night, same thing, jumped in, saw one of my friends. I'm like, well, I'll go help her.

And I was just didn't. Yeah, I'm still obsessed and I would still be playing it nonstop if I wasn't on to do another review. Yeah. Do you think you're going to end up being able to go back to it or with everything coming out? I think I'll go back to it.

I think, I mean, we're doing a stream tomorrow here with the community and stuff. So I think those will be like some nice little saving graces to get back into it. I do feel, and this is speaking not out of church on. that I feel like I know quite a bit about it, right? I've crossed over on getting all the stratagems and the things I wanted at level 20

because now that you're past that, like I can get anything I want, right? Once I get currency. But I got the ones I feel like I really wanted, really needed. So now there is a bit of like, cool. I can keep leveling, of course, and, you know, go up and unlock more stuff and do whatever, but I'm not feeling the carrot on the stick as much of like, I am driving for this. I'm collecting resources for this. Right now I'm getting samples because like, yeah,

out you get samples and you want them and I'm like I will get I will unlock everything so inevitably when they introduced the next race of people are going after right that it'll be like all right if there's weak against this mortar I'll have it or be ready or sit on that currency so that when there is the next thing I can invest and get that next thing to go that white man we're going after we're going out we're going out of the next we got bugs over here we got robots over there we're going to we're going from super earth to regular earth kick the shit out of some fucking C-suite executives. the, like, when I look at the things to unlock on the ship, it's like, dude, it's going to take

forever to get any of these goddamn things. How, what's your progression like there? It's for me, not astronomical, but it's because of the way I'm choosing to play. I'm still playing hell divers very much from, I want to play. I love this. I love the moments and I love the laugh. So I'm going to play with Kevin and Joey and Khalif and then, you know, my friend Mia and And I'm getting into things where people are usually a couple levels below me. What I need to do, if you wanted to unlock that stuff faster, it wouldn't be hard. It would just be, okay, cool, we need people who are levels higher than us to go with us. And we're going to take on harder difficulties so we get the super rare samples.

So there's more of that. The XP's rolling in in a different way kind of function of it. Okay. But I'm still using it as a social game rather than a, I feel like I need to grind this out. Because inevitably, you know, Joey Kevin, all of them will catch up as we go and play more. and then we'll get off to the races of doing that if we really want to. But right now I'm not feeling the need to go on, you know, level nine hell diver's mission,

which is the hardest difficulty in all that jazz, even though I have plenty of people in my DM's offering it. And I do want to do that with them to see it and get more stuff and yaddi-a-a-a-a-a-y-d-y. But I'm enjoying where I'm at right now. What a game. What a game is he. That's the thing about it. Like, you know, I mean, 50 hours in or whatever.

It's just the fact that every mission, every time has some crazy thing that happens, or I feel awesome and then it all goes bad and you're dying, you're struggling, you're doing the thing, it's just so fucking good. How wild that on that drive back after we previewed it, we were like, that was good. Yeah. But I don't know. We'll see. And I think a lot of it was maybe just not understanding the flow as well as we could have.

Also, I wasn't on keyboard and mouse. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure coming out of the preview where it was like, yeah, that was held divers and that's great. We'll speak. we were done, and this is always hard of the preview, the disservice, I think, of cool, we're starting you at level 10. So you haven't gotten that experience of here's your,

you start with two, you're not even worried about what stratagem to take because you only have the one, right? So like you're building out to get to a kit to have a thing. And then also it was that thing where we had a developer rolling with us and they were taking it very seriously. Let's move here. Let's do this. Let's do that.

And they're trying to teach you while we're fighting. So it was like, It, they, that demo, I think, lost the fun of hell divers of like, it's fun to be overwhelmed and not know what's going on. And then also be like, oh, man, I shut the thing's fucking head off and its body still coming after me. Like, that's fucking rad. And I drop the thing on you by accident and ha ha ha and cross fire and all that jazz. I think that's what it was missing. It was missing the chaos of getting in there with your friends and not knowing what you're doing or watching people figure it out and like do that.

Takedo Broad Sword does, uh, left a super chat here saying too late for hell divers for me are others too OP. No. No. The Hell Divers community is super friendly and people who are obsessed with and want to help with you. And it's that thing even for me right now. Like I, you know, the Sunday night, my last mission was off with Mia and her friends and they were like level six, five and seven, right? And I was 23, 24 or whatever I am. Right. So it was an idea of like, cool, I know everything. But it was the inverse of what was happening when we were having like SC infected during our games. where I was like just being quiet. Like I'm letting them figure out what they want to do and where they want to go and how they want to engage, right? And like, yeah, I had the cool, you know, I got a backpack drone out there that's killing everything and I've got my thing and I know the strategy

for taking down a charger or whatever. But even then, it's not like I was one man arming it, taking care of everything. You know what I mean? Like I was hanging back, letting it go, but still feeling rewarded, still getting the samples, still getting fun times with my friends and seeing them experience.

But yeah, when we hopped in with level one, Nick, it was like still a lot of fun because not only do we not play at the hardest difficulty, but it, you don't feel like you're at the most ultimate disadvantage, which is great. It wasn't like hopping into like a destiny raid or something like that, or it's like, oh,

I'm too level for this. I don't, I'm too low level. I don't belong here. Yeah. It somehow, it doesn't feel like an impossibility to kind of get these missions done, you know?

Well, I think that, you know, so much of it comes down to experience the strategies, right? Because it really is like, okay, I'm level 23, which means I have the access to, you know, the things that I've been able to unlock. It doesn't mean my character is stronger, right? It's like, doesn't mean that I've gone through, even if I was going to put a booster on, that's for the whole team. Like, there's all these different things. So it's not like I'm God punching everything. I'm still

subject to cool downs and subject to all these different things. So it's a balance and it's also always awesome than to show people what it could be, right? I think that's one of the brilliance of it too. Like we, when we were playing with people like S. DeInfected, right? And we're seeing them rain, hell do orbital lasers. Like that is a cool actually motivating thing I think of like oh shit. And not let alone when you are slamming your head into the automaton front and somebody's like, well, you should be doing this or get that or shoot them this way. That's the helpful like chain of command thing. Yeah. That really helps. And again, me playing with lower level people like I think back to like Diablo when I would join people's games and it would just be like,

I'm just hitting everything and killing them, killing him, killing them, right? And it was like, cool. Not only am I way overpowered for this. I'm getting. no reward for it. Whereas in this one it is, yeah, I'm more powerful than the missions they're doing, right? I'm running usually like a level five or six, whereas they're on them level two or three or whatever. So I'm feeling very powerful, right? But it's also the fact that like I'm getting the samples out of it, which are what I want anyway. I'm getting the war bond metals out of it, which is what I wanted anyway. And I'm with my friends. It's not like there's this huge chasm where it's like, wow, I've wasted a night of my time playing.

Yeah. Yes, I could have been min-max and I could have rolled with somebody who wants to go drag me to a level nine mission and I could have been like fucking, Cowering in the back, trying not to, you're trying to figure it all out as I go. But like there's a nice balance to it, I think, where you can go play with your friends and not feel like you're screaming it up. That's great. Yeah. So yeah, I'm anxious to get back to it and see, you know, what they add into it as we go. Closing out the episode here, Andy, I got to hear your thoughts on Pongf S.C7 rebirth.

Obviously, you're not going to get too in depth into this. You and might be going to play through it all. So I'm sure you're going to talk a lot about it on the stream itself. But how far into it are you and what you're thinking of it? Um, I decided to stop progressing because of our big Thursday stream and realistically, how much are we even going to play on that big Thursday stream? What? Uh, well, I mean, you know, we had the Starfield stream and maybe put in about three hours or four hours of progress in 36 hours of stream. Fair enough.

Um, the, uh, yeah, so I, I think I put in around 18 hours. Um, did not do a whole lot of side quests. I kind of just try to do as much story as I could, having an awesome time with it. I think the combat, they somehow improved it and made it even more intense, but even more rewarding and engaging. All of the character team-up moves, the relationship sort of status, updates, you know, going to see Barrett and let him, like, it's, it does seem in some ways like, this is like, this is an RPG because I, I is cloud. I'm going to choose to be nice cloud now as opposed to like, very out of character for Cloud to be like, don't worry, man, you'll get it next time.

And it's like, what the fuck? I would never be that encouraging. But I love seeing the responses from my squad mates and being like, oh, shit, thank you, Cloud. I appreciate that. They seem shocked sometimes. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, I'm just, I'm enjoying the world. I'm enjoying the characters. I think that there's a lot of, I tweeted the other day when the embargo went up. There's a lot of, maybe not a lot, but several things you'll want to just turn your brain off and say video game logic, who cares,

turn brain off, enjoy product or whatever. But some of that stuff, it's like, how the, nobody's really, nobody, like there's some moments like that where I just like, it's frustrating and you can't imagine somebody who has never played a game like this, experience it, and just being like,

how the fuck is this being ignored, this sort of thing, you know? But for someone like me who's played, you know, a couple of Final Fantasy now at least, I'm a little bit more easy on experiences or moments like that, rather. I'm enjoying the hell out of it. I think it's been improved in so many different ways. I think there's a lot of...

The highs are so astronomically high that they'll like make you forget the last two tedious, boring things you did where you're like, man, that shit, like, why am I being forced to do that? Why am I moving this generator? That seems like an... That seems like an extra quest that may be like a small mini game for extra XP. Why is that part of the main plot that you want me to have a push forward or whatever? There's like, again, yeah, the highs are just so high that they can easily make you forget the last couple of boring things you did. But I'm still enjoying it.

I don't see how I won't give it a five out of five by the end of it. Just really, really impressive. And the level of production when you get into those awesome cutscenes and the visual. and the particles are flying all over the place. It's freaking gorgeous, dude. My last question. What are your thoughts of Queen's Blood? Queen's Blood.

I like it. But I skipped all the tutorials initially. Because I was like, I don't want to play this mini game. I'm never going to have to play it. Who cares? It's all going to be optional. And then it suddenly was not optional. And I was like,

Barrett! Fucking shit. You know, I just had to kind of like learn on the fly or whatever. but that was a bit more annoying. But in the restart of the playthrough where it's like, I was telling Blessing and you, Tim, but there was a couple of boss fights where I was having a lot of issues where it was taking me way longer because I was not over-leveled.

I wasn't doing any side quests or anything like that. So now in this sort of redone play-through where I'm starting from scratch, I'm doing a lot of these side quests and I'm getting levels and I want to do Queen's Blood now and get XP. hopefully that'll make the boss fights like, you know, a tiny less difficult, but everything's just so enjoyable. And now that I'm

actually getting into Queen's blood, it's like, oh, I want all those cards. Oh, you get this fucking card if I beat that dude? Yes, like I love it. I really, really enjoy it, and I totally understand the appeal for it. Yeah. Well, you'll love to see it, everybody. Let us know in the comments below what game spoke to you that we talked

about today and how excited you are for Fallen Fantasy 7 Rebirth. If you're going to hang out with the boys having their little unknown journey beginning. But until next time, I love you all. Goodbye.