Video Gamers Podcast - BattleBit Remastered, Dave the Diver and Helldivers 2 - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Video games hosts Josh, Paul and Ryan chatting some of the hottest video games out and you can’t afford to miss this episode. Battlebit is taking the world by storm, Dave the Diver is a beloved new release with an old school feel and Helldivers 2 has us hyped for this awesome looking video game. All the video game news you could want, each and every week! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Skippy, Kiitaclyzm, Gideon Is Lit, Toro, Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q  Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Video games covered this week:  BattleBit Dave the Diver Helldivers 2 Immortals of Aveum Halo Infinite Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hello everyone we are so excited to have you here for the multiplayer gaming podcast it's time to break down recent gaming news like we do on every thursday today we are going to be breaking down some recent game releases that seem to have struck a chord with the gaming community we'll talk about a couple of game trailers and then we'll wrap things up with a little bit of an update about Halo Infinite. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he's living his best life exploring the depths of the ocean for Matt's to fund and supply his dream of being a sushi restaurateur. It's Josh. Dude, this, Okay, this could not be more perfect. Number one, I love the ocean.

I love swimming. I've worked on the ocean and in the ocean for several jobs that I've had, and I love sushi. So I feel like these devs are just looking into my life and going, what's the perfect game for

Josh? But you were a dolphin trainer. Why don't you just train them to go get the fish for you? Well, I did. Yeah, dude, I'll tell you what, best sushi I ever had in my life was when I lived in Key Largo. I bet. Yeah. I thought you were about to say the best sushi you ever had was dolphin. No, Paul, they're mammals, Paul. They're not fish, number one. Oh my goodness. This is your daily biology lesson from Josh. That's it. You're not fish, number one. Oh my goodness. This is your daily biology lesson from Josh. That's it. You're getting a lecture after this show, Paul. I know dolphins are mammals. They have hair and they produce milk for their young. I know how to define a mammal. Name the other three, Paul. I don't know. Yeah. All right. All right. We got to move on. Welcome to Josh's

Dolphin Ted Talk. Get out of here. All right. And joining Josh and got to move on. Welcome to Josh's Dolphin Ted Talk. Get out of here. All right. And joining Josh and me, he's blasting away all of his teammates with some erroneous friendly fire. It's Ryan. Oh, I'm so ready to kill so many of my teammates on accident. Slash sometimes on purpose. Yeah, I was going to say this is 90% on purpose, 10%. Oops.

I would definitely replace sometimes with a different word. All right, let's get into it, guys. There are two games that have like really blown up over the last month. We're going to talk a little bit about Dave the Diver. But before we do that, let's talk about Battle Bit Remastered. So this game has now been out for close to a month, and it has sold 2 million copies. It's only 15 bucks. It does not rely on any of these stupid modern day live service gaming things.

It's just simply a game with a lot of content. It seems like people are really eating this one up. I personally love to see it. Have you guys been kind of following the success of battle bit here in the last couple weeks i yeah actually it's funny because we have a few friends that i saw like jump into it and i was like what is battle bit like why are they playing that so i looked it up and it was like roblox and i was like man people people are getting desperate out there playing some roblox games now for entertainment um but the hype on

this game is through the roof right now um i did actually buy the game and played it for a little bit so we can talk about that here in a minute but um ryan have you seen anything on this yeah actually um actually this morning i was just going over some stuff and kind of refreshed and everything and i actually watched they had on steam uh live video feed of the developer he was playing um so i got to sit and watch i watched that for probably about 20 minutes and got to see some of what's going on um i like the uh the roblox thing i put down that it looks like lego battlefield so you because like i saw them they planted some c4 i mean it's kind of like the regular battlefield destructible environment so i

saw a guy throw c4 on a wall and it broke up and it looked just like each block was falling down but it looks pretty neat from from what i saw now we're all huge battlefield fans i mean i all three of us absolutely love Battlefield. I picked this game up and played it. This was, Ryan, before I got your PS5 so we could dive into Final Fantasy 16. So it's really jonesing for something to play. And I was like, let me check out this BattleBit. It's 15 bucks, man. What can go wrong? So I did pick it up. I read a lot of the hype and the stories before that. What is setting BattleBit apart from everything else is what Paul kind of hinted at in the intro. This is not... There's no microtransactions. There's no,

oh, we're going to have tons of paid DLC. This is... Battle passes. Right. Yeah. This is the way a video game should be. We developed it. It's feature complete. We're going to expand it with new guns and stuff like that. But the purchase price, that's all you have to pay. And then you get this game, which is very refreshing to see, number one. But I'll tell you guys something. This is the best Battlefield that I have played since Battlefield 4.

In all honesty, I know that sounds crazy. And trust me when I say the graphics, it's weird, man. I'm not a fan of Roblox. Everybody knows I'm somewhat of a graphics snob, even though I claim not to be. But it's very odd playing Battlefield with Roblox graphics. But dude, gameplay carries this thing like you could not imagine. It is super fun. I've definitely watched some footage, and I've seen a lot of people just cackle, sticking bombs in front of vehicles and running them into tanks. And even though the tank kills the car, the car keeps moving, and it's like this kamikaze torpedo at a tank. One thing that stuck out to me is that I heard you

and our buddy Steve, both of you said that the voice comms in this game are incredible. And I wanted to know more because I don't exactly know what you guys mean. Is it just that people are actually talking cooperatively and working together? Or are people role-playing? What makes the voice comms so good? I will say I jumped right in on the voice comms so good it's i will say i jumped right in on the voice comms because i heard the exact same thing before i started playing it is open voice comms uh localized so you can hear your squad mates near you people are shouting for medics uh you hear guys screaming and you hear people getting into like the whole like call out military like you know we've got bogeys on our six, guys, turn around! People are just really getting into it.

The crazy thing about this game is it's something... It's like 256 people on one map. So this is not like 20v20. This is just chaos everywhere. But it's so quick to join. You don't have to go through 18 menus when you load up the game. You literally load up the game, you click play, and within 15 seconds, you're in a match. How refreshing is that nowadays, number one? And everything in this game is like that. But I'll tell you what, man. I found a squad. And just like the good battlefields, you can spawn on your squad leader if they're not in combat. They have a full scoreboard. It's everything you want from Battlefield except for good graphics. Honestly, I know that sounds

crazy, but I'm telling you guys, it really is. Gunplay feels good. Grenades feel good. I didn't do too many of the vehicles, to be honest with you. But I mean, there are helicopters and stuff like that in the game. But dude, medics were actually resing people. The engineers or whatever the resupply guys are, were dumping ammo. So they're like, get your ammo here so we can throw grenades. It is like people actually working together

and playing the game together like the way it's meant to be played. That's always such a short window. You have to play these games that release because within three to four months, it'll devolve into sheer toxicity so it's almost like you got to really enjoy that in that small window while you got it yeah exactly well even even this morning i love uh talking about the voice comms and stuff

the guy he killed someone up in this upper level and then there was like a patio a balcony area with a ladder down and it was like a hole and he goes he picks up you can pick up bodies i guess and drag them and he goes you go in the hole and the guy's like no no he like he like dumped them down and so to me you know there's there's a couple big things i love in video games but having that multiplayer co-op or like interaction where you get on the the mics and you all just laugh and joke and have a fun kind of community experience. That's what I love and that's some of my best memories.

That part was really intriguing to me. I had a few people already ask me, did you get it? Are you going to get it? I'm like, no, I'm freaking head deep in Ark and Final Fantasy right now. I'm off for a little bit, but my chains are broken and I'm free now. Maybe I'm off for a little bit, but my chains are broken and I'm free now. So maybe I'll

pick it up. Maybe you'll check out Battlefield NES edition. I will say, if you can get past the graphics, the gameplay is really good. And it's very reminiscent of what we all loved about Battlefield. The other thing with it is this. I just jumped in solo. I had no idea what I was doing. I was getting wrecked. I didn't know where to go. I didn't know any of the map stuff. I mean, it was literally my first time playing. But I will say, if you have a squad of friends that you can actually squad up with, it is

going to elevate things dramatically at that point. Because now you're working together as a squad. That's part of the fun of Battlefield. Remember when the squad leader would hide so that everybody could spawn on him and he'd made sure he didn't get in combat, right? And then it's like, you'd keep respawning and eventually take this point or something like that. All of that is there. It's really, really well done. And it's so refreshing. And every article that I've read about this is just like, it's funny because it's like, here's how you make a game that players love to play. And you don't need any of that AAA stuff.

It's just have classes, have a scoreboard, have voice over IP, like have good, make it easy to get into a game. Like these are all simple concepts that nobody can seem to do anymore. And then when somebody does it, it's not reinventing a single thing. This is just being smart about developing a game and everybody's freaking loving it at this point. Oh, you love to see it. Yeah, and I don't know if the game has fully peaked, or maybe it's just going to stay here for a while. But looking at Steam, the all-time peak is 86,000 players. And right now, 82,000 people are playing it on a Sunday afternoon.

So, yeah, we might still see some more success, even though they've already sold 2 million copies. Before we jump into Dave the Diver here, Josh, can you tell the people a little bit about how they can support us on Patreon? You can head over to MultiplayerSquad.com to be the hero the world needs. You can head on over there. You can say, guys, I love the show. I've been listening for years now. All of the hours and hours of entertainment. I want to throw a tip to you guys there. Here, have a little bit of money. Or you can say, you know what? The world needs more of this podcast. I want to support you guys long-term. You can sign up long-term if you want. We've got tiers that start at $5 all the way up to our legendary tier at $100. But it is the listeners and the supporters that make this

podcast happen for everybody out there. And if you want to provide joy to the world, you can do that at MultiplayerSquad.com. Perfect. All right. So the other game that released here just recently is Dave the Diver. It's had a ton of success as well. It's currently sitting at a 97% rating on Steam. This one goes for 20 bucks. So these are like some really good low-priced games. And Dave the Diver is one of these games that kind of mashes several things together. We covered a lot of games like that last Thursday. But this one basically takes some things like adventure, RPG elements, deep sea exploration, fishing, and managing your own sushi restaurant. And there's a lot of high praise for this game. IGN says it is one of the best games that they've played this year.

And it also has an 89 currently on Metacritic. And I love when these little quirky games catch on. I love when studios are willing to just kind of take a chance with some of these little niche games. But what's your guys' impression after looking into Dave the Diver? Well, I'll sneak in real quick because I'm pretty sure Josh was a little high on this game, the way he was talking. But it looks really cool, and it goes to show

just how much gameplay really does matter. If you have a good idea and a good concept, and you have good gameplay that's fun, unique, and enjoyable, graphics don't matter as much as a lot of people think they do. So I thought it was really neat from what I saw. It's getting, like Paul said, really crazy reviews. It's not crazy expensive. So if you like games, you know, if

you like games, you're burnt out on some stuff and you want to try something different, I think this one is pretty cool. You're basically a scuba Dave and you go down and you have all these different missions in the, what's it called, the blue hole? The deep blue or the blue hole

or something like that. Yeah, and then you run a sushi restaurant at night. It's wild. It is totally off the wall, but it did look really cool. I mean, I think there was even for Paul, there was like farming and stuff, you know, crafting and all kinds of stuff. So I thought it was cool. Yeah. Yeah.

It's got some interesting things where you dive underwater and you're collecting all these mats that you can use to build stuff, but you also have to hunt your own food. And even in how you do that is kind of interesting because you can take firearms with you and just shoot the crap out of a shark or a fish and now you can harvest it. But the game also gives you other mechanics like using, I think they're like trank darts, there's nets, you can set traps, and those things are harder and they include their own minigames. But then if you do that, you get higher quality meat. So I really love all those kinds of aspects. I have not played it. I've just watched a little bit of gameplay here or there. The only real criticism I've run across is that some people say after a few hours, it just starts to feel like more of a grind. But it seems like almost universally, people just love the game loop. The one thing I keep

running into is that people say this is kind of the epitome of, okay, I'm just going to do one more day. Okay, I'm just going to do one more dive. And the next thing you know, it's three in the morning, and you can't believe you've been playing this game for so long. Yeah. Every now and then a game comes along where you don't know much about the game, but it gets so much hype and so much praise that it kind of forces you to look at this game. And this is exactly what happened with Dave the Diver. I forget what I was doing. I was looking up something. Oh, I know what it was. Somebody said, what's the game coming up in 2023 that you're most hyped for that surprised

you the most? It was like a Reddit thread or something like that. And so I'm just browsing through there, looking for all the smart people that are picking Baldur's Gate 3. Maybe some of the people that know how good Remnant 2 is going to be. And somebody mentioned this game called Dave the Diver. And everybody lost their minds talking about how amazing this game was. And I was like, Dave the Diver?

What the heck are people talking about, man? So I do what anybody does. I go to Steam and I start watching the trailer for it. And it's very pixely reminiscent of the early 80s type graphics on this thing. But then the reviews, everybody's just like, dude, I have not loved a game this much in like a decade. And like, that's crazy talk, right? Like, I mean, you're talking like Diablo 4, Starfield's coming. I mean, all these, God of War, right? And all these people are just gushing about this game. And I'm like, what am I missing?

So I start, you know, looking more into it. And it's just like, it's just a very, very well done game. You love the characters. You love the gameplay the game throws um new gameplay elements at you like people were saying like every 30 minutes it seems like like when you're in the sushi restaurant and you're doing that part of the game at night you actually have to like do this little mini game to cut the fish or to like mix the wasabi and stuff like that so it's like these are all really neat little things that they don't sound great individually. But when you put all that into a game, you're just entertained at that point.

I will absolutely be picking this game up. I almost bought it the other day. And then I started diving into Final Fantasy 16. But I'll tell you right now, a game that gets this much hype, this much praise is right up my alley as far as it seems a little bit old school, a little bit new school. I'm going to wind up playing this one. I'll be very curious to hear if you like it, because the game that it reminds me the most of is probably Stardew Valley. Yeah, I know. Yeah, I thought that too. And you're not a Stardew fan, so I'll be curious to hear. I think between the three of us, I would be the most likely to like this game

so if you end up liking it i know for sure that i will yeah yeah it's just got so many different elements i think honestly there's probably something for everybody like i know people were saying when you're diving and going like hunting for the fish you wind up fighting boss monsters and stuff so there's like these really cool boss fights yeah like a hermit crab that's using a tow truck as a shell and stuff like that. And they show some of this stuff in the trailers. So I just love stripping things down sometimes, right? Like just give people a good gameplay loop.

Give them fun characters that they enjoy. Be silly. Don't take yourself too seriously. Mix it up a little bit so it's not so routine. I'm seeing that a little bit with Final Fantasy 16, which is a huge AAA title. But there's some parts where I'm like, this is kind of repetitive. Like, could you not come up with something new on this? And so a game like Dave the Diver that comes around and says, look, we're going to keep things fresh for the 20 hours it takes you to play this

game. That seems like a breath of fresh air. Yeah. Not every game has to be open world, 100 hours. You know, it's okay to have a smaller experience. Yeah. All right. Well, we're going to take a short break, and we'll be right back with more Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. All right. Now that we are back, there are two game trailers that we want to talk about here. The first one that I think is probably more exciting

is hell divers 2 now i'm excited about i'm not gonna lie i'm just coming out i'm excited about this one this one looks like a blast so we got a co-op and combat trailer and everything in the trailer is captured on a ps5 and it looks gorgeous and i love when you see that it's captured from a ps5 can't wait to see pc footage but if anyone out there doesn't know anything about hell divers because i didn't know anything about it until i started researching the second one it is a tactical third person co-op action shooter and side note it has full friendly fire and i think friendly fire is one of those mechanics that doesn't really exist a whole

lot anymore but man if it's not really infuriating but also really funny at the same time so tell me what are your guys thoughts on hell divers i am i am excited not not just for the friendly fire calm down shoot each other in the back a A lot of accidents. Oh, whoops. Oh, that was you? Ryan again? Like I said earlier, I love co-op games. I love multiplayer games that you can play with friends. Get on a mic, have objectives, and go

out and just wreck stuff. And this looked like that type of game. From what I saw, there were so many unique features and ways to get your weapons ways to get upgrades um you know you can uh you can change your armor to uh if you want to be more tanky they have like heavy armor if you want to be a little lighter and have more mobility and less uh enemy enemy detection you can wear lighter armor so there's all these different kind of things they

do to have little kind of wrinkles and folds within the game but to me just you know going from these these kind of low graphical games that we were just talking about to this like this looked beautiful and it looked like it played beautiful i'm stoked i'm very very excited i know how we're talking about you know i was super excited for assassin's creed and and uh a lot of these other games that just looked fun. This game just looks fun. And I feel like if we get it, we're going to have a blast. I want to play this game really, really badly, honestly. Oh, yeah.

And I want it now. I do want it now. Thankfully, it does come out this year. I put in our show notes Outriders 2.0? Because, Paul, we loved playing Outriders. And some of the fun with Outriders was just that co-op third-person shooter nature. Strip everything else away. To me, that's a blast with friends. Now, Outriders had some really, really cool abilities and mechanics and boss fights and stuff like that. But I'm seeing all of that in Helldivers 2. The fact that you can have different armor loadouts, I think they said there's classes too, or maybe it's just the loadouts that matter.

But like Ryan said, you can have a guy in heavy armor that's on the front lines. You can have a guy that's running around being real fast. I love the fact that they got into some of the technical stuff on it, where they're talking about the angle that you shoot these bugs. Like, because let's be honest, these, yeah,

like these bugs kind of look like the starship trooper bugs. I mean, they're very similar, right? They look a lot like them. Yeah. So, you know,

you could easily get confused, but they show a guy like shooting one of these bugs. And if you shoot it in an angle, the bullets kind of ricochet off and do minimal damage bugs and if you shoot it in an angle the bullets kind of ricochet off and do minimal damage but if you shoot it head-on now the bullets do more damage like that's just a cool feature man like you know i gotta be aware of how i'm shooting this thing um i love the friendly fire aspect they show a dude just chuck a big grenade or call down some orbital strike and it just wipes out his teammates and i'm just like yes like i want i want to do that too but also at the same time they say in the trailer death is

cheap because when you die you basically take control of a new citizen and they get dropped into the map and i thought that was really clever because we're so used to playing games where you die and you just respawn and it doesn't really make any sense we just accept it because you have to have some kind of mechanic but i loved that they're like oh yeah death is cheap we got all these soldiers if one drops you'll just play as a new one so if there is friendly fire it sounds like it's not the worst thing in the world where it's gonna ruin the experience. I did look up a little bit about the first Hell Divers. It's a 92% on Steam, and people seem to say it's pretty hardcore and it's a difficult game. So if this is kind of like the Outriders model, but it's more difficult, hopefully with really good endgame content, you're 100% speaking my language. I don't know that I would quite yet

say it's in that Outriders camp because we'll have to get our hands on it first. But Outriders to me was the first game in a very long time where the gameplay actually felt completely fresh, especially with the class system. Hopefully Helldivers 2 will do that same thing. And Ryan, you're pretty hyped about it too. So maybe this is one that we'll all end up picking up.

Oh, I hope so. I'm excited. Yeah, I hope so, especially that we'll all end up picking up oh i hope so i'm excited yeah i hope so especially if we can all get on together and just games like this are just fun like even if the game isn't something so spectacular and new and fresh like they're just fun to play with friends like i i can't imagine a world where we don't get you know our 40 worth or i don't even know what the game's going to be priced at this point. But these types of games resonate with me big time because if you can get two other friends in there, it's almost like you were just guaranteed to have a great time. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So moving on, we also wanted to talk a little bit about

Immortals of Avium. That name might sound a little bit familiar because we did talk about this game back in April when we got an announcement trailer for it. This is the one that is really just a first-person magic shooter. Just instead of guns, you have magic. This is the one where I kind of complained a little bit about the trailer because it was nothing but quick cuts with hundreds of spells, and there was no HUD. There was no real explanation for anything. It kind of just looked like a laser light show to me, and I was no HUD. There was no real explanation for anything.

It kind of just looked like a laser light show to me. And I was like, I don't really get a sense of what this game even is. And this trailer that we got this week, I think provides a lot more context and it lets you better understand what the game is gonna be like. I was curious to know from you guys, because I feel a lot more optimistic about it now,

but what stuck out to you guys from this trailer? Shiny lights, fireworks, pretty, pretty. Lots of red, lots of blue, lots of green. The one thing I laughed at this because there was one part where they're showing this off, where there's so many particle effects on the screen that you literally cannot see the thing that you're shooting at. And like part of me just kind of chuckled because I'm like, like, this is so over the top. That's like green explosions or whatever. I don't even know what's in front of me anymore. But then at the same time, I love the fact that they actually did go a little bit deeper into the different schools of magic like red magic is your up close you know

close range you know dps magic green magic is auto homing kind of damage over time um blue magic i don't even remember what the heck blue magic was like long range bolts oh yeah yeah sniping yeah yeah blue magic was like sniping and then i kind of went okay like, this is pretty. I look like I'm watching fireworks. But then they started getting into the skill trees and the different modifiers for the different schools of magic this red magic that you can hold and it channels a big fireball, right? Well, now you get this perk or this amulet that instead of it being a fireball, it splits into six different little mini fireballs and spreads out in front of you or something like that. I love the ability to build out a play style. And I was really worried that this game was just going to be blue magic, red magic, green magic. But it seems like you can actually

customize those magics on how you want to play the game. And to me, that's a huge selling point. I did see too how I think some of the characters were shaded a certain color, which magic worked on them, which is always cool when they put in that little wrinkle

in a game where you know you have to you have to be selective on what type of magic you can't just get something that you love to use and just decimate all the enemies no matter what um i know you guys are talking about all the laser lights and everything i just said it looked hectic like all the screen it was very chaotic it was just chaotic it was just It was just blasts everywhere. I highly doubt that I would pick this up. It just did not set with me. It's not something that got me excited at all. I'm sure it's going to be cool and a lot of people will like it, but I just don't think it's probably my type of game it up. You're one of the very few people in this world that could actually run the game because Josh and I did talk about this. Oh, really? If you want to run this game on medium settings to get 60 frames a second, 1440p, not even 4K, you have to have a 3080 Ti and a 12th gen processor. That's for medium settings. Oh, my gosh.

I don't know how many people are even going to be able to play this game i wonder if there's going to be a lot of people picking it up and then refunding uh but yeah ryan you've got one of the very few supercomputers that actually meet these requirements all right and instead i'm going to play battle bit yeah at 4 000 frames a second. Max ray tracing and everything. Yeah, this one is set for release on August 22nd, so it's actually only a few weeks away. I did like that they said there's 25 spells, and then with the customization beyond that, it does seem like there's a lot to play around and tinker with. I'm keeping an eye on it, but this is one where it's a wait and see what the critics say

if the critic scores are there i i would be tempted but you know at this point here i'm gonna say probably stay away but it looks interesting i do i do have one question for josh with someone with such gamer add i i have no patience ever to like really really work on a build out and and really customize those things because i just get so bored with that part how do you how is that like so means so much to you with such gamer add that you have it that's part of the add though because i can go from one build to another like immortals of you're always changing it i will 100 be like let me try out this red fire i I want to spec into that as much as I can. Let me see what this does. I'll do that for a day. And then it's going to be like,

all right, green magic, let's see what you got. And then it's like, oh, green magic sucks, man. Okay, blue magic. Let's see what you can do. And that's just, I'll sit there and build it out just over and over and over again. And it's that, it's kind of that challenge of finding what works for me or what works best. What's the most fun versus what's the most effective. And it's just, it's kind of like ADD in itself in that regard. Cause it's like, I'm constantly changing the game itself,

even though it's the same game, it's how you play the game that varies. One reason I love overwatch so much is because if I get bored with overwatch, I just stopped playing Reaper or I stop playing, you know, and I can jump to healer and it's like, okay, now it's completely different because I'm not worried about killing everything. All I got to do is keep my team alive. Right? So there's those certain aspects like that where I can change the gameplay of the game. When I get bored with one aspect helps me out a lot as far as like a game's longevity. Yeah, I think that

makes a lot of sense. Yeah. All right, and then we are just about out of time, but we got to hit this last story of the week because we mentioned it in the intro. Guys, ooh, yeah, yeah. Halo Infinite seems to have died. Player numbers on Steam are not looking good. There are only 2% of players playing now

compared to at release. Of course, you expect a drop-off over time, but this is rather steep for a game that's not even two years old yet. I took a look on Steam charts. Only 4,500 people are currently playing Halo Infinite. That puts it below Farming Simulator 19. That's a four-year-old version of Farming Simulator that's getting more action.

And the OG version of The Forest. Oh my goodness. And most people who like The Forest are playing Sons of the Forest. It's a cheap game. It's newer. It's bigger. So, you know, there's even a ton of stuff I've never heard of. It's below Russian Fishing 4.

You know, like titles like that. I don't even know what this is. So just maybe in like one or two sentences, what happened to Halo Infinite? Why are people no longer playing it? Halo died after Halo Reach. Oh, so you say it's already been dead for like 10 years. It's been dead for a while. Yeah, Halo 3 and Halo Reach were the pinnacle, especially Halo Reach.

I played a lot of that online. After that, I haven't cared at all about Halo. I even got the newer ones. I got Infinite. I don't know. Sometimes, you know, I always say to my wife when she's giving me a hard time for going to them where I'm like,

if you love them, let them go. I love you, Halo, but it's just time to go. Did you play the single player campaign, Ryan, or only the multiplayer? On Infinite? Yeah. I think I just played multiplayer. The single player campaign's really good.

I almost wonder if Halo, maybe the multiplayer has kind of lost its magic over time, but the campaign was still so good. I wonder if things will kind of shift that way but i think for a lot of people just any lack of meaningful progression and just like lack of updates and i think by the time 343 they kept making excuses and people just kept dropping and if your friends aren't playing you're not gonna play and it seems like it just kind of snowballed but what do you think josh that That's exactly what I think. I was going to say, I think it died because of a lack of continued development and support. If you remember, this was a surprise announcement where they went, you guys, Halo Infinite multiplayer, free to play. It's coming out

next week. Boom. Everybody lost their minds. We all hopped in. We had a lot of fun with it. But then people started going, okay, this is fun. Where's Forge? Where are these game modes? Where's these new maps? Where's all this? And they kind of went, oh yeah, yeah, don't worry, we're working on that. And they never worked on it. And then the problem was, is that they started introducing new problems because they were focusing on seasons, right? Everybody wants to sell battle passes. So what do we got to do? We can't fix the game. We have to monetize it now, right? And so in some of the stuff, the hit registration became bananas. It was terrible. In a shooter, you have to have good

hit registration because if you don't, nobody wants to play it. If I'm shooting a guy, I expect that his health is going to go down, that kind of stuff. And so I really think they shot themselves in the foot on this because they didn't focus on what they needed to focus on they focused on we released the game we better make some money on it now and they did that to the detriment of the life of the game yeah i think that's probably all it comes down to which is sad we enjoyed halo in the beginning it was just kind of like after a month it was like i have so many choices why would i still play this forge is what they needed to get out dude they if they had gotten forge out it would be a completely different story

you have there's so many choices of all these different types of shooters or other games co-op games you know there's so much to choose from now so you have you have to put something good and you have to maintain it and advance it and make it unique and fresh all the time. Otherwise, people are just going to leave, and that's what this shows. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Well, I think that catches us up on all things gaming news related here for this week. We do want to say thank you to all of our listeners for tuning in. Make sure to swingbymultiplayersquad.com to check out the Patreon support options that Josh laid out earlier, and please check out our other episodes. They drop every Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. So make sure to hit the follow button. That way you'll be notified of all of those episodes.

And then until next time, happy gaming. Thirstbusters, huh? Well, see you later. I'm going to play Dave the Diver. That's it. All right. See you, everybody.