Video Gamers Podcast - [Flashback Friday] Raft and Minecraft Dungeons Double Header - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: November 10, 2023

Take a trip to the past with this video game flashback episode. It’s another double header episode where we cover two couch co-op games. Join us as we cover Raft and Minecraft Dungeons. We break these video games down like no other gaming podcast can, give you our thoughts, what works, and what doesn’t in another packed gaming episode from your favorite video games podcast!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate and Kiitaclyzm Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com//videogamerspod Follow us on Twitter: 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

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fridays are the path to the light side. Fun leads to enjoyment. Enjoyment leads to laughter. Laughter leads to happiness. Get into it now, we will. Hello, party people! Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Hello party people! Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are a family-friendly podcast where we like to get together and talk about a different multiplayer game each week.

And if you'd like to help us out or find out more about the show, come check us out on Twitter at MultiplayerPod or Instagram at MultiplayerPodcast. We'd love for you guys to leave a review for us and to rate our show five stars. We'd really appreciate that. I am your host, Paul. We are still minus one today while Todd is out on paternity leave. Although to give you guys an update, he will be back and joining us next week. So that's really exciting. But joining me here today, he just accidentally drank a cup of salt water and then yelled at me for throwing away all of his mango seeds. My partner in pirating the seven seas, Josh. I that is a shockingly accurate introduction, man. I did yell at you for throwing away the seeds. You did, which was funny because we had been playing Raft,

which we're going to be talking about today, along with Minecraft Dungeons. And the whole time we had been tossing seeds, I thought it'd be no big deal. And then I touched your mango seeds and you weren't too happy about it. I had those organized in a chest. I thought I made it look like these were important. And then I come in, I look at my chest and they're all gone so yeah you're forgiving well oh thank you so today for you guys we have a two for one we've done this once before every once in a while we like to knock out these episodes where we cover two co-op games together and i didn't even really realize the irony that we picked raft and mine craft dungeons so it's a double raft episode double rafter double raft across the sky so today we'll be we'll be covering both of these games

but before we get to those games of the week we do have a couple of things to catch up on so first of all josh i mentioned something back in our Escape from Tarkov episode, and I said we would have a recurring segment called Everybody Hurts by REM. I don't know if you remember this, but as an audience, I think we've all been waiting anxiously these last couple weeks to hear an update about your Rocket League tournament that's being put on by our home city of Peoria, Arizona. How's the tournament going? All right, let me catch you guys up. So I've shared my misery in our losses and our victories. Our good friend Andy, who is a core component of our three-man team, has abandoned us the last two weekends to go to some cottage in the woods or some nonsense like that. I don't know.

It sounds boring if you ask me. But other buddy, James, who's phenomenally good at Rocket League, by the way, is like, hey, man, we'll just 2v3 these guys. Those guys beat us 2v3. We can do it to other people. We're like, okay. So we're all ready. We're psyched up. We practiced and everything. We can do it to other people. We're like, okay, so we're all ready. We're psyched up.

We're, we're, you know, we practiced and everything. We're ready to go. Other team completely no shows. We win that week. So then we troll Andy and we go,

Hey man, James and I won without you. And then Andy's just in shock. And he's like, man, I guess you guys didn't need me anyway. And we're like, Nope,

we're good. And then we finally let on that. They no show so next weekend comes around time to play again andy you good for saturday nope sorry guys i'm gonna be out of town again like where's your priorities man like your family and like cabin life or rocket league in a small town tournament? Like, come on. Weekend rolls around. It's just James and I. We're ready. We're disappointed in Andy.

Team no-shows again. Different team. No way. Second no-show. We win again. So you're undefeated without Andy. Yes. What's that tell you?

Well, it's so funny because Andy and his family actually invited me and our family to go up north with them and you know we've been social distancing and able to hang out in the woods up north and the first thing i asked him was well what about your rocket league tournament and he looked at me like he had not thought about this once. It was so clear that he was checked out on the tournament. I don't think he cared whatsoever that he was going to miss out. Not an ounce. Yeah. And we'll remember this, Andy. So it's going great, though.

That's the good news. It's going phenomenal. It's no longer everybody hurts. You know what's the problem? There's a little bit of pain because the playoffs start on Saturday. And so James and I said, Andy, playoffs on Saturday. You're good, right? You know what Andy's response was? What?

I'm going up north? Sorry. Going to the woods. And I said, no, you're not. And then he was like, yeah, I really am. I'm sorry, guys. So he's fallen down the friend tier list. Oh, he's taking a few hits?

Yeah, he's taking a few hits there, man. So we'll'll see nice i mean i can be your new brother-in-law you you could but you're really terrible at rocket leagues so this kind of got awkward it's a good point so it's no longer the everybody hurts segment it's gonna have to be like the uh victory by puff daddy and the family segment now i'm pulling out my 1997 rap references here. Pretty sure that after this team's going to show up for the playoffs and we're going to have to just try to win 2v3 and I don't think it's going to happen. Well, good luck to you and James.

You'll have to fill us in later. Yeah. And then secondly, you know, for such a long time, you had been harassing me and Todd to go play a little game with you called Remnant from the Ashes. And you broke me down, Josh. I bought it. How excited were you to finally have a teammate to play Remnant with? I got a bone to pick with you, buddy.

All right. What? People that have been listening to the show know that I've been pushing for this game. I think it's a phenomenal game. It's dark souls with guns. It's hard, which I love. It's got good shooting.

It's just an all around. It's a good game, but it is a game that the first level is kind of blah. It's more like a tutorial level. I broke you down. You finally bought it. Our buddy, Andy,

the rocket league abandoner bought it. Our buddy Andy, the Rocket League abandoner, bought it. And I'm thinking, this is great. I finally got two of my best friends to play with in a game that I think everybody's going to love. We hop in. We play for a couple hours. I'm like the guy that's trying to make sure everybody's having fun. Like, isn't this the best game ever? Yep.

In the first level, it's like, all right, fine. And then you had to go do something and then it was like we didn't want to play without the three of us but then i noticed that we were never playing because there was not a lot of time where the three of us could actually join in and play together so then finally i'm like hey paul like andy and i have time to play is it cool if we play a little bit and you're like yeah that's fine no problem and then lo and behold i get an email from yours truly that says your steam refund has been processed and you're like sorry guys not my cup of tea and i was like dude you gave it like a 30 minute try like this is not i played for two hours and 14 minutes because i was afraid steam would reject the refund because it was over two hours.

But they did grant it. I had to refund it. I didn't like it. It was enough time playing. If Todd had bought it, I would have stuck it out to review it for the show. But Todd made it very clear, no, he's not going to buy it. And so I got out when I could. I mean, the game had some neat stuff.

I did like the gunplay i liked the booby traps throughout the catacombs and stuff but man this game is so dark i don't like games that are so incredibly dark like this i mean this game has two colors it's like dark brown and dark red and i don't i don't want to live in this world. I don't want to spend any time in it. I was done. The next level is this really cool floating obelisk thing. Then you transport to a desert level

that's got this amazing Stargate-type pyramid glowing in the background with lots of sun setting. If you'd stuck it out, it would have been all right, man. You know, this is the second time you've done this to me paul really you and i bought a game to play together oh and then you bailed on me but it's it's for the same reason what's that game called the hunt showdown showdown yeah yeah it's too dark what's with these dark games i

can't see anything it's like depressing i don't want to spend my free time in a depressing world i can handle depressing storylines as long as there's something nice to look at i need i need some yellows some oranges give me some you're killing this stuff in the depressing world which by nature makes it happy right i guess but look there's a whole realm of games like this that I just personally, I don't like spending time in. It's Dark Souls, Bloodborne, Dishonored. As much as I hate to say it because I know how much people love the games, but Bioshock. I don't like these games that are depressing and dark.

It's why I love games like The Cycle. You know, it's such a beautiful world to take a look at. I don't know. I played enough of Remnant to just know I don't want to spend time here. So I'm sorry, Josh. My apologies.

At least I gave it a try. That puts me one step above Todd, right? That's very true. At least I gave it a try. It's very true. You are a step above Todd because you did at least buy it, get my hopes up, and then crush them to the ground, whereas Todd just never even gave me hope. Exactly. There you go. All right. So since we have two games of the week, we should probably move on to our regular part of the show. So let's

go ahead and get ready here to break down Raft and Minecraft Dungeons. Ooh, this is gonna be fun. All right, so taking a look at our two for one here, I think we should take a look at Raft first. I think you and I just came off of playing that more. I think we probably have some stronger feelings about Raft. I think it'll be fun to break that one down. And then we can go ahead and take a look at Minecraft Dungeons after. So to take a look at Raft here, I do have a description that is in Steam about this game. I'll go ahead and read it, and then we can find out a little bit more about your thoughts about it.

Raft throws you and your friends into an epic oceanic adventure. Alone or together, players battle to survive a perilous voyage across a vast sea. Gather debris, scavenge reefs, and build your own floating home, but be wary of the man-eating sharks. So I will point out right off the bat

that this game, kind of like a couple others that we've covered, it's in early access, but it has been released for over two years now. So it's one of these very lengthy early access games. They do release content in chunks. Every several months, they'll release some new content. But tell us a little bit about this game, Josh.

Tell us what this game is like. And do you think there are any natural comparisons to make with other games? This is not a well-known game by any stretch. I don't know of anybody that I know that's played this. My daughter is actually the one that introduced me to it back when there was just a tiny little demo where you're on your raft and you have a hook and you can try to catch tough and that was it. So it's fun to dive into these kind of games where they're just not well known, but they're hidden gems sometimes. So in Raft, it is most definitely a survival-based game. You're fighting hunger and thirst primarily. You start with nothing. You're floating on a little, what is it,

like a two-by-two board? Two-by-two. Yeah, like a two-by-two board you're floating on. And you are kind of drifting through the ocean. And there's debris. There's little boards and chunks of plastic and palm leaves that float past you from time to time. And you collect those. And that's kind of how you get your start. And through the materials, you're able to craft stuff so that you can get more stuff and it just follows that kind of survival mechanic um it's a very neat game because it takes place almost exclusively on the ocean and like you mentioned in the description one of the main things in this game is that there is always that darn shark that is circling your raft

and you can't get off the boat you can but he's coming for you the second you jump off the boat so there's that really neat mechanic of like there are times where you might need to jump off but you know that shark's coming and so it adds like a nice like tension to the game um it's a very bright colorful world so you know i'm sure you loved it right away yeah um but yeah i mean it's a survival game through and through um there's a lot more that we'll get into in it but at its core that is the basis of the game scrounging crafting survival exploration plays a big part which you would think would be difficult for an ocean game but there is there is a good bit of that as well yeah and it's not just exclusively on the ocean you do run across other islands that you get to explore and you get to

find new items that you get to pick up and then then you can research them, and the game does have this progression over time where you unlock better and better technology. And I feel like this game definitely begs to be compared to Rust. I mean, this really is just a co-op Rust without PvP. It's not as advanced as Rust is, for sure, but it's very similar. It's similar in that you're just running out, you're fishing or killing animals, and then you're just building bigger and better loot, bigger and better rafts, and taken a bunch of antidepressants and was just like, oh, I'm happy, Rust, and on the ocean in the Bahamas. With fewer Nazi signs outside of bases, and you don't get called any racial epithets yeah exactly uh i mean yeah it does follow it like i said it follows the survival mechanic very well i think there it definitely has some unique aspects to it that that helped to set it apart but it's funny because i played this game previous not fully but with some with my daughter uh because like i said she was the one that kind

of discovered it. We were looking for a game to play together. And I remember you seeing me playing it and saying, Oh, how is that game? I'm interested in that. And then I said, I'm not really playing it anymore. We kind of had tabled it. And then you and I jumped in. I mean, I had a lot of fun.

I was shocked at how charming and how fun this game is. I wasn't expecting it. I feel like it is a little bit of a hidden gem. Although what's funny is I didn't necessarily have that impression right away. So I thought that we could maybe divide the game kind of like into thirds. Because I feel like this game evolves and it changes so much over the course of the game. So in the very beginning, like you had mentioned, you're just floating in the ocean. You don't have anything yet in the very beginning. And I thought that it was incredibly slow right off the bat. The first hour or so, I did find myself getting a little

bit bored because I'm throwing out this hook and I'm grabbing floating debris that's passing me by. But you're constantly struggling with food and water. And that's really all you're doing. You're just grabbing these floating barrels and hoping that it has some potatoes or some beets. And you're struggling for water. And I felt like that's really all I was doing. And even when I did finally build up some items, I thought that it was pretty intimidating to build the raft right away in the beginning because they don't really teach you how to play this game. I mean, I got stuck because I didn't have any rope and rope you need for almost everything that you build. And I did not know that you have to build rope out of the palm branches. So I kept just playing, trying to find more barrels that would

hold rope. And it wasn't until you and I played that it was, oh, you can actually craft rope. Yeah. So what did you think about the beginning? Did you think it was great right off the bat? Or did you find it very slow until you kind of develop your raft a little bit further? I thought it was definitely slow paced. I mean, it kind of fits into the genre or, I mean, you're floating, you know,

you're lost at sea on a tiny little raft. I mean, if that was me, my number one concern is going to be food and water too, man. If this game, you are always thirsty and hungry. I mean,

I know some survival games have like different, you know, meters and how fast you'll dehydrate or get hungry and stuff like that. But apparently when you're floating on the ocean, you get hungry real, real quick and you dehydrate real fast. And so that is definitely the challenge for a large part of the beginning of the game. And this game has a very annoying mechanic that, at least to me, that if you get thirsty or hungry, your guy starts to just slow to a crawl. Like in walking speed. Yeah, barely moves.

Yeah, I mean, you can hear your stomach rumbling. And then your guy is just limping along. And it's just like, oh, this is terrible, man. Like, I need to eat something. But yes, the first third of the game is 100% just survive and try to build up some materials. You can do that for sure. And you can build your raft, which is a lot of fun. Like you hadn't touched your raft until we started playing. Yeah, I had because I had just built a paddle. And I was using that to kind of direct my boat a little bit but I had not built a sail

or anything like that because I very quickly found out that if you build something on your raft and then the shark comes up and attacks that segment of your raft and if he eats it then you'll lose whatever you had built on the raft so I figured I'm just gonna wait and I'll get some advice from Josh and then once you hopped on you were, yeah, first thing we need to worry about is a water purifier. That way we're not constantly having to worry about water and let's get a grill going because we can fish. And that was great, having a little bit of a guide. Although it did crack me up that right off the bat we were fishing and pulling up, like, salmon in the middle of the ocean. Because I was like like i'm pretty sure

these are freshwater fish but i'm not gonna be nitpicky like that salmon paw come on no no yeah we're catching like salmon and catfish out in the middle of the ocean i was like all right whatever but you know that that was kind of like the first third is really just getting your feet set on the ground and then you can kind of start to do what you do in the second third of the game which to me i thought was a real turning point because finally you have your stuff down where you don't have to worry as much about food and water and it lets you start researching more technology do you want to talk a little bit about how the research table works yeah so anything that you find in this game, and I mean like anything in the beginning,

you find a palm frond, like take it to the research table, because what it's going to do is it's going to unlock recipes using those components. And so if you research a palm frond and you research a rope and then you research a piece of scrap, those three components will allow you to build something else. And so it's that puzzle of which components, when you put them together, will make an item. And it handles all that for you. It's not like some games where you have to just randomly throw three things into a container and hope that it makes something. I mean, it tells you, hey, here's the recipes for these. But you're right, because once you start to unlock recipes, you can build bigger and better things. You get, you know, metal weapons and fishing poles and things like that that don't break as easy, because just about everything you

use in this game will actually break over time. You know, you ultimately wind up working your way up to where you can improve your raft, you can improve your ability to survive so that basic survival no longer is the focus at this point. But expansion of your raft becomes your priority because then that makes things easier from there. And then that frees you up with enough time to kind of start exploring and following some of the storyline part of the game, which this game does have. Yeah, absolutely. And playing with a second person, I found to be wonderful. Because when you're playing by yourself, you're constantly worrying so much about food and hunger

that it makes it hard to start doing the researching. And when you and I were on at the same time, it actually kind of worked out because it would be where maybe we would find a new island. And so we would pull up to it, toss our anchor, and then we're low on food. But you could jump out and start exploring the island and I would be fishing on the raft. And so it lets you do a little bit more multitasking. And then also, I don't want to give away any spoilers.

And I know that we're kind of speaking a little vaguely about elements of Raft because we wouldn't want to ruin it all. But you actually do end up discovering that there is not a very detailed storyline, but there actually is a storyline that's in Raft. Any good survival game needs some kind of mystery or storyline. Like, honestly, to me, that's what really makes survival games entertaining. I've mentioned Subnautica in the past. Subnautica, one of the reasons I love that game is because the story and the mystery part of that game is so great on top of the survival mechanics and the progression mechanics in that game.

And so I feel like Raft does a decent job of making sure that they have some kind of carrot to dangle in front of you. That's not just, Hey, build a bigger raft or Hey, unlock this recipe, you know, this, this blueprint so that you can build something. It does a really good job of saying like, there's, there's more out there. There's something going on other than just floating in the ocean. Exactly. And so in this game, you end up, as you progress and you research more and more things, you start to build electronics that you add to your raft. And part of that includes building a radio receiver and some radio antennas, and it gives you coordinates that you can head toward. And then as you get there, you start to discover different notes and you read the notes and they tell you a little bit about the world and about what's going on and then it'll give you a hint of where to go next.

And so the game does drive you to discover some of those mysteries, which is great because if it was just building a bigger and better raft, you'd probably play this game for two or three hours and be done. And it is still a short game right now. From what I've seen on different walkthroughs, with where it stands right now, we're basically at the end of chapter one. And so you can't discover all the mysteries or secrets yet. But it is a lot of fun starting after the first maybe hour and a half or two hours, then you enter the second phase where it's a lot of research and the storyline, and you start to add some more automated components to your raft

so you're not having to babysit everything as much. And then you kind of hit the end game in the last third. And I think probably the main difference is going to come down to fighting. Because I would say this game is very easy for the first two thirds. In the final third, we actually did struggle a bit. Yeah, oh, dude. I mean, minor spoiler, those stupid bears. Well, not just the bears. We attacked a special mama bear. Oh.

Which is known for being the hardest enemy in the game. I looked it up after we died. And you do get an achievement if you kill that bear. But we had no special weaponry. We just thought, hey, let's go stab this sleeping bear. And we got wiped out. Yeah, that was, by the way, don't stab sleeping bears, apparently. Because that's, you know, in video games or in real life, that's not the best thing to do because they get mad at you.

And then they maul Paul and they maul me. Yes. And because in Raft, if you die, you don't get to keep your eyes. You don't run back to get a corpse. That's something that Bear is mentioning in this is as colorful and peaceful as this game seems. I mean, if you look at a video, it's like, oh, this game looks so happy. It's colorful. It looks peaceful.

You're just floating on the ocean. This is a survival game. And if you die and you don't have a buddy, the way that it works is if you get knocked out by a bear, if I can get to you, I can pick you up and bring you back to the raft, put you on a hammock or a bed, and then you'll heal and you come back. But if both people die, you're hosed. That's it. You have to just respawn at the raft with nothing. If you had stuff in chests on the raft, then you get to keep that stuff. But everything that you were holding is gone, is poof. And there's no corpse retrieval at that point. It's not like you can go back, find your body, and retrieve your retrieve your gear exactly and in the last third of the game the two things that really stand out to me was fighting the mama bear and do you want to talk a little bit about that stupid

chicken i was hoping you're gonna bring it up man so man. So this isn't really a spoiler either. But like I said, there are islands that you do come across. So you and I had found a decent sized island. And we get on the island and we realize there's animals on this island. It's like the first time we'd seen anything but the shark and some fish. And we're like, oh, look, animals. And there's this scraggly looking just cracked out chicken that's running around on this island. So we're like, hey, let's go get that chicken. This is the world's fastest chicken, number one.

Get out our wooden spears. Yeah, we get out our spears. We're like, we're taking this chicken down. There's two of us. You and I chase that stupid chicken for a solid, what, 15 minutes? I was going to say at least 10. Like, legitimate, no exagger exaggeration a minimum of 10 minutes and we stabbed that chicken like at least seven or eight times when we would finally get it

because we kind of learned the path that the chicken would take because the chicken would run up to the the ocean on the beach and then it would cause it to change course and so we kind of learned okay as it's getting close to the water just sit back and maybe it'll turn back to you and we did get it a few times but that chicken would like bounce and bob up in the air and you'd have to be so close with these spears and we we never killed the chicken no we gave we never did that chicken was the end of us he won yeah yeah you were you were the one who called it off we gotta just forget it forget the chicken but but it was like it wasn't almost dead like you said we speared that thing like seven times and you can hear it it goes like when you when you hit it and we're

like oh okay it's like it's got to be close to dying and then i yeah it must have been regening health i don't know between long. I don't know. Between long stretches. I don't know. That chicken had the quickest 180 turnaround speed I've ever seen in any living creature, number one. We did finally give up. One of the things that I thought was really funny is you were like – I'm like, Paul, where are you? And you're like, I'm past the kangaroo. Right, yeah. Like, kangaroo? Kangaroo. Like, where are you? And you're like, I'm past the kangaroo. Right, yeah, yeah.

Kangaroo? Kangaroo. Like, what is this? And then I'm walking around and I'm like, well, I see like an alpaca or like a llama or something. Like, where's the kangaroo? And then you're like, oh, oh, oh, that might have been. That's a funny looking kangaroo, man. At the time, I was fighting a boar.

I'm stabbing this boar and I see something like running off in the corner of my screen, and it looked like a kangaroo. But yeah, it was very clearly a llama next time that we saw it. So anyway, if you go and pick up Raft, which I would highly recommend, don't waste any time on the chicken, unless you have a bow and arrow. And also, be very careful that you do not buy a game called survive on raft oh that's right i spent five dollars on that game thinking that was the game you and i were talking about and it is just a port of a very bad stupid mobile game that you can buy on steam so be very careful that you buy the actual game raft and if you run across chickens, just let them be. It's not worth it. Not worth the time. This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid

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if you want to jump in early now, you can experience the new content as it gets piecemealed out. Or maybe you just want to sit back and wait for more to come out. It does make it difficult to read reviews about this game. Because if you read reviews during the initial beta, or after the first major update, It's such a different experience. But I do have a couple of reviews here because we do like to go to the community, see what some of the people had to say about this game. And I did pull four reviews here from Steam that I thought I could read here on the air. The first review was a negative review from a user, and they said,

the hunger and thirst system is just ridiculous and needs an overhaul. You can catch and eat a massive fish, which will keep you fed for about five minutes before you need to eat again. It's hard to focus on anything when you're constantly having to worry about your hunger and thirst. It's not like other survival games where you drink and eat and don't need to worry about it again for maybe 20 to 30 minutes. That's a fair complaint. I mean, I kind of touched on that earlier. This is very unforgiving when it comes to how fast you get hungry and dehydrate. I mean, we had to make special accommodations when we were exploring an island to bring as much water and as much food as we

could carry. And it's not easy to come by. The only way to get food is either chop down a tree and get a mango, which does not fill you up very much, catch a fish, and if you're lucky, you get a big fish, and that's it. So food is not plentiful at any point in this game. And even then, we got 10 minutes on the island before we were hungry again. It just, it does need a little bit of toning down. You know what? My initial reaction when playing Raft was, I do wish that I didn't have to eat and drink as much. But I quickly realized that the game actually does progress very nicely where you always have something to do. There is never a moment when you play Raft where you're bored or you're sitting there wondering, what do I do next?

I feel like the game does such a good job of giving you 10 things that you need to do, and you have time for nine and a half of those things. I feel like it's actually in very good balance. Because if you could just eat one mango and you're set for 20 minutes, you're very quickly going to get bored and there's not much to do. So even though it does feel like a little bit of a grind with the food in the water, I actually think it's in pretty good balance. That's a really good point. And it's funny that you mentioned that, because I never even really thought about how the game keeps you busy. And it really does, but not in a hectic way. I never felt like things were super hectic at that point, but you're very right in that this game does a really good job of keeping you doing something, and you don't feel like you're wasting your time.

You do feel like you're constantly progressing progressing regardless of what you're actually doing. Yeah, exactly. All right. And then I have two reviews here that are quite short and I'm going to read them together because I think they're hilarious. Right. As a combo.

The first one is a negative review wide as an ocean and deep as a puddle, which I kind of understand. Yeah. And then positive review, more content than sea of thieves. And then positive review, more content than Sea of Thieves. Oh, shots fired. Yeah.

And I thought that was so funny because I saw these reviews right next to each other and I was like, oh, that's so perfect because yeah, technically this game is pretty shallow. Yes. And I think as it stands now, it's worth the 20 bucks. I don't think it has to be much deeper, but man, it still has so much more content than Sea of Thieves. That is 100% accurate. We know you are not a fan of Sea of Thieves. I'm higher on Sea of Thieves than you.

I feel like Sea of Thieves has more content. To me, not a chance. But I get it. i get it i get it raft is i mean i guess we'll figure out where it falls later uh you know we'll rank it you know yeah but and then finally a positive review actually a very good survival game at first it seems difficult to get anything going and food seems to be on a shortage but once you get established the game is actually really well made. The latest update as well added so many things to the game which it needed, and there is so much to do and more to learn about the game. I highly recommend this game. The shark isn't really that much of a problem. I feel like they should make that mechanic a little better. I think that's a fair review.

The shark is really not the biggest... Challenge? It's not your biggest challenge your biggest enemy in the game it's definitely the survival elements i also learned pretty early on you can jump in the ocean and as long as you're looking at the shark you can just jump over it's the shark is a neat touch because it's always there it's not super threatening it's like in a weird way he's almost like a companion since he's always there. He's one of the only things that you know in this world is the shark. It really is a neat dynamic.

I think the game would be much worse without the shark, to be honest. All right. So what is your guess for percentage of positive reviews on Steam? I wrote my answer down. What you got? I'm going to go 82%. Okay. I went a little higher.

I went 88%. All right. And on Steam, it's 89%. Wow, really? I mean, fairly so. It's like I said, it's a good game. I thought maybe some people would be complaining about the content and stuff. So I'm actually really glad to see that it got rated higher than what I thought.

Because it deserves it. I think so too. You can easily get six, seven, eight hours at least in the game with the current content. And if you're okay paying $20 for that and then just waiting for more to come out, I couldn't recommend it more highly. I mean, if you can only afford to buy one game in the next six months,

I wouldn't recommend it being Raft. But if you're just looking for a fun game to play and just to goof off with for a couple of weeks, I think this is the perfect game for that. I think you and I had a blast going through all the content content and i think we would both probably dive back in at the next update oh for sure should we i mean should we officially rate this game paul so now that we've talked a little bit about the community ratings that takes us into make love marry murder i'm gonna throw it to you josh even though i, you do such a better job introducing it.

Go ahead. It's time for Make Love, Marry, or Murder. Where Paul and I rank it in stupid ways. Yeah. Our own special way, as you pointed out. Yeah. So basically what we do is we we rate a game make love marry it murder it for wrath it's definitely man it's a make love but depending

i mean it's early access this game could end up being phenomenal like depending i feel like there's more than six or seven hours of content too. I feel like we played it more than that, but I, you know, maybe not, I don't know. I don't really keep track, but I feel like there was a good amount to do. Um, but they're talking like about some mega content. Like, I don't know how long they plan on developing this game for, but I could see this game turning, you know, into a merry depending on the amount of content. But for now, it's a make love. It's super fun. I mean, I'm surprised at how much fun you and I had playing. I will say this game thrives as a multiplayer game. I don't know that I would

love it near as much if I was just by myself on the ocean with just me and Mr. Shark. But grab a friend, play with them. It really opens it up. Like you said, the interaction, the helping each other, the surviving together, I think really, really improve the game in that aspect. So I'm giving it a full on make love, man, because it was a blast. I completely agree. Raft is a great, solid girlfriend. Maybe you're not ready to propose quite yet. You kind of maybe want to see a little bit more of what you're signing up for. But absolutely, incredibly fun. But it's just not quite long enough yet that I'd want to commit long term. But it's a very solid make love. All right. Well, I think that wraps up everything that we have to say about raft.

Let's go ahead and move into our second game of the week, Minecraft dungeons. So I did pull a description of this from the Microsoft store, because unfortunately that's where you have to pick up this game. And we've already made, made known our issues with the Microsoft and Xbox stores. So see if thieves Minecraft dungeons, bleeding edge. made known our issues with the Microsoft and Xbox stores. So Sea of Thieves, Minecraft Dungeons, Bleeding Edge, these are not easy games to party up or to buy and get games.

Not terribly easy. But here's how they described Minecraft Dungeons. Fight your way through an all-new action-adventure game inspired by classic dungeon crawlers and set in the Minecraft universe. Up to four friends can play together, or you can brave the dungeons alone battle new and nasty mobs across action-packed treasure stuffed wildly varied levels all in an epic quest to defeat the evil arch illagerer so i think the first thing to address is this game is barely related to Minecraft, right? Yes. I mean, they're really trying to promote the name there to get people to play.

But really, it's only Minecraft in appearance in monsters, and that's it. That's it. They're cashing in on the Minecraft name, 100%. There is no open world. There is no crafting. No. Despite it being in the game. The game name.

Yes, you do go into some mines. But yeah, it's really nothing at all like Minecraft. So if you have never played Minecraft, it does not matter. I never played Minecraft. I jumped right into Minecraft Dungeons. Honestly, it shares way more in common with Diablo than Minecraft. I jumped right into Minecraft Dungeons. Honestly, it shares way more in common with Diablo than Minecraft. Yeah, I was going to say that's one comparison that we've made before is it's Diablo with like a Minecraft skin. Like, honestly, and it's, you know, it's not dark. Obviously,

Diablo's angels and demons and all that stuff. I mean, this is Minecraft. This is Creepers and Endermen and Villagers and stuff like that. But yes, action is a great description. It's a fast-paced game. But from trying to cash in on that Minecraft name, that's really all you're getting. You're getting the pixelated characters. You're getting the monsters. Some of the gear. I mean, you can get a pickaxe in a bow and stuff like that.

But that's really where it ends. This is a top-down hack-and-slash action type game. Absolutely. It's a hack-and-slash dungeon crawler slash looter, I guess is maybe how you would describe it. It's like a very stripped-down version of maybe some of the other action RPGs you'd be used to, like Diablo or Baldur's Gate or something like that. So basically the way it works is you have your little village, and then you can select a mission from a table, and then you go out, and then as you fight enemies on the mission, you earn some currency and you can also find loot out in the world. And the loot is very streamlined. You don't have different pieces of armor.

It's just a full set. And so it'll tell you what stats it has and you can choose to wear it or not. And basically, as you play through the game, if you finish the mission, you get some nice bonus loot at the end. And then it takes you back to the village where you can then spend your currency because there are a couple of traders there where you can basically exchange currency for random gear with random stats.

And so it does keep you kind of moving to earn and get new loot. And I think probably the best part about this game, and I think you would agree with me, is the artifact system. Do you want to talk a little bit about that? Because this game does not have any classes or any innate abilities. It's completely gear dependent how your character works. Yeah, it's a very simplified version of a lot of these types of games. And instead of abilities that, you know, you may have that's specific to a class or something like that, in this game, you just find artifacts.

So if you pick up, like, let's say, you know, a ham bone, then that artifact, you can equip it, and then that allows you an ability. So in that case, that would allow you to like summon a wolf. And there's a cooldown on these, you know, you get like a firework arrow. I think that's like the first one that you get in the game if you go through the tutorial is you get, you know, a firework arrow and you can equip it. And then once every like 15 seconds or however long it is, it lets you shoot like an explosive arrow that can clear out like a wide area of mobs in that regard but it's really fun in the sense that there's a lot of different artifacts and they there's different powers for them i mean some are better than others but you discover these as you play and they almost like let you build out your character and your party

for for that matter like i know we were playing on a very hard difficulty level because we liked that challenge and at one point we finally found an artifact that let you drop like an aoe heal and it was the first one that we had found and it kind of changed the game for us at that point yeah and then somebody else found one and before you know what we had like this just massive like aoe heal that was keeping us alive during boss fights and things like that but you can you know maybe some of the artifacts are like dps oriented or movement oriented like i've you know i found some like boots of speed or whatever that gave me a you know temporary speed boost and things like that too so i think it's a great system as simplified as it is to really let

you kind of play your character the way that you want and to have some neat abilities to help you in combat at the same time. Yeah, and the game encourages you to switch up your play style because as you level up, the gear that you find will be higher and higher power levels. So maybe you had your, you know, firework arrows that were a level two but now that you're a level six you see something else drop so you're going to be more likely to equip it and then mess around with it so i don't know if you had like any particular builds or not but for me i remember early on in the game i was a little surprised because it was a little deeper than i thought it was going to be and i remember equipping a i don't remember what it was going to be. And I remember equipping a, I don't remember what

it was called, but it was like a sorcerer's robe. And it had very low defense, but it added to where after I would kill a mob, I would collect its soul. And so basically I could blow up like a skeleton and then a little like spirit wisp would come toward me and then I could collect it. And then I equipped an artifact that was this, I don't remember what it was called, but it was a box, and it would shoot out like a giant purple laser beam out at whatever I hit, and it would last as long as how many souls I had collected. So you could go a full build where you add a bunch of gear that increases how many souls you collect, and then you go that route. And then later in the game, because I played a lot of this solo, and toward the end

of beating it for the first time, I just kind of ended up with a bunch of tanky gear. So I was actually the one who had found the Totem of Healing. That was me. And I also had an amulet of where it would increase my defense greatly for a set period of time. And so I just would run in and just face tank mobs and bosses, right? Pop my heel, I'd pop my amulet, I had a great hammer that did AoE damage. And so I could play a little bit more like a tank, even though every character also has ranged abilities. So it's kind of neat that you get to swap these things out on the regular and kind of just, you know, play whatever you find fun and whatever your newest gear is.

Yes. And the weapons, there's a pretty good variety of weapons, and they all do feel pretty different. I mean, at one point I got like dual sickles, and those are fast, but they're kind of shorter ranged. I had dual daggers at one point, and I was like, oh, this is going to be great. But they're like really, really short range, so you really got to get up on something, but then it's like, you can just turn into a little blender. Yeah. You know, if you get like a speed buff and then you're just, so that's kind of fun. Uh, you know, bows are viable in this game for sure. I mean, that's, you know, you can find range crossbows and bows that do triple shots or ricochet shots and things like that. I mean, there's really a very neat system in play for the inventory system.

And, you know, I guess we could talk about the traits that you get, right? Like on the gear that you find. Yeah, basically, each time you level, you get enchantment points. And it's a very streamlined talent tree that you have on each individual piece of gear. And so basically as you earn these enchantments, you can put them on different pieces of gear to add additional abilities or to reduce cooldowns.

And the neat mechanic of that is that in the beginning, I didn't use any enchantments cause I didn't want to waste them. But then I learned, Oh, whatever you put it in, as soon as you sell that piece of gear, you get the enchantments back. And so it does give you the opportunity to not feel like you're ever married to any gear.

You're constantly swapping it out. You can try different enchantments. You can go down different skill trees where maybe you're adding freezing effects or you're adding gusts of wind that add knockback. And so the enchantments are another neat little element. And none of this is complicated. Honestly, if you've never played a video game before, you can hop in and play Minecraft Dungeons. I mean, it's just a matter of running up, down, left, right. You have three buttons for three different abilities, and then you just kind of run around and have fun. And as much fun as we did have in playing Minecraft Dungeons, I think probably the biggest criticism that the game has had

is that it does not take very long to beat the overall campaign. I mean, this game has a razor-thin storyline, and there's only, I don't know, maybe 10 to 12 missions. And after you run through all of them, then you do get to face a final battle. And then after you beat it, it unlocks a higher difficulty. And then you can go back and play all of those same levels with higher level mobs. But some people felt like it was kind of cheap because you can beat the entire story in a couple of nights and then there's not a whole lot left to do unless you want to retread content to get

bigger and better loot i will say that they do unlock new artifacts that you don't get the first time around but i did find myself really slowing down fast after i beat it simply because i had already experienced all of that other content. I found that the key to this game and the best recommendation I can make is bump up the difficulty level. Like one of the things that it does do and I thought was really cool is when you do select a mission, you can select, it'll tell you like, hey, the recommended gear level for this or power level or, you know, whatever they call it for this mission is like six but you do have the option of bumping it up to oh i want to play it on like hard or ultra hard and then it'll say well on ultra hard for this mission the recommended power level is

12 you know and we're running around a power level like four but we're like let's give the the 12 a shot and to me that's what made this game a lot more fun like you like creepers will one shot you you know you're gonna get the the i don't even know what they're called man it's like the big looking humanoid guys but they have a big like battle axe those guys the vindicators that's it they'll wreck you like on the harder difficulty levels they'll like it's like three shots and you're dead. So I found that if we bumped the difficulty level up well past what our gear score was, that it improved this game immensely at that point, because you could not just plow through a level willy nilly. There was a ton of risk. It made the boss fights a lot harder because there's some cool boss fights in this game i mean i think that's you know that's something worth mentioning

is that you know there's boss fights at the end of the level and some of them are pretty cool like that's a neat thing to do but i actually played around at the like the recommended difficulty level it's very easy i could have done that in my sleep, man. It was just boring at that point's incredibly easy. It does give you that flexibility to bump up the difficulty and we had a blast with it. I don't mind games that are really difficult where you're dying and you have to switch out your gear and let's try it again. I think that can be a couple of reviews that I picked up for this game. Since it is on the Xbox Store, that's where I grabbed the reviews along with the rating for the game. So, on Xbox, you can rate a game between 0 to 5 stars. And the first review here is a 1-star review. This game is not worth $20. Really just a bad attempt at a dungeon crawler. The loot system is broken. The loot system is broken. The

shop system is broken. Also the gameplay loop is super shallow and very repetitive. All in all it took about 7 hours to complete the entire game. Don't listen to people saying that they have spent hundreds of hours playing this game. They are definitely fake accounts.

I love when somebody says like don't pay any attention to somebody else that might like this game more than me yeah i think that guy just doesn't i whether either he was thinking this was going to be like diablo 4 you know what i mean like this it's not diablo it's it is a dungeon crawler but it's not i mean it's minecraft dungeons what did you expect right and to be fair if anyone says that they've played hundreds of hours of this game, I would probably call them a liar as well. It's super fun, but it's not that much content. Now, they do tease out that there will be DLCs coming. Even when you beat the game,

you get a little bit of a cutscene that shows the story's not over, and the map even shows that there's more content coming. So I haven't read online. I don't know if they're going to be free or if they cost money, but don't expect this game to provide hundreds of hours of content, that's for sure. So the second review here is a two-star review. Very basic, like Diablo for kids. Lasts four hours hours and it's boring i would recommend it only for five-year-olds and that's it plain and simple i guess i'm five i don't i don't think this guy ever bumped up the difficulty no not at all yeah yeah otherwise he might might have a point and then finally i have another two- review. This one's a little bit longer.

Not worth the money. This is made for nine year olds with a console. Not RPG gamers with a PC. Gameplay becomes dreary very quickly. Same thing over and over again. Hardly a storyline to speak of. Zero character story development. You just follow waypoints through a generated map.

Items and loot generations are as basic as it can get. With a laughablepoints through a generated map. Items and loot generations are as basic as it can get, with a laughable attempt at a skill tree. If anyone has played Skylanders on the Xbox, this game is going to feel very similar. It's like they took that game, cut half the storyline out, and just used a Minecraft texture and sound pack over the top. So another reviewer saying it's made for nine-year-olds. So a lot of the negative reviews said, this is a kid's game. If you're an adult, you can't play it. And I would have issue with that assessment. Yeah. I mean, like I said, they're trying to cash in on the Minecraft name. So inherently people are going to say, oh, this is geared for kids. It's mine.

It's, you know, it's Minecraft still. It's not Minecraft still. If you play this game on the recommended difficulty level, like I said, a three-year-old could play this game and not die and accomplish something. But it can be challenging. I mean, I know that we had a lot of fun with it in limited doses, obviously limited doses obviously like he's i mean the consistent thing is that this is not a 30 40 hour like mega role-playing game it's not diablo you know that kind of thing but if you're jumping into it for what it is i think it's plenty enjoyable especially in like a four pack of friends playing it. Yeah. You just have to have the right expectations. Just know what the game is and it can be a blast.

All right. So Xbox, you can rate games from zero to five stars. I'll go ahead and let you know my guess up front. I wrote down 3.5. Ooh, I was going to say 3.1. Oh,

you hit it right on the head. Did I really? 3.1. Yeah. There's a lot of hate for this game because apparently people really struggled understandably between the xbox store and the microsoft store so i guess if you like bought it in microsoft you couldn't run it with your friends who had it through the xbox game, and there were all kinds of issues like that. So there's a lot of negative reviews for people who had trouble even just accessing and installing

the game. I think out of the people who did play it, overall, they did have a fair amount of fun. But 3.1 is where the community ended up. So, all right, it's that time again. Josh, why not? Take two. Make Love, Marry, Murder. I gotta go smoother on this one. I'm gonna go deep. community ended up so all right it's it's that time again josh why not take two make love mary murder i gotta go i gotta go smoother on this one i'm gonna go deep it's time for the episode segment we call make love mary or

all right no how was that? That works. Sure. All right. You want me to go first on this one? Yeah, you got to go first this time. As much as I hate to say it, I'm going to say murder. Which might come as a shock because I did find a lot of elements of this game very charming, incredibly fun. I had a blast in the short time that we did play it, but at the same time, I'm looking at it comparatively. Looking at our leaderboard, even though we're not quite at

that segment yet, there's no way I can stack it up against a lot of games on that list. So because it's a little bit shorter, it is a little more shallow. I think it's perfectly fine to play with your kids or to just play for a night or two but overall this game's 20 i don't think there's 20 of content personally if i was going to only spend 20 bucks i would spend it on raft i would not do that with minecraft dungeons so i'm going to murder it i don't like doing it but that's where it ends up paul paul paul i agree with you 100 i i played this game a lot more than you did i had a feeling you were gonna murder it i mean it's there i don't want to take away from the game itself it can be fun it's fun with friends but it is very shallow uh you know there it's not a terrible game by any means so this is not

a murder in the sense that it's like hey don't ever any means so this is not a murder in the sense that it's like hey don't ever play this game um this is a murder in the sense that it's just there's not a whole lot there and i would not spend 20 to pick this game up but if you have xbox game pass it's you know it's it's included in that i mean if if if i wanted to sign up for xbox game pass just to play this and spend five bucks for the first month, then sure. I think you're going to get $5 worth of enjoyment out of it. And you'll be done with it well before the end of that month. Yep, exactly.

But as far as gaming goes and a multiplayer game and recommendations and stuff like that, no. It's a murder for me, too. There's just not a whole lot there. All right. that like no it's it's a murder for me too it's just there's just not a whole lot there all right well let's go ahead and transition into our last segment where we'll wrap things up by taking a look at our leaderboard and seeing where we're going to rank this game against all the others that we've reviewed all right so josh we got we got two games to look at here. Raft and Minecraft Dungeons. You care which one we try to place first?

No, you pick and I'll tell you where I think which part of the leaderboard I'm thinking of. Let's go Minecraft Dungeons first. Okay, bottom half. So we both put it murder. Yeah, it's going to be bottom half. If we want to take a look here, starting around 13, we have RimWorld, then GTFO, Escape from Tarkov, Halo Reach, Sea of Thieves, Overcooked 2. Do you think it's somewhere in that range, or would you put it above those?

No, it's definitely... It's here in that bottom third. It's in the bottom three or four to me. Man, what do you think, Paul? Well, my love of RimWorld is very well documented. There's no way I'm putting it above RimWorld. It's below RimWorld for me. It's below GTFO.

It's below Tarkov. Yep. But boy, man, compared to Halo... Halo for you and me is that dividing line i feel like if we do one more episode we make a gate just above halo ton is going to murder us i know some people might think we're joking but like legitimately if i hop into Minecraft Dungeons, I'm going to have fun. And if I look at any game on our leaderboard from 1 to 15 right now, I would have a certain element of fun. But Halo, Reach, Sea of Thieves, and Overcooked, I'm not having fun. I'm going to say put it at 16.

Yes! It's going above Halo. Absolutely. Dude, I'm with you 100%. Todd Webb, sorry. We're not trolling you. We're not trolling you in this case, man. But I'm 100% on board.

Like, if I hate a game more than Halo, there's something seriously wrong with that game. Yeah. And, I mean, Minecraft Dungeons may be shallow. It may be kind of just numb fun, you know, but I'd rather play Minecraft Dungeons. Like, honestly, I'd rather play that than Halo. So I'm with you, man. It's certainly not above Tarkov for me at all. So I think it falls right in that number 16 and bumps Halo down. Yeah, Halo Reach is actively unfun for us, where I would never say that about Minecraft Dungeons. Minecraft Dungeons is mostly a murder because of the price and the other games on the list. It's not a bad game. All right, so we'll lock that one in between Tarkov and Halo Reach. And then the one that I think is a little more interesting is Raft, because I'm not entirely sure where I would put Raft at this point.

Are you thinking somewhere kind of in the middle? Middle. Upper middle? I think that Raft belongs somewhere outside of the top 10. Like last week we just did A Way Out, which was also a co-op game raft is co-op would you put this above or below a way out which we currently have at 11 i would put it above would you well i mean it's so tough man like neither neither of those games has a ton of replayability right and they're completely different experiences which is again why again, why I love the leaderboard, because it's like, can't necessarily explain it but the game accomplishes

what it wants to do very well whereas a way out definitely had a lot of suspension of disbelief issues which we documented last time i i am okay if you want to put it between the cycle and a way out i i have some heartburn with keep talking and nobody explodes i think that's way too high yeah i would way rather play Raft than that. But we also have The Cycle, and I wouldn't put this above The Cycle. So I'm going to say between The Cycle and A Way Out. Are you cool with that? I think that's the perfect spot for it.

All right, we'll lock it in. And again, as we review the leaderboard over time, some of these games are still in early access. Games like The Cycle, games like Raft. And these things could change over time, some of these games are still in early access. Games like The Cycle, games like Raft, and these things could change over time. So we'll definitely keep tabs and we'll review it as needed. And so that wraps up our show here for today. We'd like to thank everybody for hanging out with us for this last hour plus. We would like to ask you once again to subscribe to the show,

go leave us a review, rate us five stars. We'd love to hear that from you. If we do get some reviews, we'll go ahead and we'll read them here on the show. And also come engage with us on social media. You know, Josh is quite active there with Instagram and Twitter. He's really good at responding to you all, so feel free to reach out to us there. And then next week, we will be back with Todd. He'll return from paternity leave you you know the very first thing he's gonna do is just make fun of us for ripping on halo all this time he's gonna have to defend it yeah yeah but we are gonna be covering uh one of my personal

favorite games gta online it might not new, but it is very popular. It's not new, but man, is it a huge popular game. And we've been playing, I mean, we've been playing this game for a while and it's, there's just so much to it, man. It bears talking about, like, honestly, there's so many funny things you can do in that game. I'm really looking forward to that episode. It's fun to jump into the GTA 5 world. Yeah, so I really looking forward to that episode. It's fun to jump into the GTA five world. Yeah, so I'm looking forward to that one. And we'll have Todd back for that too. And which is going to be great. Yeah, we're still working our way through the heists there. I'm hoping we can finish all the new content. Because we're revisiting the game after having a break for

a while. So we'll we'll be knocking that out so feel free to pick up gta online if you don't already well gta 5 if you don't already have it and then we will see you guys again next monday you got anything for the outro not a thing i was trying to think of like a gta 5 thing and then i was like i'm drawing a blank