Video Gamers Podcast - Loop Hero, Aliens: Fireteam and Josh Discovers Wallpaper Engine - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: March 11, 2021

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back with another This Week in Gaming and we’re diving into some recent news and releases. Josh shares what led him to finally discover Wallpaper Engine, Paul chats his initial thoughts on Loop Hero and then we dive into the demo of Aliens: Fireteam. What we thought worked, and what has us concerned about another gaming entry into the 3 man squad shooter genre. 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

Hey guys, Josh here. I just wanted to take a second and let you know about this amazing new product called MultiplayerSquad.com. It's the greatest new addition to gaming. Well, I mean practically life. It's sure to fill you with glee, help you make new friends, and expose you to all sorts of awesome memes. It's got the best community of gamers around, and more than that, it's the best way to help support the show and let us keep providing awesome content. What? I gotta read this disclaimer for legal reasons. Warning. MultiplayerSquad.com can cause feelings of joy, happiness, companionship, ownage, and all-around sense of being awesome.

If you notice yourself acting more like Josh, please discontinue use immediately and seek professional help. Hey, who put that in there? Paul! Hello, everyone. Happy Thursday, and welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Since today is Thursday, that means we're going to be spending some time breaking down recent gaming news and new developments in our personal gaming. And we are so excited to have you guys joining us here today. As a reminder, please subscribe, rate us 5 stars,

and leave a review. And if you'd like to consider supporting this independent podcast, then head on over to MultiplayerSquad.com, and you can also hit us up on social media at MultiplayerPod. Alright, let's get into it, guys. I am your host, Paul. And then with me, I don't know what's going on, but my co-host here has a little bit of a different angle with the webcam. Maybe he's lit up a little bit more than normal. It's my co-host, Josh. Josh, do you have a new monitor over there or something? What's going on? Oh, you talked about new development, man. And boy, do I have a new development going on.

Yes, you are. I'm not trying to pose for like that, you know, top-down selfie, Paul. I got a new monitor. And I don't want to sound like I'm bragging because I'm not. But I just, I love, you know, I love technology. Um, and I tend to go down these rabbit holes of like researching different tech. And then I somehow convinced myself that I can't live without this technology. And I'm lucky enough that I have a wife that supports that. So. And you got a third stimulus payment coming, right? And honestly, I'm not going to lie. Were you banking on that?

No, I wasn't banking on it. But tax returns came in. Sure. And then it was like, hey, let's get something nice. And it's always a good trade-off, right? She wants patio furniture. And I found this monitor that I just can't live without now. And so it's the greatest thing, honestly, ever. I got a 48-inch OLED TV to use as a monitor. Now, most people, any techies out there are gasping and they're going,

you can't use a TV as a monitor. Au contraire, my friends. This TV is made to be a monitor. It is 4K, 120 Hertz, G-Sync, OLED panel, super fast response. It's the greatest thing ever made, dude. Honestly, I've never had my eyes be so blown away as I was when I got this thing and I set it up. It's absolutely incredible. I can't describe it enough, man, but I have been in nerd nirvana since I got this thing and it has led me to download all of the games that I have not played in a long time to see how they look. Cause it's like, it made everything like brand new again, man. I downloaded Doom Eternal and I was like, this game looks great. I've been playing Rocket League because, well, I just love Rocket League.

But so two things that this has led me to discover is number one, have you ever heard of Wallpaper Engine? No, but I did see that you randomly loaded into that in Steam. So I did look it up, but I had not heard of it before. Dude, it is the best $3.99 that I think you will ever spend. If you want your monitor, regardless of what kind of monitor it is, if you want your desktop to look incredible every time you sit down at your computer, spend the $4. Basically, I've heard of Wallpaper Engine, and I've seen some Steam friends. It pops up, and I'm like, what are these guys building wallpapers?

I'm not an artist, man. Okay. But somebody was talking about, hey, if you get this OLED TV, you want to keep the screen moving because there's a risk of burning and stuff like that. So that led me to Wallpaper Engine. I spent the $4, and for the next three hours, I spent just downloading and looking at wallpapers. My kid, who we've mentioned, who's the Terraria expert, my daughter, Crenn, loves Star Wars. So I found some super cool Star Wars wallpapers.

And I was like, Cren, Crank, come here. Come here. Look at this. Look at this Darth Vader, man. It's got like a glowing lightsaber and he's got force lightning crackling out of his other hand. And I was just like, this is the coolest thing ever, man. So then she's like, whoa, how'd you get that? And I'm like, go spend the $4 and get it on your computer.

So we've been nerding out over Wallpaper Engine, man. Well, ever since you posted it on Discord, now my older son, James, has been asking me if he can spend some of his allowance money to go buy Wallpaper Engine. So apparently you're spreading the word. But one of my favorite things is that, obviously, if you're new to the show, you can probably already tell by now, Josh is a little bit extra. So I'm not surprised that he needs an extra wallpaper. I am about as basic as it gets. And so Josh pasted a print screen of what his monitor looks like. And then I just sent a picture of mine. And it's just a pure black background. And I've got about 16 icons on the far left side. And that's it. That's my desktop.

It was pretty hilarious. So what didn't come through is I posted a picture of Darth Revan with his arms crossed and two lightsabers. What you can't see is the movement that goes along with that because they're like living wallpapers. The lightsabers are glowing and they're crackling and you can see him breathing and stuff. And it's just your desktop. It looks super cool. So when I posted that, you were just like, here's mine. And it's just, it's just a straight up black screen.

And that's it. And I just went, this is a hundred percent you though, Paul, like, Oh yeah. I don't think I've ever seen you ever wear a shirt that wasn't a plain black shirt, you know? And it's like, this is just, this is why we're such good friends though too, I don't think I've ever seen you ever wear a shirt that wasn't a plain black shirt. And it's like, this is why we're such good friends, though, too. It's like, like you said, I'm very loud and extra, and you're very calm and laid back. And structured and organized. It's why we're a good duo. Yeah. Yeah.

So one of the things that our listeners can't see that is actually cracking me up is that I am so used to your webcam being at a certain height, which is like a normal height that you would normally use. And this one really is looking down at you at like a 45 degree angle. So it's like the center is almost more on your forehead than on your face. Oh, it's glowing too, right? So I was like, okay, that's Josh's new monitor. I did go play some pickleball not too long ago, so that might actually still be a little bit of sweat on my forehead, too. Very nice. Yeah.

Well, I'm glad that you are enjoying your new monitor. I love how probably 10% of the time that you and I are gaming online, you always have to warn me and others, yeah, guys, I can join this match, but I got some guy coming over because he's going to buy my old monitor, or it's your old graphics card, or it's an old tool in your garage. You are constantly, incrementally upgrading your tools and your computer equipment. It's just part of the gaming experience with you that we're just used to it's it's how i offset the expense right because like when i'm trying to explain to my wife why i need this gigantic expensive new monitor when she's like don't you already have a nice monitor and i'm like well i do but if i sell that monitor then then you know

that money comes off the price of the new one. And it's just how you present it. And it's funny because you guys all do laugh that I am constantly shilling stuff on Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp and stuff too. Yeah, you really are. It definitely cracks me up. All right. Well, that's neat.

And so you've been diving into some of your old beautiful games on the new monitor and things are looking pretty good, huh? It is. So the other thing, it's an HDR. It's HDR. So it's the perfect, it's everything you want, right? But what I've been doing is going through these old games and checking them out again. Legitimately, it has renewed my love of some of the games that I've already played because they look neat and nice and cool. So I pulled up divinity original sin because it's a very colorful game and it actually has built-in like hdr support okay and is this the second one this morning the second one right i i when i when i pulled it up i had 97 and a half hours in that game and i like i knew i played it a lot but I didn't know I played it that much.

And I never actually finished it. So I was like, I'm just going to test this out. I just want to see what it looks like. I had to start a brand new game because I guess they released like a definitive edition and the classic edition, the save files don't work with the definitive. So I was like,

well, I'll just start brand new. Cause I don't remember where I was anyway. And this game is, number one, it's gorgeous. Number two, I think today alone, I probably have five hours in that game already. It's such a good game. Paul, I don't know how much you've played Original Sin 2. I know you said you had it, right? I do. And I liked it a lot. I don't remember why I stopped playing. I think it was only because we picked something up for the podcast.

Dude. Because I want to go back to it. I want to play it. I'm telling you right now, it will rank up there with Dragon Age for you. The story is incredible. The characters are super memorable. This has Paul written all over it. Yeah. Oh, no, it definitely does. So I pulled it up in Steam. I only played for 73 minutes, but I know that I liked it. But it does show one friend has played recently, and it's you. 7.4 hours. Seven hours? Okay, maybe I started playing last night.

I did. Okay, wait. All right. Not to try to save face here, but I actually did install it last night, and I think I played for like two hours last night. But yeah, seven and a half hours in less than 24 hours. That should tell you something. Yeah, I know it's right up my alley, and I liked how the combat worked and your teammates and the story as it unfolded for that first hour and 13 minutes. For me lately, I picked up a game I did not hear about until just today, but there's a

little game called Loop Hero that just released this week. Have you heard anything about this? I looked at this game because I heard it was getting a lot of hype. And so I actually looked it up on Steam. I started going like, hey, let me, you know, if anytime I hear hype, man, like, I want to at least check it out, right. Like I pulled this game up on Steam. The graphics, I'm not a graphics snob. You know that. But the graphics in this in Loop Hero are so bad that I think my eyes started to bleed from watching like the trailer for it.

Like when I was trying to get an idea of what this game was about, blood started weeping out of my eyeballs. And I just went, I don't care how good this game is. I can't play. It's like four-bit graphics. It's not even like eight-bit graphics. No, it's a little reminiscent of super old school DOS games where even pre-Pentium processors, it, it looks bad. Like, I'm not gonna lie about that. But it is a really interesting game, because the only thing that I saw is that it was getting rave reviews. It was super cheap. I want to say it was $12. And I saw that it combined roguelike elements with idle games. And idle games, I'm not crazy about, but I have played- What is an idle game? I don't, about but i have an idle game i don't i guess is that a game you don't play like it just sits there and plays in the background like i'm

not sure what an idle basically is yeah basically so there's a whole slew of them so for the for those of you who are new to the show josh does not do any mobile gaming which is where idle games have probably taken off the most so for example maybe you'll buy a mineshaft and you have some workers and they'll move and they'll pickaxe the stone and then they'll bring it over and you hire workers and then it's all automated. So it runs and then basically if you check back the next day, all of those workers have been working since the last time you logged in. Without a break?

What kind of tyrant are you? These poor guys don't get any time off? No overtime, no holiday pay, nothing. So basically, this game kind of combines a little bit of those two worlds. Now, it is almost impossible to explain how Loop Hero works, because I've never played a game like this at all. The only way I can think to describe it is that it is a tower defense game. I do like tower defense games. Wait.

But it's completely in reverse. So instead of you building the track with all the good guys and the towers and then the bad guys run through it, you build the track of the bad guys while your hero constantly runs through this cycle over and over so basically the game gives you a track your hero will just keep running through in a loop and then basically you get handed cards the cards are basically different types of units that you place on the track that spawn bad guys or it spawns chests

and then as your hero is defeating bad guys they drop loot you put the new inventory on your guy he's stronger but then more monsters are spawning and then basically at any point you can just end the run and then your guy brings all the resources that he's gathered back to your encampment and then you can build upgrades. And then basically, once your guy is strong enough, you play it long enough, and then it spawns the boss, and then you can defeat the boss and move on to the next mission. So it's kind of hard to describe. It does not look good at all, because the graphics are horrendous, but the gameplay is very innovative. And I will say it's fun. It's another game that I love to play because I can so easily... I was doing it today. I was

watching Casino by Martin Scorsese on the left screen while I've got Loop Hero running on the right. You know this is how I like to game, right? And it's the perfect game if you want to multitask. So when it goes to combat, do you actually fight? Because I've seen on Steam, I saw that it did look like there was a different screen where there was monsters lined up and then your hero. Is there any interaction on that part? No. So the only interaction is just swapping out gear and then it's an auto battler. So for example, I can swap out maybe a sword for an AoE axe, because I can see I'm about to have to fight three spiders at once. So there's things you can do in the planning stage, and you can pause at any time and then see what your guy is going to fight. Maybe you swap out gear, but you're not actually physically swinging the weapons or physically fighting.

It's all auto. So I'm not getting the sense this is really up your alley. I mean, I do. Honestly, I like these surprise games, man. Like, you've never played Darkest Dungeon, but that was like a game that was kind of getting some traction. I'm finding that I do enjoy these roguelite games with strategy built into them.

I love card-based games. So when you said, Hey, there's cards that you can play like that definitely ticks a box for me. I'm going to wait like three days because I know what's going to happen. Either you're going to write up this, like Paul's review, write up in discord where you start talking about hero and why this game is

so awesome, or I'll just never hear about it. So if I see that write-up, then I know it's got you hooked, and then it's probably worth looking into. If three days from now there's no further mention of this, then I'll let you be the guinea pig, and I'll know that I didn't go wrong by not picking it up. I will say it seems appropriately priced at $12. It's not a game I'm going to play

for 100 hours or anything like that, but it'll be fun for at least a week, I think, and I'll have to keep poking around in it. All right, so that kind of catches everybody up on what we have been doing this week in gaming, and there have been quite a few news stories. And I think for me, the thing I was most interested in is that there was a reveal trailer, and then there was also a 25-minute video of footage of a new game that'll be coming out this summer called Aliens Fireteam. I saw this, man. I'm conflicted. I watched the whole 25-minute demo. I saw the teaser that they did at first, but there really wasn't anything to show. And then a day or two later, they actually were like,

oh, I guess we should show some gameplay footage. And they did this big 25-minute kind of demo for it. A full mission. So I'm guessing most of our listeners probably haven't seen the trailer. It's Left 4 Dead meets GTFO, right? I mean, this is about 90% Left 4 Dead mixed in with a little bit of GTFO elements, and it's set in the Aliens universe. I mean, that's really what it is. It's three-person fire teams, and basically you have your weapons and abilities.'ve got some consumables you can heal yourself or others you have to work your way from one side of the map to the other and there are swarms and i think that that format of games it's always worked but i do feel like it's getting a little

bit old at this point and the the fact that we have Back 4 Blood coming out and Aliens, Fire Team, Fire Strike, whatever this game is called. I don't even remember now. I do feel like there are just so many games of this format that I am a little bit hesitant. But I do love the Aliens movies. And if there was ever an atmosphere that I would want to play this kind of game in, I think it would be Aliens. Yeah. It's really funny because in the 25-minute demo, I think it was one of the guys from IGN or something like that that they invited to play with them. And the guy even asks, because he's playing with the two developers, and he goes, so would you guys say this is Left 4 Dead? No, it's so much more, is what they said. I was like, no no it's so much more is what they said i was like no it's not like uh well

you know i mean it does draw like inspiration from left for dead but we've tried to take that and add like rpg elements and some like he kind of just started saying why it wasn't left for dead but then he also acknowledged that yes it's left for Left 4 Dead. Yeah. I mean, it's a great formula. It works. But I don't know. This is one where it's like, I'm not real hyped about it. If it gets good reviews and there's enough variety to it, I could see picking it up, to be honest with you. I didn't look at the release date on it either.

My thing is, for three-man gaming that's shooting, Outriders is coming up in another like three weeks and I'm going to be all about Outriders for a little while. So for another like three man squad shooter based game, and I know they're vastly different, like Outriders is much more like RPG ish, whereas Aliens Fireteam or Firestorm or something is going to be just that Left 4 Dead genre, I guess. I mean, but I don't know. I'm pretty reserved on it right now. If it starts getting great reviews, I think my interest will peak up a lot at that point. But I'm very meh on it right now. Yeah, it kind of depends on the price point. I did think that it looked fun.

I think it's the type of game that we normally would pick up but if it's gonna be a 40 or 60 game i would have far less interest in it so i think we'll have to wait and see i did like the idea that there are multiple classes and i thought the classes did have cool names no shade thrown at outriders but i've already poked fun at the class names and outriders. I don't think they're terribly good. But for aliens, you can play as the Technician, the Demolisher, the Gunner, Recon, or the Doc. I thought that was kind of funny. So all of them have access to different kinds of weapons. And I did really like some of the animations. I don't know if you noticed, but you see shotgun shells flying across the screen, and I thought that stuff was really neat. And I did really love the audio in the game.

And normally, I don't comment on the audio, but to me, it immediately pulled me back into Aliens that I went and I started watching Aliens right after this trailer. Yeah, all I needed to hear were the xenomorph screams in the background oh the motion tracker the pings from the motion tracker yeah yeah i was like i haven't watched aliens in a few years because this is not like the first alien which was more horror this is not that kind of game this game very much draws inspiration from aliens the second one which is all flamethrowers shooting aliens all action yeah i i i and i do like that the one thing that they did say that i i was very intrigued by is they said they were really focusing on the ability to customize like your

character through skill trees and like oh there's a lot of progression there where you can, like they said, we're focusing on kind of RPG elements for your characters. And so if they give in-depth skill trees with different weapons and different abilities, I mean, maybe you can only have two abilities at a time, like active, but if you can actually spec out your class to different degrees, that would interest me a lot more because I think that's really going to add to the ability to keep it fresh. And I know they were talking about the difficulty levels on the game and how it can really scale up to be really difficult. And I like that. I love a good

challenge where friends have to work together or you're not going to beat that level. So we'll see. Like I said, I'm not off of of it but i'm just kind of hesitant onto is this something that's going to be worth you know spending time on i mean then again if it's 20 bucks yeah i mean i'll spend 20 to have a good time with my friends for you know like two weeks and then it's like okay well it's getting old now but that's that's money well spent yeah another thing that did interest me in the trailer is that they have hidden caches in the levels and that reminded me a little bit of like vermentide that's exactly what i thought when they said that too yeah yeah so if those cycle into new locations

and stuff then i think that's kind of neat they did say that the game tells an overall story. It's a standalone story that is a sequel to the original Alien trilogy. I don't think anyone's going to really pick this up for the story. But at the same time, hey, I love Aliens. So maybe it'll have something to offer. Yeah, I completely agree. Even Prometheus. Prometheus gets a lot of shade. I ride for Prometheus.

I liked Prometheus. I heard all the shade being thrown at it. And I don't, maybe these are just like alien purist diehards or something, but I watched it and I was like, that's a, it's a great movie, man. I went and saw Prometheus with my wife. I think it was for our anniversary. So if this movie came out in June, then that'll confirm it. But I remember we went and saw Prometheus that had only been out for maybe a week or two, and the scene when Noomi Rapace's character has to get inside the surgical tube and have the xenomorph removed, to me, that's like a top two or three movie theater moment.

Our whole theater, you could hear everyone holding their breath. It was such a cool scene. I love those movies. They're great. All right. So anyway, a couple other news stories that i pulled here that i thought were kind of interesting minecraft dungeons is going

to be coming out in arcade cabinets have you seen this josh i i saw the story and really all i did was kind of look at the photo that they had of like the arcade cabinet this is a game that's going to be like dave and busters like they're talking this is not like your arcade cabinet for home use kind of thing you know where it's really just an emulator with like a big cabinet this is like these are going in the arcades and like hello gauntlet you know like what are you doing man like gauntlet was the original and it was great but i did not really look into the story until you mentioned it i don't some things are just like who who was the person in the board meeting that was like you know what we need to do we need to get minecraft dungeons in the arcades like that is not a game that i look at as being like very good in an arcade like yeah i i don't know i don't even

know how i feel about it i remember when i first saw flappy bird in peter piper pizza which is in arizona specific uh chain and i remember thinking that that was super goofy like who would ever play that but then they had fruit ninja and they have all these mobile type games that are in arcades now and kids love playing them i i do see how this would be fun being able to play as like a tween or like a young kid playing it with your friends and hopping into minecraft dungeons i do think that the arcade cabinet looked really neat. I mean, it looked amazing. But the thing I don't understand is that they say that the game functions without any save files. And so the loot that you get is somehow on these physical cards

that you have to scan into the system. Are you familiar with anything like this, Josh? Because this sounds kind of crazy and very archaic to me. It does to me too. I mean, I think it's a marketing ploy, is the way I look at it. It's like, hey, let's capitalize on the Pokemon craze, right? Let's the trading cards, right? And so if we can get you to play this game and then you find a piece of loot and when your game is over it spits out a card that maybe looks cool or something and then the the premise behind it is you can keep that card and the next time you come back and you play the game you can scan the card and it will give you that loot in the game so that you can play it with that loot then. So there's kind of a progression there. But it's just like, it's a marketing ploy that I don't think is going to work. Because maybe I'm just old and curmudgeon-y, but I'm going to lose that card. That card's going to go in my wallet.

It's going to get shredded. It's going to get sat on. I'm never going to take this card back to the arcade for me to to do this with like i don't really see it working it's like you said i think that time has passed and i'm not real sure that that is going to be what ropes people in i mean we played minecraft dungeons we actually reviewed it as one of like our double header shows it's fine it's like it's okay it's fun but it's not like a game like if i'm going to dave and busters like i'm playing the racing games and the the crazy like starfighter tie fighter pod games or the trivia games like one of those you know like stuff you can't normally do

at home right because that's the other thing minecraft dungeons is a pretty cheap game i want to say it's either 15 or 20 bucks right and if you have the game pass i think it's free so it seems like you're just better off playing that at home instead of sinking a lot of money into these cards because maybe you have to buy the cards or maybe you'll buy them from your friends or trade them i don't i don't totally understand how it all works together but it did kind of make me laugh because it didn't make a whole lot of sense to me but then again i don't think they're really aiming for the 30s and 40s crowd for minecraft dungeons probably so maybe we're not supposed to get it yeah all right well that's all that we have for you guys here for this week in gaming so thanks for spending the last half hour here with us we We are going to be back with a full

hour long episode on Monday. I will issue a little bit of a correction here. Initially, Josh and I were going to be deep diving into Cuphead. However, we ended up finishing and beating Valheim, which cut into our gaming time for Cuphead. Sorry, guys. Sorry, guys. So if you've been waiting for Cuphead, you'll just have to wait one more week. So we will be back on Monday for a bonus round episode. It's a bonus bonus round. Bonus bonus round. Yeah, two in a row.

So please check us out in the meantime on social media, MultiplayerPod. Come support us on Patreon, MultiplayerSquad.com. And then also, if you want to see some of our new video footage, Todd has been working hard on our YouTube channel. You can subscribe to us there at

Multiplayer Podcast. And Todd did upload a several minute video that kind of covered some of the early exploration and rafting experiences that we had in Valheim, so go check us out there as well, and then we

will see you guys on Monday. Hey, Paul. Yeah? Divinity Original Sin is multiplayer. It is multiplayer. I'm just saying, man. I'm hooked. It sucked me back in, and it's multiplayer it is multiplayer i'm just saying man um i'm i'm hooked it sucked me back in and it's uh you know let's push back cuphead you can just new announcement cuphead we're pushing it back 2022 just edit it again in post to be like cupheads move back a month guys

next week we are going to cover divinity 2 yeah we'll fix it we'll fix it in post yeah