Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The WORST Game of 2021? - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 59

Episode Date: February 3, 2021

Go to http://upstart.com/kindafunny to find out how Upstart can lower your monthly payments today! Tim, Greg, Blessing, and Imran give impressions on Balan's Wonderland, Super Mario 3D World, Cyber Shadow, and more. Time Codes: 00:00:00 - Start 00:05:00 - Housekeeping 00:06:25 - Super Mario 3D World 00:22:05 - Balan’s Wonderworld 00:45:43 - Ads 00:48:07 - Destruction All Stars 01:05:00 - Cyber Shadow 01:15:21 - Division 2 Next Gen Update Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty's joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. I realize it's my introduction, but I am ready to accept the concession speeches from all of you for last week's Kind of Funny Gamescast prediction episode, right? I said by the end of this year, Imron's going to say, Avengers, pretty good game. Avengers comes out. Here's the Hawkeye DLC. Here's what we're doing with PS5 and Xbox series X-patches. The world rejoices, right?

unanimously they're like this will fix it. Then this week, right? Last week I say, you know what? No Switch Pro this year. This week, Mr. Nintendo himself comes on and he says, no Switch Pro, Greg was right. So I'm ready. That's two in the bag already for points, everybody. I'm ready. Turn it off. It's over.

I feel like we're going to want to wait until the end of the year for both those predictions. Ah, yeah. I'm wrong. Give it the damn points. You say no Switch pro. What? What did I miss? Ah, who gives a shit? Motherfuckers said some things are going to be changed and taken back 10

different ways like, well, I said no Switch Pro. It's like, well, great. When the Super Nintendo Switch comes out, then we'll see. Exactly. That's the thing. They're Nintendo about it of like, no time soon. Which, what does that mean? This week and the next week's not soon to them anymore? Who knows? Yeah, who knows. You know who might know? The future

of video games. Blessing at a Yoia Jr. Awah, hour. Our, hour. What's that? It's a TikTok thing. I would expect you to know, Tim. No, I did know that. I just like, I thought that it was like a really broke-ass Mario getting burned by lava. No.

I was like, this is the kind of funny games cast. We get together to talk about video games and all things we love about them with the people we love, including the former and former Imran Khan, who my God, you just had to make the real Greg Miller prediction real that we didn't want to see, which is the predictions episode is always the surefire sign, the kiss of death that the fourth member of the kind of funny games cast is moving on to much better place. By that point, I had an interview.

I had not gotten an offer yet, so I was like, hmm, this is kind of awkward. There's a chance. This is true. And for those that don't know, Imran, can you please explain what's going on? Yeah, as of next week, which will be my last couple of shows for Games Daily and Gamescast,

I will be no longer a regular host and kind of funny. I will be leaving for Fanbyte, where I'm going to be building out their new section over the next couple of years. So this is my, pen ultimate games cast as I would go to co-host, but not necessarily as a, you know, as a host in general. Yeah, right before the show went live here,

I was telling him about it. I was like, I don't know. Like, I know this doesn't actually matter in the pantheon of things that matter. But to me it does that I want you to still be a kind of funny part timer. Like, I don't want to, I'm not taking you off of that list. Like, you're still officially in the kind of funny family. And I'm not letting you go anywhere because you've been way too good to this show.

Well, you're going to have to fight me. get me out of that game code's channel because that's like that saves me so much money no no your new overlords at fanbyte can get you all right anyway we're very proud of you man this has been awesome like you've been amazing on the show you're going to continue to be amazing on the show as often as we can have you and you're going to be so great over at fan bite and that's such a great thing for you and you know we are very lucky to have had you for as much as we have for as long as we have so thank you for all of that i'm i'm so glad that i was able to do this for the last year and a And like, I remember very clearly before my first games cast, I was sitting in a, God, it was when Ceremony Mall was still open.

And I was like sitting in the coffee shop and a laptop, like, watching previous games cast to be like, all right, I should, I should watch a couple of these to like get, figure out what I'm going to do with this podcast. And I'd be like, oh, man, everyone like knows that they're talking about and they're all so funny. And like, everyone's such good friends is going to feel like real weird for me to be there. And now it's like, I can't imagine not being on. the show at this point of like not talking to you guys about video games every week i know yeah it's it's gonna be hard to get used to but we're hoping we can get you on uh a fair bit as much as we can we'll see you know we all have to figure out how this all goes and stuff this isn't a jared petty andrea's situation where they are fucking dead to us like imron's very much alive to us you know

i do want to point out i threw this out on twitter is that i was i was talking about possible assassins creed hot takes from my assassins creed interview and imron responded with i i i I will leave kind of funny if you put Unity at the top spot. And Imron, that was the biggest fucking bluff because you're planning out leaving anyway, and it just hurt. I wanted like one, like at least one person who had seen that and then saw the news of me leaving and be like, did Barrett force Imron out? Yeah. Did you know what happened? You did you?

Number one? Oh, man. Well, let's enjoy you for as long as we have you here because this is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week right here on YouTube. slash kind of funny games. We get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You could watch the show live as it's being recorded, ad free with the exclusive post show

by going to patreon.com slash kind of funny games. Just like so many of you did. Thank you so much for all of your support over on both the patrons and on Twitch.tv slash kind of funny games the month of January. We always do our big push to try to make kind of funny as big and great as it possibly can be.

and we're going to absolutely do that this year. Thanks to the help of Graham of legend, David Mindel, The Mind Freak, Trevor Starkey, Elliot, Patrick Higgins, James Hastings, Katie Gallagher, Sancho West Gaming, shy Jackson Burgess, Alex J. Sandoval, Julian, the gluten-free gamer, man-bear paradox, Talia Floyd, civilian soldier, Mizuki, Trent Barry, Kevin Boges, Joy, Joseph O'Suf, Tyler Ross, at Jesse the Decker

sorry Jesse the Deccrepit James Davis and the nanobiologist thanks to all of you you're amazing you're dope

claps for you thumbs up for you all the good stuff we're brought to you by Upstart but we will get to that later for now let's start with a little bit

of what we've been playing now I want to come off the bench real quick to start this one off I've been playing I've been lucky enough to be playing Super Mario 3D world

Plus Bowser's Fury on the Nintendo Switch Yeah this is still the preview phase of this So I can't really talk about Too much overall But is Mario in it

Mario I can confirm is in it Yeah Along along with his brother And you know Some of his other friends There's here Peach is there right isn't she in this one Peach is there

Yeah The cat suits I remember this game Mm-hmm Mm-hmm You would remember it well From 2013 when it first came out Very long time ago

I absolutely loved the game then. Of course, loving the game now. But the biggest addition to this game, Greg, is not FunkyCom, as you might have expected based on how Nintendo normally does ports things. It's a new game mode called Bowser's Fury. And that's kind of the first thing I want to talk about. It's its own separate game mode. When you start the game up, the menu has two sides to it.

You're either going into 3D world or you go into Bowser's Fury. And I didn't necessarily expect that going into it. because the trailer and all the things they've shown about Bousers Fury kind of just makes it look like it's a different section of the main game. Did you guys get the same read I did on that? Yeah, that's how I thought it would go. It didn't see like a different engine or anything like that. Like, I can't think of a reason besides just Nintendo's weird about those things

than to put it separately. But like, yeah, I would have thought it would be better integrated than just like, here's a menu item for it. So can you then play it off the bat? Yes. So that's the thing. Now, let's just start off. I want to, let's get through my thoughts on Mario 3D world.

It's as good as it ever has been, which is to say fantastic. It's very much built. It was really, really good. The music is fantastic. It is kind of just the most, like, Mario hit a point around there that everything about it is just so graphically refined that it just looks and sounds exactly as it should, almost too squeaky clean in some ways where it's just kind of like, it kind of loses personality at some point.

And that's been something that has been true, I think, of Mario for a very long time. Like when you look at 3D Mario, they all start to kind of blend. And it's like the look of Mario in 3D world and in Odyssey are very similar. And that's not necessarily the worst thing. But like I do think it's a little less exciting. And replaying through 3D worlds so far, I'm like, this is so good. But it very much has this been there, done that feel to it. Granted, I have been there.

I have done that. But replaying other Mario games, I just did with the, 3D All-Stars. And I don't really have that same kind of feeling. And I was a little bit surprised by that. But I can't wait to, I'm sure we're going to be doing a lot of multiplayer streams and stuff. And the multiplayer really is where 3D world excels.

Because like so far with what I can talk about in the game, it's very easy. Even if you're getting all of the collectibles and the, you know, the green stars and the stamps and all that stuff, it's very rare that I've had to play through a level more than once to collect all the things. But the good thing is it's been long enough that I don't really remember where all the things are. You know, so I'm excited for people because I know a lot of people haven't played this game. And a lot of people were kind of not talking shit about it. But I feel like when it first came out, everyone was just like, oh, it's another 3D land.

And it's like, this is so much more than 3D land. It was real weird, but it first got revealed because like it was in E3 and people were like, this is the game that's supposed to save the Wii you. And granted no game could save the Wii you. But, like, it was, people had these undue expectations of we wanted a Mario game to, like, change the world or whatever. And 3D world was just a really fantastic Mario game. So, like, when it actually came up, we're like, oh, yeah, this game is really good. But I think it lost because, like, people were expecting so much more of it.

Yeah. And it's interesting because, like you said, it's a fantastic Mario game. And from what I played so far, I can stand by that. It is a fantastic Mario game. But what's interesting is this was kind of not that. the introduction, but I would say perfection of this third pillar of Mario games, of 3D Mario games. There's the, or the Mario games in general. There's the 2D games. There's the 3D 64 style collectathon, explore big open world type games that Odyssey kind of was a sequel to. And then there

was 3D land to 3D world that are essentially, hey, what if the 2D Mario games were in 3D? It's obstacle based. We're trying to get to the end of the level. Maybe there's collectibles along the way but they're they're always challenged based as opposed to just collect a whole bunch of shit that's scattered around you know like the moves um so here's what things get really interesting bowser's fury blessing right off the bat you can play the game on the menu which i thought was a interesting choice but i actually am happy that they did that because it allowed me to get this new experience without having to play through things i've already done to be able to open it up right uh it is a lot more different than you'd expect

it is somehow a fourth pillar of Mario game. What? It is very unlike anything I've ever experienced with Mario where it plays like 3D World. It's the exact same engine. You have to hold a button to run, which gives you a little bit more momentum to jump higher. You don't get the triple jump.

You don't get as much control over Mario as you do in something like Sunshine or 64 Odyssey. And with that, there's a giant open world. This is the first time in a Mario game that the entire game is, Barrett has the video up here. It's this one world that you're going around. There's a whole bunch of different islands that you're going to, but they're all in one thing with no loading at all.

So it's kind of, it's interesting where it's kind of like if you took Odyssey but made it even more, if all the worlds of Odyssey were in one world together, but it has the gameplay style of 3D world, where each island kind of has its own mini obstacles that you're jumping through and stuff, but it is very much a collectathon game. There are these cat shines that you're collecting.

And it's kind of weird because it's a hodgepodge of all the different Mario styles that we've had before, and it really works most of the time. Most of the time. Most of the time. And to get to that, the more weird negative side of it is the same problem that a lot of these type of games have,

which is getting from one area to a, Another, nobody really likes water levels in Mario. And I feel like a big part of that too is even like with Mario Sunshine where, you know, so much of it was kind of water based. And this game reminds me of sunshine a lot actually, uh, in terms of how it reminds me of the Mario sunshine of 3D world, which is like, Hey, let's take let's take the core of this, but then let's kind of like add add some more like like a lot more water.

It's what. Uh, but, but on top of that, kind of. the idea that Sunshine wasn't quite ready for, but presented, which is, hey, Isle Delphino is its own thing and all the levels, you can see all of them

in the background of this whole thing. Like, every level in Mario Sunshine was part of that one world, right? But in this one, you can actually go to all those places. But it is kind of annoying when you know where you need to go,

and it takes a little too long to get there. And the game gives you some things to speed that up. But at the end of the day, it just kind of feels like the 3D Mario World gameplay. The Mario 3D world gameplay isn't necessarily meant to be in this type of open world. So it sounds to me, I don't know how I assume you're familiar with this comparison to him,

but it sounds to me like that 2008 Prince of Persia game, whereas like an open world with like platformer sections along the way. Yes. It is very similar to that. But the way it's set up, but there's a bunch of different islands. And there's this like goo all over the place, very sunshine-esque. And as the goo kind of goes away, the more you progress, the more shines you get and light shit.

up and all that stuff and then eventually you get access to more of this world. But it is all one interconnected world, which is a very cool idea. And there's Assassin's Creed style towers where eventually when you get enough shines, it lights up a lighthouse and like allows you to progress further and go to different islands. And the thing is all of this is extremely fun. All of this is extremely high quality Mario gameplay. There's some good challenge in it so far of what I've played. and the Bowser stuff is interesting when he comes up. I will say, so the way it happens is it seems random. Maybe like every like five minutes or so,

Bowser will kind of like attack and starts raining and he comes to face off and essentially interrupt the gameplay that you have for a Bowser fight. And you don't always need to fight him. Sometimes as he's attacking you, his attacks can like open up secrets in the areas that you're in. And it's very clear where you are. So sometimes when he comes, you'll want to get behind a certain wall.

So when he uses fire at you, it blows up some blocks that were in your way from getting to the top of this island or whatever. So there's some pretty clever things they do with Bowser. So it's not always this repetitive, just fight, fight, fight over and over and over. But having said that, like in the same way that traversing can kind of get frustrating, there are times where I wish Bowser would just chill the hell out. And he just keeps coming over and over and over. And it's just like, there's a lot of sitting and waiting where I'm like, all right, I know exactly what I need to do. But the game's not letting me do it right now.

And that can get kind of frustrating. So this very much to me feels like a very good experiment for what a style of Mario game could be. But it does seem to me like they were like, all right, this is very cool. But it's not going to be a full game. It's not going to be a full experience. So 3D World Plus Bowser's Furry seems to be a very good packaging of it, especially for a game that is, as old as it is, and this is definitely a step up above Funky Kong being added to Tropical Freeze. Hey, hey, hey, don't disperse my boy Funky Kong with his new Funky Kong.

Funky Kong is a history. Funky mode, all right? It makes you funky. I want them to add Swanky Kong to Dukong country, like, platformer milieu of like, this guy just is Dongky Kong with a coat and like sparkly paste. Hey man. When he says Swinky Kong, I believe you for a second that was a real picture. No, he's real. Oh, shit. Yeah. He was in three. three, I think? Yeah, it was three. Okay.

It was three. It was three, yeah. Yeah. But yeah, like, Tim, what you're saying? Like, this sounds like, to me, it does sound like an experiment of like, we know from that Nintendo Gigalink that they sometimes just sit on ideas for 10 years. And then like, okay, now we've broken through. We can figure out how to do this.

This to me sounds like, they've been talking about an open world Mario for a long time in like Mexico, or not Mexico, but like the desert in Marijuana City is like kind of similar to that idea. I think this is like their next step is like, does this work? Is this anything? and then like maybe in a game or two, they'll actually do that. Yeah, it is interesting.

I do think that it's going to, when they inevitably do make that game, I think that it won't be with the Mario 3D world physics engine. I think it'll be much more similar to Odyssey or maybe not with the cat mechanics or something, but I think it'll be a bit more of a traditional 3D Mario game where you have full control over Mario. You can do all the different types of the flip jumps

and, you know, there's just like a different level of precise, precision that you get that you kind of don't get with the 3D world. Or let me throw this out there. A Zelda dungeon where you're just doing the dungeon but the boss is just constantly fucking with you. I mean, yeah,

that could be cool because it's interesting. I can't worry for you guys to play it because like it is really good. It's just there are a couple core things that I'm like, man, this gets in the way of this being like something super special. But I watched a couple previews of people that are also playing it.

And everyone seems to be very, very, very high on it. And I will say that it is a lot bigger of a game mode than I expected from what they've shown. I thought it was going to be just kind of like one more world of 3D world levels. It is not that. It is its own thing. And it's pretty substantial. And it's pretty cool. How big is it?

Like you mentioned earlier that it feels like if Mario Odyssey had all the levels interconnecting, I expected it to be the size of maybe one Mario Odyssey level. Is it that or does it feel like this bigger thing? Uh, it's kind of in the middle. It's not all the Odyssey worlds connected. I was saying that more in the sense of like the idea of it. The idea of that. Like, yeah, the little sections are big enough.

Like they're definitely bigger than 3D world levels. But just like as a whole, it is, it's a lot of water that you're traversing through to get from to island. Some would say, some would say. But anyways, yeah, I'm stoked for it. Can't wait to keep playing more. and there's a lot of game here, man. Before, can you talk about online?

Is that allowed? There was an online demo that I was not part of, so I didn't get to play online yet. Okay, I'm curious how that works because Mario Online traditionally not great, but, you know, maybe this is the time they break through. Maybe. We'll have to see Twitch.com. I'm sure we're going to play some over there.

So we won't have to wait long. It comes out in 10 days as of recording this. Can I ask one question before we can. completely transition. You talked about the base game, you know, being easy, and this is something I haven't touched the base game for so long and when I did it was multiplayer stuff. Is it easy in the way

that it's going to be brain dead and you're going to put it, you think it's just going to drift off and you're not challenged enough to keep going for a lot of people, or do you think it's just, it's still an enjoyable easy and it's just not like making you have eureka moments? That's a tough question to answer based on what I can and can't say right now. Speaking only of the Wii U version and not the

switch version at all, it was very easy up until the post game on the Wii U version that that started getting hard. And I loved the post game on the Wii U version. Yes. So there's that, you know. But to answer your question, it's not brain dead. It's like you still, there is some cool things.

Like there's some things that are unique to the Mario 3D world that are very cool from a gameplay perspective. There's this, the cherry that you get and it doubles your character. Yeah, I remember that. You go from a Mario. you have two marios. And it keeps going where it's like you can keep getting multiple cherries and levels. And there could be like six Mario's running around.

And you're controlling all six of them. And it's cool. And the things that they have you do with that are very clever and fun. And I just feel like at least for as far as I play it up to World Four right now, a lot of the stuff just kind of feels familiar. But again, it's a weird thing to talk about because, like, of course it does. I've played this game. I've 100% of this game before. Like, so really world had a very interesting structure.

Like you would tell level design was like a three. act structure of like introduction, test without dying, and then test with dying. If you just follow that through every level, it's going to start, like, you start knowing what's going to happen, but they don't ever reuse anything.

Like, they put stuff in different places, but no concept has ever reused multiple times. And like, if you like, just go through it as a watching or really admiring its level design, it just consistently mind-blowing and how well they just keep doing it. Yeah, I can't wait for,

the majority of people to play this game that haven't because there's a lot there and I think the Bowser's fairy thing is going to be so far seems substantial enough to me that it seems like the best addition to a Wii U point that we've gotten so far so that's cool moving on

let's talk about another 3D platformer let's talk about Ballin's Wonderworld Oh God I can start I can start So give some background on what Balin's Wonderworld is. It's a game coming from Ballin Studios, their first game, being published by Square Inix. Ballin Studio is made up of the director, UG Naka, with artist Naoto Oshima. This fucking thing.

Yeah, yeah. Okay, I remember this thing. Essentially, it's a game that's being led by folks who created Sonic the Hedgehog and Knights into Dreams. and they put out a demo on all platforms. And I played the demo. I believe Tim and Imran have also played the demo. Yeah, I played the demo after you said you were going to. And like, I got very mad at you.

It is the strangest, it is probably the strangest demo of a game I've ever played. It is a fever dream of a demo. And I have no idea what my takeaway is of this game other than it seems very bad. It seems like a very bad game. Okay, so you know how there's like good video games and there's games that like aren't good, but they have interesting ideas and like you can see where they like there's more to them than just the quality. Bailey and winter light is neither of those. Bailey in winter like fucking sucks.

And it's like I can't remember the last time I've played a demo this bad that has convinced me so hard I never want to play the actual game. I can't remember the last time I've been so I was excited for this game when they announced it. Not like in a not in a like oh yeah for sure. This is going to be a home run. or oh, this is going to be the next cyber or I guess that's a bad example. This is going to be the next last of this part to you. Not in that way, but in the way of you tell me you're going to make a game

that is from folks who created Sonic and Knights and the Dreams and those types of games. And you're going to tell me that it's a 3D platformer with musical elements to it. You're speaking my language. I love all those things. And so going into it, the it's 3D

platforming levels, right? There's power-ups in the way that you can... Like your distaste is like making you spin your wheels. I can say it's like an insult to humanity. I just don't know how to describe this game because it's what you'd expect from a 3D platformer from the folks who made Sonic and stuff, right? Like you're going to the different levels.

There is... No. No. Don't lie to people. It's not the 3D platform you expect to the people who made Sonic. Like not in quality, but in like what it is. No, and I would actually compare it more to Mario honesty in terms of like you're taking on different powers and you're solving puzzles with those powers.

That's it. Okay. Okay. Okay, look, guys. You're both making really good points. It's a little bit of this, it's a little bit of that. At least we can all agree, none of it is good. The thing is, I loved Knights into Dreams when it came out on the Saturday.

There was something about it, just like the character design really spoke to me. And then on top of that, I was like into the gameplay because it was very arcade-focused, kind of high score. Like, it was almost as much a rhythm game as it was a platformer. Then when Knights into Dreams 2 came out in the Wii, the first thing that I saw was the character designs in a Like, this is not at all what I liked about Knights into Dreams, the first one. And that type of human character design, this like really kind of creepy, just dead looking thing. That's just they're like, we're going all in. There's going to be a shit ton of human characters in this.

The demo starts off where you have to choose your character and there's a side of boys and the side of girls. And you choose one. And then the game starts, it has a cinematic. And you see that both the girl and boy are both somehow. involved in this this weird wonderful adventure that we're about to go on and then it starts off and it's like the knuckles levels from sonic adventure and it's like that's great i don't i don't know that that's what people wanted when they when they wanted more yeah no one wanted more pumpkin hill from from the

sonic adventures games and then so i see we're talking about the odyssey stuff because there is in the same way there's moons everywhere and it kind of incentivizes you to like look around and explore the world there's like there's these weird balance wonderland things everywhere and it's like you're them. But the moment you get your hands in control of this game, you realize every single button does the exact same thing. Even on the menu. Holy shit. That is the most, like in the grand scheme, I would think that doesn't matter at all.

But a menu where every single button is confirmed is the most insane thing I've ever seen. It is insane. Like, Greg, we're not joking. Oh, I don't think you are. I'm just enjoying it. You hit start. The menu comes up and, you know, there's a bunch of different options. And at the bottom of the screen, screen, it says confirm X square triangle circle.

To let us know. You can fucking hit anything you want and it's just going to do the same thing. When you're playing the game, X square, circle, they all jump. R2, L2, they all jump. That's all you fucking do is jump. All you do is jump. What was the moment? Describe the moment where you figured that out because for me, it was me like finally loading into the world.

And be like, oh, sweet, let's go. X to jump. Okay, sweet. What's circle? Jump. All right, cool. What's square? Oh, okay, let's jump to you. Okay, cool. Oh, fucking jumping. So then the deal, Greg, there's no double jump by the way. Okay, why would there be? Why would there be? Why would there be? Why would there be? Why would there be? But then you start going around and then there's like enemies and you're like, well, it looks like I need to punch them. No, I guess not. They're not enemies. I guess they're friends.

Like they're just kind of there. Then you eventually can like overtake power. So that's where the Odyssey thing comes into play. Where you get the Greg Miller. What's your question? I'm sorry. I just, I thought this is important. Real quick. What do the triggers do? So the triggers jump. Okay. But let me let me let me get yourself. L1, what do you think it does? I'm going to say jump. It's not jump.

It's not jump actually. No. This lets you, this lets you cycle through the different powers that you've kind of obtained from different characters around the world. But every time that you get one of their powers, it just adds to your jump. It doesn't give you an extra button to do something.

It's like, okay, you got this character that's kind of a Tasmanian devil. So now you get to do the little fun spin. Sure. Like Crash Bandicoot style spin. But guess what? It only happens when you jump. Yeah.

So you have to hit a button. It causes a trade-o jump. And then later you get another character that's like a Jackrabbit. And you get kind of Yoshi's hover jump. But guess what? That's also a different form of jump. You're just changing your jump. That's all you're ever fucking doing in this goddamn game.

Every couple minutes, it'll just be, here's a cinematic that makes no sense. before we go too further, I want to mention there's occasionally a mini-game that breaks this up in that you find a golden hat. It will take you to what I think is the worst

minigame I've ever played not because it's bad but because it's nothing. It is you have to line up an image with Balin who is like doing spin kicks and stuff but like one, there's almost no way you can fail. Two, it is exactly the same

every single time. So literally you have to just wait for this image to like go through this like auto scrolling thing and it's like all right hit X. There you go. Done. And you do this three or four times. It's like you did great. You did all of them. And I don't know what you get from it, but like whatever it is,

isn't worth it? Do you see this character, Greg? This magical ballon character. And he's flipping around in this anime-ass way where there's like a lot of colors flying by and he's doing this weird flip kick and it's really unclear why or what he's doing it to. But then a fucking JPEG of him will go across the screen. And as it like goes, over him that you're supposed to hit x and you stop it okay and then just boom that's it and it's

like what the hell is this shit like it is so bizarre and then you get to the end and imrod you posted a video of this uh barrett i send it to assets can you okay good good can you please bring up the video that is essentially your reward for beating this demo i can't wait i will say as weird as this is it got stuck in my head the entire day yesterday so okay so prep you gregg for what we're about to see. The other core thing about this game is they don't speak a language that we know. Of course. It's like Shadow Colossus. It's just

like some weird gibberish language. It also is clearly Japanese people speaking it. So it's like it kind of sounds like Japanese but then isn't quite. And the weird things you collect are called Tim's and that upsets me. That's got to make you excited. Come on now. It's a lot of this weird thing. We're going to watch this together.

Okay. I'm very excited. Because like you were talking about the humans. Like this guy is just looking at you the entire fucking level. It's a weird-ass farmer. Like, dream, our Dreamworks farmer.

It's just like staring at you the entire time. Yo, what the fuck are we watching? Yo, it's about to get crazy. The drop. I was excited for this game. I was legit like,

oh, a fucking 3D platformer musical, just signed me up. And then I got here. And I was like, oh, okay, well. Also,

it goes on with a trophy list looks like. Like, it goes on for another, a minute after that. That's just where I hit the record button. If all you're doing is jumping in this game, it can't be that hard of a lot. I was going to say. It's very collect-a-thony

though, so I can't imagine, you know, a super when I first booted up the demo, I actually downloaded it on Switch and the game runs and looks terrible on Switch. It, like, I don't know how you can make it that looks that bad

on Switch, especially when I get a transition to actually playing on PlayStation because I thought that was the problem. The problem with the game was that I was playing it on Switch and then I played on PlayStation. I was like, oh, no, this game is just bad. The Switch version looks terrible, plays terrible, runs terrible. It feels like, it looks and feels like a game that you would just see, like, one day just show up on Steam. Like, this developer has had no previous work or whatever. Like, is this a mobile cash grab? What the hell is this? Like, this is what this game feels. I cannot believe how bad the controls are. Even taking away the simplicity of it, it feels like actual garbage to play.

Yeah. And like, so great. Like that the weird creepy farmer. Yeah, that looks a lot like you, but yeah. There's no context for it at all. He's just kind of there. And like his face never moves. It's always just the same weird, like static look. But he is giant in the level that we played in the demo.

He's just kind of standing over the level. And it's like what? Watching you. Like what is happening? And if you walk near him. Is it like the giant creepy bird in like the in Helheim and God of War where you see it in the background at all times? And you're like, oh, God, that's terrifying. So it's kind of like that, but imagine it's not the background, and imagine he's just standing on the level, and you have to constantly walk around him, and he'll just disappear.

It's like the opposite problem of draw distance, where it's like this giant thing that's right here just goes away. All the character models do that. Like, it's animals just like literally just dancing around. You go up to them, they'll just disappear. I'm like, what the hell is, did the game break? Is something wrong here? I do like that you have friends in the level that are just cheering you on and following you the whole time. I don't understand that either.

Like, one time I respawned and I came back and everyone's like, woo, good job. Like, I just fucking die. What do you believe? And it's like, are there enemies? I don't know. Because everyone seems to kind of be your friend sometimes. Kingdom Hearts Heartless kind of things. It's weird because at some points I wasn't able to tell.

Like, I try to defeat enemies that are actually my friends. And I also try to be friend. Characters are end up being my enemies. So, Bless, are you going to play the final product now? I'm going to see this through. Yeah. I'm not going to beat this game. but I want to see more of it.

At this point, it is more morbid curiosity than actual excitement or anything. I just want to play more than no. I need to know. That's the only reason I could possibly imagine they put out this demo because they couldn't have believed in this game. There's no way that they thought like, oh yeah, people are going to play this demo and then buy this game. They must be counting on people going like, ah, yeah, this is shit, I'll buy this.

Well, that's the thing is like, this game is being published by Square Inix. Yes. Which means that somebody must have green lit this based off of name recognition. Somebody saw something. It was like, yeah, we need this. Like somebody saw the art. This is a $60 game, guys. What?

Are you serious? That's magic. That's magic. $60. Fuck you. Tim, it's not that I don't believe you. It's that I have to actually find out for myself. Dude, look, I'm looking right now.

We can pre-order on Amazon, Ballin Wonderworld for $60 on Switch PS4 and Xbox 1. It's $60 just across the board. And again, not that I don't believe you, but I need to find out for myself. Holy shit, you're right. legitimately this strikes me as somebody had art and and uh they approached square annex and they're like oh you made sonic this art looks good all right cool let's green light let's see what this is about and square annex was like all right time to put out the demo and they're just realizing what this game is um there is there there does seem to also be elements of them trying to go for the chow garden thing i don't know too much about

child garden because that's not my um that was never my jam but there are these little cute looking creatures uh in the world and you can feed them things so you can feed them electibles the tims yeah you feed them Now, you said you didn't know anything about this farmer. Does the story not explain who Jose Gallard is? The first level is called the man who fought against a storm. No, no, it's the man who rages against the storm. The story of a farmer who fights against a storm. Jose Gallard, a man who runs a farm.

One day of storm struck the cornfield, he took great care of. Dot, dot, dot. The storm stole everything for me. were then leading to Bartholomew lurks in the depths of the worlds born from hearts and plagues Jose's heart. Wait, hold on. Lurks in the depths of the worlds born from hearts and plagues Jose's heart. Controlling a tornado, it attacks the protagonist. Show enough strength to withstand the storm and Jose's heart will be freed.

So that's why he's dancing. Yeah, because he's agreed. But it's like, what if you could write a Kingdom Hearts game worse? And that's what this is. I mean, Imran, you just said it best. Like, you know what the thing that 3D Sonic games and Knights into Dreams needed, Kingdom Heart-style storytelling. This seems like, you, this seems like, this, I'm on the website for the over here at a Belan world, wonderworld.com or whatever. And like, it seems like something you read it, you fed an AI, a bunch of different boxes in like instruction manuals and it spit this back out.

Chapter one stage, a world born from hearts woven by the memories of the beautiful farm in Jose's heart. the bulging ground and huge crops create a mysterious landscape and then one of their little things here is a world adorned with various crops and farming tools and then there's three bullet points here laid out why these are important the ground bulges showing off diverse variation

go into the field with massive corn oh my god this one just says wow a large iron ball is rolling all those things do happen that is a fact They literally just described the demo. Great. Like, read the first one again.

The ground bulges showing off diverse variation. Yo. Okay. So that is a fact, I guess. But what they really mean is that random parts of the level are just always kind of bouncing in a way that's not visually pleasing at all. And on top of that, Blessing earlier said, oh, it's 3D platformer and a musical. Really what that means is that music's playing. And honestly, I'm not going to hate all the music.

It's kind of fun. But music is playing and to the, I don't even want to say the beat. It's like every note is represented on the screen by what I can only explain and follow me here, guys. I can only explain it as, you know, when you're at a bank ATM and it's touchscreen and you touch on one of the options and there's like a weird like thing where it kind of looks like wherever you touched has like almost like a wave coming. from it like a circle way. It's the touch screen ripple. Yeah. Touchscreen ripple.

They decide that it's a good idea in this game that for every note of a song, random parts of the screen looks like from inside the screen, they're poking what we're looking at. And it's just causing ripples everywhere. You know what I'm talking about? Yes. Yeah. I noticed that immediately.

I was like, well, I noticed it. I didn't realize it was tied to the music at first. So I started watching it. It was like, oh, I guess this is kind of on the beat, but it's not on the beat. It's like, too. It's not. Random parts of the music. Like, not consistent.

But like the chorus will come and then like the last three notes of the chorus will get those ripples It's like what the hell I don't understand what this is. It's just distracting Barrett can you find a YouTube video that's like a walk through the demo because I need I need people to watch and see this Chapter 6 the girl and the kitten So story of a chance meeting between a girl and a kitten Oh my god I don't want to clown this game so bad because like this is clearly a game for babies but babies deserve better than this game Yeah, that's my thing is I tweeted about this game and somebody was like, well, it's a kid's game.

And I'm like, yeah, but there are a lot of awesome kids games. You know, like Mario's a kid's game. Remember that? Candy and books float around this sweet world. A clock tower looms in the distance. The buildings are full of moving gears. Ride the spinning gears to move ahead. It seems like there is a path up ahead.

If only you could stop the moving blocks to proceed forward. I mean, this is, it's insane. Like, I just talked for 20 minutes before this about Mario 3D world. And go from Mario 3rd World to this is so, like, that's a kid's game too, man. Yeah. This shit is a fucking fever dream that like, I'm just really not sure who the audience is because it, it very clearly is trying to tickle the nostalgia of people that were fans of Sega Saturn games and, uh, and the Sonic Adventure games. There he is. Yeah, look at him, Greg.

Oh, that's very uncomfortable. I'm very good at him. It just looks like a really nice in there. Really badass. Guys, we need to save his heart over now. Hold on. Look, guys, look around. You see that? The random circle, the touchscreen circles are happening.

No, I can see that. And the character was disappearing for no apparent reason. Yeah, these are the power-ups that they collect. Yeah, now you're a tornado wolf, which is fantastic. But I want you guys to clearly see this touchscreen stuff because it is just freaking bizarre. Also, I believe you need to find a key in order to pick up power-ups. Yes. Which is another thing.

Which is another thing. Like, that key will respond. so you could just theoretically just keep picking up that key. And I don't like, what is, what is the game play here? What do they want you to do? Hold on. We just saw one. Yeah.

Where was it? Where was it? I will say, I did like the boss fight. I thought the boss fight was one. Yeah, right there. The boss fight was like, yeah. Kind of like, okay, we've played a Mario game. Oh, my God.

It's we have Mario at home. That is what this game is. Oh, there's a whole bunch of them. Yeah, the ripples here. Yeah. Greg, what's up? What do you got for a second? I just ran into the,

is it Balan? Is that how we're saying it? I only said I say Balin, but I don't know. Balin, that makes more sense. You know that there's a special edition? No. There's the,

please tell me about it. Balan, Balan Wonder World Showtime set. Can you send it to Sets? Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. It's also here. This game should be at least, it should at least just be knights again.

Totally. I don't understand why they made a new incredibly terrible thing. Mm-hmm. for the low, low price of 12499. Oh my Lord. You can get the Boulon Showtime set here. Look how terrible this looks.

Oh, I bear you have it. Yeah, it's got what. It looks like an art book. I'm trying to find a breakdown of what's actually in it. Here we go. So you get the Boulon Wonder World game software on PS5. The Boulon Wonder World original soundtrack CD, a game novel, a pin badge,

and the Boulon Wonder World Theater Program pamphlet. this is a Showtime set exclusive. That's a slightly cheaper than the Mass Effect Legendary Cashay Edition. Oh, my God. Barrett, I also sent you a link if we can go to it in assets. After this, yeah.

I need to pull it up just so people can actually believe that, yeah, there you go. $124. Add it to your wish list. No. Can I guess? Should I go on the list? So I go on the waiting list?

Right now you can buy it. It looks like, yeah, it's sold out over there. Over on eBay, it looks like you can get it here for a buy it now of $237 if you wanted to jump in there. eBay. I get the feeling that Galbra can be sitting on that one for a while. But yeah, Barrett, can you bring up the website for this game? Because what's shocking to me is earlier, Irond was saying that, you know, there's a demo for this game because someone was just like, no, no, no, this is horrible. We have to get in people's hand so they know how bad it is.

what's crazy to me is this demo is available everywhere. Like they put this out there as like a, you know, last week we talked about Resident Evil Maiden. And it's like, cool. They put that out on PS5. They're, it's very targeted. They're trying to get pre-orders for Resident Evil 8.

Here's a like a small look at what Resident Evil 8 kind of could be. This is like, no, here's this game. We want you to play it. And now we want you to pre-order. Like, scroll down, Barrett. Like, we got the demo links at the bottom you can see. But yeah,

this website just has way too much information everywhere about a game that I don't think needs to be talked about this much. But yeah, thank you. Stick here. What is the Isle of Tim's? Oh, you know what it is. Greg, please read this.

The Isle of Timbs is the hub world of your adventure and the home of the Timbs. You'll use this area as a base to explore the other worlds born from the hearts of their inhabitants and free their hearts from torment and worry. What are Tims? Tims are mysterious creatures that live on the aisle of Tim's. This is the most fucking circular shit I've ever read where it'd be like, what's the Bible? The Bible's

a book that tells stories about the Bible. Like, what are you talking about? What is it? The last thing I want to do. Last thing I want to do go scroll down a little more. Because I want you to get to the control section of this. Because they actually, I'm shocked, they did it, but they did. They did. Here you go. That's awesome.

Oh, no. There you go. R2. All 2. L1, R2, R1. Circle X, Triangle Square. That's awesome. Costume ability.

Oh, what the fuck? And now go hit where it says Nintendo Switch up there? Yeah, just in case we didn't know. Here's diagrams of every controller to let you know the amazing experience you're getting. Guys, do you think that this might be the worst game of 2021? Oh, that's such a tall order. there's so much crap coming out on Steam all the time. Yeah.

But like, but this is it the worst game you think that will come from a major publisher? Oh, absolutely. It's like, this is quite a, oh, absolutely. No, no doubt.

Oh, yeah, for a $60 game, yeah. Even from a major publisher, like, who can compete, you know?

Who's going to, who's going to step up? Who's next? Mortal Comedy. I don't know. Damn. Damn. Damn.

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Don't forget to use the URL that we just said to let them know that we sent you. Loan amounts will be determined based on your credit, income, and certain other information provided in your loan application. That's upstart.com slash kind of funny. All right, guys. If only we would have known, the sponsor was going to be fucking Balan's Wonderworld. We have egg in our face. You know what I mean? While we're still here, why is, why does Square Analytics do this?

this. They also published The Quiet Man, which was a terrible game. Why are they a cool idea? It could have worked out. It didn't. I'm one world also a cool idea that could have worked out. In my eyes, in my eyes at least. I'm totally with you. Yeah, it could have.

I don't know. Again, I don't have any it still could work out. Like, I wish I knew why Squinnis is like really quixotic like publishing deals. Like, it kind of makes some skits like they oh, you know how to make video games. You've been in the business for a while.

That applies to Eugene Naka. And I forget who made Quiet Man. I want to say it was Roonick. But like, it makes sense to give them. But then it seems like there's like, all right, here's some money. See in four years. Like that seems to be what they're doing. Because nobody who has been looking in this game,

like unless they're actively trying to get fired would be like, no, yeah, this is good. Keep going. Nailed it. Yeah. All right. Well, moving on from that nightmare. I want to hear about destruction All-Stars. Who here's played it? I have. A little bit.

Ooh. Look at that. Did you get a chance to you yet. Yeah, Greg Miller. What are you thinking? Yeah. It's like it's, it's, I mean, obviously Greg Miller is never going to be your definitive source for all things,

competitive multiplayer, let alone Destruction Derby competitive multiplayer. But like, it's just, is a game that exists. There's way too many characters and none of... They all are made to be unique.

They all have different outfits and abilities and all the stuff, but I have played several of them, a handful of them throughout this morning. I started playing this morning and I played before this, right? And it's like, all right, fine. Like, I get it.

Like, they have different cars and their cars have a little bit of different abilities. And granted, again, I'm scratching the surface here as I still figured out. If you don't know, of course, Destruction All-Stars

is a car combat game. that is a PlayStation plus freebie. It was originally going to be a $78 launch game for the PlayStation 5, which would have been a huge mistake. Fucking ridiculous. Thank God they pulled up at the last second on that one because they would have been eviscerated for that. You start every match.

It's like you're watching a game show. You start every match out of your car. You run into the world and you jump into a car and then you go off in several different game modes, but they all involve smashing into each other. You get points for hitting other cars. Your cars have life bars. Eventually the car will explode.

you'll either hopefully have jumped out of it beforehand, or if it blows up with you in it, you get ejected out of it. You then are running around in third person until you get into another car. You can find cars that are being spawned into the world all the time, because again, this is the Destruction Derby game show that you're on. Or you can jump onto other players' cars

and take them over with a, they have to wiggle the stick left and right to shake you off. You have to hit the button prompts on there in a quick time event to get it out or whatever. Again, this is all taken into a bunch of different things where there's basically like death match where it's, of course, who can get the most points by smashing into each other.

There's a thing called grid fall, which you're out there, and it's last man standing, and it's like hexagon from fall guys where the hexagons are falling out of it, and then you're trying to knock your opponents into those things. Once you're caoed, you're out of it completely.

There's Carnado, where you're going through, you're doing things. Carnado! Yes. You then run and bank the points, and then there's stockpile, which is similar. Again, it's all,

all is about running into each other and causing damage and doing it. and yeah, it's not bad, but it's not something you have to play. It's definitely something that I wanted to play as much as I could to get to here, and I will probably, I think actually Mike might want to stream a little bit of it on our stream tomorrow, but after that I'm going to delete it. Like, it's not something's hanging on my hard drive. Am I wrong and run?

It feels like one person had the, like, one person played Overwatch was like, fuck, I have a really good idea. Another person plays Splatoon is like, I have a really good idea. Then they hit each other with cars. And like, that's what this game feels like. it's like it's inspired by these things but not quite there and Greg and blessing correct me if I'm wrong because I played two matches and the second match was me trying to figure out if the first match was just a glitch but there's no music during the game right

like during the actual match like in menus and like before and after yeah yeah there's menus and stuff for sure I don't remember they're not being in the game but I don't remember it standing out either like I had a glitch where I couldn't get into a match so and it was after like five minutes, Jen's like, so are you going to listen to the main menu this entire time? I'm like, I'm trying to get out. I'm trying to get off the main menu. That's why it's still on here.

I don't know. But like it's such a weird thing. It feels like this game has always been meant for like, oh yeah, it's PS Plus. We had this idea. We're going to put it out here and like that's it. If this were not PS Plus at some point, then like I'm really questioning the sanity of anyone who made those decisions.

Because it just doesn't feel like a full game, really. It feels like an interesting idea. I really like how you said it, you know, it feels uninspired, right? or it's inspired by those things, but it doesn't hit that thing. That's the thing about it where I think even looking at it right now, there's so much color and there's so many different characters with different looks that I think for me to be like, it's generic or nothing stands out seems not crazy,

but you look at it like, well, this is standing out to me right now. But playing it, like it does, it, there's all these different influences, including the micro-transactions, right, where, you know, you're earning gold when you level up that you can then go spend on new banners, new outfits for the characters when most of them are just pallet swaps. but then you can also buy the purple or the pink coin hot pink coins that look a lot like v bucks and it's very clear that's what they're inspired by for you to go and get this stuff but going through the dozens and dozens of you know banners and then icons it's just like why would

why even when i got the points to go in there i was like none of this like no i don't look at this and go oh that's clearly x character that's and i'm really i'm really attached to that character like all these characters are what they are they're you know after you know you know morning and afternoon here of matches with different people, I burn out on what they say, because I feel like the game has a very quick cycle of audio. And granted, since I'm learning and probably

making the same mistakes or losing in the same ways or whatever, like even the announcers are saying the same things over and over again, it feels like super early on. It's totally a thing, and I can see people enjoying it, but like, I don't think it's anything to write home about. Hey, speaking of a quick cycle of audio, there should not be a microphone in the PS, like, the dual sense. Like, oh my God.

That was the first thing. It should not be by default on for a free video game because holy shit, everyone is terrible. Yeah, no, that was my first thing when I first booted up the game. As soon as you matchmake, all mics are on. And you can like turn that off. You can go in your system and fix all that. But if you don't, if you go in, it's just everybody talking. And because you're playing online, everybody's saying terrible shit.

And so I was immediately like, oh, it's a horrible first impression for this game that I'm greeted by all, like, all these slurs and all this bullshit that everybody's talking about. Good. But as far as the game overall, I agree with both Greg and Emron. Like the game for me doesn't seem like it has a voice. Like it seems like one of those ones where they like halfway through the development process, they're like, okay, yeah, this is going good. Like we can, we got driving solid. We got the game modes.

All right, let's see where we can find the fun. And it seems like they just never found the fun. Like I'm playing last night and playing a little bit this morning. I played some of mayhem and I also played some of Gridfall. and one, the part of why I say like it doesn't feel like it has a voice is there's not one single game mode so far for me that feels like it stains out from the others.

I wish it was like a Rocket League where if you hop in Rocket League, you're going there to put balls into goals. Like there is a Rocket League game, there's the League of Legend game, there's an Overwatch game, in Destruction All-Stars, it feels like they present these four different modes to you

and they're just like, cool, just jump into whichever one. These are all four very different games, and it's your choice. And none of them so far have stuck out to me. And then also, like, for all the different characters that I've chosen, none of them also have also stuck out to me in terms of their abilities and all and stuff. Like it very much feels like a cut and paste hero shooter type thing.

There's one character that has invisibility. There's another character that has a different thing that's like, cool. I've seen these all before in other games. It very much reminds me of Bleeding Edge. Like, this game does feel like this year's Bleeding Edge in terms of the one thing I'll say about it is the style. I think is cool. I think there's a cool art style and the game has flare and all the stuff. And I'll say the same thing about bleeding edge. But there's just not much to back it up.

And so like I there's not much currently that is bringing me back to it. I want to keep playing it. Just to just a, you know, fingers crossed. Maybe something hooks me and I finally find where the fun's at in this game. But so far within my first few hours, I'm like, I don't really have any desire to keep going. Yeah, there's no, you're nailing it, I think, with lack of identity for the modes and then that lead into a lack of desire to come back. Like there's nothing tugging at me. right now since there's no leveling up doesn't net i'm not like questing for oh i need this thing i need this skin for this character that i really care about like there's an ocean of characters and skins and all the shit i don't really care about so what is pulling me back to play and i'm sorry am ron i know you're starting up to talk to well i was gonna say it's like it reminds me of a game and this is a very specific like hypothetical but like if the four of us were at a packs or an e3 or a demo event and somebody was like hey do you guys want to just like sit down and play this

game real quick. We're like, yeah, sure, why not? We, like, have fun for, like, five minutes playing this game. This is what this is like, oh, yeah, cool. Like, this is fine. I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna run back to the office and, like, get on my laptop and, like, quickly right when I'm gonna up a preview about it, but, like, it's an okay thing. And I bet there will be people who get really super into it. And that's fine. I think this game probably does have those, like, it probably will hit for those, like, those kinds of people. But for most of us, I think it's just like, all right, cool. I'm glad I didn't spend 70 bucks on this. Yeah, you, you nail it where that's one of the things I was thinking today

is it was giving me a lot of pangs of rigs, mechanized combat. When they would go to Eid, we'd be at Judges Week or whatever, and they put us all into it, and you're all, we're fucking out of your friends, so you're having, you have a soft spot of memory for it, we had a really good game,

but then to be at home with this, this would have demoed well. If you would have taken, they would have gone to IGN and set a whole bunch of people up, it would have demoed well, I think people playing and getting that taste, but to get in here and realize like,

that's what it is, it's juicy fruit, right? Like you get in, you chew it, and you're like, oh, this is all there is to it. And like, the gridfall one. I was like, oh, okay, this is an interesting idea. I like the floor is falling out as you go. It's evolving. But it's also like there's, and I'm not, the loads aren't terribly long or anything, but they're not instantaneous. So it's like I start grid fall. All right, we found 16 players. We're matchmaking. All right, we load in. All right, load in the characters. I pick my character. All right, go play gridfall. And if you get knocked off the world right away or you figure it out right

away, you're dead. And now you have to load back to the main menu or matchmake again and load it up. It's like it's not instantaneous on that one very specific mode. The other one's like you're playing a lot longer in some ways I think too long. I quit a game today where I was just like all right, I fucking lost. Can this end? Yeah. Maybe my biggest problem with the game too is that I feel like the actual act of getting hits and knockdowns and all that stuff aren't isn't fun. You know, when you're playing college duty, you're playing Overwatch and you get a kill and it feels awesome. You know, you're playing Overwatch and you usher in the payload, and it feels cool because you're making progress and all this

stuff. The, in Mayhem, at least, for Destruction All-Stars, your goal is to wreck other players by hitting them. And never has that felt satisfying for me to do yet in this game. You know, you know what happens. It's got the right sticks hit stick like Madden. So you're hitting forward or side to side. Yeah, exactly. And so you're like, you're like, for me, the way I play, right? Like, I'm driving behind people and trying to get a hit from behind, trying to get a hit from behind by pressing forward on the right, right analog stick or I'm driving beside them pressing right in order to shift right in order to hit them that way almost like a burnout but even in burnout like that stuff is way more satisfying because you get that good feel of like grinding against their vehicle and causing a nice crunch yeah there's a nice crunch and I don't feel that here at all yeah I don't know when I hit people except for the thing says okay light hit medium hit like wrecked I'm like I don't feel anything when it says wrecked I'm like all right cool I got some points yeah what's also interesting to me because like I you know I I you know I

wasn't expecting this game to change the world or anything, but, you know, is this a PlayStation Studios game? Yep, it's, yeah, it's X-Dv and then somebody else, the lucid games. Lucid games is the one who's working on it. Yeah, because I know it's, so SIE are the ones publishing it, but like, does it have like the PlayStation

Studios, like Splash and all that. Yeah, it does. Yeah. I know it's because the Chuck and Derby was in that this time. So I'm like, that's probably not going to be in the next game. I bet they take that one out. It's just weird because it's like, this does seem like a a bleeding edge type game. And especially when Sony have already had a game like this with some legacy with twisted metal that, you know, I think there's a reason twist of metal games don't exist anymore.

The time and place for those just isn't here. And I get taking that idea, trying to change it to be more of the quote, quote, quote, free to play. But like, PlayStation Plus type experience of let's just give people this and maybe they'll latch onto it like Rocket League. But to come from PlayStation Studios, it kind of seems weird because they've been on such a streak of like, that means something. That means like a level of quality.

It's kind of a bummer to hear that. Well, this is what they're doing that, right? Like, this is what they're doing with PlayStation Studios going forward, where Lucid Games isn't owned and operated Sony First Party, right? But they're partnering with them in a way that that's what the studios will be, where it is something where if you're working second party or what traditionally would have been second party, right, they're treating you as first party and it will have it there. But it's also the thing of like this game, even though I, if you remember it,

you know, as what it was going to be a launch game, it makes sense there too, right? where yeah it's so yeah i don't i haven't there's not many multiplayer games i've played if any right where i've heard the audio from the other player come out through the speaker too because that's what's happened like this happened to you right where it's like the the other players i'm playing with they're not coming through my tv speakers they're coming through the controller the speaker in the controller as it's encouraging me to hit the mute button and talk to them into the controller in a way that yeah this was clearly a launch thing of what they wanted you to do and get in and have a part of that and have it

use that way for it. And so that's another thing where it's like, there's so much, there's so much in the game, I say with gesturing my hands wildly, but it is still so threadbare. In terms of like, there's all these different modes.

All of them are smashing your car into other people and then, you know, returning to the tornado or trying not to fall in the hole or whatever, but it's like, it's such a thin concept applied to other things within this, this is how the controller feels.

And like, uh, haptic feedback and, uh, you know, the resistance and all that jazz is happening too, where it's like, you know, somebody like Mike gives the, uh,

the dual sense shit, right? And he's a psychopath. But this one is one of those where I'm playing in my, like, I am like, fuck, I don't like having to push harder on the trigger right now to try to get through this fight right now to really,

we're really trying to make it feel immersive that you're in this, you know, destruction, I don't fucking care. Like, why am I doing this? Yeah. There's a whole lot of dual sense integration.

It does very much feel like a, hey, this is going to make a great launch game because it displays a lot of the different elements of the PS5, uh, the dual sense and how it's going to play into things. I just lost my chain of thought. I had a whole chain of thought I was going to go through and it's gone.

All right, come back to me later. I will say, like, I like, I like the vibration, like when you're like half health or below that like, the engine starts sputtering,

you can like feel it in the controller. Like, that's a good way to make me not have to constantly look at that like, not very obvious and kind of small health bar at the bottom. Hmm. You guys, were any of you, go for it.

Go for it. Greg, Greg was kind of talking about. a little bit, but like in terms of the games, the launch game again, like the, we're just talking about Ball and Wonder World and Destruction All-Stars, we're talking about Sony and that seal of quality and that seal of approval and all that stuff what PlayStation Studios means, right? Destruction All-Stars, I think is an interesting one because it's, like, I don't think anyone's things that think the game is horrible. Like, it's not a Ballin Wonder World, but it's one of those things of like, you know,

it's, it's in that similar place of, all right, I have no interest in this in the way that I have no interest in Ballin Wonder World, but it's on the other side of things. where I think Destruction All-Stars overall is like a quality game, right? Like the game runs very well. The game has a lot of great colors and the game like fuels get to play and all this stuff, but it's just not fun overall, right? Like it's not a bad game. It's just a, eh, game.

And I think that kind of falls it back into that thing of like it's a launch game. Like it exists. That's kind of the thing. Because that's the thing about it, right? I'm sorry, was it? It's like hyperscape to me that like other battle royals exist and they're better at it. So, like, it's not that hyperscape is bad. It's just not good enough to, like, find a, like, knock something else off.

You know what it reminds me of, especially, and this is, you know, I didn't play it, so I don't really know. But it reminds me of from character, aesthetic, all that stuff, Battleborn is what I reminded, or Destruction All-Star Heroes reminded me of, right? To the point, though, that was what I was sitting there thinking, I knew I had another point about it being a launch game. Sitting there playing it, you know, on PS, I love you, we've talked so many times about, or not so many times, but recently about Killzone and, like, Killzone should stay dead. why would Sony go and make, why does Sony need to worry about making its own multiplayer shooter suite

when there's so many other good ones out there, right? That was my, I was thinking about that today before I was like, all right, launch game, right? Of like, why is Sony making,

paying people to make this weird destruction? It's like, oh, well, you have this console, you're going to have a whole bunch of people. Wouldn't you want people playing something online microtransactions? You know,

there's a limited pool of things to play. Why not play something that is bright, colorful, different. And it's a, you know, giant thing you can play with all your friends. who just got a PlayStation 5-2.

PlayStation Plus makes sense for it. And again, yeah, it's not bad. I totally see how people can have fun with it for a few nights or whatever, but I don't think it's got legs by any stretch of the imagination. Next up, want to talk about a good game. Cyber Shadow.

Cyber Shadow is out on GamePass and also other consoles that cost money, so just played on GamePass. Totally. I mean, dude, that's exactly where I'm at where I was like, oh, this is clearly a game I want to play on Switch, but I was like, But I have Game Pass, so I'm doing that for sure.

Yeah. So you're also playing it, Tim? Mm-hmm. Okay, yeah. So I guess to people at home, it is a Ninja Guardian-like in almost every way, except you can't duck. And other than that, it is like extremely, it is so Ninja Guidon that I almost quit in frustration the first two levels. It is very, very difficult. I like the checkpoints, though.

I think it has a very fair checkpoint system where you're never too far of retreading all the, the bullshit you had to get through. Yeah, like, so the central story concept is, I think, based on where I am now, which is about three or four levels in, you were part of a ninja clan that was defending this city. A bomb went off and all the city's robot, like nearly killed your character and all the these robots like kind of went evil after that point. So you are now working away through a mostly dead city full of robots. And it is a, it's straight up as a 2D platformer.

NES style graphics, but you are, how do I put this? It controls much better than it would have on the NES, so it's in that sense a little easier. But if you don't have nostalgia for Ninja Gaiden, this might not be the game for you, because like I said, it is extremely difficult. Yeah, it's really difficult,

and at least in the first couple levels, like you're pretty limited on your mobility and the things you can do, like especially the first level, is you're just jumping. And it is weird, but the one difference being not being able to duck, it kind of makes you feel like you, you don't really have many options to do things, especially because so much of it is the Mega Man style dodging of, it's not quite ever bullet hell, but there's enough things on screen that you're trying to dodge. Like you can even see here that Barrett has pulled up. Like there are things being shot at you and your only option to get away from them are very specifically arched jumps.

Yeah. So like getting used to that is definitely an old school. NES type thing you've got to get your head wrapped around but the music is fantastic music's great it's done by Jake Kaufman who is also known as Vert he's the founder

of VG Mix the website from the early 2000s that I fucking loved and he is supremely talented I would say one of the most talented when it comes to video game remixes and that's turned into him making a lot of the music he's done shovel night he's done a lot of similar things and Conte in the Pirates Curse which had a fantastic

fucking soundtrack. Exactly. And he's so good that like the music alone is a good reason to at least boot this up, especially like we always talk about game pass and it's the thing of like, oh, it's good for a game pass game. This being a game pass game is like, oh shit. Like there's some quality here. And yeah, this is a perfect example of, well, it costs more money somewhere else. So the value is clearly there.

I will say if you get past the first two levels, it starts easing up because you do get more things to like handle situations. It still gets more. It is still a difficult game. But like, so like, the first couple of, the save points have this weird thing where you can invest the currency you've been like getting out of enemies and boxes and all that into that particular save point. And then from there, like you'll always start with like an extended sword or whatever from that one. So you can invest in every one or just like invest in the one before the boss or whatever. It's kind of a modular difficulty that way.

By the like third level, they give you like cooler things from that save point. So it gives you a homing shirukin that extends from your body that you can also hit with your sword to like send it specific directions. So like once you get that thing, oh, I don't need to walk right up to this guy now and like punch him in the face with my sword. I can like take from a distance and like kind of be a little bit more careful. That is it's it's an interesting way to kind of like give you an easier time through things without like just saying, hey, you kind of suck at this game. Do you want to do an easy mode? Yeah, totally. You know, it actually reminds me a lot of shovel night, which makes sense.

But it reminds me a Shubb Knight system of as you get through the levels, there's the kind of risk reward of, are you going to take the coins and money from the checkpoint? Or are you going to leave it there and not get the, like it'll count as a checkpoint, but you don't get the money type thing. And it allows you to kind of control the difficulty to gain based on the experience that you're having. But that is mixed with a almost like contra power up type system, where it's like there are a certain guns.

and certain weapons or certain like abilities you have. You have, you're like, oh, man, this is making my life significantly better having the spread gun in contra or whatever. Yeah. And I think they do a good job in this one so far, at least, like, kind of giving you those options to make the game a little bit easier and more fun if you're frustrated, but also keeping it a much more vanilla traditional NES experience if you're there to torture yourself. I'll also say, like, one thing I found interesting is at least one boss has talked shit about me

after the fight if I didn't fight with honor. So like, all interesting. Like there's an Iron Man looking boss like really early on in the game. And if you just like land behind him and start slashing him in the back, he gets so pissed off at you. But if you fight him from the front, he's like, all right, you did okay. Like I think that's kind of cool. And I like, I like the idea, like when I'm facing bosses now, I'm like, there's one of the first bosses called like laser head, which is a fucking fantastic name.

But like, I was wondering when I was funny, it was like, if I do something like the game, does it like? Is there going to be like a consequence for this? Because clearly they're tracking it. So I don't know like while I'm fighting them like should I be not cheesing it or what I'd rather just cheese it and not have to deal with it all. Yeah. And those are the kind of choices that I think make this game unique and kind of stand out as just another one of these games. Because I feel like looking at this, it's like, okay, cool. I get it. It's a, you know, a retro platformer that we've seen a million of these days. But this one definitely does seem to be more in the category of Messenger and Shovel Knight

and like Axiom Verge and that style of quality but I will say that so far it hasn't clicked for me in the same way and I've just never been a Ninja Guyton fan in the way that I was a fan

of more shovel night type games right so so far I'm like this is really damn good I don't know that I'm gonna see it through to the end though yeah and that's kind of the game pass thing of you know I'm fine playing like three or four hours of this like I got what I needed out of it

I might see it through more levels we'll see how long actually long game is and how much harder it gets. But like, if I quit right now, I'd be fine. Like, I enjoy this game. I'm not like, I don't think it's a bad game, but I have enough like monetary investment in this, which is basically none, that I could walk away and still feel satisfied. You've enjoyed, you've gotten your money's worth out of it.

Pretty much, yeah. Yeah, definitely. Me too. And I haven't played as much as Imron, but like, I've gotten value out of this for sure. A music alone, it's worth playing through the first couple levels. You're like, damn, this is some hot shit. What's up, Les? did you guys play the messenger?

Yes. How would you compare it to that? I'd compare it pretty fair. The messenger is a lot easier and more frenetic. So it's more platforming heavy than I think Cyber Shadow is. Keep in mind, I don't think I like the messenger that much after the switch. You know, the thing in the middle of the game that changes things up. And like when it became more of a Metroidvania thing, I'm like,

eh, this is not what I really came this for. But I think like the first half of the Messenger, when it is the 8th, bit Ninja Guyton thing. I think this game does combat, or CyberTher does combat better well than, or better than Messenger does, but Messenger does platforming better. You absolutely nailed.

I agree with everything you just said. In Messenger, like there is that switch and I was like, I don't love this game anymore when I did love it before. And it is just because moving around is fun in Messenger. The way that they like chain the jumps and being able to slice through different things, it feels familiar but unique at the same time. Whereas with this one, it is a little bit more just traditional and not as fun to move around, which for a game that has as much jumping as this does, I kind of wish we got some more out of.

Like there's a time where I walked out of a room and just jumped immediately and just got killed by a laser. I'm like, what the fuck was that? Why did that happen? And like, that's kind of how the game treats it sometimes is like, you're just going to get screwed sometimes. Like, they're safe points. You'll lose a couple of minutes. But if you're someone who's very sensitive to getting like, oh, I didn't know that was going to happen and I just died, like, then this game was really going to pin it. you off. Yeah. And then the other thing, and again, I think this is really good so far. So it's like,

we're coming across more negative than I actually feel about it. But I do think that there was a lot of dialogue boxes that kind of interrupt the gameplay that aren't so far adding to my experience. I'm always kind of like, okay, I don't really care what you're saying. Whereas Messenger, every time someone was saying something, it was funny enough or interesting enough from a mystery perspective of what's really going on that I was always engaged. So, That level, I would so far give it to Messenger from what I've experienced. But it's a Ninja Guyton thing. Like, Ninja Guyton had that.

They were the creators of the cutscene of like the super self-serious ninja story. So I think that's what they're kind of trying to lean into. But also it's just like I didn't get this like until the end of level two, you don't actually understand what's going on in any way. So it was the first two levels of like, I don't, did this bomb turn people into robots? I don't really understand what's happening yet. I will say the opening cutscene is fucking fantastic. It is like I was watching it.

I was like, damn, imagining this on an NES, like would have been the freaking most insane thing of all time. Like you see the, the city blow up from like first person perspective. And like in pixel art, you see his hands go up as like a giant explosion happens.

It's like, this is cool as hell. So good. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Here it is here. Yeah. Oh, that's awesome.

Oh, that's really cool. Like that is freaking cool. Which is why I thought you were turning it like the bomb turned to it a robot because like I apparently I don't understand the settlement. So funny. All right. Enough of Cyber Shadow.

Greg, you've been playing Division 2. The 4K patch update. Yeah, it's another one I got to tinker with a little bit today. You know, I haven't touched Division since right after they, when they dropped Warlords of New York,

I got into it and that's when they introduced their battle pass and their like ongoing challenges and, you know, take out the four different sub bosses to get to the main boss and they did it over time. I, of course, course, was super into that. I love the division, as you know, what, it would have been most played game of 2019, right? And so I was super stoked when they introduced that last year in March, but then, of course, a pandemic happened, a whole bunch of other shit happened. Other games

came out and got moved away from it. And it's always been, I'll get back to, I'll get back to it. Today was the day to get back to it as they kicked off the Resident Evil event where you can go and start, you know, earning cash keys to get clothing for the Resident Evil outfits. And then also, yeah, PlayStation 5 Xbox Series X, Series S, optimization patches that run it at 4K, 60 frames a second, and it is fucking gorgeous. Like, I'm putting, jumping back in today, it was the John Wick like,

oh, I'm back. Like, I, if it looks so good, it ran so good, loads are better. They're not like instantaneous by any stress imagination. But again, you're playing a PS4 game now, even though it's on PS5. They are better. Yeah, it looks beautiful.

There's obviously a ton of content to go do. I didn't realize the second rate had come out. Like, I was that blinded by everything it's going on. I haven't done the New York skyscraper thing or just the skyscraper thing to go for, you know, start with no weapons, work your way up, see how far you can get. So I'm super excited that there's a reinvigorated, uh, re-invigorated approach to this, uh, that's got me back in a whole bunch of funny folks back where it's like, uh, you know, I think, uh, Snow Mike's been jumping back in for the stream tomorrow. Gary wanted a code, blessing wanted a

code. Uh, Paris has always been big on the division. Uh, so I'm excited to get back in there and, you know, knock out the last few DLC trophies I have since I have the platinum. But yeah, it, it, it, It totally hit the mark for what I want out of this thing. And I'm excited to go back into it and really play a lot. Hell yeah. You think that this is going to be something that gets like a lot of people back to Division 2? A lot of people,

it'll remain to be seen because it is the same thing as any of these, you know, games of service when you take that much time off where I'm coming back in and it's like, okay, cool, yeah, man hunt. There's a new, obviously there's a new person to go hunt that I want to go get. That's going to be, I like what they've done in their redesign because it is now very clear of like, I want to go after this big bad person,

so I have to beat these four people. What do I need to do? Okay, and then even the Resident Evil thing, it's checklisting. And of like, cool, I want to earn cashes. So the, you know, this, I forget if it's daily or weekly. I just looked at it today. I think it's daily.

And so it's like, all right, cool. I knocked out the bounty I need. I knocked out this resupply. Now I got to go do two more of these things or whatever. Like, wandering back into a games of service after this can be so intimidating. Like, destiny. I wouldn't even know where to start, right? But the division, granted, I play more division than I play destiny ever.

So like walking in, I know to go to my objectives and see what's up there. And I'm excited to see tonight, you know, like Mike played a whole bunch on Xbox, but obviously to even have a chance to play with me. He has to come play on PlayStation. So like, he's doing the thing of like, all right, cool, though. I want to jump, you know, warlords actually will boot you up to level 30 so you can go run stuff with friends.

And it's like he's going to do that. We're going to see how it complicated it is to figure all that out and sync up where everybody is and stuff. But I think there's a chance. I don't think it'll bring back a huge number of people, but I saw Andrea over at what's good, you know, streaming today. Like I said, there's reinvigorated interest from our group. Imran blessing you both took codes.

I don't know how gung-ho you are to actually get in and do stuff with it. I see like, honestly half my interest to be like, well, these are people making the Star Wars game. So I kind of want to see how that like, what their design ethos is. And like, I imagine at some point the Division 2 is going to stop like wind down so they can actually do more work in that Star Wars game. But I want to see like, and also I want to get that Leon Kennedy costume. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing is I think that's how this works, right?

you put that carrot at the end of the stick and get people to chase it. But the hope being that by the time you get the costume you want, obviously you want to play with it a bit. But then you're also like, I enjoyed this. What if we went and did this? What if we went and took on this? What is this skyscraper thing about?

We'll go see. I'm excited. Like you mentioning that it looks better, it has me very excited because I liked how the game looked when I played it originally on my base PS4 that is actually packed away. Now it's pointing back, but I was like, oh, it's not there anymore.

Oh, actually, no, it is. Yeah, on my base PS4. I'm excited to check it out now on PS4. on PS5, you know, you mentioned it loads quicker. Are you playing it off of SSD or is it on an external hard drive? It's on my SSD. No, hold on. It's on, yeah, it's on the SSD in the thing.

Wait, so is the PS5 version or is an update to the PS5? It is a patch for the PlayStation 4 version. This is not a PS5 version. I am playing the PlayStation 4 of the game, but they've put in a PS5 or whatever up for a 4K 60 frame. Yeah, 4K 60 frames a second patch. I guess if we can't do an update that at least do that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Yeah, I'm excited.

I'm excited to jump back. I wish I played more of it at launch. I played quite a bit of it. And I got through things like the Air and Space Museum and other museums. And I was like, oh, this is fucking awesome. But I made the key mistake, which is I bet it on Anthem when the game first coming out. And so I end up getting to Division 2 later because I was like, well, everybody's off Anthem. We just hopped to Division 2.

And because I got to it a couple weeks late, that meant that all the people who I would have played with were over-leveled for me. And dropped off from it by the time I got there. And so I didn't have people to play with. And so if kind of funny, playing it. That's what I've been telling everybody of like, you know, for me coming back to it. Like, you know, I opened it up and it was hilarious because, you know, they introduced loadouts and stuff when I was still playing it. I opened it back up and I have all these like half done gear sets in my inventory and all these weapons that I had starred for favorites. And I'm like, I was like, all right, yeah, I was keeping this because I wanted to, you know, I'm like, whatever.

I just undo the stars deleted everything. I'm like, it doesn't matter. Like, I'm not going to worry about trying to get the better build like me and Fran are always worried about or go to the crafting table to figure out how to make. the shotgun even better and take this perk from that thing. It's like, I'm just jumping in. So like for right now, like where, you know, I know Mike was so concerned about like, oh, well, I'm like, they're not specific. What I'm interested in right now is getting the Resident Evil outfits, which aren't behind

some crazy wall. They are go do bounties. Go, you know, save a control point and give them some stuff. So it's like, I'm downish to play however far back people are and fuck around and figure it all out. So isn't it easy one to get back into? Like you said you'd like unstart everything to stop caring. Is that a thing?

you could do like mid-game, do you think? Yeah, well, I mean, so with the Warlords' DLC, and again, I didn't do this, so I don't even know how to activate it necessarily. With the Warlords of New York DLC, you can do basically the old mode of light or whatever from Destiny. Where somewhere in there, there is a thing of like, do you want to just jump to level 30 and be done with it

and be able to go do the newest content? And you can say yes, and then it'll do whatever that is to you. Oh, okay. And so I think you'll have to then be like, wait, I have a whole bunch of new shit, how do I equip it or move it? But other than that, I think you'll be able to just go often play missions. And I think that's the best way

for all of us to handle it right now is like, cool, Mike's got this mission and I've probably done it 300 times. But yeah, let's go through and kill a bunch of people. You know what I mean? And with that, this is the Kind of Pretty Games cast. Thank you very much for joining us. If you want to stay tuned for the Patreon exclusive post show, guess what? You got to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games. And

you can watch it. Very excited. Another episode of Bless Who coming up. until next time love you guys