Video Gamers Podcast - Icarus, Age of Empires 4 and Hot Wheels Hotness - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: April 15, 2021

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back with another This Week in Gaming! This week we chat Age of Empires 4 new gameplay footage, Icarus reveal and some pretty great looking gaming footage for the new Hot Wheels Racing game. It's your weekly dose of gaming news and updates with all the fun and hilarity you've come to expect! Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon Follow us on Twitter Follow us on Instagram Subscribe on YouTube Visit us on the web Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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We'll be having some family-friendly discussions about gaming news that caught our attention here in the last week. Please make sure to subscribe and rate our podcast five stars i am your host paul and joining me as always my trusty player two who likes to keep things spicy josh like uh cala california carolina dude carolina reaper man i completely blew that oh i thought maybe you're going calabrian chili i wasn't too sure is that a thing calabrian chili oh yeah i feel like i could have just made up anything cthulhu chili that sounds like it could exist that's fair all right well before we jump into this week's gaming news josh we have a bit of a special announcement about our next episode. Oh boy. So we are going to have a guest co-host on our show on the next episode, actually.

So we are covering Outriders. We have a lot to say about it. We've been playing it a lot. But we are having our first guest co-host. He is the host of one of the top podcasts in the world uh and that is no exaggeration by the way uh so andy uh holloway is my brother-in-law and your lifelong best friend he is the host of the fantasy footballers podcast which if you are a fan of fantasy football you should know that podcast if you don't play fantasy football,

that won't mean a lot other than that. This is also the Andy who has taken the pan to the head in pub G and is oft referenced by us in various gaming moments that we talk about. So anyway, yeah, he's going to be joining us, man. We're pretty excited about it.

Like I said, he's a great dude. He's a, he's family, he's going to be joining us, man. We're pretty excited about it. Like I said, he's a great dude. He's family, he's friend, and he's going to be joining us to chat about Outriders. Yeah, we're very excited to have him join us for that because Andy is the kind of guy who gets into maybe one new video game a year. And since he actually jumped into Outriders right from the get-go, we were like, all right, Andy, if you're ever going to join us, this is probably the one. So we're excited.

Hopefully you guys are excited as well. And so we'll have that to look forward to on Monday's release. All right, so this week in gaming, you know, it probably wasn't the most exciting week. Certainly there was nothing that's going to hold a candle to Operation Drumstick from last week. Chicken Drumstick nothing that's going to hold a candle to Operation Drumstick. Chicken Drumstick. Get it right, Paul. There's lots of different kinds of drumsticks out there. You know, there's Ice Cream Drumstick. There's a Drum Drumstick.

I would argue the Ice Cream Drumstick is the superior one. I do not. I'm in full agreement. Yeah, so nothing quite that exciting as last week, but we did have a lot of gameplay trailers drop for multiple games. There's a lot of games that are coming up for release, and I think that's where we're going to spend most of our time here today. So we'll be able to talk about some of those things. So the first one that I have on the outline here, Josh, is Hot Wheels. Hot Wheels! Wait, is there a Hot Wheels theme song? I feel like there is.

I have no idea. I used to love Hot Wheels. I'll never forget when I was a wee lad that my dad came home with a Hot Wheels. One car for me and one car for my brother. And I don't know why it's this weird little memory that sticks out to me, but I named my car the Red Rocket. It was just this little red car. You know how when you're kids, you're like, oh, it's white lightning and the Red Rocket. Oh, yeah.

So I saw that they're releasing this Hot Wheels racing game, and I was like, this is going to suck. Like, nothing childhood toy ever translates well. And I'm like, okay, let me just watch this dumb video to see what this game's about. And I start watching it, and I'm like, dude, this game looks great!

This is like the arcade racer that I have been waiting for! The first thing that struck me watching this is it feels like a throwback arcade racing game. It has mostly realistic type driving physics. You have a boost. So this to me reminded me very much of like Cruise in the USA. Yes.

Those kinds of racing games. I was a little surprised that it went for a little more realism. I assumed this was going to be closer to Mario Kart, and it really is not at all. No, it's not. I mean, it's definitely not like a sim racer, but dude, I was honestly shocked, really pleasantly shocked by this video, because like I said, I was not expecting anything. But, you know, they show drifting around turns. They show like little patches of like speed boost. They show like you can nitro boost like, you know, at a moment's notice.

They showed jumps. They showed shortcuts. Like there's one where the track splits and this guy goes over this little ramp off the track over. Like I guess you're racing in some dude's garage or something so it's almost like you're in honey i shrunk the kids kind of thing too but the guy like lands on a tool cabinet skips off of that and then lands on the track again like further along and i was like this is my kind of racing game, man. I love those aspects. I love shortcuts. It looked really, really legit to me, and I could not believe that a Hot Wheels racing game looked that good.

Right. Now, the one thing that I do wonder about is it might be a little too simplistic for a lot of people, because I think the draw of Mario Kart is that you have the combat while you're racing, and it leans completely into the arcade gameplay. You've got everything on the other end of the pendulum, like Forza, Need for Speed. It's not just realistic physics, but all of it looks gorgeous. This one kind of sticks in the middle and does a mix of both, and I wonder how that'll be received by the masses it's going to depend on how the maps are to be honest with you i mean yes like i don't know there are a lot of different hot wheels cars so if the cars have a lot of variance to them then i

think that could add a lot to the game because they showed some of the more like spectacular hot wheels cars i mean they get pretty fantastical uh and so they showed some of the more spectacular Hot Wheels cars. I mean, they get pretty fantastical. And so they showed some of those. But yeah, I mean, if it's just racing and nothing else, then I think that that'll get kind of old. There's got to be some sort of progression. If you're playing an arcade racer, do you unlock new cars? Do you unlock engines and wheels and brakes and that kind of stuff? Are there challenges?

You know what I mean? Like, yeah, so there has to be something other than just pure racing there, unless it's like, you know, a $15 racing game, in which case, like, fine. But I was just, all I know is I saw the video and I was shocked by it. I was impressed by it. But then I could not find any more information on it. Right. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't think this was anywhere on either of our radar. We don't know very much about it at all. It is supposed to come out at the end of September, although now that we have mentioned it, we all know it's going to get pushed to 2022.

Yep. You can put money on it. It's going to happen. Yeah, it seems to me like this game would kind of be perfect for purchasing loot boxes or packs of cards, and it's going to unlock other cars and other cosmetics. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a relatively cheap game, but then you can buy cosmetics. I kind of feel like that's probably where this is headed. Yeah. It did look...

I mean, the gameplay looked very solid the driving looked very solid the graphics were top notch for being hot wheels like racer it was really there was a lot of like it was very crisp and clean looking i guess is the best way to put it so i it's definitely on my radar now uh it's in the loop that was a hot wheels yeah yeah i see what you did that's terrible uh and then uh but yeah so this one i'm gonna keep an eye on and and and hopefully uh it stays impressive yeah in in my notes what i initially wrote down was it looks fun maybe a little simplistic the ui is very minimalistic. It really shows nothing on the screen at all. You've got a little bit of boost. It almost looks like a UI you would expect from

a mobile game. And I thought that actually worked well because it lets you see the world and the graphics and be a little bit more immersed. I actually thought that that was a good thing. All right, so moving on on we have another game that is set to release this fall we don't have an exact date for it yet but this one is age of empires four and we got quite a bit of gameplay footage of this one what'd you think josh i mean just say it it looks like it looks like every other rts game that i have ever seen in the last 10 years i mean their gameplay reveal the big gameplay reveal was like these little humans chopping trees and gathering ore and slowly constructing a barn. And it was just like, I got really bored instantly from watching it.

And I was like, this is nothing that I have not seen a thousand times before. I'm not trying to bash it because I've never played Age of Empires. And I know that people love, Todd included, love Age of Empires 2. Right. So I tried to keep an open mind i was very like cynical of the footage that they were showing i guess that it goes through like the different ages you know because they showed like you upgrade your dark ages the feudal ages the imperial age or something like that and i guess there's like eight different factions that all play very differently but like

the combat looked clunky the animations looked clunky the building looked as routine as i've ever seen in an rts game like there was nothing there's one thing that stood out to me and that is you can play as the Mongols, I guess. And at one point they showed like the Mongol, like your little base and then they just pack it up and they move. So I guess as the Mongols, like you're very mobile with your entire base, which I thought,

okay, like that's a neat thing. But that was the only thing in this like six minute demo that I saw where I was like, huh? Right. So like, here's the thing.

I like Age of Empires. I loved the first three when they released. I bought them all. I played them with friends. I'm on record as saying, out of all the RTS games I like, I would rank Age of Empires last. Like, I prefer StarCraft and WarCraft, Command & Conquer, but it's still a great series.

I have played AoE 2, the Definitive Edition. Granted, it's been a long time, but honestly, this trailer for AoE 4, I thought it looked really low budget. I did not think it looked very good at all. Right off the bat, the camera is very zoomed out, and immediately I thought it looked really nice, but almost the rest of the gameplay, they were zooming into things like as if they were bragging about what these models look like up close. But I thought a lot of it just looked terrible. The arrow animation in particular looked awful.

Yeah. I, yes. Where they draw back the bow and then they shoot an arrow and the arrow like basically teleports from the bow into the person. But it doesn't look realistic at all. It was very strange. And then there were like fire animations, but the fire did not look like it was interacting with the building.

It just looked like it was just set on top of the animation model. And then even when they show the peasants going to pick berries in the beginning, they just walk straight into the bush and just lean over and clip through the branches. People are walking with their spears through doorways, and all of it's clipping through the models. I was not really impressed by this. I don't know what this offers that you can't get from the second definitive edition. If you had shown me this footage and said, hey, Josh, when do you think this RTS was made? I legitimately would have said, I don't know, sometime in the last 10 years.

This is not an RTS game that is currently in development that is going to release in 2021. Like that would not have ever been something that I would have like considered at that point. Like I, and I don't mean to slam it. I mean, you guys know, I'm not a huge fan of RTS games, but I can at least appreciate like a good video game, right? Like even games that we're not big fans of, like when we're ranking them, we'll still go like, I recognize that this game is well done. It's just not for me or something like that. This game, I didn't get that vibe like at all. Yeah. I thought that the war elephants were kind of neat. I was like, okay, well, that's interesting to see. But I didn't see anything here that would entice me to buy it. I would just go back to Age of Empires 2 if I had an inkling to play.

So I was a little disappointed in that because I'm on record as saying I would love to play a new top-of-the-line RTS game. But I was not alone in thinking what I did. I tried having an open mind. I watched the full trailer. And I start scrolling down through the comments. And they are all really sarcastic about the graphics oh really saying okay good is this game gonna come out on ios only or will it also be on android like there were comments like that man and i was like i'm with them it does not i did not think it looked that great so i was i i'm sad but what are you gonna do i don't think

we would have sucked you into age of empires 4 anyway i don't think we'll cover it on the show but this is not the rts we've been waiting for no i think that's for sure no no jedi mind tricks involved that these are not the droids you're looking no this is just i don't know maybe maybe they'll release a better trailer yeah maybe all right so moving on from age of empires there there was some teaser footage, I guess. Well, more than that. They actually went through some gameplay with the developer. But there's a game coming out sometime this year. There's no release date. But it is a game called Icarus, which I think is probably fair to say it's a combination of survival, exploration, crafting, base building, kind of all those things put together. What did you think about this one? I watched this trailer, and I was very interested because the way that they described it was a session-based PvE co-op game. And I kind of went, okay, let me break that down in a sec. okay pve sure co-op oh i like co-op uh like session based and i was like what do they mean by that like there's no continual

progression or like it's procedurally generated so i was a little thrown off by like the session based thing but any you know any co-op game has my interest in the beginning. So I watched this footage, and then I was like, these player characters look like they were straight ripped out of the game Satisfactory. Now, I know that you're not real familiar with Satisfactory, but I've played probably 30 hours of Satisfactory, which is a great game. That game pleasantly surprised me. But I guess the focus of this game is you're trying to find a way to restore your rocket ship so that you can get off of the planet. And you're these astronauts that are on the ground. You need to harvest trees and rocks and do the whole survival element thing, which I like. I've realized that I'm a fan of that.

But then I had to laugh, Paul, because I don't know if you noticed this in the trailer, but these guys are astronauts. They have this crazy tech, right? At one point, they plunk down this radar thing, and these robotic arms open up, and it starts spinning around. And you're like, oh, that thing's acquiring like a satellite signal or something. And then there's another part where the guy pulls up this tiny looking bow and arrow. Yeah. He's trying to hunt a deer. And I'm like, dude, you're space faring technology.

Why do you need a bow and arrow? Where are the phasers or the laser guns, whatever you want to call them? We should have something like that, right? Exactly! So it's like, is this because it's a survival game so it's not a survival game unless you have a bow and arrow? Like, give this guy something. Give him a phaser. Give him just a laser gun, a cattle prod, something, man. So I'm assuming the storyline is going to have something built in where you are in space, something happens, some kind of catastrophe, you don't have access to all these tools, and all you can do is come down to the planet, start crafting, kind of like Rust, where you start off from scratch. Although what I don't totally understand is that they talk about it being session-based, where you have a certain timer and you can only play for that long and then you have to get back in order to catch that ride

back up into space but if you have just your ship and just your group i don't totally understand why there would be a time element involved but they did say that if you miss that ship your character is donezo all the progression anything you've built up on that character is dead. You have to start over. So they said you can get downed on the planet and someone can res you and there's all of those mechanics. But if you don't make it back to the ship on time, then you're toast. So there is an element of managing not just your HP and your oxygen and all these other survival elements, but also how far out do you explore in order to come back on time? But I will say that it did sound interesting.

I loved that it was eight-player co-op. So kind of like The Forest. You could get a big, giant group of people. The combat and the fighting was a little bit funny with the makeshift bows and arrows. But this is one that i would at least check out it is it there are rumors that it's going to be free to play but then everyone says that they don't know how it's going to be monetized so i feel like there's a huge mystery here whether it's going to cost money or what they would do because if it's free to play

i'm not sure where they'd be making money yeah yeah cosmetics in a survival game don't make a lot of sense um yeah i don't know man it's like if you if you don't make the ship and you die and you lose everything is there permanent progression because even like roguelites they you have some form of permanent progression there you know it's just straight up, everything's wiped, you start all over with nothing, with no gain of any sorts, then that seems like that is not my cup of tea at that point. I did see in the demo where they talk about you do unlock different biomes that you can start in. So that does hint that there's some sort of form of progression in the game. But is that progression just, oh, you go from chopping down pine trees to chopping down cactuses? Do you know

what I mean? If it's just a different model that I'm chopping at, then that's not really a whole lot either. The game does look, and I don't mean to sound like I'm poo-pooing this, because it does look very interesting to me. I'm just curious how they're going to like meld the survival because at one point in the gameplay they showed like some dude died of lack of oxygen and he started like clutching his throat and gasping and like falling over on the ground yeah and his buddy basically instead of like trying to like like res that guy just goes like goes like, oh crap! And you see him running and jumping off of a ridge or something like he's trying to get to an oxygen supply. Yeah.

I don't know. I mean, it definitely has promise to it, but I'll be interested to see how these different mechanics all come together for it so the one thing that did interest me is that they said that they have a multi-year plan for this game as far as releasing new content and expanding on the lore that you discover on the planet and the surroundings so maybe it'll be one of those things where the base game is free but then all future expansions maybe have to pay a few bucks for or like buy a season pass or something. But I thought that that was kind of neat. So the progression might come in discovering more about the world.

Maybe you unlock blueprints like Rust. So even if you don't earn a whole lot on that certain session, maybe you can still unlock recipes for the future. I don't really know, but I think it's one that we might possibly play. The time limit thing sounds interesting. You never played Outer Wilds, did you? No, I did not. Outer Wilds is one of the best games that has flown under the radar that I can think of in recent years.

So you would probably love it. But basically, Outer Wilds, which is a phenomenal game, you were on a 22-minute timer. And so you started this game exactly the same every single time. Your guy would wake up, staring up at the stars. You'd see a ship explode. And then you could get up and start moving. But every 22 minutes, the sun in that solar system would supernova and kill everything, no matter where you were or what you were doing, right?

And then it would put you back to the very beginning of the game. Your character opens his eyes. He's looking up at the stars. The ship crashes and away you go. That was the best use of time, like a set time limit I've ever seen in a video game because it adds so much to that game

to where you know like the supernova is coming. And so it's like this very, very cool mechanic, but it's not ever punishing. You learn something every single time it happens. So if this game uses that mechanic in any sort of way like that, then it's definitely got my attention. But if this is just a, hey, you lose everything

and you're starting all over again because you didn't make this ship, then that's going to be a problem. Yeah, if they do incorporate that kind of mechanic like the movie Day After Tomorrow. Wait, is that the name of it? Edge of Tomorrow. That's the name of it. Edge of Tomorrow. I was like, isn't that the Frozen Twilight one?

Day After Tomorrow is the Jake Gyllenhaal. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So if they incorporate that, that would be a really neat idea because they did say that icarus is not procedurally generated it is handcrafted so maybe that's intentional to learn shortcuts and learn things for future runs yeah we'll have to find out more as it gets closer to release and then we have a game here that we have only mentioned in passing but we have not spoken about it a whole lot at length. But we do have new Pokemon Snap, which is set to release at the end of April.

Oh, snap, Paul. Oh, snap. Oh, snap. Now, I am pretty sure that you never played Pokemon Snap. Or did you? You would be... Paul. I mean, you don't think that I would play a Pokemon game? Come on.

Okay, I know you have not played very much Pokemon, but you might have dabbled. I cannot imagine you playing Pokemon Snap. I will play Pokemon Snap when the world is ending and I have gone through every other video game that exists in society. Oh, boo. This is as bad as your Animal Crossing is bad. I know. It's funny because my wife has already said she's like, hey, I'm going to pre-order this game. She's very excited about it. This is not my kind of game, man. Animal Crossing is not my kind of game, man. Like, Animal Crossing is not my kind of game. Pokemon Snap is not my kind of game. You know this. I need chaos. I need fast action. I need edge of my seat, you know,

just stuff going on. And those games just are not that. Okay, so do you know much about Pokemon Snap gameplay? I know you go around and you take photos. Basically, you're basically like a peeping Tom for Pokemon. Okay, kind of. You're not wrong. But I feel like in your mind, it's just walking around taking pictures. Is that your impression?

I mean, it's called Pokemon Snap, so that would be my rationale. There's a little bit more to it than that. All right. Now, you are on, at least if it's like the version that was on 64, you're on a set track and you're being taken through this island where you can see Pokemon in their natural habitats. Yes, you take pictures of the Pokemon, but you can also throw out certain items and things that interact in the world.

So there could be a Pokemon that's hiding in a bush, and you learn that if you throw an apple and you hit this tree next to it, something will fall down, and then that Pokemon runs out, and then you try to take a good picture. And at the end of your run, they give you a rating of all the pictures that you took, and it's based on how centered the Pokemon is, whether they're doing something interesting. So it's a simplistic game. Wow. Oh, sorry.

Sorry, Paul. Disrespectful to Pokemon. So it's a very quaint game. Sure, there's no hard shooting mechanics or anything, but there are elements of discovery and just having a good time. You know, that's what it is. I know people love Pokemon. And I just, like, I'm going to be walking through the living room and my wife is going

to be snapping pictures of this Pokemon that's hanging out of a tree or hiding in a bush. And I'm just going to look at the screen and I'm just going to shake my head and I'm going to go, I don't get it, man. I just don't get it. I know it works. They're going to make gajillions of dollars off of this game, man. But for me, it's like watching grass grow, man. I don't understand the fun of it. I was reading the synopsis. I looked into this. I watched the gameplay trailers. I read the write-ups for it. And it's like, oh, there's going to be a leaderboard for people that get these amazing photos of these Pokemon.

And you might get super rare Pokemon that are doing super rare poses. And then I'm just like... That you discover and create by you learning the world that sounds terrible yeah i loved the one on 64 they had ported it i think for both the wii and the wii u i'm just surprised that it's taken them this long to make a new one because slap the pokemon name on anything and it's you know gonna make millions of dollars yeah i i think this one will be interesting i know i'm gonna check it out

i won't be looking for you on my friend list but uh that's when i'll definitely pick up on the switch you can let me know how it is what my wife will be playing it i'll be able to you'll see it yeah yeah all right well that's all the time that we have here today for This Week in Gaming. Thanks for listening and subscribing to the show. If you would like to help support our show to keep it running with two episodes every week, you can head on over to MultiplayerSquad.com, where you can become a Patreon supporter, which starts off at $5 a month, which also gives you access to our discord server where you can come chat with other people who love the show and other people who are looking for

other people to join them in gaming you can also find us on social media at multiplayer pod and then as we mentioned earlier our next episode will be a deep dive into outriders so please come back and join us for that because we have sunk so much time into Outriders. We have lots to talk about. It's the biggest release of the last few months. We're really excited for it. So please come check us out for that. And we

will also have Andy from the Fantasy Footballers with us. So we're excited and we will see you guys on Monday. See you, everybody.