Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - We Played Doom: The Dark Ages - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

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What's up, everybody, and welcome to today's kind of funny games cast for Monday, March 31st, 2025. I'm one of your show host, Snowbike, Mike, and today I'm joined by two incredible dudes. Let's go down the desk, Mr. Blessing out of Yo-Yea Jr. How are you blessed? Good day, Mike. How's it going? Good, big week. Yeah, Switch to. Switch to. Can't wait. Big deal. 11 out of 10 hype on this one. I got some things to talk about with you, but I'll circle back to you in just a moment. Let me introduce, of course, Andy Cortez, the Nitro rifle on the panel. Hi, Andy. How are you?

What's up, Mikey? I'm doing great, big dog. Your weekend was good? Had a good weekend. Yeah? Yeah. A lot of rest. Good. I like that. Relaxation. A lot of unaccounted four hours. How so? I'm going to find out what those hours are. I'm going to find those hours. I'm going to start when he's at home resting.

I'm going to talk back to you in a minute, okay? I'm going to circle back to you. I'm not done with you. Jesus. Bless you, I want to start with you. What's up? Of course, before we get into today's games cast, I want to circle around and talk about both of you, of course, you blessing, have been on the search for a game. You know, this weekend, you attacked your top 100 list. You've been asking people, I need a new game because you're coming off the high of Outer Wilde, which I appreciate. But you didn't take any of my recommendations.

Because what did you recommend to me? I recommended you all of the biggest games that dropped this year. Which I for Elite Resistance. I recommended Inzio. I recommended Enzoi. Inzoi. I recommended Warriors Abyss. I recommended Dynasty War.

years. I pretty much went down every single game that I had bought in this year. After Blessed requested to you, what bless? I want a game that's going to change my life. And Mike looked at him and it was like, play Inzoe. I gave blessing games that you can make out of content. You can make another life. You know what I mean? But he wants a game that

can change his life. So Bless you, I turn to you. It's four days later. Where are we on that search? So this is the deal. I was looking for games that I should play for my top 100. also games that aren't going to take a lot of time out of me. Like I am still reviewing games. I do have games I am currently playing,

but I want games that I can play that are kind of in my free time that are going to blow my mind. Or games that I know are me-ass games that could maybe make it into my top 100. So I do have a backlog list, a very short backlog list of games that I do want to try. Okay. What do you got?

The Half-Life franchise is one that I've been putting off for years and years and years, and I know I'll be into Half-Life. And so at some point, maybe some point soon, I want to start playing Black Mesa, the remake of HalfLife that came out quite a few years ago. Great call. So that's my list. And also, I want to play HalfLife 2 and all the other ones, right? And Half Life Alex also.

Love that. I love that. Man, people think I hate VR, but I do love VR. And Half Life Alex is one that I know is like... People think you hate VR. Well, PSVR, too, specifically. Okay. Which... Well, they shouldn't have put the cord on it. That one, it might be fair. But, like, I had such a strong VR era with PSVR one when I was playing Beat Sabre and I was playing Trover saves the universe. And I was playing Astrobot Rescue Mission and all these things, right? And you got to three games.

I was like, I was like, it's just going to be, I was playing this and this and so many other games. No, like, legitimately, I fucked with VR heavy. It's just PSVR 2, that catalog just wasn't hidden for me. Because guess what, Horizon called the Mountain wasn't a fun time. I didn't like

that game as much, right? You're like the bow and arrow simulator. The climbing simulator, if anything. In the fucking kayak VR game, that made me sick. But I do want to play Half-Life Alex so bad, but I got to play Half-Life are great poles? Yeah. So those, Return of the Oprah did. I'm big, into detective mystery type shit.

And the streets are saying that a return of the Oberdin would be my kind of game. Could be a thing. If you fucked with, what was the games that we got really into last year, blessed. Oh, Case of the Golden Idol. Yes. That's what I've heard is like if we fuck with those games, we're really going to dig Oberden. I love this. I'm just having a flashback to like

Polygon Game of the Year list in 2018 and shit. Yes, exactly. Oberden is like massive. Donkey Kong Tropical Freeze. Oh shit. I've been putting it off. I never had a Wii you. And then it came out on Switch and I was like, $60? No, I'm good. And so that's on the list. And then Silent Hill 2.

The new one that just came out. Themes. Themes of Deadwise. Deep, bro. Themes of Deadwise. Deep. That's one that like... The Fog.

When you're ready to go deep on that, you let me know. Bless, I'll talk your ear off about it. Hell yeah. So those are the four games I have in my list right now. Okay, those are some solid four. Yeah. No, Adam Fall. How long is Adam Fall?

I don't know. I just know that people who are into games like, of that genre are fucking with Adam Ball and I feel like blessed fucks with that genre he's fucking with that he likes being a detective

he likes solving puzzles yeah it's like a first person he likes getting put on to things it's not just like from what I keep on hearing it's not just first person exploration I hear it's like 15 hours 12 to 15

12 to 15 yeah I think I'm one of the reviews I watched it wasn't that long because I'm also you can knock it out is the thing where I'm also looking for games that are gonna like change my life

change my life yeah so like is Adam's like is it gonna change my life or is it like an Aida out of 10 game from this year. You know what I mean? I guess I'm going back to games that are out from this year.

But I like I, you know, we, we have the discord that we frequently hang out in Mike. But man, I just all, I always have something to be playing this year. More than any other year I feel. This year more than anything, there's like there's always something to be reviewing. Or else I feel like I'm kind of wasting my time if I'm not doing that.

If I'm not getting to other games I came out in the year of our Lord 2025. And there's just, you know, I saw the, the subreddit question of like, why aren't the guys playing out of all? I'm like, because fucking, you know, First Preserver Kazan's massive. Yeah. It's like we play Kazan. I got two games. I'm double fisting reviewing right now. There's just, there's always been something to play this year.

Yeah. And I've been enjoying my little time with, uh, with Sabbath's greed shadows, but I just don't have time for that. Yeah. Yeah. Because I'm, because first brother Kazan's so hard. Yeah. Exactly. I, it's, it's messed up.

because I think on the last game, whenever we did our first berserker-Kazan review, I said, oh yeah, I'm going to see this game through because I'm enjoying it. But I hit a point this last week where I looked at the icon on my PS5 and I was like, what if I didn't? Like, what if I didn't continue this game? Because I like it, but again, I'm like,

if I play the rest of the 10 hours or 15 hours is going to take me to beat this game, will that move me? Dude, I'm at a boss fight right now, though, that's like, so fucking sick. Yeah, okay. But I've also had like four or five boss fights in the past, I don't know how many hours,

that have been so awesome as well. Yeah. But I just hate the dance. Here's what, an experiment I did over the weekend. I decided to stream it after I was streaming Dark Souls 2. And I reset my, my skills to where I went back to 10 on everything, right?

You're 10, you're 10 health, 10 stamina, I'll cross the board. You're just a little baby boy, a little baby Ben Star out there. And I reset my shit and I put everything in a strength because I was the great sword build. 99 strength maxed out. put the rest of it into whatever

Vitality whatever the fuck of Dexter I don't know motivity that's lies it be But it was like 30 something right So I'm 99 I'm glass cannon type shit Normal dudes Backstab them Takes about like 40% of the health away

It's like how are you not dying immediately Why is the damage scaling this game So fucking wrong man I don't get why it's made that way Like normal dudes are still taking me 3, 4 swipes to kill it sucks. It's really fucking annoying. This is what I'll say about First Preserker is on.

Because there was a chat that was like, you know, not every game is going to change your life. And I agree, right? And I don't always need a game that's going to change my life. We played Wolong Fallen Dynasty like a couple years ago, right? And I was happy playing through that game. We gave it like a three out of five. Outriders is one of my goats, man. Yeah, exactly. That is one of his goats.

I fucking love Outriders. It's not the fact that like, oh, First Preserker goes on at a time and his end so I won't finish it. It's more so right now is the rare opportunity. What we are putting together the lists for our top 100 games. I got a lot of Madden's. And I have the opportunity, the excuse right now, to go back and play some of the goats. And I'm going to take that chance. I love that.

So I'm going to play some Donkey Con Tropical. Okay. Have you thought about playing the original Halo trilogy? I started playing Halo 1. Put you on to that. But I think I like Halo from the multiplayer more than I like the campaign. The chat is also recommended maybe play through all the way through Balders Gates. Have you done that?

See, now that's fire. I like that. Let's put a game in that could change your life. Let's go to Boulder's game. See, that's what I'm looking for right there. Because that's a good point. I never did finish Baldwin's game three. Now I've got to get to you at the end of the desk.

Can I say one more thing? Oh yeah, one more thing for you. I hit download on this game called Metal Gear Solid 5, Phantom Pain. I've already played it. I played it back in 2015. That game will change your life. But I was listening, the song from one of the trailers came up. I always forget the name of it.

It's like, I think it's by Elegger, it's by Elegger Solid 5. It's like, one of the songs from one of the trailers. It's one, done, dun, dun, dun, dun, dun, don't. No, it wasn't wood kid. That song came on, and I was like, oh, this is the song from the Middleogers Solid 5 trailer. Oh, man, Phainononon was a really good game. And then I hit download. I'm like, fuck, I might replay Melrose 5.

What if I told you about a video game that you, I believe you started and never got back to? Mass Effect 2. You know, I was talking a lot about Mass Effect 2 last night. I did get halfway through that game and I never finished it. And I did really like Mass Effect 1. You play 2 and 3? No, I only got halfway with you too. Plus, you got so many games to tear through, bro.

You got to get in, bro. You only have so much time, too. So much time. All right, let's get to you at the end of the table. Don't distract him. Don't distract him. Okay, you and I got to talk about. I'm talking about Doom, baby.

We got talking about your unaccounted four hours. Andy, this weekend you've been playing Dark Souls 2. I want an update on it. Where are we at? How are we loving it? What was the last boss you fought? Take me on a journey through one of my favorite games. Mike, I put me on.

I gave you a lot of shit for saying this is your favorite Dark Souls game. And I totally see it now. I'm not saying it's my favorite Dark Souls game, but, you know, I just heard too much shit talking from so many people saying that I was expecting Lords of the Fallen trash. Like, I was expecting this game to be really, really, really bad. Yeah. This game kicks ass.

I love this game so much. I think Dark Souls 3, boss fights, fucking goaded, right? Some of the best boss fights you'll ever experience. The getting from place to place is Dark Souls 3, not my favorite. I enjoy that in Dark Souls 2 way more. the spectacle of boss fights in Dark Souls 3 way cooler Dark Souls 2 it's it's known that Dark Souls 2 is all about it's mainly big guy

with a big sword which is like can get kind of samey I don't feel that way I think it's super sick but that's like one of the common things it's like you're not often fighting gigantic beast with a you know the the the ratio I guess the percentages of like big dude with a sword and gigantic creature

are way more weighted towards big guy with a sword. Agreed. I still think it's sick as hell. I'm loving this video game. And shout out to Frump's officer for all the beautiful visual mod. It looks amazing. I love this game so far. I'm about to start the DLC.

I'm ready for DLC. I already kind of finished most of the course shit. Yeah. I make King Vandric Lamar. Yes. VD. Gosh darn it. I'm so glad that you're coming around on it.

Game kicks ass. You're having fun giving it a try, opening your heart. Yeah. That game rocks. It's right. Bless you play that game yet? No, and I, Dark Souls 2? Yeah.

No, I'm playing Dark Souls 1 right now. There's the whole thing. We got to get back to that. I'm telling you, these are games that'll change your life is right, Bless. We got games for you, Bless. We'll get back to you on account in four hours, but I've been told we've got to get this show on the road. Of course, don't forget, this is the kind of funny games cast.

Each and every weekday, we get together to talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in the video game world, live on YouTube and on Twitch and, of course, on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, consider support. We're supporting us with the Kind of Funny membership available on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts to get all of our shows ad-free. Watch us record them live and get your daily exclusive show for a chance to be part of the show. Please submit your thoughts, opinions, as YouTube super chats as we go. Today's topic of discussion, Andy is what?

Doom the Dark Ages. You played it. Yeah. We're talking about your hands-on preview. So if you have questions about Doom the Dark Ages, Andy has played it. he's gone over and talked with the team. He will answer it. Are you wearing a wrist strap?

Yeah, I think I inadvertently gave myself either carpal tunnel. Where did that come from? Or a, I've been wearing it the whole time. I thought you just put it on. I just noticed that. What the fuck? What did that? I think I inadvertently gave myself carpal tunnel or I pinched the nerve.

We have a big problem with these hands. We have to address this because these are, those are your money makers. These are my money makers. You have beautiful face and your hands. Now I understand where Mike's coming from. What were you doing the unaccounted hours? Exactly, bro. You broke the end of the under the unaccounted too much.

So cranking it. I go lefty. Yeah, I'm trying to like. He's got to be go in-goon-in' going apo. Yeah. That's what he can't be going in. Going apo. No, I mean, it's a long story.

We got to get to do it. It's a long story. Like, here's a thing blessed. All right. We get it. I don't have carpal tunnel. Mm-hmm. But I was like, I want to prevent it in case something happened.

And it got so in my head that I have to prevent what could happen to be in the future. Because I was into a besties podcast. and Justin McElroy, one of the hosts of the besties, was talking about how he sleeps with like a, kind of a glove thing at night that keeps his finger straight. So it's like, because, you know, you're playing game so much, your fingers are curled all night, right? So I was like, I want to prevent that in the future.

So for some stupid fucker reason, I was like, what if I lay on my back and I put my hand underneath my ass? So my fingers are straight. But what it did was just like twist my, my wrist was twisted for hours and hours and hours. Jesus. And then I started like feeling weird kind of like tingly shit. it when I would stretch it a certain way. I think I got carpal to...

I think I gave myself up. Can you inadvertently... In order to prevent it, I gave it to myself. Jesus Christ. We didn't even see a dog. Who told you to fucking put your hands under your... I'm stupid as hell.

I was just like, this is the best way to keep my fingers straight. Can I tell you? One of my biggest fears is that I like, yeah, I get carpal tunnel. I do a thing that's going to fuck up my gaming in the future. Because, like, I love fighting games, right? And like, obviously, like, we like action games. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, like, I want to have, be able to have Twitch reflexes forever.

Yeah, yeah. And like I get so scared that I'm going to play so many fighting games. I'm going to fuck up my fingers. I don't feel anything when I'm gaming. I don't feel anything when I'm doing most of anything. But if I, with my left hand, if I were to like twist it this way, I feel like a kind of weird teal. Like I fucked up a nerve.

That's what Kevin saying. He stressed it out. Sorry. Yeah. Unaccount of four hours. That's some housekeeping for you. We will keep eyes on Andy's wrists and make sure he's doing all right. We got to protect those hands.

Some housekeeping for you. Andy Cortez. It's been 1,200 days. since we last dropped Howard Hospital. Oh, 1200 days without Verdans. Oh, my God. This Friday, the map that started it all, returns, and so do the Gibroni boys.

That's right. Even Andy is back to play Call of Duty Warzone one more time. This Friday at noon, Mike, Nick, Andy, and Chris Anka in studio will return to the game that brought them all together and also tore them apart for one. Megathon Marathon stream of laughter, friendship, and frustration.

Hatred. It's going to be so much fun. Make sure to tune in. This Friday, as the return of Verdansk goes down, we'll be jumping in together to have so much fun. And Chris Anka will be here to celebrate a hot drop with us. Don't forget, Kind of Funny is an 11-person small business all about live talk shows. Today on Kind of Funny Games Daily, you got

you got me and Greg talking about some news about GTA6 Is it going to come out this year? Is it going to kick ghost? Oh, I might have to change the headline. We talked about Ghostio Teh also. We didn't talk about it enough. Yes. So I'm like, oh, man, do I got to change the headline?

Might have to change the headline. Of course, after this, games cast, you will be getting Predators in review. Predators, you'll be reviewing the Predators. The Predators? Predators. Predators. It's called Predators. Yeah.

I watched that this weekend. Had a good time. After that, the boys will be playing Schedule 1. If you are a kind of funny member, today's Gregway is 10 minutes about our insider information ruining showcases. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, Carl Jacobs, and Omega Buster. But today we are brought to you by Lost Guys, Monaco, and Rocket Money. We'll tell you all about that in just a little bit. Let's jump into the show.

Let's get the topic of the show. We have played Doom the Dark Ages. Today is all about Andy's hands-on preview with the upcoming Big Doom game. Of course, your developer, Id Software, published by Bethesda. Release date May 15th, 2025. So right around the corner. Of course, Doom 2016 launched on May 13th, 2016. IGN gave it a 7.1 PC gamer and PC gamer gave it 88.

Doom Eternal launched on March 20th, 2020, has a Metacritic of. 88. Andy Cortez, you've played the next installment. You've seen it. We've all been hyped for it. Let's talk about it. Let's talk about it indeed, Mike. Because when the game starts off,

it just gives you a quote with somebody saying before he was the slayer, he was the super weapon of gods and kings. Fuck yeah, dude. It's like, how the fuck, guys? This game is going to be a banger. This game was a lot of freaking fun. I am somebody who loves Doom Eternal as well.

And I don't really... I think I'm in the minority when it comes to the opinions on Doom Maternal, how Doom Eternal is too jumpy and too air-dashy. Oh, I agree with that. I know that's like the majority of the opinion. To me, I'm like, I still love that.

To me, it's a different ingredient thrown into the Doom sauce, and there's going to be a lot of that here. I think it will be a bit divisive for more of the hardcore audience, but I still loved my experience with Doom the Dark Ages. We got to play it for about three hours in Los Angeles. It was going to be in Dallas,

and then it got changed to Los Angeles. I was like, damn, I kind of wanted to do what's up with all the Big D. The Big D, Dallas, the Metroplex. Go talk to fucking Jerry Jones out there. It's running on ID Tech 8, their newest version of the engine. There are characters in the games with their, you know, no masks, and it's just, you know, they got human beings in the game

obviously, but I will say the visuals on that didn't look like the most groundbreaking, but I think that's mostly because Doom has always looked awesome. Doom has always looked really pretty and visually it's always been an amazing looking video game, so I think I got to just play it on my

monitor and kind of be like, oh yeah, this is where the upgrades I'm seeing, because you go to these events, you don't always have the best of tech, but the game still rocks and looks amazing and feels great to play. But Again, the sort of mentality with Doom the Dark Ages is it's no longer a run and gun, which is Doom 2016. It's no longer jump and shoot, I think, is what their mentality for Doom Eternal was.

For Doom the Dark Ages, it's stand your ground. And there's a lot of side dashing, obviously, when you're in crazy amounts of, you know, battling against these gigantic enemies. Or just smaller, you know, you have your cannon fodder out there that just kind of, you know, just there for your ammo replenishment. But stand your ground because this game is very heavy on wanting you to parry things at the correct timing, to throw your shield at enemies to then kind of get them stunned or to break the armor that you've slowly weakened. And once you break that armor, they'll kind of go into a bit of a stun state, going for the

kill. You're still gunning. You're still using your weapons, obviously. But this game has a lot of melee-focused type things that it wants you to, add to your arsenal. It's not trying to replace it necessarily. It's just here's an extra way to be sick as hell and to feel like just an ultimate badass doomslayer.

I was watching some other previews this morning to get ready to ask you some questions. And I heard someone say, they said it's back before you were a jet fighter, now you're more of a steel tank. Yeah. And so, yeah, that's a great analogy. The stand and fight is going to be exciting, right?

So how did that feel, Andy, going from more of the high flying, a lot of dodging, dashing up in the air to now being on the ground and really stand in your ground here? It was tough because I think the standard difficulty, which is ultra nightmare, I think there's like seven levels of difficulties

and the fourth one, I guess like the fifth from the heart, second from the hardest, I believe, kind of like visualize it. If, you know, stick with me here, Mike, if one is the easiest. Okay. Seven is the hardest. Four is where we were. Okay. Okay. Okay. And they said we could lower it if we want. I was like, no, I'll go with the standard thing.

I was pretty challenged to the point where I'm fighting these gigantic beasts and I'm trying to parry at the right time. And I die. And, you know, it's the meme of the dude leaning forward in the chair. It's the gamer lean. And I get a smile on my face. I'm like, all right, that was sick as fuck. You beat me. But I'm so excited for this challenge. The game was a lot of freaking fun. And I think that, again, I think this will be a bit divisive towards people who maybe just want to go back to 2016 Doom. I think their tweet from back in the day still kind of works perfectly now,

which is you control the buttons you press. You could still kind of play it in an old school-fashioned way, but the game's just kind of asking you to maybe add other things to your arsenal. I had a blast with it. I am so excited for it, And I think it will still, maybe, I think more of the hardcore audience that wants to just go back to 2016, we'll go, ah, maybe these mechanics aren't exactly what I want. But for me, it's kind of the perfect addition who loves, as somebody who loves paring, who loves melee combat,

who loves getting the timing down of certain patterns from bosses, it's a fucking blast. So many cool abilities I can't wait to talk about. So many awesome weapons I can't wait to talk about. Well, good. Why don't you hold on to that? because when we come after, when we come back after a word from our sponsors, we're going to get into what's new with the combat,

the shield, and all that and more right after a word from our sponsors. This episode's brought to you by Lost Skies. What would you do if you woke up and the world around you was now floating high in the clouds? Lost Skies is the new open world survival like that puts the power of exploration and choice in your hands. Use the physics-based grappling hook,

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when using all the app's premium features. Cancel your own. wanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster with Rocket Money. Go to RocketMoney.com slash Kind of Funny today. That's RocketMoney.com slash Kind of Funny. Welcome back, everyone. Andy, you gave us your initial thoughts to start us off. I know that you're enjoying doing the Dark Ages with your preview.

Let's talk about the combat. What's new? Of course, the shield is a big thing here. Let's start off with the shield. What's it all about? So the shield is kind of your primary way to just kind of defend from enemies. You can hold it up for a decent amount of time. You will see a blue bar underneath it and your shield will essentially break down for a little bit. And once it's broken, you can't bust it out for a while

again. You kind of have to measure, do I want to be just blocking bullets at this time or do I want to just kind of keep dodging away from enemy projectile? So the shield is kind of your primary method to quote unquote stand your ground. But it's also a neat way to, you know, add to your combat arsenal, right? You can throw it at enemies. You can shield bash towards enemies, which is one of my favorite things to do in this preview. You will see about seven to eight,

just normal as zombies kind of huddle around. And if you shield bash towards one, you kind of just zip right towards them, similar to how the glory kills work, where as long you see them blinking within the flash of an eye, you're right in front of them starting this animation. But the shield bash or the shield dash, going towards them was so freaking fun because you would just zip towards them and it creates kind of an a.O.E. effect whenever you destroy one of them. So it ends up becoming like this is going to destroy this whole blast of enemies. And it's so freaking satisfying to do. And of course they'll drop the armor, the health or, you know, ammo. But throwing it at enemies was also incredibly fun. So when large enemies were present, if you throw the shield at them, it will stick inside of their body and start spinning.

It's got sort of this chain, these chainsaw spikes around it. And we throw it at a large enemy and it sticks in them and starts spinning. It's essentially kind of getting them into a stun state and they're there just kind of absorbing all this damage, leaving you to go up to them and either melee them or just shoot them as much as possible and not having to worry about the repercussions of them shooting you back. But you are able to shoot the hell out of them and hopefully they'll get into their finisher state and then you can go in for whatever the glory kill may be. so there's not only that, but then there will be a lot of enemies with armor and you'll see sort of metal plating on them and when you start

shooting the metal plating armor you'll see it start to light up and get almost like it's getting hot, you know, like the way metal can, if you think of Blades of Fire our preview last week. If you start to heat up metal you'll see the metal start to light up and then you know, oh, I can throw the shield

at them now and the armor breaks off of them and they go into like a stun state and then you can go in for the kill So the shield has so many different ways to approach combat. The shield is kind of a multifaceted pronged approach. And I freaking love it for that. It's so much fun to use. And adding it to, you know, adding it to this gigantic, you know,

you look at all the weapons you have and you look at all of the moves that you're capable of doing and adding that to it just makes it even that much more fun. So the shield, the shield is a freaking blast. On the shield really quick. can you dive a little bit deeper on like deflect slash parry? I know it's a lot of deflect, right? We're looking at this bullet hell. There's a lot of orange and red bullets,

but there will every now and then be a green one. And it looks like you're deflecting back to the green, but what is this peri mechanic? So you are, and that was one of my favorite things as well, because a lot of different enemies will have different ways of shooting, you know, this sort of bullet hell wave of blast at you. Think returnal, think, you know, any sort of schmup you've seen. and you'll see, you know, seven orbs of energy coming at you,

but one of them is green. And it might be on the far right, it might be in the middle. It might be anywhere amongst this sort of wave of things that are going to hurt you. But the green one, you can parry. And it was so much fun seeing waves of enemies shooting all fucking sorts of projectiles at you. And you see the green one, you parry that, it gets sent back to the enemy. They go into a stun state.

Or it might break their armor or it may get their armor into, a breakable state to which then you can follow up with the shield throw to break the armor off. But that shit was so fun to see, to notice and immediately have the habitual thought to go, I want to go parry that green thing over there. There's a green thing that's not even that close to me, but I want to go parry it to get the enemy that shot at me into a stunable state or into a finishable state, right? So that was a freaking blast.

You can also, as you are fighting a lot of these larger enemies, you, oh, so it's not only the bullet hell type stuff, but what Barrett just showed off, there's a cannon that shoots blasts at you, right? And it might shoot four or five singular blasts of red, but then one might be green, and you have to kind of recognize when the green is coming, and then that's when you would go into that,

you know, you would parry that shot and then go right after that cannon. But then you will have gigantic enemies that want to get more into a melee scrap with you. And you could still be shooting them, You can be dodging them. You can do whatever you want, but they will wind up a bunch of different telegraphed attacks. But then you'll see one of them is going to be green.

And as soon as that enemy hits you with a big green attack, you can go, and it's the coolest metal sounding like deflection type thing. I was another great thing. The sound design is just so on point in this video game. Weapons wise and especially the Perry. It's the first thing that I talked to everybody about at the event was like, how good did that Perry sound? Because it kind of just sounds like, like, did you play much Hades 2,

bless? Like, how far did you play? I played like the first area, if that makes sense. Did you ever get Hephaestis, the guy who does the metal like, you know, that, it's kind of a darker or a deeper sounding tone to a metal kind of being clanked, but it's just like your metal shield is deflecting this thing and there's a good crunch to it, but you hear that sort of deflecting thing and it

it just sounds so great to then go in there for whatever the finisher may be. And so the parries in this game felt amazing because it really felt like I was, if I didn't want to just be running and gunning and dashing away from enemy attacks, I could go in there and stand my ground like they want you to and parry these gigantic enemies that are hitting you with very, you know, telegraphed patterns. And it was so much freaking fun. And it was really difficult. And I loved the challenge.

I loved like, oh, fuck. To the point where they were like, all right, we're going to start kind of wrapping up here. I was like, I got to beat this fucker. Like, I'm not leaving until I beat this guy. Ryan and Chad said, oh, kind of like cuphead. It sounds like with the period of like having a specific kind of projectile coming out. Yeah.

That's a certain color. Absolutely. Yeah. You can hit it back. Yeah, that's exactly. That's a great analogy right there. Speaking of sound design, music is something that I think is a big topic of conversation, right? I forget if I assume Mick Gordon is not back because they had the weird thing with the last team.

Yeah. I think Mick Gordon and. And it have just parted ways. Yeah. So how's the music this time around? Can you tell that there's a difference? Is it hidden this time? The headphones we were using, it still sounded awesome.

Like I could still visually see people around me getting into after whatever the cutscene is when you're introduced as before he was a slayer, he was the super weapon of gods and kings. And it's just metal starts hitting, boom, logo treatment. You're just like, this feels right still. I know what's not big Gordon. I know people will probably shit on my opinion for even saying that it still kicks ass. The music still kicks ass. I'm blanking on the artist who's still or who's doing a lot of the instrumentation,

but it still rules. It feels right. There's also like the addition of some kind of orchestral stuff as well because you are in the Dark Ages. This is a prequel game. This is before you do, 2016 takes place. So you are in this sort of medieval dark souls looking castles

and shields and even your doomslayer has kind of an animal pelt around his neck, right? Like you look like you look like if the doom slayer was transported to a different time, which is kind of exactly what this is. And yeah, the music still kicks ass and it still rules.

Totally love it. Damn. weapons. I want to talk weapons. I do want to shout out. There was a earlier, speaking of weapons, right? Those one weapon, that was the machine gun that you can see literally right here where it's pushing skulls into the chamber to then be chopped up into bolts. That shit's fucking sick. It's so

sick. That weapon is a lot of fun. That weapon is really neat for just kind of hitting gigantic hordes of enemies because it has a gigantic spread on it. But it also wasn't just this weak kind of AR that has a huge spread of projectiles and isn't going to do much damage. It felt

really good. So the weapons, obviously, you start off with the standard shotgun and then later on in our preview we ended up getting the the whatever mega super ultra shotgun the one that's like the double barrel one a lot more uh you shoot one shot you got to reload immediately but it feels deadly you got a lot of damage behind it um the rail spike shredder was really sick it launches a barbed spikes at enemies and that was probably the one that i used the most. It was just a really neat feeling AR that I really enjoyed.

A lot of great body degradation that Doom Maternal had as well, but in here it felt even, like, because I haven't played Doom Eternal in so long, I kind of forgot how awesome that detail is when you are shooting enemies and you're seeing their legs being slowly chipped away and it's

just like gross meat and gore. Their bodies still break down in a really cool advanced way that I feel awesome technology-wise, but just really cool visually to see the effects of what you're doing to these, you know, chunks of meat that you're shooting, you know, enemies' arms are now just a bone or whatever.

It feels awesome and it looks really, really gross as shit. The plasma twin barrel, plasma weapons are back and plasma ones are kind of the alternative to using assault rifle weapons with bullets. These are just shooting sort of like orbs of blue energy at enemies, and those are great whenever you're trying to take down. There are some enemies that are kind of immune to certain attacks.

So I wonder, I'm not sure if some enemies will be weaker to bullets as opposed to the plasma energy shots. I'm not sure how much of that is implemented. Maybe more electrical enemies are not great against the plasma weapons. But there are some enemies that are so armored that you can't just shield, you can't throw your shield at them. It'll bounce right off of them. so you have to weaken their armor first to see that light up, then you throw the shield and break it, and then they're susceptible to more damage. But the skull gun shooters, the one that you mentioned blast down, so really cool. Not only visually, but it also feels good, and it's a really nice way to take out a lot of enemies on the screen.

The super shocking is what I was talking about, the super shot he rules. There's also the Reaver chain shot that is a range weapon, kind of, not really. it shoots out a gigantic ball of metal and it comes right back to you. So you can shoot it and it's tied to a string. So it just like, and it hits enemies in it and it comes back into the gun and you can charge it for an even deadlier hit.

And it's a fascinating one because I believe it also hits enemies on the way back. But there are different ways to upgrade these weapons to every couple levels of so you'll find the Sentinel Shrines and you can upgrade guns to then have extra perks where maybe it's doing like

electrical damage or fire stuff. I wasn't really too sure of how the upgrade system works because we weren't given a whole lot to upgrade with. You need to upgrade finding kind of coins on the ground and you would find if you go to the secret passage, you might

find a little toy doll that like you would back in the day but also some coins that are kind of scattered around that you would used to buy upgrades. And those can be visited as often as you want. They're not just kind of a one-time use. You can kind of upgrade your shields, your gun, or your melee. And the melee is another big aspect of the game.

Melee, you can't just be melee and all willy-nilly. You have three melees that recharge. Oh. In a similar fashion to back in the day where you kind of find that rhythm of, all right, I chainsaw to get ammo. I do this to get armor. You what recharge

the melee is the let me see real quick. Okay, so Perry's refill your melee. Okay. And you can melee with just your hands, but then later on you'll end up finding that mace that was in some of the footage of Barrett was shown where it's a stick with a string and a kind of the morning star

where it's just like a sphere of metal with spikes on the end of it. The flail. Yeah, the flail. yeah, that's what it's called. Thank you. Yeah. And you, dude, you are just beating dudes down with this melee and you can hit him with the three combo. It will solely refill.

But, like, that's sort of, I guess not always in my repertoire of, of use, of combat in doom. I'm not always meleeing. I'm not, I guess when I go in for the glory kills, that's kind of as melee as I would get. Yeah. So I wasn't really utilizing that as much as I wanted to, mostly because I kind of forgot it was there because you kind of we unlocked it later on in the demo session

but you can unlock that flail feels great to use you're swinging that sucker around and you can kind of like three hit combo some of the smaller enemies to immediately get them into a stun state and that has like three three slots that refills for the yeah if if barrett brings up the some of the gameplay as well you'll see the little icon

right below the you'll see the you'll see the UI of the thing that's recharging which is your shield health and you'll see three little icons that indicate those are your melee charges. So I'm not sure. I'm not too sure about how the melee should or should not function because it just, I wasn't using it as much as I should have.

I wish I would have written down a note. Like get back to the melee because you're not using that enough and I know people would want to ask questions about it. The chainsaw for me was always like the get out of jail card of, oh man, I'm, I'm in the action and I've like exhausted everything. and now I'm like oh fuck what do I do I just use the chainsaw is like get rid of this big enemy and they'll drop a bunch of bullets and then I'll pick up ammo but you would still need the gas for that if you didn't have that so that's kind of that's kind of the direct comparison that I

that I would see is like this the melee flails kind of what you would use right there so we see the three little icons right there as Barrett brings up the below the reticle yeah the gameplay right there so yeah I don't think that they recharge it I think they only recharge with the paris because you're not seeing a slow recharge the finisher that the finisher didn't count as using the melee you know once the enemy turns purple and glows purple you can kind of go in for that finisher to knock them out i will say i knew you had a lot of issues of the glory kills in the preview that we saw yeah that they didn't feel as highlighted yeah they didn't look as like almost like as gory right like i feel like in doom unless i'm misremembering right i feel like in dune 2016 in eternal i'll go for a glory kill and it's like fucking put your arm in their fucking throw and then rip them like that type of shit.

I don't think that they were as pronounced here because I don't know if it was maybe just the method of combat in this game and how quickly they want you to get back into the battle. I did, there's plenty of violence, there's plenty of gore, there's plenty of fatality animations

once they glow purple and you go up there and there's, you know, you might see three or four different variations of how you're kind of taking these enemies down but I would probably agree that they didn't feel as extreme as they did in the past maybe I just haven't seen enough of them but to me they felt more

like just getting the final hit on an enemy which is still very gory in the way that they were doing it and showing it and it felt less of like a fatality in the moral combat sort of way so I don't disagree with you there but I think as long as it still feels fine that I'm fine with that It felt great. I think maybe I just hadn't seen everything that it had to offer in that moment.

The, let's see, the Dragon Combat. Oh, yeah, can we get to it? The Dragon Combat is something I think it's going to be also pretty divisive. Oh. At first for me, it felt kind of odd. Okay. I ended up playing it both with controller and keyboard mouse just to see exactly what it was and what it felt like. it's kind of weird because

you will have missions where you are flying your dragon to get the Doom Slayer into a certain area, right? So, I think it's a neat way to kind of break up the combat and the movement and give you something else to do. I don't think it, I don't think it's bad by any means. It just feels less fun than just running around

as the Doom Slayer and killing things. Okay. But when you're flying around as the dragon, one of the missions is, I don't know, let's just hypothetically say there's four ships you need to get to. But the ships are being guarded by certain guns. You know, they have gunners and turrets on them. So you have to, you're flying around. And as soon as you kind of either, I believe it was right click. When you right click, you just, whatever you're looking at, you go into this. We saw it right there for the smallest glimpse. But you kind of auto target and auto revolve around. whatever it is that you are targeted on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I like that. So you kind of have like this 360-ish, if you're just targeted on, if I'm targeted on blessed,

I'm just going to move around him facing him the whole time, right? And the reason for that is because you will start to get blast being shot at you that are the same kind of, not parryable, but dashable things, right? And in this case, you're not parrying to knock a blast back. You are dashing at the right time to make that weapon weak not really sure how that makes any logical sense but it felt cool when you did it right

because the enemy would sometimes shoot a blast that were a bit hard to read because it might be like a imagine like a imagine like a you that's all red up top and then an upside down you that's all red at the bottom but the outsides of it are not filled in so that would tell you to dash left or right

because if you dash up to avoid it, you're going to get hit by the red. So there's like projectiles that have directional recommendations of how to dodge them, which I thought was kind of hard to read at first. I didn't really understand where they wanted me to go in those moments,

but then they would hit you with a green one. And if you timed the dash perfectly, then your gun gets like superpowered and is able to break down. So you're kind of shooting the whole time as you're fighting these enemies and you're dashing when a dashed. appropriate, but dashing

the green one at the right time would supercharge your cannon and it makes you it makes it known that you are getting superpower because it kind of does this big sound effect, does this big visual effect and you start to gun down whatever turrets it is that you're aiming at.

Once those things are down, then you can fly your dragon in, your dragon lands, and now you're the doomslayer and you're doing missions in there as a doomsayer again. Once you clear out whatever it is you needed to do in there, get back on the dragon, then you fly off and you do the next one, right? So it's not, it, I guess the nicest thing about it was that it didn't feel, it felt tuned right time-wise. I don't think you're going to be

doing dragon missions that are going to take 20 minutes, you know, I, it really felt like just a way to kind of, let's get you to the next opportunity to be the doomslayer again, while kind of intermingling these dragon sections. And they didn't, they weren't annoying. I, I still had fun with them once I kind of got the idea of what they wanted from me, but I don't think people need to worry about the dragon section's feeling like they're kind of being shoved down your throats. It doesn't feel like something that you're going to be doing a whole lot for a long time, you know? Okay. Well, we have dragons. We also have giant mecks. They showed off giant mecks in the trailer that everybody wants to know. Did you get to jump into one of those? The opportunity was

there. I fucked up and I accidentally skipped it. Wow. So they were like, they were like, They're like, all right, you're now, you're up to the, to the next section, which will be the open world sort of section where you're kind of open world roaming. And I was like, I didn't do the giant mech thing. And they're like, oh, really? They're like, we're kind of like running low on time. Damn. I was like, ah, shit, I messed up. But the guy recommended, I recommend you go into the open world section because the, the mech section might take a bit longer.

And then you'll have less time in the open world roaming, which is. their idea of, you know, finding treasures and just kind of fighting hordes of enemies out and more open-ish areas. Not saying that it's an open world, but it's like a larger open zone. Yeah. How big is this open zone? Yeah. How big did it really feel like? The open, the open zone areas felt, um, I mean, they still felt doom, right? They just felt less hallways, right?

You're kind of more in open fields and you might try to solve a puzzle that has a, um, You have your grappling hook, right? And you always want to kind of be looking around your surroundings because there might be something you need to shoot with a grappling hook to either pull down or to weaken or to launch towards. So your grappling hook was something that you kind of used often for traversal to look for secret spots. And then you'll find a little jump booster that might send you to another island, not an island, but another landmass that you weren't sure how to get to begin with.

And now you're fighting that to then kill that thing. to unlock the three gates or whatever the hell. Like there's, it still feels very doom in that way. It's just, you're not necessarily just in hallways now. You are kind of more, I think Doom Eternal had a lot of open looking areas. And I would say that if you're expecting, you know, Skyrim, don't expect that or anything like that. It's still, it still feels like Doom and these areas are a bit larger than what you would

have expected in Internal. Rewarding for discovery to go off the beaten path. didn't very much feel like, hey, I'm just, I'm running over to this area now, and I'm going to close this gate, then I'm going to run back to this area and close that gate. Was it like, hey, I should go get lost, fight this optional boss, where there's things like that? Yeah, I guess in those open areas, I couldn't really tell what was optional or whether all of it was optional. But there are definitely a lot of areas that you will find little secret spots and secret hallways. And you might notice something up there.

You're like, oh, what's that? Let me go up. Oh, shit. It's a little vents that that I didn't see. see what's at the end of this oh there's money with a collectible or some other piece of treasure or you know some power up or that's going to be a passive amount of shield for this time being like there's always going to be i found probably about six of those just kind of playing this demo and that's maybe why i wasn't able to get to the mech section because i wanted to look for all of the the little

secret spot so there's plenty of stuff like that always you always want to be looking around for where your grappling hook can take you i would say so that's That's kind of like, if I were to recommend, if you decide to buy Doom the Dark Ages and you're maybe confused by a puzzle or how to solve something, there were certain puzzles in the world that there's a gate that I didn't know how to open. It's covered by like a red blast shield, right? You're like, how the hell do I get in there? Because there's something cool I want. And I looked up and there was, there's a platform that if you sand on it, the door opens. But if you walk away from it, it closes, right? and I was like, how the fuck do I do this? So I need like Super Dash or what do I got to do for this? But then I looked up and there's a breakable chain link chain or whatever that I was able to shoot and then it dropped a gigantic block and then weighed down the thing that was keeping the door closed.

So there will be those sort of puzzles in the game as well. And that was obviously the most basic version of that. But I expect some of these open world-ish puzzles to be a little bit more, almost God of War 2018 and Ragnarok where you're hitting the little secret things around the world. Yeah, I expect things to be like that around the world that aren't, this isn't the most groundbreaking form of puzzling, but it's there and it's still good.

I didn't feel like I was wasting my time or anything. I felt awesome to see that thing. And I think when you have elements like that of breaking something above you to then drop down and waste something else down, like adding whatever that mechanic and functionality into a game, I think is neat. And I am excited for how they might implement that in other ways to the rest of the game. Cool super chat.

Cool video game from Joshua Moreno. He writes in and says, I had a fun weekend with Bolt Gun. How similar is this, Andy? The Warhammer game? The Warhammer game? The Bull Gun starring Rahul Coley. Well, I mean, I would say if you've ever played Doom or Doom Returnal, that's what you should expect.

Right. I don't think Bull Guns necessarily the best comparison. I mean, they're first person shooters, but this is, I think obviously

a much larger, grander scale, bigger budget, more gore, although you're not having Rahul Koli talk every time you do a kill, so that does suck.

That's unfortunate. I want to ask about the story. There will be a lot of first-time fans jumping into Doom the Dark Ages. It's a prequel, right? Should we go back and play 2016 and Doom Eternal?

Can I just jump in right here with this and kind of get the grip? I don't know. Story has never been the biggest thing in Doom, right? It's about the slaying. But what was the story like? Could first timers jump in and be just fine? They were very open about saying you don't got to know the story, but you know, you will kind of appreciate some of the nods here and there.

You don't have to know the story, Doom, 2016, or Returnal to enjoy what this game's story is. it does seem like they, they did mention they are going for more of a direct approach as opposed to finding the lore through little items or voice memos or whatever that, that you were experiencing in Doom Eternal and Doom 2016. It does feel like the story is going to be more present. And there will be more cutscenes kind of happening at you and with you as opposed to you just kind of uncovering something, right? which is the way a lot of the other games kind of felt.

It always felt like, I guess my direct comparison is the Dark Souls. How when you experience the lore in those games, it's because you are experiencing something that happened rather than something that's happening right now. This feels more like things are going to be happening right now with the amount of cutscenes that we saw, with the amount of characters that they were highlighting as this is the general of this army.

And it, you know, it sort of seems like there's a different faction of of people, kind of this alien race that isn't sure whether they want to unleash you or not and they finally say like, all right, unleash the son of a bitch, get him out there, they need help. And the story feels more,

I think more present as opposed to something that you are experiencing after the fact or experiencing more as a third party. They talk about, yeah, a lot of different characters. Help priest and Prince Azrak. they have the heart of Argent and I want to take over the Doom Slayer and then the next note I have is my shield has a chainsaw on it, shield saw. That's good.

It was really good, really good shit. It's a fun fucking game. I still think, like I mentioned earlier, that there might be some divisiveness of people just maybe wanting more of the same. I think this is still more of the doom that you expected with just a little bit extra sauce. I think it's awesome. I can't wait for this. I hope to God that this gets my fantasy score.

Give me like an 85. 80. Oh. I think we're high. Yeah. I'm kind of like, I don't know. You're trying to be modest.

I know. Just being modest. No, that was a good pickup. I'm being modest right now. But yeah, I really enjoyed my time. I wish we had more time with it. It was one of those, I think I've gone to so many previews for larger games in the past couple years

where the preview is, four to six hours long I guess maybe more like five to six hours long where you're there at 10 a.m. and you leave at four or five and it's an all day thing and this was 10 to two and I was like you know what that makes sense because these games are not gigantic these games are usually

you know 12 to 15 hours long so they don't want to show off too much of it but it was a freaking blast of an experience I'm so stoked to I enjoyed the hell out of it even though I was in 60 frames per second on a monitor with like v sync on You know how he gets. Like, Mike, I almost brought my damn 240-hurt alien wear OLED with me.

Because, like, you know, I'm feeling the delay. What can I bring out of carry out of here? Yeah, come on, man. Should I drive down with my setup? I can drive down with my setup? I can drive on? Bullshit. Blessing you, anything that you want to touch on with this game,

anything that we might have missed before we go on. We got a lot of super chats, but not many of them are about Doom. I don't say hopping to do super chats. I don't have anything. I don't want to say, shout a little. trick's just comment in the Twitch chat. What a win for GamePass. Like another awesome game coming to the Game Pass library.

If you are a subscriber there, that's so awesome because this game feels like it's, it feels like what this franchise may be, I think we've seen a lot of awesome first person shooters in the last couple years that do things so well that you go, what can Doom really do to show that they are still the goat? and after playing what I experienced, I'm like, all right, this is, this is them making another statement. They're like, no, we're still kind of the kings of this. So you'll be following our lead, uh, moron in the future. Uh, I, I had a freaking blast with it.

Game pass. PlayStation, PC, all day one. So everybody's jumping in to have some fun. So that's great. No further questions for this when you're ready for super chats. I'm ready for super chats. Baird, do you have anything that we might have missed that you might want to ask Andy before we move on to super chats?

Why are you so hesitant about super chats? Oh, no. What's in the super chats? Well, Superchats is like, we're going into a different thing of like, these are all not about Doom. Yeah. So, I mean, I'll do like, I'm trying to like put a book end here on this. I'll shout out the fact that it's been, like, the fact that we're here with Doom,

where we are now two sequels into this current iteration of Doom. Yeah. I just want to shout out how impressive that is, right? Because I remember it was 10 years ago where I believe we got that, that reveal of Doom 2016 at that, but that's the E3 in 2015, right? Of like, this is what Doom is. And I remember watching that trailer and being like, this shit's fucking crazy.

It was the violent-ass trailer of going through, ripping things open, rip and tear for like a three minutes of a trailer and being like, damn, this looks cool as fuck. And this is Doom. All right, like, let's see.

And then the game came out and it really lived up to what that is. And now we are multiple iterations in into a franchise that's been around for decades at this point, right? Like one of the old storied franchises in video games, the fact that you have a reboot that was so successful that it's now spawned to Eweaternal.

And now we're here with Doom the Dark Ages and like, we're talking about it and like, this shit looks cool. And it's not to come out. and it's still lit. It's so wild, how much time has gone by that, like, Doom Returnals, 2020, and I still feel like that was two, three years ago.

Yeah. Like, no, it's, this game has been cooking for a while. And I, I'm so excited to kind of see this game running at full power. They mentioned they are partnering with Nvidia to do all of the stuff, to do full path tracing, full everything in this game. And I, I'm just so stoked to kind of see what an already beautiful looking game looks like with all of the bells and whistles visual. because when I play first person shooters,

if it's a story kind of campaign game, I don't need the most frames on that. That's usually meant for more of like multiplayer type stuff. When I'm playing a campaign game, I want that shit to look amazing. And goddamn, like the, ID tech as an engine, I think isn't talked about enough

because we maybe don't necessarily see a whole lot of games. Correct. Being made with IDTech. But any time they, like, I'm still blown away when I fired up Doom Eternal back in the day when I got my first PC maybe in the pandemic and I'm like

how I'm getting this many frames with ray tracing on this shit is so optimized and I can't believe how awesome this engine is and they are just kind of continuing to you know to iterate on how awesome they are with tech and hardware well let's have some fun let's jump into these super chats

as we start to move away from Doom really quick before we leave Doom. Riley must have missed it. Earlier, we did talk about the music, but Andy quickly from the Super Chat, is it still banging with no Mick? I still say that it was banging. I didn't get to experience as much of it as I wanted to.

I'm excited to have like my own headphones and kind of, you know, get everything tuned just right. I didn't want to be in the menus for too long because I could already see the people were like looking at me being like, what are you doing the menus right there? I'm just checking to see what the frame rate cap is, you know. We got some fun stuff coming in. So let's

jump into the super chats. Thank you all so much for supporting us and writing in with your super chats. Logan Jensen writes in and says, Bless and Mike, being so into magic, are you going to Gen Con this year? Bless, have you ever thought about attending combo breaker? Andy, you good?

I'm good. Let's start it off. Andy, you good? I'm good. Blessing, have you ever thought about attending combo breaker? No. I don't know much about it. It sounds like a fighting game thing. It is a big fighting game thing, yeah. I would say, like, yeah, you have Evo and then combo breakers are in that, like, super high tier, but not Evo status.

You think of like, you know, Mike, it's like the master's golf tournament is the number one thing, but this is like the U.S. Open. Yes. This is like where all the big fighters go and people go like, oh, damn, what a cool rematch we're getting at Evo because they fought a combo breakers. Like, it's kind of like the other big, the other big thing. We got to get you going to all that. We got to get you on the circuit. I'm already doing too much traveling. West thing's already doing a lot of traveling and I'm trying to just continue to add to his travel.

I made a Google doc over the weekend of like, what are my travel planes for the year? And no, we got, I got to start cutting things. 26, Blatch, you to change that mindset. I want you, weekdays, Monday through Friday, here. Weekends, you're at every single convention. We're going to pay everything. What do you mean?

What do you mean? We're going to pay everything. Me and Mike could have been in Sweden. Fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up. I fucked up. We could have been in Sweden, dude.

How about Jen Con? Should we look into Jen Con since we're into Magic? Is that the one in Atlanta? Where is Jen Con at? Let me look at Jen Con. I've never heard of Jen Con. I've heard of Jen Con. Gen Con is in Indy.

2025, it says. Indiana? Indy. Yeah, Indiana. I'm good. Okay. We're not going back to the Midwest. Wait, we're in Indiana.

What is that going to make a difference? Name three places in Indiana. There's Indianapolis. Erie. No. Because of the show, Erie, Indiana. Yeah, that's definitely one. Yeah.

Wow. I think there's even a Gary, Indiana. Oh, shit. Oh, yeah. You know Gary. That's where Michael Jackson's from. Gary. See you, Gary.

I've driven through Gary, Indiana. Okay. I don't want to get on my car there. Well, it's a man. Maybe. It's a maybe. No, but it's a maybe. It's a maybe. Professor Precursor writes in with a $10 super chat to celebrate their birthday with some birthday tax.

Happy birthday, Professor. Have a wonderful day. Happy birthday. KF. Live. Love all the content. Mike, what's Final Fantasy? What Final Fantasy will you play next after loving Final Fantasy 10 so much? I have no idea.

I'm going to let the just. Jesus take the wheel. Or should I say, Shinra take the wheel. Okay. Well, not that. No. No. The center structure, take the wheel.

I feel like everybody would recommend eight to you. I mean, that's also Ben Starr's favorite. Eight, okay. I was thinking 16 or 15, the boy band or Ben Starr could be fun. You might really vibe with 15. Yeah, the boy bands, you know what I mean? You don't do the 10-2. Of course, there's 10-2.

Eventually, I have no idea. I'm so deep in this one, I have no idea what's happening in the world. You know what I mean? This is my life. 13. 13. It's a trilogy. Oh, okay, okay.

Alex writes in and says Happy to be able to keep supporting y'all Was laid off from my job last Monday And thought I may have to cancel my membership Got a new job Friday last week So the membership and chats continue That's awesome Thank you Alex

And yes congratulations on the new job We're very happy for you Thank you to I think I already blanked on who Just JP resubscribed on Q Did you know that if you have a moment? on prime

You have Twitch Prime That's out to Alex and Shaq who says 13 is fire and then Rudy who chats in and says 13 is the worst Final Fantasy, baby Jaydie Silver writes and says Andy was cranking it stupid style Yeah

Just do wheeling Oh my God What is that mean? God, man That's amazing What's it? I win a Kimbo That's good. That's a good one. We have a fun one here.

Jeff Bull Jr. writes and says, Andy, check out 1HP gaming. There are e-sports gaming physicians that give good advice and tips on keeping your hands healthy has helped me a lot. I think I mean, I just did this to myself sleeping on my hand.

Yeah. Well, that was a choice. Yeah, yeah. We'll have to tell that to a doctor. We'll see what kind of side eye they give you on that one. What if you get sponsored and you can team up with 1H 1HP gaming and maybe like spread the good word about keeping your hands safe?

I just don't What I do, what I got to do is to see a doctor and be like is it will this ever, will this feeling ever go away? What do you have to do? Let's go see a doctor. These are great questions.

Can we get a doctor on the phone? Can we call somebody? Will this feeling go away whenever I bend my hand in a weird way, you know? Is it your wrist specifically or is it? No, I get the tingleys like kind of you know what? This could be a nerve thing, yeah.

It's got to be a nerve thing. Like when your hand feels like it falls asleep or whatever or your leg feels like you get the like the prickling kind of feels or whatever, it only happens when I like bend my left hand crazy this way. When I do that like, Ah, you're fine. You see it through. Yeah.

See it through. Because if I'm gaming, I'm fine. Yeah, I'm gaming. If I throw a basketball at you and it hurts your hands, then we go see a doctor. That's the only time we have to worry. Well,

like if your sweet, sweet shot goes away. then we have to worry about it. Yeah, but you still got a cradle. You got to catch it. You got a cradle. Got my dominant hand. I've been on Reddit a lot lately. Oh, shit.

Why? Is that a good or a fan? Every now and then, I don't know. Every now and I'll just open Reddit. Okay. And on my homepage, would you recommend me some Reddit pages I should check out? I mean, I can look at what I'm,

what it is is I look at other podcasters, like podcast subreddit is to feel something. To feel something. To be like, oh, everybody hates them. Yeah. It's not just. us. Yeah, no, exactly.

I go on other podcasts to some videos. Like, the podcast I follow to see if other people are also complaining about the same thing. But then I'm like, oh, that's what people do to us.

It's a whole thing. But basically on my homepage now, I get a lot of people that are like writing into subredits asking for medical advice. Oh. Where I am also like... I get that too.

Yeah, where I'm like, man, I feel like these people should see doctors. But now, like, I'm sitting here with you and I'm like, nah, just see it through. Yeah, you're probably fine. I'm fine.

I like the, am I the asshole one? Yeah, that's a good. Yeah, I like that one. Daughter writes in and says, how are we feeling about strictly single player shoot-em-ups in 2025? I missed the days when fun shooters came out with multiplayer that felt like it could have been left cut, but was left because of how fun the mechanics were.

So we look at Doom, right? I think in 2016, they might have had multiplayer on that one. I remember one of them did. And now we're here with just a strictly single player. How do you all feel about? kind of the cut of multiplayer, maybe the addition of,

hey, it didn't have to be here, but it's here and we're having a good time. Are they talking about co-op? No, we're talking about like, adding to multiplayer mode. Yeah, a small multiplayer mode. I have a nostalgia for it,

but I think it's such a waste of resources. It's such a waste of resources, yeah. Tomb Raider had one, uncharted had one, every game had one. And those aren't shoot-em-ups, but those are just odd games that, like, had the MP in it.

So it's not happening anymore, which I think is a good thing because you save resources and also you have a more focused product. That said, I do miss the era of like every now and then you would get a hit out of that, right? Like, I mean, last this multiplayer

was fucking sick. I mean, fucking, I don't know if you count Halo, right? Like, Halo had a campaign in a multiplayer and guess what? Like, that then spawned a fucking generation of first person shooters, right? And like, that was a huge thing. It's just such a different era now.

It's just a different time though, yeah. I don't, I don't, I, I see both sides where I go, man, you are just, this is like wasted money, especially in this day and age, when it's near impossible to break into the multiplayer scene. But if you do, obviously, great things will come to you. But people might play the shit out of your game for a month and then go back to what they usually do and go back to their homes, which is Fortnite, call duty, blah, blah, blah.

But on the other side, I go, well, if you don't ship that and you save money, you're going to have layoffs anyway. Let's get creative and fun and weird. Yeah, like I guess that's like the pessimistic part of my mind goes, you know, don't make the multiplayer sweet because that'll just lead to layoffs. And the other side of me goes, yeah, but if even if they don't do it, we'll still see layoffs sometime down the line anyway. I mean, there's more, I mean, Elvin Ring Night Rain, I think is a good example of,

oh damn, that's such a good idea, right? You put out the single player thing, it's big, it's massive people love it, right? And now a couple years later, you're putting out the multiplayer thing and you're charging money for it. And like, it's something that's going to do really well. well, right? And if you're, if it depends on how from software wants to treat it, but if they wanted to monetize it, they could, right? The thing that I, the thing that I'll to this day never understand is Ghost of Tsushima Legends, which is a multiplayer mode in a fantastic single player game. That is also

fantastic. That had a lot of work put into it, has, is jam packed with content. I spent just as much time in Legends as I did with based Ghosts of Tsushima. Yeah. And I still don't understand why they released it that way. That could have been a standalone thing. Oh, okay, okay. You should have got out into its own thing, I think. I think it has to be a PVE thing. I think when we look at the wins, Nightgrain seems like if you're putting

your players into an arena against other teams, I think that is just immediately going to fail. I think Legends is a good example of being something worth the damn and being like having substance and being this awesome PVE experience.

Night Rain being a PVE experience, I think of, I think of returnals like climb the mountain or whatever the fuck or the tower of sycophis type thing i don't even know if that's what it called if that's what it was called but that being another pvee mode i think as soon as you try to implement a pvee sort of aspect it was tower of sycophis oh no okay cool so i think of doom were to be like hey we're releasing this co-op mode that is a roguide style thing that you and your friend can hop into that would feel like something that could be a tie-in thing or something that you add later on

to just kind of maybe bring players back to your, you know, hey, a year goes by and they go, hey, remember we released Doom last year?

Right now we're releasing this co-op thing or whatever. Yeah. Those are the modes that work. I think as soon as you try to implement, as soon as you require a player base, you're fucked. Yeah.

Well, yeah, I think it's circumstantial for each game, right? I think for Doom, the next move would be, hey, move away from one team's the aliens,

one team is Doom Slayers and go into what you're saying with the co-op thing, right? I think other shooters, you find the right combo there. But I think there's these different games that aren't shooters that have this good blend of what you guys just brought up with those online multiplayer games that are just co-op experience that are a lot of fun.

Honestly, and we should rank, we should find either check and give us recommendations or we should find a list of like the best multiplayer games or like, you know, in the shooters that aren't like the big three of Call of Duty and Halo because there's some winners in there like you brought up. Oh, for sure. The returnal tower assistance thing is another one where I'm almost like I look at that and I'm like, man, if you took maybe another year to expand this out even more and maybe add the co-op function to this and put it out as a standalone thing, like, how well does that do? Because I feel like that's another mode that I wish I played more, but I didn't really because I just viewed it as like another DLC thing.

And I think that could have maybe added in like another air of like, oh man, man, another returner release. and now it's less of a wait until we get to Soros. What was the name of the character? Celine. I knew you. I remember that Friday. Surrey goes to watch Game Showdown. It was a really good episode.

Let's finish it out with a couple more super chats and we will get out of here. David writes and says, new, huge fan from Montreal. You guys are the best. Quick shout out to Motion Twins, new game, windblown. Bless, I think you. you dig it. Beautiful art style.

We streamed it. Plus same weapon and shrinking system from dead cells. Yeah, this is one we played together. We streamed though. I want to get back to that one because I think that game was, had such a cool mechanic that I know that they've kind of tweaked

since then, but the idea that if you and your two homies are playing and both of your homies go down and it's just you against an enemy, you have this sudden death mechanic where if you, if you get a hit once you, it's a failed run. And you just, that,

That idea of having to clutch up in that moment is so awesome. I can't wait for them to have whatever their next big gigantic content drop is because that game was a lot of fun. If the, what was the company, ESA? They're the, yeah, if the ESA ever were able to, like, get all the game companies to, like, invest in a chip to put in our brains and I could, like, track the shit that I've played and, like, have all my gaming data and, like, I put it on, like, a G. Like, a G.

Like, a social app type, like, social media thing. I'll love that. Because I feel like in the last two days, I've had so many people be like, bless, you got to play disco leasing. I'm like, bro, I've already played disco leasing. Bless, you got to check out this thing. Oh, I see. I see. You know what I mean?

Like, if I could, like, upload a database of every game that I've played, I see. You'd still get copy recommendations. Put a chip. Bless, you should check out this game called Mario 64. You also check out Witchfire, though, because Witchfire just had a big, massive content drop recently where you go, the Witchess Tower is now open, and it's this huge area to go explore. which fire. If it comes out this year, it'll be a contender. It'll be my top 10. Riley writes in and says

Do multiplayer should just be Unreal Tournament. Man, whatever happened on Real Tournament. I know. I remember playing Unreal Tournament 3 on my PlayStation 3. And that concludes all of the Super Chats. Thank you all so much for writing in. Thank you for supporting. This has been today's kind of funny games cast for Monday

March 31st, 2025. It was all about Andy going hands-on with Doom the Dark Ages coming your way in on all of the big consoles. Hopefully you're excited. Let us know what you think in the comments down below. Bless Andy Barrett.

Thank you all so much for a great show. Chat. We'll see you on the next one. Of course, if you're watching live on YouTube and on Twitch, the fun doesn't stop. AVP in review is coming your way and then an afternoon stream after that. If you are watching later on,

thank you so much for supporting us on podcast services and on YouTube. We'll catch you on the next one. Goodbye.