Video Gamers Podcast - Shadow of the Erdtreeeeeee, Nintendo Direct and Space Marine: 2 - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: June 27, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is back with another incredible episode of This Week in Gaming. Gaming hosts Josh, Paul and Ryan are chatting the latest gaming news including thoughts on Shadow of the Erdtree, The First Descendant, the hottest video games from the Nintendo Direct and more!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Disratory, Ole Jake and JigglePuff Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, fellow gamers! We are so excited to have you back for another episode of the Video Gamers Podcast. We are three dads who love gaming, and today we are breaking down recent gaming news from the last week. I am your host, Paul. Joining me, he has dusted off his katanas, he's been out there fighting a golden hippo, who, by the way, really needs to see a dentist. It's Josh. I am the resident reigning Elden Lord. Hippo murderer? That hippo murdered me. Dude, hippos are gnarly. They kill, like, everybody in the world.

This hippo was the gnarliest and golden and yeah it's really weird because he only had a little bit of gold i don't want to spoil the fight for people that may not have done it but then it's like oh that's why they called him the golden hippo well we'll have some fun elden ring talk in a minute here and then joining josh and me we all know he's not playing shadow of the earth tree instead he's busy in toontown rewritten it's ryan yep uh i am the resident toontown uh toonologists equally equally as hard of a game for sure just as hard as elden ring uh can you throw pies at people in elden ring i don't think so you can throw dung at people in Elden Ring? I don't think so.

You can throw dung at people in some of the Dark Souls. I know that. Oh, that's way better. Dang it. That is a better gag than anything I've seen in Toontown so far. All right, guys, we have a lot to cover. But as a reminder to our listeners out there, please make sure to rate our show five stars. Give us a bit of love on Patreon. You can support our show starting at five bucks a month you'll get perks like bonus episodes exclusive channels in our discord shout out on the show so much cool stuff we are very thankful to all our patrons out there you guys are the reason we get to do the show go check it out at multiplayer squad.com all right shadow of the earth tree is here j Josh is excited. Baby. He has not been on Discord hardly at all.

Our Discord has been a lot more quiet. I think everyone's been playing it lately. On Metacritic, the game is a 95 on console, 92 on PC. Gamers have actually been a little bit more mixed on it. On Steam, surprisingly, it's got a 67%. Ryan and I, unfortunately, are the Debbie Downers. We don't really like Souls games too much. But Josh, we know you are hyped to pick it up.

Why don't you give us like one or two minutes about what Shadow of the Earth Trees has been like? Oh, man. Let me tell you that when it comes to DLCs, this is as good as it possibly gets, man. I mean, the DLC was $40. That's not cheap, but it is quite possibly the best DLC that I have ever played. Now, there was an article where the CD Projekt Red with The Witcher, I think it was Heart of Stone or Blood and Wine, I can't remember which one, congratulated Elden Ring and said, hey, you're the highest rated DLC ever. Congratulations. There's a reason for that, man. This is absolutely incredible. And it's funny because I have not...

Ryan checked on me yesterday. He's like, Josh, you okay, man? You've been real quiet lately. Are you alive? I could go on and on and on about how good Shadow of the Erdtree has been. I actually went back to the base game earlier today because

I got a new weapon. So dude, like the first area I went to was this giant castle like town thing called Bellarat. So then I'm fighting this crazy lady named Rolana who is basically like Melania from the first... Then I found this place called like the Cerulean

Coast and it's just filled with all these beautiful blue glowing flowers and the oceans in the background. And it's like if you... So then it's a freaking golden hippopotamus, man. I walk through this doorway. I'm like, oh, I know a boss arena when I see one. And then all of a sudden, that little boss name pops up, Golden Hippo.

I'm like, what the heck is a hippopotamus going to do to me, man? Dude, I can't even begin to describe what that hippo did to me what the heck's a hippopotamus gonna do to me man dude i can't even begin to describe what that hippo did to me in a family-friendly podcast let's just say it was not pretty that's uh that says more than enough we're gonna um we're just gonna play the music get them off the stage play them play them off stage yeah play them off stage that's enough so josh let me ask you because I've read a lot of the negative comments on Steam about Shadow of the Earth Tree. Some of it seems to be performance-based. And then, of course, kind of famously at this point, Eurogamer gave the game a pretty ho-hum

three out of five. And they kind of said that they didn't like the fact that you don't just go out there and figure stuff out anymore. The game's much more linear. They explicitly tell you things to try and not try in the game. Do you feel like the game's missing something from the base by adding all that? Or do you feel like Eurogamer is just kind of off on this? I 100% think Eurogamer is off on this. I've been reading some of the reviews. I will say the performance is not great. I have almost a supercomputer. I had to turn down ray tracing to medium, and I'm still barely pushing 60 frames a second. I dip into the 50s and even the high 40s sometimes. So it is a little tough to go, shouldn't this be optimized by now? And so so the performance is not great you do get a

hitching here and there kind of thing this game is just graphically jammed packed like more so than some of like the base game elden ring in certain areas so it's like i kind of get it because they've really gone over the top with a lot of the visuals and stuff and that's just harder to process at that point too the main complaint honestly is the difficulty level um but i think how they handled this is masterful to be honest right because like think about all these people have been playing elden ring for thousands of hours they're absolutely just god like characters and then you release a dlc like what are you going to do those these people are just going to tear through this and then they're going to be like well this is all too easy and

it was all the same content. So this sucks. So they came up with this system that basically kind of fixes that. And it puts you back at this base level until you start accumulating these skadu tree fragments. And whenever you get those, it kind of raises your level in Shadow of the Urge Tree solely. So it doesn't carry over if you go back to the base game like I did. But when you first start out, you are getting your hiney just beat down, man. You know what I mean? Because it's like you don't have any of these fragments. But every time you get one of the fragments, you can take a little bit more damage. You do a little

bit more damage. And I think what's happening is people are starting off. There's a boss that they put right in the very beginning that you come across who was just one-shotting me. I mean, and I think what's happening is people are starting off. There's a boss that they put right in the very beginning that you come across who was just one-shotting me. I mean, over and over again, I tried him probably 15 times and then I just went, I'm not supposed to fight this guy yet. But I think what happens is a lot of people are stubborn and they go, hey, let me just keep fighting this guy and getting their butts whooped over and over. I got three scatter tree fragments. I went back and I beat the guy in about four attempts after that. So I think it's a really neat thing that they did.

Maybe they didn't explain it very well, but a lot of the negative reviews are just the difficulty level. It is hard. I'm not going to lie. I have fought many bosses that just one-shot me. I don't even get a hit in before they kill me kind of thing. That can be frustrating, but if you're an Elden Ring they kill me kind of thing that can be frustrating but if you're an elden ring player you kind of know what you're getting into at that point too and it does

get easier you just gotta play the game it was funny to see um it has been quiet in the discord but 90 of the talk that is there is everyone just talking oh i'm at this boss oh i'm at that boss i've never seen so many spoiler like censors on the text too in our discord yeah it's been funny to watch, to see everybody talking about different guys and giving hints to each other. Yeah, it's wild. Yeah. Well, we know how much you guys are loving more Elden Ring content. Very happy for you guys. Let's go ahead and move on to the next story here.

So we got a Nintendo Direct. Now, kind of famously, Josh,osh for the most part you're out on the switch ryan i don't think you dislike it quite as much as josh you're probably kind of in between me and josh because i'm i'm a pretty big nintendo fan there was a lot here that got announced a lot of trailers we got to see almost all of this stuff is coming out less than six months from now which i think is very exciting. I think what most people were talking about the most after the fact was The Legend of Zelda Echoes of Wisdom. So let's kind of start there. First of all, for once, our parents will be right

when they're asking, are you playing as Zelda? We will be able to say yes, because now you actually are playing Zelda. i loved in the youtube comments someone said they really should call it the legend of link echoes of wisdom and it would have been very funny to play as zelda yeah so you know coming into this trailer right off the bat you see the animation style it's very much made in the way of the remake of link's awakening yeah and immediately i was like nope i'm out i don't want anything with this game yeah okay i was so ready i was so ready to come in and trash this game and then they start hitting you all this stuff with the tri-rod and i don't know maybe one of you guys can kind of explain more here but i was like dude the zelda people

they still got it, man. Every entry, they come out with something creative and fun and exciting. I love how you can just dupe items with the tri-rod. Oh, it's so cool. Yeah, you meet this, your little fairy or whatever is the, what is it? Tri or? Tri. Maybe a tri-fairy or something like that.

Tri-fairy or something like that. But yeah, you get the rod and you can basically duplicate all these items. So there is like tables. You're out in Atlanta and you have to get up to this ledge and you can duplicate a table to jump up and jump again, create your own kind of pathway up, which is cool. Because at first I was thinking, man, how are you going to do this after going from Ultra Hand? And now I'm playing a Zelda game. I don't have Ultra Hand. I can't do all the amazing things that made that last game so awesome.

But then they do it again. They come up with something crazy off the wall. I want to take what they're taking to come up with all these crazy ideas. That's all I know. Dude, the way you can even dupe water boxes, because it's like the whole game is like a grid, right? So if you mouse over any box you can you know save it and now duplicate it in the world so you even see

one instance where he has to like climb or i guess she being zelda has to get up on a high ledge and they just start placing water boxes and then they just swim straight up like that kind of stuff to me is so cool i think we're gonna see a lot of very funny creative stuff on tiktok same way when tears of the kingdom came out my tiktok was nothing but that game for like three months and i had so much fun watching just how the gaming community used all this i think we're gonna see that again i it's funny because i'm with you paul i saw it and i was like yeah i have zero interest in. And then they started talking about the echoes, as I think what they call them, where you can just duplicate any item you come across. And that's when I went like,

wait a minute, this is like Ultra Hand in Tears of the Kingdom. This is insanely creative. And then they show you using beds to make a a bridge and then like you said the water block to go up a level and at one point you're you're you're cloning spiders so that they spin webs so that you can jump from one spider to the other as they start to dangle down and that's where it really just started kind of blowing my mind and i was like okay this game actually looks really cool like i love the fact that they're leaning into this creativity part. It reminds me of Minecraft in a way, where I feel like Nintendo went, why do people love Minecraft? What's the secret sauce there?

And then they kind of figured it out and said, just give people the ability to do whatever the heck they want. And then put it inside the framework of a game, and it'll turn out great. And I feel like that's what they did with this dude they almost went like necromancer style where you can even start to create echoes of enemies but they fight on your side and i was like oh man i don't think this is going to be a game that's like terribly hard i mean all the zelda games are relatively easy but i think for like casual sandbox type gamers i think there's going to be a lot of fun to be had and it releases on september 26th it's only three months out

nintendo always has like these perfect timelines where we get hyped and the game's right around the corner there's never time to like get off the hype train which i love yeah Yeah. All right. Let's, uh, let's move on to Metroid prime for beyond. Now I wish I had more to say. I've shared this on the pod before. I've never played a Metroid game. So like, as much as I loved my game cube, like I remember staring at Metroid prime one and two, like a hundred times that game stop and just never bought it. I don't know if you guys are big fans or not, but I think it looks fantastic. Like, what'd you guys think? Metroid for me is one of my favorite series on Nintendo, to be honest. Like it ranks up there with like the old Mega Man games and stuff like

that. But yeah, I mean, it's Metroid is really, really good. Recently I played Metroid Dread, which I thought was fantastic and very well done. So for somebody like me, I mean, let's be honest, there's probably something like 18 different Metroid games at this point. Cause they were making offshoots and kind of remakes and the other, you know, I have, I've played like the main games in the series. Um, but this is the one that I was probably the most hyped for just from a, I think I would enjoy the gameplay portion of it. Really good looking game for the Nintendo Switch. There was a lot of people that said,

oh, this was definitely recorded on the Switch 2. That's why it looks this good. Might be a launch title for the Switch 2, I'm thinking. Yeah, there was a lot of conjecture about stuff like that. I think it looks great, man. It's a first-person kind of shooter. Metroid has always been kind of about exploring the world. And it's a Metroidvania, right? I mean, that's the term, Metroidvania. And so, yeah, I really enjoy it, man. I like that progression system. I like the exploring this world. I like the combat, which seemed it was Metroid 4 or Metroid Prime prime metroid prime 4 beyond metroid yes or prime beyond yeah um it looks like it is you know action heavy in that regard which you know resonates with me as well so yeah i'm i'm looking forward to this one man yeah i uh the

the extent of my metroid uh interaction is smash bros that was that was my go-to that's how i knew samus it's like oh yeah yeah the the person in smash bros neither one of you has played a metroid game no well let me ask you this mr metroid man um how does she roll up into that little ball she's very flexible okay yeah i figured i don't know i'll be know i don't know what the technology is for that because it's like she's got the suit and the can of the arm cannon and all that and then all of a sudden she turns into this teeny little ball and it's like yeah how does that technology work i was like i know that's a lady in there but how does that work yeah but what's cool about the ball thing is since you guys have never played it you get when you're ball form, you get different abilities in ball form to where it's like you can ball up, but then you can drop these mines.

And then you can use the mines to jump different places and stuff like that or attack enemies. There's a lot more in the Metroid games than what you see on the surface of a trailer for the game. That's honestly what resonates with a lot of people is you find this new ability, you unlock this ability, you know, now you can double jump. So,

you know, you can get up to that ledge up there. Um, I mean, it used to be that they were Metroidvania type games, and then they kind of made them a little bit more action focused. And then they kind of went and said, let's combine the two so that we've got this really cool action combined with a Metroidvania and you unlock

these abilities and skills and parts of the map and stuff like that. They're a lot of fun. Yeah. I remember the really old school Metroid, even though I didn't play them, I remember them being the 2D side scrollers, playing like Metroidvanias. And then I think Prime was when they shifted to that first person but yeah i mean i know especially that metroid prime one was just so beloved by critics and somehow i just never got around to it all right let's go ahead and take a short break and we'll come right back all right guys continuing uh the Nintendo Direct here. You guys have any thoughts on Super Mario Party Jamboree? It's just another Super Mario Party.

It's Mario Party. I'm not dissing the game. There's 110 games this time, Josh. I know. Dude, I love Mario Party. Like, invite me over, Paul. We'll play Mario Party with a bunch of people. I'm in.

Like, it's always a good time. For one weekend. For one. But that's literally the thing is it's like i they're fun games but if you have played one mario party you have played all of the mario parties man at that point like it's cool they're coming out with a new one there was a couple things like okay this looks neat the coopathon thing where it's like massive multiplayer stuff reminds me of fall guys a lot like fall guys that's exactly what i thought yeah and so like at that part i went okay that's kind of cool but it's just mario party man if you own one mario party like why pay you're just

paying for new mini games at this point that's literally all you're paying for is like i just want new games to play in mario party yeah it's almost like the the sports games you know it's basically you have one from a few years ago it's pretty much the same but yeah i mean some of the new games looked cool i didn't think it was weird they had one of the maps um where you get some sort of bonus and move like 40 spaces or something crazy um if you get this unique item or something but other than that i mean some of the new games look cool but it's been a while since what was it mario party uh what was the last one it was eight i'm not even sure there's a lot of them.

I think it's eight. Yeah. It's been out for a while. So yeah, I'll probably end up getting it. It's funny because I say that too. But then I think we've literally bought every Mario Party. Exactly. We play it, like Paul said, for a weekend, maybe a week.

And then we sell it. And then we're like, okay, well, that was fun. Yep. And you know Nintendo loves it because no game will break down your joy cons faster than these mini games over and over in mario party all right well that one is set to release on october 17th not too far out i will say uh the one thing that did grab me was the whatever they called it coupathon coupathlon whatever that was neat with pulling in 20 people and you did see, for example, where everyone's running from the top of the screen to the bottom while getting chased by a

giant Koopa. And there's fire and the ground is falling out. That I would have a lot more interest in. The rest, I'm a little bit more ho-hum because it is a little bit like there's four to five different types of minigames and then they're all just kind of repeated all right the other one i would say i was really excited about was mario and luigi brothership brothership we're brothers this is the sixth game in the rpg series it's the first entry since mario and luigi paper jam which is now almost 10 years old the game's got like a very unique cell shade graphic style that i really like this is the first one to be fully 3d we do see like some platforming elements there's mini games within it all these combo moves with mario and luigi with turn-based combat and stuff i thought this one

looked like a total blast what What did you guys think? I think it looks pretty cool. Poor Luigi, man. He's always getting the shaft. They always just make him look like a doofus. He gets his head stuck in the sand and stuff. I think this one, I'm not that big on the Switch, Paul, like you said. I mean, I enjoy it.

I definitely don't hate it. But I'm finding myself being drawn more to these types of games and games i can play with the kids and and stuff like that so um i thought it looked i thought it looked neat a lot of the features were cool and then getting to play you know the character both characters mario and luigi so yeah i thought it was pretty neat i i personally though i was I'm pretty amped about Donkey Kong. Oh, are you? I don't know about you guys.

That was a little nostalgia kickback for me, you know, running through the train tracks. Yeah, the bananas and jumping in the barrels. And I'm like, oh, yeah. Yeah. I always felt like the music was a lot more fun than the gameplay with Donkey Kong Country. But I know I'm kind of in the minority there. You would. Yeah, I'm actually pretty excited about Brother Ship as well. It reminded me of some of the better parts of It Takes Two with the co-op nature and having to rely on your teammate.

I'm a sucker for that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, anytime you have couch co-op stuff, I think it's incredible. I liked a lot of what they showed off. I liked the fact that there was turn-based combat kind of a la Paper Mario with even some of the same UI elements and stuff like that. But then the ability to work together to create these super moves and stuff like that. My wife doesn't like playing video games with me

because I want to just kind like play the game and let all right let's do this challenge and she likes kind of taking her time and exploring and making sure there's no hidden mushrooms somewhere and stuff like that come on honey i want to win yeah i know and so it's like i'm curious if i can convince her to play this one with me because i think it'd be a lot of fun like this looks like a blast for two people you know it's a one-player game right what how do you have a game called brothership and it's one person yeah it's like uh brothers a tale of two sons that was one player it's gonna play more like that okay where in this trailer did they say this was a one-player game uh they didn't say but in the series it's it's

a one it's a one-player series wait a minute this is blowing my mind okay that's one player okay you have a game called mario and luigi brothership in your trailer you show nothing but combo moves between two characters yeah one character going to one end of a seesaw the other one running to the other end jumping and grabbing each other from these little handlebars in cliffs and stuff like that these combo moves and you're telling me there's no two-player option in this game yeah that's exactly what i'm telling you stupidest game i have ever seen in my life why would you do that yeah i mean you you see all the button presses and all the prompts and yeah you're you're controlling mario and luigi just single players sorry to tell you

it's so your wife doesn't have to deal with you now okay well guess what guys my wife is going to be thrilled to learn about this game she doesn't have to play with me now oh okay does that not seem weird to you guys no No. It does. You know what? Forgive Nintendo. I'm selling my Switch. I'm out. Outrage with me, Ryan, so I don't feel so stupid right now. I'm so angry.

Yeah, there we go. Dumb guys unite. Switch 2 sucks. Don't buy it. Is that what you're saying? Okay. Legitimately, I did not know that. Yeah.

And that changes my whole opinion of this game, man. Hashtag switch to no switch. Well, yeah, I was going to say, Josh wouldn't know because he's not out there playing all these Switch games. And Nintendo games on past consoles. Yeah. Josh is a PC gamer at heart. We all know it. All right.

So let's move off of Nintendo Direct. We did get a Warhammer 40 000 space marine 2 gameplay overview trailer so i think at this point pretty much everyone knows about the game it's a third person action shooter man does this game look great graphically this trailer looks absolutely incredible they covered a whole lot of stuff there's basically like three main modes to the game that they highlighted you get to go through the campaign story mode either solo or in squads of three they've got another mode i don't remember what they call it but it has uh operations mode that's what it is where you get to replay missions over and over with replayability kind of reminded me more of like vermentide left for dead it's probably going to play more like that and then eternal war which is the pvp mode there's a lot we could talk about in cover i don't

know even where to start what do you guys what struck your fancy i know where swarm technology was that not the coolest thing when you're like in the in the gameplay you're up above and you just see thousands of these different enemies just swarming in everywhere unreal like it looked so cool that alone got me so hyped up uh um what is it like the chainsaw sword yes yep freaking so cool awesome there's just like you got a jet pack so they're're flying around. And then they have multiplayer online, so it's like 6v6. All of it, it kind of gave me kind of the clunky moving around like Gears, but you're a lot more mobile with going aerial and stuff. So I don't know.

I'm super hyped. I've watched that probably two or three times, that gameplay video. So I'm beyond stoked. Space Marine is one of those games that when I first saw a trailer for, I went, oh, this looks good. Every time I see something about it, it just gets better and better and better for me. This last kind of gameplay showcase that they did

really took my hype to the next level. I mean, like Ryan said, the swarm technology is super cool. What I really liked seeing was the fact that you can get all these different weapons and then you have skills that you can unlock and use and stuff like that too. So that when things are really getting hairy, it's like, hang on guys, hang on. I got my, I'll use my, you know, whatever my skill ability is. And then it'll just wipe out a bunch of those. To me, that tells me that there's progression in the game. It's not just shooting hordes and hordes and hordes of

these Tyranid things. The PVP portion, I think, looks like a lot of fun. The mission structure. So they have the main campaign, but then they have these missions that you can kind of replay that I'm assuming are just parts of the main campaign but at that point they even showed that like you select something like six or eight different classes of character to play and different loadouts and then different loadouts and stuff and they were saying hey teamwork is going to be much more important in these missions than it is in like just if you're playing the campaign. So you really need to kind of plan your loadouts and your builds and your characters accordingly. And I love any time that you have to rely on teamwork to get through something.

Like I want to know that Paul is gonna take care of what Paul's supposed to. Ryan's gonna take care of his end of things and I'll take care of my end of things too. And we have to have different builds to do that. So I'm really excited for this. I mean, like I said, every time I see something, it just gets better and better. And what a freaking beautiful looking game too, man. I can't help but think we're in the future,

man. It really does look incredible. The one thing I'm most worried about are just fighting those hordes of enemies. It's a little reminiscent of Dynasty Warriors, which we've all kind of said isn't totally our jam. So I'm slightly concerned about that. But I will say they add a lot of flourish that I really love. So I like the fact that as you're playing this guy, Titus, that you can do finisher moves that replenish your armor. And I love when games keep you in the action. And they add this extra flourish with the camera, where when you do that finisher move, because normally you're playing in third person, where you're just somewhat zoomed out,

same as you would see in any third person. But when you do the finisher, the camera immediately zooms in and moves to the right. And then you get to see a super gory finisher move on one of these enemies and every time they did that i just thought it looked so cool i love that kind of style it seems like they knew what they wanted to make and it seems like they accomplished it and that's like high praise i mean that's like the best thing you can say about a trailer right guys plus three player co-op for the campaign the missions pvp this is like everything that we've been waiting for since like hell divers to be honest for like a multiplayer

game and we've got some amazing single player games coming up that i know we're all excited for but like i think this is the next multiplayer game that i'm really pinning my hopes on oh for sure and paul you're gonna work on getting henry cavill on with us of course yes of course yeah he's he's already booked he's warhammer guys so all right sweet yeah we wish i'd fangirl so hard oh my god yeah all right and then last thing of the week the first descendant so this is a game that has been... I just keep saying yes to all these. Like, yeah! Definitely been growing more and more in our anticipation the more we see. It is a free-to-play, third-person, co-op, action RPG shooter. Those are all of our favorite words, just for the record.

It releases in less than a week. July 2nd. It has had a lot of videos. I do think it's kind of flown under the radar quite a bit. I did not realize that this is underneath a parent company called Nexon that I didn't really know anything about. They're a huge company in Asia, and they just started releasing games in the West. These are the same guys who are making Ark Raiders, which of course, Josh, is like one of your most anticipated games. Yeah, dude. They're making Ark Raiders, which of course, Josh, is like one of your most anticipated games. Yeah, dude. They're making Ark Raiders?

I don't think it's the exact same dev team, but they're the same parent company. Okay. Yeah, like EA or whatever. They're also the same parent company over the finals. So this might be your new people, Josh. Dude, they might be my new people because they know how to make a fun game.

Ark Raiders obviously is not out. We've had hype for that but it's been radio silence for a long time on that game we found out about this at what what was that was it the uh game showcase summer games fast one of those showcases there's been so many of them and i remember seeing the the trailer for this and i was like whoa like co-op looter shooter like with this kind of style, this looks incredible. So I have been watching a lot of videos on this. Come to find out that this game has been in beta

for like a year or two now. So, you know, there's a lot of information if you're curious about the game, but it is going to fully release on July 2nd, if I remember the date right, which is, yeah, one week away. It looks really polished from what I've seen. It looks insanely polished.

I absolutely love co-op looter shooters. I mean, we have gushed over Outriders. I have gushed over Remnant 2. I mean, Borderlands 2 is the same kind of genre of game. This has everything that my brain loves. Progression, strategic elements, chaotic gameplay, shooters, abilities on cooldowns and stuff like that. I feel like this is custom built for me. I know I'm more hyped than you two, but I feel like this is the kind of game that when the three of us hop into this, like Paul's going to get enamored of it right away, kind of

like he did with Outriders. You know, Ryan hasn't played a game like this in a while. I feel like this would absolutely be up your alley, Ryan. My only concern with this game is it is free to play. There are going to be a lot, a lot of microtransactions. Personally, I'm fine with that because we've always said, if you're giving us a free to play game, I don't mind giving you money if you're giving me enjoyment out of it. I don't care about cosmetics, but I'll pay you money to unlock this character that I really want to play. All of the negative things I've seen about this game have been because of the gotcha elements, because of the micro transactions, right? And it just, the stuff that comes naturally with a free to play game. Every single video that I have

watched has said the gameplay, the shooting, the characters, the abilities are all absolutely top notch. And that's really all I care about about i don't care about cosmetics and stuff like that but i haven't seen one person be like nah man the gameplay kind of boring it kind of sucks like everybody's like gameplay gunplay characters abilities progression all this stuff is amazing so it's like okay well yeah like when do you hear from somebody man these microtransactions are so sweet but the gameplay sucks. Right. Yeah.

You know? And so like, to me, that's what I care about. I care about the gameplay. It looks fantastic. You can unlock these characters. You can level up these characters. So again, I always say, I love the ability when I'm playing a game, if I start getting bored with one character, you know what, let me try out this character.

Now let's start leveling him up. See what his abilities are like. Ryan, you just jumped back into Diablo four. You know, know like are you playing a new class yes i am and it kind of makes the game feel fresh again right oh my brain's still spinning like i'm still like all the characters and everything yeah definitely like a barbarian whirlwind yeah yeah exactly and that's what i like because that just kind of keeps you in invested it keeps the enjoyment going if the base gameplay is a lot of fun then these are just the things that help you kind of want to keep logging in and want to keep playing and i feel like it has all that it could be a massive

disappointment but i'm really really excited about this game right now hey well the best thing is if it is a disappointment it was free exactly yeah you can't hate on that but i did um as far as gameplay goes i thought like you said you, being able to switch to different characters, I thought they were unique enough within themselves to make it feel fresh every time you switch. And their abilities were cool. Like the main Lepic guy or whatever that you started out with, kind of like your standard character that's kind of well-rounded. But he's got this bionic arm, and can shoot these like gravity grenades that like suck enemies together and then you can shoot regular grenades into them and run around and shoot it's just a lot of the features like you

know it's definitely up my alley i love looter shooters they're one of my favorites so um this thing is uh i i'm gonna be honest i totally forgot about this and I had no clue until we, we refreshed, you know, watching the, the gameplay and stuff. Uh, I'm like,

Oh crap. This does come out in like a week. Yeah. And it looks good, man. Yeah. I think it's the abilities that are going to make this game stand out because you know,

the shooting looks fine and great. The combat looks great, but kind of like where I always said, Outriders had such a novel take on combat. this game's got stuff like, for example, there's a class. You know this is going to be the one I'm going to play because it's a chef. All right. But everything revolves around fire. And so you set what they call stoves on the ground where you erupt into a giant sphere of fire.

And then you get like a chef star ultimate but then you can also like turn your stoves off and you suck up all the fire and it gives you a boost to like your guns all that stuff sounds very clever and a lot of these abilities have amazing names like frayna is a character that relies on all these poison debuffs one of her abilities is called venom baptism yeah like what a cool name for an ability yeah i love seeing so paul you like blair because i i recently watched like the character breakdown video on that blair looked really cool to me with like the fire that looks fun yeah you have like viesa which controls ice and and the crazy thing is for people that like this kind of

stuff all of these skills play off of each other so there's like a it's it's an easy to just get in there and mash buttons and have fun but there's a very like difficult to master um like gameplay element to how you combo your different abilities and skills and stuff like that that i think is going to come into play in the end game stuff when you're actually doing like raid type bosses and stuff like that as well where it's like you have to know your character you have to be good at this and efficient and your use of skills and stuff like that um there's a lot of characters that i thought looked really interesting i'm actually leaning towards ajax which is the tank dude that has like the shields and the leap in and stuff like that it's like normally i want to play like the really quick like stealthy rogue character which there actually is like the character that can go stealth and

stuff but but she's called sharon yeah i was just gonna say can one of you please be sharon so i can be ozzy osbourne and just you know and just being the co-op nature having a tank in the group i think would be like super handy but i just love being in the thickest stuff, too. And this guy is just in the meat of the combat at all times, which I think is kind of up my alley as well. Well, and how cool is it to have a character like Bunny, where the more you run from all the friction, you gather more and more electricity, and then you can unleash it on the enemies? It's so creative. I love seeing that kind of stuff you know what we're gonna sound so stupid pumping everything up about this game

because you know what's gonna happen it's gonna be exactly like lost ark we're all gonna play the first 20 hours we're gonna say this game's amazing and we're gonna hit a point where if you don't buy stuff you just can't continue in the game and then we're gonna rage against And it's going to be one of those experiences where it's a 10 out of 10. And then we're going to turn on it hard. That's my prediction. I'm going to get that fun 20 hours out of it, man. He's got no one to cut bait. Yeah, I'm in.

I know what I'm getting myself into, man. Make me hurt, baby. Yeah, going to hit that paintball. It's fine. Yeah. Oh, it's going to hurt, though. It's going to be sad. Hey, I want to say though they

definitely uh raiden is is shaking right now in his grave if uh because they stole his like his suit from rising metal gear this is for sure kojima's like what the heck yeah all right well that wraps up this week in gaming make sure to go check out Patreon support options at MultiplayerSquad.com. We would love it if you'd leave us a five-star rating and a written review. Also, come join the free Discord. We'd love you to come say hi. Hit us up on socials at VideoGamersPod. And make sure to check out our next episode on Monday.

Thank you so much for sticking around and listening. Until next time, happy gaming. Sharon! All right. See you, happy gaming. Sharon! All right. See you, everybody. See you.