Video Gamers Podcast - Sea of Mystery, God of Simpsons and Fall Guys goes Free - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: May 26, 2022

Gaming hosts Josh, Paul and Michael are back with This Week in Gaming. The best way to stay up to date on gaming news without any of the boring stuff. We break down some of the top gaming news stories in the best way possible. Never boring, always funny, guaranteed! (Ok, maybe not an iron-clad guarantee but we’re pretty sure you’ll love it!) Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: 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

Hey guys, it's Paul here. I just finished beating Michael and Josh in a Mortal Kombat tournament, and before we hop into today's amazing episode, I want to ask you all to check out our Patreon page at MultiplayerSquad.com. We are an independent podcast, which means nobody pays us to do this show, we rely on our listeners like you to support us. We want to make sure that you get some perks in return, and so you will get some awesome things like exclusive access to the Squadcast feed, which is a podcast that releases twice a month, only for supporters. So get over here, and we'll see you on Patreon at MultiplayerSquad.com. Let's start the show. Fight!

Hello, Squadmates! Hello squad mates! Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are a podcast run by three dads with day jobs, and we love gaming so much that we get together and record these conversations, and we hope that you enjoy being a part of it. You guys already know the routine, but please make sure to rate our show five stars and leave a written review. Follow us on socials at multiplayer pod. And what's that? You want access to the squad cast, our exclusive show only available to Patreon supporters that releases twice a month. Sure.

Just head on over to multiplayer squad.com and you can see our Patreon page and the different tiers of support available. Today is Thursday, which means it is time for This Week in Gaming, where we will be breaking down recent gaming news that we thought would be fun to talk about. I am your host, Paul, and today I am joined by the only person I know who has worked on a boat. He is kind of a real-life pirate, and part of me wonders if he wants to test out the waters of the seven seas again, because I hear there's a murder that needs solving.

It's Josh. Paul, everything you said, just, I'm so excited now. Yes. I would, I think we've covered this, but I would definitely have been a pirate. Yes. I feel like you were a pirate in one of your past lives. I think that goes without saying. And then joining us, he's the only person I know who just loves EA.

He's an EA man through and through. He told me right before we started recording that the only thing that would make him love EA even more is if they merged with his other favorite publisher, Amazon. It's Michael. It's so crazy. I have giant flags. I thought about wrapping my car with just a giant Amazon flag on one side and an EA flag on the other side just to tout how much i love these publishers man whoo all you have to do is add an e in front of amazon and you have e amazon and that's the merged company it's the dream team right now yeah dream team of doom all right so guys we have so many fun stories to talk about i mean we can we can choose to talk about Sea of Thieves, EA, God of War, Fall Guys. I mean, where do you guys want to start? I don't even know what we should start the show out with.

I feel like every good show should start with Pirates. That's a good call, right? I approve. Arr. Let's do it. Let's talk about Sea of Thieves. Infamously, Paul's favorite game. Well, yes, I am on record as saying Sea of Thieves is like the best five-hour game I've ever played. And then very quickly, there was nothing left to do. I was like, all right, I get gold to buy missions to get gold.

And I've done that 40 times. Now what's left? All right. So Josh was a little bit higher on sea of thieves than me michael i wasn't even sure have you ever even played sea of thieves absolutely i played it early on when it when i just released and it's yeah i i appreciated it again like you said it was fun for a little bit and then it just kind of got old fast yeah so it seems like over the last uh i guess really year plus sea of thieves has been releasing a lot of new content.

It does seem like they've been trying to drive more narrative stories into the game. They've been adding these things called adventures, which I have not played personally, but I've watched videos of them. They seem kind of interesting. They give you these extra missions where you go fight for Megalodons and do all this other stuff. But now they are rolling out a new feature that they are calling Mysteries. And we got a chance to see a developer update where they talked a little bit about Mysteries, got to find out a little bit more about these. Do one of you guys want to maybe just take the ropes and explain a little bit about what these are? Batten down the hatches, Michael.

I got this one, buddy. So these mysteries, dude, I feel like Sea of Thieves is trying to find a way to make their game fun long term. And they just keep missing. That's the sad part because I love the fact that they keep trying all of these different avenues. They came out with the Tall Tales. I actually hopped back into Sea of Thieves when those came around to be like, ooh, longer quest lines with puzzles to solve and mysteries and stuff like that. They were neat. It definitely gave you more of an objective.

But at the end of the Tall tale, guess what you get? You, you, you get a, you get a treasure chest. Or I thought you were going to say a skin in game skin. All the rewards and see a thieves or skins. You plunk the chest on your ship,

you sail it back, you hand it in and you get gold. And now you can buy a mast, you know, or something like that. So I, you know, we,

we've kind of covered our thoughts on sea of thieves, but I do like that. They're still trying. And so what they've rolled out with now are these mysteries, which they are claiming are going to be very difficult to solve and will actually involve the community as a whole. So this is not just you as a player goes out on this quest, finds these clues, solves this puzzle, gets a chest, and that's it. They're saying that the community will actually need to come together, almost like those, I think we call them, are they AR games? You know, where there might be a game coming out and they forward you to a website, and then you have to scour the website for a clue. And then I'm trying to think which game did that

very famously, and now I can't think of it it i feel like there's been a couple along the way yeah and it's like they're trying to get everybody involved and hyped and people are sharing information and there's forums where you're posting clues and hints and things that you found and hey i i opened up the console on this website and i found this clue in the html code and so that pointed me towards this thing where a map appeared on the screen and so everybody's sharing all this information and collectively people are trying to figure out this riddle. And I feel like that's what they're gonna do with it because ultimately what's gonna happen guys we solved the mystery here's a chest or a golden skull that you can go hand in and now you can upgrade your cannons but not their power or their range just the way they look just the skin yeah no i i i think it's interesting that you said

like they're trying to make it super challenging right because one of the criticisms about sea of thieves so far with any of their story narrative has overall been that it's just really easy and it doesn't mean anything and so the doesn't mean anything part is probably going to stay the same because it's probably going to be just like what josh said it's going to be a chest and you're going to use that gold or whatever it is to buy a skin and not change really anything in the game now if you're if you're all about skins and stuff that's great but i like the fact that it has a challenge i just think it's funny that they're adding in all these story elements and to quote the article it says mysteries are something like side stories that play out in parallel with sea of thieves's main

overarching plot wait see if thieves has a main overarching plot? I thought the exact same thing. I thought the same thing as well. I know. Is the plot not to just go get gold? Right. And then spend the gold? Is there a story?

There might be at this point, but we haven't played it in so long. I'm sure they have a story, because they've done the tall tales, they've got the adventures, they introduced the Megalodon. They nerfed PvP. I don't know where they're going with this game. And the sad part about it is there's a basis that could be great. They nailed something. Maybe it's just the water. Maybe I love just sailing on the boat going nowhere. I don't know. I find that relaxing. But there's something about Sea of Thieves that just works. And there's so much about it that just misses the mark, man. So here's the thing. I don't want to be just the person that bashes Sea of Thieves for no reason. All right. When I started reading this article, which the one we're referencing to was from Eurogamer, and I started getting excited because they're talking about like solving a murder. And I love good detective stories. I love the idea of like chasing a serial killer or

something like that. And honestly, since Sea of Thieves really struggles with the reward system, to me, it kind of makes perfect sense. The reward could be solving the mystery, right? Give me a really good, complicated story, and maybe there's a big reveal of who the killer was, and then you can resolve it. And I started getting excited in reading the article, and then I watched the developer update. And I am so sorry to say, I gave the world's biggest eye roll when they started saying, you're going to have to follow our social media posts for clues and watch our developer updates.

There could be clues even right now behind me. And it just seemed so desperate and so cheesy to just drag in involvement in social media that I just felt very manipulated. It felt to me like, rather than trying to give me good content that's going to draw me in, it just kind of felt desperate. I don't know if I'm the only one who kind of felt that way, but it just overall seemed too gimmicky. And then I was kind of like, well, if I hear good things, I'm willing to try it out again. But I don't like the idea of having to scour social media posts. Just let me play Sea of Thieves the game. That's what I want to do. Well, and it feels cheap to me too. We can't put all this stuff in the game and launch it. So we're

going to send you to something we coded in HTML very quickly and easily and pointed you towards our social media pages or whatever it is to go look for clues there. But I don't know. One of the issues I have with it is more of just the overall narrative again with um okay so we're pirates right see if thieves is a pirate game right put yourselves in pirates shoes a murder mystery oh my goodness a pirate's never seen a murder before right why do we care about a random murder we're out there our job is to go and kill people and steal their treasure like a, ah, murder mystery. That sounds like a pirate really going to go after. Yeah, it's a good point.

Especially because you're constantly PVPing and fighting other pirates. It's a little silly. Just add progression to your game. Right, that's it. That's all you need to do. Give me a skill tree. Give me something. That is all you need to do.

Give me cannons that do 10 more damage and have five meters more range, and I'll have something to work for that I actually care about. It could be insignificant at that point, but just do it. Quit coming up with all these other ideas, man. Yeah, totally with you. All right, so Sea of Thieves, I think that kind of wraps things up in that regard. For the second story, I feel like we should at least cover the EA news since I already referenced it earlier in the podcast. Right. opportunities with a number of different potential suitors. And when I saw that, I was a little surprised because EA is already enormous. They own so many great IPs. And it seems like because of the Microsoft Activision deal, EA has been approaching

other companies, including Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal. And what truly would be my favorite pairing of all time is EA and Amazon. Can you guys imagine EA and Amazon combining their powers? Dude, this is like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. This is like saying Candyman in a mirror five times. I mean, I can't imagine the fallout that would happen if EA and Amazon somehow merged. Number one, I don't think they'd ever make a quality game, ever. Boy, would they hype them. But I'm not one to boycott distributors and stuff like that. But man, it seems like a bad idea. What I think is funny is what you mentioned. EA is huge. I don't know what EA's net worth is, but it's got to be in the billions range. And when you go, hey, we think we want to shop our

company around, who out there can afford to buy us? There's like four, maybe five potential people. And it's like, well, we could try Amazon. Well, what about Apple? Your choices are really limited in that regard. Well, and it's funny too, because one of EA's sticking points on this is they, according to the articles I've read, is they really want their current CEO to be the head of this new combined company. It's like, isn't that like having the blind to lead the blind? You've got a guy who has run a company so poorly. I mean, maybe not. They're a cash cow or whatever. But here's what I think. Here's my take that would make this more fun. Why don't... I think that EA and Amazon, if they're sitting in a negotiation room, they're in the boardroom and they're sitting there, there's always these big tables,

at least that's how I picture it. And I think they should be subject to the same thing they subject us as gamers to. So for instance, what they do is they take all of their different negotiation needs. One of them be, hey, the current CEO is the CEO of the new company, and we put that in a box, right? And we put 50 of those boxes on the table we call them loot boxes and then what happens is amazon opens a loot box and they either get or they don't get what they want and if they want to they can offer more shares to open another loot box and maybe they'll get the negotiation term they want on the next loot box i could not be happier i was literally going to make the exact same joke except i was gonna say that they're

gonna sell off their different gaming series through loot boxes yeah so it would be like reach your hand in the box and maybe you're maybe you'll get dragon age 4 or maybe you're gonna get wing commander from 1990 but there's no way to know you're gonna pay us you're gonna pay us 100 million dollars and you get one loot box, and let's see what you get. That's it. That's great. It's brilliant. And then they're subject to the same thing they're subjecting gamers to.

It's called irony, and it's great. Oh, man. I mean, how many times are we going to get burned by Amazon games or by EA games? You kind of have to reach back kind of far to remember the last time you were wowed by either, or in the case of Amazon, it's never, you could argue lost dark,

but they didn't make lost dark. All they did was publish it in the States. So they, yeah. And then by all accounts, they've kind of ruined the first expansion or DLC for lost dark anyway. So I just, it's weird to me that EA is shopping around. It's weird to me that they want to keep their CEO. I would think that the whole point of

shopping EA around would be to try to sell it to lose your bad reputation. If you're the bad kid at school and nobody likes you and you get the chance to move to a different school, you might take that chance so that you can be like, hey, I'm going to turn over a new leaf. I'm going to change my reputation. Nobody will know me. And so maybe people will like me. So it's like if that's what EA is trying to do, that at least makes sense to me. But if you're keeping the same CEO, what are you doing at this point? Well, it's a real shame because EA has been this very big fish in a pond just eating the

smaller fish, right? We've lost these other developers like Maxis or Westwood and these other really high-reputation studios that have just been enfolded inside EA. And now that they've eaten all of these small fish, they just want to sell it all off, I guess, is just the thought process. Get a big cash out, a nice big payday. And if you can have your cake and eat it too and stay CEO, I get it. But I just can't imagine EA merging with Amazon. It seems like a match made in heaven, except for the fact that I don't want to lose some of my most favorite gaming

series, like dragon age to something like Amazon. Yeah. Oh goodness. Yeah. It's also, it's also interesting because, you know,

there's a lot of rumors on who might be at, you know, at the table to throw their hat in for a possible deal. And they talked about how NBCUniversal had progressed pretty far. And it fell apart because of the proposed structure and price. And I can't help but think that maybe NBC is like, we're not taking your CEO and making him in charge of our money. That's not going to be a thing. However, Apple kind of intrigues me because I really don't see them a lot in that kind of gaming space. And

so that could be interesting because Apple's relatively intelligent when it comes to what they do with their money. So that might be interesting. But I don't think Apple's going to want to go near this, to be honest with you. Dragon Age 5 exclusive to iOS. Oh my goodness. Please no. Please no. Don't say that, Paul. What are you guys do iphones edit that out edit that out that you even said that let's strike it from the record yeah oh goodness all right let's move on to our next story here so there's nothing like a good mod

for a game right we've covered a couple one of the joys of pc gaming man that's right it arguably the best part of pc gaming you know customization modding all that stuff god of war 2018 all three of us well i believe love that game and here in this case there is a mod that has been released by omega fantasy and they've done this with other games before, but it replaces all of the main characters from God of War with characters from The Simpsons. And if it just did that, if it just replaced Kratos with Homer and Atreus with Bart, that would already be funny enough. But they actually re-recorded all new dialogue dialogue seemingly for I don't know how much of the game. I legitimately watched 20 minutes of gameplay and they completely rewrite all the

lines. It is actually quite funny. And the voices are clearly not the real Simpsons voice actors, but it's close enough that it's actually really funny it's really well made i i as soon as you guys posted this story and of course i went to watch the gameplay and we've seen a couple of these i forget the guy from gta where you know we saw that one where you know they put him in there and so we've seen a little bit of this and it's like oh okay that's funny haha it's good for a little laugh what sets this one apart are the voice lines like as as homer when you're fighting like one of the giant troll things he's like get your hands off my pork chops exactly and then he's throwing a bat instead

of the leviathan axe right bart is axe. Right. Bart is running around. Yes. Like, Bart is running around. And the voice acting is hilarious. And that's where it's like, I mean, you guys know I love God of War. And there's a part of me that's like, hey, don't mess with my beloved game. It's a serious game. I love its take on mythology and all that. But then you can't help but just laugh when you hear these voice lines and how they're interacting with each other and how they're fighting in the world.

It's just so crazy to me. And then you get to the part where the stranger who, you know, we know who that is later on in the game. But you get to that part and then it's Ned Flanders. You've got the voice of Ned F flander showing up as the bad guy which is just fantastic i don't know if i'd want to play this entire game oh no with with that mod but i would definitely check it out and i mean if there's a way for me to go to different save points i have in my regular game you know and look at the some of the dialogue there and see how it's changed that that would be absolutely a riot. But it's just interesting to me. It's what a clever way to do a mod and just make it like, again, a serious game. It's an emotional game, right? You get

very tied into the story, the characters. And we're just going to throw all that out the window and just make it ridiculous. But it's interesting, too, because they used existing character models from 2003's Simpsons, the hit and run game, which I thought was a smart way for them to not have to put a ton of effort into creating all these new things for it and just use existing, you know, kind of content, or not content, but character models and stuff.

Like existing assets. Yeah, but then focus on the funny things like the dialogue and just having Homer cutting down a tree with a baseball bat which i just have to see it and he yells another lug for my lug collection like they just replace dialogue like that and it's it's funny too because for such a serious game the music is still the same so you get this like operatic really emotional music during the funeral scene but then homer just yells let's light up the barbecue and lights the funeral pyre and i was just like oh man this is too funny um now it's

not like the like michael is saying since they did just use these models from another game there's no fine tuning there's stuff clipping left and right. It doesn't look great, but it sounds great, and it's very funny. It's worth at least watching a few minutes on YouTube. What a great idea for a mod. It's definitely one of the funnier ones I ever remember seeing. I was going to say, that video is like 20 minutes long, and you get about all the gist that you need to get out of it. I don't know that I would ever spend the time to actually install this mod and then play it when I can just watch a 20-minute video that has me laughing and tells me and shows me kind of everything that I need to know. So watch the video if you really, really love it. Maybe it's worth your time to install the mod, but the video itself is well

worth the time. I think if I was a Twitch streamer, then I'd probably consider throwing it on there and playing it for my fan base and my viewers viewers but other than that i i won't be installing it the video gave me enough but still kudos to the originality and it's just it's it's fantastic what a great and ridiculous idea and again thank you to the modding community always you y'all always surprise me i don't know if we have people who are modders that listen to this. I hope we do. But keep doing what you do because you make my life so much better. Oh, absolutely. All right. And then to wrap up today's show, we've got one last story here.

Let's talk a little bit about Fall Guys. Now, we haven't brought up Fall Guys in a very long time. Josh and I did do a deep dive. Neither of us was really a fan. I think we were interested in the game and the concept ultimately it just kind of fell flat i think for both of us no pun intended uh i didn't even know about this one either michael did you ever play fall guys sure didn't okay did not well hey if you want to coming on june 21, it's actually going free-to-play.

So they are kind of following the Rocket League model, where it was relatively low cost. I think it was a $20 game. Yeah, it wasn't expensive. $20 or $30, yeah. And I think what these game developers have realized is, once your player base is waning, and there's not a whole lot of sales going on just go to the free-to-play model it kind of reinvigorates the whole fan base and then you can just sell some cosmetics and squeeze a little bit more money out of the game and i feel like it's kind of win-win for everybody

so if you never gave fall guys a shot just wait another couple weeks you can actually play it for free well and also if they want to now that it's free to play they can also put like a coca-cola advertisement in the background or have the jerseys say red bull on them we covered that story a few weeks ago but yeah it's i don't know fall guys was just ever it's you know uh games like that where it's a royale game or anything like that and with the my biggest things i don't like playing games that look super cartoony it's why i don't think i really got into um the breath of the wild even I enjoyed it. I just couldn't get past it. I don't know why that is. It's the same reason I had a hard time making a transition from EverQuest to World of Warcraft, because the models just looked too cartoony for me. And so I looked at this, didn't check it out.

But now that it's free to play, maybe I'll give it a shot. Fall Guys is one of those games that when you're bored and you want something different to play, it fits that niche perfectly. My daughter will play it with some of her friends sometimes when they want to play something, but they can't agree on anything. And Fall Guys will come up and they'll be like, oh yeah. And they'll play like two or three rounds and they'll be like, yeah, we're done with Fall Guys at that point. It's a fun game. The premise is great. I think what ruined it for Paul and I was a little bit of just the random element. It's a fun game. The premise is great. I think what ruined it for Paul and I was a little bit of just the random element. It's a competitive game. And when you throw in randomness, it kind of takes the fun out of it. And at the time, now this was early on in its release,

there were a few issues. Number one, they didn't have a ton of different modes. So we wound up playing the same five or six games over and over. And hackers! Man, the hackers in Fall Guys was ridiculous, dude. I don't know if they've gotten a handle on that because like I said, I don't think I've played Fall Guys once since we did the deep dive on it. I just don't have much interest. It missed the mark for me. I get that there's a lot of people out there that love it. And I think it could be a ton of fun for a lot of people. So them going free to play really does make a lot of sense. You can make a lot of money off of a free to play game. The only flack that they're getting for this move is that when Fall Guys released, the developers promised that it would always be available on

Steam. They said, hey, Steam's going to be the platform. You'll always be able to buy it on Steam and play it on Steam. Well, part of this free-to-play deal means that they are going to the Epic Game Store as an exclusive game. So Fall Guys will no longer be on Steam. This is a la Rocket League. Epic Game Store did the exact same thing. Exactly the same. Right.

If you own it on Steam, you can still launch it through Steam. I have not launched Rocket League anywhere else but Steam in ever, honestly. But people that pick it up have to pick it up on the Epic Game Store. And they show us Epic Games friends and stuff like that. So you're grandfathered in if you already own it. If you don't, it's going to be free to play on Epic Game Store. But they're catching a little bit of flag for that. And I'm not really sure why. I get it. It's like, hey, but you're still

going to be able to play on Steam. So I guess I miss the anger involved there. I think a little bit of it is because of their own statements in the past. They full out said, we will never leave the Steam Game Store store and that's exactly what they've now done so they've gone back on their word you'll see some phrases thrown out about them being liars i don't i don't think they ever had the intention of going exclusive to epic but you know what when you're not making any money and epic says hey here's x million dollars and you can take it free to play my mind for a few million yeah yeah i totally get it and i i've never understood the hate over the epic game store i mean they give you free games

all the time like that's fine they they can buy my love and loyalty and it's worked like a charm i have zero issues with epic game store yeah and it's funny because i think one of the biggest issues is we've seen this happen a few times over the last year or so where different developers or publishers will just say, we're never, ever, ever going to do this. And they do it. And I think that studios and publishers should probably just stop speaking in terms like that. Even Obi-Wan Kenobi tells us only a Sith deals in absolutes. So just go back on your word with that, right? Yes. We have no plans at this time of ever moving the game off Steam. And now you're covered.

Now you can do whatever you want in the future and no one can call you a liar. At this time. But they're like, never. Okay. All right. Well, guys, we are actually out of time. So what a week for gaming. There were so many fun stories to talk about.

That's just a little bit of the tip of the iceberg. But we will be back with our next episode on saturday which will be a quick take and then we will be back with a deep dive on monday that'll be a fun one that's been anticipated for a while we're going to be covering elite dangerous which is one of michael's favorite games josh and i had never played it before so for us it was a brand new experience and I think that one will be a blast. Any closing thoughts or anything before we end the show, guys? No, just thank you to everybody that supports the show.

If you're not already, come join the Discord server. We literally just had a guy that joined the other day. Shout out to Chibi's son, I think is his name. Chibi is just kind of what I, you know. And classic example of, hey, been listening to the show forever, finally joined the Discord server. No lie, 20 minutes later, he posts and he says, you guys are absolutely right. This is the best community I've ever seen.

He said, Discord servers get a lot of flack and people say they're good and then they're not good or they're not moderated or the people are just toxic or whatever. And it absolutely made my day to hear him be like, this is no joke. You guys are 100% serious about this. Everybody was super welcoming. It's just a great place. You don't have to participate, but we want you to be part of the show and part of this gaming community. If you're a lurker, hey, that is absolutely A-OK. But don't miss out because there's a lot of people that listen to the show and love gaming that you can definitely hang out with yeah i can't agree more it's it's one of those things i was when i was listening to the show and i wasn't a host um i the first thing in

the morning when i woke up i was like what did i miss overnight what can i talk about now what kind of games are they talking about it's just it's it's truly awesome you can talk about almost anything you want and also i mean i kind of owe it to the people in the Discord for me even being on this show, because I guessed it a couple times and they were like, Hey, Michael, we want more Michael. And I'm like, Thank you, guys. I appreciate you. And also, I still think I owe a few people a couple hundred bucks for that. If I do owe you money and you want to send me a DM in Discord, I'll let you know. Let me know.

I'm sending Michael a DMm right now there you go exactly well thank you so much to everyone for listening and thank you to those who support the show on patreon or through apple and we can't wait to see you guys next time until then happy gaming absolutely cheers all thanks all right see everybody All right. See you, everybody.