Video Gamers Podcast - Diablo IV Launches, Street Fighter 6 Smashes and New Fable Rumors - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: June 8, 2023

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul and Ryan are bringing you all the weekly gaming news you need in another can’t miss episode of This Week in Gaming. Diablo 4 takes over the world (and is quite great so far), Street Fighter 6 is a smashing success, Xbox teases the next Fable and Six Days in Fallujah looks to be a brutal military sim that has our attention, plus more in your weekly dose of the best video game news for the week. Video games covered this week:  Diablo 4 Street Fighter 6 Fable Six Days in Fallujah The Expanse 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/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, fellow gamers of the world! Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. On Thursdays, we break down recent gaming news and provide our thoughts. I'm still reeling a little bit after our Tears of the Kingdom deep dive, but we're all back, no one's quit, I think we're all done crying and arguing with one another. I am your host, Paul. And joining me, we all know that he loves hardcore combat and a strong challenge. I think we might be getting the right military game for him here later this month. It's Josh. Oh, you know it. That might be the most perfect intro you've ever given me, Paul. Yeah, yeah. Hardcore combat, strong challenge. I feel like that's your cup of tea.

Spot on, my friend. And joining me and Josh, he is streaming in from Sanctuary. He is one of the Nephilim, a combination of both angel and demon, and he's tracking Mephisto's daughter Lilith across the countryside in hopes of killing her before she destroys us all it's ryan i can't i can't do this guys now right now i got i got fallen to kill i'll be back i just love that we keep joking that ryan is dual screening diablo 4 while we're recording i'm not gonna say i didn't think about it. My new computer is powerful, but I don't know if it's that powerful. Probably best not to split attention.

Oh, goodness. All right, guys, we have so much to cover here today. I think the biggest news of the week is that Diablo 4 is here. Lilith has returned to Sanctuary. The critical reviews are about as expected. They are fantastic. Very high ratings on Metacritic. It's still too early to tell,

but I think this might be a little bit better than Diablo Immortal. Oh my goodness. I thought you were going to say like Diablo 3 or even 2 maybe, or just something controversial, Paul. I thought he was going to say Zelda. Oh man, that's a given. That's an easy one, right? Oh goodness. All right. I know this is a really dumb question, but are you guys excited to be back in the world of Diablo? Yes. I am so pumped, man. I had very limited playtime. We got early access, right? So it's like we've

been playing from, I don't know, for a few days now. And it took a minute to get past the repetition of playing the last few betas. But I'm kind of at that point now where everything is new. And we have hopped in and played together. I've hopped in with another friend and played together. And it's like the love of playing games with your friends that has been missing from my life for so long is now back. And I'm loving every second of it man but yeah i i'm super pumped for diablo 4 it's been a blast so far yeah i'm the i'm the same way i was joking around because

every everything else right now i'm kind of coordinating around diablo i'm like okay how can i fit this around diablo okay i gotta do this and then and then i can play more diablo i i was joking with my friend the other night because we were playing for a few hours and it's like man i feel like i'm 15 again what a time to be alive oh yeah and those long sessions playing with groups of people it's been a while since we've done anything like that i i think this is kind of funny but yesterday all three of us clocked in some time in diablo is that the first time the three of us have ever gamed together? I think it might be. I don't know that the three of us have ever been on.

I don't think we played any Overwatch. I was just going to say, the only other one would have been Overwatch. I'm not sure if we played any Overwatch together. Yeah, I think it was our first time, the three of us. So Diablo 4, milestone moment here. I will say dude having

to res ryan repeatedly and save his bacon you know because he got killed it was just you little dinky rogue running around help help oh man oh and also we want to tell our listeners we created a clan for our listeners and fans of the show. Now, the funny thing about when we game is that we generally only have about a two-week window to knock out games because we're doing deep dives every other week. In this case, we're actually going to be able to play Diablo about three weeks before we record. So if anyone wants to join with us, I would really recommend doing it sooner than later. But we do have a clan called Multiplayer Pod. And it should be listed publicly.

I just created it last night. So hop on in there and request an invite. And we'll add you guys. But me, Josh, and Ryan are all in there. We would love to be able to game with fans of the show. We do have other IRL friends playing Diablo. So I can't always guarantee we can play with everybody. But at least we can chat and socialize, have everybody in there.

So go check that out. Again, the clan name is MultiplayerPod. And then we'll have that deep dive ready in a few weeks, so we won't share too many opinions quite yet. But we're definitely playing a lot of Diablo right now. Thankfully. Yep. All right. And then before moving on to our next story, we would like to ask our listeners to consider

supporting our podcast on Patreon. We rely pretty heavily on Patreon to keep the show going. So if you like what we do and you want to keep family-friendly gaming content running, we do release three shows every week. You can pledge support starting at $5 a month, which you can cancel at any time. Not only do your gifts keep our show running but you also get some amazing perks like bonus episodes all our content ad free you get a shout out on the show if you want to sign up you can head over to multiplayer

squad.com to do that all right next up not only did Diablo 4 release in early access to great reviews, guys, Street Fighter 6 released as well. And shockingly, the reviews are actually better than Diablo. Street Fighter 6 is now the best rated game of the year on PC, according to Metacritic. You guys both played a bit of the beta. Does this news surprise you? I'm surprised. I think what it is is that everybody's so just bent out of shape over having to play Zelda.

They're just like, I need to punch something. No, after playing the beta, I know Josh as well. We kind of weren't vibing with it. It seemed weird. The little open world that you were running around in. It just didn't sit right, didn't feel right. Like you said, I just want to be able to get in and just fight. That's what I'm there for.

It's just a fighting game. But if it's reviewing well and people are talking about it, there must be something there. Yeah, I actually dug in and watched a few reviews and some articles and stuff on it. And I see why people like it. It actually got me kind of hyped for the game. It's one of those things where, regrettably, I don't think I'll ever have the time to put in to get good at a fighting game again. I used to literally sit in the training room and go through the button combinations and the combos you could put together so that I could then hop online and actually be decent at the game.

And it seems like there's just so many cool techniques that they have done for Street Fighter 6. And it's like, I'm watching these and I'm like, oh man, that'd be so good to just pull that on somebody. And then they counter it and all that stuff. But then I'm just like, I want to be there, but I won't ever be there again, you know? But yeah, this seems to fix all the issues that people had with like street fighter

five. The open world thing is janky. And almost all the reviews said, is this even really needed? Like they're trying to put like RPG elements in this and stuff, but they did clarify that, dude, all you have to do

is just pick fight uh pick quick play or ranked match and boom you're in and you're good to go so i think that's really resonating with a lot of people there's a couple weird things about this one so it is a full 60 game and it still has a paid battle pass which is a little bit odd because i know fighting games obviously have much smaller audiences and they have to like find other ways to monetize and i guess that's their answer that's a little odd but really the one thing i do want to criticize capcom for is that they sent out review copies and they were all console reviews apparently and then they very quietly added denuvo anti-tamper at the last minute for pc and so this is a trend that we've now seen on a couple of games where they sneak in unpopular elements at the last minute after review keys go out and then you're

changing the product i mean i will admit it's a very smart PR tactic to get it in there, but it's a little bit of a bait and switch, and I think this sets a really poor precedent. I don't like the fact that reviewers are reviewing a game, and then the game is changing after the embargoes are lifted, and then the game releases with something that's unpopular. I'm not a fan of that at all. Yeah, here's the thing with DeNuvo and all that. It does seem dishonest and I'm not a fan. I'm with you 100% on that, Paul. I am all for publishers and developers being able to protect their games, right? I get that some people say all the high Cs and piracy is a big issue and all that stuff, but it's like, I get it. You want to protect your game from piracy. Fine. However,

just admit it upfront. Or somebody come up with something besides Denuvo because Denuvo's got a bad rap. People say, hey, this affects performance. And I know there's arguments and stuff like that in there. But just come out and say it. What are you trying to hide at that point? Nobody is mad at you because you're trying to prevent piracy. They're mad at you because you're being sneaky about the context that you're using or how you're going about it. Yeah, the issue is the cover-up is always worse than the crime, right? And that's how this comes across. Yeah, exactly.

Yep, yep, I agree. Yeah, if you're going to do it, just come out right. Just take care of it. It's a good thing. You're protecting the game, but there's no need to kind of try to use backdoors and back channels to... Then people just feel, why did you wait for that? There's no reason to do it.

So, yeah, I don't know. Yeah. It's manipulative, and it definitely shows that they know there would be negative backlash, which is why they get you hyped and then sneak it in at the last minute. manipulative, and it definitely shows that they know there would be negative backlash, which is why they get you hyped and then sneak it in at the last minute. Boy, you kind of snuck up on me there. I am very, very sneaky, sir. I see that. In any case, the game is doing extraordinarily well. I mean, if you check Steam charts,

they're regularly getting 70,000 concurrent users on PC, which is really, really high for a fighting game. It really seems like gamers were just ready to eat this one up. So I don't know if it's just a matter that there was a little bit of this gap in between like Tekken, Mortal Kombat, and Street Fighter entries. Maybe people were just ready for the next fighting game, but this one's doing really well. Although it sounds like probably none of us will actually pick it up. Is that the case? It makes me happy to see, honestly. It really does. And it's crazy to think that 40,000 people is the highest concurrent.

But when you think about a game being 1v1, that's 20,000 matches occurring at any given moment, you know what I mean? At that time, too. So I know people like to compare Apex and Warzone and say oh it's got a million concurrent users but it's like yeah but there's a lot more people in each match no i mean it's it's i mean maybe the fighting game is coming back i mean just yesterday at at comic-con i saw kratos playing street fighter 2 so yeah everybody's oh that's great yeah for our listeners we listeners, we have Phoenix Fan Fusion out here, which is kind of like Comic-Con. And Ryan was there.

Josh was there. My wife took our son there. And yeah, I did see some pictures that Ryan took of Josh in his full Kratos outfit, schooling some kids in some Street Fighter II. And that kid totally cut in line, by the way. He did cut in line. He looked at you. And I called him out on it, too. fighter too and that kid totally cut in line by the way he did cut in line he looked at you i was actually surprised because i'm very uh passive and not good at that stuff and and you

were just like hey were you in line and he's like yes he was just he just clapped right back at you and i'm just i just stepped back i'm like all right you guys go yeah and then i schooled him yep with a broken uh broken ring well yeah to be to be completely fair i did lose the second match but the controller was basically garbage and i couldn't do half my move set either so oh sure all right well it's time for our ad break here so we're gonna take a short break and we'll be right back all right guys let's talk a little bit about an upcoming release called Six Days in Fallujah. So if any of our listeners out here don't know anything about this game, it's actually been in development since 2009. This one's been a very long time coming. It follows a squad of Marines

during the Second Battle of Fallujah, which took place in November of 2004. And since the game is based on true events where people were killed and with the politics involved and everything like that, the game has always been considered quite controversial. So it has passed between publisher to publisher to publisher until it landed with Highwire Games back in 2021, and it was finished by former Halo and Destiny devs. So this is a four-player co-op tactical shooter game which has procedurally generated levels and 100% destructible environments. And probably like the brand or the hook of this game

is basically to make a very hyper-realistic military game which will feel and play like what the Marines experienced in real life. So this is not over-the-top combat like you might expect from Just Cause or Far Cry or something like that. This is actually requiring hardcore tactics and teamwork. This will actually enter early access later this month on June 22nd, and I feel like this game is going to be pretty well received. What are your guys' thoughts about this one? I got to admit, for it being in development for that long,

I've kind of missed this one. I haven't seen it coming through any of the channels for me, but, you know, Fallujah me once, shame on me. Oh my goodness. I love it and I hate it at the same time. It was so good and then it was so bad. That's how you want it. I will say watching the stuff on there

where it actually had the soldiers talking and describing everything. It was kind of bone-chilling to how they described the game and how it is the soldiers talking and describing everything it was kind of bone-chilling yeah yeah how how how they described the game and how it is and then they showed the gameplay it it's something i definitely want to check out um absolutely i i love these type of super realistic that's why you know i loved i was more of a battlefield guy because you can shoot a cannon and boom and it blows up a wall and then even when i was a younger kid i played a SWAT 3 old like windows 98 game where you were a SWAT police officer and

you'd go in and you have to zip tie the guys and it just seems so much more realistic so those are my types of games and this one seemed to be something that's going to hit the marks for me and something i i definitely want to check Yeah, this one really got my attention. I generally like the more arcadey shooters, but the really cool part about this, there was a line that one of the Marines or whoever they consulted with said, most of the shooter games that I've seen are nothing like what combat is like in real life. And he said, this is the most honest depiction of what real world combat is actually like that I think I've seen in a video game. Oh, wow. You know, and that makes me very curious because I am naturally like a competitive and strategic person. And so I want to instantly go like, I wonder how I do, you know, like, like, how would we do guys guys? If the three of us are playing and we have this mission, would we do okay? And for me, that's the draw. I want to think about, okay, will you cover the window? I'll break through the door. That kind of thing. And I like the tactics aspect of that in a very popular genre, like a first person shooter. So I color me very intrigued on this one.

My one concern is that if you get too tactical and too slow paced, it starts to feel like work versus a video game at that point. that's by far my biggest concern as well so when the game meet your maker came out and we were able to beta test it yeah that was the one thing that i wasn't really expecting is that the speed kind of grinded to a halt because you have to be so careful rounding corners and things like that and the with the real lifelife story in Fallujah, you have insurgents who were sitting for days just waiting with a gun pointed at the door to kill whoever opens that door. So for a game like this to require such hardcore tactics, I do worry a little bit that it might fall too much on the lack of action side. But maybe that's also just naive because I haven't played the game yet. I've watched footage. It looks incredibly enthralling and thrilling. I mean,

Ryan mentioned the SWAT games. I was thinking of like the old school Rainbow Six games, which is kind of very similar to SWAT, where you had to have a predefined plan ahead of time. You had to execute it well, but you also had to be able to improvise and change things on the fly. And since this game is entirely procedurally generated, where there's different buildings and different layouts and the insurgents will be placed in different areas, this is not the kind of game that you're going to be able to just memorize or follow a guide. You're going to be able to have to plan, but also adjust on the fly. I could see this game being incredibly frustrating, but also incredibly fun at the same time,

because by all accounts, the game is punishingly hard. You die a lot. You have to retry a lot, but you're going to be able to replay these missions because they're procedurally generated. I feel like this is the perfect game to watch streamers. I think it would be a lot of fun to watch and try to glean from people who play this game a lot to see their strategies, try to implement it on our own. This is a game I would love the three of us to be able to play, but I don't know if we're going to be able to fit it in with all of our deep dives. Yeah, I am very interested to see what the reception is. able to play, but I don't know if we're going to be able to fit it in with all of our deep dives. Yeah, I am very interested to see what the reception is, and I would love to play. I think it's a game with friends that really would shine. Again, talking about tactics and, you know, you do this, I'll go here, and that kind of thing, and coordinating all that. Yeah. No, you were supposed

to cover my back, Josh. What are you doing? Yeah, yeah yeah exactly you know and it's like dude i saw a bird up in the sky i was a guy yeah and do you guys know what this game is gonna cost this is maybe the best part thirty dollars very close forty forty dollar game that'll work so it's not not a seventy dollar price tag like four spoken or something like that this one's a little on the cheaper side. I think it looks really interesting. It does seem to be a good counterbalance where we have so many arcade style shooters. And I think this will be a nice change of pace to mix in along with

maybe something like Apex, right? Where you're sliding and, you know, doing all kinds of crazy stuff. All right. So next up here on the docket, I don't know about you guys, but I'm very excited about an upcoming game called The Expanse. It is a Telltale series game which is set out in space. It is a prequel to the TV series, which I've never seen. I guess that aired for six seasons on SyFy and on Amazon Prime prime they are going to be releasing the very first episode on

july 27th and then after that there will be four additional episodes that release every two weeks after now this week we did get a story trailer that dropped just a couple of days ago i'm curious to get your guys thoughts am i the only one looking forward to this or are you guys also excited i thought i thought it looked kind of cool one thing i will say from watching that trailer that voice acting sounded horrible to me i don't know if it was you guys to you but to me i was just i'm i was blown away by how how bad i thought it was um other than that it looks pretty cool i just that one kept holding me up the way the guys

the way they talked inflections it just i don't know it didn't sit right with me some of their weird slang stuff like that just yeah yeah i don't know if they were trying to be a little over dramatic or or something like that like i didn't think it was bad but it definitely didn't catch me as being like really really good, like the Walking Dead series was. I thought the voice acting in that game was great. I like these kind of games. Initially, my brain always goes, yeah, it sounds kind of boring. But any one of these games that I've ever played, I've always been like, man, you really get into the characters, you get into the choices and the outcomes and stuff like that. This is a game that will be one of those where if it gets really good reviews will bump it up

like my radar and and and I don't know why that is maybe it's just that we have so many other like big killer games coming up this year so it's like and I love space is the other thing so the setting is fantastic you know they're they're really driving home how grand this is like a galaxy changing story and all that stuff that you play a part in. But I, my, I don't know, man,

my hype level is just not that high on it. And I generally really enjoy the telltale game. So I think it's more just a matter of like, we have big game releases coming up this summer. And so this one has just kind of naturally fallen down that list for me. Yeah. And they don't show hardly anything. So I don't think it's so much the content of the trailer that has me excited. It's more the cachet of trust that I have for Telltale and the fact that it's been such a long time since we've gotten a game from them. So the fact that they like went under, but now they're

back and we're finally going to get more content that's what i'm really excited about i know all of us really loved the walking dead and that's one of the most emotional uh and one of those games that just stick with you that you can't shake for a while after playing and so the idea of having a game like that set in space i think is interesting because we haven't really seen that before you know there are other games like star trek resurgence just released like i don't know i think it was like a week and a half ago and it didn't get very good scores it's a 69 on metacritic um but here having an official telltale game that has me interested you do see some stuff in the story where maybe there are like some romance options there's also

one line that really stuck with me they say during the trailer one of the characters voices there is no good option whatever you choose will be wrong and it's your job to choose and that's kind of like the whole star trek kobayashi maru test right it's the no win scenario he cheated i changed the conditions of the test got a commendation for original thinking i don't like to lose then you never faced that situation i don't believe in the no win scenario but how are you still gonna go about this mission and that's when it's like okay that's the stuff that i really love i have said before that my favorite tag on steam is choices matter and that's what telltale's all about that's the stuff that I really love. I have said before that my favorite tag on Steam is Choices Matter. And that's what Telltale's all about.

That's all it is. It's just you making choices and then you get to watch the game play out. So this one's definitely on my radar. This is one that I actually might pick up on my own even if we don't cover it on the show. It's very rare that I'll do that for a game. But because of my love for Telltale, I might be willing to do that for this one yeah all right and then i think the last thing that we'll talk about here for just a moment is i think all three of us are big fable fans right is that the case oh yeah i really enjoyed the fable games um i i mean it's been what 100 years since fable has been around at this point is what it

feels like it's been 84 years exactly like oh man but yeah i mean the fable games when they came out were just legendary they added so many things that games nowadays still copy to this day. But then, I mean, honestly, the franchise kind of lost its way a little bit with Fable 3, and it wasn't as innovative and stuff like that. So maybe it's time. Maybe that was just, hey, we got to give people a break, and we don't know how to innovate, really. So we're just going to not make anything for a while. Yeah, this is a weird one because we've received no news about the next Fable game. But I feel like people are always writing articles about it. But the articles are always, we still have no news about Fable. And it's now been 13 years since Fable 3.

So it's funny that we have nothing to say here. But there have been some posts lately on social media, and Microsoft is very heavily hinting that the upcoming Xbox showcase, which will be on June 11th, is going to highlight Fable. So we don't know that for sure, but showing pictures with glitter, which is how you follow your way markers in Fable, it seems to be heavily hinting at that. So I think everyone should probably at least take note on june 11th we might finally have some news about fable there uh ryan i know you were saying you can't wait to start accumulating more spouses in fable i was gonna say any game that i can just be evil and have a bunch of wives bring me in i'm all i'm all for it see ryan and i played a lot

of fable one together on xbox i remember when it. See, Ryan and I played a lot of Fable 1 together on Xbox. I remember when it first released, we bought it. We played the heck out of that game. And I do remember the fastest way to turn evil was to get married and then to sacrifice your spouse. It was like minus 100 morality points or whatever. And if you did it a couple times, you you grew giant massive devil horns and you'd be full evil so yeah spouse relations are a little complicated and in fable i'll just say that all right well i think that wraps up today's show we do want to say thank you to all of our

listeners for uh tuning in and listening to this episode we do also want to give a very big shout out to all of our current Patreon supporters. We've got two legendary supporters, Gaius 2f1 4 and Red Letter. We also have Epic supporters, Ace of Shame, We Like Mowers, HG Knight, Casmon, Skippy, Michael the Butler, Yoda, Remilia,

and MasterWayne01. So if you guys want to join their ranks and help support the show as well like they do, you can go over to multiplayer squad.com and we would also appreciate if you would toss us a follow on socials you can find us everywhere at multiplayer pod and then we will be back on saturday with a quick take and then we'll be back on monday for a bonus round and i think that's it guys come play some diablo with us, man. I was going to say, if nobody's on, I'll probably

be on. So join us. Join our Discord server. You can ask there. We've posted an announcement about come play Diablo with us. I am more than happy to hop in with people. I will say this, not a spoiler at all, but they do a phenomenal job of

bridging the level gap so if you're like oh you're gonna be higher level than me it doesn't really matter i mean they handle that fantastically so you can really just play with friends uh and it works really well so come join us yeah you'll still earn xp regardless of your level so it's not like if you're level 40 grouping with someone who's level 12 that you won't get anything. They do a good job, so you can still level and play together. So, yeah, come join us. Party up. Woo!

Y'all gonna make me lose my mind. Up in here, up in here. And then until next time, happy gaming. See ya. All right, see ya, everybody.