Video Gamers Podcast - [Force a Friend] The Fun is Endless - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: November 13, 2023

Video games hosts Ryan, Paul and Josh are back and this time it’s Paul’s turn to WAIT… IT’S ANOTHER HIJACKING! That’s right, it’s another listener chosen video game and this one sounds like a smashing good time! We reveal the video game, the host and our initial thoughts in this packed gaming episode! 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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i am your host paul and joining me he's got all the information ready for us we have another hijack a host episode ready for you all it's josh this would normally be a force a friend episode. But once again, boys, we have been hijacked. The person reached out to me and said, you know, here is the game that I have picked. I know the game. I know the host. Since I know it all, it ain't me. It's one of you two. But I am super pumped for this episode.

You know, I got forced to play The Witness, and now we just keep getting legendary supporters. So someone keeps grabbing the wheel away from me. One of these days, I'll get to make my pick, but it won't be today. You're on deck, Paul. It's fine. I'm on deck. Today is not that day. I've been a bridesmaid for a long time.

Never a bride. Joining me and Josh, he's in the dark like me we don't know what game we're gonna be playing we don't know who's even gonna have to play it but we're gonna find out pretty soon it's ryan everybody knows it's gonna be the host with the most and it's no i already said it's not me ryan so oh okay i was trying to oh it's paul obviously this is where ryan's just like please please let it be Spider-Man 2. Please let it be Spider-Man 2. Well, that'd be good.

I already got a head start. Oh boy, can't wait to find out. All right, so let's talk a little bit about how Hijack-A-Host works. Josh, you want to give a little bit of a rundown here? So normally we do these Force-A-Friend episodes where one of us gets to pick another game for one of the other hosts and they have to play it. And it's, it's awesome. Like it's just such a

cool thing to be able to do, to make a friend play a game and then see their thoughts on it. And so we've been doing this for a little while, but we have said, you know what, for people that want to support the show and they go legendary status, which is the highest tier we have over at MultiplayerSquad.com. One, just one, not all of the perks, but one of the perks of that is that you get to hijack one of us, which means that if it's Paul's turn to pick a game. You can hijack that. You can say, nope, I want Ryan to play this game or I want Josh to play this game and you get to pick the game at the same time. So you get all the power for these episodes, which is great. We have these fun episodes where we kind of reveal what game it is and which host is going to play it. And then we'll come back in two weeks and we'll actually do a full deep dive on that game to find out what that person thought.

If any of the other hosts played it, kind of what they thought about it and just talk about that game in general so that other listeners can say, hey, is this a game that's worthwhile for me? Maybe I want to pick it up or I'm really glad I didn't have to play that. I'll stay away now. So this episode here is just setting the stage we don't know what game we're gonna talk about what game got selected and why we'll talk a little bit about what we know about the game josh i know you did a little bit of prep work you've got some community reviews that we're gonna read some stuff like that uh i don't think we need to delay any longer josh how are we gonna do this are you going to tell us what the game is or what?

Well, first of all, credit to Kidaclysm, who has been a listener for a long time, signed up for Legendary status, reached out to me with the game that they wanted to pick for one of you two fine gentlemen. So thank you to Kidaclysm for, you know, supporting the show, for picking this game. I'm actually really excited about this. I can see his smile. I know. So, you know, I don't know if you can tell in my voice, but I think this is going to be a fun episode. But,

you know, shout out to Kidaclysm for making this all possible. So now it's time to talk about the game and maybe, maybe which host. So I have a little clue for you guys that I have put together. So I'm just going to, I'm going to play this little, this little audio clip. And I want, I want to know if this rings a bell for either of you,

if this triggers any memories. Okay. So here we go. Sweet dude. We're off the hook. Does that ring a bell to either one of you oh no well i hear ryan saying we're off the hook and i'm laughing yeah so sweet dude we're off the hook uh ryan saying something about dude we're off the hook i'm trying to remember

i'm guessing we must not be off the hook whatever we were talking about it must have been some game that you and i did not want to play ryan so all of a sudden i'm getting a little nervous all right well let me let me go back to battlefield let me set the stage for you guys a little bit because this was on a squad cast episode which is an episode that is available to people that support the show they are bonus. One of the other perks that we give people. And we were talking about a few different games and Ryan came out, you know, Paul, you said, yeah, I'm not going to play that. Ryan said, I said, forget you guys. Ryan goes, Paul, we're off the hook. And then lo and behold, it's the very next day i get a message from kidaclysm saying this will teach them to deny playing a game with you josh do you guys want to know what the game is

i think i remember the one you're talking about we talked about a trio of games we did because they were releasing like i think three days in a row. There were three big releases, but I don't even remember what they were. Oh, I remember, guys, because you guys rejected me. All right. Ryan, does this jogging? Ryan looks like a deer in headlights right now, man. Dude, I've been in the forest for two weeks or whatever. I'm trying to reacclimate to everything, so I'm trying to remember right now.

I remember saying that. I don't remember what it was, too. All right. Well, here it is, boys. The trio of games that we talked about was Dread Hunter, Mario Wonder, and the game that one of you is playing called Endless Dungeon. If you two suckers remember, I was so hyped for Endless Dungeon. I've been raving about this game. You two, I said, you know what?

You both just bowed out on me. And I said, fine, forget you. I'll go find some other people to play with. And then Kid Eclism to the rescue, boys. Because Kid Eclism said, ah, ah, ah. One of them is playing with you. Do you want to know who it is well first i want to know how much of the legendary support did you pay josh in order to get we don't talk about that we have

to play with you we don't talk about any of that i'm just wondering if you slipped a 50 to get a clue so that's i'm just asking i'm just asking asking questions. You'll never know. You'll never know, boys. All right. So who gets the honors of playing Endless Dungeon? Well, let me just play this little sound clip for you one more time, boys. Sweet. Dude, we're off the hook. Oh, man.

Ryan, you are not off the hook. I'm off the hook. Paul, you are off the hook. Ryan. Saddle up, buddy, because me and you, we're going to be playing some endless dungeon together. Let's do it, baby. Yes. I'm ready.

Now, I will say, in all craziness and my excitement aside, Kidicalism did say that they did think that you would actually really enjoy this game. You're always talking about how you love co-op games. And I think they just wanted to kind of put that to the test and say, you know what, Ryan, you're always talking about how you love any game that's co-op with friends. Well, you shot this opportunity down, but now you don't get a choice. So when we previously had Michael the butler as a host, it was a little bit of a running joke that Michael just loved all games. He wanted to marry every game we played.

He liked all of them. That is Ryan with multiplayer games. I don't know if Ryan has ever played a multiplayer game and just been completely out on it. As long as he's got a buddy, he's going to like it. Yeah. If I got a friend to play with, I usually can put up

with whatever we're dealing with because then we can talk about how horrible it is so uh no i just i just i love i love playing games together online so oh man that's that's i'm gonna have to get that audio clip from you because that's hilarious i'm gonna have to put it into this episode oh yeah don't worry i've already done the work ryan so so ryan do you remember anything about endless dungeon at this point like there's very little that i remember from watching some clips what do you even remember so this is the one with uh it's like that kind of over top view with the with all the guns right yep come on through okay yeah so i remember that one i actually i thought it looked pretty cool it just it wasn't you know on my radar with everything going on and all the games we have to play and stuff like that

it wasn't one that i was wanting to to pick up but i guess i don't have a choice anymore. You do not. But I am not disappointed is what I'll say. So I think it looked really, really cool. And if I get to play with people, maybe Paul will have to jump in. Then more the merrier. It is a three-person. Don't try to drag me into this. It is a three-person co-op game.

Paul is off the hook. So if he doesn't want to play it into this it is a three-person co-op game paul is off the hook so if he doesn't want to play it he is not obligated to um ryan i will say this i actually bought this game on my own i told you guys i was going to i started playing it and then that's when kidaclysm reached out to me and i stopped playing it so i do have a little bit of knowledge of the game i checked today i have 10 hours in this game which is not a ton um but i actually did stop and wait for you to get back from being in the woods just so i would not be so far ahead of you that you were then forced to just you know kind of play solo and play catch up and all that so and now is this is this um is there like a a like a genuine campaign to

it that we can play co-op or how does that work it's there is no campaign um so i'll tell you what let me read the steam description um and that'll kind of familiarize maybe this will jog some memory here too but it says it's been a while official steam description is endless dungeon is a roguelite tactical action game set in the award-winning endless universe recruit a team of shipwrecked heroes plunge into a long abandoned space station and protect your crystal against never-ending waves of monsters or die trying get reloaded and try again dude we're gonna protect that crystal like nobody's business dude so i i actually got to play this game with a couple of our listeners um so joff and cryptics uh i played for a few hours with them one night

i have played a little bit solo as well i can tell you that this game is way better with friends so that gets me excited to have you being, you know, that you have to play this because I will play it with you 100%. And it is way better like co-op multiplayer than the solo is. There is an overarching goal to the game, but I wouldn't say this is like a story driven campaign. This is all about action and fun. Well, and this also has like tower defense elements too, right? It does.

Yeah. So it's a very interesting mix of a twin shooter game so a twin stick shooter um so you've got pretty frantic action going on um and a tower defense game mixed in a roguelike so those are three genres where a lot of people kind of scratch their heads and say, how can you mix these together? I can say from my experience, they mixed it together very well. And so if that makes not a lot of sense to you, trust me, it will. So I've got one question for you, because you, me, and Michael did a deep dive on Dungeon Defenders.

That had tower defense elements, but then it also had like third person shooter elements as well. Is endless dungeon at all similar to dungeon defenders or are they wildly different? They are similar in the tower defense nature. But that is about where it ends. I mean, there are multiple characters.

So I don't want to spoil too much, but you know, you do, you do progress. You unlock new characters. Those characters have abilities. Some characters synergize. You do have tanks and DPS and healers and support characters, which is really cool. And then, yeah, it's much yes and no. Yes, it is a tower defense game and you are trying to defend against hordes of monsters. So in that sense, it is similar to Dungeon Defenders, but I think that is where I would draw the line. Okay. Well, let's go ahead and take our short break

and then we'll come back and we'll ask you some more questions, Josh. All right, we're back. Continuing our talk of Endless Dungeon, I want to know, do you have to play with controller? No. And honestly, I tried this at first because I always try mouse and keyboard. Anytime I try a new game, I start there and then I go, oh, this is a controller game. This works very well with keyboard and and mouse actually so the aiming portion

and the action portion i have played it 100 with mouse and keyboard because i was very pleasantly surprised when i started playing it that it worked so well because i was gonna say being a twin stick shooter i figured you probably have to go controller but i like that you can actually play keyboard and mouse that's nice wasd actually does control your character's movement so it's not like diablo or something where you're clicking around everywhere so you can you can wasd for movement and then you use your mouse cursor to kind of just control the direction you want to aim i think it works really really well i like it so much on mouse and keyboard that i've i've not even tried controller to be honest oh wow oh nice that's that's good

so ryan do you have any questions for josh anything you're concerned or worried about or are you just excited uh i'm honestly super excited because anytime i can you know be forced to play or force you guys to play a game with me i'm i'm stoked so let's play i'm i'm ready i'm ready i'm trying to think how many multiplayer games have we covered with ryan not many not time it's mostly been single player and all of our force of friends have been subnautica the witness metal gear solid five has multiplayer but not like we didn't play that yeah no i'm trying to think i don't know that we've officially covered yeah we did play deep rock and which ryan did like a lot and the co-op nature yeah diablo 4 yep diablo 4 um and then i know we played some bopple battle

we did a kind of a a quick episode on that but i think that's about the extent of it. Pretty much. Yeah, I don't think there's been many, but I'm beyond excited. So I am ready to check this out. So I'm going to download that bad boy tonight. I'll say this. This does give me a little clairvoyance on minding what you say, especially when it's going to go out to go out to the world a lot of people listening

right when you go when you when you when you played that track audio track hopefully we can you know put that in uh with editing but uh it's you know oh we're off the hook i'm like hey that's me i was like i said that i oh i remember saying that. Oh, crap. We did also play one other multiplayer game with Ryan, and it was Ark. Oh, that's right. Dude, every multiplayer game we've played has been a ton of fun. Those have all been fun.

Yeah. I'm fun, guys. Guys, I'm fun. I have a question for you, Josh. So I assume, since this has tower defense elements, gameplay is set up in waves. Is that how it works? Like you beat a wave and then kind of like that ends and then you'll have to start the next one. Is that how it's segmented out? And then at the end of each one, does it give any kind of like MVP or stats of everyone that played? Cause I always love when games do

that. So the way that this game works is every time you're exploring this derelict space station to try to solve the problem, I won't spoil any plot stuff for Ryan just yet, but every time that you open a door, it raises the threat level meter to where you can open a door and then it will trigger a wave of enemies. The main goal is that you have your crystal bot,

this bot that has a big crystal in it, that you have to try to like get to the exit of the level to move down like another level, right? This is kind of why they call it endless dungeon, so to speak. So you have to protect the bot. That's where the tower defense comes in. You don't have to have towers. You can 100% twin stick shooter this thing if you want to in the beginning now as the game starts to progress and get a little bit harder you better start strategizing a little bit because the game throws monster generator rooms at you so that now you're getting attacked from like multiple directions and things like that there are times where you

have to move the bot and if the bot is moving it is an endless wave. So the waves do not stop until the bot gets to a certain point and then can like set back up. And then once the wave finishes, you kind of get a little bit of breathing room. So the, that flow of like chaos who, okay, we can breathe and now we can kind of progress and maybe find some guns and stuff like that. And then chaos, it's like this just back and forth. It's really neat to me. It does not track. I'll be honest with you.

It might, but I don't remember because I've only played co-op once. And so I don't recall if it shows you. You know what? When you beat a floor, it does show you stats. So every time you beat a floor, it does pop up and say, hey, this character did this much damage. I'm really looking forward to like the class nature because I think there's eight different characters

and they're different, which is really neat. And I got a chance to play a few that night that I played co-op. So I think that's going to add another dimension to like, what character am I good at? What character is Ryan good at? You know, that kind of stuff too. One of the things I really loved about playing Outriders with you, Josh, was when we would do the end game content, we would finish and you would get like the breakdown of all stats and you could see exactly how much damage you me andy jared whoever we were playing with but it also like broke down by individual ability yeah and i always just loved

my cheesy build where my weapon reload was the biggest it was like 70 of my damage yeah but i do like that a lot that that sounds like a lot of fun. I always like playing wave-based stuff where you kind of get that breather until you go open up your next door. That sounds pretty cool. Yeah, they've really, in my opinion, you know, again, I don't want to give too much of my opinion

to sway Ryan's opinion, but I think they nailed the pacing of the game in that regard to where it's like you do have time to breathe and kind of strategize and say, okay, well, what if we put, they're going to come from this direction. So, you know, and we have to move the bot this way.

So let's funnel them in here. Let's put a couple turrets here. And there's all kinds of different turrets, you know, and then, and then it's like, Ryan, you lead the way and I'll have some of them chase me in like down this way so that there's not such a massive hoard or something like that. So the game does give you time to strategize, but then sometimes you'll just get a random wave that pops up and then it's like, oh,

strategy time over! Time to hop into action, boys. Yeah, as Mike Tyson would say, everybody's got a plan until they get punched in the face. That's exactly right. Oh, that's awesome. I know you're still somewhat early on, Josh, but scale of one to 10,

where would you say the difficulty is? It's on the higher end, right? It is on the higher end. I have died a lot. I would put it at a seven right now. I, you know, maybe as you have friends to play with and you start to strategize and work things out, maybe it gets better at that point.

You know, I mean, any game, you kind ofize and work things out, maybe it gets better at that point. You know, I mean, any game, you kind of start to figure things out. But for right now, it's not easy, man. Like, this is not just a cakewalk. Like, I mean, send a bigger horde after me, guys. Like, they're coming. Don't you worry. And it happens pretty fast.

Well, you haven't had Rhyme Master Flex in the group, you know? We'll see. Everybody listens like, like oh my goodness that is ryan's uh gamer name by the way it is yep so okay i will say i'm not planning to pick it up but if you guys are going to be playing if i'm available i want you guys to stream it that way i can at least hop in and watch a little bit of what you guys play yeah that way i can at least hop in and watch a little bit of what you guys play yeah that way i can at least you know get get an idea of how it's going with you guys and then josh i think you've got some community reviews i did i you know just to get ryan a little hyped or maybe a little worried um i did pull three reviews um i did pick two good

ones and one bad one uh just to give some different opinions on this this first one is recommended they've got five and a half hours on record and it says if you have an itch for a good tower defense game this is one to check out without a doubt for me it's up there with orcs must die series and sanctum 2 as my favorites in the genre good graphics good controls and handles very well, and it's a blast to play. Pretty much the gameplay and controls of The Ascent or Hades, but tower defense style like Orcs Must Die or Sanctum 2. I had no idea this game was coming out. I never played the old game, which is a reference to Dungeon of the Endless, which was

kind of like the precursor to this game, by the way um so this has been a very nice surprise for me so far i played almost three hours and i can't wait to play more it works well on pc and also the steam deck i honestly don't understand the mixed review score for this to be honest it runs great the controls are awesome and it's the most fun i've had in a tower defense game since the orcs must die series funny to bring up orcs must die because that's like the sister series of dungeon defenders i've played orcs must die 2 and dungeon defenders 1 and 2 so i think you're gonna like this a lot ryan i think this is right up your alley the more i hear about it i never played orcs must die to be honest dungeon defenders was the first time I played that series either. So, I mean, I have played pure tower defense games before,

which I actually enjoy, but I've never played a hybrid one other than Dungeon Defenders when we played that one. So this is kind of a first for me as well. Okay, this next one is recommended. 21 hours on record. It's a very fun game.

It has some kinks that need polishing but the game is a heck of a lot of fun and super addictive oh okay all right is this one of those like let's just open one more door one more wave let's just do one more next thing you know it's 2 a.m it is i will say so far for me it is that that one more, yeah, one more door, one more level. We all die because it will happen. One more run, guys. I want to see what this new ability is. I unlock this character.

You're speaking my language, man. Let's just do one more and see what happens. You know, let's try different characters. There are multiple different levels that you unlock as well. So it's like, hey, what's this level? Let's go into that one instead kind of thing too. So, all right. And then this last one is not recommended. They have two hours on record. And it says, I want to be very clear that I don't think that this is a bad game. I just cannot recommend it to people. There is something off about the gameplay that just makes the core loop

feel much less satisfying than I had anticipated. This was one of my most anticipated games of the year, and I can't help but be a little disappointed in it. I can't necessarily put my finger on it, but I might come back to elaborate after I play it some more. Part of it definitely has to do with the rapid pace of the gameplay. You barely get defenses set up before you've exhausted all the doors and resources in a zone and have to move on to the next zone. It is funny because after re-watching some gameplay, it looks significantly more fun than it feels. Okay, so I have not played any of the Endless games, but I am under the impression that the older ones are more technical and require more of that thought process and planning ahead and then executing it. Whereas this game sounds a little bit more frantic and action-based.

Maybe that's what wasn't quite jiving with that reviewer. I've never played Dungeon of the Endless. I will say that most of the negative reviews either reference this is not dungeon of the endless or it references um something else that i'll mention here a little bit after we guess the scores but they have actually fixed that so i would say that 90 of the negative reviews the thing that they focused on has been fixed i guess i can say it right now when the game very first released if if ryan if you were playing in my world, you would not unlock progression, which was a bummer, right? So if we unlocked a character while you had joined my game, then I had that character. But then when you left and you went to your world, you did not have that character unlocked. And rightfully so, a lot of people went, this sucks. Developers have actually already fixed that um and so thankfully that is not an issue anymore but that was the overwhelming majority of reviews or the negative reviews was just oh this sucks progression is locked to the

host and blah blah blah and it's not a thing anymore so okay well that's good all right so then uh let's guess the score guys i don't know how good you were paying attention, but there was a clue in one of those reviews as to what the overall score was. Not only that, when we did a This Week in Gaming episode while Ryan was on vacation, I believe I also shared the score of this game.

So I did look this one up. It has been a little bit of time but i think i do remember pretty close to where the rating was all right well let's let ryan guess first here sounds about right so what are we doing uh the steam score from zero to one steam user Oh, man. Let's do 87. Okay. All right. I believe this game was very close to 70%. I'm going to say 71. The actual is 67%, which is a mixed rating.

Oh, it's dropped a little. Just a bit outside. Which is a mixed rating. I will say again, the reason that I picked this one negative review was because it was the only review that talked about the gameplay aspect every single other review was this is not dungeon of the endless so i'm not happy with it i don't know what that game was everybody talks about it being very very difficult and hard like you said paul much much more tactical um and then they complained about the progression not carrying over if you're playing a co-op game that there was no co-op

progression but again that has been fixed now okay so most of the negative reviews are no longer valid so in reality if you asked everyone to redo it it'd probably be much I would be curious what it would be now. I bet it'd be probably an 87. I would think all right. Nice. Well, I did. Did we cover everything? Is there anything else we need to talk about? That is it. Um, Ryan, we gonna play tonight.

I'm down. I already got it. I've been waiting for you, buddy. I've been waiting for you. You have to tell my son that we're not playing Spider-Man 2, though. Oh, I'm not doing that. You can play Spider-Man with your son. We'll play tomorrow. I know he's been waiting, too.

Crush his dreams. I know. I came home from work, and he's like, oh, are we going to play Spider-Man 2? I was like, I got to record, buddy. And he's like, oh. I was like, we'll play after. I will say I'm very excited to get to play this with you ryan um i have been enjoying it a lot um and so it was tough to have to put it down and wait to be honest so i am proud of you

i i was not easy but i'm also looking forward to being able to play a good multiplayer co-op game with you and then it's going to be very difficult for you to not give away what you think about this, but we never share our thoughts until we come back two weeks later. And so that's going to be the tough part. So for all of our listeners out there, we hope that you'll check out all our episodes, but make sure to come back in two Mondays when we'll give our final thoughts, or at least you guys will on endless dungeon. And also for our listeners,

you know, if you want to hijack an episode in the future, like Josh talked about earlier, go visit multiplayer squad.com. Also check us out on socials everywhere at video gamers pod. We also want to say thank you once again to criticalism. We really appreciate the support. We know you've been out there for quite a while supporting us.

Really appreciate it. And come back and check out our deep dive on Endless Dungeon. Be on the lookout for that as long as we don't goof like we did with The Witness, where we accidentally released that one a week early. That's all right. With Ryan's Vacation, we have recorded so many episodes out of order. We were making mistakes left and right, but I think we're finally back in the regular swing of things. Yes. Yeah. No catastrophic issues, just, you know, releasing episodes in an order

that was not otherwise intended. Gotta keep the show going for the people. So that was the goal, even if we goofed up the release a little bit. Yeah, we're gonna release episodes. They might not have been what we originally planned, but something will come out. right well thank you surprise to all of us yeah all right thank you so much to everyone out there for listening to our episode until next time happy gaming see ya all right see everybody Bye.