Video Gamers Podcast - [Hijack a Host] What’s up Doc? - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: June 24, 2024

Gaming hosts Paul, Josh and Ryan have once again been hijacked, this time by Legendary supporter Alex. In this awesome gaming filled episode, we’ve got quite an interesting pick to chat about. Join us as we announce the video game and the host who was forced to play, and what our predictions will be in this awesome gaming episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Disratory, Ole Jake and JigglePuff Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This Friday, Captain America arrives. Sam, the world needs heroes. Here I am. Thanks. Get tickets now for the first Marvel movie event of the year. Let's go! Woo!

With Anthony Mackie. I'm going in. Giancarlo Esposito. Stand by for proof of death. And Harrison Ford. I'll show the world I've changed. You want me? Come and get me!

Captain America Brave New World. See it in IMAX this Friday. Hit tickets now. Hello fellow gamers! Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast, hosted by three lifelong gamer dads. Please take a couple of seconds to rate our show five stars, toss us a follow on socials everywhere at VideoGamersPod, and come check out Patreon support options over at MultiplayerSquad.com. Today is a Hijack-A-Host pre-dive episode. We are going to be teasing out the next game that we are going to have to deep dive along with which host will have to play it. We will cover all that here over the next half hour or so. I am your host, Paul. And joining me, he is like Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade in Scent of a Woman yelling, I got no life. I'm in the dark here. It's Josh.

Lieutenant Dan, you got no legs. Okay, that's the wrong movie. What? You said Lieutenant somebody. Okay. I thought you said the older one to Josh. What's your line? Wait, no, no, no.

You're Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman. You're blind. You're in the dark, Josh. That's what you mean. Lieutenant Dan, you got no eyes all right we're moving all right it didn't work it's fine it's fine we didn't make it through the intros all right and then joining josh and me we treat him like sergeant dignum treats feds in the departed we feed him poop and keep him in the dark it's ryan lieutenant dan i got no poop i quit

podcast over paul probably spent so much time with these awesome movie references i'm just a huge movie fan i'm like what are two quotes about people who are either blind or can't see and like it's scent of a woman and the departed have you guys not seen these movies I haven't I don't think I've seen any one you've never seen the departed I don't think I don't think I have

go watch it is that Leonardo yes yeah I've heard Matt Damon and Jack Nicholson Alec Baldwin is it a heist movie what's it about no it's about good. Jack Nicholson, Alec Baldwin. Is it a heist movie? What's it about? No, it's about the Irish mob. Oh, okay. Go watch it tonight.

You won't be disappointed. I've heard amazing things, but I think I... Actually, I'm quite sure I've never seen it. All right. So moving on from the worst intro we've ever had on this show. Josh, I'm going to throw things to you here for a minute. Will you tell the people why we're at on this show. Josh, I'm going to throw things to you here for a minute. Will you tell the people why we're doing this episode and who our sponsor is for today's content?

Well, it's obviously for the amazing Forrest Gump quotes. This is why everybody's here. No, the reason that we are here is we have been hijacked. One of the things that we absolutely love is, listen, we are gamers just like you we are not industry experts or professionals or any of that stuff we're gamers we love doing this thing where our listeners can force us to play a game we've done that with friends hey man i love this game i feel like if you just picked it up and played it you'd enjoy it too so we have made an agreement that if people support the show and they go legendary status, which is our highest tier, that they get to pick a game and a host to make play that game.

And we had that happen by our good friend, Alex. Alex went legendary. Alex reached out to Paul, which worries me and Ryan a little bit because Paul, that means Alex did not pick Paul to play this game, but Alex reached out to Paul and said, Hey, here's the game that I pick. And here's the host that I want to have. You know, I want to play it. The beauty of this is you're finding out as we find out Ryan and I have no clue whatsoever, which one of us it is or what this game could possibly be um so you're gonna find out with us but that's why we hear a huge

thank you to alex for going legendary for supporting the show and hopefully picking a fun game for one of us to play yeah thank you al your boy al yes thank you a Al. It's your boy, Al. Yes. Thank you, Alex. He is a super cool dude. He's a full-time worship pastor. He's got a ton of video games. He posted some pictures of his huge collection. Oh, yeah. That was a mad question.

He was saying, like, should I sell some of this? It's probably worth a couple thousand bucks. And he's been super into Bellatro lately. So he was even streaming a few days back. Ryan and I got to watch a couple minutes. We love you, brother. Thank you so much for the support. All right.

So this is fun. It's been a minute since I'm the one who knows the information about the game, and I just get to share it with you guys. So I wanted to start off this episode with teasing a couple of facts about the game. So I thought we could play a little bit of a game here to try to figure out the release year, because the game that Alex chose is not terribly new. It is a little bit aged.

So I wanted to tell you guys two hints, and then I want you both to guess and see what year you think this game came out. When this game released, the number one song at the time was Rock Your Body by Justin Timberlake, and the number one movie

in the box office was Finding Nemo. We're going back a minute, guys. Number one movie in the box office. Alright, number one, I have terrible time memory, as I like to call it. I could not tell you what happened three days ago versus three weeks ago. All I know is it's in the past.

So number one, I'm really, really bad at this kind of game. If I had to guess, Finding Nemo came out in either the late 90s or the early 2000s. I'm going to guess 2002. Am I anywhere close? You're very close. Okay, that was literally a dart throw for me. 2001, Bob. A Space Odyssey. Oh, okay.

One of you is off by one year. And it's not Ryan. So 2003. 2003. That's what I get for going to the price is right method. Okay. What came out in 2003? When did world of Warcraft release to,

Oh, that's a funny question. 2004 actually. Okay. So, Ooh, Ooh, we're closing in.

This game came out the year before world of Warcraft. Yeah. So we're going back a minute here with this one, uh, to give some context, I looked up the bestselling games in 2003 in the United States to give you guys an idea. Advance, Super Mario Advance 4 for the Game Boy Advance, The Legend of Zelda The Wind Waker for GameCube, and GTA Vice City for

the PS2. Oh, I love Vice City. Great game. Okay, so wait. Same year as Vice City, Ryan. Yes. Same year as Vice City. But I want to go back real quick. Who was on the Madden cover? Who's your guess? Oh, for 2004? I'm going to say Mike Vick. Let's see. Let's find out. You might be right.

Let's see. Madden NFL 2004. It is, let's see. I have no idea. You are correct. No way. It is Mike Vick. Yeah.

It is Mike Vick. Yeah. Wow. There you go. Oh, Ryan. Boy, he was like a cheat code for football games then. Yeah. Dang, I can't believe I guessed that.

What a guess. All right. So you guys might have noticed in that list of games that I just gave you, those are all console games. Yes. Now, I will tell you, Alex did not pick a console game on the PS2. All right. So obviously, legendary picks have to be something that you can still play today. I will say that 2003 is still pretty early on for PC gaming. I would say that while it obviously

was happening, it was a little bit more of a niche market. I mean, we're talking, this is right around the same time as Battlefield 1942, which was one of the very first online games I ever played, and SimCity 4. This game released before Far Cry 1 and before The Sims 2. So how do you guys feel about the fact that this game is an older title? I don't mind because you're talking my heyday. Yeah. title i i don't mind because you're talking my heyday yeah you know like i mean i'm not gonna say how old i was in 2003 because that would require me to do some math um but i mean 27 i was i was gaming on a pc since i was four years old man you know and so it's funny because you say pc gaming wasn't really that advanced but i'm just sitting there shaking my head going dude i guarantee you i was pc gaming back then um i

mean world of warcraft came out the year after so i i figure i i agree with you that that was probably especially with the ps2 that was the heyday of consoles yeah but your boy josh was definitely playing something on the pc around then too and wait was i really 27 paul you're gonna make me do the math now yeah i did the did you all right all right so i was old okay i was 14 or no you would have been 25 25 okay that makes me feel way better so much better well that's weird too though because there was so many. I had so many friends that we would game with. None of them had computers.

I only had one friend that was a PC and that's who we'd play Battlefield with and Counter-Strike and stuff. But I know you and I, Paul, we played a mountain of WoW when it came out. A lot of Diablo 2 and stuff. So other than that, not a lot of people did have, other than people like us that just were so into gaming, but everybody else was console, you know? Oh yeah, absolutely. So what's even a little bit crazier is that the earliest renditions of this game actually go back to the summer of 2001. Like we're talking pre 9-11 this game went into beta testing in january of 2002 that makes this game by far the oldest game we've ever done a deep dive on so i looked at our leaderboard our two oldest games are halo reach which came out in 2010 and fallout new vegas which came out at the end of 2010 this game is almost a full

decade older those games feel really old i mean i'm thinking fallout new vegas and it's funny because everybody's playing fallout again all of a sudden right yeah and i remember being like well i mean fallout new vegas it's it's pretty dated you know so if you don't mind the old graphics and some of the quality of life stuff like it's a great ride but now we're talking a decade before that hey a good game's a good game man that's true i mean it's that is true a good game will stand the test of time yeah and this will be the oldest so it'll be quite a test so let's narrow things down just a little bit so based on what you know looking at like 2002 2003 era you have a guess as to what you think the genre might be oh i got dude i'm trying to think

okay so it's a pc we're first person shooters taken off by then when did they start really taken off battlefield certainly battlefield 2 was that was way later yeah this is before by then? When did they start really taking off? Battlefield 2 was... That was way later. This is before Battlefield Vietnam. This is like Counter-Strike. A couple years before. TFC. Dang. I don't know. I'm drawing a blank. No guesses?

Alright. Genre of game. I feel like... You're not going to guess it. Platformers were still coming around. You were going from the Game Boy and the Game Cube. What was the game that you said came out in Game Cube? Wind Waker. Wind Waker.

So then you were kind of moving the PS2 era. Oh, man. No, I don't know. I like Ryan's guess of RTS. This is kind of like around, you know, some of the Starcrafts and Warcrafts. This is an MMO RPG. What? Okay. Wait, an MMO?

An MMO. Josh's eyes got so big. This is an MMO, buddy. Okay. This is an old MMO. Wait, is it RuneScape? It is not RuneScape, but no more guesses. I was like, I just blew up with the whole show, man. No more guesses. It's not RuneScape? It is not RuneScape, but no more guesses. I was like, I just blew up with the whole show, man.

No more guesses. It's not RuneScape. Okay. So hilariously, Josh, I wrote in my outline here, it's older than Warcraft. It is older than WoW. And you somehow, out of all the games, asked if it came out before World of Warcraft.

Wow. This predates World of Warcraft. It predates EverQuest 2. It is not just one of the OG MMOs for a lot of people slightly younger than you and me, Josh, kind of like Ryan's age and a little bit younger. A lot of them say this is the first online game they ever played full stop.

So it's very nostalgic for a lot of people. I could not believe that this is an MMO that existed before WoW. It really surprised me. Okay. So you're really piquing my interest here because I have famously said that EverQuest, which is the precursor to WoW, I was absolutely cracked on. I mean, I played EverQuest for years, dude. And so that means that this game had to have fallen. I don't know. I won't say released because I don't know. But this game had to have fallen in that window between EverQuest and when WoW started up.

Yep, exactly. That means that when I quit EverQuest, I quit MMOs completely because I was like, yo, I don't need to get sucked into something like that again but now but now i mean i've been craving an mmo and this is an mmo that is still around it is an mmo that you can still play i'll have some interesting facts about it i think I might know what this is. I have a feeling that I can't. But I don't want to guess because I don't want to blow up the show. Yeah, I have siblings that are a little bit younger that would game too.

And I think I know what it could be, but I can't think of the name. I think I know what it is, actually. I'm going to text it to myself with a timestamp so that if I'm right, you guys will be like, wow, I can't believe he got it. So impressive. Sure. So yeah, this is super early MMO. This is going to predate Guild Wars, a lot of those big name titles.

I will say that this is one that I had not heard of prior. I was going to say if someone had the best odds of knowing it, I was going to say Ryan someone had the best odds of knowing it, I was going to say Ryan because of his younger siblings. But I don't know if either of you guys are going to know really much about this game, if anything. So let's go ahead and take a short break and then we'll come back and I'll read a description of why Alex chose this game.

All right, we are back. Here's what Alex DM'd me about the game. He said, it's an MMO that is task-oriented with minigames and Sims-like elements. You get to design your house and buy stuff from a catalog with in-game currency. There are no microtransactions. You level up, you defeat enemies and bosses in a unique way it is so much fun i played it for years and then after i asked him a couple follow-up questions we were discussing it a bit and he did clarify that designing your house is not part of the main story or anything like that but it is a fun thing to do that is not necessary so josh you famously do not like simulation games like The Sims. So if you are

chosen here, at least it's not necessary to worry about building your house. Okay. I don't necessarily spend a lot of time building a house in a game, but I mean, as you guys have witnessed, my building skills are second to none. I mean, Valheim, I kept us sheltered for a night. Seconds. A night, you know, in the rain. I'm still in therapy for not organizing the area right. No, you did right, Ryan, but that was after dire consequence warning for me. Okay. I mean, I don't mind building. You did right, Ryan, but that was after dire consequence warning for me.

Okay. I mean, I don't mind building. To me, that can be fun, provided it's not the only thing to do. Sure. If that's the main goal, I'd rather just build a house in my backyard and actually have something to show for it. So, Ryan, I feel like that aspect is a little more up your alley. I mean, you and I grew up together. We would take turns playing The Sims, which is older than this game.

I feel like designing a house is something that would maybe grab your attention a little bit more. Oh, definitely. No, I enjoy that. Even when I do stuff around, you know, I've done a ton of work to my home. Anytime my wife asks for something, I'm like, oh, yeah, let me drop some plans. And I get out some graph paper and sketch some stuff out and how we're going to build it. So I do enjoy that aspect of it,

but it's funny cause I like playing the Sims, but I hate like stamina or hunger and thirst and like survival games. I hate it in those, but, but I don't mind it in like Sims feeding them and doing the chores and building. But yeah, I mean,

it's, it's definitely something I'm, I'm more uh into than josh's yeah so it's not central to the gameplay but it is in there yeah so but back then back then that would have been a pretty like forward thing in a game to have i mean other than sim city like were there were you a lot of, I mean, it's in tons of games nowadays. We just played No Rest for the Wicked, and you can get a house and, like, deck out the house. So it still carries in, but, like, back then, I don't think that was a common thing. I don't think so. Like, I remember The Sims seemed really advanced with that, and I think The Sims came out in 2000, if memory serves, but that's where you would actually build your actual rooms and your full house layout and all

that. I'll be honest, I don't know how detailed this game gets into it because I haven't played any of that part yet, but we'll see. So I did try to bring up some reviews on this game since it is a bit older. I could only find two critic reviews on it but i do have two snippets that i want to read for you guys this first one comes from game chronicles and here's what they said they gave the game an eight and a half out of ten and they said that the game is poised to fulfill an important role when it comes to the online gaming market a kid-friendly game that will allow the whole family to join in on mmo fun without having to worry about the usual gang of idiots that populate most gaming communities so not much has changed in the last

20 years i think it's fair to say that most online games are still populated with the usual gang of idiots but this game was an attempt to weed out those people and to make things a little bit more kid-friendly okay now i'm completely lost because i was thinking for a minute like maybe this is you guys remember second life when second life came out and when you said building in a house thing i kind of went wait second life kind of fell in right after the everquest days i, I think. But Second Life was not family friendly. No. All you heard about Second Life was what people were doing in it.

And that was not family friendly. And of course, immortalized in the office when Dwight creates Second World. Yes, Second World. Dude, I can't remember any kind of friendly MMO. I know, right? I am bad. This is right now.

I think this is nowhere on you and my radars. Josh Ryan might have a chance. Okay. Game Chronicles did also say it should be obvious that the focus is on silly fun. It provides families with a complex, relatively deep gameplay experience that still protects kids from the net creeps that seem to be everywhere. It also mentions that the base game was free at release. However, it did cost $10 a month to play.

So, not sparking any ideas yet. We know the time frame. It's an MMO? Yeah. family it's a kid friendly let me kid friendly was it let me ask you this is it like uh kind of cartoony like might be might be a little bit cartoony i think that is fair to say if you have a guess ryan maybe maybe you should write yours down yeah right if you think you might know it so the other review i found was from worth playing they gave the game a slightly lower score of 7.8 out of 10 still highly respectable they wrote their review after the game was out for two years and they said that although the game is not targeted to hardcore gamers, it is built on the principles of traditional

RPGs and MMOs. Its gameplay, however, has been expanded and modified to appeal to casual gamers, and through several years of testing, it has developed a core fan base among the gaming community. And then in their final verdict, they said, all in all, it is a nice change of pace from most MMORPGs. It should definitely be the first place one looks if they intend to let their children try online gaming. But due to its repetitive nature and the difficulty for seasoned gamers, it is hard to take this title seriously. I have a hard time giving it an extremely high recommendation. I mean, and to be fair, it's 2003. All MMOs were a little bit of a grind fest. I think in the early days, no one was too sure how to make enough content. So the whole idea of having a little bit of repetition, I think it's fair to say that's gonna exist.

Completely normal. That was your go kill five rats and do that daily for your daily mission kind of thing. I mean, that, what that was, that was the grind back then. Kill, kill of 10 million rabbits. Yeah.

Go pick 10 flowers, you know, and then come back to me. And then it's like, or the vastly different quest, go get 10, uh, boar teeth or something like that.

It's the same quest. We should probably mix this up a little bit. Gosh, I only have nine. I just need to kill one more. This is blowing my mind, dude. I feel like I should know what MMOs were out around EverQuest slash World of Warcraft, man.

Yeah. Well, we're getting very close to the reveal here. Okay. So it's a 20-year-old MMO. How could it possibly still exist, right? I think that was the first thing I could see in your eyes, Josh, you're doing the math.

You're like, dude, ever quest doesn't really exist except this like one server run by a dude. Like, how is it possible? Well, funny story. The game died in 2013.

It was done. So they took this game offline. It did not exist anymore, but it's actually a really fun story for how the game got brought back. So first of all, the game was designed with an engine that's open source. So anybody can pick up and use the engine. The actual game code was written in Python, which if you know what you're doing as a programmer, you can decompile all the code. And most hilariously, if you ask me, the guy who designed the game

gave a lecture about the backend server architecture, laid it out in full detail with diagrams on dry erase boards, and this was posted online. Oh, wow. So when you put all these things together you have people who are able to grab all the original code set up all the architecture and run the game themselves online so this game has actually been recreated by dozens of people uh a lot of versions of this game

actually still currently exist today oh wow hilariously pc gamer wrote an article eight months ago and this was the headline i think i know what it is 10 excuse me 10 years after this game died it is more alive than ever and that's from less than a year ago all right you think you might know josh do you have a guess i do you want me to guess yeah throw it out there and then ryan if you have my guess is city of heroes nope it's not it dang it that was the only mmo that i could think of that was remotely what's your guess right i'm having trouble reading that sorry i have a time stamp of the text is it is it toontown online very close it is Is it? Is it Toontown Online? Very close. It is Toontown Rewritten.

Toontown Online is the original that got taken down. Well, you're off the hook, Josh. This is going to be for me. This is a game called Toontown Rewritten. It is a free-to-play revival of Toontown Online. It is a game that was originally made by Disney. You get to customize your own tune to play. You explore a cartoon world.

You engage in lighthearted combat. What's very funny is the combat in this game is not using traditional weapons. It is with gags. So it's things like throwing a pie at a businessman or squirting them with water, things of that nature. So you have a lot of slapstick comedy in the game. You are fighting against these robot businessmen who are the antagonists that are called cogs. And believe it or not not josh it is turn-based combat and on top of all that

it offers tons of other activities beyond the combat it includes things like cart racing golfing fishing oh and all kinds of other stuff as well so what do you guys think about toontown toontown rewritten maybe maybe it's to see if josh likes all turn-based games i i've never heard of this number really ever i i vaguely remember just seeing like the characters walk around from my younger siblings playing like on the old compact game in like the early 2000s like i'm watching i'm on their website the official toontown rewritten.com is the official website for this and i'm watching their trailer that is titled what's the game all about i've seen people playing tag i see these big bad guys now it's showing me the turn base this

this looks bananas does it look like a 20 year old game it does look like a 20 year old game definitely looks 20 years old um but i mean the cartoon nature of it kind of throws that off almost like yeah because it's almost like oh i'm just watching a cartoon from like the the 90s or the 2000s so that part holds up well but i this i've never heard of this dude and i can't imagine what you would do in this either. Dude. I'm seeing tag and combat and all this stuff, but it's like, this just is weird looking. I think I'm on the right one.

It says the estimated daily players are 8,000. Yeah, I mean. Oh, really? If it's that high, I don't know if it's quite that high. That might be a different. Maybe it's. Where are you pulling that from, Ryan? Never mind. It's 10 years ago. Oh, okay. different, maybe it's where, where are you pulling that from? Right? Never mind.

It's 10 years ago. Oh, so as of 10 years ago, it died in 2013 though. So if it had 8,000 players, then that was with it dead. Yes. So nowadays I believe I read it has the server capacity of about 2000

players. Okay. And what's crazy is that they do hold annual events where the servers basically crash and they lag really bad because so many people log in. This game has a huge cult following. I logged in today and guys, there were players everywhere. Really?

I was running through. Yep. Players all over the place. Right off the bat. I do the little tutorial and I go into the first main area and I see six players fishing in a lake. Oh, Paul's like, I'm in. Can I be your friend? I love fishing. I start running around doing combat. Next thing I know, what's funny is if you engage in combat, even though it's turn-based, other people can join in or you can join in on

theirs. The very first mob I fought, there were three of us throwing pies and squirting it with water. And so it still has a lot of players. And I'm guessing they are all people like Alex, who probably played it 20 years ago, fell in love with it, and they're just happy to have a version still alive today. This is blowing my mind. How was there this mmo i've never heard of in my life i've never seen this in my life ryan somehow knew the answer like what is happening now this game is so old that the default buttons for movement are the arrow keys oh up down, left, and right. And jump is the shift key. So immediately right off the bat, I had to like, okay, we're rebinding this. We're going WASD. Jump is going to be

space bar. Like we're going to have to go through and redo some buttons. It definitely plays a little old. I did not play a ton. I played for about 40 minutes or so. I will say it has some clever elements and it is a little deeper than it might look right away. So like, for example, if you want to upgrade your pie throwing ability, you have to use it 10 times and then you can upgrade to the next thing. And how many times have I said on this pod? One of my favorite mechanics is progression where you level up something by actually using it. Like San Andreas, you ride a bike, your bike riding ability goes up, right?

You lift weights, your strength goes up. I love stuff like that. They do have it here in this game also. You guys ready to know who has to play this game? Gets to. Thank you very much. Gets to. Did I say has to?

Yeah, the player chosen chosen the player with the privilege chosen for this one the next host that will play toontown rewritten is brian how do you feel about it ryan uh i'm excited to check it out i i have a little assumption that it's probably because i talk about my son and gaming with my son so much that it would be probably a cool thing to expose them to like an online mmo um so yeah it's it's it's something i vaguely remember i'll have to to you know i'm going to check it out again so yeah i'm excited to see what it's all about excited to go fishing i'm i'm amazed number i mean i feel like this is like just the

way justice because it's like you knew what this game was and paul even mentioned that this was more so like your time period of like the popularity of this i just don't know how i've never even heard of this game before i know right you know it's crazy yeah well i i mean i have like uh geez uh three younger sisters and a younger brother so all of them like the the next level of games that came you know around that time when i was playing wow with paul and Battlefield and stuff, that's what they were playing. They were playing Toontown? Yeah. Really? Yeah.

Okay. Toontown and RuneScape, because that's what I thought first was RuneScape, because I know my little brother Jake and my sister Selena. I think RuneScape's older, though. That's the thing. A little older. Yeah, a little older.

And so many people were playing Club Penguin that Disney dropped Toontown. So that's actually why, because so many people were playing Club Penguin that Disney dropped Toontown. So that's actually why, because so many people were playing Club Penguin. Okay. Apparently, I missed an entire generation because I've never heard of Club Penguin either. Oh, see, that one I knew for sure. That one I knew when it was big. Was that an MMO?

I never played it. I was just aware that it was very popular at the time. I think it's somewhat MMO-ish. So I know Ryan has played World of Warcraftcraft but have you played any other mmo uh guild wars 2 did you ever pick that up of which one guild wars 2 no i never played that i played um elder scrolls online that one wasn't really that good uh trying didn't think so either. I'm trying to think of any other MMOs I've played. Dungeons and Dragons Online had a moment there for like a year. Yeah, I think it was mostly just WoW was really the only one I ever played. Destiny 2 almost kind of has a push in MMOs.

Yeah, looter shooter. I've played a whole heck of a lot of that. Yeah. Now, Josh, it is free. You don't have to pay the $10 a month. Are you going to possibly hop in and play with me and Ryan? No. The launcher is only 36 megabytes. I mean, is it really only 36 megabytes? The launcher, not the game, the launcher. Yeah.

Honestly, the answer is probably no, but that's not because I'm not curious about the game itself. It's just, I have armored core six to play. Hellblade two is coming out, goes to Sashima on PC. Like my schedule's booked, man. If you guys, okay.

If you both were actually playing it and having fun and being like, Josh, you got to get in here. I would absolutely like join in, but that's only if you two were like, man, Josh would have a blast with this. I mean,

I'm a big kid and this looks like a big kid. MMO. I don't know, man. I just, maybe I'll check it out. That's the only promise I'm making is maybe I'll like download it, log in,

create somebody, run around and then go, yeah, nevermind. We gotta be careful though. Cause we know how you get with MMOs. So I do. I mean,

I will be the server leader in pies thrown before you know it. Oh, and wedding cakes and all this stuff. You get to upgrade it to as the game goes on. All right. The last thing I will mention that I thought is funny is that in order to make the game kid friendly, they instituted,

I think they were the first group to do this, kind of like the chat system from Rocket League, where there are some pre-made responses, except it's a pretty expansive tree. So you click on a little chat button and they have all kinds of things like ways to say thanks, or you're welcome, or even to insult so you can yell, you stink. That's like the one negative thing you can say to other people. But then later they did add a typable chat feature, but it will only pull from a bank of approved words. So it will let you type, but if you try to use any words that aren't in their dictionary, it won't let you use it. And I thought that was kind of clever. That's like a really neat way to make like a kid-friendly

server. Also, when you create your name, it's we've seen this in other games. You have to choose from like a list of titles and a list of first names and then a list of last names. Kind of like in Helldivers 2. So you guys can come find me. I'm Dr. Corky Funny Stink. That is my tune's name. you guys will be able to create your own also and uh ryan at least you and i can start throwing pies and squirting water in the eyes of uh these robot businessmen are there classes do you think there's class are like paul you said

you played a little bit are there is it just create a character and run around do you have to play as a class or do you have no i don't think other yeah you have abilities okay but you you unlock your new abilities over time you like you play all these games so there's like mini games that kind of play like like an old school mario game and you play it and then you earn jelly beans and then you can use those jelly beans to buy mats to like throw pies you have to actually like buy the pies and have them in your inventory, all kinds of stuff to unlock lots of different mini games. So I think the whole idea is that there's a lot to do. So if you don't like one aspect of the game, you can go off and play something else. I don't know that it's terribly deep, but it does seem to be a mile wide,

but it seems deeper than an inch. Like I would not say a mile wide and an inch deep. It's a little more complicated than that, but it's going to gonna be an interesting one i think it'll be fun to come back and talk about kind of like curiosity going man my brain's like sitting there going like you could have fun with it ryan's gonna be playing it paul has it installed already so that's gonna be like you guys want to play hell divers we're like no we got a raid we're got 300 pies to throw dude we got a come on man let me in let me come on can i join you guys we got 87 more fists to catch yeah all right so we're gonna give this game or at least me and ryan to an extent we'll give this game a good old two-week college try. We will then return and give our deep dive thoughts.

Even if Josh doesn't play, you'll still be on the episode. You'll ask us questions. You'll jump in and provide some thoughts. We do hope that our listeners tune in for all of our episodes, but make sure to come back and that's when you'll hear our final thoughts about Toontown Rewritten. And then as a reminder, please make sure to rate us five stars, hit us up on socials at Video Gamers Pod, and please consider signing up on socials at video gamers pod, and please consider signing up on Patreon. Just like Alex, our man of the hour did again.

You can do that at multiplayer squad.com. Thanks so much again to Alex. Thank you to all of our listeners until next time. Happy gaming. See you later, kids. All right. See everybody.