Video Gamers Podcast - Terrific Tears of the Kingdom, Fantastic Final Fantasy 16 and Jammin Jedi Survivor - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: April 20, 2023

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are bringing you all the weekly gaming news you need.  What a time for gaming! An insane flurry of AAA video game news hits as we gush over Final Fantasy XVI gameplay, get completely sold on Zelda: Tears of the Kingdoms latest trailer, found a possible FPS gem in Xdefiant, and look forward to the release of Jedi Survivor. This is one gaming news week you don’t want to miss! Video games covered this week:  Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom Final Fantasy XVI Jedi Survivor Xdefiant Odyssey Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: 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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On Thursdays like today we break down recent gaming news and this week in particular brought just so much to talk about in case you all missed the announcement on Monday's show. Michael has stepped down as a regular host of the show. Basically in a nutshell, he's just in a season of life that's brought some hardship. So he's reorienting some things in life, which we completely understand. But I do want to say once again, just a huge thank you to Michael and everything that he's done for us over the last year and a half. He is an absolutely

incredible friend of ours. He's one of the easiest people to get along with and to have fun with. If you want to hear the full announcement, go ahead and check out last Monday's show. I am your host, Paul. And today I have never been more hyped about a Twig episode. We're going to be talking about Final Fantasy XVI, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, Blizzard's upcoming survival game, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, and X Defiant. Spoiler alert, I'm crazy excited about every single one of these games. It's been very hard for me to contain myself. Joining me, am I crazy here, Josh, or did we get Christmas early in 2023? It is finally a good year to be a gamer, man, because I don't know what happened in 2022,

something called COVID or something like that, but man, gaming sucked. And now we're reaping the reward of all these delays and these game developers taking their times on their games and stuff like that. Dude, this is like going to a Ferrari dealership, man, where it's just like, I'll have one of those. I'll have one of those. I'll take that one. And I'll take that one. How many Ferraris do you own, Josh? Oh, I mean, just a couple. Just two? Yeah.

All right. Let's start off by talking about Final Fantasy XVI. And I feel the need to apologize to the audience. I have said before, I'm not a huge Final Fantasy guy. I've only played, I think, three titles, and I only beat Final Fantasy VII. We have not even breathed the words Final Fantasy XVI. We got a PlayStation state of play. It was 25 minutes total. It showed 20 minutes of real actual gameplay footage. I think this might be the best State of Play I've ever seen. Almost every single thing I saw in this made me want to get my hands on this game right away. It releases in two months, Josh. This is not that far down the road, and we have not even

talked about it. I feel like we've kind of let this one slip by to our own detriment. I will say apologies to all the Final Fantasy fans out there. I used to love Final Fantasy. I mean, I was one of those guys that said Final Fantasy VII is one of the best RPGs ever made. I can't say that anymore because it's so dated. But at the time, it was great. Yeah. Trust me.

Okay. But then Final Fantasy got weird to me. It just became very modern in a weird sort of way. I played the Final Fantasy VII Remake, which I thought was top-notch. I played Final Fantasy Online, I think, what is it, 14 online? It was before they did the Realm Reborn thing. So this was, I guess, when it was bad. But I had some fun with that.

And then I just kind of phased out on Final Fantasy. It's dudes driving around in cars now and then dragons. And I'm like, what is this weird mix of modern day and then fantasy? I just want fantasy, man. Just give me magic and dragons and stuff, right? So I did kind of take a step back from the franchise. And I'll be honest, if you hadn't said, Josh, check out this trailer for Final Fantasy 16, I probably would have just never paid

attention to it yeah dude dude dude this trailer is bananas and now the only thing i can think of when i'm watching this i'm 15 minutes in i'm watching the insanity that's going on on screen right now and the only thought running through my head is I need to borrow Paul's PlayStation. I know it's a timed exclusive. It's only on PS five at first and you don't have one. And I'm just watching this to go in. I want to deep dive this.

We got to play this game. It looks incredible. I, I almost messaged you and I was like, let's, let's buy you a PS five with some money. Cause I want to play it. I'll sell one of my Fer5 with some podcast money because I want to play it. I'll sell one of my Ferraris, Paul,

because now I want to play this game so much. Yeah. I mean, I guess we should talk about the trailer so that people understand. But just understand that you need to go look at this trailer because I was like everybody else that really hasn't paid attention to Final Fantasy in a while where I was just like, it's just going to be more... Yeah. And then I started watching it and I was like everybody else that really hasn't paid attention to final fantasy in a while where i was just like it's just gonna be more that yeah and then i started watching it and i was like dude this might be one of the best trailers or coolest looking video games i have seen

in a while man and it only gets better like it starts off good where right off the bat i was like oh this game looks awesome and then they just start telling you more and more and more where i think like the last eight minutes are the best eight minutes of the whole state of play. So like one of the things that really stood out to me, because when I hear Final Fantasy, I immediately think turn-based combat, right? Because we're all so used to that with Final Fantasy. This one is exclusively an action RPG. They said this is the first one. It's purely action.

There is no turn-based combat, and it is incredibly fast-paced, and they are giving you tons of abilities to learn and tinker with where you're running around as this dude named Clive. He's a younger guy in his 20s. They said there's going to be flashback sequences, so you learn more about the character's past. So this is very friendly for people who do not normally play Final Fantasy. Jump in. It's a new story. It's a new format.

And I don't know what to say other than the combat in this game looks beautiful. The whole time I just kept thinking, these are the greatest effects I have ever seen on weapons and on abilities. There's like lightning and fire, ice shards. You swing a sword and there's a phoenix that comes out and flies through the air. There's so much going on on the screen at all times. It is so fast-paced. It does not really look or feel like Final Fantasy

games for me. But then again, I haven't played any of them in over a decade. So I don't know if they've been trending this way a while, and I just haven't been paying attention. But oh my goodness, everything about it looks great. It sounds great. I thought the dog animations looked really weird. That was one of the only things I was going to kind of complain about. But they called this game a high-speed roller coaster ride, and that is exactly what I think we're getting. They really broke everything in this game down. They broke down the characters. They broke down the combat. They broke down some of the menus and the hideout, I think is what they called it. Yeah, the hideout.

Right. So they broke down the hideout area. They went back to the combat and talked about how dynamic it is. Now, understand, this is Final Fantasy. This is over the top as far as animations and graphics and stuff like that. There's a gajillion particles on the screen. Your character doesn't swing his sword. He swings his sword and then a thousand blade cuts happen. And numbers are popping up all over the screen. It is an absolute spectacle. I'm here for it, man. Honestly, every minute that I watched of this, I thought was just fantastic. Then they started showing off some of the environments. And they spent a solid,

I feel like it was five minutes going through the different environments in this game. And they looked so good to me, dude. This is not like Skyrim where it's like, well, check out this snowy part of the world. And then look, there's a mountain over there and you might find a cave. These are alien landscapes. These are the most fantastical imagery that you could imagine. And it was beautiful. I feel like this game is taking full advantage of the PS5's power because some of these environments

were absolutely top-notch. I'm the guy that hates the fly-through of the game. I am. I'm like, dude, I don't care what your cities look like. I don't care what your mountain ranges look like. I'm not going to spend my time flying through these things. Just show me the gameplay. But when they were showing these environments,

I was just like, oh, it's so beautiful, man. Oh, look at that area. That's really cool. I want to go there. I was impressed. So I think that it might be a little controversial, but they did say that you're going to fight with companions. They join and fight with you. You don't have to control them. I think some people are not going to like that. Normally, I don't like the idea of AI controlled bots fighting with me. But I will say that sometimes turn-based RPGs can just really get stuck in the weeds where combat takes so long because you control every character. We kind of talked about that a little bit with Pillars of Eternity 2. In this environment where it's an action RPG, it just looks like a lot of fun to me. I don't

have an issue with that. And then toward a lot of fun to me. I don't have an issue with that. And then toward the end of this trailer, they talk about these giant cinematic fights with the icons. And all I kept thinking was, no one's done this since the original God of War trilogy that I can think of. Why are people not giving us these giant, massive bosses that are going to be longer fights? I hope they're difficult. And it's like, you see these long sections where now you're riding on a phoenix, and you're fighting in the air, and then you're running around this giant boss tail. The icon fights look so well done and so epic in scale.

Everything about this game just spoke epic to me. The sound design, the ability effects, these giant icon fights, it all looks so good. Dude, for fans of the series, or people maybe that are like me and kind of lost interest for a little while, so the icons are your summons from the older Final Fantasies. And so if you have ever summoned Bahamut or Ifrit or Shiva or Leviathan or the Phoenix or any of these things, and they just wreck your enemies, that's what these icons are. And you get to fight real-time combat another icon. I'm going to call them icons because that's what they're calling them now.

But they're summons for the older folk and these were the most over the top combat sequences i can imagine there was one point where ifrit is fighting i think shiva or rama or something like that and it looked like it was mortal combat It literally went, the game went from like Final Fantasy to a 2D fighting game with the Frit on one side and Sheev on the other, Phoenix or I don't know. They showed a bunch of different ones

and you're going at it and this is not a cut scene. Yeah. You were tearing into them. You're blasting with fire breath. I was like, dude, I want to play that game. Yeah.

Just a final note here. There's also a character in the game that is named Sedolphus Telemann, and it's voiced by one of my all-time favorite voice actors. His name is Ralph Ineson. You might know him as the father in The Witch. What went we out into this wilderness to find? Leaving our country, kindredred our father's houses but i just wanted to bring that up that his voice acting sounds like it's going to be a really integral part of this game as well

in addition to that there's a hunt board where you get to take on bounties um there's little throwbacks to the nes final fantasy games so there's like a historian. And as you learn lore in the world, you tell him. And then they actually played like the old NES 8-bit theme of Final Fantasy, which I thought was awesome. I have quite the find for you today. There is some button mashing quick time events. I was wondering what you thought about that, Josh. I will say that one event that they showed,

I was completely fine with because the perspective from the event was awesome. It's like some weird black hooded wraith, weird looking guy, and he's standing over you. And it's just the most intimidating thing ever. And even though you're button mashing, it was just so well done that I was like, dude, I'll mash that button. I'll mash that button all day, man. What's going on here?

I've never gone from caring less about a franchise to like, I absolutely need to play this game because everything in this game looks so incredibly well done. And just like every other Final Fantasy, I'm pretty sure that you could easily sink a couple hundred hours into all aspects of this game if you wanted to. Everything looks super polished. The menus, the skill trees. I mean, there's so many things you can customize between your weapons, your characters, your skill trees, your allies, your height. I mean, it's endless. It seemed endless. I could not think of a game where I watched the demo and I went, this is so polished. This is so over the top. This is so beautiful. How have we not known about this before? I know. It's wild. So it might sound like we're on Square Enix's payroll, and we are not.

If they want to pay palace, that's fine. These are just our honest opinions. All right. So before we jump into the next story here, Josh, do you mind telling the people a little bit about why they should care about our Patreon page? Well, that's kind of what keeps this podcast alive. So we talk about it all the time, and we are a listener-funded podcast. We would not exist if it was not for the support of our listeners. So if you are a longtime listener and you've been listening to the show for a while, we could definitely use your support.

If you're a new listener and you're like, Man, I love what these guys are doing. We could definitely use your support. Like I said, it's what keeps the podcast going. I'll be honest with you. If you're like, Hey, I love you guys, but I'm sorry. I just don't have the finances to do that right now. We 100% understand. And we are super glad you're with us. Think about leaving us a review, maybe telling a friend there's all kinds of ways that you can help the podcast out. But if you, if you think, you know what, I want to, I want to support these

guys. I want to, you know, make this all possible. You can head over to MultiplayerSquad.com. You can sign up for as little as five bucks a month. You can cancel it anytime. It's super easy to do. So there's no obligation or anything there. But it really does help us out. And we're very appreciative of it. Oh, absolutely. Very, very appreciative. And thank you to our current Patreon supporters. All right. So I know that we have been talking a lot lately about Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, but we have been talking a lot lately about Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, but we did not know a whole lot about this game even just a month ago. And now they've given us little morsels and bigger morsels leading up to the release. They did release the final

pre-launch trailer. I think all of our listeners have probably already seen it. Our Discord kind of blew up when it first released. this is one of the best late marketing pushes i've ever seen in a game i knew a lot of people that were not terribly excited about zelda leading up including you i was one of them including michael and all of a sudden now we get a couple of fantastic trailers and everybody i know seems to be really excited it releases less than a month from now it comes out on May 12th. I mean, I don't even know what you want to talk about in this trailer, but we see tons of sky islands, sinkholes in the desert, bubbles that you ride in the air, giant, goofy, jimmy-rigged machines running around in the world. There's laser beams that you're skydiving through. I mean,

what else could you want from a Zelda game? This seems to have everything. I have infamously been very blasé about Tears of the Kingdom. I remember when we saw the first trailer, I think I even said it just looks like kind of more the same to me. And then they showed off the fusing and the ultra hand stuff and some of the crafting and how you can make boats and wind machines and stuff like that. And I kind of went, oh, okay. Yeah, this looks neat. I see what they're going for. Boy, this trailer is what got me legitimately hyped. And if you want to know how hyped I am, I asked off work for the day that this game releases. Now, they're not going to delay it because they already said it's gone gold. Nintendo doesn't delay games. So we're safe, everybody. Normally, I would apologize up front. But I have never seen a company release a trailer this close to release that actually

got me so excited about what the game actually is. Dude, it looks like we are going to return to the old school Zelda dungeons, number one. A lot of the puzzles in the game look incredible they showed off little snippets of that um they showed off some of the combat and the fusing at one point link has his shield glued to his sword yeah which i thought was really neat you know they are showing just the most fantastical things um you know little things that i i didn't realize i even missed from some of the old trailers, like going into town and having the townspeople wave at you. And it's like,

oh, let me go check out the vendor. Maybe I can buy some new gear or something like that. Yeah. You shoot this machine and then all these laser beams shoot out and blow up all or tear down all these fortifications for this base. At one point point it looked like you had a siege tower. This is the janky machine thing that you were talking about. It almost looks like you built a walking siege tower and you were walking it towards some enemy that has like another janky siege tower thing. And you're about to fight. And I was like,

what is this, man? It's like makeshift mechs. Dude, there was so many things in this trailer that i just caught my eye and made me realize this game is gonna be fantastic dude like i i have been very down on it you know we call breath of the wild a little bit overrated i love that game it's phenomenal but i am so optimistic now about tears of the kingdom it's it's it's crazy to go from

what i was to what i am right now yeah it's we're gonna have such a killer's row of game of the year nominees at the end of 2023 it's it's shaping up to be an amazing year we're absolutely going to deep dive tears of the kingdom we'll try to get that one out as soon as we can. Luckily, we both own Switches, so at least we have the consoles. And this one will be a lot of fun. Even the whole time reversal thing is going to add a lot of new content. You see one guy fling a rock, and then Link reverses it in time, so then it shoots back and then hits the guy who actually threw it. Stuff like that is very inventive.

I love the whole idea of reversing time. I think it's going to be really awesome. All right, well, we're going to take a short break and we'll be right back and we'll dive into some Jedi Survivor. Okay, Josh, we are back. Hard to believe that this is actually being pushed to the second half of this episode, but Star Wars Jedi Survivor releases on April 28th, only a couple of days away. We got the final gameplay trailer. Shockingly, this did not have as much gameplay as I would have thought. We keep getting these trailers that are labeled gameplay trailers, and it does have some, but this is not like Final Fantasy 16, where we saw 20 straight minutes of actual nonstop

gameplay. But I think that this had some really exciting stuff to see in regards to the combat in particular i did not finish playing jedi fallen order uh only because we were busy with other games for the pod i enjoyed elements of it i am very excited to be able to play this one and especially when i see stuff like uh what's his name cal kestis is that the main guy you see him like wall running and then he does like a dash midair and then slices a stormtrooper's leg off and i was like oh if we start to get into some more like realistic in quotes lightsaber combat where you're like dismembering people i think that's a really cool aspect of it dude this this trailer i'll tell you what makes me really excited about what we saw in this latest trailer and what i'm hoping for in

this game is jedi fallen order was beautiful they nailed every environment they nailed the animations and stuff like that like it's really good. One of the things that they showed off, and I think was their intent on this, was more of the cinematic pieces in this one, because they've shown off some of the combat. It is going to be a little bit more brutal. Watching the Stormtrooper's leg get cut off was super cool. But there were a couple moments where you're on a speeder bike, and you grab the scout trooper that's next to you, and then you fling him up in the air as a TIE fighter is coming down, and you sling him into the TIE fighter, dude. When you see something ill, you know what I mean? That's whoa. That's whoa.

Anything ill you see is whoa. That's awesome. That where I was like, whoa. Whoa. you see it that's awesome that where i was like whoa and then there's another part where there's an atst and you're you're you know you're dodging the blaster fire and then it shows cal kestis on top and you open up the little lid and you force grab the dude out and swing him out of the atst and that's when i was like whoa then there's another fight where you're fighting a bounty hunter and the bounty hunter goes flying over you with a flamethrower, just, you know, tearing a streak across the ground and you dive out of the way. And I was like, whoa, it's just, there's so many things that they were showing off. Like these moments where I felt like that was a little bit of what the first game lacked in that regard was that huge over-the-top cinematic stuff like it tells a great story and i've said

that the ending for fallen order has one of the best video game moments that i can remember and i feel like they're going for more of that in this game which i am all about because i love star wars i love some of those things they showed off some mysterious jedi guy that's in a bacta tank that apparently is going to play a big role. I actually tried to cheat and look up who that was. Everybody's like, we don't know. I just,

I feel like this game is going to nail the gameplay elements. It's going to drastically advance the cinematic elements. We know that there's open world nature to it. The combat looks a lot more varied in the different lightsabers. You can get the different stances a little bit more brutal, which I like to it. The combat looks a lot more varied in the different lightsabers you can get, the different stances, a little bit more brutal, which I like to see. Everything that I saw in this just has me excited for this game. It's really shaping up nicely, best we can tell. And you didn't even mention you get to fight the Rancor from Return of the Jedi down in the pit. Dude, there were so many cool moments, man i said bounty hunters other jedi uh just crazy stuff happening i really feel like this could be a dark horse as

far as how well this game might actually turn out like i think we're all expecting it to be good i don't think anybody's gonna be like oh i don't think but i it's kind of like fallen order i still to this day think fallen order was one of of the more underappreciated games or like less hyped games that turned out really, really good in my opinion. And I feel like Jedi Survivor hopefully is going to come out and just blow everybody away to the point where they're like, well, I have to play this game now. Yeah. One last thing to mention about it that I am also interested in is the fact that it's going to have these Jedi chamber trials, which are kind of compared to like the shrines in Breath of the Wild. So the idea that you're going to be able to find these in the open world and knock out some puzzles along with combat, that really speaks to me in open world games. So this one, I'm very excited to jump in and play, even though I don't know that it was really

on my most anticipated list going into 2023, but it's really grown in estimation as we just get more and more. All right, let's move on and talk a little bit about Blizzard's upcoming survival game, which was previously codenamed Odyssey. But as we've gotten more leaks over time, it does appear that at least for now, this is the actual working title of the game. The game is still unannounced officially. so take all this with a grain of salt um but there have been you know quite a bit of of information released especially recently supposedly the game is nearly finished which is really exciting especially since we haven't seen very much yet that means they're kind of waiting until it's pretty well polished. Anytime Blizzard comes out with a new project, you have to pay attention

because the last one was Overwatch, which is still one of the most popular games and it's seven years old already. So we did get some info about this one. Not a whole lot. We do know that it's a survival game. We know that it will be in a fantasy setting. It's going to have like elves and dwarves, that kind of stuff. And the animation style will be in a fantasy setting. It's going to have elves and

dwarves, that kind of stuff. And the animation style will be what you would predict from Blizzard. It's a little bit more cartoonish. I'm guessing it's probably going to look something similar to Overwatch or World of Warcraft, and it's going to involve both magic and technology. So I kind of think about the gnomes in World of Warcraft where they use bombs and machinery and stuff along with magic users. So they did say that this game is compared probably closest to Conan Exiles, which I thought was interesting because I never played it. Did you ever play that one? It was a weird comparison for me, too, because I never played it. Yeah. And I remember it coming out and I remember thinking like, isn't that an MMO?

But apparently it's not an MMO, which is why they use that comparison. And the information that we have is this is not going to be an MMO. No. What people think it's going to be is almost akin to like an ARC server or like a rust server where you have a finite amount of people that are on a map and share a map yeah and so it definitely will be online all the time kind of type game but it is not going to be a super huge just as unlimited people it is going to be limited you are going to compete for resources and things like that. We have zero clue if PvP is going to play a huge portion in this. All we really know is that it is a survival game. It will focus on survival elements. I love survival games.

I've learned that. I like gathering. I don't like crafting so much. But oddly enough, in Rust, I love just chopping down trees and picking up rocks and stuff like that. I don't like crafting so much, but oddly enough, like in rust, I love just chopping down trees and pick up rocks and stuff like that. Oddly enough, it's kind of relaxing until somebody shoots you. Um, but we know that we're going to have the blizzard polish on this game. Uh, say what you want about blizzard, but you know, their motto is gameplay first. And that, that, I mean, that's true, dude. I mean, I'm not a fan of every Blizzard game, but it's kind of hard to slander any game that Blizzard has made as far as like, oh, that's not a good game. And so you put all that together, and I'm fine with the cartoony graphics. I don't need ultra

realism. That's not Blizzard's thing anyway, as far as that goes. So I am very excited for this because I've kind of been hankering for a survival game. You know, I like the way that they're doing it with it kind of having a server and you're competing against other people because I like that aspect of competition and stuff as well. Yeah, I do wonder on the pendulum, is this going to swing more toward cooperative play like Valheim? Because there is a large portion of this game that'll be exploration, which Blizzard's never done before. So I'm very curious to see how they work that out. But is this going to be more cooperative, or is this going to go more of the Rust route where you're going to be fighting other clans and breaking into other people's bases through raiding?

We just don't know yet. But the fact that Blizzard was willing to completely scrap the MMO that they were working on Titan, and they're willing to just scrap entire projects, and then they grabbed a couple parts and made Overwatch. So the fact that they have such a good understanding of gameplay, and the fact that their games do come out not always terribly balanced, but they do come out very polished. And so for them to tackle the survival genre, which we both love, if they come out with a super polished version of Rust, I could see that doing incredibly well. You know, I would like to think that it will be more like Rust than Valheim because Blizzard always allows for PvP, right? I mean, a lot of

their games, that's the nature of it. And even if it's not the nature of it, then they at least incorporate it in some way, even with Diablo 4. I mean, they just talked about, hey, we'll have the fields of blood or whatever they called it, right? Yeah. I forget the name, but it's like, you know, you can do PvP. So I am excited for that. I hope that's the case, because it really adds to survival games that you actually have to survive against other players as well. I feel like it just heightens the tension, really ups the ante on those. Yeah, absolutely. All right. And then moving into our last story of the week, there is a free-to-play game made by Ubisoft called X-Defiant. It is in closed beta here over this week. And this is a first-person arena shooter, but let's be honest, it's just Ubisoft Call of Duty.

And Josh, are you excited about an Ubisoft game? Because I am. I... Who saw this coming? Not me. I got robbed by a sweet old lady on a motorized cart. I didn't even see it coming. I,

this is, I almost want to like issue an apology to Ubisoft, but I'm not gonna because all their other games are kind of crappy and boring now. But I'll tell you what, man, I did not know that X Defiant even existed like two days ago. And then we had a buddy of ours, you know, he said, Hey, this game looks

good. This is my next multiplayer game. And I said, Ooh, what's this? We started digging into it. And I am excited about this game, dude, because it looks super good. This is a fast paced first person shooter, all a call of duty, which, Duty, which I'm not a huge fan of. I've never really gotten into. But it is fast-paced. It almost reminds me of Titanfall's multiplayer. A little bit. Where movement was very crisp and clean and fast.

Aim down sights time is quick. Time to kill seems spot on. And it looks polished as anything they said it's going to release with 14 maps which is great because who loves playing the same three maps over and over again you have all of the different ubisoft factions from their various games so you have the splinter cell faction yeah right you have the cleaner faction from division you have your hackers from Watch Dogs. It takes from all of these franchises.

You have classes in a game, which I am a huge fan of. And the classes matter. They say you're going to want to build your team with different classes. And they all do different things. You have kind of like a healer class. You have like an offensive class, a defensive class. You have your tech class. Tons of gadgets.

Super crisp gameplay. The graphics look good. Everything I have seen about this game just really makes me go, I want to play that. And I'm not super big on the really fast-paced, repetitive, Call of Duty type of game. They can be a lot of fun, but I tend to just get tired of them after a week or so because it just seems like it's the same thing over and over again. But this looks really good and it's going to be free to play. Yeah. So like in Call of Duty, you have to play a lot and level up and you unlock guns and you unlock attachments. All of that is an X Defiant as well. But whereas Call of Duty for me can sometimes become a little over-technical

because it's just solely weapon combat, the fact that this incorporates different abilities, like one class can go stealth and you see that you earn ultimates and one guy's using a flamethrower it really ups the fun factor of it i know it makes the games harder to balance but for me call of duty you'd get people who would just bunker down in corridors and they never move and you know to me that really grinds the gameplay down to a halt this does not seem to have that at all and on top of that the level design looks spectacular so So I was watching, I don't know what it's supposed to be. It almost looks like a Google-type company campus. And so you see that there's areas where you fight outside. There's areas where you run inside. And there's slides, and there's arcade machines, and there's an incredible use of color. It really looked great. There's running, jumping, climbing, shooting. I

mean, we know Ubisoft can have good gunplay. We have Rainbow Six Siege. Rainbow Six Siege also, to me, sometimes can be a little too sweaty, kind of grinds a little bit to a halt. So for this to be a faster-paced Call of Duty type of game, to me, it made a lot of business sense as well because it's free to play a lot of people i think are going to jump at the chance to play this as opposed to paying 70 for the new call of duty that drops every year here you're going to be able to play for free yeah i like a lot of what they did you mentioned the gun attachments they showed that off like that's just fun you know finding that site that you like or the way to control your recoil or or you know hey

i'm more of like a mid-range guy i don't need long range accuracy and stuff like that um it's just you know they're doing the closed beta i think they said this game is planned to release like soon we don't know what soon means if it means by the end of summer or by the end of 2023. But I have not been excited for a pure first-person arena-based shooter in a while. And this one actually got me excited. Now, the finals I thought looked really good too. But what a good time to want to play first-person shooters for free because we have the finals coming out and now we have X-Defiant coming out. And both of those games look really fun to me. Which one are you more hyped for? I'm actually X Defiant, believe it or not. From what I saw, it just looks cleaner. It looks crisper.

And I think I like the speed of the game a little bit more. And I like the class. I love having classes, man, because it's like, oh, I suck at offense because I tend to just run in and get myself killed. But if I play the guy that's the defense guy, I'm way better. And so it lets me find kind of my niche in games like that. And so I think that's one reason I like them so much. But I am more hyped for X-Defiant than I am the finals. And it did look shockingly well-polished from at least the gameplay that I saw. You and I have not played the beta.

I'm hoping to be able to get my hands on this one sooner than later. But yeah, between this and the finals, we've got some good multiplayer stuff coming up soon that I can't wait to play. All right. Well, that wraps up everything here for our show today. As a reminder, please go check out. I know it goes so fast. Please go check out MultiplayerSqu squad.com where you can sign up

on patreon make sure to follow us everywhere on socials at multiplayer pod um i i this was a fun episode i love being able to come in and just sing games praises i don't like coming in as the negative nancy if if you listened to our squad cast episode it was a little more negative news on like redfall and things like that i just like to be able to to talk positively about games dude and we're getting good ones so many good games coming out so like it's gonna be like one of the best summers of gaming ever man we've got tears of the kingdom we've got jedi survivor we've got diablo we've got balder's gate we've got i mean there's just there what comes out at the end of august I'm forgetting some big names here, but it's like, dude, there's so many good games coming up. I am

so excited. It's going to be great. Makes me a little more nervous for Dead Island 2, because I feel like in a normal year, I would be really hyped about it. And I feel like it's releasing in the middle of all these potentially all-timer kind of games. So Dead Island 2, I'm a little nervous about only because of the context where it's releasing against other great games. Yeah, it's like having your birthday be like three weeks before Christmas where it's like, all right,

I'm gonna get a present for my birthday, but I'm really looking forward to Christmas. Yeah, it's a good analogy. All right, well, thank you to everyone out there for listening to the episode. Until next time, happy gaming. All right. Well, thank you to everyone out there for listening to the episode. Until next time, happy gaming. All right.

See you, everybody.