Video Gamers Podcast - The Best of Steam Next Fest, The Alters is LEGIT and DA: Veilguard - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: June 20, 2024

The Video Gamers Podcast is back with another incredible episode of This Week in Gaming. Gaming hosts Josh, Paul and Ryan played a LOT of demo’s and we’re talking about the best of the best and which gaming demos were our favorite. The Alters shines bright as all three of us are quite enamored with it. We also chat about the gameplay reveal of Dragon Age: Veilguard and our thoughts on its changes for the series. 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

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. Hello, fellow gamers. Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. We are three lifelong gamer dads, and since it's Thursday, that means it's time for This Week in Gaming.

I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he has been busy running around with a god in the form of a fox, fighting against all the other old gods. It's Josh. What am I the god of, is my question. Yeah, I want to know too. I feel like I would be the god of mirth. The god of mirth? Mirth. Mirth is a word that we don't use very much anymore. For our listeners who don't know what mirth means, why don't you let them know?

Oh, mirth? Yeah. So, mirth is a word in the English language that it, mirth, stands for amusement, especially as expressed in laughter. Okay. Really? Got it. You definitely did not just Google it. That was the fastest Google I've ever done.

Google's an amazing thing. What a time to be alive. Very nice. I feel like that would fit me. Amusement. There you go. I'll buy it. I like it.

And then joining Josh and me, he is eating some delicious question mark pierogies with his angry clone. It's Ryan. Pierogi is more like per no use. Oh boy. Ryan and I have eaten a lot of pierogies together. We've got a lot of Polish relatives.

So thanksgiving. If you will. Okay. Now for somebody that's ignorant, a pierogi is just like a pastry, right? With stuff in the middle of it. It's not a pastry. Okay. How is it?

Okay. It's not a pastry? Like, isn't it like an empanada or like a meat pie or something like that? No, no. Empanadas are deep fried and like meat pies are baked. Pierogis, it's closer to like a ravioli it you make a dough it's stuffed with mashed potato maybe onion or cheese or garlic and you either boil it or you boil it and then pan fry it to get a little bit of color it's closer to a pot

sticker than it is like oh i mean okay That's really okay. I mean, I like pot stickers. But imagine it's made by the whitest people and they put no spices or seasonings in it. It's pretty bland, to be honest. I was going to say, when I heard mashed potato raviolis, that's kind of what my brain went to

and that does not sound very good. Oh, dude, they're so good. My grandma used to make them every Easter and they were so good. I feel like I always had to judge them up a little bit. Lots of butter. Throw some slices of onions in there. You got to got to get a little bit of extra flavor in there. All right.

Well, before we get down to our news of the week, friendly reminder to everyone to rate us five stars on Apple and Spotify. Make sure to smash that follow button and come check out support options on Patreon at MultiplayerSquad.com. That'll unlock sweet perks like bonus episodes, etc. All right, fellas, for this week, we're doing something slightly different than what we usually do on Thursdays. We usually only talk about gaming news, but the Steam Next Fest has been going on. We thought it would be fun, give a whole bunch of game demos a try. All of us have kind of, I think, played anywhere from like

four to eight demos, and we thought it would be fun just to get together, talk about some of those games and our experience with it. But before we do that, let's talk about the only news story that we're going to talk about this week. I know it's already a little bit old, but we have not yet talked about the dragon age footage that we got to see the day after the horrendous trailer at the Xbox game showcase. So even though it is a little bit older, what's your guys' impression of it now that we got to see like a good 20 minutes or I don't remember exactly how long it was 15 ish minutes of dragon age veil guard footage i want to know

how paul feels about this first why don't you go why don't you go first paul as okay so for people that may not know paul is the resident dragon age is one of his favorite game series of all time yep i have played dragon age it it is definitely up there for me i mean i loved all of them it's right up my alley as far as gameplay and settings go but paul i would definitely defer to paul is like this is your series paul like you know and when paul saw the very first cinematic trailer he had some uh some some some choice words to say about it. I said I was mad. Paul was mad, which we don't see very often.

Very, very rare to see angry Paul. But the thing was that that was literally the day before the gameplay reveal showcase was coming out. So then that came out where they showed off. It was a solid 15 to 20 minutes of gameplay uh in game and i was curious to hear what paul's thoughts on that part were because i have my thoughts on it but i want to hear from our resident expert on what he thinks i will say i feel better after seeing it as opposed to the first teaser trailer but i will will still say overall, I'm a little disappointed. There are some things in there that I liked quite a bit and there's other things that I don't like at all. So I was writing notes in real time just while watching it. And I only

jotted down like seven things here. Um, but here's just what I wrote down over the course of the video. Okay. Same emotional responses and dialogue wheel. That's exactly the same as it was in Inquisition. They haven't changed it at all. I wrote down, you can still pause combat, which we assumed would be the case. And then I wrote down, why did we add dashing? I feel like they're trying to make Dragon Age combat more Souls-like, because we've never had to dodge abilities and get out of the way of telegraphs on the ground. There's a lot of that now. I wrote down, this reminds me a lot more of Dragon Age 2 than Origins or Inquisition. And then I wrote down,

Soulless Shattered Bianca? With like 10 exclamation marks. Big deal if you're really into Dragon Age. And then I finally wrote down, I don't like that it seems devoid of team combat because you are always running around with your squad. And in all the other Dragon Ages, you can switch to and control the other players. You get to do their skill points. You can control their abilities and cooldowns.

In this, it seems like they stripped it back. It seems to be much more fast-paced combat. You seem to really kind of run around and fight on your own. But if you bring up your ability wheel, it does show combos that you can do with your allies, but it doesn't seem to me like you get to control them. So I don't know if that is maybe coming later in the game and maybe it is still there, but that has me a little bit worried. I am with you in the, if you are stripping away my ability to play whatever character I want at any given moment, I have a big problem with that because that was one of the things with Dragon Age is that you could always do was you had this cast of characters, you had this party that was larger than you could take

with you so you always had to like leave people at camp and you could swap people in and out and say hey you know what let me mix up the gameplay a little bit i want to try rolling with this character and i'll leave that one back at camp and things like that and for somebody like me that always kept the gameplay fresh because combat felt different, you had this new character with you that had new abilities and things like that, and they'd have comments and dialogue options and that sort of stuff, and if you have stripped that away, man, what are you doing? I like action combat, so for me, seeing the combat in this game, I thought this looks pretty fun. Like I'm not opposed to this necessarily. And maybe you can switch characters, but they didn't

show any of that in this first 15 or 20 minutes. All they showed was you playing as Rook. If I, if I remember the name, right. I don't know if that stands for rookie or whatever the character's name Rook was was but then you are fighting um you know where it's like you see your teammates you know and he's shooting bianca at the the pride demon i think is what they showed as far as like a little mini boss fight and you know you got your other i don't remember the character's name at this point but the sorceress lady with a little ice wand um she was shooting stuff and it's like okay cool and i like the combo idea and rook has this like lightning fingers ability or something

like that shocking fingers or something that he used a few times but what if i wanted to switch to the other character and they didn't show any of that. And to me, that's a huge worry because as much as I like action combat, what made Dragon Age was that ability to just swap at will and say, hey, I want to play this guy. I'm going to nuke this character from afar because it's too tough in melee range. Or maybe I need to actually actively play the healer so I can keep my characters alive. And if that is in the game, I think I'm all for it, to be honest. Like the change in art style, the change in combat to a more action forward combat,

all that stuff, I don't think I have any issues with whatsoever. But if they are stripping things away that really kind of made Dragon Age, Dragon Age, I'm a little, I'm not only a little worried, I'm a lot worried. I think the game will still be fun but it doesn't feel like Dragon Age at that point so Ryan you haven't played Dragon Age what

are your thoughts after watching this uh well you messed up what I was about to do I was about to troll everyone and say how uh how excited I am for the for the new stuff because I hated the old Dragon Age. So that's out the window. Cut. Cut. But I think, yeah, I'm worried. Anytime they take away the ability to just, I mean, because if it's gameplay you love and gameplay that made it such

a foundation to why the game was great, I don't understand why everyone always wants to tinker with things and tweak stuff. If it works, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. You've got to try to fix it. The biggest thing for me is as this all came out and how

angry Paul got, I just kept thinking of Godfather. He's like, look at how they massacred my boy. Yeah, 100%. Over and over. I'm very tentatively excited i i want to see it i really want to get into this series i want to to join you guys and experience it all so hopefully it meets your guys's level you know once it's released and and then i'm sure i'll enjoy it too

yeah to steal a comment i saw on youtube better than i feared worse than i hoped and that's exactly where i feel that's a good one yeah yeah i i think the game just speaking as a whole i mean i think the game looks awesome if this was not called dragon age and somebody just said here's a game coming out you know that just is untitled game right and they showed off all this gameplay i would be in like oh man this game looks awesome dude like the presentation the combat like the world the characters the voice acting like all this stuff looks top-notch so i am not saying i think the game looks bad i'm just saying i'm worried that they stripped away some of what made dragon age dragon age so i'm optimistic that this game

will be fun i'm just a little worried that it's not going to feel like dragon age in this iteration if they call it dragon age but we're running around with ai controlled companions the whole time and it's more like dragon dragon's dogma see that's not what we want out of the dragon not at all no exactly well we'll just have to wait and see i'm i'm not saying i'm optimistic but i'm not giving up on it that's for sure hopefully it'll you know hopefully it'll it'll carry on the mantle and be worthy of the dragon age name all right we got to move on to the steam next fest so if anyone isn't in the know they do these pretty regularly hundreds of game demos available to test out and play.

I know there are a few that at least two of us checked out, and there's a few that all three of us played. Let's go ahead and open up by talking about the biggest name from the Steam Next Fest. It's one of the most wishlist games on Steam, Once Human. So this is a game that I did some beta testing a couple months back. We talked about it. This is the game you might remember. I said it plays largely like Rust. It has arcs form of progression to unlock recipes. It's got a nice dash of the division, in my opinion, with the map and some of the gunplay. And you get to do raids with larger groups of people. It's also super weird. Josh josh now you've had a chance

to play like we all saw like the walking bus with the legs but now that you've actually played it i was kind of curious to know what you thought uh it's a weird weird game it is a weird game um they they give you a fairly good tutorial that made no sense to me to be honest there's i mean they're trying to explain these like the the world and then you get these what's the name of the the deviance the deviance right isn't that the right so it's like a raven is teaching all this to you there's a weird raven thing that's teaching you you have this deviant butterfly and i could not for the life of me figure out why i couldn't use this butterfly's ability because apparently you have to put it in this containment thing, not keep it with you. If you keep it with you, you can't use it.

But if you put it in this containment thing back at your base and then sync up to it, now you can use it. And then there's this weird anime girl that of course has a blindfold over her eyes. Cause that's what people do, you know, and like nobody likes to see anymore what's up with that so you looked around there's buses walking yeah i i mean it's just bananas so you're in this weird world and i'm like what is this game man like what the heck is going on and then it finally lets you go and that's when I was like, okay, okay. This is kind of like rust, man. Like

now you're talking my language. I'm building a base. I'm scavenging materials. Ooh, look at this. I'm scrapping them for stuff. And Oh, look, there's a guy running by. I tried to pop a cap in him and I were, it's a PVP server, but apparently I, I don't know if you have to be a certain level or what, but so I couldn't kill that guy. He probably would have wrecked me. I'm going out on these missions to go look at this other base. The game's directing me on stuff. I'm chopping down trees.

I'm punching rocks. And I'm like, dude, this game is right up my alley. And I think I even mentioned it to you, Paul. I said, this feels a lot like rust meets like arc.

Maybe like, I mean, I may, this feels a lot like rust meets like arc. Maybe like, I mean, I may, we like survival crafting slash exploration games and this game fits all of that. The shooting felt good. Tons of options. As far as building goes,

the world's beautiful. Um, you know, there's like some competitive nature. I was running around this town with other players and like, we were racing for these like treasure chests that would pop up. And if they got to it first, they got to it first kind of thing. And I, I was having a lot of fun, dude.

I'm going to be honest. I really was. The only thing that put me off on this was I just went, dude, this game could easily consume like 50 hours of my life and I can't put 50 hours into a demo right now. Well, that leads to a good game, typically. If you're able to get that out of a demo, it's not just something quick that you get bored of, and you're like, oh, okay, I'll see what else they come out with.

But, I mean, if you bring up Ruster Arc and then The Division, which I love survival survival i love crafting and then i love good kind of crazy gameplay with uh crazy worlds if you want to get weird i love it let's get weird you know so buses walking around crazy creatures uh just the mystery behind things so and then just a crisp gunplay with a good shooter like that's all the things that i love and then if we can do that together you know sky's the limit for me so i'm i'm stoked i'm excited to see and like you said with how much you get out of the demo that that bodes well for the you know actual game on release it has really fun progression in my opinion so basically you do anything in the game they give you like points basically. And you have this

little log book. I forget the exact name for it, but as you complete certain objectives, you get to click it and it gives you like different rewards. And next thing you know, you're crafting in the beginning pistols, but then later you're crafting these assault rifles and everything just gets bigger and better. And it's a really fun gameplay loop. In my opinion, I think it'll be a lot of fun for us to all play together i'm hoping we'll have a chance to deep dive it uh but we don't know the rest of this year is just so jam-packed i will say one of the things that i really liked was the boss fights um in the kind of tutorial this gigantic creature with a radio

tower on his head like climbs out of the ground this dude's like freaking 10 stories tall and he's lumbering towards your base and that's like oh you have to defend the base and there's with your crossbow yeah you have machine gun platforms like on your base that are just wrecking things and then you have this little crossbow that you're shooting at this gigantic 10 story tall creature i'm not sure you can fail it. Cause like that point I was trying to figure out my key binds and stuff like that. And it was like,

what the heck is going on? But like just the fact that they had a 10 story tall creature that climbed out of the ground that had a radio tower as a head that was lumbering towards my base was like, yo, like this is kind of cool, man. And there's long boss fights.

And that's, I love the fact that it's so gun play forward because with Rust and Ark, sometimes the lack of fighting can get in the way. This game's got a lot of enemies and a lot of guns. You can do a lot of fighting. The one thing that's interesting is I did notice that they removed the player left notes.

They used to have those like you would see in the Souls games. Oh, yeah. They got rid of it for this. So I don't know if they're going to keep it or not, but I always appreciated that because they would have things like treasure chest up on roof and then you would like know,

okay, there must be a way to get up there. But yeah, Once Human, I think, is definitely worth keeping your eye on. That one, I think, is going to be a blast. The demo really sealed the deal as far as this being a full and complete game um yeah like i like i said that i quit because i just went i can't put 12 hours into this game but i kind of want to put 12 hours into this game and that bodes well so i am curious to see where it goes and if we go with it and i know we got to move on but real quick too just

with the boss fights you guys mentioned that how cool is it because there's so many bot you can only do so much this guy he's got a ton of armor and he's super strong or this or that but with this the the weirdness of the world you can create anything so it lends itself to to just expansions and and just crazy wild boss fights that I'm hoping will just be memorable. Remember when we fought this guy or that guy and it gives a weird individuality to the boss fights instead of just another bullet sponge that you just got to take out with some weird mechanics.

So yeah, I'm excited. And a very weird and small Pokemon aspect where when you kill these creatures, you can capture them as like a deviant and it's straight up out of Pokemon. Like you, you sit there and try to absorb it and you see the percentage of like chance to capture it and stuff too. So it's got a lot going on for it,

man. I'm, I'm actually pretty intrigued on this one and good quality of life. You get a summonable motorcycle anywhere you want. It's got some fast travel, so it doesn't have some of the annoyances. Some of those like open world survival games. Yeah. can have all right well let's go ahead and take our break and then we'll come back and i know that we're going to talk about our number one favorite

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I'm pretty sure we all feel the same way. Hopefully I didn't give a false tease right there. Did all of us think that the altars is what stole the next fest? Why am I here? I thought it was incredible. Why'd you bring me here? What are you? Why do you look like me? Let me just feed you some pierogies

oh that's good i got some pierogies we're good uh it okay so this is pretty funny because i remember paul you were the first one to play this game and you went i love this i love this so much this is 100 my style of game i can't believe how good this is. It blew me away. And then you were going, Ryan, I can't wait for you to play it. And you kept saying, Josh, I'm not sure this is your kind of game, which is fair. Dude, I don't know what magic sauce the alters has going for it, but I was enamored with this game instantly and I loved every aspect of it. And this is normally not my type of game. So I don't know. That's a testament to how well this thing is done, man. But the alien world that they put you on, this crazy gigantic wheel of a base with all these modules in the

center part of it, the aspect of going out into this alien planet and wandering around and forging for stuff and then coming back to the base and building new rooms and new technology and having to build things and craft components or gear that you can use and stuff like that. Everything about this freaking blew me away, dude. I cannot wait to play this game. I don't know if we had plans on deep diving this one or not, but I am more excited play this game. I don't know if we had plans on deep diving this one or not, but I am more excited about this game than anything else that I played in Steam Next Fest. Oh, yeah, dude. All I've wanted to do since I played it was like, I want more.

It's just an itch that I can't scratch because I'm like, I just want more of the game. You know, it's so cool because, I mean, a lot of them are. You just get thrown in this world. It's kind of bright and sunny, and you got to go through this kind of open land to start getting your materials and craft. On this one, it's such a contrast because you're on this alien planet. There's this crazy atmosphere to it. It's dark. It's deep.

There's impending doom you know there's all of these cool features that lend itself to just awesome an awesome experience you know so so you have this altar you you can and it's not you don't have you don't have to build this base kind of off to the side you have this altar that you can i even loved like how it would pan out and then you can kind of adjust the tiles and move your elevators and and there's just so much there's so much cool features just with that and then the the exploration and and you find these like steam fishers where there's minerals or you know uh whatever to harvest and you run the stuff the power back to your altar there's there's too much to list but i

the second paul was saying you got to try this, Ryan, and I got on, I was like, dude, you aren't kidding. This is awesome. So I am beyond excited. It is definitely the best one of all the release things that I tried that just blew me away.

Well, and it tries to accomplish so much. And that was kind of my worry because you've got your base building, but then you also have the simulation element where you're cloning yourself, but you get to make different decisions in your background. And the AI computer will simulate all of that when it makes a new clone. So it has differences. So when you bring in your first alter, it's one that decided not to go away to college, instead stayed at home and kind of had more of a blue collar life. And so you get to see the difference in personality and how these two people, despite having the same DNA,

turned out a little bit different. And so in the demo, you only get to create one, but we know in the future, we're going to get to decide where do we want to branch the story and how is that alter going to come out different? And you're going to have to deal with pros and cons every time. And then all the stuff outside the base, I thought it played a lot like a stripped down version of Satisfactory. You find that geyser, you build and plop down a giant factory thing on it, but now you've got to run these tubes back to your base. So there is the element of exploration and base building building and you're doing all this. And I thought all of it worked beautifully well together. It didn't even

feel segmented. It feels like one game that just has so much going on. We're going to have to deep dive it. It's coming 2024. I'm a little dubious because there's still no date. I would not be shocked if it goes into next year, but I hope we get this sooner than later. Yeah, I'm with you. The presentation on this game was second to none as well. Everything in it was top notch. Like you said, Ryan, even when you zoom out from your base and you're seeing the different like modules that you can, you can pick and move around so you can design your base kind of how you want, which includes needing elevators to go from one floor to another. Like even that part was just so well done.

I was just like, dude, I just want to stay on the screen and like start tinkered around with moving these rooms around and stuff like that. Then when you create your, your altar and then you start talking to him, this is its own like kind of game in itself because this guy hates you. You brought him to life to like,

to work for you. I made him so mad, you know? Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And he's stranded and you're going to die. Like that's the. Yeah, and he's stranded, and you're going to die. That's the whole point.

You're like, dude, we have four days to live. You better help. And he's like, what the heck, man? Why did you do this to me? So I really, really enjoyed everything about this game, man. I really liked the lifeline and just going into that and then clicking down the dude's life and the major

moments in his life like even that the storytelling and that was phenomenal i mean you had a little static screen with like a neat hand-drawn kind of graphic and then just a one paragraph of like what was going on in this guy's life and it tells the story over i don't know probably like what like 15 panels or whatever like that. But then when you make your altar, you see the branch and now you see how the life kind of differed. And I had fun just reading through all that stuff, man. So I'm a hundred percent in on this game, dude. Well, you're reading through it. And then, then as it branches off, cause it's, it's so dramatic and you feel like you dive into it and then you go, Oh, Oh, he didn't,

Oh, he didn't go to college. Oh, he stayed with mom and he kicked dad out. You know, you start acting like it's your own personal life. Like, oh man, that's crazy that he chose to do that. And look where he ended up, you know? So yeah, all the gameplay was awesome. And we got one clone out of it. So imagine when we have a full base

of all the different guys and trying to manage it. There's just, just yeah my expectations are pretty high for this one totally agree same with me all right we gotta move on and talk about another big title flintlock the siege of dawn we've talked about this one as well if you guys remember this is the game that ign called god of war and elden ring combined and they also said it was the best thing that they saw at Gamescom 2022. So very high praise coming from them. It's a fantasy action RPG.

It's third person. You're basically out for revenge to kill the old gods and save all of mankind. It's got souls like combat with melee weapons. You do get some limited firearm usage. There's brutal executions. I know all three of us played the demo do you guys feel like it lived up to ign's hype because i was a little more mid on this one i didn't think it was bad but i i did not love it no i i definitely if they're comparing it to uh elden ring and what did you say god of war and god of war combined

yeah that's that's pretty uh lofty praise there so i i enjoyed it um you can definitely see the souls elements to the to the combat um i was definitely immediately frustrated because i'm not a big dash roller type guy and so i just want to come in there and use effects and moves and crazy stuff but i i was really excited on this one before i i wanted to see how you could traverse the land i love the idea of that kind of portal thing you can go through which was neat it felt just a little clunky you know like i i just that's the kind of feeling that i got to it it wasn't very smooth and streamlined as i'd wish it would be but i i did enjoy myself when i played it i thought there was features of it that were neat i liked the and i know you love these the little quick time event when you're loading your

musket you know where you can reloading yeah the active reloading there um that was really neat because sometimes you pop it open you forget and then the guy's charging you and you're oh crap and you gotta abandon it and bash i did that a few times and it was it was a little tough i don't know how you guys did on that that one boss if you made it to that boss but you know i had to kind of take back look at the mechanics and like all right i need to do this this and this and stick to it instead of just going off script and then i'll be able to beat them um but yeah overall i thought it was i thought it was a good a good demo but definitely didn't live up to that hype yeah for me it's interesting because i was super hyped for this demo was the one that i was like i can't wait to play this one first yeah and i remember i think you said it best

ryan it felt very clunky to me which really threw me off i mean even like her sprint speed just feel feels kind of slow and stuff and then i remember thinking like dude no like no this is not what i was hoping this game would be and then you started to get some of your movement abilities where you know the game kind of gives you it's it's all one long tutorial for the first probably hour but then you mean the 200 tutorial screens you you have to read, like in Forspoken? I mean, it really, dude, that was the other thing, Paul. So between it being clunky, and then I definitely got, I started to get this Forspoken vibe,

and I went, oh no, dude, not again. And then they started giving you the double jump ability, and then you could double jump, but then dash or dodge in midair ability. That was cool. And that's when it started to kind of open up for me. And I went, okay, like this is starting to feel better now. I'm not a hundred percent on this game yet, but I will say that I found myself really enjoying playing it. But then even like the

musket thing, right? Like you get one bullet, you got to pack it down. you got to do the active reload thing, and then you got to aim at somebody. Well, all the while there's two people shooting at you. And if they shoot you, it interrupts your reload. And then the aiming was really weird. And so it's, I don't know, man, I'm really undecided on this one. I would say that I found myself wanting to play it, but at the same time, while I was playing it, I couldn't help but notice a few of the it, but at the same time, while I was playing it, I couldn't help but notice a few of the flaws in it at the same time, like the clunkiness and the combat didn't feel super fluid. And I know they had this whole thing where it's like you stream together different moves and combos and stuff like that. And then you can decide whether you bank this stuff or not.

I got an ax that was like fire and it would set guys on fire. So I liked like the equipment and stuff, but there's just something I can't quite put my finger on that left me not feeling like amazed and instead a little worried. And I don't quite know what it is yet, but yeah, I'm, I don't know, man, this one was weird for me because I had fun, but it wasn't what I was hoping it would be either. Yeah. I feel like what what i wrote down was just there's a lot going on with combat but i'm unsure about it yeah that's i don't know what to think honestly yeah i do like firing your sidearm to interrupt enemy moves so instead of just always having to dodge roll you can just hit them with your gun and that's kind of neat. And then you can recharge those when you do melee hits,

but then your long range gun, you only get, was it three or four? It was three, three bullets. And you don't get to reload those until you rest at a campsite. Yeah. I mean,

it's okay. Did you guys play SIBO at all? I did. I actually played. Oh dude, I was playing a bunch of SIBO. Yeah. It took me a minute to figure out what the heck I was supposed to do.

And then I was like, this is dumb because if I just never move this one piece, I can't ever win. It's too easy. Yeah. And then I was like, what the heck is this, man? Well, at first when I was trying to figure it out and then the guy beat me and he started bragging and I'm like, hold up, hold up. And then I beat him a bunch of times. It's like, you can gain no more reputation from beating this character and i'm like i don't care play me again yeah at first i was like is this like uh checkers or something and it's even like more elementary

than that it's just get three pieces next to each other to make a triangle but sometimes especially when the board is so small if you just get them in the right spot, you can just move one piece back and forth endlessly until you run out the clock and you win. So I feel like that was like a little microcosm of the whole game. Like kind of a neat idea, some issues with execution, and ultimately it kind of failed for me, but we'll have to see. I know that we all played a lot of other demos and i know that we're basically already out of time so maybe we can just bring up one or two other demos just a

few seconds each i really loved a demo of a game called the operator it's like you're working for the fbi but you're in the office so field agents call in you solve puzzles and look up info and try to help them out um but then you get hacked by a hacker and it turns out there's some more conspiracy stuff going on. And that's when the demo ends. I love that kind of game. And also there's a game called Moon Mystery where you are abandoned on the moon with like an AI and it's a small dev team, but holy moly, they put so much stuff into this game. I mean, you are running around with guns. You're dogfighting in space.

You're driving a rover on the moon with different physics. You're controlling robots that are gathering mats. You're piloting a submarine on the moon, which is kind of weird. There's like a lot of weird, crazy stuff going on. But everything there kind of ran a's like a lot of weird crazy stuff going on um but everything there kind of ran a little janky so i'm not so sure about that one but they really did try to do an awful lot what about you josh what are some of the other demos you you tried out um i tried out a decent bit of stuff wizard of legend 2 um is a roguelike kind of just almost like hades but with magic and stuff

it just felt very kind of basic it was it was fun for a little bit but i was just kind of just almost like Hades, but with magic and stuff, it just felt very kind of basic. It was, it was fun for a little bit, but I was just kind of like, I feel like I've done this a thousand times at this point. Um, I tried a game called hidden pass. That was a turn-based kind of tactical game. I didn't like it, man. And it was actually ranked fairly high in the demo list, but I just found it to be not fun. I don't know, like no, no shade to the devs. And it was actually ranked fairly high in the demo list, but I just found it to be not fun. I don't know, like no, no shade to the devs. Maybe it gets better as it goes, but it was like, I had a limited move set and I made it to like the second stage, but then none of my people healed and I just died. And I was like, what is the point of this? So I don't know. Um, and then I played a,

this game is neat. I I'd be remiss if I didn't mention this one. Level Zero Extraction. This was right towards the end of the demo of Next Fast. So I didn't really have a lot of time on this one. But this felt a little bit like Lethal Company meets Tarkov in some weird way. Plus it's like an asymmetrical game. So it's like you have teams of people. You go into this big facility. you're against all the other teams. You're trying to just find scrap and make your way out.

But if you come across other teams, it's straight PVP combat. But there's also a couple of players that are the aliens that can like track you through walls and stuff like that. And so you have to be careful about sprinting too long because then your heart rate gets too high and the aliens can now detect your heart rate and they come into play. So it's like, not only are you worrying about the enemy squads that are trying to kill you, you're also worried about these two aliens that are hunting you down while you and your teammate are walking through this giant facility in the dark because you have to use flashlights and stuff. You have to open doors,

um, try to make it out. I got obliterated every like round that I played like four rounds and I got absolutely wrecked all four rounds. So I kind of just went, ah, I'm done with this. But this is one I could see if you had a group of buddies to play with being

really neat. Like it seemed like a very well done game. There was not very much jank to it the facility was cool and eerie and you could hear the alien like scuttering around like down a hallway you could hear people talking because it had like proximity voice chat and stuff too so really neat premise i just didn't it didn't jive with me but i think it's just because i didn't have anybody to play with either yeah yeah probably i i didn't i had that one downloaded i didn't get to it um but i looked over some pictures and some gameplay and stuff that was a good comparison and it looks cool

so i and i love those style of games so um yeah like as always if we can all get on together i'm gonna have fun so it seems very well done so that's one if it sounds like it's up your alley definitely check it out like the gameplay footage and stuff um i'm not sure it's up our alley because the extraction shooter sweatiness i don't think we jive with too much but you know again i just i had four really bad matches so that it was just a bad first impression but i can i can say the game itself looks very well done and the premise is really neat i can see it being a lot of fun for people oh and we all know how josh feels about losing yeah i don't like losing either so i was i'll be honest after like the fourth round i

was like this game's stupid and i just like i was like on to the next one they're all hacking yeah that's why they call it next fest um Next. I played quite a bit, obviously. The two that I want to talk about, Lindworm is a game that we actually, the dev actually reached out to us. And I've been talking with them. I go onto their Discord and see how the kind of development's going and everything. Really cool guys. I forget if they're like out of germany or something but it's cool it's this uh almost looks like a uh diablo style game but it's got a jump which is really really cool so as you're cruising

around you can jump through definitely in alpha phase um there's some weird things a couple little glitches that i ran into and and one thing that really threw me off was you could hear your sword slash or your weapon slash but you didn't hear any impact or damage so you're just like but there was nothing else to it and so it was it was kind of throwing me off but it was it was fun you had like four or five attacks and then like a specialty attack one you could like make all these daggers fall from the sky or something like that so yeah definitely like definitely. Like I said, alpha phase, but it was,

it was pretty neat to just go in and play a simple game like that. Um, and then another one that I actually really enjoyed, uh, was soul drifter. It's like a 3d platformer style, but it's almost like a kind of parkour ask where you're wall running and, uh,

jumping down and sliding and having a double, you get like a extra set of wings when you go you hit these like orbs and it gives you this extra double jump and then you have these other ones where you could it's like a your spirit got glide or something you have to hold it um but you only have so much of it like a stamina bar and so you have to use it to kind of coast along to get to next platforms and things like that and there's all different like lasers and stuff that you have to dodge that can kill you but i actually really enjoyed it for you know the hour 70 minutes or so that i played um yeah it was just a cool kind of it was a screenshot it was a really neat looking yeah it was it was really cool that that stinking level because you go up and you run out of that stamina, but you have to use it in some areas to like go up these like instead of just hopping on those standard like wind fans that take you up,

you have to use your Spirit Glide to go up. But if you already used it on a couple other platforms and it hasn't charged back up yet, you know, you got to time things really well. Otherwise, you start all the way back there, you know, at the beginning of that area. So it was tough. It took me a few tries to get through there and kind of learn the platforms and where to use everything but um overall i had a great experience playing it i have such a soft spot for platformers i love when people come out with new ones i i will say i love having the next fest because every day there's like 50 new games that you can buy and play on Steam and it's nice

to be able to give some of them a free try the altars I feel like if we didn't have that demo dude I could see where I was like hey guys I know it's really kind of like just up my alley what do we want to do and I feel like we'd probably just lay it to the side and we probably wouldn't even try it I would have just said that's not my kind of game you know if it was like hey I need to pay money to play this I would have just been like I'm really glad of game you know if it was like hey i need to pay money to play this i would have just been like i'm really glad you like it paul it's probably not my my style of game but being able to play it i am i was really really impressed with that one so i mean that's kind of the point right it's like let's give you a taste of what this game is like and hopefully

you like it and me likey yeah game dev game demos i think are like necessary in today's gaming market for sure otherwise like how are people gonna know there's just a million options you gotta you know at least let people try it out all right well that wraps up everything here for this week in gaming make sure to go check out support options through patreon at multiplayer squad.com come follow us on socials atersPod. Make sure to rate our show five stars and come check back in with us on Monday. We're going to be doing a pre-dive, which I think is going to be a lot of fun.

So make sure to check that out and that'll tell you guys what our next deep dive game is going to be. Thank you so much for listening. Until next time, happy gaming. See ya. All right. See ya, everybody.