Video Gamers Podcast - Playstation Showcase Games, Gollum Flops and Talos Principle 2 - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: June 1, 2023

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul and Ryan are bringing you all the weekly gaming news you need in another can’t miss episode of This Week in Gaming. We break down the Playstation showcase games that have us interested, diss on how bad Gollum is and get hyped for Talos Principle 2, plus more in this video game packed episode.  Video games covered this week:  Spiderman 2 Metal Gear Solid 3 Remake Talos Principle 2 Towers of Aghasba Assassins Creed: Mirage Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Skippy, Kiitaclyzm, Gideon Is Lit, Toro, Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q  Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Rise to rewards with the BMO Eclipse Rise Visa Card. Terms and conditions apply. Hello, squad mates. Thank you for listening to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. On Thursdays like today, we break down recent gaming news. And today we're going to be talking about the games highlighted during the playstation showcase the release of lord of the rings gollum and if we have time we'll also talk a little bit about some new information we know about aliens dark descent i am your host paul and joining me he's so happy because after years of asking for a stealth game with golem it's finally here it's josh and you made fun of my decker cane all right in my head that was gonna be a lot better than it

probably came across uh so just know that in my mind that was the perfect golem it was thoroughly mediocre yeah i know still better than golem the game however all right and joining us he's getting ready to fight some of his favorite bosses again some bosses like the fear the pain the sorrow the fury the end, and the boss. It's Ryan. Snake? Snake? Snake! There it is. Tastes like poison. All right.

We've got so much stuff to talk about here today, guys. So on May 25th, we had our first PlayStation showcase in two whole years. It's been quite a while. We got to see trailers for a ton of new games. And I think probably the first thing we should talk about is Metal Gear. Now, hilariously, I think in the three years that Josh and I did this before Ryan joined, we maybe said Metal Gear two or three times. And ever since Ryan joined, now it's apparently every episode we're talking about Metal Gear. This time, at least we have good reason to talk about it. It was announced times. And ever since Ryan joined, now it's apparently every episode we're talking about Metal Gear. This time, at least we have good reason to talk about it. It was announced that

we are in fact getting a remake of Metal Gear Solid 3, which we already knew from rumors for quite a while. That game is going to be called Metal Gear Solid Delta Snake Eater. And we are also going to be getting Metal Gear Solid Master Collection Volume 1, which also going to be getting metal gear solid master collection volume one which is going to include metal gear solid one through three and the original first two metal gears from the 80s ryan you've got to be thrilled about this news i am so beyond excited and speaking of all this metal gear talk we even got people in the discord now buying playstations just to play metal gear and i'm so proud i'm so proud i was gonna say like i feel there's like an infection going around or something like all of a sudden i i'm it's just metal gear solid everywhere now

and i'm like what happened we call this uh the r. Depends what happens. I'm all about it. What makes me curious is that they announced this collection as Volume 1, which kind of obviously begs the question, what's going to be in Volume 2? So a lot of people are kind of taking guesses of what that might mean. And then, of course, having one of the best games of all time, Metal Gear Solid 3, remade from the ground up. I can't wait to see footage of what this is going to look like, because Metal Gear Solid 3 is pretty darn old. So the idea of being able to play it on modern consoles would be incredible. And there are some rumors, maybe we'll even get metal gear solid 4 in the future i'm a little

more skeptical of that but being a ps3 exclusive we know how hard it is to port ps3 titles that's why we don't have things like you know red dead redemption 1 remade or anything like that josh you we've kind of talked about how you have not played a metal gear game since the early nes days are you starting to feel a little more excited since the early NES days. Are you starting to feel a little more excited about Metal Gear Solid because of how much Ryan and I are excited about all this? I feel like the kid that wasn't picked for kickball, where I'm just looking at everybody else having fun and talking about how great the last kickball game was kind of thing. I will say this. Famously, I never played Resident Evil 4. And then the remake came out and we talked about that.

And I said, dude, I never played Resident Evil 4. I did play some of the Resident Evil series. But here's this game that everybody raves about that is getting remade. And so I'll finally get to play it. And it was fantastic, man. Resident Evil 4 remake was great. And so there's a part of me that comes in excited about this to say, I never played these games. And I know, I know I'm missing out. This is not like, maybe this guy likes this game because it's more up his style. This is a beloved series. You two have just raved about it. And so I'm finally going to get a chance to see what all the hubbub is about.

And so I get really excited about that because I don't know what to expect. Other than greatness, but not having ever played them, it's like all of this will come as just new and shiny to me. So that part excites me. Yeah, the game's coming up on 20 years old so metal gear solid 3 came out in 2004 uh you can still play it but man it definitely feels its age so yeah this one is is sorely in need of a remake now what our listeners probably don't know is that ryan including right now uh loves wearing bandanas. He loves to tie them around his forehead. And I legitimately want to know,

is this because of the influence of Snake on your early childhood that you love bandanas so much? You know, I actually never thought of that. Really? That actually may have been an influence. I swear, I never even put those things together. But even, I'll wear, you know, because I mentioned in one of the other episodes about paintball

and I love paintball and that's a big thing. And paintball is bandanas. I have like 15 different bandanas just for paintball and I'll wear, I wear bandanas at work. I mean, I just, I've worn them as long as I can remember, but I never put those together. So that may have definitely influenced me i think it might have that's pretty funny all right so moving off of metal gear we also got a new trailer for assassin's creed mirage this game is now set for release on october 12th

and i would say the buzz around this game is a lot higher than the last few assassin's creed games um which i think is really exciting i know that we've given a lot of crap to ubisoft uh on this show in particular especially from josh we're kind of done with the far cry assassin's creed all these games are starting to feel the same right well the thing that is supposed to set Mirage apart is that it's a little bit of a, almost like a reboot mechanic-wise back to the first Assassin's Creed. So we had like Valhalla and Odyssey, which were more open world RPGs. This one feels like it's getting more back to its roots. So in this trailer, we see an emphasis on parkour, running across roofs, doing quick assassinations and getting away. It feels like we're getting back to the original roots that made Assassin's Creed so much fun.

What do you guys think about this? Are you excited about this entry? I had to put aside my Ubisoft disdain for a little bit because when I watched this trailer, I went, I feel like I've seen all this before. And so where is the new stuff on this? And then I kind of had to say, Josh, stop for a second. Look at this game from the viewpoint that you're not jaded against Ubisoft. And then that, honestly, I know that sounds goofy, but that helped me because I loved the first couple Assassin's Creed games. Now, I'll be fully upfront. I don't remember what set one off from the other. And I know there's the different assassins. There's Ezio and somebody else. And there's the Animus

and stuff like that. Yeah. And so in my brain, it all starts to jumble together. And honestly, I couldn't tell you the difference at this point. What I do know is that I loved the first couple of Assassin's Creed games. I did play Assassin's Creed Odyssey. I thought it was a great game, but it was just super bloated at that point. You can start to see where they really kind of lost their way. So when I see this Assassin's Creed Mirage trailer, I'm starting to look at this. And then things started to jump out at me. Number one, I love the fact that they showcase that you can approach things in different avenues, right? They even say it, you can try to bribe the guards, or maybe you sneak your way through or something like that. And that's where I started going, man, if they pull this off,

if they actually give you freedom of choice on how you want to go about this, the combat looked good. The stealth looked good. The parkour looked amazing. And that's when I start to kind of get excited and go, if they pull this off with modern technology, really nice graphics, get away from the stupid Ubisoft recipe that they've been using for the last six or seven years, this game could wind up being really good yeah no i i'm i'm kind of in the same sentiment like i i when i first started playing the assassin's creed i was i think i was i moved out pretty early i moved out when i was 18 i uh got an apartment i think i was 19 when i got it and I just sat sitting in my apartment, no kids, just able to play. And it's my type of game, that stealth, that storyline.

Everything back then in those first couple, the first two were the ones that really set it off for me. But I did like what they put. I was reading an article, and it said it's a return to the series roots a bigger focus on linear storytelling and stealth gameplay so that that is what got me really excited it looks like more of the same from back then but that's that's a good thing you know sometimes if you have something why are you gonna try to reinvent the wheel why are you trying to change it if it works you don't want to have something just be continuous and the same thing over and over. But little tweaks can make a big difference on something that's already a good core. But I think it's just going to go back to the gameplay that made it so fun and enjoyable. And I like the options of being able to bribe the guards or do different things like that.

But yeah, I'm super stoked for it. Yeah, I think this is the first time in a long time I've been really excited for Assassin's Creed. I'm kind of hoping maybe it'll be our first Assassin's Creed deep dive. I think we'll have to wait and see. Josh, I'm a little surprised because look at you being excited for X Defiant, Assassin's Creed Mirage. Is Ubisoft winning you over again? No, no, let's not get crazy now. You're not buying any stock?

No, I'm not buying any stock. It is nice to see that we've said this before, and I think this is becoming more popular. Not everything has to be open world. I don't need 50 million side quests for you to earn my money. Give me a crafted experience. Put some love into it. Give me good mechanics. Have it not be super buggy. Have it just work. It's not even hard to please me at this point. Just let it run. Whoa, now you're asking too much.

That's way too much. And it's a fantasy land I'm living in. But I have to sound a little jaded when it comes to Ubisoft. So the only thing I'll say that sounds jaded is, are they just going back to like the first game? Is this like, is it not going to be anything new to where they just go, guys, it's been long enough. All we got to do is just remake the first game, call it something different and say we're going back to our roots and everybody will buy it up in a heartbeat. So like, can you just go back? Like, is this just Assassin's Creed 1 remake?

With a new story? I'd be totally down with that. I'm not saying I wouldn't, but it's just, like I said, that's my little piece of being jaded against Ubisoft, is, like, are they trying to hide a remake under a new name? That doesn't sound like them at all. Yeah. Well, yeah, this one will be much more contained.

It's all going to take place within the city of Baghdad, divided into four districts. And that's the way I think Assassin's Creed plays best. So I think this is all great news. So, Josh, will you tell the people a little bit about why they should sign up for our Patreon? Because it's awesome. And that's how this podcast continues to bring you phenomenal content all the time. We are supported by our listeners. We put out the best quality shows we can. We try to give you guys in-depth reviews, fun bonus rounds. We catch up on the gaming news each and every week.

And we do it because we love it. We love the listeners. We love the community. And if you feel like, hey, you know what? I want to give back. I want to say just, hey, thanks, or keep doing what you guys are doing. You can make sure that happens by heading over to MultiplayerSquad.com. You can sign up for as little as $5, man. Five bucks. That's it. Really helps the show. You get a ton of perks for it. You get bonus episodes, early access, ad-free, access to our full Discord community. I mean, there's just so much that makes it valuable.

But head on over there, MultiplayerSquad.com if you want to help support the show. As low as five bucks a month, which is the same as one gallon of gas right now in Phoenix. Literally. I have a 32-gallon tank, so don't tell me about gas. As low as five bucks a month, which is the same as one gallon of gas right now in Phoenix. Literally. Yeah. Well, I have a 32-gallon tank, so don't tell me about gas.

Yeah. Oh. Ouch. All right. So I think Assassin's Creed and Metal Gear is more up Ryan's alley. Now we get into some of more of like Josh's lane, I feel like. Ooh. Ooh.

So Josh was really excited to talk about Talos Principle 2. Oh, man. Okay, this is up my alley. You were right, Paul. This is more Josh's speed. The first game, of course, very beloved, famous puzzle game. Josh and I both played the first entry. We now have the second one, which is going to be coming out later this year. And what is it that has you so excited about Talos Principle 2, Josh? Number one, I haven't had a good puzzle game in a long time. Talos Principle is one of the best puzzle games made. Also, the story that Talos Principle tells is second to none, man, especially in this day and age of emerging AI. Could you be more topical

right now? So I love the fact that this is an underrated game. I'll be honest. A lot of people have heard of Talos Principle, but they've never played it. It is one of the best puzzle games you can play, and it will blow your mind in looking at humanity Like you're making these decisions. I can't spoil anything, but just trust me, this story gets deep, man. If you liked like the thought process of like Outer Wilds or some of these games that really make you question, you know, your existence and humanity and the world around you and stuff like that, dude, Talos Principle nails it. I mean, absolutely nails it. And here, lo and behold, we've not heard a single thing about this. And then they come out and they say, hey, guys, Talos Principal 2, it's coming

this year. And they start showing some gameplay and some of the scenery and stuff. It looks like it's improved in every way. Then they go on to talk about the puzzle elements and they say, listen, we've got this stuff that you're familiar with. So we're not completely ripping the rug out from under you. Oh, but also we're going to introduce gravity elements like, you know, other types of puzzle things. And it just it puts it all together for me with a little bow. And I will absolutely be picking this game up. So, Ryan, did you play the first first talus principle or is that nowhere on your radar i it wasn't i i mean i love puzzle games i enjoy them um i usually like them kind of molded

in with some adventure you know like uncharted or tomb raider or something like that but um after watching some stuff about it it it looked pretty cool and um i don't know how i missed that one but i may have to check it out before this one comes out, because as excited as Josh is, I think I'm going to have to take a look. They also really lean really heavy into philosophy and asking questions about life. So they did say that here in this sequel, humanity has gone extinct. There are robots made in our image that are carrying out human culture, which is interesting. And they said that we're going to be confronted with questions about the nature of the cosmos, faith versus reason, and the fear of repeating humankind's mistakes. So it will be a little bit of a heavier puzzle game than what you normally see. And on top of gravity manipulation, they also used the phrase

mind transference. I don't 100% know know what that means but color me interested yeah yeah this game's super deep man i again it's you're right it gets into some really really neat philosophical thoughts about what is consciousness and existence and like almost like matrixy do you want the red pill of the blue pill like these are the types of questions and things you face in the Talos Principle. It's not just puzzles, and that's what makes it really, really stand out. I will recommend that game to everybody,

and the fact that they have announced a sequel to it that looks like it's pretty far along really gets me jazzed. Yeah, this one's definitely highly anticipated here on the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Go figure releasing info on the game when you're close to finishing.

That's something new. Yeah. Right? Oh, yeah. Here's some character models. We'll be ready in four years and pre-order now. Concept art for the game

that'll come out a decade later. Exactly. It is a little refreshing. All right. Well, we are going to take a short break and we'll be right back. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings.

Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit Superstore.ca to get started. All right, so the last thing that we wanted to cover in regards to the PlayStation Showcase is a game called Towers of Agasba, which I think is how it's pronounced. Agasba. Not 100% sure, but... Agasba. Agasba.

So this is set for release in 2024. This one's still a little while off it is a third person action adventure builder it basically takes place where a character is going back to like where their ancestors lived and trying to rebuild that city and the whole ecosystem and and things of that nature bringing back plants and animal life and things of that nature. This one, it's kind of hard to describe what it looks like or what it is. I kept seeing people comparing it to Breath of the Wild, but I think they were only saying that because the guy uses a paraglider. Yeah, but nothing else really screams Breath of the Wild to me.

It's got this emphasis on building structures and changing the world around you, which is not like Zelda at all. What were your guys' impressions about this one? Well, first I saw that it only takes 30 gigs and a 270 can run it,

so Paul, you're good to go. Oh, there you go, Paul. Shots fired. Shots fired at my 2080 Ti. Am that slow am i that old now i may have a little bit of an ego with all my new pc parts so that's i just had to get at you but i did see uh looking at the trailer um the the under i i know we've talked about it before especially with metal gear solid um but like the underwater aspects of it actually looked pretty cool to me yeah um you you saw them swimming through there and it doesn't didn't look like the same kind of

mundane just underwater garbage they do it it looked actually intriguing and something you could explore and dive into and and uh i thought that that it was it was pretty neat uh aspect of the game from what i saw that's actually the first thing I wrote down also. I said, this is like the first time in ages that I ever thought, ooh, I want to play that underwater part. I thought the same thing, man. This game is beautiful. The aesthetic of this game is what jumped out to me right away.

I like the fact that they kind of gave you the premise like, hey, you're trying to restore your ancestral homeland, and it's all very dark and grim. And then you get this giant turtle thing that's talking to you, which gave me like Neverending Story vibes. From like the big turtle in the swamp of sadness kind of thing. And then it even says like, I had hoped your kind were gone forever. And then it's like, Ooh,

like this is a neat premise. But then like this, they start showcasing the world on this. And I got like almost like avatar vibes with just that sense of awe with all of these creatures. They have flying whale things that you can hop on, and they show you picking up something off of its back. They did mention... The cool thing for this is they talked about the gameplay a little bit. And while we saw some of the game, you don't really get a sense of what the actual minute-to-minute gameplay is like. But what they kept saying is that you have to balance building these villages without disrupting the ecosystem.

So apparently, there's all these creatures that live there. And this is their home and their world. But here you come as humans trying to rebuild your villages and stuff like that. But you have to balance that out. And I thought that was a really neat aspect to say, you can't just go ham and build a huge city. You have to balance that with protecting nature and the creatures and stuff like that too. So we'll see how that plays out, but I thought that was a neat angle. I have no reason to think this, but the whole time I was watching the footage, I just kept thinking, this feels like the kind of game that keeps getting scaled back to where they'll they'll cut all this cool looking stuff and it'll end up as a mediocre product i

hope i have no reason to think that i just i got those vibes for some reason i can see that i because i when i was watching it too i got almost for some weird reason maybe a bad comparison but like avatar vibes you serious i just i just told you that a moment ago the vastness in the great areas the flying creatures and everything but um and then those those the hand things the look like the thing or whatever those those weirded me out so this one's still a while off i'll be curious to see more footage as we get closer i'll just say that all right and there were a ton of other trailers you might want to check out that we're not going to talk about here but there's stuff for spider-man 2 alan wake 2 uh phantom blade

zero dragons dogma 2 a lot of stuff to go look at i know a lot of people kind of felt underwhelmed by the showcase there are some rumors that sony was holding some stuff back i think the biggest complaint people had is that a lot of those games are multi-platform so we didn't see a whole lot of sony exclusive stuff but uh i thought it was fine i think there's some stuff to really look forward to there's there's a lot coming up so i i didn't really have any complaints about this all right guys time for my favorite story of the week uh lord of the rings golem released after many many delays josh and i have been covering this game periodically uh feels like for the last two and a half years how would you guys describe the current

state of the game and gamers reaction to it not good not great bob not great bob oh man um i don't want to say we told you so because that would seem immature of me uh but let's be honest everybody knows i'm immature anyway look the writing was on the wall for this game. I mean, we have covered it a few times. We very specifically said, I don't get it. This game doesn't look good. Maybe it'll surprise us. It surprised us, all right, with how bad it actually is. Now, here's the thing. We've been seeing a lot of games that release in a very poor state, performance-wise, technical issues, that kind of stuff and that that dings a game for sure but underneath there's good bones gollum is a jellyfish i don't know if

you guys watched gameplay and some of the quest structures this is the worst game i have ever seen like in design this might rank up there with like et from the old Atari. Who thought that this was a good idea? Like, I don't like the quests in this game are absolutely abysmal, dude. This is the literal definition of work in a video game. Fetch quests. I don't know who came up with this. I'm sorry if you were a developer or an artist on this game. I know it's not your fault, but it baffles me that in today's day and age that people can miss this hard

on a video game. Yeah, no, it was, it was bad. I know you guys have covered it a lot longer than I have looking at it, but I don't understand just from watching the trailer, you can see how bad it looks and how,

how, I mean, personally, maybe they just needed a better voice actor. Josh you should have thrown your you know yeah on the ring but uh that's the real problem yeah that's the issue for sure no it it looked bad sounded bad i i don't understand it gives me feeling that maybe i could just go and just make a game and people will be like oh yeah yeah let's develop that. You know how bad this was.

I don't understand how these people have jobs. You know, you see those commercials or radio ads that are so bad and you don't understand how, how people are employed doing that. And then you see games like this, you know, it's just such a shame because we are all huge Lord of the Rings fans. Yes.

I mean, Ryan, you and I have seen all the movies together, you know, dozens of times in our teenage years. And I remember when I first heard about it, I was like, that's a weird idea to play as Gollum. But I love Lord of the Rings. I'll wait and see. And every time we saw footage, we just kept saying, oh, it looks bad. Oh, it looks even worse.

Oh, what? Yeah. And then the reviews start rolling out. I've got to read this verbatim because it actually made me laugh out loud. Here's the summary of the Guardian's review, all right? A derivative, uninteresting, and fundamentally broken stealth action adventure that fails to capture anything interesting about Tolkien's fiction. So, like, this seems to be a running theme in all the reviews and in all the footage. It seems like everyone kind of agrees it's just boring and bland. There's nothing to

draw you to this game. It's a poor idea. It's poor execution. It's not creative, really, in any sense of the word. And what's so funny about this is that Daedalic Entertainment is already pegged to work on a second Lord of the Rings game that's already in development. So talk about a swing and a miss on Gollum. They're going to come out with another game. We don't know anything about it yet. But after such a swing and a miss on this one, I don't know that anyone's going to trust them on another Lord of the Rings game. You know, fool me once. Fool me once,

strike one. But fool me twice, strike three. Now, I mean, all that said, right, this is, this game's 20 bucks, right? No, it's not, Josh. Right? No, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Like $30,

right? Like they know it's... Getting closer. We've never seen a game regress. Like when we first heard about this game, we kind of looked and went, ooh, like I don't get the premise, but the graphics were really good. They look like maybe this is going to be a really good stealth based game. I don't know that we've ever seen a game take as many steps backwards as Gollum has. So when that happens, they're going to lower the price, right? This one's going to set you back 50 bucks for the plain version, or you can go all in and pay 60 bucks for the precious edition. Oh man. I think it's actually $70 on some platforms. I've seen a lot of people say that this game was marketed at $70. This is one of the biggest misses that we have seen,

and not just from a technical aspect. That's the kicker, right? We've been getting a lot of that. This game's just bad. It's just bad all around. Hey, on the positive side, kind of like you were starting to go here, Josh, and I thought this is where you're going to land the plane. At least it's not a bad PC port, right? It's just bad for everybody. So at least we can't complain as PC gamers. At least this one's hitting everyone equally. I mean, this game currently sits on metacritic the pc version is a 41 and the ps5 version is a 36 the user score on ps5 is a 1.5 which is about as low as you can get so this is pretty much universally considered the worst game of the year so far uh but yeah what a disappointment well i i just spent about a million dollars building my computer so i'm gonna apply as a developer for them and i probably won't even have to show up to work

and they'll just they'll just pay me because that's what it looks like they did just ask chat gpt to give you a terrible idea for lord of the rings game right and there we go you're gonna get something better than gollum all right so i know our show's gonna go a little bit long today but i did want to still leave a little bit of time here to talk about aliens dark descent so this game is right around the corner it releases on june 20th we have talked about it in the past couple of weeks and um they they released a five and a half minute gameplay trailer that explains a little bit more of how the game functions. This is the Aliens game, if you remember. It's more of like a strategic game,

but it's strategic light. It's less XCOM and more where you're a commander leading a squad around, and the squad will automatically carry out certain actions based on their class and their point system and things of that nature. And you kind of play as the commander. Was there anything here in this trailer that stuck out to you guys that looked interesting or anything that we didn't really know about from before? Because every time I see more footage, I think it looks better and better. I'll be honest, man.

This game's my hype meter for this game is rising. When we first saw it, I was very interested. But watching this trailer... Now, some of it they did kind of rehash from the first one in case you hadn't seen that. But there were a couple things to me that stood out. Number one, it is much more action oriented. They made a big point to say, listen, if you start feeling overwhelmed, you can slow time and that will allow you to kind of keep up with what's going on. That's a great feature. Maybe you don't want it. I like chaos.

I want fast paced. And so for me, just having to go with it, I think is neat. The thing that caught me off guard was they did show off a little bit more of the class system and the gear system, which I thought was really cool. Because you don't control every member of your squad. Your squad acts as one entity. So you just control you and then your squad moves and reacts and things like that around you. And they were talking about how smart the squad is. I thought that was a really neat aspect of it. But where

they really got my attention even more was they started showing, hey, you can give this guy a heavy pulse cannon. You can give this guy a flamethrower. And you can kind of build out the strategy that you want to go into these levels with. And that's where the little exclamation marks went off for me. Because I love strategic approach to certain things, especially combat. And so now it's like, wait a minute. If the difficulty curve is there to where strategy actually matters, you are speaking my language, baby. Because now I get to go just waste aliens, but I get to do it my way and then see if that actually works.

Yeah, this has not only good action and it looks like it has an interesting story to tell, because that's the thing. They keep hinting at it where they're like, it's a really dark new story set in the alien universe. And I'm really curious to learn more. But the one thing that was highlighted a little bit more here, and they didn't even directly address it, is that you have to worry about the mental state of the people in your squad. Yes, you can see stress levels. And I thought that was really cool. Yeah. state of the people in your squad. Yes, you can see stress levels. And I thought that was really cool. Yeah, you see little tags where certain characters are now paranoid, or they're exhausted, or they're stressed.

And it seems like your characters might crack, and maybe they'll get combat debuffs and things like that, or maybe they'll freeze and not fight as well. I don't know exactly how much that's going to work into the game, but I thought that was actually really interesting that you don't just worry about their health meter and their ammo and their gear, but also their mental state, which I think is really neat. That kind of harkens back to more games like RimWorld and things.

Darkest Dungeon, some of those things. Yeah, for sure. No, it seems cool. Some of those aspects are those little kind of uh roles within a game that you can have that are just just enough of a tweak that they're not overwhelming but it is a

cool little flair that you get to do while you're battling so it's not not too much but it's something extra that you can control and use a strategy and then try to set up you know the gameplay the way you want and the way you think is best with your squad or your team. I feel like it adds flavor. It's not going to be game-changing, but it adds just enough flavor that the replayability or the stagnation doesn't set in as fast. So whereas a game without this,

I might play for seven hours and then go, okay, I'm ready for the next thing. This one, these little touches like that i think will help carry like the the longevity of the fun factor for a game like this oh yeah you get you get your squad set up and then you know you're one guy let's call him jim bob jim bob's paranoid you're like i got you buddy you know you gotta do what you gotta do to make sure no no it's gonna be okay you know do whatever you have to do to make sure he's fine and you keep battling you get almost like a connection with your squad. Yeah, or Jim Bob freaks out

and runs off into the other room and gets himself captured by an alien and now it's like, well, crap, Jim Bob's dead. Classic Jim Bob. Classic Jim Bob. Yeah, this one looks really exciting and it's only $40, so it'll set you back less than Gollum.

So that's good. And I love the fact that AI changes your game as you're playing, which we've seen in a lot of games like Left 4 Dead. It's been doing that for decades, but it's still neat to see them tinker with the gameplay based on your decisions. The only thing that kind of sucks is that we have such a killer's row of games right now. We've got Diablo coming out in less than a week from when this airs. We have so many legendary games to catch up on. I don't think we're going to be able to deep dive it, which is a little bit of a shame because I have a hunch this one's going to do pretty well. All right. Any closing thoughts? Anything else to share with the people, boys? Thank you for listening. Honestly, we've been doing this a long time. It is always amazing to

me that we talk into these microphones and we share our love of video games. And there's so many people out there that just join us for that. They hop in our Discord server. They talk about upcoming games. We get into the nostalgia of certain games. You know, people are grouping up and playing games together. It's just awesome, man. So appreciate you for giving us a chance, listening to this episode or following the show and just kind of going on this journey with us. Yep. Same thing.

If you guys, I can't stress enough how cool the Discord server is. If you guys aren't on it or if you don't even have discord get it it's it's awesome lots of cool different channels within there that that there's all kinds of talk you know games or just normal stuff or everyday life things and stuff it's it's a really cool thing to to be a part of and then yeah again thanks to everybody that's that's listening all uh i guess all over the world and then also, be ready for Metal Gear Solid. Yep. All right. Well, thanks, everyone, for listening.

As a reminder, make sure to go check out our Patreon page at MultiplayerSquad.com, which will get you those bonus episodes and other perks. You can follow us on socials everywhere at MultiplayerPod. And for Discord, which Ryan was raving about, and I totally agree, follow the invite link in the episode description and that's everything here for today so thanks again to

everyone out there we really appreciate and love you all until next time happy gaming all right see everybody see ya