Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - WWE 2K22 Review - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: March 9, 2022

Greg gives his thoughts on WWE 2K22 and Barret gives his review of A Musical Story. Time Stamps - 00:00:00 - Start 00:00:50 - Housekeeping 00:06:18 - Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands 00:21:24 - WWE 2K 2022 00:30:23 - Ads 00:34:25 - WWE 2K 2022 Continued 01:09:02 - A Musical Story Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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 in video games. Greg Miller. Timothy does me well to see you. How are you this morrow? I'm fantastic this morrow, Sir Greg. How are you? New Face of Video Games blessing at A.O.E.A. Jr.

I'm doing good. Tim. How are you doing? I'm doing great. Do it great. And rounding out the crew for today, the nitro rifle himself. We heard that he's two-thirds through Eldon Ring and he can't wait to keep going. Andy Cortez. Good evening, Faltonished. Damn, see, I got a little, I got some nice welcomes throughout the entire day there.

I liked that. I like that a lot. It feels good. That's what we do here. A Kind of Funny on the Kind of Funny Games cast where you can watch it on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or roosterteeth.com. If you want to listen to it as a podcast, you got to search your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Gamescast and we'll be right there for you.

If you wanted to get the show ad free, if you wanted to watch it live as we record it. And if you want the exclusive post show, we play a fun game. game show we like to call bless who you got to go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games just like our patreon producers gordon mcuire fargo brady pranksie dan golden spider b tyler ross delaney twinning first responder indeed julian the gluten free gamer james hastings and casey andrew have done we appreciate you all so very much if you don't have a dollar to toss our way that's totally cool anytime you're on the epic game store make sure you use our epic creator code kind of funny and you will help support us without paying any additional dollars it's fantastic stuff you get to support video games and support kind

of funny what more could you want to do in life i'm not really sure uh some housekeeping for you speaking of dan golden spider b i just want to say i haven't laughed harder in a long time than seeing and bhaugh and blest play elder ring and seeing a hand spider covet blessing and him losing its mind i didn't know you had that type of energy in you i didn't know either tim i i've been talking about this a lot with Andy specifically that like from software has a way of creating new fears that I didn't know I had. And they've done it with Bloodborn before. We're like, I see some spider shit. And I'm like, oh, shit.

I didn't realize I was scared of spiders this much. When I saw the hand spiders in Ellen Ring, legit, like I saw them during the review period. I got to the manor. It's called Kariah Manor where you walk in and there's these giant spiders for people who are unaware, right? And they're not spiders, right? They're giant hands that have spider-like movements and have way too many digits, right? Like, Tim, you know how the hands usually have, like, I don't know, four or five fingers. These things have like 20

And like they're gigantic They drop down and they run at you And I saw that during the review period When I was playing by myself And I was like, no, I'm not doing this I'm not playing this I'm just gonna leave this for later Maybe when I'm on a stream or something

And so yeah me and 80 finally got back around To doing that on the stream And I don't know what it is I don't know what activates But I have like a physiological reaction to these things Oh yeah, we saw We saw now first off I appreciate the use of digits Like that was the moment of the video

Where I was like Bless is having an out of body experience right now, even his mind isn't working correctly. This motherfucker just dropped the word digits to explain fingers. It's physiological. I just, I love it so much. And then here you just see him being pulled back. I love it.

You got to check out our TikTok. Go check out at Kind of Funny Games. We also post it to our Twitter and Instagram and all that. Your social media platform of choice will be right there, including our YouTube pages. You can get them on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny or Kind of Funny games in shorts format, depending on what channel you prefer why not both that's what i always say uh that thing was great and then in addition to that there was one of their housekeeping thing i wanted to say oh samoa joe is hosting uh kind of funny games daily on thursday that is utterly incredible and i'm so excited and

that's another funny video not edited or anything but just gregg tweeted a clip out of uh me reacting to gregg miller live on kind of funny games daily calling legendary wrestler samoa joe casually talking to him and then inviting him to be a host on Games Daily. So I can't wait to see that happen. So for the record, you said that will be a TikTok. I hit up Raj today. I was like, hey, I had asked for this a while ago, and I didn't know if you had a chance to do it.

He's like, I'm actually waiting. I'm going to have him be on the show and then do one super edit up. And I'm like, that makes sense. That's awesome. Fear not TikTok, folks. You will see it eventually. That's hilarious.

Yeah, it was going back really quickly to that Eldon Ring thing, Tim. We experienced a lot of fear with Bless. We got through a lot of trouble, and we were able to sort of face our fears. still come out on the other side of it a bit scared, but, you know, more brave, I think, than when we entered. And then later on, I think Bless was going to stream on his personal Twitch channel,

Blessing Jr. And he texted me, hey, I'm about to go into Volcano Manor. Are there any spider-hand things there? And it was one of those, it was a text that I saw, I was napping, so I didn't see until super late. And there aren't any hand spiders there in Volcano Manor. There are around Volcano Manor. On the way to it, yes.

Yeah, that's what fucked me up, is that, like, Miyazaki knows what he's doing because like it's like they have maps scattered around the the world where like you can pick a map and that'll fill in what the texture of the world is when you boot up your actual map and so like the one map marker that you can pick up near there has a spider or has like a hand spider that is camping out on it to where as soon as you walk up on it over a hill a spider will come through and I'm like oh fuck and that happened to me and I was like dude if these things are in there and I don't know if I'm beating this game Tim in that area that that bless was scared in the video you saw so there's the little small ones that's that big one that you saw and that's that big one that you saw

little than attacked him. And there are other ones scattered throughout there in that in that manner area, in the grounds area. And they're not always visible, but sometimes when they are, their fingernails are sticking out of the ground. Oh, no. And so like you might be walking and you just see like pointy fingernails in the ground. You're like, what's that? And you walk up to it and boom, it just like jumps out, leaps at you. Oh, it is. It's really gross stuff. It's gross stuff. Great thing. Oh my God. God. God'll love it. Today we're brought to you by Upstart Express VPN, chime and babble, but I'll tell you about that later because, oh, what is that, boys? Review season.

It carries on. We're going to do a full review of WW2K, 22 in just a second. But before we get there, you guys actually got to do a little fun, I don't know if you call it a preview, but a fun opportunity for Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. That's right. That's right, Tim. Yeah. So we did sponsored content with 2K, but not sponsored in the,

way, you know, we talk to you about the game, sponsored that for the first time and forever, they invited us to the studio, which I guess makes it sound like they don't invite us places. I mean that there's been a global pandemic and we haven't done anything in person in a long time. They had hit me up because obviously we did the Borderlands show for them, and they were looking for a for a foursome to come up and show off their brand new end game for Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, the Chaos Chamber. So myself, Blessing Adioia Jr., Janet Garcia, and Andrea Renee from What's Good Games, I went up to 2K Nevada a couple weeks ago

and got to be in person, which is crazy because I had never met Janet before. That was my first time meeting Janet in person. Even though I've worked with her for how long now, and then I hadn't seen Andrea and I've worked since it forever. And then blessing, I hadn't seen it a while, but I feel like we talk enough. You know what I mean?

Did he tell everybody yet that I forced them into watching a Batman v Superman this weekend? He was like, I'll never watch that movie. And then one text later, I got him locked in. Greg is talking with me yesterday. I'm actually not watching Batman v. Superman, to be clear. But like last night Watch the extended edition

It's not bad It's not bad It's not bad It was the thing where Yesterday during PS Love You We were talking right And the show starts And we're talking about

Like movies that are too long Because we're talking about God of War coming to the big screen And I was like Oh man I'd like to say God of War movie That's like three hours long And I was like actually not three hours long Because three hours is too long for a movie

And of course I was coming off of watching Batman Which is three hours long And me feeling like Three hours long is too long for the Batman To which Greg then DMs me Mids show In Amazon link

To Batman the Superman Ultimate Edition Hell yeah. And I was like, Greg, I'm never watching the ultimate edition of Batman. You couldn't pay me to watch the ultimate edition. You should. At some point in your life, just should. You know, because a Batmanian is real bad. But then, like, later on in the evening, I get a random text from Greg of, like, the Amazon

link to Batman v. Superman Ultimate Edition, to which I respond. Greg, I'll prefer for the Ridler to be real and for him to discover that I forced my parents' signature in eighth grade or some shit than to watch Batman v. Superman Ultimate Edition. And about 30 minutes later, I get a text from my very good friend Yusuf McGeed. And he's like, oh, hey, man. Me and me and B are thinking about doing a movie night this weekend. Would you want in? I was like, oh, yeah, man, I'm busy on Saturday.

But if you're doing it Friday, I'm down. Yosef's like, oh, yeah, man, we can make Friday work. And then Yusuf text me like minutes later. And it was like, hey, like, we're feeling hot off of watching the Batman movie. We're thinking about doing Batman Ultimate Edition, to which I read that. I text him back and I'm like, did Greg put you up to this? And Yusuf's like, what do you mean? And I'm like,

Greg's been joking with me the whole day about Batman's Superman Ultimate Edition. Like, did he put you up to this? He was like, oh, man, that's funny. No. Like, we just really want to watch Batman. So I was like, all right. I guess I'll watch that. The master schemer.

The master schemer. And like, I didn't know how to, I didn't know what to do in the situation. Because like I had just told Greg that like, no, like, nothing could be done to make me watch this fucking movie. Right. The homies hit me up. I guess all while. Like, I really love Yusef and Belinda.

I love hanging out with them. You already agreed to watch. movie. Like, you can't back out and be like, no, I don't like that movie. Never mind. Yeah, exactly. I made the commitment. Commitment. So I was like, all right, yeah, I guess I'll do it. To then, like, great. I forget exactly what it happened. I think I texted Greg and I was like, hey, man, just so you know, Yusuf is texting me and it looks like I'm watching Batman movie Superman. I wake up this morning. You said, text text me text. He said, text me up to this. No, man, I'm joking. Greg didn't put me up to this.

We're not watching Batman. I was like, what the fuck, man. You said flip on you so hard. My text message exchange went like this. Hey, help me out and fuck, this is out of the blue. Hey, help me out and fuck with Bless. He just goes, gladly, what are you thinking? That's what you need in a friend. He's like, I don't care. I mean, let's roll. Where are we going? That's a good friend. Climbing in the car, we're going after Bless. Honey, Tina's Wonderlands. So yeah, they put out a thing today announcing Chaos Chamber, which is the end game mode for the game. And so they had hit us up and like, hey, do you want to just come up here and play the game? And, you know, we need people playing it. And since you guys

are local, we love working with you. We'd love to have you do it. And then, you know, tweet about it or whatever if you liked it and we're like sure of course so we ran up there and we played it and i had a great time with it you know obviously i'm a fan of borderlands i think that goes without saying we you've heard many of borderlands story from gregg miller in the run-up to borderlands three let alone getting borderlands three and then doing the borderland show with fran long after uh to watch the game and continue to go through all the deal seeing stuff to that uh regard so tiny tina's wonderlands has been on my oh i'm going to play that i'm looking forward to that but i haven't gone over the moon for it nor have i gone out of my way to look at things outside of what we get

me do the showcases or something like at E3 or gearbox did their presentation, which was awful. But the Tiny Tina stuff was interesting, right? And so this was my first time really getting into the world because even with Borderlands 2, I hadn't done the Assault on Dragon Keep, which is the, you know, DLC that kind of spawns this. Because if you're unfamiliar in this game,

what's happening is Tiny Tina is running basically a D&D game, right? She's running bunkers and badasses, and you're playing through that. So it's borderlands, but it's a, you know, mystical, mythical borderlands in the storybook, right? So a lot of butt stallions and stuff like that. but there are classes, there are, you know, mages and things like of that nature.

So this is my first time jumping in, and I was surprised how much it isn't Borderlands 3. Like, and I know there's a, you know, an undercurrent today at the announcement of this, which is its first real look where people are like, I think even in my comments about it on my Twitter, just like, so is this just a re-skinned Borderlands 3? And I saw somebody coming back like in a more public thing and be like, that's really offensive. Like is Borderlands 3 a re-skinned Borderlands 2 kind of thing? Like I wasn't somewhere in saying, oh, man, what a cheap thing they're doing here. I expected this to be different, but I'm not shocked.

I'm surprised by how different it is and how it doesn't. Like even it's clearly borderlands inspired. Clearly it's borderlands as you play it, but it's not me going through. I recognize that asset. I recognize that asset. I know what I'm doing here. I know what I'm doing there. Like, I didn't get that vibe from it.

So playing it and having character classes that you have in Tiny Tinas that actually play differently enjoys different things. Like that was, interesting and fun to get our heads wrapped around. We first started playing, you know, Andrea was playing as the Glass Cannon. And so for her, she was, you had to figure out how to work that build.

I was playing as a burr-zerker, which is, you know, a cold-infused berserker. It feels different than how I played Flack in Borderlands 3 or something that. Thank you very much. Get it now. This is a game for you. This is a game for you.

Oh, bur. Yeah, burr. It's cold out there. There must be some Toros in the atmosphere. I said burr. That's what bringing on everybody. Yeah, exactly. You nailed it.

And so, yeah, I'm talking a lot. Blessing, did you enjoy Chaos Chamber? Did you enjoy what you played in it? Yeah, I had a good time. The specific mode that we played, right, which is the endgame mode, has rogulight kind of systems to it where it is we're going through room by room and choosing which room we want to go through next depending on what the rewards are that we want to get. And we're able to kind of like pick the difficulty, pick how hard we want to go, pick we want

to do the side objectives. And I'm not really experienced any sort of like Borderlands end game because Borderlands for me is a series that I like Borderlands. I like playing it casually, but I've never had the patience to push through the however many hours it takes to finish borderlands and then play the end game and then play the DLC and then push through all that stuff usually I'll pick it up and like I think me and Barrett had the story where we tried so hard it was like four months it was like right before you started working for kind of funny and there was like a good four months that we were trying to

like beat it together and this was like this journey and I swear it was like every single night we would start we would play for 20 minutes and then both you and I would like fall asleep while playing yeah yeah and it's that it's that thing of like I think one for me once I play enough Borderlands. I'm like, all right, cool. I got what I wanted out of it, and then I just feel, you know, tired by it. I was interested as I was playing Wonderlands because I was like, okay, this is a different flavor of it. It almost reminds me.

I think the re-skin thing is interesting because it reminds me almost of like either like a majorist mask to an Ocarriage of Time or a like Far Cry primal to a Far Cry 3 or Far Cry 4. I forget which one that was. But you know, it's a different take on it that makes it more interesting that might be bouncing off of the recent

release, but finds ways to switch it up and finds ways to keep your energy engaged. And so, like, I do like the tiny Tina twist. You know, I think the fantasy stuff in here is fun, different. And, like, the borderlands traditional humor never always hit with me. Like, I never thought it was too terrible. I know a lot of people split different ways in terms of how funny or not funny they think Borderlands is. I've always thought it was fine, right? It's not something that ever bothered me. But I do think the, having, like, a place to lean into, right? Or, like, a, I guess a bit to lean into when it comes to the D&D type stuff, right? I think does give them good prompts for jokes.

Like, I was joking with you guys during the actual recording that, like, every time an achievement would come up, I laughed because, like, I thought they were nailing it in terms of, like, the, I can't pull them any director at this moment. But, like, they had a lot of good puns, a lot of good, like, D&D jokes, right? Like, a lot of good borderland style jokes, but, you know, pertaining to D&D that I thought were fun. The gameplay, I felt, like, was borderlands, but, you know, everything kind of had a twist to it, right? Like, you mentioned being the berserker. You mentioned the class that Andrea was. I can't remember the exact class I was.

I think I might have been the Graveborn. Yeah, that makes sense. I haven't pulled up over here. So Graveborn. Graveborn are death-touched acolytes who sacrifice health to unleash devastating dark magic attacks and become the phantasmalryper of bones accompanied by their manic demi-litch companion. Yeah. Andy, what's your take on the word acolyte?

Ackleads are really cool. Because I think of WWF for back in the day. Yes, Andy. Oh, my God. That was one of those where he said it. I reached up. I'm like, somebody has to remember Faroo. We gotta be talking about the APA right now, right?

Fuck yeah, Andy, I'm proud of you. I'm hot. I wish I saved that for later. I would have been a great segue today. Anyway, sorry, bless, bless back to you. But yeah, like, you know, I like, I like playing as the Graveport. I liked having my, what, Demolich next to me, hanging out with me. And like, also I had another companion because you can, like, mix and match classes in this one,

uh, which I, it's, which is new for, uh, Bordland's franchise. So that was cool. Um, but yeah, like, I had an overall good time. Like, I was actually, I enjoyed it more than I thought I was going to. for somebody who like tends to bounce off right like i get to see myself when tiny tina actually comes out me doing streams with gregg and whoever wants to come through of hey yeah let's do the end game let's do the um like the roglight mode which what what was it called again Greg chaos chamber chaos chamber right let's do one or two runs with chaos chamber and have a good time like so yeah

it's all standalone right like this isn't anything you need to have oh no it's a standalone game no no it's all its own it's all its own yeah yeah and like the here's the chaos chamber stuff like I don't think I'll end up playing it after the fact. And I don't think it's because it's bad. I think I'm very much, I play Borderlands for the story. And again, I know humor is different for a person.

I thought Borderlands 3 is funny. I enjoyed that. I really enjoyed the DLCs. I thought the wedding was great and all that. I digress. The casino boat, that was great too. But what I like about this is I know

from doing the Borderlands show how hardcore the Borderlands community is about mid-maxing and having the best build. And it's like a stuff. that like I knew people loved Borderlands. I knew people played Borderlands 2 up until Borderlands 3,

but I didn't realize how much there was this undercurrent, hardcore, let's go through and figure out the best DPS, how to melt bosses, let's do blah, blah, blah. And so if you're that kind of person,

if you're a Fran, right? That's why Fran and I work so well in the show is that I was there for the story and what was going on and I enjoyed playing it with Jen, you know, on normal and having fun. I didn't really want to roll. You know, they changed mayhem around,

but I didn't really want to roll between the mid-mayhem system, which made the game tougher. This one, what I like, if you're trying to be that mid-maxer, right, is that they say the mission, a run of this should only take you 20 to 30 minutes. Obviously, you can make it tougher and make it longer. The idea of going through makes sense is you play. You get these thing called moon orbs, right,

that you can then use when you leave the mode to, you know, re-roll the enchantments on your gun. So you're trying to get the better enchantments there. But also, if you're like how I am in this and borderlands, where I'm like, I like two kinds of weapons. Like an assault rifle, right? I usually like a good pistol. You can play this over and over again. And then the other currency. I forget what it's called. I guess I can look it up. I think it's crystals. Yeah, crystals. The crystals you're earning in there at the end of the mode when you've gone through and you beat it, you then walk in before you go back into the quote-unquote real world that you're coming from. You can then put the crystals into specific like, here's an assault

rifle bunny that barfs up all these assault rifles that you can then go. And obviously there's RNG attached if it's going to be a good one or a bad one or whatever. But it's there that you can get that. So if you are just looking for a better version of that gun, you've hit a different level and you like your assault. Like that was my thing with Borderlands 3 is I found myself in play situations where I was like, oh man, like I like, I've now got a gun that's more powerful, even though it's not the kind of gun I like, I'll switch over to that. So that idea of running it to try to get that makes sense.

And I think that I would use it in that sense if I'm into this game and I want to play the DLCs for it, that I want the better gun going into the DLCs. Yeah. I'm stoked about this. This will be the first Borderlands that I play on keyboard mouse. And ever since I switched over to PC, I just feel like I'd, uh, I, I, I, uh, I, Tim, I unlocked the talent that I didn't even know I had, right? Like suddenly, suddenly I'm at least top 50 in the world in FPS games.

Top five in Destiny, some people might say. But I'm, I never wanted to play the DLCs for Borderland in the same way that whenever Destiny would come out with like a minor expansion, I'm like, I'm good with that. But this being sort of this brand new thing that everybody can kind of hop in and everybody's sort of like at the same level and I'm not feeling super left behind. and the idea that it is a brand new world with really great crossplay and just gun mechanics that I adored. Like I loved Borderlands 3.

I had a blast with it. But when it was done, I never felt like I wanted to do the end game or do any of the extra DLCs. So this is pretty exciting, honestly. Is the game crossplay? The Borderlands 3 is. Hey, Boralance 3 is crossplay? Yeah, I'm pretty sure. I think they maybe later supported it so you could do Xbox and play.

Xbox and PC, but I don't know if they ever got PlayStation. Oh, am I high right now? No, no, it was a big thing they struggled with for a long time. Yes, Borderlands Street is cross-platform between Xbox 1, Xbox Series S&X, Mac, PC, and Stadia. Ooh, but not PlayStation. Oh, come on. Yeah, it's about it. I'm on the gamehouse.com.

They say, since Tiny Teena's Wonderland's crossplay functionality will not likely be supported, at least on the initial release. Sorry to breaking news Not playing it Just come over man Kind of Tina's blunderland Jesus thank you You got it

You got them there Thank you Go to Kind of funny.com slash Tiny Tina Go to click on the thing And say we sent you But I had fun I had fun playing it

And it's like again I think for me what it was Was oh man I'm really going to enjoy playing the real game The base game Not the necessarily the end game Maybe I will maybe I won't But I'm usually not the

Grind it out Go run the boss again and again And again What I did like Was the taste of Will Nett. Well, we already knew was in the game. Oh, that's right. You think to hear from him inside the game world.

They're like, oh, that's going to be fucking good. That's going to be fine. How was Andy Sandberg? I don't think I heard him. Andy Samberg. Andy Samberg. This is Tiny Tina's Wonderlands and I'm Andy Samberg. Yeah, I think it's different enough to him from Borderlands 3 and I'm excited to play it.

Hell yeah. There you go. Moving on now. W.W.E. 2K. 2022. They took a year off to fix all the problems. Did they, Greg? Let's start here, ladies and gentlemen.

WW2K 2022. I have been looking forward to this for a while. As Tim brings it up, maybe you don't know. Maybe you're like, I really want to hear the Eldon Ring talk. I'll suffer through some wrestling, and I appreciate that if it's you. Remember, of course, what had happened. For WW2K20, the people who made the game quit. And it went to work on an AEW game.

So 2K's visual concepts is like, we can do this on our own. They could not do it. It was a trash fire. Full of bugs, full of problems, eviscerated online, memes all over the place, clips all over the place. Then the next year for WW2K21, they said, you know what? No, we're not going to do it. Which is an outrageous thing to say when you think about 2K, take two interactive, not

annualizing a sports game, working for WWE too, another company that likes to make their money and have their regular wrestling games, right? Like if you're new around here or at least haven't been the whole ride, remember that like wrestling games are like definitive Greg Miller shit and like obviously as I've gotten older and wrestling's changed and yet yet I mean I might uh desire to play or ability to or whatever as lesson but I used to review them everyone at IGN right and before then I I learned about IGN really and have definitive memories of IGN from going and watching the superstar videos I remember in high school having the computers in the the computer lab actually had the ethernet to them right so I was

able to go up there. And I remember watching Chris Jericho's entrance in WrestleMania 2000, like the Thursday after he debuted on Monday Night Raw that I was at, no big deal, August 9th, 1990 changed my life. But being able to watch that there and be like, on IGMA, this is the future. Blessing Eddie, you, Jr. Greg, were you the type to go online and look up the formulas to design different wrestlers? 100%. 100%. Are you kidding me? Of course I was. And this goes all the way back through, you know, my entire history.

You got to be a kernel from KFC, right? Of course. You had to have the kernel from KOC. Incredible Hulk every year. You know what I mean? Captain America for no reason. But all the way back to Genesis and, you know, even stuff on Super Nintendo or NES or when I'm playing at a friend's house yet, yeah, yeah.

I'm big into wrestling video games, right? So after I gave up reviewing them at IGN and passed that off to somebody else, like, I check in. When was that, Greg? You know, I was trying to figure that out myself. It had to have been around up at noon time. Like I, if you, I mean, if I, so I was,

Andy, give me a Google on IGN, W.W. 2K11 and 2K10. And see if I reviewed either of those, if I had already passed it off then. So you were reviewing the 2K brand of WW. This is Greg Miller, 2K11, Smackdown versus Raw, WWE. Okay, yeah. And now you want 2K12?

Well, if I had 2K11, yeah, 2K12, I bet it's where I fall off. Maybe it's 2K13. Oh, every hole's with bated breath as Andy Googles to see where Greg gave off on reviews. WW12 is by Richard George. There you go. There you go. And I think, you know, that coincides with moving over to hosting stuff and up at new stuff and yaddy, yeah. So yeah, I did into the 2K series, yes. And from there on out, Sam, I did play the 2K series. I would say never as never. I never played them as deeply as when I reviewed them. And then I would say if you want to going through the looking glass there and being more of a fan with them, never like I did when I was a kid. And I think part of that speaks to quality of what the games were compared to a no mercy compared to a, you know, war zone or something like that. And I'm being fast and loose with them. like WWF, W.WEF attitude or whatever, but I digress.

I play a lot of wrestling games. What? What was that? 8.5 grade 2010. Yeah. Wow. Well, where did you stand with Jackdunf as wrong? I'm sorry, what was that?

Where did you stand with Smackdown versus Raw? Oh, I reviewed a lot of them. Like I, like, I, like, I, like, in comparison to WWE, the 2K series, did you feel like that was a step up when they switched to 2K? Because I know THQ lost and then, uh, no, and that was my problem. God, and I, this is not an insult at all. to the people who work on the WW games. But especially, and I think you've seen it with the history here and some of the

conversations, there's a rumor going around right now that WWE is talking to EA, that this is a make or break game for 2K and if they bounce, they're looking to going to EA. I think anybody you talk to will tell you that the 2K series is a bit stale, right? The problem was is that it was a bit stale with SmackDown versus Raw because it was the same people. And if you remember when THQ went away and the rights went over to 2K, they really just hired everybody from THQ.

Like they brought in all sorts of people. The people who were the higher ups on that game came over. The PR people who were the higher ups than that came over. Like it wasn't like all of a sudden you had a brand new group working on the game. You just had a brand new logo on the box and a bunch of new people, but a whole bunch of old people to you. Andy. That's really funny.

Just real quick, I want to say, you say Rich George, that reminds me my first ever like real work trip with IGN was to go to WrestleMania with Rich George for that game. That's hilarious. I was just going to mention like, you know, hey EA you're going to work on this and it's Vince Amela again just having to fix another franchise Well so then

So I This is a long preamble I'm sorry To explain to you where the 2K series is To explain where I am with it as well It's just a wrestling fan And a wrestling video game fan right And so In the lead up to this I was excited

Obviously right now if you're not paying attention AEW is trying to come on strong Eukes the people who made SmackDever versus Robb the people who made 2K up until they left visual concepts on their own to make 2010, or not 22, 2K 20, right? They are working right now on the AEW game. Kenny Omega is a big wrestling video game fan.

He's a wrestler as well. He is very clear that they are trying to make a new no mercy. They are trying to make a modern game inspired by no mercy, which many people would point to as the best wrestling game of all time, myself included. And you could argue WrestleMania 2000, you could argue WCWNW or revenge, that style of A.K.I. gameplay, right, for what you're getting. I digress. The heat is on right now. And so, yeah, you can't have another shitty game, let alone the fact that your last game was so shitty.

And so I'm excited for this. I'm looking forward to this. I reach out, I say, hey, getting pretty close to this game. You know, it comes out officially Friday, this upcoming Friday, right? But last week, I started asking about codes. Like, when are we going to get codes? They email me back. They're like, hey, here's an NDA, get you signed up. We're going to drop you codes on Friday. So that's last Friday, right? And I'm like, okay, when's the embargo? The embargo is Monday. They were telling us we were going to get this game on Friday and then the embargo would be 3 a.m. Monday, which is an outrageous embargo. Most people when I say this go, oh my God, yeah, 3 a.m. I'm like, no, no, no, you're not listening. They are giving us a video

game on Friday and saying you can review it, give it a score on Monday. Like that's an incredibly short turnaround. That's, you can do it, of course. Yeah. It's a weekend. It's a weekend. It's not a work day. That's a shitty turnaround. And immediately for me, that is sirens. That is the red light of death of like trouble ahead. Usually when you get a shitty embargo like that, that means they're hiding something. That means the game is not good. That gives you like at least like two days to play, right? Right. That's more than 48 hours of just playing, right? God bless them. Like, you know, you mentioned the top of this, the full review of WW2K22. This is far from that. You know, again, And I have played some, I've played a fair amount of it.

I've played a lot of it. I have impressions and I have plenty to say about it. I have not touched certain modes beyond like the surface level of my GM and stuff like that. This is not a full-blown thing. But what it is is telling you where I'm at and what I think my score would be and all that jazz about it and everything else. But God bless them. There are the people out there that I've already seen that I follow on Twitter. They're like, I've been awake for 26 hours.

You know what I mean? That they were just like gung-ho. They were going to play through everything they could and get up as many videos. They couldn't do all the different things to talk about it. Like, a Greg Miller in 2007 would have as well. But of course, he would have been, you know, living in an apartment with three other people. And he would have had nobody, not a baby to worry about. You know what I mean?

I digress. I was sending you up there, Greg, just to, I was joking being like, you have two days when in the actuality. You said Friday to that, but we actually didn't even get the codes until. Sorry. Exactly. So what happens, though, is Friday comes and goes, no codes. I hit them up. They're like, hey, we're still trying to, they're working on a patch.

They're working on a thing to put out. And like, okay, that's interesting. Not a good sign either. And so they're like, you'll get them before 3 a.m. on Monday. You're like, okay, cool. Sunday, 7 a.m. codes drop. We get codes. So does everybody else. You know, I install it.

I come back from hanging out of the farmer's market. Andy knows I love a good farmer's market. And it was a good one. I get a lot of voice memos from there. Had a pizza. Yeah, you stopped responding to them, but I'll keep sending it. Don't work. You send those in public?

Oh, yeah. I sent them everywhere. Did you hear my Batman and Robin one the other night? I did. I did. I may not respond to them, Greg, but I do play them on other podcasts. That's good. That's all I'm at. As long as there's an audience for him, I don't mind. Yeah.

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slash kind of funny. That's upstart.com slash kind of funny. Don't forget to use the URL to let them know that we sent you. Loan amounts will be determined based on your credit, income, and certain other information provided in your loan application. Go to upstart.com slash kind of funny. Tim, put it in your hat too. I was thinking about a Patreon tier where I just put up a nightly voice memo that's just

off the chain. You know what I mean? Put it on there. Off the chain. Yeah. I'm pushing P out here. You know what I mean? I'm pushing P.

I got to do. This message is off the chain right now. I start the game up on someday. I start playing and I am dumbfounded by how good the game is. Like how much I enjoy the game, how there is no dragging around the corner of problems. I guess, you know,

it is the rare occasion that they really were working on their day one patch or whatever down to the last minute to get it out. Maybe. I don't know. You know, for this one, the big push is that, you know,

it is a brand new control scheme. So in the past, the 2K series has been criticized for animations. You get it. You're going through. You hit your button. The animation plays out and you just watch it happen. You just go through and that's how it's going to be. And then something else happens and you go.

They've been criticized for having it be too complicated to be pick up and play for newcomers. And then also just like not fun to sit there, you know, worrying about, well, if I'm a hitting L1, am I hitting R2? Am I doing this thing? I got to reverse this thing that way and do another one that way and blah, blah, blah. they've gone through this time around and their big push was we're building it from the ground up we want it to be approachable

we want it to be easier to get into and I think they have done that I think they've delivered a gameplay system that we're talking about at the base level is enjoyable to play leads to those kind of I don't want to it's a WWW thing I think actually from the series too but the

OMG moments of you're so close to something happening you're not you know I for this part of the review right I would kick it to blessing where we went and played online. And at that point, I had played, I don't know, a day, and that's in quotes, not 24 hours, but, you know, a day in a life of, you know,

my weekend and hanging out. And me and Blessing got in there playing. Blessing had played like two seconds of one thing. And so it was this idea of me giving Blessing a few pointers on how to get, do this or get out of the ring or whatever we were worrying about. But we were having, we had a match that was sweaty, poem inducing. Yeah. It didn't feel like you were dominating, right?

I felt like, I was competent enough with the controls, you know, okay, X is heavy, square is light and triangles is counter for the most part, right? Like being able to keep up with that was enough for me to go, all right, cool, like, let me wait for the reversal here. Let me try and read Greg's moves here. And like, we had a pretty good back and forth where I was pinning you at points you're pinning me more of the time. Like, you were winning for the most part, but it wasn't, it wasn't always a given that you were going to absolutely dominate me. And I feel like it does come back to that, that thing that, like, you know, I've read it in the articles, too, of them talking about what they want this next

game to be. And it often is a thing of, we wanted to be. We want it to be a an approachable fighting game. You want it to be something that if you're starting from Ground Zero, you can still have fun in play. And for me, coming into this game from Ground Zero, having not played a wrestling game for over a decade, because my last wrestling game would have been SmackDor versus Rock 2008. And, like,

you know, the control scheme's completely changed, right? So, like, I'm not able to apply that skill to this game. Feeling like I'm coming in at Ground Zero, I felt like I was keeping up fairly decently. Can I... Can you switch, like, light and heavy to the Souls? Do I have a dash and a parry? What's going on there?

Hold on. You kind of actually do. Like, not so much of the dash and parry necessarily, but, like, there is more of, like, a dodge. And then the light and heavy, I'm pretty sure you can remap to whatever. I don't think you can. I'm here on controls.

Oh, really? Yeah, yeah. Visceral attack. Stick your hand in their chest. There is a dodge roll, and, like, I mean, a counter is kind of a parry. And so I think there is everything you want their end. Perfect.

And yeah, Barrett has it up there. I just took it out. Sorry, if you want to toss it back up there, Barrett, like, they made a big point in their trailers to show this control scheme, right? And you look at it, and it does look no mercy-esque, where you're looking at, like we're talking about light attack, heavy attack, grab. Like, that's all you really need to understand. And I think that the fact they're showcasing that shows they know the audience they're going to, that they're trying to get in nerds who are lapsed wrestling fans, people who are

just looking for a fun game to play. And I think this succeeds as that. Again, you know, I have not, I'm going to back you out here. And if you want to go to the thing, right, gone through everything all the way through super intently, yada, yada, yada. But one of the of the things they're talking about there's these are the main modes if you're watching on if you're watching right now right there's showcase where you play as ray mysterio and his greatest matches and i say greatest matches i'm using air quotes on that because of course most of his greatest matches are with people who aren't in the game so they have to cherry pick great matches raymond series had with the actual roster that's available in the game let me stop you right there because

i want to pop in i play it for maybe like two hours and i don't i don't think i'm on the exact same pages you guys where this is one of the least approachable games I have ever played and I think that's more just the amount of modes and the amount of things they're yelling at you and like trying to figure out the how combo based it is and it's like some of it works more like tech in where some of it works works works works more like no mercy whatever I was very overwhelmed by it all and a couple of the modes wasn't really viving with and you'll get to those in a sec but showcase mode is fucking awesome that was the thing that like once I kind of like settled like the just like overwhelmedness down. I was like, I'm just going to focus on this. You're going through some of Ray Mysterio's

biggest moments like you were just saying there, Greg, that sure, maybe not the biggest, but like, it's all live action, documentary style interview footage of Ray Mysterio talking about his journey through WWE or through wrestling, really, and talking about the matches, then you play the match and you have objectives as you're playing through it that they want you to kind of reenact moments from that match in between the gameplay of just fighting them. And when you do it correctly, it will transition into actual footage from the match. So when you see, like, instead of a video game animation. It transitions in.

And I am so blown away by how cool it is. Like, it is such a great thing. And also, Ray Mysterio is just such a dope dude with such a great story that I'm very, very impressed with this. And I'm 100% sticking with it. Halloween havoc. Yeah, yeah, they're using stuff. But again, this is the stuff I love of it, right?

And this is, again, you know, as always, it starts with the, you know, W logo right then now forever and going through that and that's you know again the games that have succeeded in the past are the ones that are able to embrace you know the past while celebrating the present and elevating the product and so i think ray mysterious showcases a great example of yes how do we make the past exciting how do we showcase that in and even right there right like you look at the like filter they've put on this right and it's you come in and i don't know if we'll get to it let me get i'll get a little bit going here as i'm wailing on edie guerrera right now is ray but like combo yeah so they get my combo going eventually it will transition from the act while we're playing

right it'll go from the what we're playing in the game uh in this it'll transition into that archival footage again so it's like it's doing a great job of letting you play the documentary almost and let you get out of there once you get to the next sort of like memorable moment or maybe exactly you get on the turn buckle and then something happened yeah yeah exactly and that's why you know it's doing the whole thing of telling you to go through and stay on them and get all this stuff but i stunned them because of just too yeah this this might not be the best it's going to happen but this might not be the best example with the obstacle here yeah there we go through and you play through and they talk about it and then they cut to the footage from what's happening yeah that's

it's so fucking cool man and i for me most of the ones i was doing it's like the objective that you kind see pop up in the the top left when you're in the actual gameplay it's a little bit more concrete than that one was i think that was a little more vague of just kind of wail on them until something happens but like it'll be like get them in this turn buckle or like in the top left turn buckle or whatever and then you do that and it cuts to it. It's like it's so impressive and I do think that it's a testament to the camera work even in 2K 22K 22. That's a hard thing to say. We just call it in 2022. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah, where it's a bit more dynamic than it has been in the past. So it is able to kind of seamlessly transition into the archival footage and

not feel goofy as hell. Like I feel like I'm very, very impressed with the showcase mode. Yeah, showcase mode was the first thing I've checked. out too. And like I think Greg mentioned them reaching back into the history of WWE and embracing that. And that was something I did not expect for this game. Because again, like not being, not playing a WWE game in a long time and also not really keeping up and watching the WWE for a long time. Going into this game, I was like, okay, I'm excited to play this, but I don't know if this is going to have anything for me. And when I saw the Ray Mysterio showcase mode and I saw like how they're going through

the history of Ray Mysterio who like, no matter if you've been into wrestling, right, like there are so many points of entry for you to like, you know, love Ray Mysterio or have seen his matches. And so for me, it was like the mid-2000s stuff with Eddie Guerrero. I was like, oh, holy shit. Okay. Like I'm, I've been playing this game for 10 minutes. I'm already feeling something, which is really cool.

Yeah. And I think, you know, it's interesting here, Tim, you know, you thought it was in that approachable. Did you play the other 2K games when they were more like R1? And I'm talking out my ass on which the actual buttons were everybody who wants to attack me. R1 blocks strikes. L1 blocks grapples. Marry that the right way.

So I played a couple of them. I've never been into the 2K games. Like I gave, like the last wrestling game that I really enjoyed was probably, well, besides, what was that one that was like not battlegrounds, but the battlegrounds before battlegrounds? All stars?

All stars. I had fun with that. It wasn't that great, but like I had fun with it at least. But before that, it was the Smackdown versus Raw era of games. But there's just something about this that's probably standard

to a lot of people that play things like, NBA 2K games where just the amount of modes and the amount of my this and my that and whatever and the card systems and all that it's like there's just a lot of shit where I'm like I don't even know like where's the career mode like what just let me play the game like I don't know

what I'm supposed to do and then everything I'd click into felt like I did the right thing and then I just felt like bombarded with tutorial stuff that left me almost more confused than I was trying to be and until I realize like oh this is not the mode I want to be in like starting up my GM mode You hear Stephanie kind of going through all this stuff. The presentation was really cool.

But then once I got into the actual content, I was like, oh, this is not what I expected it based on what I know of GM mode. Granted, from a decade ago's video games. But on my- She's been gone for a while, too, by the way, GM mode. That's one of the reasons people are stoked that it's back. But it just is not it, though. It's a very, very different thing here. I'm like, okay, that's fine.

And then I started up what my rise, I guess it is, which is like what's actual the career. And within five minutes of that, I was like, oh, no. Like this feels so PS2 era storytelling of your like follow around like, hey, it's my, it's my first day here. What, what are we doing? I'm like, who wrote this? Like, what is going on? So that's why, like, going to the showcase mode, I was like, okay, this feels like the presentation and gameplay kind of matches up a bit more. Because like it kind of just feels like there's a lot of stuff that isn't up to par.

I had that same. I had that same feeling when I hopped into my rise. Like, I think kind of what you're talking about to him is kind of the, it, it, It feels very sports gaming in a way where sports games traditionally have like just a splatter of, here's a bunch of different things you can hop into. Like there's a manager. Here's like the, you know, card unlockable mode. Here is like the here's the showcase that is celebrating a certain sports star, right?

Like it doesn't really present anything as the main way to play. But yeah, for me, like I did hop into my rise and I think I let it go for five minutes. And it was in that opening cuts and I was like, uh-uh, no, I'm not doing this because this does feel very janky. and like the acting doesn't feel there. And it reminds me of YouTube videos I'd see of NBA 2K of the same thing. Jake from State Farm. Yeah, like it's Jake from State Farm. No, way worse than that, dude.

I'm thinking like, Tim, you're finally experiencing what I experienced in NBA 2K14, 2K15, where Eric Gordon, NBA NBA player is kind of like the guy who's like, hey, I'm here to mentor the rookie, but it's just, I think they got like seven NBA stars to just read from a script. and it's, hey, man, you're here on the new team. And when you come into this place, like, it's like, you could, you could tell, like, where the sentence and paid, where the page was turned and shit. Like, it is, it was really bad stuff back in the day.

It had that energy, but like these, I mean, it seemed like an actor who was there was just like, hey, you know what? I'm here. I'm getting a call, though, so I can't be with you. Right. I'm like, this is like atrociously bad. And it sucks because going to the main tutorial, like the first tutorial when you boot up the game.

um was uh fuck what's his name uh is it riddle or something no it's not riddle was the gullack or whatever is yeah yeah like he's kind of like teaching you the game and stuff i feel like that at least it's a little corny but like at least it was presented well and it's like okay this fits the tone of the game whereas my rise feels like i i can't imagine anybody finding enjoyment out of out of it so far but did you play any of that great oh yeah i really like it oh really yeah okay i mean it's totally that thing of everything you're saying is right especially the woman you talk to, right, at the very launch of it, where she's like, I'm getting a phone call, whatever, blah, blah, blah.

Barrett, stay on me for a second. Because I have more of my MyRise stuff in here. What I, I didn't know what to expect out of My Rise, right? And I've been impressed with it. It's just another way to get you into playing the game and what to do with the mechanics, right? So here's a screenshot, right? Social media will be a big part of your MyRise. Social media posts appear in your social media feed and direct messages appear in your DM.

Storylines kick off with conversations in social media posts, or DMs. If you want, you can only display the conversations, yada, yada, yada. It's the idea of playing these, right, that you go through and have this conversation with someone in your DMs, then there's decision branches that are going to make you face or heal, right? You get to go through. It's all just a wrapping to get you to keep playing, but I like the idea of starting at the performance center, you know, road dog is your coach or whatever. Then at some point he brings in Sean Michaels. So Michael's, you know, there was a conversation about which was the better DX. So Xbox comes to town and like, you know, they take me on there.

side because I chose to go with them. I said, you guys were the better DX. I get to go wrestle with them against Sean Michael and his dude or whatever. Like it's this idea. And then they do this thing too. This is a terrible thing of it. But like they find a way to even when you're in the performance mode make you go wrestle the greats, the old folks. You'll have a conversation with somebody and be like, Road Dog was like, I want you go home tonight and envision, you know, wrestling a great superstar and try to learn something from that. And you got to pick. I got challenged by somebody, you know, to go think about fighting Andre the Giant. Here on this one, right, I had already made it to the raw roster.

And, you know, when you start the mode, when you start my rise, you have to pick your backstory. When you pick your backstory, it then influences how people talk to you, how you talk. It's what your angle is when you start at the performance center. And so there was this conversation, you know, like Titus O'Neill's been breathing down my neck ever since the performance center. He's upset because I'm claiming to be the best, you know, former pro football player. so Mandy Rose for the big game in quotes, halftime heat, they bring back half time heat. And they're like, you're all the former, you know,

folks at Raw who were football players are going to do a battle royale and stuff. And it's interesting. Like, it's a nice way to see matches go. Obviously, this is one of those that's taking wrestling seriously and acting like the fights are happening in real. There's, you know, my GM doesn't as you go through and book your card that way and figure stuff like that.

Universe does and doesn't to an extent. Like, I appreciate the rap. happening here. I appreciate this stupid side quest that I've put up here where basically the wrestler Otis ate all of catering. So now if I want to, I can go whip his ass. And if I win, I'll get 15 upgrade points to go put into my character attributes, right? I'll get more fans because it's counting how many fans you have at any point. And it gives you an attribute bonus for arm power. On top of that, as you go through and play this, it's unlocking, you know, new arenas. Hold on. Hold on. No, no, no, no. I'm not letting you. Beat Otis's ass. Bring that, bring that back.

up though because we need to read this i fucking love it i just love the blah blah at the end of it just don't take it out on otis okay i heard he was hungry could have happened to anyone make otis think twice about his late nights late night stacking and that's the thing is like the quest like that obviously are tongue and cheek and know what they're doing you tim are 100% correct that like the woman you talk to the performance centers acting is terrible and i think even your guy in that scene was bad i remember in the same way of you, me like, I feel like he gets better later on as we go through with other stuff. And I don't know if that's just being around him the whole time.

Don't get me wrong. He's not Oscar winning in any stretch of the imagination. I retweeted somebody today who's completely, God, let me see if I can find it at time. It cracked me up. I haven't heard it myself, but I 100% believe it.

Talking about this mode and everything else in the game and saying, God, you tweet too much. Was it the edge? Oh, is Mitchell Saltzman from IGN. Man, if you want to hear how COVID-impacted game development, check out WW2K-22, because they definitely had edge record lines from what sounds like a webcam. I'm like, so like that's what you're getting out of it.

It's enjoyable. I like it. I'm not at all saying it's perfect and it's, you know, this cinematic experience. But as somebody who's looking for a fun way to go through and unlock stuff and have a reason to keep playing, have a reason to go after the stuff, you know, go after different rings, go after everything. It tracks the whole way. I'd show you in my rise right now, but I'm in the middle of a match I bail down.

So like it'll start right into that. It has, you know, you keep track of the storylines. Eventually you're going to be able to hop between factions. but like it was admittedly cool when you know my stupid performance center they're like all right the GMs are coming if you can impress them maybe they'll you know ask you to go up and like I chose the hardest match against Drew McIntyre I won and then it was like all right cool I could go talk to William Regal Mandy etc and I could decide what show I wanted they all made offers so I go to raw right and that's that was a cool thing to go to raw and have that moment and then in the same way like I'm spoiling the storyline for everybody sorry you know the universal or United States champion I Yeah, the United States champion of me got into an angle. It started on social media where I talk shit. I took the high road because, of course, you can be face or heel. We went and had the match.

I won, and I was like, oh, my God, this is cool. My character's got his first title or whatever. And then, you know, cuts to the cutscene of the dude gets up, beats on me, tears off the steps, gives me his finisher on the steps. And it's like, then it's a, you know, a post from Mandy that's like, hey, because at the end of that match that happened, my character, Blue Suede, I call them, has broken ribs.

He's going to be out six weeks, so the title goes back to the other dude. And then I confront, I confront Andy about them like, what the fuck or whatever? She's like, listen, you're fucked up and you got to go back to Performance Center and you got to rehab.

And I was like, oh, that's actually interesting. I like that. Again, it's exactly what we're talking about. You know, Mandy Rose is like all stiffly there, talk, like, you know, hands at her side, talking. But I was like, oh, this is a cool thing I didn't see coming. And I like that there's those,

little parts to it, that there are like angles to stretch it between it. That's what I always want more than, you know, what you get out of universe mode, where you go and there's angles and stuff like that. But I prefer the scripted stuff. Again, I think back to a no mercy. And it was, you know, the little things with the branching storylines that went back and it's like, oh, man, I'm going to go back. And when I get to that point, I should lose this match to see what happens there.

And it's the same thing so far of like, I'm sure there are probably you have to win these matches. I haven't run into them. They are like, whatever happens is going to happen. And like when I lost my, you know, I had my first. an NXT match, right, trying to impress people, and I lost it. And there was a, you know, condolence in my DMs from one of the wrestlers who I don't know. And it was just like, hey, man, I lost my first in the next team match too. It happens, blah, blah, blah.

And I was like, that's interesting. That's cool. It's, you know, again, for the showcase to celebrate Ray Mysterio's career, my rise to incorporate social media and DMs and have feuds and angles start that way, I think is neat. So gameplay-wise, going back to that, like the core of it. Like, do you think that this is a, very strong foundation that they can kind of build on. Earlier you were saying that like if this, if this one doesn't hit, EA might have might get it.

What do you think that conversation lands? I think it's put some in a stinky situation. Because I think that, you know, 2K has not done excellent with WWW for quite some time. And you can, we can go to 20, uh, 20. We can also talk about battlegrounds, which you know what I mean was a fart in the wind. Nobody cared about that game.

And it was like, oh, well, does WWE want shitty games? I imagine no. They want money, of course, but they want the shit to be good, especially when AEW is coming for them and trying to actually make something interesting here. So I think this is a strong foundation. I think this is a game that I am enjoying playing and I'm enjoying learning. And I'm enjoying like, you know, I saw Jeff Gersman tweet about, man, I'm playing 2K 22 and I feel like I'm watching animations play out and not being interactive with it. I'm not having that, and I haven't had the chance to actually talk to Jeff about it. I had that feeling when I played previous WWE games where you missed the reversal on the front of the move,

and now I'm just watching it happen. What I like about this version when I'm playing it is they put the reversal in different spots for different moves. So it is this thing of, all right, cool, he's starting to be, it looks like I'm getting suplex, it looks like I'm getting power bombed, it's like whatever, when does that triangle pop up, when do I hit it, when do I try to get out of it and reverse it? And so there is that angle where I actually feel more invested in the moves and the animations than I ever was before. And I think it's another one where it just makes sense,

if that goes with it, it makes more sense. Because even for me, as somebody who played these games year after year, you'd get into this and they'd add in a new match, you'd do this thing, like, all right, well, what the fuck am I supposed to do? How do I get him out of the ring?

How do I do the thing? How do I go out that way? I've been impressed with them the way that, in my first battle royale, right? I'm toss into it. And I was like, shit, I haven't done a battle rail on this game yet. I don't know how it's going to do it. And so the first time, you know,

I threw, I think it was Goldberg to the corner and went over there. You know, it does the full blown pause and comes up and it's like, hey, in a Battle Royale, you know, this is the mini game and how it's going to work. And it's all back to button taps and stuff like that of, you know, you get there and you try to tip them over. So you're tipping that. Same stuff for submissions and stuff like that. I like that better than the old spinning sticks trying to match the dot, the whole bunch of different ways that we've gone around on this. And it was get them to the ropes and do it. Even if something, you know, a non-battle royale to figure out, you know, to grapple and then R1 to pick somebody up and walk them to the ropes and throw them out of the rope.

ring that way. Like, I feel like right now the controls are simple enough that I'm not getting into situations where I'm trying to do something going on. I don't remember how to do that. My first ladder match, you know what I mean? Like pick up the ladder, put it down, get to the top and then it is like, cool, reach and then, you know, do the mini game there, try to get there. Like, I feel like the game is making, yeah, I always talk about, you know, what a great interviewer, Aaron Andrews is. Right. And when I do that, I always reference the, um, Richard Sherman, uh, post game interview where him and Crabtree got into it. Andy, you remember this, right? Of course.

And he's super fired up and he's coming off. And Aaron Andrews goes over. They ask him a bunch of stuff. And Richard Sherman totally blows past anything she's saying. And he's just like, they want to come far legs. That's what he was. Yeah, so he wants to do this. And he wasn't.

And I remember watching on a plane. And I had just gotten there late. And I'm like, who? And Aaron Andrews goes, who? And he goes, grab tree. And I was like, that's when I was like, Aaron Andrews is a great reporter. Because so many people would step up and get in that situation. And they would keep on their line of questions.

They wouldn't stop what they're doing to actually interact with what's going on there. I think that applies to this game because when I get to the corner and I want to do something, I'm able to do it. Somebody played that in a playtest. A developer sat there and said, this should just work. You should get to a certain situation and you should be able to figure out without bringing up the pause screen. The only thing I had to bring up a pause screen to ever figure out, or actually, I couldn't find on the pause screen. I just figured out my own was how to pick somebody up off than that. That was it.

Eventually, I stumbled into it because it's just up on the right stick. Easy enough. but everything else I feel like I've run into in these modes so far has been great about it and has been interesting about it. And I enjoy the way they explain stuff even though my first hell in the cell match. And you turn off tips obviously, but the tips pop up your first time you do anything. And it being, you know, get tossed out of the ring by Undertaker and it explains, all right, hold on now, you know, it's smaller.

So your moves are going to do this. If you get to the corner, you can whip people out this way and break through that way. So yeah, I'm having fun with it. You know, I think the reversal system, the stamina system they're using, you know, the same hurt people's body parts, make them weak. The blood, I guess, appears at different spots. depending on where you get hit. You know, I was doing an Iron Man match with Samoa Joe.

I was Samo Joe, of course. But, you know, I was taking some damage to the face. And my face started to swell up and get red and stuff. And it's like, it is those little touches. And I'm like, damn, this is good. It's the normal shit of if you want to come in there and do the normal. Man, hair looks terrible sometimes. Man, the crowd doesn't look great.

Man, have I run into bugs? Of course. You know, I got whipped into a corner that somebody else got whipped into today. And so then I did the animation of laying in a corner, but I couldn't lay on the guy. So it pushed me out. and then it just broke me. I was out of the universe

just laying on a, like not laying on a rope, but looking like I was leaning on a rope and nobody could touch me. It's like, yes, this shit happens. I've been spending time

in the creator character and like I had a double check. I was like, I'm playing the PS5 version of the game, right? Because I felt like, whenever I'll switch a different feature,

it would linger on that feature for a second of like, oh my God, I gave up. And being like, is this SSD, is it loading off the SSD? Because this should be faster than this. But yeah,

like, there are those things that are there that I think people will recognize. is like the jank that's probably always been there. Yeah, I've always been disappointed. And again, this speaks to 2K being caretaker of the WWB. I've always been disappointed in how long it takes to load their shit. But that said, Barrett, if you can go to Khalif,

if you can go to Khalif's tweet from this morning or last night of his creative character, you look at that and you go, holy fucking shit. Like, I can't, like me, me, me, Blessing and Mike are doing a stream on Thursday where we're going to play through this and we're making our creative characters right now. And so me and Blesser at the same point of going through this. But like it in like yeah, if you're looking at this on the thing, Barry, click over to the photo that came with this of. That's Caw obviously from the Pax Wrestling thing.

And you click over to his actual character and like, you know, he went in there and he was able to remake the shirt. And like, of course, this is the same shit as always where, you know, image uploaders in there. You can go and put your face on there if you wanted. I don't think Cah did that. You can go, you can put your all this different. You can upload your own images.

Like I'm making mine right now and I'm doing the cut off blue. kind of funny aerobics shirt and if you have the aerobics logo i need that i don't know who has that i need to get that and upload that to make it like there's that level in it i think those characters look good enough in the game when they're fighting and doing their things like there's a lot to love here and there's a lot that makes me want to keep playing you know we didn't talk about my faction which is i wanted to shut that out because like marvel or marvel ultimate not an ultimate team fief ultimate team yeah go ahead yeah that was the one where when we were talking about my rise right that was the one where i played a little bit my rise i hopped out because

i was like okay i'm not feeling this and then i hopped into my faction and i was like i i do feel a lot. Like it is, like you mentioned, right, it's like FIFA Ultimate Team, where I've never care about FIFA Ultimate Team because I'm not super invested in soccer or football that way. And so for me, hopping into my faction where I actually recognize the characters, it is the thing of you're building a four-person team and then elements around that team by collecting cards that apply to those elements. So for me, my first role, it was AJ Styles, I got Xavier Woods, and I think I got Kofi Kingston, one of the other wrestler. And I was like, oh, shit, I really like this team. And then you go into matches. I've only done one of them.

modes within this mode. I've only done one of the modes, which Greg, you tell me which one this is, but it's the one where you go in, you fight NPC characters, and you have certain conditions that you're trying to hit, right? Where if you want to do, like, the one star out of three star, you do, you get 15 points. If you want to do the two stars out of three, you get 60, and if you want to go the full way, you get 90 points. And if you want to go for the 90 points, you have to do a list of objectives, essentially, where it is, taunt to the opponent, taunt to the crowd. Depending on the wrestler you are, like, if you're a high-flying wrestler, you know, jump off the turnbuckle three times, right? Do three

Super Salt or whatever the fuck is called, right? And like, you have to fulfill these elements to get the points to then, like, have points later on that I'm sure you can then spend on more cards and more characters. And like, from the start of it, I'm already having fun with it. And that's the thing. Oh, yeah, sure. Well, Barry, if you want toss it up, I'm in my faction right now, show enough, my decks

or whatever. I got cold decks of things I can do. Sorry, Andy. I guess mostly for Greg, because Greg, you really enjoyed FirePro wrestling. Yeah. And I'm not sure if you enjoyed FirePro Wrestling more for the customization aspect of it. Do you think that this will be enough to kind of supplant FirePro Wrestling as your main wrestling game?

I do. I think that, you know, I think FirePro Wrestling is an incredible game. I think it's got a great creator suite, which obviously people got behind and made a lot of cool shit in. But for me, yeah, the gameplay of FirePro was never 100% my jam. Like, it was incredibly timing-based, you know, listen for the foot to hit the table. That's when you put in your button prompts and stuff. stuff like that. And it has that more, not basic, but like older school feel and look to it,

right? And I think that was great for simming and it was great for creating, but playing I was never like, oh, man, I really want to play some fire pro. I wanted to create and fire pro. Whereas what I love about what we're talking about right now, and especially for what Bless just said, right, is like, I feel like even if you don't like, my GM isn't my kind of thing where it's like, it's not even, it's not unlimited GM. It's not forever GM. It's you for 15 weeks versus another opponent, either AI or a human controlled thing, where you draft your team, you draft your rosters, and then you plan your matches and you try to earn more money to then make cooler matches and get, you know, higher in free agents and stuff. I get why people like that, that's not

what I'm in for. I want to play the game. And I think, uh, my faction with the cards and the decks and like give me a reason to come in and play whenever I want to. I'm not so much about collecting the whole deck, but having a reason to play is great. Uh, same thing right now for, you know, the career mode I'm going through. But then yeah, Andy, I do think that, you know, even right now, over here to creations and jump into online's struggling right now of course it's still early access and technical but like i went in there earlier today to look at what's already been uploaded from first blush and it's the same thing that you'd want right like oh man that cm punk looks great that sting looks great there's a classic cane like it's what i liked so much about fire pro because fire pro

was we're going to have every there and the fact that i think you can make a caliph look so good speaks to when this gets out to everybody and the creators come through what they're going to create. And it is that idea of like, you know, I, you know, I talked about this on the stream with blessing when we were getting ready for this. And it was just in the middle of, I think, a random ass stream, metal gear where it wasn't even that, right? Like, I had hit up Tim, so excited at the end of my paternity leave where I was like, I have a great idea. When I come back, I want to do KFW. I want to do kind of funny wrestling. I want to, I'm going to create all of us in FirePro. I'm going to make all the ring aprons. I'm going to make the title. I'm going to do the whole thing.

then on my stream days, not every time, but maybe every time, you know, we run Monday Night Raw, as we lead to a paper view. I'll have, you know,

we can get everybody of their costumes so Andy can cut promos and he can do, everybody can do their thing. We can edit it together and have a whole thing. Yeah,

it was like, that's great. Let's get, you know, a real logo treatment and all this stuff. And I was like, yeah, awesome.

And then like, two days later, Aaron Porter, or a friend from rooster teeth tweeted out like, hey, achievement 100 wrestling is coming back. And I looked into it.

I'm not ripping you off. I'm not, I'm like, oh, no, I totally get that. No big deal. Blah, blah, blah. And so I was like, great. And then. And then we sent our lawyers after all of them. Oh, God, no, Andy.

Then Aaron put out this video and I looked at it. And I'm like, she is doing like my dream version of this. Like I was going to do the half ass kind of funny. I build it all in front of you. The plane takes off with no wheels. But by the time we get in the air, I'll have a wing for you. Like, she had everybody in their costumes. I know.

They're alive. action they have an announcer table they're doing all this shit and i was like this is so incredible and so i was like i'm pausing this until i'm in a different place with it but right now nobody was excited about fire pro you know none of us were sitting around being like oh yeah let's all go play fire pro with gregg or whatever i do think the creation tools here and what we're able to go through are going to be exciting i do think uh it's going to be fun to play with each other for a while and actually do some stuff there and maybe come back to not all the time but here and there and have some fun with it like i'm stoked to play this with you guys i'm stoked to play this with you guys i'm

stoked to make all of us in there and go through and do it. And that's what, you know, like Thursday stream is, yeah, me blessing of Mike going out there. And what are we going to do? Yeah, I'm excited to see how it goes. Hell yeah. Did you, I just went to the bathroom. Did you give it a score so far? No, I mean, so far, like I think, you know, mileage varies, obviously. I think, you know, what do you want out of a wrestling game? What are you looking out of a wrestling game? Like I said, for me, my GM isn't my schick. The universe has never been it either for me. They're like to just keep on playing kind of thing. I like my rise a lot. I like my faction a lot. I like having an option to do that.

But I think for me personally at the core, the gameplay is great. And so I would say at this point it's a four out of five. Like there could be, you know, something else falls apart down the line or whatever. But as I look through creations, as I look through this, like this is for me better than okay. And I can't believe I'm saying that. I didn't expect that at all, you know, based on the history of the 2K games as of late, based on the late arrival of the code for embargo and stuff like that. Yeah, I think this is a great wrestling game so far. And when I say that and why I'm so passionate about it and why I'm not emphetic about it, but I am like, this is a great game is the fact that I'm going to keep playing this. I think as you look back at the other two games that I,

2K games that I did not review, what would happen with them is that they would get a Friday and Saturday out of me. And that would be the end of it. I would run through and I would do like, you know, the superstar or the basically showcase mode that wasn't the past or whatever, you know, relive some great WrestleMania moments or whatever. and then, you know, do a rock bottom and kind of be like, all right, cool, it's still the same gameplay and I don't really want to do that. Like, I want to do this. I want to experience this.

I, you know, I'm, my hope for the stream on Thursday is going to be that I can convince some Iron Man matches and see if we can actually go and do like an hour long match and just have two exhausted, bloodied characters that are just like pinning each other off of roll-ups and, like, that would be incredible. And like, I'm excited for those kind of moments. The time of the commercial in the middle of. Exactly. Yeah, every just laying there winded and stuff, right?

Like that's what I'm I'm I'm stoked about for it. And that's the thing is I'm stoked to keep playing it, which I have not said about a WDB game in quite some time. Andy, I really like that. We should we should figure out a way to do the thing where it comes. How's the commercial? The picture of pictures. I love it.

I love it. Oh, that's great. Well, hey, I'm so happy you're enjoying it that much, Greg. Before we end the show, I did want to check in with Barrett Courtney, who beat a game called a musical story last. week. Barrett, what'd you think about that? Uh, yeah, I finally was able to get pulled away from Eldon Ring, which, uh, you know,

stuff to do. Yeah, it's, it's, it's tough to do. There was a, a night where my PS5 was at my desk and not at the TV. So I was like, all right, perfect excuse. Let's, uh, let's sit down and, uh, play this game in bed. Um, and I thought it was great. Uh, hold on. I'm gonna, I gotta reset some things here.

Um, because I just want to show off some game. play if you all forget. I think this was shown off. I forget, I think, like, opening night live, I think is where this trailer is from. And it really struck us because it's like this very artsy music game that is telling the story kind of like through this music you're playing as this character here. And he kind of like, he's in the hospital and he's reliving his memories. And there's not really any dialogue or even any text to read.

You're getting the story and kind of. vibe of, you know, the settings for each scene that you're playing through the music itself. And, yeah, sat down. It's like a good two and a half hour to three hour game. And the more I sit with it, the more I really like it. I think the story, when it wrapped up for me, it was one of those I didn't expect it to go in the places that it went. meaning to say that there's one aspect of your character that's introduced about like a third of the way through

this game deals heavily with like addiction essentially and I wasn't expecting that to be kind of like the core of what the story was and so that was like really interesting where like walking away I was like huh that's not where like I expected things to go that's not where I expected things to end but the more that I think about it right like going back to gameplay here I want to like bring up actually like what you're doing throughout this game where you'll have this circle

and there's kind of like circular notes that are representing like an instrument that you gotta kind of play like at the same time as an instrument is playing and stuff like that and when you actually do it correctly a memory will unlock or part of a memory will unlock sometimes you're doing like in one scene

you're doing like six or seven instruments like back to back to back and like unlocking certain moments in your character's memory and it's just it just reminds me like how much, like, I love music and, like, how much of, like, my life was used, uh, I use music for expression, even though I was just, like, percussion and stuff like that, like, have like, even though no one really speaks in this game, the conversations that, like, you could

hear with different instruments back and forth, like the call and response kind of stuff, I think is really, really cool. Um, I don't think the story is anything special, but I think just like, the art style is really cool. Um, and I think just, like, the way they deliver the story is so unique. And I think, like, for anybody who wants to, you know, pick up a $15 game, I think it's only, like, five bucks on iOS. I think what Janet's been saying. I think it's an absolute, like, great evening,

almost like you want to sit down and kind of, like, watch, like, a weird, kind of, like, a movie, you know. I really like the soundtrack. It's a tear joker? There are moments where, like, there's no part where I was, like, devastated, like walking away from moments and stuff like that, but there are definitely heavy moments. God damn, that hits in certain ways. And there are definitely moments throughout you're like, oh, wow, I did not expect this kind of emotional punch in certain things. And

you know, that's what I was like really impressed by as well. Yeah, and just the music, even though it's like the story seems to be very like inspired by Jimmy Hendricks and there's even a little bit of that, like the music, definitely Jimmy Hendricks inspired. The music itself also, almost reminds me of less Jimmy Hendrix and more of like if Pink Floyd wrote an album about Jimmy Hendrix. And just like the way of like the unique things that aren't instruments that like are used as instruments and just like kind of like almost like how like industrial it can sound at times. And then like going back into the more like 60s, early 70s vibe there. I had a really good time with it. I highly recommend it.

It's on Switch. And I think a bunch of other platforms. It's on your phone. if you got a phone, play it on your phone. I got it downloaded it on PS5. Yeah. So, yeah, I would give it it. When are you going to play it, huh?

When are you going to get off that Eldon Ring, huh? Yeah, when are you going to get off that Elven Ring like I did, bless. I'm going to beat it soon. It's hard. I'm going to beat it soon. I got the five demigods defeated, but it just keeps going. This game doesn't end. I would put it out of four out of five.

It's great. It's definitely, like, out of all of the games from review season. It's definitely a standout for me. And I think it's definitely one of my favorite games so far this year. Hell yeah, go check that out. And for everyone else, we'll see you next week. But for all you Patreon people, guess what? It's Bless Who, Tom.

Very excited for that. For everyone else, love you all. Goodbye.