Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - We've All Played Xbox Series X! - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 42

Episode Date: October 15, 2020

We talk about Yakuza Like a Dragon, Mario 64, Genshin Impact, and give our impressions on the Xbox Series X. Time Stamps - What We Have Been Playing 00:02:08 - Minecraft Steve in Smash Bros. 00:09:55 - Genshin Impact 00:21:35 - Second Extinction 00:26:00 - Foregone 00:31:50 - Mario 64 120 Stars 00:42:00 - Topic of the Show: Xbox Series X Everything We Think So Far Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome back to the kind of funny games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes. Join by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. Waka, Waka, Waka. The former and former Imran Khan. Waka, like, is that a, are you doing the Pac-Man noise or the Fuzzy Bear noise? I was doing Fuzzy Bear. Okay.

Are you doing Pac-Man? I think Pac-Man is three, Fuzzy Bear is two. So that's why I was confused. Gotcha. Okay. Glad we could have that up. You're right, though. You nailed it.

No, that's right. I was fucking wrong. The new face of video games blessing at Ayoia, Jr. Walk a flock of flame. Thank you. Thank you for that. I was wondering what walk of reference you might make, and I'm happy to do it with that one. You got to do it with no hands, baby.

Do it with no hands. This is the Kind of Funny Games cast each and every week right here on YouTube. com slash Kind of Funny Games. We get together to talk about video games, all the things that we love about them. You can get the show ad free with the exclusive post show by going to Patreon.com slash kind of funny games just like our many Patreon producers did. James Davis at James Davis makes. Jeffrey P. Long.

Julian the gluten. Pee long. Free gamer. Sancho West Gaming. James Hastings, Tom Bach, and 248, 835-53699. There you go. Give it a call. Say hello.

If you don't want to give us any money, that's cool. You can just watch later on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roosterteat.com. If you want to listen to us as a podcast, just search your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Games cast. Today we're brought to you by AT&T 5G and Guideline, but we will talk about that later. Boys, I want to talk about the Smash Brothers update. Who here has played it so far? I have played the Steve. Did you get all the spirits?

Did you see his giant dong? His huge censored dong in the victory screen, yes. It's weird. It's weird. I hope that they change it because it's like, oh, they're going to change that. Did you get all the spirits?

I did. They were surprisingly difficult, and I'm not sure if that's because the fights themselves were difficult or that I'm really bad with Steve, and it could be either because I'm really bad with Steve. Could be all the above.

The final one, the Ender Dragon or whatever the hell it is. That one, that was a challenging spirit. It's the first spirit that I've had to do multiple times in a very long time. That one I kind of cheased a little bit, because like if you get Ridley underneath the cage

and just keep doing the down A, he just keeps popping up and popping back down. The one with the Enderman was like extremely difficult for me because they would just kick my ass every single time. And I only barely won because I didn't watch that whole Sakurai presentation. I fell asleep during a lot of it. So I didn't understand a lot of the basic mechanics

of how this character worked. So I kept running out of iron and I could not like do the attacks that do the most damage. So I'm kind of in a similar place where we watched, me and Bless watched the live react, or the reaction. We made reactions to the reveal of Steve. But because Sakra,

I didn't do the whole presentation until the mind con thing a couple days later, I actually never got the chance to sit down and watch it. For the first time, playing a new character, not knowing anything about it. On top of that, not knowing anything about Minecraft. I have never been this lost in a Smash Brothers game.

I have no idea what the hell's going on. It's seeing the different characters is, really like mind-boggling to me where I'm like, what is the difference between Steve and this enderman, slender man thing and all the just different variations going on? All the levels look like garbage now. I'm just like, I know that I sound like a total hater right now,

but like this, I don't like this guys. I don't know, man. I don't want this shit in my smash brothers. Not in my smash brothers. There's a very like old man yells at cloud kind of aspect of this though. It's like, I am sure there are kids who are like from, ages like four to 15, 18, whatever, that are losing their minds and all this stuff,

that are saying like, oh, my God, they got a skeleton spirit. Or they executed Steve perfectly when he falls asleep. Exactly. And for me, I'm like, I don't know. I don't understand anything about this character. This is not working for me. Yeah, like jokes aside,

this is the first new character in Smash Brothers in, potentially ever that I'm just like, I don't enjoy this. Wow. See, it's funny, being a, way more of a Minecraft fan than a smash fan I think in modern times like everything you're saying makes me interested in it like oh man that'd be cool to go see and I'd love to go see how the levels look in the Minecraft way yeah I mean this the weird an issue that I have is a lot of the moves

and again I should do more research and actually watch the how to thing to understand this character because like even his B move I'm like I don't really understand what's happening what's he do he just kind of switches like I don't know it looks like he's digging in some he like yeah he minds Is there like different items seem to be popping up? Yeah. But I don't know what they do. But do you know, Emron? So you have to, basically above your life bar or life percentage, you have a material bar.

And you fill that up with materials. And occasionally you'll dig things that will allow you to upgrade your weapons. But the materials determine how, if you can do certain moves. So like, let's say you don't have any iron. You cannot do the animal move. You cannot do the mind cart move. You can't do like certain other things. You don't have enough wood.

You can't build blocks out of wood. so that makes it harder to, like, you know, use the neutral be in the air when you're trying to recover. So it's stuff like that. There are a couple of moves that are not, like, uh, resource dependent, but most of them are.

And you will have a very hard time killing anything if you don't have any resources like banked. I would have not known that. I didn't know that it changed the, the moves at all. I was using the, the, the up A and the anvil,

like all the time. And it seems fine. It is so incredibly complicated. Like, I feel like, this is like when I gave my parents an iPhone and I was like, hey, figure this out. Like, see what you can do with this.

That's what it feels like to me is that I'm sure people who play Minecraft understand all this easily. But for me, I'm looking at like several different things and just not understanding any of it. Yeah. And it's cool, though, because, you know, to the credit of Sakurai and what Smash is, like, there's so much love and care clearly put into it. This just seems to be the first time that it totally goes over my head.

And some of that comes off as annoying because unlike a lot of the other characters, these characters get in the way of the stages. And granted, I was doing the spirit battles, so a lot of them had multiple Minecraft characters at once, sometimes like upwards of six or seven of them. And they're all like creating blocks and shit on the normal levels, and it just turns into just chaos of just pixelated garbage. It's just like, this sucks.

But I wonder if I'll ever be able to wrap my head around understanding the core of the characters gameplay without fully understanding Minecraft because Minecraft is something that I have watched at least three, five to ten minute explanation videos of what Minecraft is and I still don't get it.

This is one of those, yeah, basically, yeah, is Lego blocks. But that's, that's, like, that is. Like, you got a mine and you got a craft. And it's like, all right, you can say Legos, but where does the mining and the craft can come in? I'm with you, Tim. I've never understood Minecraft. It's always fascinated me.

If you've played any survival game, you've played like the core of Minecraft at this point. Like hell, if you've played Fortnite, you've played a lot of like what Minecraft is. Get your mats, yeah. Yeah, but on top of that, I was just like not really viving with the character so far, I feel like this is the least interesting,

like update Smash has had in a long time where I feel like there's not that many spirits to do and there wasn't that much other extra stuff added. Whereas like, I feel like the last couple DLC characters, there was more new gameplay. there's more new things to do. I think numerically you're wrong there because there are more Minecraft spirits

than I usually are for DLC. I mean, I guess Min Min Min Min. Not for the first ones. I mean, yeah, I guess Min Min Min was an exception. Min Minen was like Persona 5 had the most, I think. And then since then it's been like some are one page, some go on to the second page. But like Minmin had a decent number,

but a lot of them you would have already had because they were arms characters that were in the game already in a business spirits. Like Minecraft has a decent amount. out, it's just like, I think they're just done adding a lot of content beyond the fighters. It's just going to be like, here's a fighter, here's some associated spirits, here's a classic mode, and that's kind of it. Like, we're not getting anything else.

Yeah, which I look, I'll take more characters. I'm still stoked this is happening. And at the end of the day, I'm happy that Steve's in it. I do think that it's super important to represent different eras of gamers. And that is, while it goes over my head, I'm sure there are many people that totally are going to main him. How much bigger can you get than Steve? at this point. Like I think the right you go down, you go down at this

point is, I don't know, get Fortnite characters in there. And it's like, all right, well, we're going to go from here. Right now I'm in a state of, I'm boycotting Super Smash Brothers because they did my boy dirty. They made Travis Touchdown, a Me costume. And I ain't with that. I ain't

with that. Did you buy it? Yeah, I did. Have you put it on? Have you tried it? I haven't tried it yet, but I always just buy the things. I'm curious if it does feel cool to actually like rock that thing. use the swordsman. But aside for that, you're thinking about buying already.

You're over here like, wait, is it a good day? Should I get it? Do I pick it up? See, blessing, what you need to do is you need to put Travis versus Cloud and recreate that fight from the starting number of heroes too. Oh. With that one guy who looks way too much like Cloud.

Like identical. Is he supposed to be like Cloud? Is that like a bit? I didn't put that together. That's actually kind of funny. Hey. Moving on. I want to talk about a game that we didn't have time

to talk about last week. Genshin Impact. Has anyone here besides Imron played it? I played like a couple hours of it. What's the word, guys? Imron probably has way more to say than I do, because I started it and I kind of dropped off because my journey with it was booting it up the night.

It came out. It was like a Sunday night or whatever. I booted it up, played a bit, try to like wrap my mind around it. And basically I came away from it with the idea that, okay, this is a Breath of Wild-like game, open world free to play action RPG which is really unique like we don't really get many of those

which is the thing that kind of attracted me to wanting to try it out and seeing what it is uh as i started playing it though like it it felt like it it almost felt like a mobile game port in terms of how it runs in terms of how kind of chanky i feel like some of it feels uh and then also in terms of the gotcha mechanics because since it's free to play the way they go about monetizing is having these, like having these gotcha systems and having you essentially buy character packs, their character upgrades and all this stuff. That said, like, I think the art style is cool. It is very anime.

It is very like a, like, here are your wifus. Here's the character that is basically Navi, but it's Navi with the personality and very, like, yeah, I don't, I didn't really like her that much. But I've not been paying attention enough to Twitter and what the reactions have been to see how people have been reacting to the characters. in the game, but coming away from it, I was like, all right, this seems like it's going somewhere. This seems like it has something to it.

I don't know if I'm going to come back to it. We'll see. But over the last few weeks, it seems like people have really been digging it. Yeah, like IGN gave it a nine, which is surprising. Like, I really like the game. I think I put about 20 hours into it. I don't know that I would score it that high, but it is definitely a, is a game that seems like it cribbed from Breath of the Wild and then went, okay, what can we do to improve

that? Or what are people complaining about in Breath of the Wild? answer was, oh, there's no music. So what if we added a lot more music? And a lot of people were wrong, though. The music of breath of the wild is perfect. Like people complained about the, uh, the lack of, are the degrading weapons that you have like would eventually break.

So they don't break in this game. They probably complain about the ballastom a little bit than like this game is honestly a pretty good ballastom. It's very tales of, you know, blank like. It's, it is litigiously close. Yeah. Litigiously close to, uh, tells them. Not turtles, but only.

That would be a cool balance of them, though. It is litigiously close to Breath of the Wild, though. Like, the main enemies, the hill turtles or whatever they're called, are straight up just moblins. Yes, they are. And, like, their encampments or moblin-like encampments, like, there's even a little glider that is exactly like the Wild Glider, so that it's wings as opposed to, like, whatever the Breath of the Wild thing was. And, like, instead of Korok missions, there, you get, like, little things. to basically

you like currency to upgrade a statue to get more stamina and stuff like that. In terms of the gotcha mechanics it's not that bad. The only thing you really gotcha are weapons and characters and you get enough of the in-game currency to do it.

I put about five bucks in this game just because it was free and I figured what the hell I'm enjoying it, why not? I have not ever needed to actually pay money for a role. I've gotten like eight characters at this point and like four of them are free and then the other four have been like also free but I had to roll for them can you explain that a little bit more like how exactly does

the gotcha thing work in this game because breath is a wild with gotcha sounds like I'm struggling to put those together so you can't basically weapons and characters are random so you pay uh they call them wishes but you can like you have the currency of primo jams that you get from like doing things in the game. That you can convert to wishes. I forget the exact currency. It's like $300 for one or $160 for one, something like that. But you pay that and then it will roll a random item or purse character for you.

And they have different rates. So characters who are stronger or weighed higher. So they're less like going to show up. I got a couple of four stars really early on and I have not gotten anything since then. So it's been a little bit more repetitive because I've like, I had these characters, I want different elements that they cover. It's like the two four stars I rolled early were a fire element and a earth element. So I got nothing in my party that covers water.

I got nothing of my party that covers of the seven elements. I forget what the other ones are. But like, I've got no water, for example. So it encourages me to keep rolling from better ones. And I'm fighting that. Be like, I'm not going to spend any money in this game just out of principle. But yeah, that is the part that I think is just, it's fun to have all these different characters

because they do control differently, they do have great things. Like the two fire elements I have is one is a kind of low tier archer who has just fire arrows and one is a like a character with a spear that like does cool melee combos and like puts out a doll that breathes fire

and they're not at all similar. So I can just choose between them depending on you know, what the scenario requires. The game doesn't feel as deliberate and just the wild. And I think that's ultimately its main problem is that

It's a cool playground and they took some, like, they made some quality of like improvements for sure to Breath of the Wild, but it doesn't feel like, oh, they meant for this thing to be here. And like, how should I put this? It feels like they made a map and then filled things into the map. And Breath of the Wild feels like they decided where things should be and then made the map around it. And that's such a, like, it's such a difficult thing to convey that I'm not sure anyone's going to like,

unless you've played both games extensively, it's hard to see what that difference is. But yeah, it's... I think it's a good game. I think it's worth downloading and playing for a couple hours until you get bored. But I also think, like, I saw...

I think digital trends on a story today that was five things Gengen Impact is better than Breath of the Wild. And one of the things I said was, this game has way more story. And it's like, that's not a thing I'd say is better than Breath of the Wild. I think this game has way too much story.

And everything takes, like, 10 textbox longer than it needs to. And it's things like that of like maybe you'll find it better. Maybe those are things that you might enjoy more, but they could also be just as like it turned you off as well. And this is also a mobile game. It is on, yeah, Android iOS, PS4, which does not run great, by the way. No.

And PC. Interesting. It's really interesting to see this game kind of coexist at the same time where we're getting Immortals Phoenix Rising in a few months. Because I feel like both those games, both these games are trying to be breath of the while. in different yet similar ways. Like you mentioned the article that is,

here are five things that Genschen Impact does that are better than Breath of Wild. And I feel like you're going to get that same exact article when Emerald's Phoenix Rising comes out because both these games feel like they are solving for things that Breath of Wild kind of, I think maybe rubbed certain groups of people the wrong way. Like, yeah, when it does come to the degrading weapons

or when it does come to the story or the lack of story or however you want to call it out or when it comes to the soundtrack, like Breath of Wild had had certain elements to it that I think some people me for example adored like I think the weapon degradation works great because the game is kind of the game is designed around that system I think the music is great because I like the piano music that is there and I think them using aspiringly was pretty artistically done but I know so many people that did not like those things I know so many people that jumped into Breath of Wild and they're like

why is this open world so so empty why is there nothing to do you know where is the story where is the narrative. We're the side quest. And Immortals Phoenix Rising seems like it's going to have that. Genshin Impact seems like it has a lot of stuff that, you know, people want from that. I'm curious to see, like, post, I guess, 2020 after we've gotten both these games, which one people seem to gravitate toward more and what, like, the end lesson ends up being with all of it. Because, like, I want to like both Immortals Phoenix Rising and Gensin Impact because Breath of Wild, one of my favorite games I've ever played.

But I do find that there are things when I play those games, or when I previewed Omeral Tienis Rising, when I tried out Genshinis Impact, immediately something felt off about both those games, and I couldn't really put my finger on it. I think part of it is one of the main things I liked about Breath of the Wild, two of the main things I like about Breath of Wild were one, the exploration discovery aspect of it.

I think that is probably the biggest takeaway from that game is how well it guides you through the map. you mentioned how the world feels designed around, like, it is hard, it is hard to put in the words, but the world feels very designed deliberately. Like, you know, you're going to the Twin Peaks for a reason, you know, like there's a, there are puzzles built around the Twin Peaks of Breath of Wild. There are, when Breath of Wild first came out, forget who it was that put out the article about the weenies, but like when you started off in the Great Plateau, right, and you look around

the map, right, and you see the floating thing and you see the desert area. and you see Death Mountain and you see Gannon's Castle and you see all the different points of interest from that main central area that they start you off from. That is like a thing that is then leading you to experiencing the world in a very deliberate fashion in a way that I feel like both Genshinxia Impact and Immortals, Phoenix Rising. Like those games might have them there and I might just specifically Emerald's Phoenix Rising because I know in that game, those kind of a Gannon's Castle-esque thing that I remember

seeing. But like, I don't know if, I don't know if they're going to go as hard as Breath of Wild did with that stuff. And then also, the physics systems in Breath of Wild is like the other big thing that I absolutely love, right? The idea that you can have, you can have it be rain, you can have a thunderstorm going on, you know, and because of the thunderstorm, that means that if I have a metal sword equipped, I'm in danger. But if I throw that metal sword in an enemy and light ink strikes, I can then kill my enemies, which can then cause the grass to catch on fire from the lightning. And I can use that fire and, like, glide up it to get a high advantage of my enemies and then drop down with my,

with my, you know, axe or whatever it is, right? Like those moments. What a fucking game. Let's get. Yeah. Like those moments in Breath of Wild are so cool. And I still go back to that game and I still experience new moments like that because the game is designed around a physics system that feels so smart and so,

uh, free in terms of how you use it. And Genshin Impact has like the elemental stuff, which feels like it's trying to go for a bit of that, but doesn't necessarily go all the way in terms of, freedom of using that stuff in puzzle, puzzle solving and in combat, and like, I mean, just however you want to.

Emerald's Phoenix Rising, same thing. Like, it has hints of that, but like doesn't, I don't think, or Emerald's Phoenix Rising is going to go all the way with that either. And so, like, I don't know, I'm, I'm, I'm interested to see, like, the progression of all these games and, like, to see, like, the ways in which they continue to stay the same, but also differ in which one, and how, how different audiences kind of latch on to

these different games. My hope is that by the end of this year, I want to go like, oh yeah, Immoral Spanx why I did things that absolutely improved on Breath of the Wild. And then next year,

Breath of Wild too comes up and like, oh, fuck that. This game is just way better than all of those. Greg, you were not playing Genshin Impact. But you were playing

Second Extinction. Yeah, me and Blest played Second Extinction today, an early access game where you run around in first person shooter mode shooting dinosaurs

for one to three players. So it was me, Bless and Andy today did a stream that was sponsored, but not sponsored by Second Extinction. It was sponsored by NXT, right? NZXT, no, NXT, the wrestlers. The amazing computer brand. My apologies. I got, I was under, I didn't, I kept making Triple H references.

Nobody understood. Yeah, so yeah, we ran around and played this PC game today, and I had little to no expectations for it. I think we had seen it, what, at the one of the Xbox showcases, right, blessed, where we had commentated over. over it. Yeah. The one,

the, like, I'm just going to call it the Assassin Creed Valhalla Xbox showcase. That's the thing that they were showing there.

Yeah, exactly. And that was one that was announced there. It's in early access now on Steam and we jumped in and played it. And I had a hell of a time

with it. I was, you know what I mean? Like, it's this weird early access PC game that was given me and blessing. And I think maybe even Andy,

all kinds of fucking trouble starting and keeping it in the right resolution and doing stuff, which, of course, I chalk up to PC gaming in general. But,

the game itself was a ton of fun, right, Blas? Yeah, no, I had a blast with it. Like, I'm not necessarily one to fall in love with the Left or Deadlight games. But this one specifically, I think the actual act of controlling and playing it, like the first person shooting, is really solid and really fun in the way the way in which the Raptors break apart when I shoot them at a, shoot them in the face with my shotgun. Very satisfying.

Yeah, and that was what I wasn't expecting. I think, you know, my, and I was going to say we as an industry, but definitely. me, Greg Miller, I'm so quick to say, oh, it's trying to be left for dead. Oh, it's doing this and trying to do what left for dead did. And to step into this game and not know what we're getting, hadn't played it, played it until we turned it on today and find that, oh, man, it is literally just jump in and like, you know, pick which character you want to be. They have different, you know, special abilities or whatever, but you get to go through and pick what weapons they have and go from there to run in there and just have it be us three running around, trying to pull off the

objective to then, you know, get to the end and exfiltrate out. Like, it was fun, you know, it was challenging at times. They have a bunch of big dinosaurs in there that are a threat. I don't know what you call that one with the, Tim, you're a big dinosaur thing. The big dude, you kind of, you kind of think of it, like having a giant turtle shell, and he's got that big tail and he spins around with a rock a kiss. That's the one. Yeah. He was there. And yeah, he's, you know, his belly was the only weak spot. So, you know, we had to blow at him, and then he would start tipping over and try to throw a grenade to roll him on his side and then shoot him in the belly.

and it was it ran well and it was it was fun to play and you know it was it is left for dead a run around and shoot a bunch of stuff and then andy screaming and we have to run over there and help him but i don't have fun with it i think it has like a lot of hints of greatness too like i think it being in early access for where it's at right now i think it's in a good place like playing hades has made me such a believer in in early early access because i've been watching the danian the um the um the new clip doc about the making of hades i think it's called developing hell um where they they they try to track Hades from its early actual launch. Great name. Fadde O'Dwyer. You clever son of a bitch. They basically tracked Hades from it launching an early access

and what that looked like. And yeah, like coming back to Hades and playing it as a fully released game, you know, everybody's in love with it. Everybody's like, this is fantastic. Everybody's talking about how good it is. But, you know, watching that early access journey, I think reveals a lot of things in terms of,

okay, cool. Like, they started with a lot of these ideas in place, but it's cool to see them add in certain weapons or see them struggle with how a certain boss fight played out or see them struggle with, oh, there are these glitches here that are messing up the whole thing. Like, you know, playing Second Extinction is saying that me, Andy and Greg, all had our different character builds

because there are different characters you can choose from that had different abilities. But we had our different characters, had our different weapons. But then, like, there are certain support items that you can get that would get air drops. And so, like, at a certain point, I was like, okay, well, if Andy, if Andy has the one that calls down equipment, which will give them grenades and stuff, and then Greg has the one that'll call down ammo, which will give us more, gun ammo. I guess I can just get the one that is the airstrike, which will then cause like a massive, like massive damage effect on the enemies. And then like that turned out to be really great

build because then when we did come up against the Tim, what was the dinosaur called in? The Rhinocalakabu? Yeah, that guy. Whenever we'd come face to face with them, I would use that my, myirstrike ability and that would knock him out. And that was way better than the first time around where we were all just struggling with him for like 10 minutes at a time because he just wouldn't go down. We'd have to flip them over. The airstrike took them out in one hit. So to see stuff like that, I think is really fun. And I think it signifies like a good, a good

starting place for this game. And that's the thing is, it's a starting place, right? Where we did two missions. I thought both of them were meaty, right? What, that stream was like an hour and a half probably, right? And there was, you know, it seemed like the missions were like 40 minutes, 45 minutes, I think. Yeah, and I wasn't bored with them. I wasn't anxious for them to be done. I was anxious for

them to be done when it was time to be anxious, right? Of like, we've completed all the objectives, get to the exaltration point. Okay. call in the chopper or the, you know, hella jet or whatever the hell it is. And then, of course, you know, it's a standoff for like a minute 10 or whatever and more and more people are coming,

more and more enemies are coming. But there was that thing that, you know, we always joke around about when you watch the Ubisoft, the E3 presentations, and you get that, all right, they're on your six. All right, I'm dropping this over here. There was that happening, right? I'm going to call it in.

Everybody drop your, you know, resupplies so that we know where everything is when it happens. I find the idea of calling it an air strike and a dinosaur hilarious. And I just like, Well, that was the thing. Blessing we were underground. We had to move these mine carts, right? Like, into position and blow it up to take out this, like, thing they had taken,

the dinosaurs had, you know, their little breeding ground in. And we're in there in the tunnels and Blessings like, man, I'd love to call on my air strike right now, but I doubt it would work. And I'm like, dude, this is a game about dinosaurs. Do it. It's going to work. And sure in the tunnel and airstrike comes down somehow or whatever. It's like, who gives you?

Yeah. That's great, man. What killed the dinosaurs, Greg? The Ice Age. Thank you. Thank you very much. Tell me about Forgone. Forgone, a game I talked about on PSI Love You this week that I am super impressed with.

It's not a game that should speak to me. Kevin, I'm going to kick you a trailer just because I think it's easier to see or whatever. There you go. All right. It's a 2D action platformer that isn't a roguelike but has like that feeling to it of progression and coming back to it. But it was in kind of funny game showcase from back in summer when we did the E3-1. in 2019. We've seen it make the rounds here a lot.

I think it was in the Nintendo presentation when they announced their switch release date or whatever. But out on consoles now, another game that was out in early access. And what speaks to me about it is that I think glancing at it and watching it right now and seeing it, it wouldn't be what I would define as my kind of game.

Like I look at it and the 2D platformer double jump kind of thing usually doesn't speak to me that loudly. But playing it, it's simple enough to get into and even when I lose be like, all right, hold on, I know I can do this.

Like, you know, for me, usually it's coming up against a boss in one of these kind of games that'll be the turn off of, motherfucker, I got to memorize this pattern. How do I do that? What do I do next?

And yetta, for this one being the simplicity of having a melee weapon, having a ranged weapon, having a dodge slash slide you can use, and then having two different abilities assigned to your shoulder buttons playing on PlayStation 4.

It was easy to get into and wrap your head around. And then there's this loot grind to it of getting new items off of the enemies you beat. Then going back to, you know, HQ and having a blacksmith, you can have him upgrade your weapons or upgrade your armor, having this, you know, skill tree that you're going through. And as you go through the levels, which have a bit of Metroidvania to them of you going through and, you know, only opening up on the map or showing on the map screen what you found or where you've been before, you'll find things, little, you know, upgrade modules that when you take back, you can apply to make your skills better. Like, you know, I use this dash slash or whatever, so making that more powerful and making my melee attacks, tether an enemy to the ground, and that tether starts to deal damage. And as I upgrade it, deal more and more damage.

The, you know, the roguelike part of it is that when you go through these worlds and you die, you go back to your home base. And there, you can talk to a guy who'll give you back half of what you've earned from the currencies that'll either be applied to the blacksmith or the, you know, sage person that's giving you your upgrade upgrades. and then you can go back in there. The doors you've opened already are going to be opened already. So it is this thing of, again, even when I do fuck up and die,

I feel like I've made some progression. Even when I, you know, I screw up and to come back to it, I feel like I'm moving forward. Yeah, that's more souls like than rogue like. Yeah,

I guess it is in that way, right? Yeah, because I think that was the thing. Everybody was trying to hang so much dead cells on it. It looks a lot like dead sales. It looks,

yeah. Clearly, it's clearly an inspiration there. Clearly an inspiration there. But yeah, it plays differently in the way that, Yeah, you're making the progress and keep going. Kevin, why are you still obsessed with these Buffalo Blasts from Cheesecake Factory?

You can get on DoorDash using the code morning. I hate him so much, but I love him. Is it Metroidvania-ish? It is in the way, like I was talking earlier about how the maps presented. I haven't run into a thing of like, hmm, how do I do this? I don't have the skill kind of thing. I don't have the item for it. That may exist.

I'm still early in the game. It was one of those things where I had a great night. or two maybe maybe the weekend is when I did it I forget when we got code but I played it and was like oh my gosh it was that thing of like I'll play this for a little bit and then switch over and do my dailies and Avengers and instead it was like oh no I'm gonna play this all the way through that night and keep going and going and jumping into it that way but I'm impressed with it it's a little indie game uh seems to be doing pretty well and I think it's interesting in that with the way I've described it like obviously I think is you know yeah

and I know like indie that what does indie fucking mean anymore but it means like in the way of playing it like the presentation and the way like even like little guns and your gun chucks you can get nunchucks that are guns are represented on the screen and stuff like yeah exactly uh it's very like basic in that way but i think there's a gameplay hook to it and i think it's an enjoyable play bless before we move on to talking about the xbox series x you got you got a hundred and twenty stars i do i'm still in i think 93 the last time i popped it in it's wild how like without even realizing it, I just fell into it. I mentioned on PSLVXOXO, because we have a what we've been playing segment on that show.

And I think at a certain point, I mentioned that, oh, yeah, ever since I beat Persona 5, Roel, I've not really been married to a game. I've been playing just all these different games, but not I've not necessarily been, like, you know, on one. And it was yesterday as I was completing it where I was like, or maybe it was two days ago at this point, but it was as I was completing it was completing his and getting the 120th star where I was like, oh, I guess I had been married to this game. Like I've been playing this game nonstop.

It's in such a reminder that it's, it's one of those things where when I think of the N-64 era and I think of N-64 games, I think we all have the shared understanding that none of those games of age well, like it's hard to go back X, Y, or A, I guess, yeah, et cetera, et cetera. I know I was going through X, Y, Z, A, B, but et cetera, et cetera. But man, and maybe this is just a, the fanboy in me, but I feel like Mario 64's age so well. Like, I feel like the game plays so well. I feel like the level design is so good. The more and more I played the game,

the more and more I was like, wow, there are geniuses that made this thing. Like actual geniuses that made this game. Yeah, no, I feel very satisfied with my 120 star journey. And I actually wanted to use this as a jumping off point. Because as I was getting my 120 stars, I started to have the thought about how big of a Mario fan that I am across all the games.

And I started to have the thought of, man, I wonder if, like, we polled people who people would say is the biggest Mario fan at kind of funny to which I made the leap that I assume people

would probably say that Tim Geddies is the biggest Mario fan and kind of funny which made me think I wonder if I can challenge that which made me think

man extra life is coming up soon isn't it which made me sit down and think how can if me and Tim wanted to sit down and do some sort of challenge some sort of competition to see who's the biggest Mario fan at kind of funny what would that look like so 10 i have a good question i have a proposition for you and i can let you work out the details whether this happens that extra life or

this happens separately whatever this looks like for you because you're the you're the the plan guy you know how to plan things out in the way that works okay but i got an idea right five rounds we're we're in to October still are we trying to get to Mari I don't know you get you got you're gonna help me out it's Mario's 35th anniversary okay this is a year long thing five rounds five challenges I've written two down all right the first challenge the first challenge you want to do me and you I'm actually where let me find it because I've written it down but it's in one of my sticky notes and I got to pull it up hold on hold on hold on I got to cycle through

these things okay here you here I go all right I want to see who can be in this is essentially going to be like a race format between me and you, all right? The first challenge. Who can get, who can be the first to beat the first Bowser in Mario 64? I like that. Me versus you. That's challenge number one. Challenge number two, who can get the most coins in Mario three in under 10 minutes?

All right? The most coins. The most coins. Interesting. Okay. Switch things up. Yeah. That's a bizarre challenge, but I mean.

Yeah. But those are the two that I've thought of. What I want you to do is think of your own two challenges. I mean, I think a basic one we need is beating Mario 1. Like beating? Oh, yeah, because I guess the entire game. Bless it's a trick. Don't do it.

Don't do it. He knows how to do it faster than you. I can tell you right now. But I can train. I got time. Yeah, it's not rocket science. I got time. All right.

Bless don't do it. It sounds good. I'm just putting this out there now. Like, I love that you're calling me out and I am in. But we got our boy Imran here too. I'm just saying he's probably a big fan as well. Hmm. Yeah.

What a re-enforcement of himself from here. No, I'm thinking like your challenges so far are very, for five challenges, it's a very early Mario-centric. There's not a whole lot in the last 20 years. Well, that's the way I was kind of thinking about it, right? Because I know my bread and butter, when it comes to my two favorite Mario games,

there are Mario 3, Mario 64. And so I figure if I'm going to make two challenges, I'm going to make those two. Can I have Tim make his own two challenges? I'm sure Tim loves Mario Galaxy. or who knows, Mario Odyssey. You know, you do when I want to do Mario Paint, you guys have to recreate the Mona Lisa

and whoever's the most act. Yo, I will fuck you up in Nat Attack, though. You ain't ready for that. Yeah, that's true. I'm not going to fight you in Nat Attack. Hey, I love, this is fantastic, but. See, I'm going to come up on the spot

with some other challenges here. It's to solidify, right? My idea was, all right, I'll come up with you. Tim comes up with you. When I'll have a third party come up with the fifth challenge. You get a Dan Riker. There's somebody else we know who loves Mario. No, we can bring in Ron into this.

Mario's 64. Who gets a better time on Cooper the Quake and Boba on Battlefield? That's pretty good. Yeah. The race up. I feel like if you guys do a trivia, I want to write the actual trivia questions for that one. See, I like that. I want a trivia challenge for sure.

Yeah. Because I will fuck you guys up with that one with like the most dumb bullshit possible. I love it. I like what, give me like what type of trivia would it be? like about the directors and stuff of the games or would it be about like specific levels I mean stuff like which Mario game had the most polygons in Mario's mustache

Odyssey right You'd think so no it's a Mario party Fuck Oh shit you're not a Mario fan See that's what's interesting about this is the Who's the bigger fan Who's better at the games and who's the bigger fan I think are different questions

Okay I don't know how good you are. And look, I'm not good at video games. I would never claim that I'm like super good at video games. But there are certain things that I'm like, I'm pretty good at. And beating Mario 1 fairly quickly, not faster than anyone in the world, but just fairly quickly, it's something I'm pretty good at. Because like, here's the thing. My two challenges are based

off the fact that I think I'm very good at Mario 64, and I think I'm also very good at Mario 3. So like, those are two that I'm very confident in when it comes to like just the movement mechanics. Mario 1 is very interesting one because I think I am very average in Mario 1. Like, I know the path to get it, I think I know

the path to getting to the final level quickly, right? Because it's the warpath. It's the warp pipe in the world two. And I assume you take that to like world 4-1? 4-1. Bless he's playing you, dude.

He has a world record fast, almost. No, I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I have heard Tim Bradd that he could be Mario 1 and run six minutes. No, I did not say that. No way. Now he's trying to get out of it. He's definitely said that. I am fine with training. I can trained to Mario. The best I've ever done is

under 10. And that was only nine minutes, right? See, the thing that fucks me up is that is 8-1 through 8-4, I will die a lot. They don't fuck around. Yeah, they don't fuck around in World 4. The key to beating Mario 1 fast is to not lose your firepower.

If you lose your, if you fuck up somewhere in 8-1 to 8-4 where you get small, it makes 8-4 infinitely harder. Because you have to get, not just through Bowser at the end, throwing all the hammers, but there's a hammer brother right before the thing with the lavage going up and that'll mess up

your day. Yeah. Because if you're big you can just jump, run through, take the hit, it doesn't matter. Cheez it. Cheez it. See, how long? This is me making an admission. I don't, like, 8-4 has like kind of the maze sequence, right? Where you are trying to figure out which is the right path, which is the right pipe,

et cetera. I do not know which is which. Like, oh, that would take me a minute to figure out. I feel like, to be fair, what we should do is like, it's one challenge per generation. but he needs he wants a Mario three challenge though yeah that's what I'm saying we need to cut that Mario three challenge out if you want to get the Mario one challenge

because like there are so many Mario games along the way here that I think one per generation is the only way we can do it for five maybe you can make that work but like no we can figure it out that way right Mario 64 Marr and like if we did like a rank the top five Mario games like all those games are in there right like Marr 64 Mario 3 Mario 1

I guess world would be in there. Yeah. And then probably like Odyssey or Galaxy or something. And I feel like that's a good range. Yeah. I love this. I would think Mario 1 World 64,

3. And then a modern one. Yeah. I would assume honesty just because it's easier at this point. Yeah. We can do like a Cooper race in Odyssey. Oh no. Now you're setting Tim up.

I've seen your video. You are setting Tim up on that. He'll destroy me in Mario Odyssey with that stuff. I'm bitching this. It's just three, two, one go. Whoever beats Mario 1, Mario 2,

Mario 3, and Mario 64 up to the first Bowser. Oh, you'll get me in Mario. At least Mario 1 and 2. Mario 3, I start to fuck up in that last world. Well, if you guys have suggestions, let us know.

I'm getting excited because it's like, I think we can do this if you connect your OBS to be your camera. Yeah, and then you have the gameplay that like that, that could work. We could make this work. Like I was just showing that to Andy. That actually worked pretty easily. I love it. I love it.

But let us know your suggestions. Go to the Reddit. I think that'll be a good place. If you could make a Reddit thread, just put all your suggestions and we'll go from there. And while we're here, I want to challenge an extra life friend to a pat-upon competition. Who can get in the far as this? Batapon one without one death. Is that, is that like a thing that?

No. It makes me be like, what's pat upon? But now a word from our sponsors. This episode of Gamescast is brought to you by AT&T, 5G and Samsung. Thanks to Samsung and AT&T for sponsoring this podcast. Samsung's newest phone, the Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G power by 18T 5G is available now. AT&T 5G requires compatible plan and coverage, not in all areas. Here are just some of the new features you can try out on this device.

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Again, check us out. Check that out at AT&T.com slash Galaxy Note 20 Ultra 5G. Next, shout out to guideline. Offering a 401k since a great message to your employees that says you have their back when it comes of choosing a 401k provider for them, which one will have yours. Guideline provides easy and affordable 401K plans for small businesses and startups, whether you're offering an employee retirement plan for the first time or want to make changes to your current retirement benefits. They design a plan to fit your needs. You can get set up in as little as 10 minutes.

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you can get a $100 gift card when you start your 401k plan with Guideline. That's guideline.com slash Kind of Funny to get a 401k for your business. Don't forget, guideline.com slash Kind of Funny. And tell them the Kind of Funny gamescast sent you. and now the topic of the show ladies and gentlemen Xbox Series X Greg, Imran

blessing me we've all been able to play it we've gotten our hands on it we've got to play around with a whole bunch of stuff and now our lips are unsealed we're allowed to say essentially anything we want with our experience

no more just being able to talk about quick resume or just being able to talk about this that or whatever Imron what are your thoughts so I've mostly been testing like backwards compatibility because they're like very few people like series X games available for us to play. Yeah.

So I, the backwards compatibility on that thing is ridiculous. Like, uh, give you mind, I am not a digital frownry. I don't have like frame rate testing equipment. I,

I tested two games to see, I got a PS4 pro and in series X. Just because like I had those games available. Like, I tried Kingdom Hearts three on both. It is a night and day difference. How good, how much better it runs on the series X than how it ran on the PS4 pro.

Like Tim, when you play Kingdom Hearts three, Did you play it on like the lock 30 fbs mode or like the the inconsistent frame rate mode? Inconsistent. So like you know that that inconsistent frame rate was inconsistent. It rarely hit 60 often went down quite a bit. It is, I'm not going to say lock 60 because honestly that's hard for me to perceive. But it is 60 way more often than not.

The resolution is higher. The image quality is like, chef kiss. Like if you haven't played, if you didn't have a last gen system, a series X in terms of backwards compatibility is incredible like it is the way to play these games i think bless what's your experience i mean i agree with what imran just said as somebody who's been playing a lot of mirrors edge on the xbox series x um it is it's wild how like playing mirrors edge the low times i kid you not might be like one second like it is wild how quickly these games load it And I mean, honestly, like, that's really the only thing I can really talk about because, like, you know, I'm jumping into Xbox Series X as somebody who has been playing a base Xbox.

I guess this year I've been playing an Xbox 1X, but I've been playing it on my 1080P TV. I've been playing the Xbox Series X on an actual 4K television and experiencing it that way. And so I'm finally experiencing 4K pretty much on the Xbox for the first time currently. And so, like, you know, Mirz Edge, you know, looks good. still is a Xbox 360 slash PS3 game. And it is like backwards compatible. It's not optimized for Series X or anything like that. And so it's not like the most fantastic looking thing in the world.

But yeah, like the load times and playing it and realizing that like getting to the sequences in that game where you're going into an elevator and like you're waiting for the next thing to load. Like I've been having the thought of man, if only they knew, if only they didn't put these elevators in here because now at this point we're just wasting time. Because if they put it on the next thing already, like it is, it is wild to see. But yeah, like the quick resume feature, like people have read the previews,

but, you know, to reiterate, like that stuff really is kind of game changing. Like being able to switch back and forth through a bunch of different games, is a really cool thing and really convenient. I'm also playing Outer Worlds,

the Pearl on Gorgon DLC. And also I should shout out that like the loading in that game is much quicker to. And also, that game runs way better on Xbox Series X than it did on my base Xbox One when I first played it. Like, in terms of not only how good it looks and like the frames and stuff, but like the, in when I recently played Outer Worlds on Xbox One, there were just a lot of like drop frames, a lot of stutters, a lot of stuff that just didn't sit well with me playing that game on Xbox One. and it is smooth. Like it is incredible how well that game runs. And to the point where now I feel like I am playing Outer Worlds as a first-person shooter as opposed to just an RPG, right?

Like it's been such a good experience. And yeah, like I do kind of see it as this come-together moment for like the Xbox family of systems, right? Like I know Xbox One has been back compatible, but to see everything kind of brought up to Xbox Series X in this way and to see the library there and be able to jump back and forth. through the different generations. It's really cool to see, and it has me actually really excited for what Xbox has coming to this next generation.

I tried out Cuphead and Ori and the Will of the Whist, where Ori, we reviewed earlier this year, and a big issue I had was how frequent the loading was and how much loading times there were. So now playing it, I know that they've patched the hell out of the game, and I know there has been just a lot of enhancements and changes over the last year. But it is just now instant with like there is no loading.

Like I'm playing it. I'm like, I don't know how it's been on the Xbox 1X, but I don't think it could possibly be this damn fast. Then loaded up Cuphead, it's another thing where Cuphead never had horrible loading times on the Xbox, but they were noticeable. They were there. They're not anymore.

And then doing the quick resume jumping between the two games, it's like I'm so impressed at how much it just works. And I feel like that's just going to be the catchphrase of this for a long time. It just works. If something should be fast and snappy, it is. The menu, just the UI itself, just going through the different tabs and stuff, I don't know how it could possibly feel as fast as it does, because I never had an issue with the Xbox One's interface,

but something about this just feels snappier. And that word's going to keep coming up a lot. Like, it's just snappy. And I really love how it all just kind of things feel like they were where they should be. And I enjoy the level of customization. that you have, and I know that you also had that on the 1X to an extent, but how they haven't everything laid out of being able to get to things and how quick it all is to go from thing to thing.

I'm like, this is just a more enjoyable experience. And the focus on GamePass and just being able to go in, and this might be something like, I'm saying, like I'm not digital foundry. I'm not doing actual, like, technical experiments and tests to see, like, how it's actually running in the numbers. I'm just talking about the feeling of it. even just downloading games feels faster.

Like we recently, Greg, had to do Master Chief Collection on downloading, like the updates and stuff for when we did the stream on Xbox 1X, right? And like, that took forever.

And then downloading games for GamePass on this, it felt so fast to me. I downloaded a whole bunch of them. And I was just like, this is insanely impressive. And it just seemed like it wasn't getting in the way of while I was playing a game,

slowing things down. Like, it's just fast, man. I have a lot of Xbox games because like just years of being in game journalism I'm going to get codes and put them in and there's always a bunch of stuff on my tile bar. It used to take forever on the Xbox 1 and the Xbox 1X to load those in

and sometimes it would be like literal minutes for things to populate completely. Wow. This is instant. Like a minute, like less than a minute it's like a couple of seconds is all right here's everything you own. It's like that was the thing that I know you said you never had a problem with the Xbox 1OS Tim.

it's always felt very sluggish and slow to me it's never felt right this one it feels like it doesn't feel like a layer over a Windows thing anymore it feels like an actual OS for the system and it just I was so impressed by like granted this is like day minus whatever so at some point bloat could hit it

and it could begin a lot worse but on as of right now it functions like a dream speaking on the bloat real quick like I do it's worth pointing out of course the word using non-final interface these are preview units. I don't think any of this is going to change, but it is when we're talking about bloat could come one day

or do whatever. It is important to say that. Right. Yeah. And speaking of the bloat, like I do not like how many ad-feely things are stuck on the front main page of it. It's just like, come on, guys. Like, let us take that out.

And I get why they wouldn't, but it's like, it's just pretty frustrating. Yeah. And to like the, because I 100% agree with everything. Emron just said about like the Xbox one versus how it is functioning now on the Xbox series X.

Like, everything just feels snappy and smooth and straightforward in a way that I really appreciate. But that also coupled with, like, the, how, and this feels like a very arbitrary thing or like, very much, like, I think that people who play Xbox probably already experienced. But the fact that I load up, I loaded up the Outer Worlds on the Xbox Series X with my account and it already remembered my save. Like, I didn't really have to think about it. It just automatically pulled it in a way. Maybe this is just because I'm also coming off of playing on PlayStation primarily where I believe I would have to then. on PlayStation, I would have to download. Yeah, you have to go to your own cloud saves and get that stuff and bring it down.

Yeah, it seems like Xbox prioritizes whatever is the most recent online save that you have, or I guess this most recent save period that you have on your system or online. It makes things so convenient and so snappy and just so easy to use that, you know, it's really convenient. Yeah. Well, yeah, Kevin, what's next generation all about? Convenience. Yeah, and I mean, you know, I know you guys are the, new impressions here for the Xbox Series X I had it first before we passed it around.

That's my biggest takeaway from it, right? Where as we talked about, I guess we've just talked about it, I think I mentioned on games daily today, but like, you know, if Watch Dogs Lesions codes come through soon, they're like, oh yeah, we have, you know, Xbox Series X or whatever. Like, I'm going to jump on that, you know, trophies be damned because the experience I had with the Xbox Series X is exactly what you're all saying. it's just the fact that it works and it does what it's supposed to do and it's it works as advertised you know i've talked about this a few times on different stuff and other people shows but like the quick resume thing

i've seen people be like oh yeah but like who cares like i don't play that many different games john and do this and it's like it's not even about on one night jumping between games it's about playing one game for the night you do it bouncing out the next night playing something else for an entire week coming back and resuming right where you left off with the other one for me it was about switching it over for some capture stuff I wanted to do for Yakuza and you know I brought the HTML out of the TV

and put it into the Aver and put the Aver into the computer and then for some reason I didn't have audio so I did a reset of the Xbox and when it came back and you know it loaded it I mean just you know a complete power cycle came back on I was right

I was right there started Yakuza and picked up right where I left off like it remembered my spot through quick resume through the power cycle like that's nuts like I was sitting down ready for okay hold on i'm gonna have to do all this other stuff and get back in the load my save when no it just remembered that and it's to the point that by no means is it ruined other games or anything but it's that idea of even like you know borderlands there's new dLC for borderlands i'm

like oh man yeah i want to go play that and then borderlands like oh yeah next gen's day and date you know with the new consoles and i'm like i will not i will totally wait and play that experience there because the borderlands loads suck what are those going to be and when you start applying that logic Like you're all doing with backwards compatibility. Like I showed last week with Avengers in Fortnite. It's like, yeah. Like, Amron, you had a tweet, I think even before you had the Series X that is so true of like, when are you going to check Twitter now?

Like, you know, I was playing Avengers last night, loading stuff up and I'm looking at Twitter while I'm on the Quintjet, going to the next mission. And when I was playing on Xbox Series X, I wasn't doing that. And I mean, like you're in that experience all time. It's making the most of the limited free game time we all have. And like I was playing Monster Hunter, which is like, infamous for long load times and to the point where like literally I got

so used to checking Twitter before Hunts that I would do it in front of the developers when demoing the game. When I played this on the Xbox 1X and it just, like usually you would have time to take the mission then go do some stuff like to put on some new armor eat a meal, whatever. It's like

take the mission beat, beat, beat. Missions ready, go. Then you go in there and it's like beat, beat, done. Like that is a game that literally would take minutes to get to where you need to be that now is instant. And I'm, I am like, hyping this part up because I am so surprised by it that I thought it would be fast.

I didn't know it would be this fast. And it's going to make, like, there's a number of games I just haven't finished or haven't even really started for the generation. I'm now holding off on them for the rest of the, like, the next month until I start getting these systems in and played them there. And, dude, I keep saying this about both the PS5 and Xbox series X, but now having experienced it, it's like, this is making. games better. The games we currently have are going to play better there. And so many people are like,

oh, but why should I buy a PS5 right now? Like Miles Morales is also on PS4. It's like playing the Xbox Series X now and playing the backwards compatible games or even current gen games. It's like, that's the answer. It's like it plays better here. Like these these SSDs and all the technology is working in synergy to create the optimal experience for you playing games. And on top of that, even just the peripherals that we got to play with the system as well, like the controller and the memory card. I know the memory card is very expensive and odd stuff, but it needs to be.

And to an extent I'm happy that it is without cutting corners, the right SSD that it needs to be to be able to work with the system correctly. And I love how clean it looks just popping into the back of the Xbox. And then how seamless, now you just have more memory space. And it's funny because, like, you know, back in the days of the PlayStation 2 memory card, GameCube memory card, all that stuff, that was just like, okay, I'm putting this in to be able to save my games. This is different where it's like you're doubling the storage space of your system

and the ability to just have a game stored on it, pop it in, and then they're just ready to go installed is so cool to me. And like, that just adds to the convenience of all of this. And the controller's dope. I'm a very big fan of it so far. So speaking of the controller, I've got in my hands, the Series X controller. and the day one, you can see it right there,

Day 1, 2013, Xbox 1 controller. God, rub it in our face again, Imran. You have the Day 1 Xbox 1 controller. I like the series X-Centure a lot more. It's a little heavier in the grips. It has, like, the, was the mesh pattern on the back that makes it, like, easier to grip. The capture button is nice.

The buttons all feel nice. Like, the overall build quality feels a little bit better, even if it's not dramatically different. I I really say like as far as standard controllers go, it's not a big leap, but I'm really liking this a lot more than my like creative or like Xbox Lab controller

that I built a while ago. And so with that, I do think that the D-Pad has always been one of my biggest issues with Xbox controllers. And while this one's not perfect, I do think that it's the best compared to the standard Xbox One controller. Comparing it to the Xbox elite controller,

the series two that I have, it has the same kind of feel like the same grippy stuff like that originated on the elite which is really nice and I'm happy that that made the transition because it makes it feel a lot more premium but the elite obviously is still the best way to go like there's just something very premium about the whole thing and the weight is even it's even heavier but like in a good way compared to that like using that after using the elite for a year at this point it's like it feels like a cheap toy and it's it's funny though because like comparing it to the other controller it actually feels fairly pretty

premium, the original Xbox 1 controller. But overall, I'm stoked that it is as good as it is. Yeah, that D-pad was a... I've seen that thing before. Like, I've never had hands-on with it. But I've seen it, and it looked like a mosaic-censored controller, like in images. But what you actually do is like, oh, this is actually a really... It's nice, it's clicky, and it actually hits the directions it's supposed to hit.

Well, the biggest thing is it's replaceable. You can take it off and there's like there's different types of D-Pats. No, no, no, I'm talking about the elite controller. Okay. I was about to pry this shit open. Yeah, no, no. No, no, no, no. The elite controller, you can pop off the different, the D-pad and replace it with different types of D-pads depending on what type of game you're playing.

Gotcha. Which is a very nice feature. So I'm not going to be switching over to this new controller over the elite, if anyone was wondering. Yeah. But if you've only been using the Xbox One controllers, this is a step up from that. And having said that, the elite fucking works with the Series X. Yeah. Because it's totally backwards compatible, compatible with peripherals as well.

which is just great. It should work, it should work. Come on, guys. Convenience. Exactly, baby. You guys, have you played any of the actual next-gen versions of games on the series X? I've gotten a little bit of here. So, Yakuza was built in on the preview of Series X we got.

So I've gotten a chance to go through that demo. Like, Greg and I, we put up a video for first impressions for his play-through of that. Since I saw that and since I'm going to play this game in a month anyway, I decided, like, I'm just going to run through this. And I'm just going to skip all the cutscenes and go straight to karaoke and go play that. And that game, like, it is not a next-gen-looking game. I will just be up front there. If you're looking for what can next-gen do, Yakuza-Like Dragon is not that game.

But it loads fast and the image quality is really good. And it's like a noticeable improvement from like, I was just watching my girlfriend play Yakuza-Zero a couple of weeks ago on my Xbox 1-X. It looks better than that in terms of resolution, image quality, load times especially. because there's like, the Dragon Engine already doesn't do a whole lot of load times, but there's like nothing in this one. They're just going straight from thing to thing to thing. I really dig the way that game looks and the way it plays, but it is a next-gen port of a last-gen game,

so it's not a whole lot to go off of. Yeah, same thing. Obviously, I did the first impressions with him, Ron, and that was before we passed the Xbox over to him. Yeah, I really enjoyed my time with it. You know what I mean? I've taken a lot of time off of you, But, and I guess this isn't about Yakuza itself.

In terms of the Xbox, what he says is spot on, right? I think I say it in the preview that it still, it looks like Yakuza. It's a sharper, clear Yakuza, but it's still got that jagged frame of what Jukuzi games look like and stuff. But again, back to the quick resume and how that works on it, back to how fast everything loads. Like, it does feel like it moves at a different speed. And it'll be interesting for me in all of us, I guess, when we get the new consoles, how long before that becomes normal, before we kind of forget that how loads used to be and how long things used to be or if you know as they get deeper and deeper in if there becomes more loads or something of that effect but that's my next gen

experience with it yeah in terms of like something that was you know a next gen watch game yeah something that i'm really interested in seeing next gen consoles of how they kind of affect people's habits and knowledge of what they're kind of doing is this is i think like the closest we've ever been to consoles being pc gaming where there's so many different settings and you need to have the optimal setup to get a lot of the buzzwords that they're even talking about. Like the old adage of, oh, any H.D. My cable works. It doesn't matter. Why are you spending $150 on a monster cable and you could spend $3 on any H.D. My cable? It's like, that's not true anymore. Like, you need very specific HDMI cables to be able to get the high refresh rates

and all of the crazy resolution bumps and the stuff that they're really kind of talking about a lot with this. And on top of that, it's like the settings get pretty complicated going into, I was just tooling around with it. And luckily, I care about the stuff a lot. So it's like, I know the difference between all the different sound settings and video stuff. But there is way more on the Series X than there was even on the 1X, which already had a lot of things like Dolby Appmost, which by the way, is still awesome in this on the Series X. I love that they're pushing it so much. But I could not recommend paying the $15 enough to get Dolby Atmos for headphones or for surround sound, whatever, on the Xbox.

I'm so happy that that's a feature that they have. have. We'll see how you feel when PlayStation updates their sound so I can have TV speakers with 3D surround sound. I mean, that's the thing. It's the same. I did. Dolby does that too the on the Xbox. They like, they do have that functionality. I know, Brian, remember how much you hate it. Oh, yeah. That stuff. It's supposed to get angry. That's not going to work. That stuff is stupid and that's not going to work well. But the headphone stuff does work and it works very well. So it's cool. And I love that like they're doubling down. And I saw Jeff Keely post the video of Blinks, the time sweeper. an Xbox original game and it's playing in 4K with Dolby Atmos and all this stuff. I'm like, that's just rad, man. Yeah.

It's just so cool. What a time to be a lot. Like the idea that if you, I mean, if you told yourself in 2003 or whatever, right, that like, hey, you're going to play this exact same game,

but the experience in about, let's say, 17 years is going to be different. Like, it's just going to be greater. You'd be like, oh, all right, cool. Like, let's see what Dolby Atmos,

the thing that I don't know what it is. You know, let's see how that changes things. I loaded up Banjo Cazoo, and I'm like, this looks weirdly good for what I'm doing. I do the exact same thing. That's awesome, right? It's like,

that's the thing is like, it's not just backwards compatible. Like, PS2 was backwards compatible with PS1 games, but they didn't look better, you know? Like, there was a lot of bugs and a lot of issues

and a lot of weird things with that. And it's like, sometimes it would be better because of the component, like the cables being used. But besides that, it's like the experience of all these games. It's like, this is the best way to play the Xbox games.

It's on the Series X. Like, that's so rad to me that that is true, not just for the games that are enhanced. It's triple true for those games, but it's just every game gets enhancements. And I'm very excited to see that they're sticking with that. It's an alien ecosystem like we've talked about, right? Like, it is a Xbox is talking, talking, walking to walk, and this is how they view their brand. And it's going to be rat. Yeah.

I cannot wait to see, like, Xbox Series X optimized games. Like, that's kind of the thing that's missing from the equation is we've not really experienced Xbox Series X optimized games. Like we played Yakuza and I know like people have their hands on like actually I don't know if I can say certain things. But like you know, Yakuza is like the example and I've also

played it and yeah like I'm not. There wasn't anything I got out of playing that that made me go. Oh snap. All right. Here we go. It's here. Like nothing in that game made me do that. Though like playing that demo was pretty cool because it got me excited for Yakuza in a way that I've not really been excited for Yakuza.

like the voice acting I think is the English voice acting is great and like is really it's really communicated like the the humor and the goofiness in that game in a way that I've not necessarily have gotten to really take in before because I've only like jumped into a yakuza zero in those games I'm not really immersed myself in them and so experiencing that through English voice acting I think is really cool but then also the battle system in that game seems really cool in the way that they've updated it. But yeah, like, you know, that is a game that is also coming out in current gen. And I imagine it will probably be very much the same on current gen,

aside from maybe like a few things here and there, faster loading and all that stuff. But yeah, like, I've been, I've been, so my roommate Michael is, like, doing a lot of work over at GameSpot covering Xbox Series X. And, like, occasionally he'll come through and be like, oh, yeah, man, like, I've been capturing, whatever so I can have this video up and he talks about like you know 120 gigahertz right and like how playing this playing on Xbox

Series X you know is basically an equivalent to playing on like a really good PC like I'm getting that experience and that kind of goes back to what you're mentioning earlier is him that like yeah like we're entering that that space that like yeah we're playing Caller Duty you're playing whatever game it may be on the Xbox Series X

you're getting the prime experience and I'm sure it'll be the same on PS5 also but to make it clear it is an incredible experience playing these games on the current on I guess the next gen and when we actually get those optimized experience experiences that's going to be something else

that's my biggest thing too is like yeah there is not any really super exciting thing gameplay wise that I got to experience so far with this like having it was like whole shit I got my hands on the series X set it up did some you know little demos of popping into those games and stuff,

then I was just like, all right, cool, I can give it to Imran now. Like, it's not like there was anything that I need to do. However,

it's, Greg, I think you mentioned this earlier. It's just like, they've proven all the marketing stuff has been true. Yep. It's like, they prove that it is as fast.

It does just work and all this stuff. And it's like, that is so exciting to me, even if there wasn't any like, single thing that I was like, I have to do this right now, right? And I,

I think that that's kind of the promise of next gen. And I think that, you know, it's when you're looking specifically at the Xbox and its launch lineup and what's going on with the Series X right now, it's, I don't think that it's bad necessarily for it. I'm not comparing it to Sony.

I'm saying just bad for Xbox that they don't have their halo or whatever because they do have watchdogs and cyberpunk and Assassin's Creed and all these third party games that are going to run amazingly on this console. Like that is exciting. And I truly believe based on my experience with it, that they are going to work great. Dirt 5 was the game I was thinking of earlier. I was like, I don't know if I could say Dirt 5, but I just looked up the game spot thing

and they have the video. So you can say Dirt 5. Okay, yeah. They're allowed to say the words Dirt 5. But yeah, like folks like, you know, Dirt 5 and Yakuzo, Yakuza, like a dragon and like the two games that are like Xbox series X games that we've got on. And I can't wait to see more. And Gears 5, which I didn't get to play. Gears tactics.

Gears 5 came out. the oh there's like an like a like a the series next gen version gotcha yeah yeah gotcha yeah I don't remember that game having load time

so it was probably not going to be a useful test but yeah I think that's more on the frames per second side of stuff but Jeff Grubb actually did a super awesome Jeffie Grubb video of a

of Dirt 5 and showing the differences between the performance mode and whatever the fuck they're calling it I don't know the different modes that they have and showing how it stays essentially a consistent 120 frames per second

when you have it all set up right. Like that's insane. On a console. Speaking of Jeffrey Grubb, he's been having this thing on Twitter of yelling at people who are concerned trolling about heat on the Xbox Series X.

So like, I want to just say this thing, I don't know if it's hot to touch or whatever, but playing it, it does not get my room hot. It does not exude a lot of heat. It's not the space heater to the Xbox 1 and the PS4 Pro are.

So people who are overly concerned about that, don't worry, the Xbox Series X is not a hot, like, it's not a portable heater, yeah. I don't know, man. Look, I'm not saying it's a portable heater. I'm just saying it is as hot as my Xbox 1X, which...

I'm sure if you touch it, it is quite hot, but it's not making the room around it hot. Go ahead and say, Tim, go ahead, be a man. I know, just step up. had enough experience to be able to say that because I my Xbox one X doesn't heat up my area unless I'm playing hours of Resident Evil 2 on it you know what I mean like to get to the point where I don't notice it at least right okay uh or like my P is 4 like unless I'm playing Last of Us 2 or whatever and like really I I've only been popping into little demos here and there of these games so I

can't say having said that though I bet you it's as hot as the 1x which is fine totally fine I don't think this thing's going to like cook eggs Yeah well like It depends on load It depends on how games like Evolve or the generation At some point they might actually be like

Too much and that thing does get much harder But yeah Based on like granted backwards compatible games I've been playing so far Does not seem like a huge Like a noticeable deal now It's not significantly cooler or anything But it is

I did not notice it to be a problem And another thing I just want to say this is just the pessimist in me. This is all great now that we're talking about 120 frames per second and all this stuff. Like, enjoy it while at last. This is not going to last forever. This is a because we're crossing over Jans and all this stuff. The moment that we're getting like Last of Us Three and, you know, like whatever we ended up getting for my Hell Blame 2 and stuff.

I don't think we're getting like this type of stuff. Like I do think 30 frames per second is going nowhere. Like it will return. whether you like it or not. That's the reason I get, I get a little trepidacious about, like I mentioned earlier, like the 120 gigahertz

and like the PC experience on the console, you know, part of me was like, okay, seven years down the line, is it still going to be the same thing? Or will PCs that have evolved to a point where like they're sending, and like, you know, all I guess stuff.

Also, I love that you keep saying gigahertz. It's just hurts. Is it just hurts? It's just hurts. It's just hurts. But how many hertz are 220 gigahertz? That's a lot of hertz. 1.21 gigahertz.

Oh man, that's a lot of hurts. It is a lot of hurts. A lot of hurts. Any closing thoughts, you guys, on the Xbox Series X? I'm excited. I can't wait to see, get more games for it, get the launch lineup out there, see what it is when we get rolling with both these systems

and start to see the games drop for them. Yeah. I think that's normally where I'm kind of, like, they've said the hardware, they've shown the hardware works. They've proved that part. Now it's just, okay, so where, the next part of the games.

And that's still going to be a bit of an open question for a while. But I think by this time next year, assuming Microsoft does actually put out what they said they're going to put out, people are not going to remember, oh, launch did not have a whole lot of games to it. They're going to remember,

hey, this thing loads really fast. It seems to have really good graphics. So cool. Yeah. Last thing I want to say is this thing looks very ugly in my setup. The results may vary, but man, I hate that.

like this system's not made to be on its side. It's a true. That was my thing. It's horrible, man. When Xbox had the great dunk on PlayStation when the video went up breaking it down and showing it how with the screw and how to put it all together again. And everybody in Xbox is like, here's how you put it down. I put it and they shot it from a very specific angle. I was like, it looks fine there.

In my entertainment system, and it's at Emron's house now. But when we would turn around and I would look down at it, it would be like, there's the stand. The stand is on the side. It's not detachable. so it looks like it fell over and I put it there. Yeah, it's kind of a bummer. I can't wait to see what the like

revision versions of these these consoles end up looking like. It looks like it got tired and just like laid down. That is what the Xbox 3 is. I sleep here. Both the PS5 in the Xbox Series X. At this point, like, aesthetically, I don't think I like either,

especially if the PS5 is as big as it seems. Like if the PS5 was a decent, size, you know, then I'd be cool with it. But it just see now the more and more I'm like, I don't know, this thing might be comically huge. If that's the case, we got like some, like a weird situation going on both these things because I don't want any of, I don't want either of them in my entertainment center.

I'm having to rearrange like I have a glass TV stand. I'm having to rearrange it so nothing's on the top shelf. Everything's at the bottom because I'm scared. Like the size of these systems are going to collapse that. Oh, the world that we have to live in, ladies and gentlemen. And this has been the kind of funny games cast. Stay tuned, Patreon supporters for the exclusive post show. We're blessed.

Are we returning with the game show? We are returning. Bless who returns. Woo. Oh, baby. Let's go. And if you've never seen one before, I'm really good. And I win all the time.

It's true. He does.