Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The First Berserker: Khazan Review (So Far) - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

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What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast live for Monday, March 24th, 2025. Of course, I am your host, Tim Getty's. I'm joined today by Blessing Eddie Oyea Jr. Good day, Tim. And happy blood-born anniversary to the man himself, Andy Cortez. 10 years. 10 years of memories. 10 years, I was watching other people play it.

Yeah. You know, I didn't really know much about it. 10 years ago, I was watching the trailer and being like, that looks really cool. I hope those people are happy. Yeah, exactly. You were watching other people play it, Andy, and then you've played it, and then you played it in 60 frames per seconds with people watching you. That's kind of crazy, right?

Full circle moment. It is a big full circle moment, yeah, spending a lot of money on that mod of PS5, but it was worth it. It was worth seeing all them frames. Yeah, one day. One day they'll do what your shirt demands. One day. Remaster it.

Oh, man, Bless, how are you doing? I'm doing good. Yeah, I'm just chilling. Ready to talk about some Kazan. First berserker, Kazan. First berserker. I got a lot to say. Yeah, I'm excited to hear it.

But also somehow at the same time, not a lot to say. Oh, very interesting what that could possibly mean, because this is kind of funny games cast each and every weekday, we get together to talk all about video games, whether it's reviews, previews, reviews, reviews so far, which I get the impression this is going to be, or predictions and everything else you need to know under the video game sun. This is where you want to be.

We're live on Twitch and YouTube. You could watch later on YouTube. If you want to be super freaking cool, you can even become a kind of funny member. You can do that on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify, or Apple podcast, and it gets you the show's ad-free, and you get a daily exclusive Gregway. Today's is Nick and Roger.

Interesting. What are they going to do together? They're just hanging out. The combo of Nick and Roger is dangerous and powerful. You know, I feel like they're going to be... Yeah. Just those two. Oh, yeah.

It's never on camera. Well, I guess maybe the Sinituner-N-R-N-R-Stuff. But it's more just off-camera. Well, that's Joey with them, too. What would you say? No, nothing. Oh, I think you said, you corrected somebody I said. I was like, fuck, what?

Am I getting that name wrong? No, no, no, no. Good. Anyway, yeah, Roger Nick, there was like an uneasy alliance. You know?

There's an energy. We can't trust him. I'm telling you that now. That's what I want with Nick. Yeah. I see Nick and I'm like, you're so desperate for it. You just got to make it happen, man.

Yeah, but he wants it too. He's too cool. He's the desperate one. He's not cool. He's going out every night at bars, perform a stand-of-comedy, hanging out with like other cool people.

And I'm like, that's what I want. He's a mustache. He's hanging out with people. You already? But he's like, it's like, it's like,

but cool people, you know? No? You don't think he's the stand-up comedies. Or the same comedy. You don't think the stand-up comics right here is the coolest people ever. Can't believe Tim hates stand-up comics. Yeah. They're out there saying jokes, doing drugs that I can pronounce.

Here's what I'm saying. I'm playing this up and like definitely a lot of hyperbole here. The one thing that is true, I hate when I hang out with this stand-up comedy friends and we're just like at a dinner and they're all just trying to make me laugh. Like they're all just trying to, like, all of a sudden I'm a fucking participant in a rhyme. It is like, I don't want this. I feel like I can say this as a podcaster. When I'm listening to podcasts I love, and they have on a stand-up comedian as a guest, and that stand-up comedian then proceeds for an hour trying to do bits and trying to

like do stand-up routine in the middle of the show. I'm like, just be a regular person. Just be regular. Just have a conversation. We're eating nachos. What I do love, though, is listening to Pablo Tori finds out. And it's always Katie Nolan, who's the best with her boyfriend, Dan Soder. And Dan just always, like, like has the most funny wrestling references. He does a great macho man. It makes me laugh every time. He's a funny dude.

Can you do any wrestling impressions? Yeah, I do a great stone cold. Yeah. Oh, can you hear? A really, really good stone cold. Yeah. And that's the bottom line. A lot of people come in here looking for a review,

but I don't give a damn. Pretty decent. The voice is in there. And that's the bottom line. The Cated case. Yeah. The energy is there. Yeah, yeah.

If you think the energy is there, of course, you can super chat into the show. If you have any thoughts, questions, concerns, comments, anything you want about First Beserker Kazan, please get those in. Is this your Trump? It's always circulating the Trump. It's like Stone Cold as Donald Trump is what that is.

I had a really good one though, on the kind of funny podcast because I think we're, you know, Greg was like putting me in these improv scenarios and one of them became me where I was Stone Cold working at an ice cream place. And I was like, because Coldstone said so. Oh, that's good. I like that. I like that. That's funny. That's funny.

Oh, man, we do great stuff here. Get to the back of the line because Coldstone said so. That's good. Remember at Coldstone when you tipped them and they had to do a song and dance? What? There was an era where at Coldstone, if they got tipped, they had to stop what they were doing and do this whole fucking song and dance. Oh, guys. My friend Angie Wang. Poor Angie Wang back in high school. She worked at Coldstone and me and my friends. Oh, no. You assholes. And we were tipping them. We're giving them money.

Yeah, but you have a performance. form for me. That's all you asshole. We only did it once, but that one time we did it many times. Nice. Today, after this, you got a whole bunch of fun stuff, but you already got kind of funny games daily. That was me and blessed talking all about some rumors

of a new God of War game that might be coming this year. And that turned into a very exciting conversation. So check that out to see what might be going on. After this, though, it's going to be a really fun time. We are streaming Half Life 2. We are partnering with Nvidia to jump into play what we all agree could be the game of the year contender for 2004 Half-Life 2.

But now it has RTX, a new community mod that uses the power of Nvidia GPUs to show off how good Valve's classic continues to be over two decades later. With the most advanced graphics you can find on any video game anywhere, this is just released demo of the still unpublished full game. We're going to be showing off every ray traced head crab we can find. This is going to be Nick playing who loves Half-Life and Half-Life 2. with Andy kind of playing shotgun there talking and helping him through all of the tech stuff. But I don't know if y'all have seen any of this stuff. We're looking at some footage now. It is gorgeous.

Like this game was made to be enhanced this way. And it's about to be a very, very, very special stream. Are you excited, Andy? Yeah, I'm super so far. I got to boot it up over the weekend just kind of on my own and kind of mess around with it. And it's a man, I just love doing the before and afters and, you know, doing the Coke Pepsi challenge. It looks so great. So great.

Let's see. If you're a kind of a member, like I'm saying, you can get today's Gregway with Nick and Raj. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twine and Carl Jacobs and I'ma Buster. Today we are brought to you by Stash, but we'll tell you about that later. It's time for the topic of the show.

The first berser Kazan, the review embargo has been hit. We are now going to discuss it ourselves. Bless. Tim. How long have you played? I have played about 15 hours. Andy, how long have you played?

I have played 32 hours. Oh. I put in a lot of work this weekend. So this is a review in progress. Andy, what are you thinking so far? I'm fairly close to the end. I think it has a real hard game. Yeah.

This is a hard. It's a difficult-ass video game. It's a hard video game. My number one thing that I, let me get the negatives out of the way. not enough Ben Star Ben Star is Kazan he's the titular dude he's the first berserker

some say but every once in a blue moon you get a I have to save them and that's it like it's everybody else around him talking which is like whatever I think

the story is kind of I stopped Karen about three four hours in but they do a really good job of helping you try to understand what the hell's going on. There's a really nice little menu screen that shows you chapter by chapter. Who's getting added to, I guess, like, the family tree.

It's not a family tree, but it's, you know, Kazan's in the center, and then in the first chapter, it's two of the homies. And then the next chapter, it's extra NPCs and how they relate. And it's sort of like a relationship tree. So they do a decent job there. The game has a really great art style, runs fantastically on Steam Deck. That's why you have the deck in front of you.

Yeah. It runs great on Steam Deck. It has, like, I think, some of my favorite action in a while. Combat is lovely. I really, really fuck with it. It is, it reminds me a lot more of the sort of Stellar Blade, Lise of P, Sekiro side of things, where you are parrying as much as you can with the right timing.

And, you know, we've had these discussions whereas, like, it's not a, it's less of a Dark Souls game and more of a, you're going to try to chip down their stamina bar to stagger the enemy going for that higher hit of damage. But the amount of different moves you can sort of add into your kit make you look so sick.

Like, there's going to be some awesome ways to make this game look like the sexiest thing you've ever seen combat-wise where, because I'm just doing crazy flips and hitting a dude and then like the blade phantom that is kind of like in his body will like pop out from the right and from the left and hit the enemy as well it's really really cool i think the level design is better as of late from what i've been been experiencing but it's been it's been pretty good so far your standard kind of old school dark souls style of level design where you unlock that shortcut and suddenly it's easier to run to the boss or whatever um but yeah so far i'm i'm i'm really

really, really enjoying it. I'm really digging a challenge. I really don't like the loot system. Oh, it's too much. You know what it reminds me of? Destiny. See, I was going to say Koa Tecmo. Remember playing Wolong Fallen Dynasty? Yeah. Yeah. There's so much loot everywhere. A lot of loot. I think there's going to be, I think it's going to be good for people out there who are the freaks that love doing the min-maxing stuff because there's, it has like weapon infusions where if I have this purple weapon that I love the stats on because it gives me stamina stuff and that's kind of what I'm building towards.

But I find a better purple weapon of higher level, I can infuse that power into the one that I like to kind of power it up a little bit. It reminds me a lot of destiny in that way. But it's like a game, it's too much of a game within a game that's already taking a long time to beat because I got to get good.

This game's pretty fucking tough. but I enjoyed so far quite a bit, Tim. Hell yeah. Plus? Yeah, I agree pretty much 100% with everything Andy said. I think this is a very fun game. And I think the thing that I'm suffering from slash enjoying at the same time. Remember it was either last year of the week before where we were talking about like when we're playing rogolites and you have like the three options that pop up and how good that is from my brain. As soon as I see those three options of like these are the perks you can choose, like my brain just like gets a good feeling.

This game gives me so much of that of, oh, I just like these types of games a lot, man. I love a game that is I'm deflecting to build down like their stamina meter to then stagger them and then get the big hit on them. It is the Sekiro-like, right? It is Stellar Blade. It is Wolong Fallen Dynasty. It is Liza P. There are so many action games that we played like this. And I think for me, that's the biggest almost downfall of it slash the thing I like the most.

where as I'm playing this I am not motivated to be like oh man I'm fucking in it I need to get to the next thing because this plays and feels like so many games I played

before like this and I don't think it necessarily excels far beyond those like so far after being only 15 hours in right like so far I'm still preferring a Liza P right like even stellar blade I could see this maybe getting there for me

but I think still stellar blades stains above it that said I think what it does it does well I enjoy the combat system, the skill tree and like the abilities and the options as far as gear and customization, I can't talk, customization and stuff like that. Those things are pretty heavy, but it is like Andy's talking about, right? It is, you are just picking up a bunch of things and I'm going to the menu every five

minutes and being like, all right, this is like higher than this. I guess I'll do this, but then if I do this, it'll lessen my stamina, but the high, the number's higher, so I guess I'll equip this. It's a lot of that management, which does turn into a game within a game like Andy was talking about. And I think it can get a bit tedious. But if you're somebody whose brain loves that stuff, you're going to have a really good time.

And so for me, I almost compare this to something akin to a Neo, as far as I think the way that it's going to hit for people. It's that plus, like, a really good art style. I think it's very pretty to look at. I'm with Andy as well where I stopped caring about the story almost immediately. It is just a bunch of jargon. It is a bunch of like maybe if you're into the DNF universe, there might be stuff here for you.

But moment to moment in the story, I'm not caring. but I do like the character design in the spirit design and we'll get a little bit more about the character that's within your character and like the different abilities and stuff but I'm having a good time I see myself seeing this through to the end

I think as of now I'm like not slow playing it but I'm not in a rush to play it either right? You brought up the DNF world can you expand on that a little bit more? Yeah so this game takes place within the DNF universe so that's dungeon dungeon fighter online I think is the name

of the game that came out years and years and years ago I don't know much about DNF Tim. It's one of those things that's been around that's super popular. It's a fighting game, DNF dual. DNF dual is the finding game that came out. That was developed by Arxas. That came out a couple years ago

and that was my first jumping in into the universe. But it's basically another universe that is very popular to a certain section of gamers. Now they've been doing a good job of, you know, finding games to fit within the IP. So this is another one being published by Nexon, but also developed by Neopold.

Interesting. Andy, when it comes to the loot stuff and you're saying that there's the game within a game, do you think that it's doing that stuff in a way that's unique that maybe might find like a new subsect of gamers that like want a game like this but also like wanted to be even more intricate? Or have we seen that before and this is going to speak to those people? I mean, it really does kind of remind me of when you're going for like the god tier role in destiny weapon grinding. But not even quite to that degree.

I was talking to the homie fighting cowboy, who's very popular for playing a lot of of these sort of soulslikes in action games, and he's just like a really, really good gamer. And he told me it took him about 30 hours to finish the game, but he spent about 50 hours in total in the game because he was grinding new gear. And I didn't, I was like, how does one go about that?

But then I ended up finding a gear set that it's called the bard gear set and the more if you have like the bard headpiece then that's one thing or whatever but if you have the the bard like chest piece as well then the more that you have of the bard sort of like the whole set you get more and more benefits

so I ended up having like four of the of the different bard armor set or whatever I think it was like head chest maybe like the pants and the boots or whatever. But with every new perk, I was able to get 20% chance of getting better loot. And then another one was 25% chance of getting like more loot drops. So I had that on at one point. And right near one of the bonfires, it's like that little red sword that you see in the ground.

again, very super souls influenced. Anytime you sit down at the bonfire, bad guys will respawn. So I kept on getting up and going to kill a spider enemy, and he would drop a shitload of loot, and then I started seeing the pink items, because pink is better than purple in this case. Those are like the legendary ones or whatever. And I had come back and I sit down, and I did that for like 30 minutes

and found myself finding better and better loot, because it was like, this dude's like 10 feet away. It was just like quick, quick, bang, bang. And not only was I leveling up as well, but I kept on getting new armor pieces that I could either exchange for the souls or lacrima in this game is what they call it, and that's what you used to level up.

So I could exchange it for that, or I could take it to the blacksmith to break it down to get new pieces to then make new armor, or I could infuse it into the current armor that I have to then power that shit up. So I found myself getting into that rhythm. I was like, okay, this is what Fighting Cowboy meant by like grinding the loot because it's just really convenient with an enemy being right there.

And the enemy is giving me a decent amount of like souls. It's not just like 200 or whatever. I'm getting a decent amount. But is that what I want out of this experience? See, and that's the thing is that's been my experience of this game too. This game loves numbers and stats, like incremental numbers and stats. And they have so many different ways of like slowly powering up your character, whether it be through gaining. lacrima and like literally like you know statting up your character or whether it be gear or whether

it be a number of things um i got to the end of like the second big level um which had a boss fight where i was like oh like that's what we're doing here where the boss fight was so fucking tough um and it took me like hours and hours and hours to get through it but between all that time i am like all right cool let me turn around let me grind let me get my levels up uh one thing that this game does I think it's kind of unique to it a little bit is they have these they're called what adversary, Revenance of adversary, I think is what they're called.

You can summon homies to help you. Yes, so when you're to a boss, you can summon a homie to help you but also when you're out in the level you're exploring you can summon homies or not home, you can summon enemies to fight which are different from the enemies that are out in the world. These basically work kind of as like other hunters and Bloodborn where these are characters that are mirrors of the player character

and so you're fighting somebody that plays like another player. And if you beat them, you then get a resource that you can spend at the boss fight to then summon an ally to fight the boss with you. And so, and those guys also drop loot, right? And those guys

also, and also the thing that they drop, also you can use the level up. It's a whole thing. But I spent so much of my time at the end of that big second level, like turning around from this boss fight, going back, taking out enemies, fighting the adversaries and being like,

listen, I'm going to get myself O.P. And I did that for hours and hours and hours. And there's a part of my brain that fucking loves that shit. Like, I love grinding and a soul's like. I love just like, you know, getting those numbers up. But there is the other part of my brain that's like, Andy where I'm like, is this what they want me to do, though?

Because this feels kind of excessive for how much I feel like I need to do this to play on a fair playing field. There's also a lot of somewhat like not hidden menus. But there are menus in this game that I found 15 to 20 hours in where I'm like, oh, I could level this. I didn't know this was here.

Like I suddenly I went into this one menu called Kazan's memories. Anytime you run around the world, Tim, there might be a dead body with like a little red glow on it. And you walk up to it and you like suck the red glow out of it. I don't know. And you hear like a memory of like, Kazan, you know, we have to stop them or whatever. You kind of hear how that dude died. And when the more and more you find those, the more and more that you take their memories, the more that you have like a certain inventory or a certain currency that you can

level up like permanent stats, I didn't even think to look at that screen. I was like, oh shit, I didn't know this is here. Not saying it's going to be life or death, but it certainly helps. There's a lot of different things in this game that are accessible to you that could maybe make the experience a little bit easier. Like Blessing was talking about these homies that you summon. The really cool thing that I think systems-wise and creative thing that they've done here is that there are a lot of different homies that you could summon. And they're all different looking. They all have their characters, right? And the more that you have each one selected, like I can go into the screen and select one.

And the more and more that I do well with them, the more and more that dude gets powered up. Not that he's even out, not that he's summoned. He's just getting stronger and stronger. But each one of these, like, teammates or whatever has their own passives that they give you whenever they are summoned in a big boss fight. So the one that I'm using right now, his passive stats give me way faster stamina regeneration. So if I were to summon him in a fight, I get a shitload faster stamina regeneration. another one of the homies gives you way better

crit damage and the more and more that you have them selected while you're playing the game, the more and more you level them up. I think that's a really sick system. I love that it's not just random NPC without, like, you know, I have no context for who you are. You're at least getting like, not only the passive benefit

of them being an extra body in the boss fight, but they're giving you some sort of power to make you stronger in the fight, which I think is really cool. Yeah. Yeah, and again, like, So many different small things like that of you can play this way to then get this thing up right so yeah you can have a certain ally Equipped as you're playing and get the plus four percent critical damage But another one that I realized as I was playing recently where I was like oh damn y'all really have so many things is

In the levels there are Anywhere from like one to maybe three or four of these crystals these red crystals that you'll find that you can break and if you break a enough time They're hidden and sometimes they're hard to reach plays so you got to throw a thing at them. You gotta throw your spear, your javelin. It becomes like a collectathon thing, but not, there's not a whole lot of them. But then you come back and then like, you talk to a person and they're like, all right, now you can spend these to do, you know, you gain plus two lacrima or plus two percent lacrimand now or plus two percent. I'm, my, I think maybe a small critique here of what

they do with it is I oftentimes look at these numbers and I'm like, these, when you're presenting these numbers to me, they almost feel too small to care, even though I know that like, In the grand scheme, it's all going to add up over time. But I'm looking at this and I'm like, all right, what's plus 1% to me right now? Like I feel like I want to build towards something, but I almost wish that they would have been maxed more in terms of, all right, if you want to gain more lacrima, this is how you have to do. Or if you want to do more critical it, this is how you have to do it as opposed to everything kind of being spread out amongst everything. Yeah. And maybe it's because of the weapon that I'm using.

I chose to go with the main one that they start you off with, which you have like a sword and an axe. And it's kind of like, it's the dex build. It's the dexterity build where it's a bit faster. You do, there's weapons, there's abilities that you can unlock that make your dude look just like crazy fast and a lot of cool, flashy looking things. But the, the reason I love it, it's got such a good crunch to it. This game has fantastic sound design. Like the, the parries, the criticals, there's moments, you know, it's got like, it's, it has, it has. has that Monster Hunter hit stop sort of thing.

And there's times where there's four like just brainless zombies walking at me. And if I swipe at them, you hear the do-d-d-d-do-do-do. And it just feels awesome. It's got a really good vibe. Even popping a health feels like it sounds good. It almost sounds like a creature

like got their head popped or something. So the reason I went with that weapon because I love the way it feels. I'm usually a very heavy set weapon, dude. And there are three weapon types you can get in this game. and it kind of sucks because it's really hard to

reset your skills or your talent points but I'm definitely building towards dexterity in this case I think they call it I don't know I just call it dexterity for now because everybody knows what they call it

or here I got willpower I can actually oh yeah it is willpower you're right so I know because I'm doing the same thing so instead of going strength I'm going willpower and as I'm playing I'm like I'm just gonna try to go

glass cannon with this shit let me just put a shitload of points into willpower and barely have any health or stamina and it legitimately doesn't matter. Yeah. I feel like I'm doing half of a pixel more damage than I was before. Wow.

The numbers are so, in my opinion, broken. Like I wish they didn't go with this sort of, of, I wish they went with the Sekiro system. Yeah. Where you just get stronger. And it's like a magical, like, under the hood, you're stronger now. Great job.

And the stuff you got to worry about is maybe... It's more learning about enemy types and systems and stuff like that and less about the menu side of shit, right? Yeah, like, because the thing in... If I were to go Glass Cannon build in any Dark Souls game, you feel that shit. You see one hit that you take and it's like, God damn, you took out of a fourth of their...

How high is your strength? That's crazy or whatever. Or how high is your decks? That's insane. And here, it's like, I barely feel like I am doing even much more than I was prior. And again, I won't... Legitimately, my...

what's up? Does that work in the inverse? Like you being a glass cannon, like, are you feeling God, I'm getting destroyed now? Or is it still like, oh, I'm taking a little more damage? Well, no, because your health bar does, you definitely see your health bar growing. So I would say like if there's people, but that was me early on before I sort of reset. This is me just kind of experimenting with stuff. It does not feel like you can really tune your shit the way an elder ring or a dark souls is. You're barely going to do a bit more damage. And again, like, I'm telling my stats at one point were I had 15 health, 12 stamina, 37 willpower. And it's like, why am I not seeing that reflected in what I'm doing?

I was the same thing for me where I'm such a min-maxer in games like this. I want to be the person who I'm in Liza P. I'm putting all my numbers into Motivity. Motivity. I was trying to pull out. I was like, what was it? I put all my numbers into motivity. Which is their version of dexterity too. Yeah, which I learned was like not the thing to do because I was basically a hard mode for the game. But I did it anyway, and that was my play style. You know, similar thing in Eldon Ring, where I'm like, I'm going to put all my numbers into dexterity.

Here, I put in, I started off just putting my numbers into strength because I didn't notice, I didn't think this game had scaling at first, just because I didn't notice it in the menu. And then once I noticed that the sword and axe scale with willpower and strength, I was like, okay, cool, then I'll do strength willpower. So I'm going to, you know, start specking into those. And it didn't feel like it mattered enough. And I, like, right now, if you look at my stats, I took a turn. I was like, all right, everything's getting leveled up evenly now.

And that's probably been the best decision I made as far as, like, how I'm going about this game. Because now I'm like, okay, cool, I got good health. I got good stamina. I got good, like, I got good everything. And it doesn't feel like it really has shifted. Or I guess the way I was playing before didn't feel like it was making as much of a difference as far as doing big damage on the enemy. Like, all damage I was doing felt non-consequential. I would have loved to have found another item to reset my skills because fighting Cowboy told me that he was using the,

the giant sword, like the great sword, which is a strength build as opposed to the dexterity build. I wanted to switch to that just for experimentation's sake. And I used like the one reset skills thing that I found. And I haven't found any more. I thought that'd be a lot easier to find. And it's kind of fucking annoying that I don't have another way to do that. Maybe I'm just missing it because this game has a lot of, I think, missable things. But so far it's like, I don't know where that item is because I had it in my inventory at first.

and once I used that, I thought I'd be finding more with how frequently I'm finding a lot of other items in the game and other items or other currencies. I just haven't found that little sum of a bitch. I don't know where it is. I definitely want to keep talking about our first berser Kazan. We got a couple super chats that I'm going to get to. But if you have super chats, please get them in

because when we get back from our word from our sponsors, we're going to get to those. This podcast is brought to you in part by Stash. Are you still putting off saving and investing because you'll get to it someday. Stash turns someday into today. Stash isn't just an investing app. It's a registered investment advisor

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That's get. Dot stash.com slash kind of funny. Paid non-client endorsement. Not representative of all clients and not a guarantee. Investment advisory services offered by Stash Investments LLC and SEC registered investment of advisor. Investing involves risk and investments may lose value. Offers subject to T&Cs. Did either of you play the demo for First Berserker Kazan? I did. Yeah. Fantastic because CJ splits on rights and says, I don't know why I said his name that way. Is the demo a good

representation of the full game? Yeah, I'll say so. Yeah. I would say so. There's a, I remember playing one of the demo builds and a lot of people saying, Andy, you didn't go check out the, there's an extra boss and I never had the ability to see that boss. I don't know how I didn't, but yeah, the demo gives you a good opportunity to see what the level design is like, take on little small

ad enemies, and then they give you the boss fight where it is, but you know. All right, learn how to play the game. You learning the different patterns and as you play the game more and as you die more, like that's the thing where when fighting cowboy told me it took him like 30

hours to beat the game, I'm like, All right, well, tack on an extra hour of boss fights. Tack on an extra hour per boss fight for me, because that's likely what it's going to be for me, where I think there's been two bosses where I've taken like two hours for, and a lot of them take me, you know, 30 minutes to an hour to beat, because it's fucking tough. But I think the sort of like the way Stellar Blade does it,

there is a lot of different abilities that you can, when you hold the A button, it'll show you, when you hold the A button, it shows you like your abilities in the bottom right. Oh, you remember your controls. Oh, yeah. Yeah, R2 for me. R2, gotcha, gotcha. So I have a lot of different cool abilities that make me stronger and make me faster

and maybe whittle down the enemy's stamina bar quicker or whatever. And there's a lot of really cool flashy animation. And I love that. Like when I'm in the combat, it does feel like you have a lot of options. I do love, this game has like three different ways. used to parry, which is really good. Yeah. It does. Yeah. I'm glad you brought that up, because I think that's another really cool innovation.

Like, it's just a... Give you options. Yeah, because you can just... Left bumper is your standard deflect, right? If you're holding it, you're blocking, but you'll take chip damage. If you time it right, you see the red flash of... And that's like, oh, shit, I've really paried that well. And I will see...

You know, I love specking my stuff into, like, make the enemy lose health whenever I do a perfect parry. And I just love the way that that sort of like feels and I feel stronger and like an awesome gamer right. And the more you do that, that's awesome. But there's a there's a couple of other things. They have a version of their

Macquarie counter for all you Sekiro heads out there where you'll see a little icon pop up above your dude's head and that tells you I either got to dodge this but I can't just normal parry it. I have to hold for me on my button scheme is really weird. I have to hold

left bumper and then hit the square or X button. Okay. And for me it's L1 circle. It's not that far off. Okay, cool. So when that happens the enemy, like, you'll see the icon pop above your head and it's like, oh, that move, I have to remember to do this move in the next half a second. And then the enemy does a windup. And of course, these windups take like seven minutes. Yeah, dude. I love it. Because they're just like, oh, God, when it's this move coming,

and finally when they come and hitch it, it's like, you have like a much bigger impacted visual sound and it feels great. And they're like down for a second too, so you can just wail on them. Yeah. And then there's another parry that they, I'll look at the name of the skill right now. This is a skill tree one. This is, yeah, this is in the common skill tree and it's called, it's called counterattack. Nope, that's not what it's called.

It's called reflection. There you. I was going to say, all these abilities have like really unique names for things that are also in other games. Yeah, so for me, my attack scheme is like a Souls game where it's R1 for light attack, R2 for heavy attack. For the reflection, you have to hold L1 and then hit R2. The thing is, it's like a really, you have to time it perfectly.

Yeah. Because it does a lot of stagger damage on the enemy, and it knocks him down. And sometimes it might even get them into like a critical, like where the red icon pops up on their body to say, all right, do that finish your critical move or whatever. Not a finisher, because usually doesn't kill them. But it's one that you have to hit way earlier than you're used to. So like if an enemy, you see the enemy start their animation, you're like, all right, let me try to do this. This is a big risk reward.

And that's what I love about games like these where you feel so rewarded because you know if you didn't nail that, you're fucked. You're going to take a couple of big hits. And suddenly it's like, man, I had a full health bar. And then I just started fucking up all my parries. And now I'm almost dead, you know. So this one, you hold L1, you hit R2. And this is like somehow they even made the sound cooler and more satisfying. I want to try and go for default control scheme.

You just fucking, like knock them down and it's like, oh, yes, I nailed that shit. All their stamina gone. But, you know, don't rely on it too much because it's really hard to do because a lot of enemies will attack you within one frame of animation or maybe they're going to take six minutes to wind up their animation. For me, this is where the game shines. I saw people earlier in chat wondering, like, are they going to give it scores? Like, what do you guys think on, like, as far as score? I'm not, I don't think I'm going to give it a score just because I'm probably halfway through the game. but I will say

I think the closest comparison I can give to this would be I played more Wollong than I did Neo but like if this game I think reminds me a lot of Neo if you remember the Wollong review that we did a couple years ago I think I gave that like a three out of five

type thing even though we really like the gameplay I'll say that this is like a step above I agree totally agree where like the combat is really engaging and I think the combat gives you enough options and the bosses are really well designed even though they're fucking tough that is really really fun on that level

And then the art style, also in presentation, I think, is really good. But the story reminds me about how I felt about the Wollong story, but not as bad. Like, Wollong was so boring. Whereas this, at least, you can tell that they're trying. You can tell that there's a universe here that might be, if you're a nerd about it, could have stuff for you. But, like, you know, I'm not necessarily here for that. The level design might be, like, slightly better than a Wollong as well, right? Like, if I were to give it a score right now, I would say 8 out of 10.

I'm around, like, 8.5 out of 10. That's great. I'm having a great. It is great. That's the definition. I really, really fucking like this game a lot. That's awesome.

I would put it above, for me, at least, Stellar Blade, because I think combat and movement feels better. I loved the way Stellar Blade felt when you were kind of

finally getting into the action, but something about like just her standard attack, when you just hit like the normal attack, it felt like you weren't moving far enough. Like you were almost just stationary swinging and just that kind of annoyed me. I think the locomotion and the way that you just traverse and run around in this game,

it feels good and it looks good. Well, hold on, I take that back. The standard run that isn't the sprint in this game looks like you're kind of on a treadmill. Your legs are moving too fast for how far you're moving. And I really fucking hate it. Like I can't. It's like my Pomeranians. Yes, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. They ain't moving, though. Yeah, like his legs are moving and you're barely kind of like. So I'm normally just sprinting everywhere because it's a lot less. annoying to look at. But yeah, I think the game is really awesome and enjoyable as hell if you're into challenging games or Souls games or whatever. There's no, I don't think there's any difficulty options, right? There's no way to drop. I think there is. I think there's like a story option or

something. Adam two times says, I didn't care for the Eldon Ring story. There is. Yes, there is. Sorry. I didn't care for the Eldon Ring story. Throw rocks at me. I know. But the gameplay hooked me. Is this, is this similar to a degree? Well, it depends on what you liked about. Eldon Ring. Like I think so much of the special sauce of Eldon Ring is not only the combat, but the exploration takes a big chunk of the pie of like, man, I appreciate the fuck out of this game. Because there's a wonder around every corner. This game isn't like that. This game is way more akin to an old school Souls game in terms of level design. Not as smart, but they're, recently the areas that I'm in, there's been a couple of shortcuts where I'm like, whoa, that was awesome. I wish there

was more of that in the game. But yeah, I think it's pretty standard level design. I think it's a much different... What I would say to anybody who's interested in this is the same thing I would tell to anybody who's been interested in Souls games at all. This doesn't play like a Souls game. This plays like Securo or Liza P or Stellar Blade.

It's a different combat system entirely. You're not going to just be able to get a big bonk hammer and take out an enemy in three hits while like dodge rolling on time. You have to start to memorize patterns of enemies where, you know, this dude's going to hit you with a left swing and a right swing, and he's going to wait just a scosh to do the overhead swing, and you have to go, ding, ding, and once you do that, like, you're going to get that. That's where I find the satisfaction in it. Yeah, dude.

It's sick. I need a cigarette. As I was saying that sentence I was less it smiling. That does something of my brain. It does, dude. You were just saying you're like, you're not thinking about like going back to it right now.

Like the moment we end this, you have to go play this game. I might have to boot up a little bit. I might have to boot it up a little bit. Better than Liza P. I would say no. I think Liza P is like the best Souls like that isn't a From Soft game. I agree with that.

But another thing I love about Liza P was the weapon crafting where I can have like a cool handle that has certain stats. It's a handle from a sword, but I could match that up with a goddamn axe that I could take the axe off of the other handle that I was on and match them up.

And now I have new stats, and it swings and performs differently. And of course, parrying enough to break enemies' weapons was just one of the coolest, most satisfying things. But this is still up there. This is awesome. Yeah, I saw somebody earlier in chat asked, like, oh, it was CJ Splits.

I don't understand why these games can never get the story aspect right. I thought Liza P was one of those rare ones where I was like, oh, I really liked the world. they have here. Obviously, they're working off of Pinocchio. But, like... I think Liza P did. Liza P had a lot of moments

where I cared about a certain NPC and you start to kind of learn more about them and then you're like, oh, you're like... It had a lot more intriguing things like that where... And honestly, it was even more impressive that like there's an IP to build off of, but the way they still told

the story felt so genuine to what Souls games are. Yeah. And like redoing that, which I think is why it kind of ends out. But yeah, this game, I don't know. Again, just a stunning lack of Ben Star in this game. It's crazy to me how little he's actually speaking in the game. It really bums me out. I'm not happy about it, too. Because, yeah, I just, I don't know, the other enemies take a lot more priority. And, like,

he never, there's never, like, a monologue moment from him. There's never, it's just little splashes of dialogue here and there that every enemy's always talking more than you. you. And you're such an important character in this game because you are essentially like, you were a captain of an army. And there's a lot of people that look up to you, right? So that's already going to try to, that already takes away my, my mental argument where for some reason, I felt like this NPC was supposed to be a voiceless, or this character was supposed to be voiceless at like, you know, like any soul's MP, like any soul's main character. You don't ever talk. It's just always everybody else. But then the more I,

But then at the last second, they're like, oh, we should get Ben Starr to kind of voices. So throw some lines in there. And the more I played, I'm like, no, actually, you, you're a really important character. You're a captain who has to, like, you know, really pump up his troops and everybody looks up to you. Kazan, oh, my God, I can't believe you came back for us. You know, there's a lot of moments like that that there's just rarely any moments where I get to go, like, Ben Star is popping off here. It's definitely not Final Fantasy 16. One of my complaints

Because this game does have Sauce like in terms of presentation And what it has going on like In terms of you know level presentation Character presentation But it doesn't have much sauce When it comes to the gear that you put on I feel like we could have gone a bit further

I'm having like cooler shit Maybe I'm not far enough yet to like see the coolest shit That it has to offer But like I'm looking at my character And I'm like all right cool you just got on some garb You know what I mean? Give me the cool carb I think the more you play

The more you'll see that because Anytime you kill a large enemy, they will drop an item along with other random loot. And then the blacksmith will give you the ability to use that one item to make a sick ass or make a weapon and then make other pieces of armor that are kind of like similar visually to what that boss was. Later on, I think the, you know how sick the Phantom Blade, the Phantom Blade look, guy looks? Phantom Blade Phantom Battle Blade Zero's Yeah How sick that dude looks

He looks like an enemy in like power ranges Or I don't know He just got like a cool sort of suit to him There's a very similar vibe With a lot of the armors in here Where you're no longer just Soldier with a helmet And shoulder pads or whatever

Now you're like Oh you look kind of otherworldly And I really enjoy the way The game kind of scales up visually Josh Morales Super Chatsin Speaking of the bosses How iconic are

the bosses. I feel like in these kind of games, the main character is never the coolest character. What bosses and enemies stick out as notable? Oh, I mean, we can't spoil that. But, like, there's sick-ass stuff in this game. I think the first day that I finally started playing it,

I think the reason why I didn't beat this game, like, GDC was just, like, a lot. I didn't have a whole lot of time to play. But Blessing telling me, like, did you get to this lizard boss, who was one of the secret bosses in the demo, I believe, that everybody was telling me to fight? I was like, no, and he was like, dude, he's really tough.

And then I had the pleasure of trying him, fighting him for the first time. And I tried him once. And I got to the second phase and I was like, all right, now it's not the night. It's already too late. And if I keep on going, I'm going to be stuck here for two hours. Let me try him out later. And then when I tried him out later, I was like, oh, bless, that wasn't even the second phase. And Bless was like, yeah, you described what happened.

and I was like, that's, he, he doesn't know that that's the, not the second phase. So it was, that boss is really tough. And that's like a really big first skill check for you. That's like, oh, shit. If I, I need to get my shit together or else I'm going to be here for a couple of hours, you know. Yeah. I'm lacking the bosses. They're not my favorite bosses in an action game.

Like, I think the gameplay is super fun with them. But I think there is a certain level of, the Blade Phantom is dope as fuck. The lizard guy that we're talking about, I do look at him and I'm like, oh, you're just a lizard guy. You're kind of just a generic lizard guy. And there's a lot of them. Yeah. And that's thing is, so far I think more bosses lean toward,

I see the archetype you are, and I'm not seeing much further past that. But then this is me halfway through the game, I'm sure I'm going to run into more bosses later. I'm like, oh, this is cool. But I've not had a, man, not to spoil Liza P. I'm not going to spoil Liza P.

But Liza P had some boss fights where in that mid-phase transition, like some transformation shit happens. And I'm like, oh, that's fucking ill. I'm not had that moment here yet. I'll say, I don't know if anything ever gets to Liza P level either with bosses. They're still cool. Like, if I were, I've already given them a score on the kind of funny scale, Tim.

Give them like a 7-5. I think it's really good. Like, really good shit. I put Liza P in like the 9 section. We can, honestly, next time we review a souls like or souls adjacent game, we gotta like review every soul's element. You know what I mean? Of like, all right, bosses.

The name of the words that are using for dexterity. Motivism. We're bringing it back to like the old school IGN reviews, Tim. We got to heard like GameSpot reviews. Fun fact. Like in 2005 video game reviews. Game Pro had sound and it had like the silly face of like, ah. You're gonna average it all out.

These are some of the armors that you get like. These are some of the arms you get later on. Brother, I haven't seen the screen. The crafting. Where are you? This is the blacksmith. You find him a bit later on. Oh, I did just find the blacksmith.

Okay. Cool. I'll talk to them then. So Andy, earlier you were talking about playing on the scene deck and it's running well. I saw a lot of chat earlier on wanting more details on that. Can you talk about performance both on Steam Deck and otherwise and what your playtime was split between the two? I didn't, I maybe put in like maybe two hours on Steam Deck. Okay.

That's not because it like doesn't run well. I just like I loved being on my PC with my screen and my controller. What screen are you playing on these days? When you're playing a game on like your PC gaming setup, what? What's your screen? Oh, I mean, it's the best purchase I've made in a long time. Last year, I bought a 32-inch 4K Alienware OLED. And this sucker's a fucking dream.

Like, it just looks so goddamn good. So I play on that thing. It's 240 Hertz. It gives me all the frames I want, gives me all the refresh rate that I want. It looks amazing. So that's where I primarily play everything. And, yeah, but going back to the Steam Deck, it runs so good on this

on this little machine I did lower because I kind of preferred the you know I want the most frame rate on the Steam deck right and the Steam Deck Oled screen is a 90 hertz refresh rate and you can play with unlocked frame rate up to like 90

frames per second or even 120 frames per second but I lowered everything down to like low but the nice thing about it it doesn't do what a lot of games like Monster Hunter does, that's the most recent game I can think of, where Monster Hunter obviously a big, beefy game to try to run on a Steam deck. And the way that they try to get it to run is by, like,

just throwing as much A&DFSR as you can at it to try to get it to, like, upscale correctly. And it looks so mushy and noisy and gross as hell, so, like, I didn't even bother playing. But here, I lowered, I wish it was an extra setting, because I was able to lower anti-alicing all the way to low, and then I lowered resolution all the way to low.

and it gives you a cool like PS2-ish look where it's still like clean and crisp but it just has like an old school nostalgia sort of like 3D look to it but I can raise the resolution up to it doesn't give you numbers though but I can put resolution up to like higher and it'll look really clean and good

I may not be getting 60 plus frames per second but it still feels really smooth and responsive it's I think a lot of that is because of art style right bless like it's not going for this crazy visual thing and it's not this gigantic open world either. It looks great. It looks great. It has this sort of cell shaded anime look to all the

characters and the environments have good lighting and everything and yeah you're able to play this game really smoothly and well on this machine. Yeah. Any final thoughts on First Preserker? A really good game. I had a final thought and I missed

it. I lost it. I was like, I know I'm going to end this podcast on. I totally forgot I was going to say, and do you speak? Okay, I'll speak. My final thoughts on First Preserker Kazan. I wish that I cared more about the story and the characters, but I don't think I've been given much of a chance to care because just of the lack of Ben Star.

And that bums me out. And also, you know, it's not necessarily like the storytelling's incredible anyway or the voice acting is incredible. It's kind of okay, right? So those are like most of my... negative thoughts, I think the gear is a little too unwieldy. I don't know if we needed that aspect of the gear and also leveling up your dude when the returns are so minuscule, but the combat is so good and so responsive and just tight as fuck and it just feels awesome. It looks great. And once

you're kind of getting all these parries down and once you're getting the timing and the rhythm of these bosses down, you feel like a god. It's just awesome. It's really kind of immediate get satisfaction. You hit all those little brain neurons and it's like, I feel great right now. I beat that boss. And then it's kind of a spoiler also,

but like having Steam achievements on, it'll pop and be like, whenever I get an achievement. And that lets me know that I beat the boss and there isn't an extra phase. Yeah, no, for real. So maybe turn those on, you know, or turn those off.

But like, you know. Dude, I had that yesterday when I beat a boss fight on only, either my second or third try and I was like certainly that was this phase one and I saw the trophy pop up and I'm like thank fucking dog

I fucking did that shit let's fucking yeah hold on one I want to talk about that because you're saying turn that off because you want the surprise of maybe there's another phase but you're saying leave it on because you're like I want the satisfaction

I love that notification and usually it's I think the giveaway for me is knowing how quickly I got through a first phase and I'll be like surely there's something else and it's like oh not okay I just I just popped off

they're awesome. But then there's a time where it's like, whoa, I finally beat that. And the thing doesn't pop and you're like, oh, fuck. And Kazan walks a sexy ass away

his beautiful hair, his big ass tits. Dude, this guy has massive tits. Yeah, dude. Big naturals. This guy has big natties. Big naturals for sure.

And he walks away and then you just see like some rumbling and like magic. It's like, oh shit, here we go. Phase two.

God damn. And immediately the first thing that goes in my mind is, first off, how those tits so big? And then second off, I'm just like, oh man, how am I going to get through that first phase again quicker? But you do, because you just start to learn more and you get better.

It's just, I don't know, I love these, I love these styles of games. I remember what I was going to say. It is that we're spoiled, man. I'm playing this game and I'm like, this game is so fucking good. It's so fucking fun. And even as we're reviewing it, right? Like I alluded to it at the beginning of this of there are so many action games that are like leaning in this direction of being a bit secular. or being a bit neolike or being a bit souls like or being a bit elder ring right and if this game

came out in like 2014 we'd be talking about game of the year you know category but for what we for where we're at we've gotten so many of these and like I'm saying that as a good thing I'm sure at some point we're going to hit critical mass of all right the souls born bubble has popped and now we got to slow down on making so many of these but as of now I think we are kind of in the prime of of the modern action game and I want to take a second to just appreciate that I'm playing this game and I'm like eight out of ten meanwhile I'm having some of the most fun you know I'm having a fucking fantastic time and that's just where we're at where we have games like dark souls that has such fantastic level design right we have games like securo that have such good combat or you know

a game like like Liza P that nailed like atmosphere nailed like having a unique combat system and all these things but and there's enough of these bad games to suss them out and be like you know these are special for this reason yes and it's not just it's not that anybody can throw their hat into the ring and suddenly make a good soul's like like there's plenty of bad ones out there for sure and this is a really good one this is a great one also uh barrett how close can you get in on my steam deck this is not a you won't be spoiled by the way um but i just want to show you like this slow-ass run cycle look at this guy oh you're right yeah he's got ice skating his legs are moving too fast to to be moving that slowly i hate it it reminds me of like old school films where they'd have like them like uh

in front of like a green screen Yeah That's very funny That one That one boxer on TikTok Who would run in place Oh yeah

That dude I think I know you're talking about Yeah yeah yeah Like he would slow down Salt Poppy Was it Salt Poppy? What are they He was this is Salt Poppy

The guy that would do like No that's Salt Bay Of course Yeah Salt Bay How could we Set up Yeah

Salt Poppy Yeah yeah yeah Because he would just Run in front of his camera And make it look like He was moving his legs and it was like crazy. And then he would go in a slow motion. Okay, yes, I do know what you're talking about.

And then he got fit enough that, yeah, he started like boxing. He's a sick-ass boxer. That's cool, man. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like the reverse Keith Lee. Mm-hmm. I don't know who that is. I just agree.

You don't know Keith Lee? Nah. He's like the food reviewer. 10 out of 10. No? Dang, dude. You got exposed to some Keithley. He was a UFC fighter at first.

Oh. And now he's like a big TikTok guy. It's like one of the most popular TikTok people. He goes to different cities. He was in SF. he was like this place is Gotham. Look up Keithley. Yeah.

All right, well, I don't fuck with him then. Let us know in the comments below what you're thinking about. The first berserker Kazan. They tried to poison him, Barrett. He's allergic to the fish, the shellfish? Shellfish. Yeah, he had a shellfish allergy. And like they got some of that in the food.

And so that, that, you know, gives a comparison to Gotham. Yeah, well, he wasn't have a good time when he was here. He didn't have a good time. Let us know in the comments below. What you're thinking about this? Has this review got you more hyped? what you're thinking about the state of action games in 2025. And also stay tuned because the stream for Half-Life 2 with RTX is about to begin.

I can't wait to see it. It's going to be beautiful. But until next time, love y'all. Goodbye.