Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - We Played Beast of Reincarnation - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: July 13, 2026

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It's Kind of Funny's Patreon Pledge Month. Support us at patreon.com slash kind of funny. We really appreciate it. Hello gamers. Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Monday, July 13th, 2026. I am Andy Cortez. I'm joined by a man who took us to an ice cream shop on Friday night. Well, where did I take us first?

Come on. I took you where you wanted to go. We took us to pie punk. I took it to the point. Y'all hung up. My point punks. Have you been there yet? No, I've never been to pie punks.

You know what, Bless? Yeah. I'm going to give it a big thumbs up. Yeah. I'm going to give it the Snowbike Mike. Pizza approved in San Francisco. And everyone knows I'm hard on the pizza here in San Francisco.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm such a sucker because I thought you, I thought you, I thought you know what, bless? I'm going to take you. I really thought Mike was going to hang out with me. He said, you know what? Bless, look at me in the eyes and then turn to Andy. I'm going to go. a thumbs up? Oh, my bad. I like it. It was delicious. We hung out with our friend Washi.

Three different styles of pizza. Yeah. The chopped cheese, which they're just stealing my move. I used to make the Big Mac pizza bless. I used to make the Mexican-style pizza. And the chopped cheese is kind of encroaching on my Big Mac pizza. Right, right, right. And so I might have to get in touch with the owner there. Say, hey, that's now called the Snowbike Mike's chop cheese. Oh, okay. You want to take ownership of it. Okay. I mean, they don't do that for any other order. Just so you know.

Snowbike, Mike, cutting the cheese? My problem that I had with the chopped cheese pizza. Okay, yeah. Is that they use normal, normal ass pickles on it. There's normal pickles. It's like a hamburger pizza, right? Yeah. Basic normal pickles.

What do you would expect? When you think of a pickle, that's what a pickle is. That's what the pickle is. Yeah, sweet. No, not sweet. Why, you don't want it? I like it. The pickle at the other.

place at their burger bar, very sweet blessing. Not a normal pickle taste. Okay. I got a burger from their like sister restaurant called Amburgessa bar. We ate there with Tim and Gia and other folks. And everybody's hanging out. It's always like before a movie. Like whenever we go to a screening.

And the pickles in that burger are very sweet. Like a sweet relish. I was like, I don't want that. You weren't liking the sweetness. And then so now to see this other pickle, on the pizza. I'm like, why don't you have these pickles over there

at the burger place? My issue with it. But the pizza was delicious and we went to Mitchell's ice cream. Went to Mitchell's ice cream. Now, was this just you guys were hanging out on our Friday night?

Or was there? Wash is in town. I see. Yeah, wash he's in town. And we went to go get ice cream. Mike was like, I'll get down.

I'll go order. You guys go find parking. And it took a while for us to find parking. Mike got number 55 and we're sitting there waiting and I hear, number 19

like oh my god gonna be a while we're gonna be here a while oh yeah that's Mitchell's on a Friday night oh yeah and I'm worried I'm worried about my tummy at this point blessing feeling some grumbling because of

the amount of cheese that we had with this pizza you know lactose intolerance I eventually just called a lift I was like I'm not gonna wait for pizza which you know number 20 number 21 like you guys are gonna be here

for a while waiting to eat more lactose yeah exactly in the middle of the summit gargles. Exactly. You're still like you got blessed here because I was not happy about it. No, I totally understand that.

That's crazy that you went to a pizza. Yeah, exactly. Absolutely. If you're watching live, everybody, be a part of the show by super chatting on YouTube. com forward slash kind of funny games. Remember, we could not do this without our producers on patreon.com forward slash kind of funny. So thank you to Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, Delaney, the Somme, Twining, and Lax Nomad. We appreciate you all very, very much.

For now, let's begin with the topic of the show. Beast of Reincarnation Preview. If you have no idea what that game is, let me read this theme description for you. Game Freaks brand new title. That's right. The game freak that you're thinking of, the Pokemon Deves, Beast of Reincarnation,

is an action RPG with a fusion of real time and turn-based combat. experience the innovative one person, one dog, action, RPG. In the beautiful yet harsh world of beast of reincarnation, what awaits at the end of Emma and Coos' journey? Once again, developed by Game Freak, published by Fictions. Releases August 3rd, 2026, $59.99 title. $60 title.

Wow, I didn't realize that. Yeah. One person, one dog. One person, one dog. Yeah. What a write of. and our very own Blessing Adioia Jr. Went out to go play this recently.

And I can't wait to find out all about this darn game because we've been looking forward to it for quite some time. Yeah. Tell me all about it, bless. So I went down to L.A. last week, played about one and a half hours of Beast of Reincarnation. I really enjoyed it. I had a really good time.

I think this group of people that are sitting here at this table are really going to like Beast of Reincarnation. Hell yeah. I agree with that, Bless. Yeah. I think it has our vibe as far as it, being in that action RPG genre that has evolved over the years. Of course,

Souls elements is a thing that we always talk about in these kind of games. I wouldn't call it a Soulslike, though. This is one that I'll say doesn't fit in the camp, but it has those elements. But I'll compare it more to a stellar blade maybe in terms of being more of a straightforward action game. I really enjoyed multiple aspects of this, starting with the combat.

I think that's the thing that strikes me is most, most unique and fresh as far as what it brings because it has the things you would expect as a Perry Perry feels good. Perry actually feels really good. When I'm thinking of other games that I'll compare this to you, I think the Perry is on the more satisfying side. Anytime we've seen clips of it, I'm like not only does it look satisfying, it sounds good at all. Yes, I think they really locked in. It feels like that was one of the ones where they looked at Sekiro specifically and went

let's try to emulate this at least a little bit, right? And I think the light up effect when you get that Perry feels good. Perry also does feel a bit generous, but I think that's a good thing because I don't think this game is as hard as, say, a Stellar Blade or a First Preserker or a I had another game in mind.

Well, long fallen dynasty. That's actually the exact one I was thinking of. Mike can know me. I don't think this game is as hard as those, but I was talking to other people who did go to the same preview, and one person who I know does not play Souls said that they found it a little bit difficult. So I think it's somewhere in that like a little bit difficult

but not as hard as like if you're playing a proper soul's like sort of range. So I say that to say that Perry Window felt generous, but felt generous in a good way. Felt approachable, felt accessible. I liked that. I think the big, big thing that makes it feel fresh, though, is Koo. Who is your dog? Of course, is a one person, one dog action RPG. And Koo is, with Koo comes a menu, almost like a turn-based aspect where you'll be in the middle of

fighting and then you'll press a button and it brings up a side menu that has commands that you can tell Koo to do and those are just additional actions additional abilities one for example will have koo shoot um like shoot these balls out of its tail like these energy balls essentially out of his tail add an enemy and that'll do damage there's another one that will grow vines from the ground to like trap an enemy in place while you attack it like those kinds of abilities that felt really cool. And it didn't just feel like an additional option. It felt like a necessary thing for combat.

When I say combat in this game feels a little bit forgiving, I think that's one of the big things that really helps it is, oh, you have coup to really help you with backup and make things feel a bit more fresh and a bit more methodical in a way that actually opens up the gameplay and makes it more fun. So really like that on the gameplay side.

I saw another preview compare kind of the Final Fantasy 16. Right. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I could see that a little Yeah, as we, you know, for audio listeners, if you're not watching any of the video stuff, there's a lot of visual, great visual stuff. I think this game looks super beautiful. Yeah. I want to read a bit more about the game from their Steam page.

Again, a brand new title set in a post-apocalyptic Japan. Humanity's only hope lies with Emma, an outcast shunned from society for her affliction and coup, the blighted dog. There's always a blight. There's always a scourge. You want to talk about the story of this game. there's always a blight always a blight

always a scourge together they embark on this expansive adventure in this one person one dog action RPG experience a journey where you feel moments of loneliness

and also the reliability and comfort of your companion savor a world of impermanence where forests suddenly burst forth amidst the wasteland as Emma and Koo traveled to this beautiful yet harsh world their bond and abilities

blossom and you talking about these abilities and being able to hold down big bosses, being able to, you know, have your dog do things. And I guess I wonder the rhythm of it. How much are you interrupting your real-time combat with abilities from Q? It feels very balanced. You know, like we started off at the very beginning of the game.

The build I played was the full game. And they were just like, hey, you have an hour and a half. Go off, like, you know, play as much as you want. But within that hour and a half. And as I was playing, I had three abilities with Koo. it seemed like in average I could use maybe the two or three in a combat sequence. And so only a few times am I interrupting that. You also can fill up essentially your ability to use those abilities by pairing and

performing actions. And also when you use when any of Q's abilities, you get a little quick time effect where there's like a circle and then you see the meter kind of fill and you have to hit A at the right time in order to actually execute it fully. I loved it, right? Like it didn't feel like it interrupted it in a way that slowed down the pace whatsoever. It felt additive to, all right, let me, this guy's over here. Let me hit triangle, click the thing, quick time, boom.

All right, that effect is in. Let's keep chopping. Awesome. I have a little quote here from a write-up on the game from Janet Garcia on Game Informer. After getting through the opening tutorials, the world opens up a bit. Beasts of Reincarnation's areas are widely explorable with side quests and optional items, but this is not an open world game. game. Quote, this is from one of the devs Fudoshima who says there are approximately 10 stages,

is kind of what they're calling it, spanning around 30 hours of gameplay. Wow. Do you feel, in your experience, Bless, that this game will hold up momentum for that amount of time when it comes to exploration, what sort of things are you finding? And are those, do you feel like there are like a lot of secrets and things around the world to, you know a little unlockable things to expand your move set to expand your skill tree or whatever yeah as far as explore explorability

I would I would describe it as open zone you know like not open world but the areas you're in do feel highly explorable as far as what you're finding I would say think like you're playing a team ninja game where you're finding gear and stuff like that you also find more stuff related to story granted I in the time I played I feel like I didn't get a great idea of the full scope of

collectibles and all that stuff, but it seemed like those variety as far as, oh, I'm in the world, I can kind of go wherever I want, but there's a very clear direction of where it wants me to go to keep mainlining. But if I want to veer off the trail, I might find some enemies to fight over here and then maybe pick up a piece of gear or maybe find something that adds like a note to the story and learn a little bit more about the world. And so, yeah, very much about the exploration a little bit here. And as far as do you think it can hold up for like 30 hours, I'd say yes. This actually, that actually makes me happy because I don't want this game from what I played, I don't want it to last more than 40.

I don't want this to last like a, when you're thinking of a big action RPG, I view this in the sense of a stellar blade. I view this in the sense of one of those that I'm in, I'm leveling up, you know, like you have your, you have your literal campfires. A lot of times in these games, we have our checkpoints. Yeah, tell me about the bonfires system.

Yeah, in Dark Souls, it's a bonfire, of course. In this game, there are literally campfires. It's fun because the first one I approached, Koo was the one that pointed it out. And so like I got close to it and then you hear Koo like do like a little bark and then you see an icon pop up pop up on the screen. I'm like, oh, that's a Kempire. Oh, thanks, Koo. Thanks for talking about you.

Shat, that's a Koo. It's the stuff you'd expect there. You go in. You can level up your character. There is a big skill tree that I wish I had the, I wish I could have screenshot or something instead of myself. I couldn't do that for the preview. But there is a skill tree that is a literal tree. It has roots that grow down and it has branches that grow up.

Cool. I believe, I, don't quote me on this, but I believe it's like the ones that grow into branches are more like abilities and the ones that grow down. Actually, don't call. I'm not even going to say fully. I did see a glimpse of it. I believe it was possibly on IGN's preview that they posted last or two weeks ago. If we can find some video. I'm going to look, I'm going to look it up right here for Barrett.

Yeah, see if you can find it and send it to bear it because I tried to get the idea of like what, what all are we doing with the skill tree. And it just felt very complex. because you have one and then Koo has their own skill tree and their own leveling up system. Along with the skill tree though, you have points that you can just put into attributes. And so the three main attributes you have are strength, vitality, and fluorescence.

Fluorescence seems like it's revolving more around skills and abilities and things like that. Your flora, is that what it means? Because your character grows like vines out of her body. Your character's like poison ivy or something. So that's another. thing I wanted to talk about that's really cool. Everything in this game,

I have two points here. One, everything in this game revolves around nature so much in a way that also makes it feel really cool and fresh. Like we're talking about this relationship between flora and fauna. You know, you look at Koo and Koo has like plants and branches and

stuff coming off the tail. Your character has hair that goes into a braid that can grow into branches and that does a few things. One, she has, it's not a double jump, but it functions like a double jump where you press X to jump and you hold X again. When you hold X the second time, you then will rise. Like you have a branches that'll grow that will then lift you high into the air.

I thought that was really cool. And then if you press one of the triggers, not while you're jumping, just regularly, like, standing around, you will grow a branch that can create a path for you. So if you're like, oh, there's something over there across a gap, hold the button and then your hair creates a path for you. So you can then walk across it and then get to where you're trying to go. You can also tap that same trigger to do a grappling hook animation. As you see, if you're watching the video, the branch is growing. You can run across it. And I use that to get the jump on enemies that were below me so I can get that instant kill sort of thing.

Now, does that feel, does it feel like there's a lot of freedom behind that? Or does it feel like this, when I get to this area, this is clearly a branch spot? Or can you just kind of bust out that move really in any spot? You can bust out that move really in any spot. Oh, okay. Yeah, you can use it whenever the world design does have parts where it's like, oh, clearly the way I get here is by using my hair. But yeah, you can use that whatever.

Same with the grappling hook. As long as there's a place for the grapple to attach to, you can use that grappling hook whenever. And I forgot it was there for half the demo. And then I, as I was in a combat sequence, I was like, wait a second. And then I started using it to get around real quickly. And it felt really cool. make sure you get your super chats in everybody

for any questions for blessing about Beast of Reincarnation. Mike. Yeah. Whenever any of these sort of action RPGs come out, you're... I roll my eyes. You're usually not... Really?

Yeah, you're there too many. It's because we've seen so many. You're usually not somebody who like, I need that code or give me that code. I want to play it, right? Is there anything this one can do to get you in? I think it's the world. I think it is the cool flora and fauna aspect of it.

I think it is game freak, the idea that like the Pokemon company that I know is making an action RPG, right? I think my eyes roll when I watch a lot of these trailers. And the story is like, what is really going on here? Right? Like, is this story going to captivate me? So right?

And so like I roll my eyes at that, but I play the best of the best. I find it hard to get into the mid-tier because there's a lot of good in some of the mid-tieres, but there's also a lot of bad where it's like, ooh I'm just kind of slowly getting through this and I'm not having a blast. I will say story is still a question for me as far as am I really going to love and fall in love with the story.

There's a vibe here that I like because it reminds me a little bit of near when you hear the soundtrack and there's kind of a melancholic sort of tone to the music that's played in the background but as far as story it is very much there's a blight and you know there's Malifax that are these infected animals right and you're going around you're fighting these like robot

looking dudes and there's like Like there's what they set up in the story early on doesn't interest me that much until I got toward the end of my preview. And I'm not going to spoil anything, but there was a cutscene that had me interested more in my character. And there was a different cutscene even that had me interested more in the relationship between my character and coup. And I love to see how they expand upon that.

So I'm not immediately like, oh, yeah, I'm loving the story. But I do think it has potential to get me there. Yeah. And then on top of that, of course, the enemy design, right? like what are the basic enemies? Is it just the zombies with the swords that come after me? Is there any sort of like fun thrilling boss fights that I'll always hold on to and remember?

We always talk about that when we come out of games like this. So a lot of the enemies were kind of like that roboty sort of thing that you saw just now in the video. I did hit a boss fight. It seems like each zone might have like a big boss fight because at the end of the first zone that I got to, there was a big, I think it was a stag. Big stag.

Very, very tall. Yeah. And, oh, bear, it's on it. And I'm fighting this. Oh, is it this one? No, the other one that I... That's the one I have. Yeah, that, that dude is from like their normal trailer, but I, I know which one you're

talking about because I believe it was in IGN's video preview. Gotcha. But, I mean, the movements are same. Like, the way that that animal right there is waving its head at you and you're the ground. The stag that I thought was doing the exact same move. And I found that one fun. That was one of the few times where I had to do multiple attempts.

Like I died the first time and I was like, all right, let's lock in and then a second time I got it. But that was like a fun. All right, Perry, Perry, kind of understand the patterns a little bit. All right, we kill this thing. Move on to the next thing. I'm both high and low on that. Low because I like bosses to be a bit more tougher in a game like this because I want to really get in the bag of learning those patterns and being like, oh, I've mastered this. I've downloaded this move set.

However, I do think that there should be space for these types of games that can. appeal to people that don't want to do all that shit because I should have checked to see if there was difficulty. There are, yeah. I believe there are difficult. So I'm sure if I wanted to turn it to hard mode, I could do that. But I think this is this game is the most that I think

a Greg Miller could get into this or a Tim Geddes could get into this just as far as it's not asking that much of you as far as dying and dying and dying and dying and keeping on coming back and being like fuck, how do I get past this? We'll see when we get further into the game if it gets there. But early on, It's fun.

Like, it's like a, it's an easy, breezy time. There was some mentions of crafting in some of the previews. Um, are we crafting abilities or weapons? Are you sticking with the same weapon? I don't, I don't recall the crafting. I don't interact with that element that much. Um, and you mentioning the, you know, the story seems like it can be a bit hit or miss. I did read that as well as in Janet Garcia's write up on Game Informer about the, you

story feels like, all right, this is maybe the biggest question mark of whether this will actually deliver or not. Were there, regardless of how big the question mark there may be, were there any conversations with NPCs or anybody that you're like, you're an interesting fella and I want to get to know more about you. Not really. It was mostly in cutscene. Okay. And this game does have so far in the first hour and a half, it had quite a few cutscenes to spare. and so it's not for the Souls comparison because we're always going to be very reacting

to Souls for now on apparently. You have a little bit more there to chew on as far as what are the motivations of these characters, what's going on and the story, and it seemed like this is going to be a story-driven game as far as get to the end of a sequence, get a cutscene that fills in more context and then continue on.

Some of the cutscenes I had were flashback cutscenes and I don't think that's going to end. I think you're going to have a lot of like, build the backstory of these characters, see what's going on in this world kind of thing. and you know I'm I'm excited for that but yeah I don't there wasn't really an NPC that I met in world where I was like oh what's your story oh you're gonna return or whatever there was a call with Brad I forgot there was a character in this game just named Brad

oh yeah that's right I think I remember this from the preview or from the trailer or like I say she says it well she does say Brad I had it in Japanese view but she says Brad I was like oh yeah fucking Brad you know like we're gonna have like conversations with Brad so I want to know more about Brad. I don't know much about Brad so far, but I want to know more. He went to UCLA. Watching the trailers, it's giving the little child from Monster Hunter Wilds, where all of a sudden he's like, we got to go back to my home. That's been balled up in wax. And you're like, I don't care about your story. I do want to respond to Mr. Lockwood says, blessing, not everything has to be souls like geez. And I understand that. And that's why I'm even bummed out about how much I'm bringing

up souls. It's just the fact that so many of these games take influence from Souls things. So it's hard not to draw the comparison when I'm literally going up to a bonfire and then sleep resting to then respawn the enemies and also putting in the attributes in a way. I guess I can just say action RPG but Souls is my shorthand for the mechanics that you know

that I'm talking about. The the, when we talk about the skill tree and how it possibly evolves, are you getting any like, oh, I want to save up whatever points to eventually see how that move works. or I want to get that, I want to unlock this move.

Like, are you unlocking a lot of abilities? Are we talking stellar blade, Cana Bridge of Spirits levels, where you start off with your set things, or are those set things just getting stronger? I think it's a bit of both. I think you're both improving the set things that you have, and then you're also unlocking more abilities. I didn't get far enough to where I unlocked anything that meaningful.

And so, like, I can't really speak too much to it, but it seems like there's a lot to do in the skill tree that'll evolve the way you play. It seems, from what I was playing, my set version of my character, the default that you start with, it feels like there's a lot of space to grow her move set and really do things, especially when you're talking about coup and when you bring up the, I'll call it the coup menu,

when you bring up the coup menu mid-combat in choosing which ability you want coup to use, the three that I had, it felt like three small slots. That thing looks like it's going to fill up, I think. Okay. Or maybe you're going to have some sort of load out or something with Ku, I imagine. That's pretty exciting. One thing I'll shout out as well that I want to forget is they were very, proactive about mentioning the Japanese VO.

They, I don't want to put words in their mouth, but it very much felt like, they were like, hey, play with the Japanese view. I play with the Japanese VEO specifically. And they highlighted that it stars the same VO in Japanese who did To Be from Near, you had Solid Snake at MGS and other renowned Japanese VO. And so I want to shout that out because that's the way I ended up playing. I wanted to play half Japanese, half English, because I like playing things with the English VEO

because it's just easier for me. I sadly couldn't figure it out because you could only change the VO through the main menu. You could get to start the game that way. Yeah, so when I started off in Japanese, mid-game, I pressed pause, and I couldn't find it.

I was like, ah, whatever, I just kept going. But I'll say the Japanese VO seemed pretty good, even though I don't understand Japanese, but it seemed pretty good. Cool. Well, I can't wait to keep on. dive in deeper into Beast of Reincarnation. Once again, get your super chats in.

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Mr. Lawrence. Oh, yeah, I saw Lawrence on my way out. Who also previewed it. It was fun. And there's a screenshot, I'm assuming, from the B-roll possibly, with an image of, here's kind of what part of the skill you looks like. Oh, thank you for this. Yeah.

I don't really know how deep it goes in there or whatever. So it definitely was, I remember having to put points into one of these three things. And then I had to, like, I believe I had to go down and then go up. Like, I had to make sure there was a certain amount of points into one of these three things, then level up the stuff at the top. But as you can see, I believe whatever was highlighted there was more of an ability. Yeah, at the very, very top, we see something called Blade Art, Shaku Yaka.

And Blade Art is a brilliant slash of sword master imbued with Shakuyaka. And then as it goes down, the roots and the branches, nice touch. Really cool idea. Yeah, I like, I was like, yo, this is pretty cool. You strengthen your soul by the roots and then you do the cool stuff on the branches. I can't stress enough because Mike earlier you're talking about, you know, there'd be a lot of these games now and like you see a new one. You kind of roll your eyes a little bit. I do think the secret sauce that this game might have might just be how much it leans into nature and leans into flora fauna's animals, floors, plants.

Correct. Yeah, how it leads into the flora of it. Because like there's everything feels connected to nature in in a way where I'm like, this is feeling fresh. Like this actually feels different than so many of these other games that are just like, All right, now you're in a dystopian future or like you're in a post-apocalypse and everything's dead. Here, there is a level of apocalypse, I guess. Like, you're one of few humans. You know, it's mostly animals here.

But I don't know. This connection between these living creatures and all of them just having some sort of branches or leaves or whatever traits of visual identity that makes it interesting for me to look at. But then also I'm really curious about where the story goes and how that is going to interact with. the blight, as there always is. What's the range combat like? Thank you for asking that, because that's something I should highlight. You're welcome, blessing.

I started off with a crossbow, and then I ended up finding a bow and arrow later on. As you expect, Crossbow has a quicker fire than the bow and arrow. I found both of them to be very effective. I was actually surprised by how much damage they were doing at times. I think in these games, I'm used to them just not. You know, I'm used to them being, like, very weak weapons unless you level them up a lot.

But they seemed very useful. I want to say, though, that I kept running out of ammo at a certain point. So, you know, obviously limits there. But I like using it as an additional option. I think my biggest question is how do they level up and get more interesting? Right. So because, like, I'm looking at the three branches that go down, I guess, into these, like, roots or whatever.

And it's tracking shot, hair. Yeah. And the third is kind of being. obscured. I can't quite see what it is. One of the one of the things. Entanglement overdrive. Yeah, that I'm not sure about I'm not sure

yeah, I can't remember anything about in the entanglement overdrive branch or whatever. Now, I don't even know if those are just branches or if those are just singular abilities, but in the entanglement overdrive sort of like path, there's recovery effect boosts.

Oh. Your gauge recovery. Okay. So are those like ultimates or, or just your skills, period? So I think it's a bit of, I think it's probably like your supernatural abilities kind of thing. Because you have, you have a heel, which it sounds like there was like a heel thing in there. Like you press a button to reel in real time, heal in real time. But then you have, you do have a meter to where if you press a button, you can pause time for a second and like hit enemies while they're frozen.

Oh, okay. And that was super short. I imagine that's going to make those windows longer to keep on damaging the enemy. It reminds me a little bit of Black Myth Wu Kong where you would like freeze an enemy in place and now it's like, you know,

spam on them, hit them, and then they unfreeze after a little bit. They have that same thing here. Did you all play on PC or what? I want to say, yeah, we played on PC. I played with a PlayStation controller, though, but it ran well. I have no complaints about how it played on PC.

Awesome. Get any questions? you all have about beast of reincarnation. Mike, is there anything else you'd like to get into? No, I'm pretty, I'm coming around on this preview from Blessing. How about that? As someone who was like, I roll my eyes at a lot of these trailers that we see until we finally go hands on.

I like the preview that you've given me so far. Bless, I'm excited to see the one person, one dog combat because I'm looking it over and I see the slowdown and the menu pop up and I like the addition. kind of almost active reload-esque QTE there to get the extra successful damage. I'm into there. Very like Final Fantasy 7 remake rebirth sort of stuff. Yeah.

Like I think the thing about this game, I don't think it reinvents the wheel. I don't look at this as something that's going to necessarily stop the world and be like, yo, this is the new. But I do think it's a really fresh, unique take on action RPGs. And I'd say once you get the review code,

maybe give it an hour and a half or two hours to see, like, is this something? something for Mike because I view this game from coming out of the hour and a half as this feels like it's for fans of the genre. This feels like it's for if you like action games, if you like action RPGs, if you like a NIR or a stellar blade or a first berserker Kazan, like this is one that I think fits in that category of game. But I think the turn-based stuff makes it even more you or not turn-based, but you get what I mean. Like the menu, who action stuff makes it a bit more unique.

Like it makes it stand you know in a more unique spot. And then also just the entire nature vibe of it for me felt nice. I liked it. A lot of Cana vibes. A lot of Cana vibes. Yeah, like holding the art, I think it was R2,

holding R2 to grow the hair and then like run across it. I like a lot of what they're doing here. This feels creative as far as what they're doing. And I put up a blue sky post earlier this morning asking people what they wanted to know for my preview. I do want to tackle one or two because Emmett Watkins Jr. asked as someone who's interested in the game

specifically because it looks like, it looks nothing like Pokemon, is there some hidden Pokemon ingredient in there? And if so, will it spoil what I hope to get, will it spoil what I hope to get from it? And this is what I'll say. If you didn't tell me this was from people behind Pokemon, I would never have guessed that this was game freak.

This feels, if I, if I was to do the blindfold test, you know, play this game, have no idea who the developer is, who do you think made this? I probably would have been like, oh, this is something that maybe Team Ninja's been working on for a while, or I would say maybe the Stellar Blade Studio had a second team that made this.

I wouldn't have said Pokemon. That said, is there a serious sauce from Pokemon? I'd say maybe the creature is design. In a way, every creature in this game is Bulbosaur. Think about it. Every creature from this game is like Venusaur. It is this weird mix of nature and beast here. And so I would say also from what you talk about like coo also as well is a little bit of that like little

Influence of Pokemon of like having this animal companion Out there with you and traveling it and communicating with it in ways or having it communicate with you of It telling you like hey there's like a rest stop over here and stuff like that's a good point. That's a really good point. Yeah I love it If you pre-order you get different Koo skins. Oh my gosh. Oh yeah. Oh yeah there's oh that like that like she does look really cool. And again, it's $59.99. Pretty awesome.

Yeah, that honestly feels so appropriate. I thought, I assumed it was $70 as I was playing it. And when you're talking about a 30-hour video game in 2026, that is coming from a studio that, you know, is putting out something that feels polished, because I'll say it felt polished as I was playing it. Like I mentioned, it's the full game. And it's around the corner, August 6th, I want to say,

is when this game is coming out, correct me? August 3rd. August 3rd, okay, that's even earlier. felt right I didn't experience glitches in my preview which is a lot to say about a preview

you know did you play on control with back paddles no I just played on a regular game developers you're on the back paddle hype right

I like a back paddle it depends on the game though he's waking up he's being awoken for this game I could see myself using a back paddle because I use them

for Liza P yeah put that Dodds in the back paddle you're in the Dodge or get a Perry on the back paddle once you get the Perry on the back battle

that'll change I don't know if I don't know about that. That's how I crushed Sekiro. I'd never even consider that. You did pairing and Sekiro on the backpack. That's how you change your game. Per me back paddle, lots of middle finger action and pairing.

I need my index. What are you pressing the back paddle with? Oh, back paddle. Back paddle. Back paddle. I thought you were talking about the shoulder button. No,

shoulder buttons. I was like, oh, he's going to middle finger. I'm that. No, I need the index for my pairing. The middle fingers are pairing. No,

that's how I break all the Xbox elite controllers. Yeah. It's because you pair. on the LB or the RB and then it breaks because it's durability is negative zero, you know? That dumb ass. Will we get that evolution? You know how we got controllers that evolved for shooters? You know what I mean?

Made the triggers feel like gun trigger kind of thing. Are we going to get the evolution to where next generation controllers know that L1 is the Perry button? So we make them a bit more like this is going to be hit quite a bit. Yeah. It's like I'm going to be hitting L1 a lot in these games that are coming out. How can we make the L1 button more durable and like, you know, we need to take that in three.

account for people that play Sekiro and eventually learn that if you just spam LB, the game becomes a lot easier. Yeah, yeah. They'll knock it out. People are going to be doing that. I want an ergonomic L1 or LB or whatever we're calling it, right? I want it to be ergonomic and no I want them to know like, yo, this shit's about to get some action. I spent

a decent amount of my weekend. Now I'm looking at the time spent. It's only three hours. But still it felt like forever. playing a little game that Tomar Hussein suggested to us on Friday's Gamescast Rundice

Okay R-U-N-E-dice and he brought it up and saying like yeah Rune-Dice is a cool game and then we got codes for it and holy hell it's

it's what you expect it gives you all of the the happy feelings of whenever the dice combined with each other. You have a number one dice and there's a bunch of other number two, number three, number four dice on the board

and you have to match up the numbers with each other and they combined. But then when they combine, it's very physics-based to where the little dice will get tossed to where the other three dice is. And when they all start combining, they all pop up as

damage on the left side of the screen. And it is so freaking addictive, man. seems like a Roger game. That's why it made him stay. Roger, have you heard about this game, Rune Dice? Yeah, I saw Andy talking about it. It's fun. Oh, wow. Okay. You think a lot of things are big, a big hater energy. Wow, yeah, big hater energy is right.

We had a great vibe for this episode. You're trying to put one out of me, Bear, got you. That's crazy. Don't put in the fucking microphone. You know, like I enjoyed Beasts of Incarnation. Andy telling us about a neat new game. What was the crazy ball game that he loved? Ball pit.

He fucking loved ball at He loves all this shit He comes out and he's like I don't like dice He loves all this shit All this crap About ball pit This is definitely like a real fun one A good one to just kind of turn on

And have be You know To have it be a podcast sort of game Okay Because of how You know some of the dice Might have a little bomb on them And when they do

They knock around all the other dice And then those dice May combine with other ones on the board And all that form damage on your left side and it is it's so like satisfying whenever all of them sort of combine but again it is very RNG physics base so like when you shoot the one dice at the number one and it combines into a number two that number two dice is going to get shot towards the direction of another number two dice on the board but when it gets shot over it doesn't always hit it it may land short

or it may get a really good bounce because it's using very good physics and things like that but man it is it is really damn satisfying and it I totally got into the the megabunk vampire survivors vampire crawler sort of vibe where it's like all right cool I finish around with that guy now I unlock this next dude who has these sort of powers and you start to kind of like feel that vibe as well yeah a lot of fun shout out to Tam for recommending that I'm scared of what that's going to do my do to my brain it's a it's a fun one it's not you know I don't think it's I think my brain has already become accustomed to what these games are. And once I get five to 10 hours of them, I go, all right, you know, I had my fun with it and I'll move on. It's certainly not the way I

felt about like vampire survivors in the day. Like I think I already experienced what that feels like. And then you know, okay, I know what the, I know what the apex of those feelings are. And I've hit that before, so I'm good with 5 to 10 hours as opposed to 70 hours of an experience or whatever. Let me tell you, y'all weren't in college when they put out cookie clicker. But like I was in, I was probably like my third year in

college, fourth year in college, and I was in class clicking cookies for nonstop hours, bro. And like that same kind of feeling of watching the number grow and then unlocking something that makes the number grow faster and then unlocking something that makes the number grow faster. There's something about it that like, it unlocks something in my brain and I think that's twice.

this day, to this day, I love Rolex so much in games like this. You're selling me. I might check out this Rundice. It's a cool one, yeah. It's a new one. Also, Mike, remember when we were out at Pye Punks and I said, I've got a, I'm mid run right now and Slay the Spire 2 and it's a really good one so far.

It ended up being the most broken experience of my life and Slay the Spire 2. In a good way? In a good, like I, I have a hundred, I have 92 hours. This is 128. I don't believe. that. I think in game Slate the Fire 2?

Yeah, 92. Because I in the game it'll tell you like your actual stats but Steam is telling me I have a certain amount I don't believe that

I think maybe I left it on my Steam deck at one point but the run that I was telling you about Mike ended up being the most broken shit of all time using the poison character

insane run just a crazy build. Is this going to be a Hades 2 situation where you're going to nominate it for top 10 game of the year and the next year

and the next is going to come out and I'm going to be like, there's one of the game. I'm going to nominate it. No, it's not going to get the, you know. I'm going to nominate this year and not nominated next year. No. This is the problem. No, I've heard.

I'm going to do it. I'm not playing it to one. Last year was my year of saying I'm not putting early access on my top 10 anymore. Because that's where I'm last year I started it. That's where I'm at. Yeah. Because like my, I wait. Unless I really break because the Hades do had me for a second.

But for the most part, I'm like, I'm waiting until 1.0. You know, I checked it out to try it. But I'll play it when it's done kind of thing. If you remember, I thought King is watching was still was still in that sort of early access until people in my chower like, Andy King is watching is out. You could put it on your top 10.

And then I had to panic and message bear it. What I need from y'all, going in there. When I eventually play this game, when it comes out, is I need y'all to be with me. I need y'all to vote with this, vote for this game with me.

I need you to support. But also, wasn't it on our top 10 two years in a row? What's up? Wasn't Hades on our top 10 two years in a row? Was it really? It was, yeah. Okay, see,

Even that's fucked up, though. Well, that was, again, that was the last year that I put something in my early access, that, like, last year was like, I'm not doing that anymore. Let me look. I'll check just in case. You like Mike putting that on me. You talk to him. You love that.

Mike likes to put out unannounced games on his voice. I made my clear decision. Because I'm like, Mike, you got to hold. We've done for a year. Hold for two years. We've done three. Let's check it on your top tens. I've said it every single time.

There's in my top four. And so, like, it's going on that. I've never heard you talk about Slade of that while clicking a cookie. So is this what cookie clicker is? Yeah, that is cookie clicker. So you're going to hit a point where you can unlock things. Like you're going to hit something that's like, oh, for every click, it's now two cookies. I thought there would be cookies on the screen.

I have to move around. You're like peggle or something. Oh, you're clicking one stationary cookie. That's what people did. I think they still do. I'm pretty sure cookie cooker is still popular. Still big. Yeah.

Brother, I had this going for like for weeks. I got a lot to say, but I won't say it on this podcast. I had this going for a semester. In 2024. Hades 2 early access was number 7 on our top 10 in 2025. Hades 2 was number 4. And like, I feel like we all waited until it came out. Yeah.

It maybe could have gotten higher. Could I think the hype just got spread too thin. Yeah. Yeah. But then they also ended the story in a kind of weak way. Sure. And I think if it ended in an awesome way, then we all would have been like, holy fuck. That's fair.

They landed the plane. Where are you at in Geno Blade? Oh man, I am Are you deep? I'm deep I must have most of the game done by now Okay I'm basically past when I say most

Just past halfway I'm like 43 hours 44 hours Okay I was playing that In another switch game On my trip around And so like

I If I wasn't playing multiple games I probably would be close to the end For Zenoid But that game still keeps delivering Yeah It's crazy It's crazy how good Zeno Blade is

And nobody ever talked about it Nobody talked Nobody talked about Zeno Not one person I'm hoping to get it done by the end of the month because there are some games coming. Okay, okay. That's my goal.

I do want to shout out one more thing from A Beast of Reincarnation as I read through my notes to make sure I didn't miss anything. I don't know what caused it, but there was like an in-world event. Maybe there was like an enemy that spawned or something, but all of a sudden,

in the middle of my play-in-my play-through when I'm in this zone, a bunch of plants just started growing rapidly, like out of nowhere. And then I killed a bunch of enemies and then like eventually it stopped. But when that happened, it was really scary and cool.

Did it feel like this emergent kind of like this doesn't always happen? This is very planned or this was... It was the one time it happened in my playthrough. The only way I could I could explain it would be that

there was probably an enemy like a stronger enemy that caused for that to happen but I don't know or maybe it was a story I actually don't know. I have no idea why it happened. It just happened.

I was like, what the fuck? Everything is growing really fast and it looks cool. And then it stopped. I love shit like that. Yeah. I love you like that too.

All right. Well, that's been our beast. of reincarnation preview that's been us talking about cookie clicker and Rune Dice. So I click on this cookie. Now I unlock a second level. Keep going, Andy. We don't need to talk about this. But what's, is something supposed to happen

here? Or like, what do you mean? Just end the podcast. He's talking about it. Keep talking while I'm talking. Keep talking about it. I mean, look how many cookies are getting right now. This has been the kind of funny games cast. I think you're getting, and I think we appreciate y'all support. The cursor and you have grandma who cooks cookies. Thank you for watching and listening.

Make sure you click the like button. And give us hype points. And if you enjoyed this, let us know in the comments down below. We appreciate you all hanging out with us. Take care of yourself. Take care of you.