Video Gamers Podcast - [Deep Dive] Edge of Nowhere - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: February 26, 2024

Video Games Hosts Paul, Ryan and Josh are climbing glaciers, battling alien creatures and talking the love-craftian horror aspects of Edge of Nowhere. This video game is one of the few VR titles we’ve covered and was picked for Paul to play by Legendary listener Disratory. Now it’s time to find out if this video game landed, or if age has taken its toll on this older VR title.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Gaius214, YayaArizona, Disratory, Jwaf and AceofShame Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. Hello fellow gamers! Welcome to this episode of the Video Gamers Podcast.

Today we are deep diving the 2016 cult classic VR game Edge of Nowhere. Please check us out on socials everywhere at Video Gamers Pod and leave us a five-star rating on Apple and Spotify. I am your host Paul and joining me here stranded in Antarctica with me, my fellow ice climber, it's Josh. Okay, number one, I am terrified of heights. Number two, I don't like being cold because I've lived in Arizona for over a decade now, so this is starting off a little rough. Yeah, I think the desert heat has probably made us babies to the cold. It would be rough. Absolutely has. Yeah, if it's under 70 degrees, I'm wearing a hoodie now. Very nice. And joining us from his cozy, warm home in Phoenix, because he didn't board the plane with us to Antarctica this time, it's Ryan.

Yo, I'm sitting here drinking Mai Tais by the pool, boys. What are you up to? You're a smart man. All right, before we jump into Edge of Nowhere, Josh, I believe you're going to read a review or two. We have asked and y'all have answered. The reviews have been pouring in lately. We love seeing it. We love hearing what you guys think about the show. It really does help the show as well. I mean, when people are looking for a gaming podcast, they look at reviews and they really help us out. And we just

love reading them too. We love hearing what you all have to say about it. So we try to read a couple on the show. I've got two more for this episode. This first one comes in from Charles 1999 nine, and it says, love the variety. And it says, just started listening to your podcast and it has been great love the variety of the show and the positive energy you guys bring keep challenging yourselves and changing it up awesome work nice oh such kind words we do like mixing it up some you know we get it man nobody wants to to have the same thing all the time but people also want some consistency but yeah this is why we do things like our bonus rounds our news episodes uh you know the deep dives the pre-dives all that goodness so try to keep it fresh i could have tacos all the time that's true

too hamburgers yeah well thank you charles it's very. And then this next one comes in from your boy, Al. And it is titled, Wondering if you should listen? The answer is yes. And it says, I was not paid to say what I'm about to say. These guys are the real deal. Just men who love gaming and talking about it. Being a family dude, it's huge for me to have a podcast I can safely listen to with kids in the car. Their content is fun, engaging, and never boring. Even if I think there may be an episode that might not apply to me,

I always end up being glad I listened. These guys feel like old friends I've known for years. Also, if you need community, join the Discord server. I'm in there every day and loving the friends I've made. The hosts are approachable and friendly. All around good guys except for josh not just saying this i have listened to over 20 different gaming podcasts this one is the best one look no further for your gaming entertainment and community

you found everything you need right here oh that's so sweet and we know that that's our boy alex in there i mean dude honestly dude, honestly, Alex, we're seeing this more and more lately, man, where we've had people that have just been lurking in the Discord server, which is fine. Hey, I get it. Not everybody's super chatty, but like, especially lately, man,

we've had a lot of people that have just kind of said, hey, I've been here for a while and I love this community. You're right. Everybody's actually really friendly and I love this community. You're right. Everybody's actually really friendly. People love talking games. Nobody's going to be toxic to me. And I love it, man. We've met so many awesome gamers through this podcast and through the Discord server and the community that's been built there. I absolutely love it. If you are looking for just awesome, good-hearted gamers,

I'm telling you the Discord server is the place to be. And again, I've said this before. I know every person in the world is like, oh, I have a Discord server, but there's something special about this one, man. There's not a whole lot of controversy. I mean, maybe over whether you should eat mac and cheese with a fork or a spoon,

but that's about as spicy as it gets around here yeah all right and then ryan why don't you tell the people a little bit about legendary support on patreon because that has a lot to do with why we're here today that is why we're here so um basically all you lovely people out there we appreciate every single one of you um and if you appreciate us we have this fancy little thing called the legendary support tier on patreon so how it works is basically um if you go legendary on uh on the patreon there we have all these amazing perks with bonus episodes uh shout outs on the show extra features on our discord and what you get to do is you can pick a host and hijack them for a game so you get to take one of our lives over pick a game for us to deep dive and then we will come

back and report to you with a full episode so and if it's a solid game maybe or a multiplayer maybe the other guys will pick it up too. Awesome stuff there if you want to go legendary. And then that leads us to our famed hijacker for this episode, Disratory. Disratory picked Paul on this one for an interesting title called

Edge of Nowhere. It's a VR game and that's what we're going to cover today. And it's very hard for me to not call it Edge of Tomorrow. I want to say it every single time, dude. It's just a great movie, by the way. It is. It is really good.

I have to stop myself every time because I'll start to say Edge of, and I got to do the brain calculus and then say nowhere. Yeah, this, you know, we kind of thought Distratory was probably going to hit us with Star Citizen. He also might have

got Josh the founders ship package. I figured me or Ryan were coming up next with Star Citizen. But no, in this case, we went VR. I remember Distratory saying how much he loves VR. He's jumped in our Discord. He has hyped up a bunch of vr titles oh yeah and i remember the one thing that really stuck out stuck out to me is that he said early on in the vr cycle there were a lot of classic games that kind of went under the radar because not a lot of people had vr and he felt like this was one of those really good titles that was underappreciated to time and so that's why we jumped into this. Josh, you decided to pick it up and play through it as well.

I know a big part of that is that I played through and beat it and told you it was about four and a half hours. It's relatively short. And Josh is like, okay, if it's only four and a half hours, I'll beat it in a day or two and then we can record. And that's why we're here. Also, we owe a quick shout out here for a new Patreon supporter. Metal Flint signed up with rare status. So we have several tiers.

They range from five bucks a month all the way up to the legendary, which is 100 bucks for a month. But we do want to say thank you so much to Metal Flint. We appreciate our Patreon supporters so much. Almost all of our funding comes from Patreon. So we really do appreciate all of you guys out there. And there's a lot of bonuses. You get bonus episodes and all our episodes ad-free in a day early. So go check it out, MultiplayerSquad.com.

All right, guys, let's start talking a little bit about VR and Edge of Nowhere. So to date, kind of shockingly, we've done about almost 110 deep dives up to this point. We have only covered one VR game as a deep dive. It was Demio, and it's rated pretty high up there on our leaderboard. It's number 30 for me, 33 for Josh. We absolutely loved Demio. We gushed over that when we did the deep dive. Some people might even start to wonder, why do we not cover more VR games? Is there a particular reason that we haven't done any more? I mean, we all like VR. All of us are fans of it. We all have a Quest 2. I think the main reason is that even though it is becoming more and more common for people to have a VR headset, VR is still very low

down the totem pole in regards to, if we'll call them consoles necessarily, that people have access to. I feel like, and again, this is just from, you know, a normal average gamer's point of view. I feel like VR has been a little stagnant in the games lately. And I know that there's, disreputory number one is probably like, what? Like, you guys haven't tried this game and that game and you know but but for a while it was it was just a lot of like similarity and things like that um ryan and i both suffer from vr motion sickness so we cannot play some of the more advanced like in-depth vr games bone labs is a game that i really was really interested in wanted wanted to play. And that game is full smooth motion, locomotion, that kind of stuff. And I was like, there's no way,

um, red matter two was another like kind of top tier game that came out. And even though you can teleport in that one, it's kind of like, I think it's more geared towards that full motion type stuff. And so I know like Ryan and I suffer from the motion sickness part. There's also the aspect that the, you know, VR feels like work sometimes, man. It's not like sitting in your comfy chair at your desk with a mouse and a keyboard and just kind of kicking back and playing these games with friends or whatever. It just requires more effort. You've got this thing on your head. It's heavy. Some games require that you move and flail around, and I just don't always feel like doing that sometimes.

Exactly. Sometimes it's nice. It's like almost an experience. You get the, hey, we're getting the VR out, and you can take turns. You can play Superhot or Beat Saber or any of these cool VR games. Even I played a lot of VR golf. It's fun.

It's a blast. I'm sure if I busted it out right now, I'd enjoy myself. But like you said, it feels like a little bit of work. It's not, you know, we kind of want to unwind from the day, unwind from our jobs. You know, sometimes when you do the VR, it's just not, that's not what you get from it. Plus, I swear every time I go to grab the quest too, it's not charged. Yeah. Oh yeah. So when the bug finally does bite me, it's never ready. My kids have started using the quest and it's like, it is the exact same thing, man. I remember cause when I actually was, I was like, okay,

I'm going to pick up this game. I'm going to play it that way. Like I can say things about it too. And I went to get it and it was just dead as a doornail sitting in my kid's room. And I was like, Oh, come on, man. Yeah.

It happens every time. All right. So reading the description of the game through the Oculus app, because this is not available on steam, you got to go through Oculus edge of nowhere is a third person VR adventure from a claimed independent developer insomniac games. got to go through Oculus. Edge of Nowhere is a third-person VR adventure from acclaimed independent developer Insomniac Games. Victor Howard is on a journey to find his fiancée, Ava Thorne, who is part of a lost expedition in Antarctica. His rescue mission takes a sudden

turn as he ventures deeper into a dark, monstrous world where reality warps and twists around him. Desperate to find the one he loves, Victor must encounter disturbing monsters and scale looming ice walls as he descends further into madness. In Edge of Nowhere, nothing is what it seems, and the unexpected lurks from all sides. Alright, that description I think is very good. I would say it almost borderlines on spoiler territory, but in order to talk about this game, I think it is necessary to talk about some of the framework. I would like to tell everyone listening that we are going to initially keep things pretty spoiler-free, and I will give you progressive warnings as we talk more and more. More or less, we're going to kind of cover the game chronologically, and I'll kind of let you know.

And there will be a point when I will say, if you want to play the game, this is a good place to pause. So that way we're not going to full out spoil everything. All right. Plus the game's like four and a half hours. I mean, you got, you got to get into some spoilers or there's nothing to talk about. All right. When you first launched this game for the first time, surprisingly, it starts out in

the jungles of Chile, even though this entire game pretty much takes place in Antarctica. And I thought it was a really neat sequence because I thought that it really sets up the framework for the rest of the game. It introduces you to Victor, who you're going to play as. And basically, you see your fiance, Ava. There's also another guy there named Edwards that is another scientist in the game. You hear some screaming in the distance. Ava runs off to go check on Edwards and you start to hear like a panther snarling.

Now you can't move yet at this point in the game. All you can do is shake your head and look around. I start frantically looking for, I don't know if it's like a tiger or a panther or what. I'm kind of starting to look around. And then all of a sudden you kind of hear the panther pounce. And then all of a sudden your character wakes up and he is on an airplane above Antarctica. So I thought this was actually a brilliant way to start the game because it kind of sets

the stage. Things aren't necessarily what you think. It starts out with the dream sequence, but it's also filled with dread as you hear this panther, but you can't see it. And then you also get the jump scare at the end. And that kind of sets you up for everything in this game. It's a lot of impending doom and dread. There are several jump scares throughout the game. Not everything is what appears on the surface. And so I thought that actually was a pretty brilliant way to start out the game. Do you think that's fair to say, Josh? I do. It's interesting because it had been actually a while since I had put on the VR headset and it's just freaking cool, man.

Like every time I go into VR, I just go like, I kind of get a little smile on my face and I start looking around. That's the first thing I do is just start looking everywhere and like looking up and down and it's like the head tracking stuff. And then I was just like, yeah, exactly. Yeah. Ryan's like mimicking it, but yeah, I probably look like an idiot, you know, but it's like, I'm looking at the trees. I'm looking at the sky. What's that Panther sound over there? Wait, where's that character going? And it's just like you instantly get immersed into this game that I have no idea what this game is about.

All I know is I'm in a jungle. There's a panther or something in the bushes somewhere. I'm starting to get a little freaked out. And then now I'm in a plane. And of course, what's the first thing you do in the plane? As I look out the window and it's like, I can see the wing of the airplane. I can see the cargo hole behind us. And I'm just like, this is so cool, man. Like there's just something about the technology of VR, even if it's old, this game released in 2016. I mean, this is an old VR game

at this point, but even then, it's still there. It's just there's something about it that just makes it really neat to be in this world and in this airplane. And of course, you're a passenger. So I'm looking over at the pilot and it's like, I feel like we're just buddies, man. I'm just chilling with the pilot flying this plane over Antarctica. So it was a very neat start to the game. It really did from early on help kind of set the atmosphere of the

game. And I had no idea what to expect with this one. I really kind of went into this completely blind. And so it was an interesting intro and it really did kind of get me to where I was like, okay, let's see where this thing goes so so i i did not play the game but i did i wanted to see the mechanics kind of how the game looks graphic wise because i know you guys had talked about it so i did watch this intro part and even without the vr headset i was watching it and and my son was with me jackson he i call him the lingerer because he's always around and he's just he wants to be part of it so he he's sitting here watching with me, Jackson. He, I, I call him the lingerer cause he's always around and he's just, he wants to be part of it. So he, he's sitting here watching with me and I heard, I heard the cheetah tiger, you know, whatever it was, uh, Jaguar growling in the

distance. And that even psyched me up and I'm like, Oh, Oh man. Oh no. Where is it? You know? So I can only imagine with the headset on and stuff. So yeah, just from the get-go, I get what you guys are talking about, how it kind of draws you in. I was immediately sucked into the game. Oh, yeah. And every time I put the VR headset back on, it's a little bit of like, this is like magic. Yes. That's kind of how it feels. It's like, I can't believe this exists and that it works this well.

I mean, Ryan, some of my all-time favorite memories are are gaming with you when we were teenagers especially the titles that have jump scares and the ones that are a little bit scarier like resident evil 4 oh yeah immediately comes to mind playing on gamecube manhunt uh you decided not to pick this one up are you just too busy dispensing justice across the galaxy, fighting off the bugs and the robots and hell divers? Do you understand how many of these planets need liberated? It's a 24-7 job.

There's only so many people that can do it, and I'm just doing my part for Super Earth. Yeah. I did. We support that, Ryan. We fully support that, by the way. All right, my man. Yeah yeah i just got i did i mean one thing that typically holds me back obviously is the motion sickness i unfortunately i i really wish i didn't get as motion sick as i do you spin me three times in a

computer chair and i'm spinning you know so it's it's hard for me it sucks because i i've tried everything known to man as far as medical science can offer to not get motion sick to not get seasick but i just can't do it so certain things just blow me up and uh there's there's no other option but it was mainly just i was super busy and uh and helldivers came out and that just took over my world. That's fine. We got to keep one of us on the front lines anyway. Absolutely. All right.

So Josh mentioned a little bit about how this game is a little bit old. So it did release in 2016, which is not that long ago when you look at games as a whole. I mean, there are some games that are eight years old that you can still pick up today and they play great we're talking witcher three titanfall 2 uncharted 4 those came out the same year as edge of nowhere those games look great but when we're when we are talking vr years all right this game does look like it's about 20 to 25 years old because eight vr years is just a lot longer it's like dog years yeah it really is yeah yeah that's a great comparison i will say a lot of this game holds up perfectly well but i do have to say that the graphics

are a pretty big downside trying to play it today did you feel the same way josh yeah i mean it's not very it's i i want to say that the sense of scale and a lot of that stuff carries over really well but if you actually look at anything up close it does leave you wanting a bit more it does and as the self-proclaimed resident graphics snob of this podcast i really really like good graphics, especially in VR. I mean, let's be honest, Half-Life Alyx, amazing game, but one of the things that makes it amazing is the graphical fidelity in that game too. You know, and so just the reflections

off of the different like materials in Half-Life Alyx, I mean, all of it put together really helps that immersion experience. I did feel like this was an old game. I was like, what is this? Like a first generation VR game? Like, man, it made me realize like we've come a long way. Yeah. But then it's hard to go back at the same time. I just kind of looked at it like I was watching like a cartoon or something. And not that the graphics are cartoony but I was able to just say I think I was able to just convince myself look this is an older game it's not about the graphics you know this time around I know that this game is somewhat story

based and like atmospheric so I think I was able to kind of overlook like how primitive it looked in the graphical sense because i kind of knew that um but yeah they're they're pretty bad so like to give you a specific example throughout the game you're climbing a ton of ice walls and the problem is while you're climbing up or down the ice walls the ice walls are a flat plane it is there is, there are no jagged edges. There's no actual texture on these ledges. It's just a flat picture that they kind of give like a fake appearance of texture on it. A lot of the plants, if you look at them up close,

I swear they're made up of like 12 triangles, where in like any other modern game, it would probably be like a couple hundred. And so you just kind of have to just know that going in. modern game, it would probably be like a couple hundred. And so you just kind of have to just know that going in. Graphically, it does look aged, but a lot of the atmosphere still hits perfectly fine. So I don't think it necessarily makes the game like unplayable. I think it's just good to know before you fire it up. It is. And I mean, like I said, the graphics are old, they are dated, but they do not detract from what this game is supposed to be, if that makes sense. So it's like,

if you hear everything we talk about and you're like, man, this sounds kind of cool, but Josh said the graphics suck. Like it's, it's okay. Like this game doesn't need to have good graphics for what it's trying to do. Totally agree. All right. Well, it's that time. Let's go ahead and take our first break and then we'll come back and start to talk about some of the gameplay. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships,

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Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. All right, so to set the stage for the actual gameplay of Edge of Nowhere, the game takes place in the 1930s and Victoror has set off to antarctica he's trying to track down ava his fiance her expedition has apparently gone missing unfortunately your plane also crashes into antarctica uh so you're more or less stuck here for a while

and basically over the course of the game you're kind of trying to follow in their footsteps. So you're running across their old camps. You're finding journals with writings that they've left along the way. And you are climbing further down and further into Antarctica as you're trying to track down Ava. And I will say that a lot of the setting I think works so beautifully in VR. Being in Antarctica makes a whole lot of sense. You hear the snow crunching with every step you take. They did such a good job with that. Chef's kiss to the audio design on that stuff. And when you're in Antarctica, you got a lot of these like wide open spaces with massive mountains and icebergs, and you're climbing up and down several hundred feet drops or rises. I got to say in playing it, it just makes me think you got to use Antarctica more in video games.

This should be a more common setting. You can do whatever the heck you want there. Nobody's going to Antarctica. If you want to have aliens in Antarctica, setting. You can do whatever the heck you want there. Nobody's going to Antarctica. If you want to have aliens in Antarctica, guess what you can do? You can have aliens in Antarctica. If you want to have Russians in Antarctica and make like a first person shooter, you can have Russians in Antarctica. Like you can do whatever you want because it's like a weird nother planet, man. Yeah.

And there's like no government. Yes. It's like the modern wild west in a way yeah but what what a cool setting especially i would say in vr so one thing that really makes edge of nowhere kind of unique is the fact that it is third person and i had not played a third personperson game in VR up to this point. So the perspective does change a little bit. There are certain times that you're seeing through Victor's eyes, but the vast majority, you're in third person. You are kind of like behind the shoulder. But what's kind of interesting is that you can get up and walk around as the camera.

So you can actually walk around Victor if you want, but your actual controller does not move the camera. So you can actually like walk around Victor if you want, but your actual controller does not move the camera. So you can kind of move around a little bit. And I think for a lot of people that does help with the motion sickness because you're not looking through Victor's eyes. Did you have any motion sickness playing this one, Josh? It's funny because I was a little worried, but the third person aspect fixes whatever the disconnect in your brain is. If it's first person and I'm moving and I turn my head, I get sick instantly. But something about just being back and observing this happening does not bother me one bit, honestly. And I'm pleased to report, because I know Dissertory was like,

hey, I might pick Josh, I might pick Ryan, but I don't want to subject them to motion sickness or something like that. There was zero for this for me. So that third person view really does work. I mean, yes, there is still motion. You're still controlling this character and he's running through these caverns and climbing walls and things like that and while he's doing that you can still look around or look down by turning your head but it just doesn't upset my brain like first person movement does for some reason that's wild yeah isn't it weird how just that that little kind of bird's eye view type look this drawback a little bit makes that difference you know because i'm the same way the second you get first person and you start moving i'm on my brain goes nope nope this is not right and i'm like right away so that's that's i i would hope that uh it would

be the same for me i because i i do you know i would like like to check this out. But I was curious, too, with it being third person but VR, how did it play as far as, like, you know, jumping over caverns or different things like that? You know, because you're not in the first person, so you don't feel like you're that character as much. So was it a little difficult or was there anything weird about it? I wouldn't say there's anything weird or different. It largely plays a lot like Uncharted or Tomb Raider in the sense that a lot of times you are doing a little bit of platforming, like jumping from iceberg to iceberg or pulling yourself up on a ledge or using these ice axes while you're climbing the walls. I thought that it worked really well and plays very easily. I would say that in some ways, the VR really enhanced it.

So for example, Victor's running around largely in large parts of the game underground where there's no light, and he's got a headlamp on his head and as you turn your head in vr victor turns his head with you so whatever you're actually looking at you'll see victor's head swivel and now that part lights up that's also going to come into play a little bit later when we talk about combat where a lot of it is based on where you look what i thought actually worked really well is that since you can't move the camera, sometimes you're running away from enemies. And if you want to look behind you, you got to physically turn your head and look while you're running forward. And I thought that actually worked beautifully because it gives you that sense of immersion where I'm running for my life. Am I going to peek behind me?

And you have to actually do that. And I thought it really added to the suspense. Yeah, it so scary. It's neat. Tomb Raider is a very good example of a game, how this plays in the actual aspect of the camera angle. It's the follow cam. Where it really works in VR is you get that sense of depth

and that 3D aspect to it. So it's like in Tomb Raider, you can tell that something's far away because of the way that they just work with the perspective. But in VR, when something is far away or really tall or really far down below, you're getting that true 3D experience because you're in a VR headset and it's able to do that. So it, it, it,

it kind of takes that Tomb Raider like camera angle and motion and then just throws that really incredible 3d depth to everything. Yeah. I would say that's exactly how it plays. All right. So here's where I'm going to issue like the first minor spoiler warning. I wanted to make sure that we at least gave, you know, some good time to people who wanted to stay spoiler free. So basically at this point, now that your ship's crashed, you start tracking down Ava and you have your first encounter with combat, which is actually a pretty neat sequence in the game. You kind of hear something going on down further in a cave. And all of a sudden you can tell it's a human voice.

And you're getting closer and you're calling out. You're like, hello, hello. And then all of a sudden the guy starts shooting a gun in your direction and starts yelling stuff like, get out of my head. I'm going to kill you like all the rest. And this is when you start realizing like oh this is gonna have like some weird psychedelic or like

you know obviously people's heads are getting messed with what's actually going on and then you're forced to kill that guy cause he's gonna kill you he's taking shots you pick up a shotgun and then the way it works is like any game you hold down left

trigger, you pull out the shotgun, you get the reticle, and wherever you look with your head, the reticle moves with you, and then you pull the right trigger to fire, and you have to kill that first guy. And this is kind of the first sense you get of like, oh, this game's probably going to be a little bit messed up. It's probably going to be a little disturbing. And it kind of just starts setting you down that path. And this is kind of the first time you realize that. And it's about 10 minutes into the game. Yeah.

That's what scurvy does to you, man. Funny, there are boats in this game later on. There are, yeah. Yeah, this game did a really good job of very slowly drip feeding you the, the, like, I don't want to say horror elements, but I mean, I guess that's the best term for it.

It's like, you know, Hey, there's something dark going on. There is something supernatural going on. And it very slowly gives you a little taste. And that Paul is like the very first example. They're like,

yo, why'd that guy try to kill me? And why is he crazy? And then it just kind of starts to progress from there. But I agree. This is like the first sense where you're like, something's very wrong here, and I don't know what it is, but I don't like it. Well, then they start hitting you with more and more elements of this. You start having, I don't know if you want to call them visions or flashbacks, but all of a sudden there's just like a normal house with a picket

fence and grass and you see people walking in. But then as you get closer, it just dissipates into thin air. And so you realize, okay, there's a lot of stuff going on. I can't trust my eyes and what I see. You're seeing these ghostly images. You're reading journals. But even then, you don't know. Is Victor making this up in his head? Is this an actual journal? Was that person going crazy? Can I trust what they wrote? And so the game kind of just starts piecing out little bits of lore and the story. And you don't even really know what happened until the very end of the game. But I found it to be very compelling to find out what's actually going on. It's kind of like watching the show Lost, except it all gets resolved in

four and a half hours, which I really appreciate. I have to say, because this is the first time that the game kind of wowed me and gave me a glimpse of like, Oh, this might be really cool. Right. Because that house sequence that you're talking about, because it's VR and because you can turn your head and look around, they throw tiny little things at the edge of your vision to where it's like, wait,

did I just see something? And then by the time your brain registers it, it's gone. Right. And then it's like, and then it's like, is that a house up ahead? And then when your eyes, you know, I don't know how they did it, but it's like, by the time my eyes focused on, wait, is that a house up there? It was gone.

And it's like, oh no, that was just ice. And then it's like, then there's something over here. And I turn to look and I'm like, dude, am I seeing things? And it's like, they flash on so fast in a way so fast without being intrusive that it literally makes you question like am i seeing things like what is happening yes exactly and it's like and then obviously you know you see a house out in the middle of a cave in antarctica and you're like okay i'm not crazy i did see something but there's like a there's a few moments where i was legitimately questioning like am i seeing things in this game like what is going

on and i thought that was an amazing touch dude how they did that that that see that would trip me out man that because most of the time most of the time you know i got a job and i got kids and stuff so most time when i play, it's late at night. If I'm sitting there and I'm trying to play this at 9, 10 o'clock at night, and I'm seeing things as I'm, you know, walking through, I'm going to have a hard time sleeping that night. Yeah. Yeah. I could definitely see a lot of people having trouble sleeping after this one.

I will also say that this part of the game really impressed me as well, Josh, more so with the climbing. So when you're climbing and scaling walls in Uncharted or Tomb Raider, you don't really get that sense of scale that you get here. And I know, Josh, you and I kind of get the same knot in our stomach. My parents always called them the heebie-jeebies when you look over a ledge. And this game does a really good job where you can look down a cave, and I can see several hundred feet below an abandoned camp. I can see that there was a fire, and there's a tent, and some other stuff. And then as I look around, I can see all these ice ledges. And so I can see exactly how I'm going to climb down and how I'm going to get down there.

But the actual sense of scale, and I know I've already used that phrase a lot, how I'm going to climb down and how I'm going to get down there. But the actual sense of scale, and I know I've already used that phrase a lot, but I'm going to keep saying it because this game delivers on that really well. You're literally plunging hundreds of feet under the ice in Antarctica. It looks and feels real in that regard. If you look over a ledge, you get that sense of like, I better not lean too far or I'm going to die. And that's how it feels. And I really appreciated that. It's very rare to have a sense of that kind of scale and then start working your way there. And it's going to take me five minutes to climb down these walls. But I found that to be very satisfying, at least in the

beginning. I mean, a little bit later, we'll kind of talk about like the extent of the ice climbing, but it really did impress me at this early stage in the game. Yeah. It just showcases the, like the joy of VR, you know, um, I will say I'm scared of heights. I do think that there are definitely better options to like get people freaked out. Like there's Richie's plank experience and there's face your fears and there's some of those you know that's what they're geared for stick you up on top of a skyscraper and a tiny little walkway but you do still get that with this game um you know yeah you're climbing a nice flow and i just look down and i see oh man i hope i don't fall

yeah you know the vr is not just a gimmick it's a core mechanic of the game right and that's what you want if you're paying for this game aside from just having great gameplay and in a good story or whatever like you're playing vr because you want to you want to dive into this world and you want to be part of it so if they're able to suck you into where you're like oh man that's a long ways down, you know? And so that's really cool to hear from someone who hasn't played the game. Yeah, I thought they really did that marvelously. Yeah, because sometimes you play a game in VR, kind of like, you know, a little bit like Senua's Saga.

You know, Josh, you played on your 2D monitor. I played it in VR. I think you can play that game either way and it's fine. I don't think you could play Edge of Nowhere on 2D monitor. I played it in VR. I think you can play that game either way and it's fine. I don't think you could play Edge of Nowhere on a flat monitor. You have to play it in VR. It's a VR experience all the way through. Yes. It would not be what it was intended to be otherwise. I mean, maybe you could theoretically play the game, but then you would just be like, what is this? Yeah. You'd be missing out on what makes this game special yep all right so here's where i'm going to give you a little bit of more of a moderate spoiler warning if this game

sounds intriguing and you've got a quest 2 and you want to maybe try this game out it's a 20 game i would say this is a good point to pause and then come back after playing it but i know a lot of people don't have any vr and a lot of people just kind of want to hear. So we're going to just go straight into spoiler territory now. So the one thing that a lot of people do know going into this game is that it is very much based on Lovecraftian horror. Now, if you don't know that, that's really going to surprise you if you start playing through this game. Because all of a sudden, as you're getting further into the madness and the insanity and further into the ice, you start running across all of these monsters that are lurking around. And there's some question as to whether or not they used to be people who transformed. Maybe it's a figment of your

imagination. Maybe they're just these evil creatures. You're not entirely too sure. And this is where you get a lot of comparisons to The Last of Us, because the creatures don't see you, but they can hear. And so you are looting stones that you can throw and distract enemies. The smaller ones you can actually creep up behind and you can execute them like with a takedown with your axe. Oh, nice. There are others that are bigger that you have to kill with a takedown with your axe. There are others that are bigger that you have to kill with your shotgun or just sneak past them. And there's not a whole

lot of variety of enemy types, but I did think that some of the enemy types were kind of neat or in how they would interact with one another. Just kind of talking about stealth and combat here in the middle stage of the game. Anything that kind of stuck out to you, Josh? This is the part where it really just focused on the gameplay, right? Like they've kind of set the stage with the mood and the skill and the location you're in Antarctica. You've figured out how to control your guy and kind of what he can do. And I felt like this is the part of the game where they just said, okay, let's just open up the gameplay portion. Right. And that is where they've introduced all these different alien things or monsters or whatever they are. And I found that this is where I really

settled into just, okay, I'm actually playing this game now. Like they've, they're done setting up my location. Now it's just play time. And the way that they go about that is a lot of times, at least I felt like it was just getting from point a to point B. How do I get past these creatures? Um, I can't just sprint past them because now there's these weird, uh, like spiky plants that explode and impale you if they sense movement. So you can't just blitz past them. So, okay. I have to stealth my way through this. Okay. Um, if I get too close, this guy can sense it. So I need to chuck a rock over there to get him his attention away. And it really just became kind of like a stealth based game at that point

for certain aspects. That is not the entire focus of this game, but I found that that was definitely like a strong mix. It's like, it's okay. I got to sneak through here. Now, again, going back to the VR portion and the audio design, these monsters make some freaky sounds. Yeah. You're hearing ice creaking and cracking because you're in a gigantic ice cavern you know you're hearing them roar and step and all that stuff and the audio design in this game is what really starts to give you that sense of dread because you can hear them clicking and creaking and groaning and and then every now and then i thought man maybe they me, but they just kind of roared for no reason kind of thing. And then now I'm terrified because I'm creeping through this creepy room with all of these

monsters around. I have to be quiet. There's all kinds of crazy sounds. Oh, no. One of them heard me. Now I'm sprinting, you know, okay, now I'm dead. And now I i gotta restart at the beginning of the room kind of thing but yeah this is where for me the gameplay portion opened

up a lot that's and there's some neat i was just gonna say like if if it can be where you know that's one thing that made uh last of us so awesome to me is you're you're through this old uh car park you know old parking garage and you hear those clickers and you just hear that sound and you don't even see them and you're instantly just filled with fear oh oh no you know and you're instantly just filled with fear. Oh, oh no. And you got to sneak around, figure out where they are so you can get past them. So the thought of that with the environment, with the ice, and then it being in VR instantly fills me with chills like, oh man. I got to go to Paul's and play this with him so he can just laugh at me and cackle.

I would love just to sit back and watch you play it. What's interesting is that it does force you to do a lot of stealth, but you can also get creative with some of the combat. So like the plants that shoot out spikes, when you get too close, you can hit them with a rock and then they'll shoot the spikes. So if a big guy is patrolling past one, you throw the rock into the plant

and now it impales that enemy for you. So you can't just run around blasting your shotgun. Ryan, I have a question for you. If you're playing a game that gives you a shotgun, what do you think the max ammo capacity would be? How many shells should they let you carry for a shotgun? Oh man, I don't know. Nine or 10? nine or ten total

try four in this game four and you get over even though even though you're in full snow gear all these pockets the game only lets you hold four shotgun shells which is very funny i i read in multiple reviews that people said that that was a really stupid way to increase the stress because it's a little silly. They almost felt like they should give you more shells and just have it do less damage. But I just thought it was very funny that your guy's like, nope, I can't carry any more. I see a whole bunch of shells on the ground, but I already got my four. I can't hold another one. That's ridiculous.

I can carry like eight in my hand. What are you doing? Yeah, you get four hold another one. That's that. Yeah, that's ridiculous. You carry like eight in my hand. What are you doing? Yeah, you get you get four in this one. All right. Well, let's go ahead and take our last break and then we'll come back and I'm going to talk about my favorite part of the game. All right. So my favorite part of this game, I thought it was the peak of the four and a half hour playthrough.

This happens about an hour into the game, is that now you've been introduced to these monsters. And as you work your way back outside, because you get stuck in these caves for long stretches, right as you're about to walk back out into the sunlight, you see massive like bug leg impale a creature in front of you and then it starts walking forward and when you're in vr you suddenly realize as this creature steps far enough away from you it's basically the size of godzilla yes like if you think the bile titans are big in hell divers oh no way these things make those look like ants. And this is where you only get this in VR. If you look at it on YouTube,

it does not do it justice. This creature is enormous. You, you cannot fight it. There's not a thing you're going to be able to do to this creature. And now you're just kind of stuck stealthing and sprinting from cover to cover. They actually force you to run underneath

all like its body in between all the legs and then sneak your way through and this sequence more than anything else in the game i found to be ultimately exhilarating i loved this encounter am i crazy josh or did you feel the same way this is the best part man you got to too yeah like i remember so cool getting my quest to for the actually it was an oculus rift back in the day and there was a demo you could do where you're in a museum and a t-rex like comes stomping into the hallway and then comes towards you and it walks right over you and i just remember having my mind blown because i was like guys that thing's like 40 feet tall, you know? And it's like, yeah, that's like the size of a T-Rex.

And I just remember like, how did they do that? Like, what kind of magic is this? And this bug thing in Antarctica is like 50 times the size of a T-Rex. I mean, the Godzilla reference was really good because like that's probably the closest thing that people could like kind of gauge but that part of the game was incredible that's where i was the idiot that was staring at my ceiling you know and like my my wife's laughing in the other room because i'm just looking straight up yeah exactly just you know like Straight up. Yeah, exactly. Just looking around and just going like, whoa, that thing's huge. And again, if you haven't experienced that in VR, no amount of explaining it is going to do

it justice. But yes, I'm with you, Paul. To me, that was where I was like, okay, game, I'm picking up what you're putting down at this point. Like I am digging the scale that you have established. I'm digging the freakiness of these weird alien bug monster things. Obviously there's a lot more going on than, than what I am aware of. And I can't wait to find out like the rest of this game and what's going on with everything. Yeah. We've talked about how Todd Howard will talk about those step out moments in games. This is one of those types of moments where you're not going to forget. Like, I will forget a lot of Edge of Nowhere just over time. It happens, right? I will never forget the first time I saw that creature walk over me and me trying to navigate like an ant in real life, trying to sneak its way past a human that could stomp on it at any moment, that's exactly what this feels like. You have never felt smaller than in this section of the game. All right. So let's start to jump into more late game spoilers. All right. So about 75% of

the way into the game, you're pretty sure that Victor's gone crazy, or at least I did. I mean, you're fighting Edwards, who now looks like he's half mutated into a bug. You've got this whole boss fight, and now he's just a corpse on the ground that looks like a human. And it's like, oh boy, this is like, yeah, I murdered the werewolf that now just turned into the neighbor's dog, right? Like, it's kind of that kind of moment. And I'm like, all right, we're going to get some kind of twist. This is like all in Victor's head or something like that. You have been talking to Ava over a radio, and she tells you how to get to a boat.

And so you reach the boat. That Godzilla creature shows up. The people on the boat are shooting harpoons at it, you kind of get knocked over and you pass out and then you wake up on the boat. And Ava is trying to check on you and the captain says, stand back, he might be infected like the others. And so now it's like, oh, maybe this was all like hallucinogenic.

And so the boat takes off and then you land at a port in a city and they won't let you pass the gates because you're in quarantine. And so like any good citizen does, you start to parkour your way from boat to boat and work your way into the city. And everything starts morphing into the creatures from back in Antarctica. So now you start thinking like, well, did I bring this with me? Am I still hallucinating? And they kind of make you think the game is about to end. Like, I don't know about you, Josh, because you've left Antarctica. Now you're in this new city. I thought the game was about over, but it's only about three quarters of the way through. And then all of a sudden you find Avaa you talk to her and she starts saying you have to

wake up or you're gonna die and then you're like what what are you talking about and then all of a sudden everything in the screen melts away and you're just still standing there in antarctica on this empty dock you've just completely lost your mind vict Victor has a little bit of a breakdown. He almost like starts to cry. And at that point I was like, okay, this, this is now just getting a little sad for poor Victor at this point. Um, but I thought that was kind of a little bit of a neat twist having like that false ending where you thought you got off and you really did it. Yeah. The, I, I joked around that this game had like three false endings because I was like, oh, surely it's about to be over. I finally made it to the boat to get out of Antarctica.

Okay. Game's over. Oh, wait, I'm in a city now. Oh, okay. Well, this is the end. I get it. They're going to do like the whole like world apocalypse thing. We brought it back from Antarctica. And then it's like, oh, wait, the game's not over yet. I'm back in Antarctica. And it's like, okay, oh, okay. I have another objective I have to go do kind of thing. I will say I liked the, because this is a, there's an interesting story to all this. And this is where you start to kind of piece together a lot of that story and like the twists and things like that. So it's kind of like this is, you're getting near the end of the puzzle and like you have like four pieces left to kind of put into this puzzle, and you know you're getting

close kind of thing. And that's what this section was for me. It was like, okay, I'm finally kind of seeing where this game was going. And I thought they did a pretty good job with how they piece that story together. Yeah. And so this is where you hit the final twists of the game. And I think if you read anything about Edge of Nowhere, it's the ending that everyone talks about. So you realize you're back on Antarctica, you never left, and you start reading a journal left by Ava. And it basically talks about how the Great One is deep under the ice. It's keeping you there. It's keeping Ava there. The only way you guys will be able to escape is by killing it.

And so you start to talk to Ava over the radio. You go deep down into the ice again, and she starts talking you through, okay, there are these artery-type blood vessels that run deeper underground. If we blow all of these up with explosives, I think the great one is going to die and then we'll finally be able to escape. And so you're kind of separated by ledges and cliffs. And so Ava says, I'll wait for you at the plane.

You finish that and meet me there. You blow up these arteries. You start working your way toward the airplane. And then here is where the game hits you with the final twist. So the great one, you now think you have killed, but then Victor gets a flashback that goes back to the jungle in Chile where the game started. And then you see that in actuality, that Panther started to pounce on Ava. You turn your gun to go shoot at the Panther. But when you fire, you hear Ava scream. And then it cuts back to Victor and Victor says, no, that's not how I remember that happening.

The Great One's dead. Why is it still messing with my head? And then you just see like hundreds of tentacles coming out from the ocean and through the ice. And these are all like 50 foot tall tentacles. And now you're like, I got to run to the plane. And so you run, you hop over all these icebergs. You barely make it. You jump on the wing, you climb in. Ava's like, you made it. You're like, yep, let's get out of here. You put your plane into full thrust or whatever the proper term is. And then as you take off, you see the great one on the right. But then you start to hear something going on on the left.

You turn over and look and Ava has now morphed into one of the creatures and eats you alive. And the game hits final credits so you get you get the very stereotypical lovecraftian horror ending if you're familiar with the genre you kind of know that this is where things are headed there's never going to be a happy ending but right face right now he's like what i feel like i'm on a roller coaster right now. Yeah, it is a very cool story. I think the gameplay I'm going to have more critiques about, but just setting aside the story, I actually found it to be very, very good.

I would say like an 8.5, maybe even a nine out of 10. Did you enjoy the story as well? I did. I will say this. And one other touch point is if you thought the giant, giant insect thing was huge, you, at the very end of the game, as you're flying past, you're flying past the full might of this great one, which is like Cthulhu, basically, and your plane is like a speck of dust next to this thing.

That's where I was even like, I thought the bug part was cool, but as you're flying past this guy, I was just like, oh, the world's in trubs, man. Like this dude is huge and he is ticked off. What have we done? But yeah, you know, it's one of those things. I think the, you know, you don't have to catch every tiny little point

of the plot to appreciate it. I was a little bit worried because there are the journals and there are the people that talk to you and it's like, wait, is this a flashback? Am I hallucinating? Oh, this is a twist and stuff like that. But ultimately it does all come together. And I was like, okay, this story, this is really neat, man. And that's honestly where I almost went, this is a story game that has minor gameplay elements just to keep me busy. You know what I mean? Like, yes, I'm running and I'm climbing and I'm jumping and occasionally I shoot something and I have to stealth pass some things and stuff like that. But all of that is to just help tell the story of this game with this great one and these people that found it and it's manipulating

your mind and getting you to do these things or getting Ava to do these things. Like you start kind of questioning like, well, wait a minute. Like, am I the one that did that? Is Ava the one that did that? And I like that because it really, anytime you finish like a movie or a game or something like that, and you start kind of questioning the characters and you can see different angles that it took you know that's always a good impression to get that that's where i'm at right now i got so many questions like did yeah he actually shoot ava in the jungle or that's my reading my my reading is that you actually killed Ava before you ever even went to Antarctica. And that has already, through that trauma, caused you to have mental issues.

And then once you're in Antarctica, you're easy pickings for the Great One to manipulate you into setting it free. So my reading is that all those creatures were actually keeping it in check and keeping it sedated through those arteries. And they're trying to prevent you from stomping your way through to set it free. You realize at the end that you're the bad guy. Oh, my gosh. And now you've unleashed it on the world. Guys. It's a little bit like the Twilight Zone.

Yeah, I haven't even played this and my mind's blown right now. It is. This game does a really good job. Like, honestly, that's the point. And it's funny because, like, in my mind, your whole purpose for going to Antarctica is to try to rescue Ava. So you don't know that Ava's dead. You don't know that you've killed her. So like go through the hallucinations and the things that you had to use you to then set it free upon the world. And the whole time you think you're like saving the world or you're getting Ava out of there and you're just going like, I just want to go home, you know? So yeah, there's, there's a lot of different angles you can take with this. A little bit's open for interpretation, but when I played that's, that's my reading on the game.

And I I'm pretty firm that that's what's intended. It is very funny to think about this game from the perspective of anyone else, because you're just a madman killing all the leftover humans, thinking that they're turning into monsters like Edwards, and you gun them down, and he's just there. Now, I will say for as, as good as the story is, I got to say the gameplay has got some real issues. Yeah.

Funny, funny enough for a four and a half hour game. I think one of the first things I said to you, Josh, after we both beat it, we didn't talk about it very much at all, but I did say for a four and a half hour game, that game's really bloated with the ice climbing which is

crazy right like how do you bloat a four hour game i i legitimately think probably two out of the four and a half hours is just climbing up and down ice walls and it does get old pretty fast it does i did i did laugh out loud i was watching like the intro in the beginning of the game and you know when you first find that shotgun and you shoot the guy and then you find his ice picks and he starts climbing up and i'm like okay here we go here's the ice climbing they were talking about and he gets up he's like all right and he jumps to the side it's got the kind of a little tutorial it tells you you know leap this way and then he sidesteps two steps and he looks and there's another ice wall and i

audibly laughed i was like oh okay this is what they're talking about and he starts ice climbing again i used to do that a million times yeah a lot i there was a point where i was just like oh come on man like but then they want to get clever so it's like a really tall ice wall but then it's four ice walls lined up that you have to jump to now you have to slowly climb down another one so that you can jump over to another and then if you die because you can whiff your jump sometimes a lot of times you just start all the way over back at the beginning of the like the initial climb so yeah and then of course you get impatient so you're like trying to jump because you can kind of jump and then reattach so i was like trying to like you know play the buttons just right and

then i'd whiff like the reattach part and then i'd fall and then it was like oh so the more i rushed through like the longer it would take me yeah it's it's i'm with you paul on that there was i was sick of climbing the ice after a while they they did that a lot in the new tomb raiders too where uh you're just ice picking a rock pick and just rock climb and i do the same thing try to jump and and swing or anything like that and you just fall to your death you gotta restart so no i totally get what you guys are saying they do mercifully let you drop and then reconnect and so so soon I'm like, I'm trying to time this where I am pressing that button at the last possible

second and at least save myself climbing down. At least I can do that quicker. Yeah. The climbing's a little bit out of hand. This game did cost $40 at release. And so I think if they took shortcuts on the climbing, like sure, you could argue now that sense of scale is going to be somewhat lost if i can climb a 100 foot wall in eight seconds so i

kind of get it but then also if the game was 120 minutes long but cost 40 that would be a really tough sell the game does now sit at 20 j, do you recommend the game at that price? I do. Yep. It's a unique experience to me. It is not a top-notch gameplay by any means. You are going to get tired of climbing ice. And there's a few times where you're going to be like, oh, I have to sneak past these guys again. But there is enough in this game. There is enough of those whoa moments that for 20 bucks, man, absolutely. I've wasted $20 on way worse things than this game at that point. So I would say for 20 bucks, you will walk away going, okay, that was worth a $20 experience to me. That's almost exactly what I was going to say.

If you are on a super tight budget, you're probably not going to play through this more than once. You're probably just going to get four and a half hours out of it, and then you're done. But if you got 20 bucks and you want to experience a couple of really high highs, I would say this game, if you had like a graph of the enjoyment level, I'd say about two thirds of the game is just pretty mid right it's sitting around like a five and a half or a six

out of ten but you do get like four of those spikes where it's a straight up 10 out of 10 i've never seen that in a game i've never felt that way in a game and so i do think it's definitely worth picking up for 20 40 that's where i'd be like i don't i don't think so but 20 i think is just fine yep absolutely i don't think i can recommend it for 40 dollars back in 2017 though you know the graphics for vr would have been pretty cool you know oh yeah back then it would have looked a lot better yeah weirdly like i i kind of wish this game had a remaster i mean obviously they obviously, they're never going to remaster this game, but it could definitely use it.

All right, well, let's go ahead and take a look at our leaderboard and see where we want to place this one. Oh, boy. For listeners who don't know, you can go to videogamerspod.com. We have our leaderboard where anytime we do a deep dive, the people who played the game have to rate it compared to every other game that we've ever done a deep dive on. For example, Josh has some stuff like Elden Ring near the top at five. Josh also has some stuff near the bottom like Tiny Tina's Wonderlands

coming in at 73 out of the 106 that we currently have on there. Edge of Nowhere is kind of tough because we do look a little bit at like value, right? Like, would I rather spend 20 bucks on, or I guess like $40 on Satisfactory or $20 on this? Well, I'd rather buy Satisfactory, you know? So that's kind of how we look at the leaderboard. Looking at your list here, Josh, where do you want to put it on yours? I thought about this and I think you hit the nail on the head. There's a lot of very mid-gameplay to this mixed in with some really cool moments. The eeriness, there's some caverns that really just freaked me out. I mean, they did a phenomenal job of really getting me creeped out. I think a lot of the visual effects,

even if though they were old, were really neat. There's a lot where you're like in this pulsing alien chasm thing and you wind up like holding onto these vines and like, you know, getting pulled up out of nowhere and you can look down and see like the blood pulsing through these things and stuff like that. Yeah.

So I'm with you. I think that there are some very, very neat, good moments that area, because I think there's definitely some memorable parts to the game, but it's also marred by some pretty poor gameplay elements on top of that, you know, and it's just dated too at the same time. So for me, I felt like that was a good landing spot. Okay. Yeah. I hear you. I would say the heights of this game, even if you add all of it together is like maybe a few minutes. So it is kind of hard to try to give too much weight to those small parts of the game when the other parts can be rather boring, which is, which is kind of tough to say because the game

is so short, but there are stretches that get boring, which is really of tough to say because the game is so short, but there are stretches that get boring, which is really surprising. I would put it a little bit higher on mine. I wouldn't go quite as low as 78. When I took a look here, I think I would put it... I'm really close to you though, Josh. Man, I'm going to say 71. Initially, I was thinking it would be in the 60s, but I'm going to put this below Lost Ark, Operation Tango, Deathloop, and It Takes Two. And I'm going to put this at 71 above Knockout City, The Cave, and 12 Minutes. I would say It Takes Two is kind of a good comparison. It gets a little boring and stretches it has very memorable parts along the way relatively short i would kind of put it in that same category i know some people

really love it takes two you and i were pretty down on it that year um you know despite it winning game of the year but for me it felt like a similar experience to that yeah that makes sense yeah all right well you know ryan do you feel like you kind of dodged a bullet do you kind of wish you played it i mean it's this game's got high highs and low lows it's a little bit of an interesting one i think it's kind of somewhere in the middle i mean if if i wasn't to get motion sick from playing it then i think for four hours five hours to get the scale in those cool moments it'd be worth it especially for 20 bucks you know to have a couple really cool unique experiences especially in a vr game i think it'd be something that i would i would like to try out

um so i may have to swing by but um yeah yeah i think i think you guys probably put it in a pretty good spot like you said i think some of the gameplay stuff that you know and this is i mean it's 2017 and it was vr so i'm sure they're still learning a lot about how to uh kind of meld the two of of a unique visual experience as well as good gameplay so but uh yeah some things don't age as well as they could so i i think i think you guys put it in a pretty good spot if this developer came out and said we're making a spiritual successor and it's coming out this year yeah and it's gonna be 20 to 40 bucks i think we would probably jump on that to check it out yeah uh playing playing this one in 2024 is just, I think, a little too late.

If we had played it the year it came out, I think it would probably fare a little bit better, especially if this was your first VR experience, it would be a good one. I would just say that. Yeah, your first VR and it's 2017 and you're just looking around, whoa. I could totally imagine back then what it would be like and how you'd feel. Yeah, your first VR and it's 2017 and you're just looking around, whoa, you know, so I

could totally imagine back then what it would be like and how you'd feel. Yeah, I don't know if you have anything else you want to add at this point, Josh. My closing thought is that more than anything, this got me more excited to play more VR. I hadn't pulled out the Quest 2 in quite some time, dusting it off and firing it back up i was like man even this game that doesn't even look very good is still a pretty amazing experience it made me want to go check out more vr i think you probably had the same experience because i know you picked up asgard's wrath 2 is that what it's called no i didn't pick that up oh you didn't i thought you were going to now that was the game that we actually had gifted to somebody in our game giveaway that we did oh that's what it was yeah i am with you

because it is putting that on and looking around it made me just appreciate what vr does for you you know and maybe going back to the very beginning of the show maybe that's why we don't play it regularly is because every time I put it on, I get that sense of scale and wonder all over again. And if I was playing it every week, I think it's just at that point like, okay, well, what games am I playing? Because you get used to it. So there's actually something innately built into taking these long breaks and then just kind of having my mind blown all over again yeah pulling it out three times a year is better than playing every day yeah i think that's fair and it's one of those things i think a lot of people to put them away

so it's kind of out of sight out of mind you know so you're not it's not sitting on the countertop where you can have a charge and it's ready to just grab so i know i put mine away and tuck it on and then yeah it's six sits for four months and then dust it off like you said and then get some wonder and then put it away again yeah it's like oh yeah this is why i bought the quest vr is actually pretty awesome yeah all right well i think we're gonna go ahead and close the show out we want to say thank you once again to disritory thank you so much for going legendary we want to say thank you to all of our patreon supporters as well if you guys want to sign up like they did starts at five bucks a month multiplayer squad.com is the place to do it you'll get those bonus episodes and all the other perks make sure to hit us up on socials

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