Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - We Predicted 2021 In 2019 - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 92

Episode Date: September 29, 2021

Go to http://betterhelp.com/kindafunny and take care of yourself. Go to http://purple.com/kindafunny10 and use promo code kindafunny10 for 10% off any order of $200 or more! Go to http://fitbod.me/kfgames to get 25% off your membership! Jared Petty returns to talk about ActRaiser, Halo Infinite, New World, and how wrong we were about our Video Game predictions in 2019. Follow Jared at https://twitter.com/pettycommajared Epic Creator Code: KindaFunny Time Stamps: 00:00:00 - Start 00:04:55 - Halo Infinite 00:18:55 - Actraiser Renaissance 00:29:57 - Castlevania Advance Collection 00:38:28 - New World 00:52:06 - We Predicted 2021 Back in 20219, How Wrong Were We? Follow The Kinda Funny Gamescast Team On Twitter: Greg Miller: https://twitter.com/GameOverGreggy Tim Gettys: https://twitter.com/TimGettys Andy Cortez: https://twitter.com/TheAndyCortez Blessing Adeoye: https://twitter.com/BlessingJr Barrett Courtney: https://twitter.com/SadBoyBarrett Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This show is sponsored by BetterHelp Online Therapy. Without a healthy mind, being happy is hard. Visit betterhelp.com slash Kind of Funny and see if online therapy is for you. What's up and welcome back to the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Getty's joined by one of the coolest dudes of video games, Greg Miller. Hello, how are you, Tim? Fantastic. The nitro rifle, Andy Cortez.

77.2 degrees in my room right now. Feeling good, feeling toasty. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. It's real hot today. I'm not liking that. It looks cold outside, but I am also hot inside. I hate being tricked. You know I hate being tricked, Tim.

No one likes a trickster. Speaking of tricksters, make it his return to the kind of funny games cast, the one, the only Jared Petty. Wow. Okay, dokey, back from the dead after my long dark betrayal. Thank you all for welcome me. It feels so great being here. Yeah, it is.

It's so crazy to think of how long it's been since you were a core member of the kind of funny games cast, because you're not even the last person to have been with us an entire year and then leave us. That's how Imran Khan took that up. But if you all weren't so terrible to all your employees, obviously we wouldn't keep leaving.

I mean, it's just like a continuing rotate. Exactly. Andy, you know how it is. Why are you hanging around? You can do better than these guys. I'm going to have a good novel. Once one time is I'm going to have a good novel.

Good biography here. John, can you read Craig? Can you imagine Andy having to write a novel? Well, first of us. of novels are usually fiction, aren't they? So I don't know what to find it. There will be some fiction sprinkled in just to keep it interesting. Just to keep it interesting, like all the good things Nick does.

But Jared Petty, where have you been? What have you been up to? What are you about to do? Well, I was doing copywriting at Google. I'm not doing that anymore. And I'm headed to Limited Run Games, which, yeah, yeah, you may be familiar with. It makes physical media for digital games, Indies, and retro stuff and all kinds of other wonderful projects. Also, they make books, which is very exciting for me. And I get to be a part of

all that. I'm starting there next month. And in the meantime, I still do the top 100 games podcast, which you can find on all your podcast services. And you should because it's a fun little thing, different guests every week. And some of the people on this podcast have already been there. Some have not. I need to hit that Andy Cortez up. I need to hit that Tim Geddy's up. Oh, I bet on it. You did smash brothers. Wait, you raise your hand. Anyway, yeah. Well, it applies both ways. It cuts both ways, you know. I'm next, Jared, but the day that you need me, I got a lot of stuff happening that day.

So we'll figure something out. I feel really lucky. I moved. I'm on the East Coast now. I'm in my big empty apartment in North Carolina. The wall behind me is not decorative. It is that none of my furniture has arrived from California and won't for quite some time. So I'm sleeping on a mattress on the floor and we have some folding chairs and things are good.

But it's beautiful here. Angie likes it. I like it. I'm excited about starting in my new gig, and I am bona fide thrilled to be here. I love y'all, and it was kind of you to welcome me back for a visit. I've missed this very much. Working for you is the most fun I've ever had doing anything.

I love you so much, Jared. And I just want to say, there is no job I could have been more stoked to see you land than limited run games where, like, I saw the tweet, and I'm like, this is the coolest most Jared petty-ass thing I've ever heard. So congratulations. I'm very excited to see what you ended up doing. Jeremy Parrish is over there too, right? Jeremy's my new boss.

It's too perfect. Like that just adds up. It's not fair. I love it though. Very, very, very cool stuff. So everyone, stay tuned to see what happens from that. But for now,

we got him right here on the Kind of Funny Games cast where each and every week we get together to talk about video games and all the things that we love about them. You can get it on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roosterteeth.com. If you want to get it as a podcast, just search your podcast services for Kind of Funny Games cast and we'll be right there for you.

If you wanted to get the show ad free and you wanted to watch live as we recorded, and if you want to get the exclusive post show, you're going to have to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games, just like our Patreon producers, Tyler Ross, the Kind of Funny Destiny 2 PC Clan, Julian the Gluten Free Gamer, Alex Jay Sandoval, Techie Haas, James Hastings, Casey Andrew, Elliott, and Brian Ward have all done. We appreciate you all and your money.

so very, very much. But if you don't have money to throw our way and you're just out there buying video games, you could use our epic creator code kind of funny on all Epic store and Epic in-game purchases, like on Rocket League, Fortnite, V-Bucks, all that stuff to help support kind of funny.

So any money you're putting towards the games on the Epic Game Store, percentage of it's going straight to us. So thank you for that. Use the code. Kind of funny. Today we're brought to you by Purple Mattress and FitBod, but we'll have to talk about that later because for now, Andy Cortez,

me and you need to talk about some ALO Infinite, Tech Flight Number 2, another weekend in the books. How many hours are you in? And where's your head at? This was the best weekend of my life, Tim. Oh, my God. I'm not, I don't want to overstate it and overrated, but it was the best weekend of my life. I can't even explain the amount of anticipation and, and excitedness that I was feeling the night before.

Because what we did was we streamed, me and Mike streamed on our channels on Friday. night and we knew Saturday morning the next, the servers open again at 10 a.m. Pacific time. We were going to do a stream on kind of funny Saturday morning like a little bonus stream. Why not at Taylor? It's exciting. And I couldn't sleep that night. I like, I woke up several times like at five in the morning being like, oh my God, it's still five. Come on. Like I need to like sleep faster somehow. It was incredible. I had so much damn fun playing against actual other players other Halo players because for the first flight, 99% of it was against bots,

and then for a limited kind of like two-hour block, they let you play against other players. But this time it was all matchmaking. It was an absolute blast. Negatives, I feel like performance still, you know, there's some left to be desired there. Frame rate, I'm not getting what I should be getting on my PC. But that's fine.

I hope they figure out ways to tune all that. But goddamn, it was an absolute blast. they added Capture the Flag and me, Tim, Kevin, and Mike had one of the most memorable. Like, I flashed back to being 16 again. And we were playing a CTF game and they had the flag. Go get the guy with the flag. And it was just nonstop excitement. It was just pure joy.

And yeah, again, this was some of the most fun playing video games I've had in a long damn time. I am right there with you. And you bring it up the flashbacks to being. We often talk about Halo and like the memories we have of it and the experiences we had with it being like for a lot of console gamers, their first major multiplayer experience on that level. Like we all have our N64 memories. But like Halo really like took it up a notch, especially with things like Capture the Flag. And when we saw the E3 trailer this year, we felt it. We knew the hype was there.

We're like, oh my God, they're nailing the nostalgia pull vibes there. Playing it this weekend though and having that Capture the Fly experience, having that match that we did, that's a lot. our first capture the flag match that they let us do and winning, you know, and I feel like each one of us got equal play in terms of being a part of the match working together as a team. You're right. Like, they did it. They gave us that feeling again, but it's modern and it's updated and it feels like a first person shooter should feel in 2021. And I had such a blast playing with you guys. I actually feel like the way they did the tech flights where it was like limited time throughout the day, different sections and they would add different modes and add different

maps and things. It actually made it a lot of fun to be able to be excited for what's happening next. So when a new thing was dropped a new game mode or whatever, we're like, oh, what is strongholds? What's going on here? And what was really fun about the strongholds game mode in particular is essentially there's three points of interest on the map, A, B, and C. And there's two different teams and they're trying, whoever has control of at least two of them at any one time is getting points. it's like King of the Hill type stuff. And what was fun about it is when we first started, we didn't realize you needed two out of three. So we were just kind of running amok,

all of us crazy, just trying to get as many as possible. But that meant that oftentimes we would only have control of one. And we're like, what the hell? Why aren't we getting points for this? The moment it was clear, oh, we need to get two. We started working like a well-oiled machine. We were doing call-outs.

Like, again, this isn't a bunch of pro gamers playing. We only had two pros with Andy and Mike. We also had the dipshits me and Kevin. And this is Kevin's first time playing Halo, but we were able to kind of like hear the callouts, understand what's going on. And with the way that the game set up, it's so simple of go get A,

go get B, go get C. It's not necessarily go to rockets, go to the tower, go to batteries, whatever. Those callouts were happening as well. And over time,

you kind of get to them. But I think that the objective-based multiplayer modes in Halo have always been one of the strong suits. And I think that what they got going with Infinite is incredibly special and they are making it accessible to people, whether they have prior Halo knowledge or jumping in for the first time. And that kind of fun of discovery of getting to understand how to play, and great, it strongholds might have been in other versions of the game. I'm not saying it wasn't. I'm saying I haven't experienced it. So that was a fun

thing to kind of have with all of you guys. And I had such a blast. I had unfortunately had to miss the last bit of it so I didn't get to do any of the vehicles. And I was really looking forward to it. So Andy, can you tell me about that a little bit? Oh my gosh. Yeah. So the fourth map that they added was behemoth. And it is, it is such a classic looking halo map. It is sort of this desert biome with gigantic forer structure. It's like what you want to see out of a halo level. And it's got a really nice sense of symmetry. And it's a really big level. I think the biggest one that we played in so far in Halo, where all the other ones have been kind of this more of the arena type shooter that you're used to, usually

either indoors or if you're outdoors, it's more small scale. This one, they introduce Behemoth and you could play either Slayer on it or Capture the Flag. And it is large enough to feel like perfect for that sort of capture the flag map where there are little vents that shoot you off on either side. You end up like, you know, vaulting yourself to the other side of the level. In the middle, there are two snipers that spawn on either side. It is so symmetrical in a way that you kind of need for a map that's going to be primarily. I'd assume a CTF map.

This is like exactly what they were looking to get. It is so much fun. It's large enough to feel like you got space to kind of work around and sneak around if you are trying to go sneak and get a flag. But it's also not too daunting enough, I don't think, to feel like, I remember the first time playing on Waterworks back in the day, I believe, in Halo 2. and just feeling like, God damn, this is too big of a map.

I don't know what the hell is happening here. When there's only four players and you're playing 4V4, it just feels really good. And I think the rhythm and the sort of rotations you have on these larger maps are working out perfectly. It's got a really nice sort of outdoor area for long sight lines, or if you want to be sneaking and go down low, you have those areas to sort of sneak around in as well.

I thought, like, Behemoth is probably... Each time they're released a new map, it's like, this is my new favorite map. And Behemoth immediately sort of became that because of we're adding back that sort of sandbox that we all love about Halo. And the amount of times that the enemy team is coming to our side and they're in a wardhog,

and I stick them with the grenade and the boom, it just fucking explodes and goes flying. And those moments of fun are just hilarious. Oh, right here, this wasn't, this moment that you're watching right here. Amy, what happened here? Yeah, pro-hammer news right here. Wasn't the most pro-game? Was Kevin's driving right here?

Was Kevin driving right here? No, that was just me in a car. I was just testing out the cars against bots and I got kind of stuck in some geometry. Testing it against trees too, apparently. Yeah, yeah, just trying to see. I was testing out the torque and the acceleration. But yeah, I mean, this level was a lot of fun, Tim.

And I know you didn't get to do any... Did you plan on it at all? Or was it just... No. Oh, really? I didn't get this one at all, dude, no. Oh, shit. That's really unfortunate.

Because what you got to do is, like, when I hopped online, I hopped in just the... right now in these early fights, they allow you to just kind of explore the level and play against bots and there's no score being kept. You're just kind of playing with three other bots on your team and you're playing against four bots.

And you could just kind of explore the level. You could set what weapons you want to start off with. You can set what sort of vehicles you want. You can set invincibility and stuff. So it's kind of a way to just kind of explore the level and check it out. And that's what I was doing before the whole crew signed online.

But man, again, this is some of the most fun. I've had playing video games and I got a couple replies for people like, yeah, but what does it have to offer, right? Like what differentiates this from the call of duties and the war zones and stuff? And I really just think it is that sandbox sort of physics. I feel like the physics and Halo are so much more pronounced in other shooters where like if you put a shitload of bombs in front of a car, it's going to explode and react in a way that you would kind of expect it to.

It's not going to give you some sort of pre-rendered animation or anything like that. Like things are going to happen in a way that feel almost breath of the wild like when you're just kind of fucking around with weird kind of, oh, if I put a bomb here and I drive here, how is that going to react or whatever? And the amount of fun that you can have launching vehicles through those shoots on the side that sort of launched to the other side of the map, it's just it's pure fun, man. And I had an absolute blast this weekend. And this next weekend, we are five days away from Big.

Team Battleton. Hell yeah. And we're going to be streaming Twitch on TV slash Kind of Funny Games on Friday. Big Team Battle trying to get as many people involved as possible. Very excited about that.

Barrett, I sent a clip from Khalif doing some of the stuff that Andy's talking about if you could bring up because this is just freaking incredible of all the physics and stuff. Jack there.

Sorry for the chat who got an ad music thing. Just a heads up. But the almost death of falling off this cliff in the vehicle. but then using the grapple hook to pull himself back to the level.

It's like, are you serious? Like, that is so freaking cool and so crazy. And like, that's the type of stuff that is brand new to Halo Infinite, but the fun of that is what Halo's always been. It is playing with the physics. It is what Andy's talking about. Things kind of react the way you expect them to.

So that's where, like, rocket jump and all that stuff. It's like the origin was just fucking around in Halo. Or like jumping with the energy sword and like the way that you target on to enemies allowing yourself to like fly across the map so much damn fun and i i love the new maps and that is something that i've always been a little scared of going into this where you know me guys i'm a nostalgic guy and it's like where's my blood goals where's my battle creek you just want the old shit

i just want the old shit i just want to feel and look like i remember like that's really all i want and with this so far these three different maps that we've had are not old maps but they feel like old maps and that is like the best compliment i could give halo infinite is they have so far nailed the feel nailed the vibe of all this stuff there's still a couple weapons that i don't truly understand um but that's just because i'm so used to the old weapons and i know them in and out uh but that's fun that's exciting and i can't wait to get back to playing this and i can't wait for the day that we can just play whatever the hell we want absolutely yeah they also added a new item called the repulsor and these items that get equipped and they are sort of your not your

grenade but the other thing that you have and and so far that's been the grass grapple hook is one of those things you can pick up, or you can throw down a shield that kind of gets deployed in front of you to protect you from oncoming shots or whatever. But this new thing called the repulsor, you essentially have it on your hand, and if somebody throws a grenade to you, you can repulse the grenade back to them,

or you can knock people off of levels. And I ended up having one of those moments in the game where, well, our whole squad, it's somewhere in that video that Barrett had up earlier, but our whole squad got totally baited into one guy just sitting in a corner as we all went and got repulsed off the level, off the map. But the good thing about these, these little items are consumables. They aren't anything that you start off with. They aren't something that you can add in your loadout for any of these sort of matchmaking games.

There are things you can pick up and they have a finite amount of uses and then they end or whatever. You can run around the map and pick up a force push cannon. And that's fantastic. Yes, exactly, exactly. I put it in there in assets. I think it's like near the, near the end of it or whatever, near the end of that video. But the amount of fun that you can have with it. And we've seen, I'm sorry, did somebody talk to me or was that in the video?

My bad. I thought Barrett was talking to my ear. But we've seen other moments where people are using the repulsors to knock off vehicles completely. Like vehicles will be driving near the end. of whatever level it is and if you're hiding in the right spot and repulsome you see the whole the whole thing just fucking fly off and if you can pass forward like towards the late the latter third of the video yeah this is this is kind of bit right here I'm kind of waiting around and I try to knock him and I

don't quite get him off the level and there's a cool down on it so I kind of I'm pure panic mode right now but just the amount of fun that you can have fucking around with people and knocking them off the level my dude my head was hurting from the amount of laughter that I that we were having over that whole weekend and then Tim like after we had that morning stream and then I then took a nap streamed again at night and I was like dude I'm fucking exhausted I feel like I'm at a convention right now yeah totally totally it was great it was a lot of fun and we I could talk about this for hours but we'll wait for the next the next flight to come through this Thursday yes so Andy me and you've

been having a lot of fun playing hail this weekend something tells me that Jared Petty was not playing Halo Infinite. Instead, he was having a party of his own with Act Razor Renaissance. And a little surprise twist here, Greg Miller has also been dabbling in the Act Razor. So I want to hear some thoughts. But Jared, I haven't heard your voice in way too long. Let's start with you. What's up with Act Razor Renaissance? You know, shocking. It comes out of nowhere. Nobody cared about Actorser for the last 25 years. It's like this game from 1991. And we're like, oh, okay, that was great. And then it's gone. and had a crappy sequel and then it's forgotten like so many square inix properties and suddenly like oh by the way we remade act razor and it's available today and of course because that's a nintendo direct where it's always feast or famine it's like either we're going to give you we're going to give you an EKG that you plug into your wee or we're going to give you like act razor today that that's how they work

Hacker is a very simple game. It's a side-scrolling, going to beat-em-up platformer connected to SimCity. SimCity parts feed into the side-scrolling parts and make you more powerful if you play them well, and the side-scrolling parts feed into the SimCity parts and make you more powerful. It's a lot like persona social links in a much more primitive way

where whatever you do during the social by day helps you in the dungeoneering and vice versa. That's what makes it neat. You're God, you got beat up a long time ago, you've been asleep a long time, you'll wake up, Satan's taken over the world, and now you've got to help people rebuild. I had a nickel. That's this game.

What's that? I said, if I had a nickel. If you had a nickel, exactly. It is a primitive, fairly simple game that there's just something about. It clicks. There's nothing quite like it. I feel like it's a game that's really not just well set up for a remake or a remaster, but a sequel, or at least a spiritual successor of some kind that's in.

But seeing it remade was shocking. This is one of those like, oh, by the way, Metroid's Dred exists moments for Uber nerds. Now, that's me talking. I'm really interested. Greg Miller's playing this for the first time. Mitch Dyer, my friend, loves to talk about this game. This is one of my favorite games.

Chris Kohler loves this game. Greg, what's it been like for you playing it now? Fascinating is what it's been. Yeah, you nailed it. You know, I remember back in the day at IGN, we did, you know, what's your favorite game of all time? We did a series on it. videos where I interviewed the staff. And when Mitch came up, he said Act Razor and he said exactly

everything you said, right? It is SimCity mashed up with a beat-em-up 2D platform, or whatever you want to call it, right, of going across and fighting everything. And he knew, and I think most of the audience knows what a big SimCity fan I am. And that always had me excited, but it never gave me enough of a push to go dig it out, to go do the thing. Old game is old, whatever, you know, really want to go chase that with so much other stuff going on. And so at the Nintendo direct when they announced this, I was like, oh my God, this is perfect. Obviously, like a chance to jump in and see this with a modern set of eyes on it and some of the stuff they have done to it and changed, which of course, I don't know, but I know they've done here and there, even

what Barrett just showed there, right, talking about saves and difficulties and stuff like that, like more modern sensibilities applied to it. And so when I downloaded it on PlayStation, you know, it sat there for a couple days. And then over the weekend, yeah, I was like, I sat down the couch and booted it up. And when I got to, you know, you start off as the God pretty much right of like okay cool you now need to fight your way out right you fight this first section in playing that my heart didn't sink but i was like oh okay it's it's going to be it's this kind of you know scrolled the side beat up the boss and then okay like that's what the gameplay is going to be i don't see me sticking with this for a long time and then i popped out uh after beating the boss

and then you know you get thrown into the city building section of it and that's when it starts unlocking and showing you this and here's how your miracles work all right and here's how you know you're you know, paying the roads for them or telling them which direction to go with the roads. Then they're building their own things. But, you know, their fields are giving you health. And then now there's this angel that you're using to go over the overworld map to shoot the demons that are coming out of the holes. But when the demons come out of the holes, you can send your people to the holes and then you go down and fight. And I was like, this is fucking awesome.

Like this is fucking awesome. And again, I'm lucky. I know there's been a push and pull in the act razor community of I guess they added in this tower defense stuff now, which wasn't in Jared. Tell me if I'm talking out of turn. and this is just from the reviews I've read, wasn't there initially. And so when you're on that overworld map, you have control of the angel. You are fighting off the demons that are coming out of the holes. And you have a hero for the town and every section has their own hero.

When eventually you get to a certain point, you know, the demons make an assault. The horde makes an assault and you have to do the tower defense thing of using your resources to build up these outposts to defend things that are going that way. And so I like tower defense to a degree. usually when I'm playing something like a pixel junk monsters, those later levels would be when I was like, all right, you know what, I've played this for 15 minutes here,

and I just failed on the last guy. I can't do this again. Early on, I'm only an hour and a half into this game. Early on, I've not had that problem. I actually enjoy the tower defense of it, but it's because I was afraid the action,

go whack everything with my giant sword was going to be the gameplay, when in reality, it does seem at least in this hour and a half, the overworld map and leading your community and your congregation, the people who worship you, talking to you and asking you to do things for them. I'm like, this is such a cool way to do some city. You know what I mean? Before it had been always, you have to come up with your own narrative to a degree of what kind of mayor you're going

to be and how you're going to go. But to have this God there, to have the, you know, your angel go down and yell at the, you know, a hero of your city when he starts talking shit about you. Like, I'm having a great time with it. I'm really shocked that I am. Not that I thought it was overblown, but I was like, oh, I don't know how this hold up for me in 2021 with no legacy for what came before. Jared, it's so funny because this is also, this has always been the game that you heard about as your podcaster's favorite game, but you, like, but this is totally the game that I have never, as a kid, I never saw it on a shelf anywhere. I never saw it at Best Buy or at any rental spots. So to me, it was always this sort of mythological, does it really,

exists. I'm sure it does, but people say that it's great. And so for me, it's, I am completely shocked that it's, that it's back. Do you think that it has held up to your standard or at least of what you remember it being? I like the port a lot. I have problems with it. Everybody, here's the problem with bringing an old game back, you know, unless you do it, unless you just hit every beat, old guys like me are going to gripe about something or another. I want to start with, I really like The port remaster. It is Fugly. The old game's beautiful. The retro way. The new one, it's not that the graphics are bad,

is that the art style matching isn't great. The foregrounds and backgrounds don't blend well. Some people are way more upset about that than I am. I'm fine with it. I can live with it because some of the quality of life improvements I think make up for it. I really do think they kind of nailed it, and hearing Greg talk about this, the fact that he was able to experience it

for the first time and really enjoy it, especially with Old Game Old, rills me. I think that there's a very unique subgenre video game. Things like XCOM, where my tactical section feeds my base building and my base building feeds my tactical section,

where you have two games that make each other better. They're greater than the sum of their parts. Actraiser is one of the very first games to ever do that, and I think it set the template. And I think a lot of people, that arc is so compelling that in a way its simplicity makes it more compelling. There's not too much to the town building.

I agree with Greg that the SimCity part is the core of the game. The fact that the SimCity part makes your God tougher when you do have to hit things with your sword, that's awesome. Question for you, Jared, just to make sure I understand. The SimCity part of it, it never gets to, I'm putting down this,

for lack of a better term, because a police station, a fire station, a school, or whatever. I'm telling them where to go. They pave out the roads and then they build their own things that then benefit me, right? Yeah, it's extremely simple. Just making sure I understood it, yeah. If it's like the old game, eventually you're actually going to have to blow up their huts to improve their buildings.

They may have taken that out in this one. Well, I mean, that is part of it too we haven't touched on, right? Is that, you know, on top of your angel, you're controlling on the over map, on top of, you know, sending your guy around on the overworld. There's also then the miracles you have to, you know, put out fire, but then also it's a rain down lightning to clear trees so now you have more spaces to go. But of course, that costs you MP in the way you refill the MPs by fighting those demons that come out. And then if your angel takes damage, you have to pick up the apples, you know, heal the.

Like there's some, it's this, it is a game that has something going on constantly. And I love that about it in the way of like, okay, cool, I want to clear those trees, but I'm not there yet, but I need to focus on this. But I'll do that. I'll do that. And then wait, hold on. I should build, you know, I have enough now to build another tower down there to defend from the cell. And it's also, and it's so arcady. It's so quick.

It's very much like one of my favorite video games is Sid Meyers Pirates. What takes everything about a sandbox game and like boils it down to like a joystick and a button. This one kind of does the same thing and that's what I like about it. It's a great take on the sim genre. It's fun. It also, the story is whatever, but I'm really interested to see what happens when you get to the end, Greg. Yeah. Because the end, the end kind of hits a little.

So let me know what you think of it when you're done. But yeah, friends, play act, Race, or Renaissance support, support, a good game. Yes, it is ugly. Music makes up for it. I don't think it's ugly. Again, not knowing what it looks like before, I look at it. I'm like, oh, okay. Okay. I can tell what Jared is talking about

just because I think that 8 and 16 bit, you know, pixel games look more, they're more appealing to the itemie than when a game tries to remake it by kind of what ends up looking like a flash game ultimately. It always ends up looking like some web type game where you aren't getting

full animations, it's more of a like when you use puppet tool in Adobe Premiere or whatever it is. Tim knows what I'm talking about. You like, you make, like, the leg, you just make the leg move like that and the thigh won't move. Like, it's never a full kind of animation. It's always sort of

this Marianette sort of thing looking. Yeah, and that's, you know, what I want is vanilla wear to draw this thing, right? I want it to look like Odin Spear or Dragon's Crown. And I'm not going to get that because I don't have the money. So I'll take what I can get. And it's good and it's fun.

And is it worth $30? Yes, it is. It's a really great video game. Is there a dodge and a Perry? No, you pretty much just beat things with a sword. It's funny you brought up Sid Meyers Pirates because that was your best game of all time that we did for that IGN project. So, yeah, a little. You remember that.

Of course I do. Of course, Jared. I'll never forget. Never forget. Moving on. It wasn't your number one game, but I'm sure it would have been up there somewhere, or at least one of them would have been. You're also playing the Castlevania Advance Collection.

I haven't been able to touch this yet, Jared. Please have good news. Okay, so here we go. This is a package where you get four classic Castlevania games all from the, all from kind of the mid-era of Castlevania. Castlevania has certain eras, and this one is one linear Castlevania and then three of the Symphony of the Night Types,

all in one package, three GBA games and then one S&EAS game. And what you get in this package are, one terrible Castlevania game. The S&ES. Not Castlevania 4, the good S&ES one, but Dracula X,

which is just awful. It's a terrible video game, never play it. That sounds like Freddie versus Jason, or what's it called? The space one, Jason X, yeah. I think that that is absolutely perfect. Jason X is a really good comparison of this game.

It's a crappy version of a great game. There's the Turbographic 16th This is like a downport, but it's does all these horrible design decisions that make it just not fun. It's just boring and hard. And then you get two completely mediocre portable symphony of the night clones in Circle and Harmony. They're the first two GBA Castlevenias. They are. Fucking monster, Jared Pettie.

They are whatever. Honestly, they're in my opinion, they both have very fundamental problems. Circle is a game that's built largely around verticality on a horizontal display. It's like playing Legend of Cage. It's kind of slow and ploddy and boring. The enemies are bullet sponges. The Castle layout's not great. Harmony has terrible Castle layout.

It's just dull. But then you get Ariosarro, the last GBA Castlevania. And that more than makes up for the entire collection. Ariosarro is a bona fide masterpiece video game. top 100 all-time video game. Wow. And all the annals of video gamage. Aria Osro is a must play.

It is, many argue, best Castlevania, even better than Symphony or Rondo. And anybody that has that opinion, I'm not going to argue with. It is Metroidvania perfection. Still down. Take Castlevania, do the Symphony of Night thing, and then add Mega Man, where you get all your enemy's powers. And that's Aria. It's Symphony of the Night with Mega Man mechanics where anything you kill, you steal its powers. And it's awesome.

And then it changes your look. Oh, there's nothing better than that back in the day. My gosh. I love Aria. Improving your armor. I love you so much. I love that you have such thought about each single one. Because to me, honestly, the GBA games, I really kind of run them all together.

Like I think that they're all, I would never call any of the mediocre, you freaking monster. but I do remember ARIA being a standout for me, but I stand out being just a little bit. Like Circle the Moon was awesome. Circle the Moon was awesome when it came out. That's the problem. We were like, oh, look, a Metroidvania on a portable. Back when we were getting from the Game Boy Color,

like the jump in tech from the Game Boy Color through the GBA was unreal. You know, it was like jumping from the NES to the SNES, which is one of the biggest leaps in the history of gaming in terms of technology. So the fact that we're like, wow, you can explore the whole castle. That glossed over a ton of flaws. As did, it's baller soundtrack.

Like that game has an incredible soundtrack. When you go back and look at it now, there's not, it's a historical curio. Now, I want to be clear, I am so glad all these games, even the bad ones are being re-released. Because context matters, history matters. We should have access to bad games. We should have access to mediocre games. We should be able to play games we love that other people. people tell us aren't good.

Mike Drucker loves these games. And he's a guy who's opinion, I really, really respect. He's wrong, but he's welcome to me. Andy, you were about to ask something? No, I mean, I was just going to mention that when we're talking about going back and sort of revisiting these older games, looking at them in a new light, I'm made even more sad that Switch didn't reveal any sort of Game Boy Advance collection because with Fusion coming,

or with Metroid Dred coming out, like I would have loved to have an easy access to fusion right now. I don't want to have to go through all these weird hoops to get the game. Why is it so hard? Jared, correct me if I'm wrong here. But Andy, this is one of the most weird Intender decision

things of history that I can remember. Really? Metroid Fusion, the last time it was available, was on the 3DS. Not e-shop. only if you bought the original 3DS before the price drop where they were like

oh we fucked up we know a lot of people bought this thing and then we immediately dropped the price within like five months and they're like you're a Nintendo ambassador so you're going to be able to download like these 10 GBA games for the 3DS and that was the only way to ever get those games

I think Fusion was one of them was Fusion one of the ambassador came I think it was I realized that it's on Wii U You can play it on Wii. Okay, at Wii U. Yeah.

So at least there's that. So if you bust out your Wii U, Andy. That's my ex-girlfriend took it in the breakup. That is the saddest fucking break-up story of all time. She took the Wii. I was so pissed. I was like, please let me have it. I'll give you like 20 extra bucks.

We split it. What the fuck? I keep my Wii U hooked up. Up till now, I kept my Wii U hooked up so I could play Aria on it. That was the last time it was available. But yeah, you have Metro. Now you finally throw it out. I'm with Andy.

I'm absolutely with Andy. I really was hoping we get Zero Mission and Fusion. If Fusion's good, Zero mission's a, again, another masterpiece. Like that's an incredible video game. Talking, going back to the Circle the Moon versus Aria, all that, Zero Mission has my heart. I love Fusion. I love the Fusion suit. But Zero Mission is, just took the original.

I made it so much better. So, yeah. And I'm looking here, Metrod Fusion was one of the GBA ambassador exclusive games. Unbelievable. Which is just so hilarious. Unbelievable. Yeah, and it makes me so sad because a lot of that gaming catalog is just something that I did not really get to experience. I had sort of stopped doing the handheld gaming around after color.

Like, I had a Game Boy Advance at one point and just never really used it a whole lot because I don't, I don't know. I honestly don't know. I don't know why. I think there was a part of me that was really turned off by the Tony Hawk Game Boy Color game that I was like, fuck, I like these handheld games just don't got it. They're going to keep on giving us fake versions of what they should be and I'm sick of this shit. I'm done. I don't want any like, because I expected it to look like the PS1 version or you know what I mean.

I was very, very saddened by that. So by that point, I was kind of bummed out by a lot of. a lot of games around that era. So yeah, it just sucks. There's so many great games in that catalog that I'll just, I won't be able to experience until they hopefully bring this collection to Switch. Listen, man, people at THQ needed jobs back in the day. They needed to make those Game Bay advanced versions of all the other games you played.

But it was, I mean, of all the other games you loved. Yeah, yeah. You went back in time, that was a weird era. You'd like, there'd be like Tomb Raider. And then there'd be like Tomb Raider. And it would be an entirely original game. And it was a side scroll like, this isn't what I wanted it to be.

But sometimes they were great. And they were garbage. And now with that, I do, I have to say, Game Boy Colored Tony Hawk games, utter trash, Game Boy Advanced Tony Hawk games are rat as shit, even though they are radically different than the PlayStation 1 versions. But now, like, those games are awesome.

So you should check it out. Tim, I love you. I love you so much. I know we got to move on. We do need to move on to a game called New World. I saw you guys streaming this today a little bit this is the new Amazon game correct Correct

Tell me all about it Andy Cortez No you go I'll take I'll take back up to you I'll be your second banana So first off if this game stays Successful I am owed a pizza I am owed a pizza from somebody

Because I swear like I've been the one saying like Guys you better watch out for this new world game A lot of MMO fans out there that really want A good MMO and they see a lot of promise in this And so far, people who are really hot on it were the ones that were around for the beta. And I think it will be a game that does stick around for a while. I don't think it's going to be this flash in the pan like a lot of other online titles. I'm not going to say it's going to be close to Final Fantasy 14 or to Wow or whatever.

But yeah, we tried it out today. And it's an MMO, everybody. It is an MMO in the way that you expected to be. you are early on breaking up rocks to get the thing to then craft that new item. And there's a lot of crafting early on to sort of get you onboarded. But I will say the combat in this game does not feel like any MMO.

The combat is, I think, I think really fun. It's very reactive. It doesn't ever feel like this sort of passive experience of you just hitting four to shoot the arrow, hitting four to shoot the arrow, hitting five to shoot that spell. It is all, it feels like you're just playing a third person, in a game inside of an MMO.

And I know this isn't the first to do it, but it feels really sharp and crisp when you are in that action. And there is a dodge roll, really important for me. You can block in certain moments. You can dodge away back from certain enemies' attacks. Shooting the arrows, you are legitimately just aiming the arrow and trying to get the headshot for the critical damage. You're not just kind of getting crit by chance.

I feel like it really is. Yeah, I feel like it is really rewarding. your accuracy and your skill and I don't know I had a lot of fun with the combat it is daunting though good Lord I forgot the feeling of getting into an MMO at first and sort of kind of getting overwhelmed with it and seeing the right panel like fucking half of my screen on the right side is just quest quest quest quest quest like oh my gosh I got to figure out the UI here but I had fun with it will I stick around I don't know I haven't really been into an MMO in a long time it's just I try to avoid them because I

that they will suck me in. Greg, how are you feeling about it? I was impressed. I liked it a lot. Everything you said resonates with it, and it kind of for me personally is what works against it, too, where the combat's awesome. I love the combat.

I hate mouse and keyboard. So it's just that thing as I play it and, you know, struggle and feel clumsy with it as you try, I, you know, a controller console person try to get their vibe for it. Thank you, Tim. They're holding up your PlayStation move. That means nothing to Jared. Please explain to him.

Jared, I now use my PlayStation 3 navigation controller in place of a keyboard to play with the mouse. So if you need some great tips on the future. Look at Jerry's fucking face as you review his idea. Tom found it he is because he knows, he's probably on the right side here. Or it's a fucking abomination, Tim. It's an abomination what you do. I mean, I'm telling you. It's God.

I'm telling you all. Greg Miller just needs to try it once and he's going to be right there with me and he's a lot louder than I am. It's going to change the fucking world. I step out for cigarettes for a couple of years and y'all just go to shit. We're so sorry. Yeah. So what you would have loved before that, Jared, is when we first started playing Warzone and Nick got really into playing like PC games and Warzone and first person shooters.

And Nick was playing Call Duty Warzone on his PS5 with a keyboard and mouse with a mouse inverted. He had a mouse and keyboard plugged into his PS5 and the mouse is inverted because of his old flight sim games from back in the day. And then Tim plays on PC with a PC though like he should. But there's the controller. Well, this is before

he got the move implemented. But he's using his left hand for the analog stick and the other buttons and he's using right for aim. It's brilliant. I honestly think I just had a bowel movement. I just don't know what is happening.

Then here's the thing, though, Tim was fragging out. Tim was fragging out with us on Friday Saturday. So, you know, don't yuck his yum. Don't yuck his yum, Jared. Remember the Dreamcast, like, people would, like, get so good at Soul Calibur that they play with a fishing controller? I think this is just like the modern day equivalent. I know that we've talked about this a lot.

So, Greg, I do want to get back to you talking about the new world. Real talk, though. It's like, I think it'll solve any problem you have with mouse and keyboard. The keyboard is way too many buttons. And it's just like having the directional stuff to replace an analog stick that you're used to. In addition to keeping your mind on all the other buttons, that's where it gets complicated. You know how to use a mouse. That's the easy part.

Like you just aim better. Like there's no downside there. And having the analog control in your left hand, you're not losing any functionality at the keyboard. You're just having a better way to control your character. And the important thing, Tim, for you is that this game is not like a lot of other. other MMOs. I think one of the things when Kevin and Tim, or when Kevin and Greg were getting into

Star Wars Republic when they were getting back into it, Kevin had bought that tartarus device or whatever the hell it's called where it's like a full glove that sits on the table and it has the thumbstick analog for, but everything else you are surrounding. There it is. There it is.

Yeah. That ain't it. This ain't it. I'm telling everyone right now. Really? This does not solve the problem. This isn't an analog. It's just a,

dumb, like clicky. A little nub or some shit. Got it. This does not solve the problem for anybody. This is a cool thing to have and has a lot of cool functions. It is not the beautiful masterpiece that I... So here's the thing. Kevin, that thing does make sense for Kevin, though, that you just showed us with all

those buttons. But this thing, Greg, you're switching between one weapon or the other. And that's it. There are no... You aren't really fucking with like, you know, three is that spell, four is that spell. Five is that spell. Like none of that shit, which is very... akin to what my experience was in World of Warcraft

where I had to get really good at like oh my arrow volley is on three and then my super arrows on four or whatever the fuck like I forgot all the World Warcraft moves I had the tiger I had the beast I forget I was a night of hunter no big deal yeah that's what it's heartbreaking for it is like the this game from what we've played so far what a couple hours of it today right totally would work with a controller and I know they've said

originally they said they weren't then since then they're looking into it and so that's just the thing for me is just a personal preference of playing it and going through it, like, I think the combat's great. I wish I could play the combat with a controller. That's not what's pushing me away solely or anything like that. It's more the thing as I find with any MMO I play or any big game like this, as we start going into it, it's when I was playing solo and listening to the boys on the stream, I was engaging with the story, understanding a bit of what was going on,

having a understanding great. Then when I jumped into your guys' world, it quickly became cool. I'm with my friends and I'm fucking around with Kevin and Nick and Andy. And then it was like, accept, except, except. I'm no longer listening to what the quest giver is saying. I'm just taking all the shit. I'm just running through all the shit.

And so then I'm just leveling and just chasing leveling up. I'm going off and killing this many boars to get whatever to go do the thing. And then that's what it starts getting in my head of like, cool, this is now just become any kind of video game. Like this is the hook of any game. And so why would I play this when I can go play Assassin's Creed Odyssey? Now granted, that's not a massively online one, but it's the same thing of I can chase a level. I can go be Cassandra.

I can go be engaged in that world already. you know here we are on the cusp of far cry six like i'm way more excited to lose myself to that world than i would be to this world and it's the same that we saw with with star wars the old republic me me and kevin we're in mike when we were playing of i love that star wars let's be we're being sit that's great but when we are playing together i was skipping three hours of the story at a time and then coming back and be like all right who are you we're bad let's go kill it's like all right well why am i doing that i think the i think the hook of what would get other people in that may not necessarily be into MMOs is, again, not only the combat that we just mentioned,

but it has this thing where you join three different factions. And at any point in time, different factions can rule certain parts of the big overall map that you're on. And you can open up the map and see like, oh, that's their territory. I should go fuck around over there. But I don't know how that messes with, are we on a PVE server? Are we on a PVP server? I'm not really sure how that ties it.

whether if you go over there your open game you could just get killed or whatever um but i think that is one of the the sort of hooks that's bringing in people who are more who play world of warcraft and play competitively like i never did pvp and world of work have i never cared about it i don't see why anybody would have thought that that was super fun because it is that sort of passive well i can't dodge that attack you just shot at me i wish i could but it's just going to hit me no matter what um now Now this one, the PVP seems a lot more involved. It seems a lot more fun and something that I would be into. But will I even play long enough to get there is the big question?

Because again, it's an MMO. It's daunting. And I have about seven other games that I want to be playing right now as well. And that's always the thing when I think about a game like this that I want to invest in, especially for like what we're talking about with, you know, combat or Dodge Roll or whatever, how close they are to it? I'm just like, well, why wouldn't I go back to DC Universe online? Like, right?

I already have 900 hours into that MMO. And I could have the same experience of coming back and being like, I don't know what the hell is going on. You know what I mean? Or why not go play Kingdoms, a mobble or reckoning, which I, you know,

a game I love or re-reckoning now, I guess, go back in there where I thought the combat was awesome and stuff like that. Like this is a fun one, but it was already as like, you know, when I came back, you had already left this stream.

I came back and hung out with Mike and Kevin for a little bit before Bruce got there. And I was playing FirePro World while they were playing the thing, right? And it was just like, you know, I'm enjoying playing my stupid other game while I listen to them and then play their stupid game.

it's good though in terms of the quality of the game it is a good MMO like I can see why even now I think tonight I might sign back on in place alone it might be a game

that if I give it three hours of just soul I'm playing it and I'm not trying to interact with my friends and then I have my boots on the ground of what the world is I'm kind of into the story

then I could go out and have a fun time with it yeah I mean I had turned it off because I was like all right I got to go heat up my leftover pizza and then immediately fired it back up Unfortunately, there was 300 people waiting in front of me in the queue. So I had to sit there for about 20 minutes.

But I felt the want to go back and finish and kill that one boss, that mini boss in that certain area that would get me a certain amount of XP. Because again, with any of these things, you see that carrot at the end of the stick and you see that color flash. And it goes, oh, great, I leveled up. That feels awesome. Oh, I can get this move now and expand my moveset a bit more. and this arrow does this thing now, which is awesome. And like with any video game, I sort of get that immediate satisfaction

from seeing the number go higher. I'm a simple guy. I'm a simple guy. Before we move on, let me tell you about our sponsors. This podcast is brought to you by Purple. Sometimes it can feel like the world is against you getting a good night's sleep. There's already tons of things to be anxious about.

And then there's the heat. Thanks, climate change. But when you have a purple mattress, you can sleep cool and comfortable no matter what the world throws at you. That's because only purple mattress has the grid. It's a unique ventilated design that lets air flow through it, which helps you sleep cool, even when it's, well, what it's been lately. The grid is supportive to your back and legs while somehow also being cushiony for your shoulders, neck and hips. Don't take my word for it. Take Joey Noel's word for it.

She sleeps on a purple mattress. She loves it. She says it keeps it cold. And then on top of that, Tim Gettys uses the purple pillow and he loves it. never shuts up about it. Purple is comfort reinvented. Right now you'll get 10% off any order of $200 or more. Go to purple.com slash MLM and use the promo code MLM.

That's purple.com slash MLM promo code MLM for 10% off any order of $200 or more. Purple.com slash MLM promo code MLM. Terms apply. Our next sponsor is FitBod, ladies and gentlemen. Sometimes it can be tough to keep working out. and if your routine gets too boring, it's that much easier to just skip a week. And then another week, and then another and another.

You see where this is going, of course. Because you're making progress means overcoming new challenges and keeping yourself engaged. That's why FitBod created a fitness program that adapts to you with new exercises to adjust to how you're progressing. This is what won Gia Tappairs.

Tim's fiance has been doing. Gia talks all the time about how much she loves FitBod, how much she keeps her motivated because, again, it's switching the programs. She's not getting bored. She's always being challenged. FitBod's algorithm uses data and analytics to help you build on your last workout to maximize your results. Plus, FitBod workouts are balanced to avoid overworking muscles with varied exercises to keep you sharp.

It's only $9.99 a month or $59.99 a year. Pick up the pace on your fitness journey with FitBod today and your future self will thank you. Get 25% off your membership at FitBod.me slash KF Games. That's 25% off at FitBod.me slash KF Games. here we are, guys. It's time for the topic of this show. I've been teasing this one for a while, but we kept having other things to talk about.

We're finally doing it. The topic is, we predicted 2021 in 2019. How wrong were we? God. This comes from Reddit user N7 MacL over on the kind of funny subreddit where they say in Gamescast episode 205

from January 17th, 2019, Tim, Greg, Jared, and Fran made predictions for what gaming would look like in 2021. A lot has obviously happened since then that no one could have predicted, but it still makes for a really fun episode that I would recommend you go back. There's a pandemic. Can I guess,

can I guess that Fran was the most wrong? I will say I've only glanced at the thing. And I don't want to, you know, spoil too much for you. But I will say, overall, we fucking killed it, boys. We fucking killed it. There's some things that are like, okay, we got a little wrong or whatever. but for the most part, I saw games casting might work out.

We are oracles, my friend. I took a peek at this red of that. We are bona fide profits. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Let's start it off. He wrote some of the highlights here. Tim says the switch will have two revisions,

selling more than 3DS, but not as much as the Wii U. And I fucking nailed it, everybody. The Switch light. It exists. The Switch OLED edition. It exists. And guess where this thing lands now on the list of best selling consoles.

Currently, the Nintendo Switch is above the 3DS, but under the Wii. Oh, will it? Okay. You said we said we you. Oh, my bad. And I was like, if it's not beating the Wii you, this. My bad, my bad. Yeah. I saw all you were like giving me a face.

I was like, what am I getting rock here? Thank you for that. So the 3DS is currently at just shy of 76 million. The switch is at 89 million and the Wii is at. 101.63 million. Holy cow. So I think it's going to outpace it at some point, but as of 2021, I'm looking good here. I would dare say, Tim, that it would be good news.

I think if it weren't for supply chain difficulties right now, there's some chance that you would be wrong, but only because it outsold even we. I honestly think you were even more right than you knew. That's a good point. That's a good point. I was also right, Jared. I was also right about there being a Nintendo Switch light. Me and you, one of the most epic battles we ever had was,

will there ever be a switch that is not portable? And you're like, they won't do it. I'm like, they made a 3DS that was 2D. They will. And then they did, Jared. They did. But I'm not always right. I am in fact off and wrong where you said there will be no Switch Pro by 2021.

And I disagreed. And there is egg all over my face, everybody. Okay. There is the OLED bottle, but it is not a pro. I got to concede it. You're right, Jared. You're right. I just thought it was too soon.

I thought it was too soon. I think they're, I think they'll do something like that, but it's too soon. Um, even next year maybe, but not now. Next up, another,

question. Did anybody order the new switch, do we, who all's getting a switch pro? I got a swall, uh, pre-order, well,

O-Let. Yes. I'm very excited for it. And I, I, I, I, trash shit and talk shit on it and then immediately

pre-odered on because I'm weak. I did everything I want it, so I can't be complained. I never use it portable. So why did I get it? Why did I get it? I don't know. I don't know.

I don't know. You know why for the plane flight, for the flight that I, who am I kidding? I never, dude, the amount of money that I've spent on games when I'm going on a trip somewhere,

I'll throw down like 80 bucks and buy like two Indies and then an actual like Nintendo title. And I never play them on the plane. I just sleep every time. When will I learn? When will I learn? I don't know.

I don't know. I almost bought a N-LED and then in the most Jared of moves, I bought a light for the D-Pad. That is a very Jared move. And I got to respect it. I got to respect it. Jared has another one here. Half-Life 3 announced before the end of 2021. Now, I want to give you partial credit.

Yeah. Because, well, we did not get Half-Life 3. And Half-Live 3, we know what that means. It is Half-Life 3. It is not Half-Life Alex. we did get a new half-life and it was great. So I'll give you the points, Jared.

I feel like half a point. Thank you very much. I think you're being generous. Too generous. Don't give us to them. Yeah, I'll think half a point for them. Give them nothing. I'm giving you three quarters.

I'm giving you three quarters. Like the three-quarters sounds good. I think the fact that anything half-life happened at all from an official play from from Valve is absolutely shocking. And I think you get 0.75 points for me. Okay. So right now, the score is Tim 1, here at 0.75. That's where we're at right now.

Yeah, yeah. And to be clear, we can keep points for fun if you want. I don't think all of the predictions are here, so I don't think the points are going to necessarily count for much, but it's just more for fun. It's easier. We shouldn't keep points. Like Fran, Fran, Fran Mirabella, who comes in saying,

subscriptions and battle passes will be the standard. I would say they are the standard. I think that there are different people like Nintendo and Sony that aren't doing it, but like there are a ton of subscriptions. Battle passes are definitely the standard when it comes to any type of living game. I'll give it to him. He fucking crushed it.

Yeah. Like the, I'll never forget opening another game after Fortnite came out and be like, oh, this has a about, oh, they're calling it battle pass. Oh,

I thought that was just a Fortnite thing. Oh, that's just a thing now. And then it just became a standard. It's so bizarre. But even opening up, uh, fucking knockout city,

be like, oh, there's a battle pass here. There's a battle pass in every guy. goddamn game. Good job, Fran. Do we have to tell him to his face, though, right? No, never. No, no, no, no, no, no. I really do love that wonderful example of the industry just going for something that worked.

Like, you know, a few years ago, it was MTX, MTS, MTF, MTF, everything, everything's got to be add-on content and DLC and, and, and, and, and, and, microtransaction. And the fact that people just finally understood that the market would purchase XP and cosmetics that didn't affect gameplay over it went like that shift it was so brilliant i really think fran just just again he was a profit on this one well-down fran yeah so we're not going to give people shit our props when they get something right but we're also not going to give people shit when they get something wrong like this tim guy who says uh xbox playstation and nintendo will only have one subscription service each that gives you at all game pass and xbox live will be one

service same with playstation plus and playstation now i was off I feel like there was some moments of that. I feel like with Xbox, we're still gearing towards that just being a full reality with XCloud and X, Game Pass and Xbox Live altogether. But we're not quite there. And the other guys definitely are not quite there, especially with Nintendo just announcing there's a new plan with the Nintendo Switch Online Plus. See, on paper, it sounds like it would make sense that you could say, oh, yeah, in the future, they're going to eliminate that. They're going to simplify.

It's going to become one thing. They said no, though. I think like Icarus, she flew too close to the sun, including Nintendo. If it hadn't been for the pandemic, Sony and Microsoft might be there. Yeah. Nintendo, no, Nintendo was not going to get. Are you kidding? Yeah.

Totally, totally, totally. And then Greg, gearbox is out of business or no longer independent. Boom. Thank you, Embracer Group coming through and doing what you do, buying fucking companies. And then a note there, Tim thinks Microsoft. Opt will buy Gearbox and put someone else in charge. I was wrong. I was wrong.

That's a good prediction though, Tim. I want to give you points just for like... Fuck. For being like on point right there. I made the prediction was right. Yeah, but you know, anybody could have done that, you know. Anyone could have got it right, right? Can I make a confession?

Go for it, Jared. Until this point, somewhere in my head canon with all the acquisitions, I convinced myself that Microsoft had bought Gearbox. So... You convinced yourself that was. right, which I do appreciate. I do appreciate. And I'm going to be honest,

I have a confession to me that I thought was about to be your confession, Jared. I didn't know that. So reading this right now, I was like, I don't know if Greg gets the point or not. Andy, real talk. Did you know when Brace the group got gearbox? I knew somebody got gearbox,

and I knew it was one of these groups that we made fun of during E3. Yeah. Like, yeah, yeah. I knew it was one of those big, gigantic corporations that will never have a face because they are part of three other corporations. Yeah.

Yeah. My next one, oh, this is going to piss people off. But it is what it is. PlayStation 5 will have a demonstrably, demonstrably better lineup than Xbox Scarlet. Thinks PlayStation will deliver three solid exclusives in the year, while Xbox will properly have two at most of varying quality. I say I get the point.

I think you get a half point. Why are you going to half point? Because the, are you talking about the first? full year of both consoles in that prediction? I mean, the problem that gets confusing about this is there was like the launch time and then

2021. So it's counting 2020. Okay, because like I do think that like hasn't Xbox had more than two like games coming out of their studios that have been of good quality? Psychonauts. Was it of good quality

or great quality? Not exclusive. That's my thing You use the word exclusive specific Okay I can see yeah I think you get a full point I mean we're talking demon souls We're talking Ratching and Clank We're talking returnal

I mean here's the thing We're not debating the PlayStation side We are debating the Xbox side I mean Did they have more than two Exclusive exclusive Like solid exclusive I mean, does Death Store count as a as an exclusive since it's a console?

Oh, you're saying console exclusive? Because it's a console exclusive. Does that count? Well, it's not an Xbox game studio thing or like an Xbox partnership. Either way. I mean, I think that I get the point. Wait, are we talking launch or 2021? Because if it was 2021, is it Halo and Forza?

And then if, I know that's not out yet, but if it would be for talking about it. And then flight sim and, uh, the, is that we're talking? We broke Greg. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I think I deserve a point. But let me know in the comments below if you think I deserve less than a point for that.

I think you get the point. I think you get the point. I think you get the point. Greg says Xbox will be the toast of the town by 2021. And people will talk about it like they talked about the switch at launch. Quote, oh my God, the switch is great. Now, Xbox game pass. Do we now walk around all the time saying the best value in gaming?

That is true. And I would argue, I don't think you had a full point for that. I do think you deserve some partial credit, though, because people do talk about Game Pass this way. And not only... Go for it. And not only Game Pass, but the ease of everything they're doing. Like how consumer-friendly everything has been, how great whenever anybody mentions having to upgrade their PS4 game to a PS5, and they have to download the cloud save and do all this bullshit.

and smart delivery is a thing and that's just so consumer friendly. So I think, you know what, Greg, I think they are the toast of the town. I will love Bill Spencer. I'm going to disagree a little bit here. I absolutely think Game Pass is the best value in gaming. I think their back catalog commitments, fantastic.

I think Andy's totally right about their customer service. They have absolutely everything going for them, except new video games. And I do think that that keeps you from being at toast of the town. I mean, I, I love what Microsoft's doing. I think they're brilliant. The acquisitions,

I think they've got a bright future, but I still don't think they quite landed yet. I still have not seen my reason to go get an Xbox. I mean, the bigger thing for me that, like, would make Greg not get the full point here is the comparison to the Switch's launch.

Like the things that we made us say, oh my God, the switch is great was like, hey, the promise of the portability console thing worked, and we got debatably the best Zelda, debatably the best Mario of all time. within that year.

Whereas with the Xbox, it's like, yeah, we got game pass, but we already had game pass before, too. And it was dope then. People like it now. 0.6.0.6 for granted. I'd even go 0.7, Andy. Wow. Yeah.

Are you happy with that, Greg? Tess of the town. I mean, I'll take what I can get. Don't be wrong. But this is, you're not treating me like, I'm the toast of the town. Okay, let's see. There's a fun conversation

that goes a lot of different places. Greg thinks Xbox will support cross-gen games that look great on Scarlet, while PlayStation will focus on PlayStation 5. Tim thinks PlayStation will have to support cross-gen as well. You're so close, Greg. Wait, hold on.

Say my part again? Greg thinks Xbox will support cross-gen games that look great on Scarlet while PlayStation is just, they're moving forward to PlayStation 5. That's not what you read eventually. I don't know. PlayStation's focus on PlayStation 5. They are focused.

you're going to sing on PS5. No. I didn't say they won't it. That's like, you're like, the toes of the town. Like, what the fuck does that mean?

No, no, because like the thing is the context is me then coming to say, I'm aware that I'm across. I'm worried that I'm arguing. They also try to figure out what an Xbox lineup looks like, which is fun to re-listen to post-Bethesda acquisition. They also talk about streaming, which Jared has a suspicious interest in.

That's very funny. Fran comes in saying Apple will have a controller solution by 2021 for iPhones and or for phones and Apple TV. Now here's the deal. I'm going to give Fran partial credit. Oh, toes to the town. Because while while they do not have an actual Apple unique controller, the Apple store sells dual sense controllers for this specific purpose and promotes it as the controller of Apple games on.

Apple TV and phones. So it's like, I understand Fran gave you your start in this industry. You don't have to carry water for him anymore. All right. Give him all these things. Think about what he did to Jared and then look me in the eye and tell him all right, this guy deserves these points.

I think he gets the point for that one because they knew that they weren't going to come up with their own. Barrett, I understand Fran gave you your start in the next year. He really didn't. I also love that Greg Strideh win and make sure Fran It loses. It's so good.

But yeah, I would give him, I'd give him a, like, 0.25 for this because he meant Apple's going to have a controller. Not that they're just going to... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I would have even gone to... I mean, the solution, of course, is the backbone, which they somehow fucked up in 2021. I mean, when it make any...

If they literally, like, just, like, put an Apple logo on a dual sense, Fran would be right. I mean, my understanding is it's pretty much 100% compatible across. the library, right? That it's officially... Well, so is the Xbox controller, right? Like, I mean... Right.

Any control you do that. The key for me, though, I would give him some points, is that Apple actually uses the dual sense in Apple marketing. Right. As a controller alongside its game stuff. So it's like,

there is a partnership there for the dual sense. A controller with no back paddles, embarrassing. Embarrassing. You're going to see, like, lifestyle photography of somebody playing Apple TV with, with the dual sense. And I think that counts.

I think I hate to give Fran credit for anything because he's so terrible, but I do think. I think about what he did to you. That's true. You know what you did. You don't know what you did. The internet will soon enough, Frank. Don't worry.

Moving on. And God, I'm happy I was right about this one. Final Fantasy 7 remake will be released and received better that our core Final Fantasy game since 12. Holy shit. You crushed a huge one. That's a huge one. So happy about that.

That is the year. That is the boldest prediction of all. in. And you deserve three points of that. Thank you. Thank you. The toast of the town. Tost of the town. He's not a toast of the town, Craig.

Jared comes in and this is a fun one. This is a very fun one. And this shows how long ago we made these predictions. Death Stranding will come out and have a metacritic somewhere in the 80s. The other guys are shocked thinking it will be either in the 90s or below the 80s. And Tim thinks the gameplay will be better than Metal Gear Solid 5. Yeah, yeah, you deserve that. You deserve that.

I'm feeling good about this one. Yeah. I'm feeling good about this one. What do you guys, where do you guys guess? I'm going to guess. I'm going to guess. I'm going to guess 88. Really?

For the Metacritic, I would have guessed. I guess like 80s. 83 or something here. 82. There you go. There you go. 802 on the Metacritics. So getting close to that under 80,

but hey, Jared gets a full ass point for that. So, yeah, Jared. I feel good about it. Feeling good here. Thank you, friends. Thank you. Brand says Nintendo will have released a core phone game like a Mario or Zelda. No.

Because this, I think, unless Mario Kart Tour came out, after these predictions, then I would give them the point. I don't think Mario Kart 2 or counts. That's still half a game. It's not a core Nintendo title. It's a core franchise,

and it is one that people do play a lot. But even before that episode, because I remember when this game came out to mobile, when I was at IGN, was the Mario side scroller, and that's a core franchise technically, so that wouldn't have been a prediction. I think Fran was saying,

like, we're going to get a Mario Odyssey 2 on the Apple store or some shit like that. that was my interpretation as well because yeah you're right about uh barrett talking about mario uh that was mario run by them it was like 2017 yeah so mario cart tour was 2019 so the mario cart tour was after he made the prediction and i would argue that it is a core title we don't like it but it is it's a mario cart game and like there's new mario cart maps in it new levels there's a lot of content again i don't like it but it's not like

Animal Crossing Pocket Camp. Like, it is a Mario Kart game. But either way, I don't think you should get the full point, because it is not like a core title that everyone has to go out and play. But, yeah, I don't, to me, like, if you would have, I would have guessed it was on the exact same level as an Animal Crossing Pocket Camp.

I didn't think that there would be much of a, of a difference between the two quality of those games. So, like, I just expected it was this thing they came out and nobody's going to talk about it again just like Super Mario Run did. I agree with that. Yeah, I wasn't thinking it was going to be Odyssey 3 or whatever. The difference is that the team that made Mario Kart 8

is to this day still making new courses for that game. God, that sucks. And not 8? What the fuck is happening in this company, Tim? Get on the phone with Mr. Nintendo, please. W&D. I mean, it's not like people have stopped buying 8 though. like Mario Kart 8 will sell to

2045 at this rate. And you know what? You know what would make even more money, Jared? Putting out more DLC to sell to all of those fucking kids who are still buying Card 8. But also make a Mario Kart 9. I know. Thank you. Thank you. Tim, I know. I know. Yeah, you've come around and I appreciate it. I appreciate

it, young boy. All right, here we go. Greg's here. Disney will have ended the Star Wars Agreement with EA. And an exclusive Xbox Star Wars game will have been announced. Oh, so close, Greg. So close.

So close. You could have stopped early. Do you imagine if it would have gone the other way that with Nights the old Republic or whatever? You know what I mean? If it would have been right there. I mean, that's what it felt like. I am shocked. Even now, I can't believe it.

Didn't they, no, Nintendo got that weird one. The only Xbox exclusive they've gotten from Disney is the Indiana Jones then. No exclusive Marvel. No exclusive Star Wars. All they got is Cindy. Tim says VR will not play a major role in the next console generation. It'll still exist, but it will mean less than it does at that moment in time in 2019. Nails it.

Fun on. Yeah. I mean, I think so far, it's interesting. I think that I'd argue against myself because of Alex, but that's not on consoles. And also Alex was like a moment in time last year, right? Whereas like so much time has passed since then. Yeah, so we'll see. Alex is the most inaccessible video game of all time.

Greg has one here. PlayCStation VR2 will have been announced. So congratulations. Okay, okay, I didn't fuck it up with some second half thing. Well, I still will give you this because I think it's going to be, but you said, and be wireless. Okay, thank you. Thank you're still giving it.

You're up on those quest vibes. Are they going to say PSVR2 will have been announced and completely free? Well, it goes back to, you know, Tim's earlier thing we were talking about right of like just that makes sense. It makes sense that the second one will be wireless. That's whatever he wants. It's whatever he needs. But now, okay.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like it's, I think it will be. They have announced it in one of the most bizarre ways ever, but they did. They did. Jared says in 2021, there will be periods where Fortnite is the most streamed game.

I do not have this information. I am going to guess. During the event, right? They just had that other big event. that must I mean you would have thought yeah the Ariana Grande event absolutely okay I was thinking of the more recent one with the cube but yeah like there's so many big season ending events right that they must have had some we're saying that it was the number one game on Twitch for a day or whatever a moment even in September 2021

fortnight is at number eight of the most watched games on Twitch so right now yeah yeah yeah oh petty two thumbs up you did it that's two thumbs up right there I feel like that was a safe one like that was that one was kind of easy I think points on the board Did I get partial credit for the one I fucked up with the Xbox thing? No. The Star Wars Xbox thing? I mean. Just want to make sure is that on the record? Does that happen?

Well, what do you want partial credit for? Didn't I get, oh, I got the right, the first part right, right? They're not the exclusivity with EA's done. Oh, Disney have ended the Star's agreement with EA. I mean, I'll give you the point. Did they end the agreement though? Or aren't they just also working with other people? Well, that would be the end of the accessibility agreement, right?

Yeah, exactly. If their games aren't exclusive. anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. During the Ariana Grande event, the Fortnite event had a viewership of 1.7

million viewers. That's a lot of people watching. People love Ariana Grande. And then I love saying her name too. It's fun. It's actually Grandi.

Do you know that? No, it isn't. It is. It's Italian. Ariana Grande. That's not as much fun to say. Why do you say it like ID? Like something Jason Mendoza would say. That can't actually be true. It is true. It's a good call. Fran has the final one here saying bungee will still be independent and destiny will be more of a service game and less of a $60 game.

Well, I mean, definitely half credit, but I don't know. That's such a hard thing to gauge. What the hell is that second? How do you even gauge that? I mean, like, it wouldn't service me. Like, you're paying for, like, updates and stuff like that. Because I feel like Destiny 2, especially where it's at right now, it's not really just that $60 game. There was that moment where Greg and I were thinking that one weekend of like, let's get, let's do it. Let's get back into Destiny 2.

And it was like, all right. Everybody says this mission is great. We went to do it. They're like, you have to pay for it. Yeah, you have to pay for this. You have to pay for this. And it was like, all right, like, I think of Destiny 2, almost more subscription.

Not monthly, I guess. but like there's just something more beyond of what it is is just a $60 game, you know? Yeah, I think I'd give him credit for this one. Can I hear it again? Fulway. Bungi will still be independent and Destiny will be more of a service game and less a $60 game. Yeah, sure. It's just really easy. I mean, what game is in a service game is my only thing.

Yeah. And I'm, you know, I was with Fran in early ones. I'm not with it here. Just because he went for the easy thing. Get fucked, Fran. Fran. Get fucked, Fran. Andy's the one that gets to decide.

You got fucked on this one. I wish there was more. We should do this again for a future time so that we can come back in many years and see what's up. You all killed it. That's incredible. There were so many perfectly. Isn't that fucking cool?

Yeah. It's almost as Tim knew what he was doing. Come on. Come on. I appreciate that, Eddie. I appreciate that a lot. You know what else I appreciate Andy? Jared Petty.

Jared, thank you for joining us. Once again on the Kind of Funny Games cast. I hope we can have you again. again, sometimes soon. But either way, where can people find you? People can find me at Petty comma Jared on Twitter. And people could find me at the Top 100 Games podcast on Stitcher, on Spotify, on Apple Podcasts and all the place you listen to podcasts. Why would you want to do that? Well, because it's fun, it's light, it's simple,

it's dumb, it's kind of wonderful. It's a silly little show I like. And I could do some listenership. So this community's been really good to me. Top 100 Games podcast, if you want to pause this for a second and search for it and then come back and add it to your subscriptions it would mean a lot to me i think it's a good little show it's about the guests not about me it's one of the things i like about it and i hope you'll come and listen and enjoy it there you go now i want to make it about charred just for a little bit longer for the patreon exclusive post show so everyone on patreon dot com slash kind of funny game stay tuned for that and for everyone else i love you goodbye