Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The Blood of Dawnwalker Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: August 31, 2026

Aliens: Fireteam Elite 2 is available now on PC, Xbox and PlayStation! Think you have what it takes to take down the threat? https://tinyurl.com/465r45t9 Thank you for the support! Run of Show - 00:00:00 - Start00:02:00 - The Blood of Dawnwalker Review00:33:50 - Ads00:34:39 - SuperChats00:35:40 - Cohen00:42:00 - Was the Open World…Good?00:49:36 - Other Critiques01:03:44 - More SuperChats Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Aliens Fire Team Elite 2, the ultimate co-op aliens experience, is available now on PC, Xbox, and PlayStation. If you want to get our shows ad-free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash kind of funny. If you're here for Games Daily, you're in the wrong place. Yeah. We got a double back-to-back, huge showcase of reviews. It's review season, everybody. I'm sorry, though, but is that the Dan Lebitard shows, Andy Cortez? Hey guys.

You know, recognize them. Hey, guys. Thanks for coming down and slumming it with us. No problem, I assume that contract's in the inbox right now. You're just negotiating how many figures,

how many zeros. Surprise you recognize you, man. Thank you. I appreciate it. Super happy to be here with you guys. Welcome to the Kind of Funny Gamescast for August 31st, 20,

26. We're almost into September, which is still technically the summer. Because the autumnal equinox is September 26. Remember. And that's an August start. That's when Autumn starts.

I'm one of your hosts, Andy Cortez, alongside Miller, Midler, and Madeline. That's our law firm. That's why you guys are the law firm, everybody. I'm so excited to be talking about the blood of Don Walker with you all. If you're watching live, be a part of the show by super chatting on YouTube.com forward slash kind of funny games. Remember, we couldn't do this without our producers on patreon.com forward slash.

kind of funny. So thank you to Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, Delaney the Somm-Twining, and Lacks Nomad, super sorry, Barrett, that I really, really rushed to that intro because he was doing camera stuff and he was like, oh, he's going to need tots already? No, they never apologize.

Let's begin with topic of the show. Tots, Tots, Tots, Tots, Tats, Tats, Tats. The Blood of Don Walker is an open-world dark fantasy action RPG set in 14th century Europe. You play as, Cohen, human by day and vampire by night, fighting to save your family in a story shaped by your actions and the secrets you uncover.

Release date, September 2nd, a couple days from now, developed by Rebel Wolves, made up of a bunch of former CD Project Red Developers, published by Bandai Namco Entertainment, currently sitting on Open Critic at an 84 and Metacritic at an 83. Very nice, very nice. Very cool debut. I all got it so wrong. Oh. Wow.

Okay. I mean, shoot. We're going to start off strong right here. I was just, I'm, okay. I was fucking around. We want to keep the audience guessing what we're going to say.

I mean, shout out to Rebel Wolves for a debut game from a brand new studio made up of, again, former CD Project Red Devs, and I'm sure a lot of other people as well. But really, really cool to kind of see this story. And as we, the preview several months ago, came back pleasantly surprised, very, very excited for the blood

of Don Walker, one that we've been looking for for quite some time. I would like to go around the table and get some top level thoughts. I'd like to just, let's get the review score out there on the kind of funny scale or on the VGC scale. Come on. We love translating it. We love. Read Jordan's review, VGC.com news right now. Please do. Go get that review. God, please do. We'll get the, we'll get the score. We'll get a just top level, couple sentences here and there. How do you feel? Some pros or some joys and some cons, as we say here on the gamescast.

I've said it like once or twice. Let's start with Madeline Stanley from Twitch.tv forward slash mad exposure. Andy, I'm so grateful I get to spend your last game cast was kind of funny with you. Before you go to the Dan

Levitard show, I'm just grateful I can be here to share the stage with you. It's an honor for a lot of you. It really is. Anyway, a top level thoughts about blood of Dawn Walker, the blood of Don Walker. I really, really, really enjoyed this game. Funny enough, I was not 100% on board with the fantasy, dark fantasy. I'm kind of fantasied out. I have never been so glad to be so wrong about how I feel about a game.

I feel like it was tailor-made for my specific gaming taste that, like, had an engaging story. It had combat. That was a little bit hard to master at the beginning. But I eventually got to it and felt extremely powerful, very cool. I turned into a different person when I was playing as Cohen. I was unstoppable killing machine, the coolest man in Lasley, okay? I want to play this game again immediately.

Very, very cool. Where would you put it on the kind of funny scale? It was so hard because I think there are a few things that bump it down for me. Like in my love of it, I am a 10 out of 10. If I take into account some of the other things that maybe made it not a 10 out of a 10 experience, I would give it a 9. Very, very cool. What platform did you play on and how long did it take you to beat? Yeah, I played on just base PS5 in the quality mode.

And I'm, I always have the thing with the in-game clock and the PS clock. My endgame clock said 27 hours. My PS clock said 37 hours. I feel like it was probably like 30 that I put in. Okay, very cool. Let's go next to Jordan Midler from BGC News. You're right at Pokemon. I brought my Pokemon, but this is not the subject of today's broadcast.

They're so cute. I wish it was. They're not for sale. I really love this game. I did the same preview you did. I did it over in London when you did some fancy L.A. nonsense. But after I finished that, that four-hour section, which was the intro, it was the prologue,

I was like, okay, this is going to be a banger. I think actually the prologue may have given a bit of a false impression of what the game actually is in terms of how much the time stuff matters and how picky you have to be about what side missions you choose. And it's because of that, that I am probably an 8.5. I really like this game. I like tons about it. I like Cohen as a character.

Similar, I was a horrible person towards the end of it. But I was just, I was down in blood and I was like, everything's going wrong. Only once did I save scum to save a character that I accidentally just munched on. Gave it to the hunger. Exactly. That left trigger can really, you know, you could just walk up and square, you know, if you left trigger and hover over a friend and they're red, it'll say like, It'll say suck them down or whatever. If you let go to left trigger, it's talk to this character.

That's just one of the ones where the options disappear when you're talking to them. And it just sits and it goes like, you were starving. Immediately feed the hunger. And I didn't notice that. And that's your little pal. I was so terrified of that happening that I literally, before I would do anything, like, I would go make sure my, my levels were all the way up. I was like, I'm not going into the next day.

I'm not, this is not happening to me. It is my worst fear. And I became my worst character as I had an impending flight to get on. Get on with it. Let's go. Let's just kill them. I did the two that kind of side quest sections. And then I was like, let's go on with it.

BS. I was probably about. 30 when I when I rolled something in that my PS 5 clock said like 60 or something but I was walking away and coming back it makes no sense but yeah we talk about it as a debut game and we'll get into this this isn't their first rodeo by any imagination this is like so which or three and so many things including how buggy it is and so that bumps it down slightly as well but yeah 8.5 on the kf scale or the play the PlayStation 5 professional the best dealing gaming come on now wow Greg Miller hi Andy been a long time kind of coming

for this one. It's been such a lot. You at some point were like, I may just stop this vacation. I'm on if we get these codes. I was begging them. Like, I want you to know, like, I, as probably people who watch this don't know, occasionally I can be kind of annoying, but I, you know, I know.

I don't mean that. You know what I mean? But I usually dialed that back. We're, we've known the head of Bandai Namcoe PR for a long, long time. So yeah, right before I went on that vacation, I was like, if you have, if there's even a like a beta, version of the game. Just let me have it

so I could do it. Like, no, no, no. So we have the two weeks with it like everybody else or whatever. Yeah, I rolled credits on the, or I beat this story. You know, I took down the main vampire, Brenzis, at what? I think it was 37 hours, 37 hours. I could have gone longer.

We're going to get into how the day, you have 30 days to save your family in this video game. I think I left seven days on the clock because it was like, we'll get to it. Sure. I rolled credits at 37 hours. I have since gone back and I've crossed that 40-hour threshold going and seeing other endings, doing other things, you know, trying to complete a few quests I didn't do here and there, whatever. This is a game that is, I'm with

Madeline on so much, right? I think as we ride into the end of the year, I'm going to talk a lot about this game. Like, I adored this game and this experience and these characters and this world and the quests and da-da-da-da-da. On the kind of funny scale, I gave it an 8.5 great. On the way down, I was, you know, the first time anybody, I was able to talk to somebody about it really was Mike and Tim on the car ride down to Pokemon Worlds on Wednesday. And I was there. I was like, Mike's like, if you tell me it's a seven or an eight, I'm, dude, it might be a nine. You know what I mean?

But in the reviewer critique of it, when we get into it, it really is the little things, the little minutia that gets in the way of how I think there's a lot of quality of life things they could do with patches and updates to fix some of the issues I have as a reviewer. And then there are the other things of like bad checkpointing and save systems. cumbersome weird platforming and late game sections. Why am I suddenly doing this and getting frustrated here? But in the grand scheme of things, it doesn't matter. If you are an RPG person like you and me, Andy,

if you're a Witcher person, especially. If you like an action-adventure game, wholeheartedly, you need to try this because they are doing some really, really special stuff here. Okay, so you played on... I did PC. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I don't know if you all know this. I'm a PC guy.

I have heard, thanks to my ROG ally X. And, of course, my Razor Blade 16, where it's just like, I want the best experience. Like, there was this whole hullabaloo about, oh, man, just 30 frames or whatever, no 60 frames. I was like, I didn't, I'm playing it fucking gorgeously on this. I mean, don't even wrong, the laptop sounds like it's about to take off. But it's like, hell, yeah, I was running. I, it's funny, you said buggy.

I had one crash, period, and then one bug where it was like there was a door and a puzzle that I had done a thing and I came back to and it wouldn't open anymore. And I had to reload the checkpoint and come back into it or whatever. But that was it. otherwise a great experience in terms of bugs for me. I had a, I had a buttload of bugs. Yeah.

How far are you, Andy? Nothing, nothing that would over, like... And you're playing on what? I'm playing on PC. Nothing that would ruin the experience by any such of the imagination.

Just little things here and there. So are you talking about, like, something not rendering right or like... A lot of different things. A lot of different things. Yeah. Like every category of bug I've probably had.

Nothing that would make me... Well, actually, no, I did have to like restart one time because they, I ran by a boss and then the health bar stayed up top. Oh, that happened to be loads of times. Yeah, yeah. I think this is like a game lacking a lot of polish. And still, I would say that it's one of the, like, better RPG experiences I've had.

I think the characters are awesome. I think the world is great. I haven't, I have not beat the game. I blame me getting really, really into Mortal Shell 2. and... Checking that review on the gamescast. And been playing another game that... Redacted.

Redacted game. Grand The soul. That I've been quite enjoying. But I'm like 23 hours in. Yeah. I'm on day 16 or day 17 of the timeline. You have 30 days to save the world to save your parents. And yeah, it's like pretty fantastic so far.

I, if anything, I wish it, like... I wish they had another 8 to 12 months just to iron out some stuff. stuff and, you know, maybe figure out some more interesting things to do in the open world. But I think it's, I think when you go into a lot of these games, you know, a lot of it comes down to, if you're able to surprise me a lot in the story and give me, you know, and I'm not saying just a twist for twist sake. Like, give me a really cool, meaningful, memorable moments narratively in a game that is already fun to play and cool to interact with. Like, this game is a, this game's a winner, man.

I love this video game a lot. It'll, like, it's definitely looking like it'll be a contender. That means it might be on the top 10. He watched it. I don't know if you know that. I really enjoy my time with it so far. I can't wait to beat it. The last couple days have been just a lot of, I,

I plugged it into the TV and I just sat down and just, like, had that, like, had that like kind of old school console experience with still on my PC. Really, really great time. Can I jump off to two? Go ahead. Just, I mean, top leveling. Go ahead. You're talking about you wish they had more time to polish and stuff.

Of course, every video game developer does. And every time we play a game, I wish they did for the most part. I'm excited to see how this develops over time with the quality of life and what they'll update and yet, eti-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a. What I think so exciting is we're talking about Rebel Wolves. Okay, cool. It's these former CD Project Red folks who came off, started their own studio. You know, we're replacing Games Daily today with this review.

how many times on Games Daily do we talk about that where, hey, all these former AAA devs are coming together, the people who made Call of Dude, the people who made Bob Shock, and they're coming together to make, and then that studio never makes anything it goes out of business, or makes something, and it drastically underperforms, and it isn't a great game. The fact that, even though this isn't their first at bat,

but it is their first time as Rebel Wolves building this new thing, blah, blah, blah. Like, the fact that this is the initial outing gets me so much more excited for, what was it, game awards, where they had the weird trailer, where it was like, hey, and then it's in the modern, and everybody's like, what the fuck is this game? And they're like, no, the game's not modern,

but that's where we want to take the franchise. And we're all like, okay, pump your brakes. Everybody. Hold the fuck on. And now you get here and it's like, shit, I can't wait for the second installment or third installment or whatever it'll be of them actually getting more time. I assume more money, hopefully more,

sinking their teeth, no pun intended, into this world and going for it. And just one more quick thing before we dive deeper into all the cool stuff about the blood of Don Walker. I know that we normally will get on these podcasts and there might be, like, hey, it's, you know, it might need some more polished, give it some time, maybe this is like a wait for a sale. I also think we're in a day and age where, you know, if you wait for a sale sometimes, that means that the studio could die.

And like, and I hate that, obviously. But I think that like, despite some of the warts and weird little, like, you know, issues that I have with it, it's like an easy recommendation if you care at all about RPG. games if you love an awesome story with a great world and cool characters and really meaningful moments i would say that like yeah definitely buy this game if you care about RPGs at all yeah a thousand percent i mean it sounds like i had the least bugs or whatever but even for the little things i'm going to go and nitpick and tell you why it's you know an 8.5 or whatever if if you're interested at a glance at this game definitely jump in and to your point and i know we're

to get deeper into this and i want to do a spoiler cast next week but of like what we want out of these games is choice, consequence, and story, right? And they say it, but everybody says this all the time. Oh, man, there's no side quests in our game. Everything pertains the story, which of course is such a witcher thing, right? This version, this game nails that into such shocking ways where I would be like, oh, I heard somebody talking about this thing or I read a letter and it was there. And like, I'm going to the next main quest, but it's lit up here on my thing.

Why not do it? And then I would do it. And then three hours later be on the verge of tears. and I have this awesome gear and it's changed my perspective on this character like this is fucking insane the amount of times I

what's apt that's text I use what's apt you know what I mean Jordan Midler over here of like what the fuck yeah very very impressive that was a nice

because I was like a little bit ahead of you because I'd been like grinded out just seeing where you're getting to and where you're getting to and where you were getting to just as we were talking there they were playing the I presume the launch trailer

and there's versions of scenes in that trailer that are entirely different than how it played out in my game Or does magnitude different? I'm like, man, I need to get back there. Yeah, that's why I, it's an interesting one of like, the review is going to be, we say you should go get it.

Everybody agrees. The spoiler cast is going to be the meat. Because that's going to be the one of like, that way, that happened. I did. Oh, my God. Because even last night going and doing different endings, I was like, oh, I'm sure they're, oh, wow. Okay, no, they don't go to the same place.

We're going to, I mean, we funnel back to the same. Here's your credits scene. But it is like, oh, shit. I didn't know that would happen X, Y, Z, but I'll be very, very cool. There's a whole character that I just really didn't get to interact with because we had an initial TIF in our conversation, and I never saw this person ever again. And reading some other reviews, I find out there are a series of missions with this person that I just never saw, which is crazy. And I love that. And with the length of how long it is, I'm so much more likely to go back and do some different things and try different builds and all of those things, which I'm really excited for.

I want to do a given to the hunger play. Yeah. Where I just go. If that option pops up, got to do it. You know, it's like fucking supersized me. Like, yep,

I got to eat this person. I feel like it's always there for me. Yeah, it is. It's like when you're, we should get into it. Yeah, I'll stop.

Yeah, we'll get into it. So again, with the blood of Don Walker, you play this character, Cohen, who is in a city or in a town, whatever the hell called Laslia.

And, yeah, it takes place in the 14th century. And this is post, black plague and vampires kind of almost kind of like blood-borne vibes where their blood heals you and heals people and they have kind of taken advantage of this city and have

you know kind of enslaved a lot of people and some people are like four the yeah we you know it's like the the um like roaches for raid like yeah we love our leaders or whatever and there's a lot of people that also hate living under these people and brencis is the main vampire and he's got a little crew of cronies that you can also kind of interact with and you may see along the way and um in this RPG you have to go save your parents and your whole family who's taken and it's very very you know oh my god like the pressure's on and anytime i feel like i'm wasting time i'm like no i have plenty of time to do stuff and sometimes i'm just doing a lovely

little side quest with a character i'm like god damn this is a lovely little change of pace and a nice little light of positivity and I'm laughing a lot with this character and it's like I could have just ignored this shit out of you and never come back for your side quests but it's so cool that you have that there I'd like to go with I'd like to talk to Madeline

and ask how you feel about the characters you know NPCs that you're dealing with and you know maybe compare to some other RPG experiences you've had yeah I I really enjoyed a lot of the characters in the game, like you're saying, Andy. There were a lot of variations in types of interactions I was having with people. I found, you know, some people are like not excited that Cohen's doing what he's doing and

they're kind of mean to him. And I'm like, damn, I'm trying to help you guys. And then some people are obviously here to help out because they don't, you know, agree with with the rule of the vampires. but I found there were so many surprising quests with care with NPCs that I was I was genuinely never sure where a quest was going to take me which I think sometimes you kind of have a sort of like oh I kind of understand where this is going this is what this character's niche is going to be and I was constantly surprised by these different people I was interacting with I there I I

I so want to do the spoiler cast because I just like want to get into the meat of it. And I'm trying to be big. So yeah, I really enjoyed the characters. One of my little one of my only little dings is like the character, there is a lot of repeating like face models for me as far as like vendors and stuff. So I would see a guy in this town and then I would see the exact same guy in the next town and then the exact same guy in the next town, which is kind of like a little immersion, immersion breaking. But I do feel like with the time clock that we have, they did a really good job of balancing for me the sort of insistence at trying to save your family and having that time ticking away, but also like that this is, this person is worth spending some of your time with.

And I think that's really important because you could be like, oh, like I don't really care about my family. I want to do everything, which I see. think, yeah, exactly. I think when you don't have that sort of time limit, you kind of end up with the open world like fatigue that I sometimes get where I'm like, I got to do everything before I finish the main quest and I didn't feel that way, but also the, because I had to be sort of more specific and intentional with what I'm doing. But then the side characters were so interesting and these different people's storylines

and what they were trying to achieve and like the sort of ups and downs they went through were compelling enough that's like, okay, I will give. up six hours of my day to like help this person even if it puts me a little bit closer, not saving my family. Yeah, we haven't dove in, right? So the idea is that you have 30 days and 30 nights hanging over your head on this one. It's represented at the top and it's always there of how many days are remaining. What's going to happen is, uh, Brenciss, the vampire as Andy who came down and was like, listen, the rule here sucks. I'm taking over. We'll give you the blood. That way you'll, you'll be of course cured of the plague, but we're also going to drink you. He in 30 days he'll be

coronated. He'll be rise as the king, right? And then, They're going to slaughter all the people of a lastly that they took down there and did that, which includes your family. So that's what you're working against. And it has that Majora's mask feel to it. It is a bit of early on. I felt it as a panic of like, oh, my God, how am I going to get it all in there? Because when you go and get to these quests, the major ones, you get a little hourglass next to it

that shows you how many segments of the time bar up there to take you from morning, noon, tonight, and et cetera. It's going to progress the story. But as you get in the vibe, really what it does is help you. you prioritize, I think, the quest lines you care about, the characters you care about. But it also is, you open up your eyes of like, okay, cool, I can do everything. Yeah, it really isn't that thing, but it's how much do you want to roleplay with it? Like, where I rolled credits at 37, Andy, it was very much like, it was the first major,

like, real, spoiler cats talk about it, the first major like, oh, I got a, I got a squad. We can go in there and fuck this guy's life up. And I'm like, if I'm Cohen, who my Cohen is driven by, I got to save mom, dad, and the kids. I'm going with the first opportunity I got, and I took the opportunity to rain with it. I wanted to... I think the time stuff can seem kind of stressful at first,

and then I remember going to the preview and then mentioning you could do a little over 80% of everything in this game in the time allotted to you. Like, there's plenty of time to do all of this stuff. You rarely ever feel like, oh shit, I'm

kind of under the gun right now. but what I think it does really brilliantly is break apart the missions that you're doing. Because some NPCs can only talk to you during the daytime. Some NPCs will only interact with you in nighttime. Some missions are time and day dependent. And some people say, come back and talk to me at night because that's when this thing will be ready. I'm brewing a potion. Come back and talking to me next time.

It brilliantly lets you kind of swap between the things that you, instead of just mainlining that one. thing it allows you to, you know, go try everything else out. I think, again, it's a way to get over, you know, Madeline's talking about open world fatigue, but the idea of, it's always that joke of you're on a world saving quest and you stop to go get flowers for somebody. Why does that make sense? It makes sense here when it is like, we are building to the battle, we're building on how to do this. I'm going to read all these books come back in a day. And then you go, okay, cool, I have free time to go investigate these side missions, whether it be just running around and an opening of fast travel, whether it be I'm going to go take on, you know, his, uh,

Brinces's lackeys or whatever, or working on taking out their little things to get to them. I think for me that that was kind of an element of it that's slightly broken. I don't know if this is because, so Brances has this court of three like sub bosses that are scattered around the, the world. I discovered one of them while I was on another mission and the cathedral, the female sub bosses, like in the cathedral doing some like spell or whatever.

And I saw her and I was like, could, could I go? down there and fight her right now or while I get there and there and there'll be some kind of she'll scram away and I'll fight you in my castle and I just went and did that like immediately and once I'd done that all of her missions like popped up on my list of like well she's gone now but you can still go and disrupt her stuff

and steal all her blood and stuff like that's like okay that's kind of interesting and that's when I text you I was like I don't know if these three exist in the world at all times and it's like a I think she might be the only one Okay. Because I had tried to game the system on one of the other bosses, and it was that, no, no, I had to show up and do his thing. I couldn't work my way around it. And be clear, so if you've played Assassin's Creed and had like the whole fucking court.

Yeah, exactly. It's very much that where we have Brenzis in the center. We have a bubble. We have the three guards out that are connected to Brencis. And then on the guards themselves, the subbosses, there are the, hey, there's three missions of they have, you know, they're storing blood or gathering blood. Hey, there's three patrols, two patrols, whatever it is. you go and do those missions that knock them out that make them angrier and then they eventually come challenging you have a gigantic bar that kind of progresses the more and more you do these little missions and it'll continue to grow and then you'll get to level three of that bar after you did like i don't know nine different you know really quick stuff and some are a bit more involved but then it will say brentz is he's hearing about you out there and he and you'll see a little town crier in the you know little cuts he'll happen town crier bust out this little news thing and now there will be extra patrols there will be will be extra security around.

Now there's a curfew and you can't just walk around at night without kind of getting questioned. And I love a lot of those ideas, but I just don't, I don't think they have the polish to really fully idealize those ideas and put them into place. If it was like they say some of the stuff is going to happen and then it doesn't actually reflect that in the game. It's like, oh yeah, it's almost as if, yeah, back your head, you should know there's a curfew now, but it doesn't.

materially change. I'm walking past guards and they're just like, yeah, that guy's dressed pretty fancy. Wait, he's got clothes. And I'm gone by then. They will see me immediately just teleport to the roof and go, Ofrak here, Vrak here!

And nobody cares after that. Like, it just kind of ends there. So it's like the veil of any of these MPCs giving a shit about you quick, like, if you have a problem with immersion like that, I think you will be quickly disappointed.

When I had the meter completely filled, that's when I was like, all right, cool, I got this downtime. I'm going to go do this one mission in the city. And I just couldn't do it. Because I was trying to find the building this man was in. And it was every guard.

Which is, there he is. Like, oh, fuck, I'm fighting 40 dudes. And it's not that I couldn't kill him. I was just like, I can't get into the buildings.

I can't find. They're like, fuck this. That's what I was going to say. That was my experience, too, towards the later half of this sort of like notoriety system. I like couldn't,

I kept killing so many innocent people because I would go to a crowded space and the guards would all agro. And then I'd have to fight them. and a lot of my crowd clearing things would just kill people because they would come into the area we were fighting. Oh, what's happening? I'm fighting these men.

Stop coming into my area. But they would agro so frequently that, yeah, once you're in the city towards the end, you have to fight like every guard that is in the city because they'll just keep coming. That's actually a good point. You mentioned like the crowd clearing stuff. What kind of scale tree did you guys go down?

Because I had zero in the, when I finished it, zero witchcraft whatsoever. I didn't even look at what. I was like, I want to be a vampire. I want to be a vampire with a sword. I'm not no witch. Maybe I'll do the witchcraft on the next time, but it felt like if you took the witchcraft out of it other than the mandatory ones of like compel your soul or that kind

and stuff, it wouldn't make a huge difference, but maybe. Yeah, I think that's where I was definitely let down when we, when we did the preview and during the daytime, you are Cohen who is a skilled sword fighter. You got taught by his dad how to use blades and he's a talented fighter. he knows his way around a sword and at night time you become the vampire and that's when you have your vampire powers and you know we asked them are you just swordfight during the day and they're like no we wanted to make that experience to feel as fun as being the vampire um and so like for example one of the spells you have you can boil the enemy's blood and it'll be like this uh damage over time

uh you know um ability or whatever and i said oh cool that's one of the things you could do neat. And that was kind of like the only thing you can do. Like there weren't, I was expecting a lot more like, I would summon the blood from one enemy, I was just expecting a bit more and it was just like very, very lacking. Like for example, you have three skill trees. You have, again, like Jordan has just mentioned,

you have witchcraft, you have sword mastery. Sword mastery. And then you have a vampire of Rakiri or whatever. Vampirism. Yeah, yeah. And they, it's obvious that they were really grasping a shot to find stuff to put in the witchcraft one because in the witchcraft tree you'll have like you could buy stuff on sale better and little things like that so it felt like very very

underwhelming in that sense and yeah whether you are like depending on the abilities you're using i didn't feel a whole lot of difference between daytime fighting and nighttime fighting well i think that's how i built it right where i'm looking at my wishcraft tree right now and yeah except for the mandatory one. I never did anything in it because especially the witchcraft powers, like the vampire powers, you agree, some of them, you know, are at the expense of your health. Like, you're using that as a currency to use them. And so when I was, when you go into vampire, you do get claws and you can use claws and you can do a claw build and most of the vampire gear you'll be getting will give you a claw buff and this, that, and the other. I said,

well, I can also use my sword. So let's just go hog wild on sword mastery. And so like, I have basically everything unlocked in sword mastery so that that was fucking bomb. And then when I got that to a place I liked. That's when I started investing more a vampire, right? Where it was like, okay, clearly the blood drain I can do in the middle of battle that'll fill my health I'd already been adding to. But that's when I started like, oh, let's slow down time. But that's like the back half of my play session.

I was finally like, well, let's start experimenting there. Because the one thing I'll say is like the game just barrages you with skill points in a great way. Not overwhelmingly, but it feels so rewarding to do everything in the game. Anything you do, you're usually walking away with one or two points. You go to the tree. Like, oh, shit, I have so much to spend. But again, I was putting them in.

They have a whole system of like, there's usually, I'll say like four, you know, levels to every thing you're getting on your skill tree. But the last two usually, you'll have to go buy a book or find a book, which is like a training manual to really unlock it, which is, I think, cool, but also kind of cumbersome and gets into my 8.5 of the minutia of the menus and I'm in himself. Did you do the same thing I did when you would just have like 50 books and stand and one go, and then it would play that scary, scary. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

For me, it was always the, all right, cool. let's look at this tree. Okay, I want to get this thing. I go to the sword teacher. He's got it. I buy it. I run over to the, you can only apply this.

You know, apply your points at the fucking shrines. I run to the shrine, open the shrine, open the, let's buy the perk. Go to buy the perk. It's not unlocked. Fuck right. I didn't read the book. B, back out of the shrine. Okay.

Open up my menu. Go find the book. Read the book. Oh, go into the thing. Go into the thing. All right, apply the perk. Great. Go out of it.

Now, for some reason, it's kicked me completely out of the shrine. Go back into the shrine, collect the fast travel that I can then fast travel where I want. It's like, this could all be done in one menu. I didn't need to be doing it. I also wish it had the Red Dead Red Dead Redemption two thing of just you could tap, select or whatever to go into your menu. Or if you hold it, go directly to map. Yeah, yeah. I wish they had that because, yeah, I'm constantly kind of.

Why did companies stop doing the old swipe up and you get the map? Swipe right and you're on this menu? Swipe left on the clutch patch on this. People are like they don't like motion control, you know what I mean? That's not motion control. You're lazy faster. We will definitely dive deeper into other mechanics, things that bothered us, things that we loved, and more into the character Cohen.

But first, let's hear a word from our sponsors. The wait is over. Aliens Fire Team Elite 2 is out now, and it's every bit as brutal as you hoped. Grab three friends, gear up as colonial Marines, and drop into the most hostile corners of the aliens universe. There's no rescue, no backup, no way out. Zenomorphs hunt and packs. strike from the dark and swarm faster than you can reload. This sequel hits harder with deeper squad mechanics,

more enemies, and a fully customizable specialist class built exactly how you want to fight. And when the campaign's done chewing you up, the new and improved horde mode throws wave after wave at you until something breaks, you or them. If you've ever wanted to feel what it's like to hold the line against an overwhelming xenomorph swarm, this is it. Aliens Fire Team Elite 2 is the definitive co-op aliens experience.

Ethan Dombrowski writes in with a $2 super chat. Thank you for your support. Remember, get all your super chats in. Ask the whole panel your questions about the blood of Don Walker. Ethan writes, once I saw the steel book I pre-ordered so sick. Hell yeah, Ethan. Support this awesome game. I think it rocks.

We have Azar with a $5 super chat says, can you smell it? Review season. The pollen's in the end. We're all going to start sneeze and start coughing. To that point, Hans Sola says, just joining, no KFGD today? No, today you're getting this review. And then Onimusha right afterwards.

Two back-to-back banger reviews. Amazing Spider-Dan says should have been called a blood. Should have been a nostalgia critic video called Blood of Doug Walker. That may be a reference. I don't understand. So sorry about that. I'm sure it was a very, very funny joke. I'm sorry.

But I had to ruin the vibe. Verum Dex. Mad, you're amazing. happy to see you back and kind of fun of you're killing it. Shout to Varam Dex with a $5 super chat. My Veram Dex. Madeline Stanley, I want to get to you really quick to talk about Cohen, but first, I want to talk about Cohen.

Thank you, Andy. Set the stage for me, please. You know, it's very, very easy to compare protagonists. And this is one of those situations where I'm like, maybe you could have been a creative character. Maybe you could have been any other, like, you... When I play The Witcher, I can respond positively or negatively to stuff, but it's still, it's still Gerald. It's still, his attitude, Goral.

Gerald. It's still Gerald, right? Gerold. I feel like Cohen is a bit kind of, like, milk toast at times. I think he responds in very funny ways at times, and I just, I can't quite get a grasp on, like, you know, I think the way he responds and the way that his character is built

it's very much like well, you build the Cohen that you want to make and if that's the case, it's like, I kind of just wish I could have created my own character in this case.

Yeah, somebody in the chat had asked I gotta know if there's hairstyles. There aren't, right? Like, there's no customization of that level, which seems like, I think,

just a bandwidth thing for the team probably. But I'm with you to agree, Andy, where I really do love Cohen at the end of this adventure. Like, I do, I think they've established a character here that I do care about and I like it. But early on,

like this isn't a spoiler, don't worry. Like I am making the choices obviously in the game, not the choices in the game, obviously the yellow text, but also then like, what am I doing? I'm a vampire at night.

So what am I just eating everybody? And I was like, no, no, I'm only going to drain the guys that I'm fucking killing in sword fights. And they're bad dudes, you know, their armies.

And the game does make you question that throughout and people will challenge that idea. But I was like, no, no, they're my enemies and that's what it is. And so like, I don't know,

I've been out in the world for a while and I've fought a lot of these motherfuckers right, I know the army garb. And so like when I stealth attacked one of them and drained him, Colons and killed them because you can stop and just knock them out. But I was like, I'm gonna drain the fucking thing. And I want my vampire powers.

Yeah. Because like your vampire power, the more blood you drink, the higher your vampire level goes, which unlocks new abilities in your skill trees. Kill this dude. And Cohen's just like, I guess I'm no better than Brinsus. And I'm like, dude, we, so if I cut this guy

his head off, you're no problem there. But we drain them. Like quietly, we're stealth attack. them and that's a problem for you, Cohn, come on, you know what I mean? I'm diving from the top of a cathedral onto this person, like breaking their spine immediately and then drinking their blood, he's like,

oh, what have I become? Yeah, come on, man, we got a gift here, we're using it, you know what I mean? Maybe you should have had that thought while you're med-airly mumbling onto this person. Madeline, where are you at with Cohen? Well, that was, that's so interesting because that was one of the things that I was

constantly questioning where I was like, is there some, like, dishonored morality system where, like, at the end, if I drank a certain amount of people and my bloodlust got a certain high amount like Cohen will fully lose control or something. Like I was questioning that that whole time. So I didn't fully invest in the vampireism. Like I was only eating animals because I was like, well, I'm a good guy. Okay. I'm not killing these people. But it didn't ever materialize that I saw that that was a thing. But that was like

a question in my back of my mind. So what was your vampire level when it was done? All of done you think? I don't know. I'm pushing 15 right now. Yeah. I think 12 or 13. See, when we get to spoiler cast, I want to know about your ending. Yeah, I'll look.

Because there's a, there's a thing there where I was like, huh, I wonder if I kept my level below this. If I didn't, if I didn't drink anybody's blood, what it would have been like.

Because then there was also like, you could get vials of blood and it would be like, you can drink this, but it will give you high corruption. Yeah. And it's a lot of judgment there. Yeah, it seemed like there was going to be some kind of morality,

like, oh, we're judging you, but he's just like judging himself. But just Cohen as a, as a character, I did love Cohen at the end. This guy is dumb. Like he's a dummy. Like I think Cohen is a hymbo.

He's like just a hot dummy guy who's just trying to save his family. And I agree a little bit with Andy where it's like he doesn't have a lot going on in here. So you're really putting all of your things. The role playing is really taking front stage here. Because he doesn't have like a lot of specific personality. Again, not a spoiler, I swear, but there is a moment talking to a different character where they're like, well, I'm 20 years older than you. And I was like, you're 20. How fucking young is Co?

Like, is he barely? I need to scream about this because why are they, in the spoiler cast, I need to scream about this because the age and that character calling them old all the time really was crazy to me. Yeah, I totally agree with that. I'd like to talk about the open world a little bit. Yeah, sure. Let's do it. Kind of getting around the open world. it um

it felt very like open world 1.0 at times um kind of a bummer there and i was expound what makes it 1.0 to you so if people played i'm with you but i want to hear so there's just there's a lot of camps that don't even really let you like you can't crouch walk and kill somebody there's no stealth there's no stealth it's like and it feels very very odd like you only have a crouch

in order to go underneath something in a very specific moment and this whole time it's like why can't I crouch and take out this camp silently? Like I don't fully understand and the answer is because doing things quietly doesn't matter. If

you could go into the city and kill four guards and the rest of the city who's 18 feet away doesn't give a shit and that stuff like doesn't fully matter. And there's also baby there's a whole stealth tree now you know what I mean drain drain drain chain drain

and there are uh there's a lot of camps where I'm like well I love you know doing the drop down thing but everybody's on flat ground flat ground I never even bought the perk I never bought the perk I was one of the first ones and I was like well I'm so rarely above stuff like I don't need to do that yeah so they're just you know there will be little things that pop up on your map that say like oh a citizen needs help or whatever

and and you know those are those are fine you just kind of go do those but there was I feel like this is a game that it shouldn't have been an open world. I don't think this game benefits from it being an open world, apart from like all it's going to make you do is it's a reason to have a mechanic that makes you run faster and things like that, which always broke for me.

And this goes back to the message. Really? Yeah. And he texted. Where I texted Greg. And because for the first several hours of playing this game, you, in vampire mode or in Day Walker mode,

Don Walker mode. You have haste, which is an ability that lets you, like, it slows down time around you and you run faster. So for no horses in this game, which for an open world game, I was like, huh, interesting. Like you say, no horsing around. No horse and around. And eventually, yeah, you unlock two different modes of travel,

where if you're in vampire mode, yeah, haste turns you into a wolf that you can run with. And then if you're in human mode, haste turns you into the flash. And you run really fast, like, but it kind of looks like Smallville when Flash would run in Smallville. So it's essentially like two different, I was going to say fast travel, that's not it. It's just like you run. It's a speedier way to get around.

It's a quick sprint. And then I already talked about there's shrines that you can fast travel from, but you can only fast travel to other shrines that you've unlocked. Yeah. And so during the sort of these haste sprint modes or whatever, I,

for the first several hours, it worked the way I would expect it to. I had no issues with it. And out of nowhere, if I was holding up on the left stick and if I moved left, he would get knocked out of it. Oh, no way.

And he would kind of stop. And I was like, what is going on here? Like, this wasn't happening the whole time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know what's happening right now. And, um, and I found out that like, maybe I was just doing it wrong the whole time, which I know I wasn't because I was like, well, I guess the mechanic works like this. You just hold up on the left stick and then right is your steerer.

Mm-hmm. But I was like, I'm pretty sure I was able to just kind of run omnidirectionally with the left stick and have no. issues, but whatever. Maybe I'm just tripping out. Maybe it always was this way. I'm doing it right now. Yeah. I'm hasting.

And then I plugged in another controller, kind of still doing the weird broken thing. Plugged another controller still weird broken thing. Restart of the game came back in and it worked again. And I was like, damn, I knew I wasn't tripping out. I knew this shit was like kind of breaking for me. Weird. And then I would kind of run with keyboard mouse and that would sometimes fix it.

Yeah. Because then I could omnidirectly just kind of sprint wherever. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But at times it just won't work for me. Weird. It's like so fucking annoyed to get knocked out of that. And the, but when it does work, it's great to just, you look at your map and you see there's a new little save point bonfire, fast travel spot, whatever. Let's run over there to that little shrine and go knock that out so that I could add to my sort of fast travel.

I actually quite like the open world. I think that, so they told me that it's the same size as Horizon 1 or like, roughly the same size. And I think it was kind of novel to have an open world where it isn't like you open the map in Assassin's Creed Odyssey and you're scrolling for 50,000 years.

Like I had quite a good lay of the land. I was like, okay, this is this part of town, this part of town. And I actually used the physical map on the screen because it shows the three generals in like their houses and one of the roofs is like especially round.

I was like, okay, that's like, that's probably there and I've trekked all the way down there and got into all sorts on the way. you can like, there's kind of the fake rock star emerging moments from the original Red Dead where it's like, somebody help me and you go over to help them and then you just get like your head kicked in. So I liked all that stuff. I feel like I don't know how this game works without an open world, maybe like an open city. If that main city was massive, you could do

something like that. But there's so many great side quests, like the one we can't talk about until the spoiler cast. So many. Right down at the bottom of the map that you're you're encouraged to go to, but you don't necessarily need to. And I was like, I like, I like, that there are parts of this world that I felt like I hadn't quite fully seen as I was moving around? That part I agree with

that I think it's a great size I like the side quests or spirnickalinnate. It's more back to where I'm brought down by minutia of cool I got to run over there to that fast travel point

to open it up and then like I talked about already these menus you're going through but then also oh here's one of the broken ones and every time you walk up it goes ah desecrated

and it's like all right now I gotta do some little mission but then the world is so chalk full of save points that I would or fast travel points that I'd be like I need to get close to that like well that one's broken the one up north isn't broken and it's a little bit it's whatever run there

do that one then go to the mission and do the thing that way Madeline where are you at with navigation in this world of Laslia? Yeah something that y'all didn't bring up what I'm curious of your opinions on is the tower like assassin's Creed thing

which like I did once and then never did again because they have a system where you can only do it at night because I guess if during the day they saw you climb up the tower they would be mad. You gotta be a vampire to get up there. That's all the deal. Yeah.

So you climb up to the tower and Cohen will see like usually four points of interest that you could also just find by like going there. It doesn't really add anything. So I thought that I was curious curious if anyone else did all the towers if you just ignored it like me. Yeah. You got decent Lute out of that

But as soon as you start Taking down the generals Their loot is so much better I did a couple And as you say You go up to the top And he goes Oh there's a village over there

And it's like well I've already been there Yeah Beautiful yeah And he would be seeing things He's like Everyone at one He's like yeah There's my house

I don't I know what you're house Why are we up here? They're really clutching for straws About what they make Is it Oh that's a round It's monsters down Yeah

Yeah I did I did two And then Accidentally was next to a third one So I just did it But, like, I am not seeking these out because I don't really know that I'm benefiting from them in a whole lot of ways. Speaking of, do you like the tell? Do we like the teleport?

I feel like I used the, and the city a lot to get from roof to roof. Yeah, I loved that. I loved the teleport. I wanted to use it more. But it was that thing where there's like a whole thing in your vampire skill tree. Like, oh, you can expand the distance. You can. And I'm like, but I'm only hopping really when you're making me hop.

And I'm not getting to a point where, oh, man, I really can't, like, there's loot that's just out of a beach that I, no, I can always get there. So what's the point? I only ever got annoyed when the teleport notifier didn't. Starts wigging out. Is it up or down or over the side? Like, there were several times where I'm like, I clearly want to be on the ledge of this.

Yeah. And it's like, you could just put me on the ledge. Like, can you, maybe you can snap to the ledge of that area or whatever? So that did kind of get annoying here and there. But same thing. This is, you know, coming off of doing Vampire the Mascarade Bloodlines, too. I was shocked that there was no glide. Not a full-blown fly, but when it would be like,

oh, get on a rooftop, I'm trying to find the thing. I'd be like, cool. Cool! I need to drink someone now! Like, they give you this claw ride where you grab the wall and slide down. It's not cool. Like, it looks cool. You don't think it was, I thought it was cool.

I would much rather jump off and have like the black cape. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there were several moments where an accidental fall was occurring, and I was able to, plane. Oh yeah, yeah. To teleport to the roof.

That's what I did every time. I was just like as soon as you get into range and just start spamming R2, it will just go and they'll just be standing there like, okay, let's get on with it. Like if that's in the game, when you're up that high, just give me an R2 prompting immediately. It goes like all the way down. If I, since we're doing a little criticism here, can I jump in with another one? Go ahead. Because again, eight five great game.

You should go play it. I think Brenciss, the Vampire King we have here, is so fucking interesting and cool. And I think he's totally underutilized here. Because it's one of those things of let's introduce him in the front. Here's why he's, you know, the big bat or whatever. And then people obviously talk about how much he sucks throughout and you get the town crier and then obviously at the end you have to deal with him. But like we have this giant section of game where our paths aren't crossing.

Like I would love just cut scenes to him of like what he's saying, doing him. You know, I'm going on a quest and bam, it's a boot to the face he's here. And like, I won't even crush you now. But, you know, if you do this, I'm going to kill your family or one of your family members. I really, really wish that they had done what. Goseviote did and giving you you know after

after you do whatever mission giving you a small quick cut scene because the one of the first you know mini sub bosses that you take on

I love this character I kind of loved his vibe and I was like man I it sucks that this is the first time I've ever hearing you talk yeah I wish there were after you do this one mission

it cuts to a random cutscene of him like they destroyed what fucking this guy you know, like, and just kind of give me some personality so that when I meet him, I'm like, oh, now I'm getting to meet the actual dude, you know. I know I'm underpowered, but I'm going to spy on what he's doing right now

and see him do some heinous shit. You do get a lot of notes, right? That's like, oh, Cohen did this. And like, I'm so pissed off. And that's why you guys got to do this. But yeah, I agree with you, Andy. Like, it would have been nice to actually see because I do think the performances are really strong from all the voyeurs,

all of the little mini boss guys. And there's also a mission that you get with Brinise that, I wish had happened a lot sooner because you get a lot more backstory on like, why he's doing what he's doing, how he started, all of those things. And it's fascinating. It's so good. I was like,

oh, yeah. in the game that like in between that and the end game was such a short period of time. I'm like, I would have loved to know this 10 days ago and it would have really up to the stakes and change the entire vibe of the game. Is such a compliment to the game. And the reason I'm bent out of shape is because I had that quest last night.

I'd finish the game not doing the one you're talking about. And then I doubled back for last night. I didn't realize you could. even finish the game not doing that? That's crazy. Double back and got all that. I was like, fuck. There are so many optional,

missable. And they're all so good. Amazing. The fucking one attached to you. It's like Jesus Christ, man. Yeah, like even early on, I would immediately hit up Greg or I talked to you here at work. It was like, man,

that one, like really cool. It's immediately showing me that these writers like are just doing their damnedest. That's again why I think. To give you awesome substance, but also to kind of interconnect some of these missions and the way that... Just support the cast, they're going to be interesting.

Yeah, I freaking love what they do story-wise. Yeah, I think, like... I'm getting major fomo right now because I'm thinking that y'all have done some missions that I haven't done, and all of a sudden, I'm like, wait, but I need to know right now. I need to go do them. Obviously, we can't say what it is,

but have you done the mission, like, in the tower at the south of the map? Yes. Yeah. Right at the top of the tower. Yeah, that was the one that was like, man, this is a... Very cool.

This is a side quest people will be referencing like the bloody baron. People would be referencing and forgetting the name of. That classic, side quest, but yeah. One thing we haven't talked about that, I want to make sure because we're into this. I am not Perry Poppy.

I am not that guy. That's not what draws me to games. I loved the combat here. And I remember reading that Game Inform or cover story where they were like, took me a while to get the hang of it, right? Because it is that your enemies are coming at you, and then when you get the triangle up in yellow

saying they're about to swing down on you, right? But you have to wait for it to flash then red for you to then go up and block with the directional attack to actually get a pari with i was like this sounds complicated i was shocked at how i duck to water where i really got it in like the power of that moment in these final fights where it's like they're sending everything at you it's like ping chink kill and then i'm using my powers just like this fucking feels awesome and it was that thing where the combat was always so active that it was one of those games which is one of the highest columns i could ever play pay is i wanted to do it

Anytime it was something, I walked into a room and everyone rose up. I was like, let's go. Unless it was the dogs, they kind of annoyed me. But like, I had a great time. Perry Sound Effect nominee for, uh, smile at the year. Like, wow, that, that, it just, it is, it's got a deep sort of base tone with that awesome, just like metal on metal. Like it, it sounds like all the stuff you're getting audio and visual, it's just like all of that feedback is so fantastic.

The best feeling is when, if you're fighting multiple guys and it doesn't. doesn't pop up their window quick enough, but you still hit the paddy. You see him coming in for the right, you go, boo, fuck this stuff's amazing. I think towards the end, it's like super, super easy. Oh, sure, but I mean, you're just an OPE at that point, right?

Like, that was my thing where I'm like, Perry, I forget exactly, but it's like, Perry's refill my stamina and my health. And I was like, all right, well, I'm just fucking. I got a set of armor when you, when you find someone on a wall, I got armor from that, that was like, basically God mode for vampires.

And it's like, okay, well, I'm gonna use this for the rest of the game, and nothing was a problem, even other vampires. Like, it was, yeah, it's loved it. Maybe, maybe a hard play through. Did it, I can't remember if it's this game, Ron Amusha, but was it only normal that was unlocked from? No, no, you can go higher.

Okay. No, you can do. That's what I was going to say. One of the things I wanted to give so much love to Rebel Wolves is the customization of the difficulty levels and the combat system were amazing. Like, I am also not a Perry person, and I found the first, like, two-ish hours of combat really difficult. I started on fair because there's a, there is story fair, challenging, and then dualist, I think,

are the four difficulty levels. But I started on fair and I had to bounce down to story for a little bit. But then when it clicked, it was like, I had the biggest enemies to lover your arc with this combat system. Like I started out hating it. And then by the end, like I said, I felt so powerful. I felt like the biggest badass of all time. Everyone was like, it's you, Cohen of Lasley. And I'm like, that damn right.

Your goddamn right. It's not run and hide. But one of the things that I loved was that I, and I ended up moving back up to fare and then towards the very end, because it was so easy moving up to the challenging. But you can customize each of the different things. So like you can change your own health and that within each one.

So you can make a customizable difficulty. So like if you want to not be able to use consumables during it, that's on the harder levels. But you can change that if you want to. Or if you want to have. the Omni block, which means like if you don't do the direct, the correct directional block, it still blocks for you, but it takes some of your stamina. You can turn that on and off in every single level.

You can have the little arrows on or off if you want them to make it more challenging. And all of those are changeable at any point in time, which I think makes it like riding a bike to play this, this combat system. Like you will find some combination that makes it easy for you. And then eventually, like, you know, I took off the training wheels and I'm like a pro at it. And it was, I find that to be so awesome because I get really discouraged if the combat's too hard too quickly. And they made it so that it was hard. I, it was easy.

And then I brought it back to hard and I was actually enjoying it. And I wasn't just fighting because I have to. I was fighting because I want to. And the segments in between the story were just as fun as the story beats for me. I ended up in the last like couple of hours. I lowered the enemy health I feel like the fights have just started taking a little too long

I feel like that also falls into the usual our reviewer kind of thing where it's like all right I gotta go can we go can we go yeah like I you know and I'm still finding it fun but it's not like it's just taking a little too long I'm like damn there's nine of you right now on the screen and you all are really kind of tanky

and it's just like okay you know I'm not dying I just don't want to be here this long. I think for me it was the power fantasy payoff where like from the beginning of struggling and then being like cool. Block you. I'm hitting LB and L

B and RB together to do the special and I'm throwing off this like area of effect attack on top of that. Then I'm cutting off your head. Then I'm doing this with the powers I had done like I just love that. I do wish that after the Perry's I was given like

the you broke their stance going for that big chunk of help damage. I don't really understand why that is not a part of this. Because I feel like it really could have benefited because... Vampires want to do that? Ah, that's true. I wouldn't do that.

What have I become? Did you get the perk, Andy, where, like, if you... You do more damage if you do the perfect repost or whatever? Because when you do that, sometimes it does, like, take off a limb or something when you do the perfect. Yeah. Yeah, I've seen the, like, you get... You have a chance to do critical damage or something like that.

Yeah. Which I love. I love that like whatever, but I just, I wish that the enemies did have their own kind of posture meter that could break or whatever. But yeah,

feedback and all the movement. And once you get to the boss fights, I think that's where I had way more fun. You know, I think a lot of the enemies, you know, small studio, they can't give you the most variety. And, you know, there might be four different enemies

with the same attack move set or four different enemy types that are never, that are not even related to each, other, but they all have the same kind of combos or whatever. Once, I fought the first boss, I was like, ooh, okay, now we're cooking. You are

doing some cool shit here. That's a lot of fun. 100%. Never seen that's fighting. Yeah, I don't know who the fuck this is. Are you guys serious? I can't read it. What does it say, Minos? Oh, wait, no, no, sorry. I think this is like, you get the... We didn't talk about it, but this was one of those

ones where I was, this is like, a controller down. I was like, holy shit. I can't believe they're showing that. I can't believe that's out there because that was like, I guess you don't know any of the buildup to it. But, like, that was an amazing fucking side quest. I think, I think I went in a different direction, but got the same result and reward. Okay. Oh, yes, of course, because that ties into, I love it in a game.

I love it in a game where you get something from like a random box within five hours. And you go, oh, that's weird, but it's, it's orange. So it's obviously something that's important back of the mind for like 30 hours. And then it's like, oh, you actually need five of these something orange. I see I see you seem to have one of these something orangees and it's like oh yes it's just been in my bag this entire time and that whole thing I was like yes man

this is what we have to do or again back to one of my little quibbles with this one of like how fucking garbage the inventory system is just like you go into these the sword options don't make sense so there's things on top of each other I'm putting health items and I'm like oh this is the green this is the purple

so I put them on the hot keys and then they just lose their color so now I'm like all right well which one's the way but like thank They have a thing of like quest items. You can't sell these. You can't get rid of them. You can't break them down. I was just going to every merchant and loading their shit up.

But like every note, every apple I found. And then occasionally I would sell something for a lot. And I was, yeah, I was, you know, selling junk, selling all the stuff that I didn't need to use. And the amount of times that I would sell something that I was a piece of armor that I was only wearing at night because you have your day load out and your night load out. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I wish that it was just like a lot for all. Why can't I walk? Why can't I do this?

It does show you Andy on there. It puts a little moon on it to let you know. When you sell your shoes, your vampire shoes once by accident. And then you're out there like, why am I fucking goddamn? Those ones had bite abilities on them. Every time it turns to daytime or nighttime, you see like the sunrise or the moon come out. And then suddenly the cutscene starts and I'm shirtless. I'm like, ah, I fucking sold that.

You go this fuck-ass sword that doesn't really work anymore. You're like, oh, what are you doing here? But, big fan of how the game also, you know, talking about power fantasies and how powerful we're getting these games. The game is really good at a bunch of different side missions being like, cool. Here's a reason why you can't use all your shit. We're going to do this. We're going to take your stuff away and do this. And I was like, oh, man, like this is fun to feel like I had the game by the balls.

And then suddenly, okay, cool. Now I'm back on my heels of my feet. And they even reacts to that. In one instance where you're not allowed to do certain stuff, if you do it anyway, it's not like a fail state. The mission just changes and it becomes a totally different thing. I thought that was really cool. Right. I did have a quick with the little quick select wheel

because of what y'all were saying with the different colors would disappear when you put them on the quick select wheel. Because your powers and your consumables are on the same thing and you have to press like X to switch between them. Or yeah, or a. But like if you use one,

it refills it with something else random. So it's like, I would use my, my stamina juice. And instead of replenishing it with like, a lower level or a higher level stamina. Yeah, I would do a pickle. And I'm like, okay, well, so I kept, there would be times where I would die because I would

look down, or I would switch to the consumables. I would use one. And I'm like, that's not even what it was because it auto replenished it was something I didn't even want. And I thought that was like a little cumbersome that those were on the same wheel that you had to switch between. I love that whenever you hit start and you hold that Y or triangle button, you would just turn off the UI.

And it's just so cool for a quick little screenshot. It's such a weird little option that I wish more developers would do. If you just hit this, you know, you have your menu button chat, which takes you to all of your abilities and all of your lore and everything game-wise. But then Start takes you to the general menu where it's save, load, settings, blah, blah, blah. And when you hit that start button on the bottom, it says, like, be to close or to exit or hold Y, and you toggle the UI and invisibility. And it was just so cool to do that and just grab a cool little screenshot of an environment or whatever.

her back on, go back in. Very, very cool. Oh, that should have been a games cast game tip. Sorry, Ken Jr. I fucked that up. My bad. Let's see here. Nikolai Lorettson with a super chat says it's just here to give you money. Have a good show. Thank you so much

for your support. Chango with a $5 super chat says Jordan Miller dab me up yesterday and shit was so loud the entire Moscone center shook and even the mascot Mimi Q looked over. That is true. I'm lots of most of best friends. Lots of VG Seaman in the Pokemon XP community.

So lovely to see you. You know who you are. You know who you are. Guitar Hero Arrow with a $5 Superchat says, Kim Come Deliverance 2, Don Walker, Fable, Witcher 3, DLC, Witcher 4, Blimmer remaster. What a generation from open world medieval RPG so stoked for Thursday, and you should be.

Starting the month with this, ending it with the Witcher 3 remaster. Oh my God. Oh my God. We have a super chat from Josh EG who says, I'm here from. Madeline. Oh.

Hi, Joshy. Hey, Joshy G. Um, Mike cursor with a $5 super chat asks, Greg, how was the performance specifically on the Xbox Ally X?

These days, I can't play slash finish RPGs without a good portable option. It's great. Obviously, I ran it on Ultra on the Razor Blade 16 and then I would dial it

down to the medium settings here. Uh, I had no problems with it. I mean, obviously doesn't, you know, hair doesn't look as good. Eyebrows don't look as good,

but it was totally serviceable for what I was doing, hanging out, just, you know, grinding on stuff. but no problems, no hitches, crashes, stuff like that. And while I'm here, just talking before I forget, because I'll definitely forget.

Number one, if you like giving us money and supporting us, today's Gregway is me unboxing the Blood of Dawn Walker press pack that came out. Maybe I get a cool cape and cow out of him. He was very excited about it. And then number two, if you like Madeline Stanley, she's on kind of funny a lot in the next two weeks, so keep your eyes peel. Very, very cool. Any final thoughts here on the blood of Don Walker?

talking about it here makes me want to go and play it but that's not possible because there's 5,000 other games waiting for me when I get home yeah I think this will be a great folly for here's what you missed in the blood

of Don Walker and it's all the minutia of all the different quests and how it can all turn out but yeah I think it's a great game it's a great start blood of Don Walker 2 is going to be a banger

and good on Rebel Wolves because as Greg mentioned and as I put in my preview the next thing from the people who made the amazing thing is not the cell that it once was. So having an example of them breaking out, making a game that is

very much in the mold of what they've made before, and it's still being brilliant. Awesome. Is it only good news? Yeah. Great game. 8.5 for me. I really encourage you if you're even slightly interested to go pick it up, like we're talking about. Like, this is the thing where, all right, cool. Now we've got to put money where mouth is and support these developers, so we get a second when they get a better

shot out. Yeah. Only 22 hours in for me and still several sit up in the chair moments of like no fucking way that's the thing I mean to talk about right where it's like you know I'm

you know old and a dad and they're gray hairs from this business and everything else so like the amount of times where I was like I'm starting to doze while I'm trying to review it

and then suddenly it's not just I'm fighting a bunch of dudes like wait a second what's happening like I go and I read the document I'm like oh fuck okay go back into the game

Madela yeah I really really enjoyed this game I highly recommend I really want a lot people to buy it so we can get the modern day version because I want to see Cohen of Laslia with a cell phone and a gun, you know? Just see him out there. Living his life in the modern era.

We got to see it. Leather trench. Come on. Let's go. I only have two bars of service out here. Corn of Sheffield. Right now I have the spoiler cast schedules for Wednesday the ninth. We'll see if that holds with all the reviews and things happening, but not long.

Jordan Midler, where can people find you? You can find me on this very panel for the on-emission review. Like five minutes time, but outside of that, you can find me at patreon.com slash video games chronicle. Go and support us there. I've been on a world tour recently, doing my actual job and doing this Pokemon stuff. So if you've enjoyed the content that I've appeared on,

consider giving your money to us instead of kind of funny. Whoa. We ain't got this. I may have two Pikachu's here and a third one outside, but we don't have this. So thank you very much. We have tons of best friends in the... in the VGC community anyway.

Every time I'm on this, the Discord goes fucking wild. Madeline, where can people find you? Yeah, you can find me here on Thursday and Friday for some more gamescast fun. And then also at Twitch.com, Twitch.tv.com, Twitch.com.

Twitch.com slash MadExposure, where I will be playing the opening little hours of Blada Dawn Walker on Wednesday evening. So if you want to see, come check it out. Woo! Love that. Everybody check them out

over at their respective links. We appreciate y'all watching and hanging out with this, everybody. This has been the Blood of Don Walker Gamescast. If you liked what you saw, consider supporting us on patreon.com forward slash kind of funny. Clicking the like

button on YouTube. We'll have 20-some-a-thousand views on this and maybe 300-300 likes. Come on. Everybody click that like button. It don't cost a dang dime, all right? Leave a comment down below. What are your fall plans for?

all of the crazy gaming that's happening right now in review season thank you so much for watching everybody take care of yourself take care of each other and we'll see you next time