Video Gamers Podcast - TWIG: Splitgate Sneak Peek, 12 Minutes Releases and T-Bagging Bots - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

Gaming hosts Josh and Paul are back with another video game news filled episode of This Week in Gaming. We chat what we’ve been playing this week (hint: it's Splitgate), before diving into some pretty hilarious news stories from the gaming universe. All the gaming news you want with your weekly dose of laughter. Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our 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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Our gratitude is forever. We'll love you forever. What do you mean I sound creepy? What? You're starting the episode right now? I was about to tell them about! Hello, squadmates. Welcome back to another episode of the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. Please make sure to rate our podcast five stars and leave a review. Also, if you would like to help support the show, you would earn our eternal

gratitude, and you can do that by subscribing in Apple Podcasts for a couple bucks every month, or you can head over to MultiplayerSquad.com and subscribe on our Patreon page. If you do choose to subscribe, you'll get some awesome perks like two extra Quick Take episodes weekly. I am your host, Paul, and joining me here for today's episode, which just so happens to be our 150th podcast, so I'm very curious to know what gift he got me. It's Josh. Paul! I had no idea. The gift is I'm completely unprepared as usual.

Well, we've never talked about how many shows we've done. And today on a lark, I was like, you know what? I wonder how many episodes. And sure enough, I go and I look, and this is the 150th. So I thought, why not throw it out there on the show? It's crazy how quickly we built up 150 shows, because I would not have guessed that it was that many. It feels like it was just yesterday, Paul.

Except that it was right as COVID started. So that part does make it feel like quite a while ago. But yeah, so this episode here, this is a Twig episode, This Week in Gaming. And every Thursday, Josh, we get together, we talk about what we've been playing in our solo gaming time, because we do always have to make time for what we cover on our deep dive episodes. So this is where we kind of catch each other up and tell the people what we've been playing. And then we also break down some gaming news. So let's go ahead and start off with what we've been playing this week. What have you been up to well i you guys know i love the roguelike card games back in the last steam festival where there was a bunch of games where

you could try the demos i don't know if you remember like rift breaker was in that oh yeah grouping remember that and you try to say no more you know that whole thing exactly man there was some real gems that came out of that time frame. So we did an episode on that. If you want to check it out, just go back a little ways. But there was a game called Rogue Book that I played a demo for and I was pretty highly impressed with. It was a beautiful game. Seemed very, very high production value. You know I'm a sucker for this genre. And Roguebook came out,

and we were busy playing a lot of games, and it's one of those ones where I would, kind of like every week or so, I'd hover over the buy button, and then I'd be like, nah, I don't have time for this, man. And then I'd wait a week, and then I'd go, you know,

I get that itch for a new game, and then I'd hover over, no, not this week. Well, I finally picked it up, and it's great i love it you've been enjoying it huh i've been loving it it's a perfect mix of like slay the spire and monster train now that's high praise but i'm really enjoying it so far it's by the guys that made faria which was a very very popular uh game like in this genre but it's just the perfect game to just sit back and chill with. Every run is different. There's enough customization in there that keeps the runs fresh.

If you're into that thing like I am, I highly recommend checking it out. It's $24.99 on Steam. I feel like I've already gotten that out of it, and I'm not tired of it yet. The only caveat is when you hit the wall on these games, like I hit it hard and I will just like not, I'll wake up one day and be like, you know what? I'm done with this game. And I just instantly uninstall it because I know I'll never play it again.

Yeah. I feel like games like this, if like on our deep dive episodes, we always play make love, Mary or murder. And I feel like roguelite games like this tend to be make love they're a lot of fun but once you hit the wall you're done with it trivia paul what's the only roguelite game that we have both married uh risk of rain two hands down that's the correct answer buddy that's probably

the best one we've played now rogue book that was the one that had like the hex tiles and the paint brushes and all that kind of stuff, right? That's it. Yeah, that's the one. It's great. I really enjoy it. I had a few complaints from the demo, but they fixed all those. They're still developing the game.

They just added this gem mine thing. It's like high-risk, high-reward kind of thing where you can go down there and might get your butt kicked. But if you don't, you get a lot of treasures and cool cards and gems and stuff like that that help your run oh nice yeah wasn't that also made by the people who did magic the gathering or something like that they had like a lot of pedigree yeah that's the thing i think the guys that made farrier or the guys that made magic the gathering are the guys that made rogue book it is it's very well polished i i do recommend it this This is not like a $40 or $60 game. This is going to be a hot and heavy make love because I know that there will come a point where I'm just like, hey, I'm done with this.

But for $25, like I said, I've already gotten that out of this game. It's well worth it. Oh, how funny. What about you? I, believe it or not, have also been playing a roguelite game, although it's a lot cheaper and it's mobile. So I paid $3 for this game. I don't even know how to nowhere on discord and said hey go play this game it's a roguelite game with snake like the old snake game where you press up down left right and you got and you try to trap the other people or whatever yeah yeah you try to make them run into you right yes and it's a roguelite it is a roguel. And that's all he told me. And I said, James, I don't know what to make of that, but I will just buy it.

It's a $3 mobile game. If he says it's good, I'll take his word for it. So I go and I buy it. And this is like a very fun game, but it's kind of bananas. So first of all, it's literally Snake. And you can buy it on Steam or you can buy it on mobile. I bought it on my phone because this seems like a mobile game and all you do is press the left or the right side of the screen and your snake turns that direction and it's like an auto battler and so you get near

enemies and your snake which you build out of different kinds of units because you earn money and you buy units and this makes up the snake that you control. And your guys will just auto attack the enemies and you got to beat wave after wave after wave while controlling the snake. And after you defeat all the waves, that level ends, you earn more money, you buy and upgrade more units, and then you go into the next level and you fight elite units and bosses it is the weirdest idea to take snake and try to turn it into a roguelite game that has almost like rpg kind of elements in it it's totally bananas i am so lost paul i know because like wait you said it's snake yes but then you said and you even did the thing where you said, hey, you got to hit left and right and your snake turns. Yes.

That part makes sense, right? But then you said your snake is made out of units? Yes. What are the units? It's like, this is like the human centipede? Like, what is this thing? Yes, that's exactly what it is. It's the human centipede.

This is where the game gets surprisingly for like this really small indie game. But basically there are all of these different classes of units where there's like warriors and rogues and summoners. I don't even remember all the names. But then inside each one, there are tons of different kinds of characters that are classes that you can buy and put into your snake. So when the game starts out out you get a couple of dollars and the game randomizes like three cards and you're gonna buy them and then that makes your snake so if i buy just an archer i've got a one cube like a one pixel snake that i'm controlling but it's an archer so if i get near an enemy it'll start shooting arrows so it's almost like a reverse tower defense too yes kind of like a tower defense except you're fully mobile tower defense rpg yes

yes and then pretty soon you're building like swordsmen which will do damage to units that are near your character but then you can have Plague Doctors, and the Plague Doctors will summon a big purple pool on the ground, and if enemies run into it, they take damage. There are Beastmasters that summon critters. There's Juggernauts that do pushback on enemies, and then also there's healers. So it'll drop healing orbs. So now I'm controlling my snake, eating the healing orbs while avoiding the enemy while it's auto battling for me. And it was such a neat game that you, Josh, but if I buy an archer card and I can only make a snake that's like seven different units long, I can buy more archer cards and now that's going to upgrade my archer unit. And if I get three archer cards, now it upgrades

to level two. And if I get three level two archers, it upgrades to level three. And then as you do this, they get these huge bonuses. So it even builds in this whole card system along with it all. It's absolutely crazy, but it is very fun. I don't think it's the kind of game you would get like 20 hours out of. But for $3, you can get like 10 to 20 hours of fun out of it. It's pretty cool. I just pulled this up on Steam because you mentioned it was on Steam. So, this is the

worst snake I have ever seen in my life! It's not even a snake! No, it's like pixels. It's like six circles glued together. But, I'll say this... Look at that rating, Josh. What's the overall

Steam score? That's what I was about to say. I was going to say, I will say this. Oh, look at that rating, Josh. What's the overall Steam score? That's what I was about to say. I was going to say, I will say this. As much as I want to troll them for this being the world's worst looking snake, this game has overwhelmingly positive reviews at 97%. 97? And that's with 2,400 reviews. I'll tell you what. From seeing the video, this looks like Asteroids meets Centipede,

but with roguelite tower defense elements. I think we've just learned it's a mashup of every game that's ever existed. And that's what it is. Hey, man, you can't go wrong with 97%, overwhelmingly positive, and $3. So I might actually have to pick this one up, Paul. I think it's actually a lot of fun. And so this one comes recommended from us and our in-real-life friend, James. But i i still don't know how to pronounce it is it snkrx is it snake rx yeah it's just you know they can't i heard i heard one youtuber call it sneaker x and i was like okay

i'm pretty sure it's not sneaker it could be snake prescription too it could be uh yeah so that's an interesting one and you know of course you know we don't we don't have uh them as a sponsor or anything we're just happy to give you know if you want to be an snkrx a shout out yeah yeah they want to be you know we're available so yeah that's that's kind of what i've been playing and other than that you know we haven't talked about on the show but we have played a lot of split gate which is going to be an upcoming deep dive it is actually going to be our next deep dive episode we have been playing a lot of it we are men of the people we're not going to cover a game that we haven't played a lot of um i don't want to

spoil anything i will just say that the other day i was popping off paul oh yeah i had like i went like 28 and 4 or something like that It was just one of those rounds where every shot was a headshot. It was great. But yes, we will be covering Splitgate. I've been having a lot of fun with it. That's not a spoiler. But yeah, we've been playing a good bit of it. And it's just a great game with friends man oh yeah yeah you can definitely play it solo but it's like all multiplayer games right it's just better if you can get a group of buddies so if you guys want to give that game a shot it's completely free and so if you wanted to download it and give it a few days of play time

then you'll know a little bit more when josh and i cover it but that will be our upcoming show on monday and that'll be a lot of fun to talk about so if you don't know anything about splitgate it's basically halo meets portal which sounds bananas and it kind of is but we'll cover that one in depth and it will play on a potato so if you don't have a good computer i mean you know we were playing with uh one of our guys from our Discord the other day. Shout out to that cat. But he was playing on his laptop, which I think he said is like 10 years old or something. So you don't need much to play it. But yeah, definitely pick it up.

That way you kind of know you got an idea when we do release the episode on it, too. Yeah, especially since that one's free. All right. And then we've got a couple of news stories to cover here. I think we'll probably do one before we take our first break here. But this was kind of a wild week for news, Josh. You were the one who kind of noticed. You and I, we've got our shared Google Doc. We just copy and paste articles that we want to talk about. And this is just kind of a week of wacky, crazy news, which I think really fits in well after talking about SnakeRx, because that's kind of the level of all the news this week.

I love when gaming news is just utter nonsense. It's just so funny that people will, number one, report on this stuff. It's great that we get to talk about it, you know, but yeah, there's some third man strap in ladies and gentlemen, because some of this stuff doesn't make a lot of sense. No, no.

So let's talk about some of the crazier stories first, and then we'll hit more of the serious stuff at the end. Let's just get right into Halo. Okay. Cause we just talked about split gate. I think it's a good transition, but people who have been playing the Halo test have noticed that the bots have some interesting behavior that they've picked up on. I don't see anything wrong with the bots' behavior at all, Paul. I mean, it looks completely normal to me. I mean, number one, I've heard the bots in

this game are actually pretty good. People have been commenting that the AI in Halo Infinite is legit. That was part of the last technical flight that they did. You could only fight bots. But if a bot kills you, there have been instances of that bot doing a little behavior that I am guilty of doing, which is congratulating the person on losing to you by a little thing called teabagging. Yes. Now, this is hilarious because I saw the headline and I click on it and sure enough, it's got the embedded video. And it's just this guy who's fighting all these halo bots and a halo bot kills him his body falls over and you just see the bot

do a good 15 or 16 teabags in a row now 343 has come out and they have said that they are actually opposed to teabagging in general you know so they came out and they said that and are actually opposed to teabagging in general. You know, so they came out and they said that and they said, no, our bots are not programmed to teabag you after they kill you. It is simply a programming error where the bots are supposed to jump and instead they keep trying to crouch over and over, which I don't know, this kind of sounds like, no, my Twitter account got hacked. I mean, when you watch the video, like there's no mistaking that they are just teabagging. I mean, I get that it's not intentional, but it's very funny. I mean, what irony that you have bots doing exactly what humans in Halo do. Exactly. And the thing is, there's not just one example.

There's a few. There's another one where a guy is shooting at a bot. He kills one bot, another bot rounds the corner and headshots him or whatever, and the guy dies. And that time, the bot runs over to his corpse and starts teabagging his corpse over and over again. So there's multiple instances of this. The only thing I can say is the AI has become self-aware because it's learning. It's learning from the people. This is the beginning of Skynet, right? It's gone live. Oh, man.

Oh, man. Yeah, and the other Halo news that we saw, which is more of a rumor, but for a long time people have been kind of speculating whether or not Halo Infinite is going to have a Battle Royale mode. And some tweets came out this week that kind of implied that there have a Battle Royale mode. And some tweets came out this week that kind of implied that there is a Battle Royale mode and it's somehow going to be tied into the single player campaign. What's your take on all this, Josh? I mean, the Battle Royale genre got so it was so amazing. I mean, we still say, you know, back in the day when we were all into PUBG,

that was some of the best, like most fun gaming that we've had in a long time. I feel like the Battle Royale genre is becoming a bit overdone and Apex and Warzone are going to be very hard to compete with. I feel like they just have such a lion's share of that. Now, Warzone is catching a ton of flack for the amount of cheaters in it. So I could see people leaving that. I mean, that's the beauty of these, right? Is a lot of times they're free. So it's not hard to just jump from one to the other.

But 343 also came out and said that there were no plans for them to do a Battle Royale. But that was also like three years ago. Yeah. Right. And so a lot can change in three years. And now there's rumor that there is going to be a Battle Royale, that it will be tied to the single player game, which means you have to purchase it because Halo Infinite multiplayer is going to be free to play. I am for it, to be honest. I have not played Halo, but our friends

that got into the technical beta have said that it feels incredible and they're very pumped for it. So if you can take that and put that into some kind of battle royale that works, I think it could be a lot of fun. And one of the things... I saw a guy that just said, dude, I don't need weapons scavenging and all that. Just drop 100 Spartans into a map and last one standing wins. And I was like, you know, that actually could work, man. Like a very fast paced, quick battle royale where it's just everybody murders everybody quickly. Like imagine a battle royale where the match takes like five minutes. Right. You know, like nobody's done that. They're always these big, long 30 minute matches unless you die right away. But that could

actually be kind of cool. So I do think there's a place for it. I would be curious to see if there is indeed one, what they're going to do with it. Yeah, I will say that I think the time to kill in Halo would naturally translate to a battle royale. Because if you play something like Call of Duty, Black Ops Cold War, the time to kill is so fast that does not work in Warzone. Warzone has a completely different system. And I feel like with Halo, you could just keep it the same, the shield system and all that. If they do it, I feel like it would work well. I don't know that I'm asking for it, but if they gave it to me and I'm already planning to buy it, then I would definitely check it out.

But yeah, the whole idea of it would certainly interest me. So we'll have to keep our eyes open on that one. Yeah, it's rumor at this point, but it seems like this rumor actually has some bones behind it. So we'll have to wait and see because, I mean, Halo comes out in, we think, November. It hasn't been announced yet, but we're thinking it's going to be November. So I have a feeling we're going to get more and more news here pretty soon. Yeah, I think so, too, especially now that they're doing the technical flights and all that.

And then for the other bananas story of the week, Josh, there's a little bit of a game that is already out and released. I can't believe I spent like half an hour watching streamers play this game. Oh, wait, did you really? Oh, I did, Josh. I did. Because you told me we were going to talk about this and I wanted to make sure I knew about it. Why did you do that? Thank you.

Thank you for having me spend 30 minutes of my Saturday watching or Sunday today that we're recording. A game called Boyfriend called boyfriend dungeon which is kind of exactly what it sounds like why don't you tell the people what this is i don't make me say this paul oh no no tell the people josh i guess if you watched much video so i saw this i i was scrolling through uh some gaming websites drinking my, and I saw this thing that said, Boyfriend Dungeon lets you date your weapons. And I instantly almost spit out my coffee. Take my money. And I went, wait a minute, I have to buy this game instantly. But I did click the article.

I thought maybe it was clickbait or something like that. But no, lo and behold, this game does exist. It is out. And so it took me to a little video where it looks like it's just a kind of low quality dungeon fighter type game. You know, your little characters running around with your little dagger, your sword, and you're slashing dungeon monsters and stuff like that. But apparently, you'll probably know more than me on this part, but apparently each character can woo a weapon. And the weapons have, there's like Talwars and Daggers and, man, I'm drawing blanks. But there's like a bunch of different individual unique weapons that all have their own personalities. Some weapons will apparently play hard to get. Some are a little aggressive. Some are demure.

I don't know, man. This sounds like the most insane concept I've ever heard. I thought it was a joke. I really did. You just want me to jump in? Yes, please. I'm struggling here, man. I can't believe somebody made this game.

This is like, i don't know a dungeon crawler meets uh dating simulator yeah so basically and i still don't know if the youtuber was ironically enjoying it or was actually really into this game i could not tell but basically you've got your apartment and you can go to your apartment and you can text all these different people, including your mom. And you have these really long text chains where the game is sending you texts back and forth between people. And then basically, you leave your apartment and on the map, you run around and you can go do a dungeon where you take your boyfriends, which are are your weapons and you can swap them out and

you use that as your weapon and you fight your way through the dungeon or you take your weapons out on dates and you have choices and dialogue options and your relationships with them hit new levels so you level up in your dates with them and um it's it's as stupid as it sounds to say this one youtuber's like oh yeah yeah this this person looks pretty sexy let's go on a date with them and i was like are they are they trying to be funny but then they're like no like this person's really like my cup of tea and i, okay, I think they're actually taking this game way too seriously. I don't think this is a game you're supposed to play that way. It's clearly a little bit goofy. Now, by person, did they mean weapon?

No, both. So when you're in the dungeon, you're just fighting with this dagger. But then when you go on a date, they show you that weapon personified. So they look like a normal... And they're not all boys either. There's men and women. So it's called Boyfriend Dungeon, but some of them are men or women, and you choose who you want to go take out on a date. And I will not spend any money on this game i can tell you that right now paul

i will say one thing the dungeon the dungeons don't look that bad it kind of looks like a like an isometric action rpg but that's the other fun thing you're fighting your demons in the dungeon so you're fighting cell phones and televisions, and you're looting sugar and stuff like that. So this game's wild. I don't know what to say beyond that. You know, sometimes fusion really works. When you take two things and you fuse them together, like Chinese food and Mexican food, right? It's delicious. Shout out to Chino bandito yes exactly but sometimes fusion just doesn't work it's like mustard and watermelon paul it just doesn't go

together you know i know this because my kids mentioned that that was a thing and i was like well i like mustard i don't like watermelon but i could see like sweet and salty right so i put mustard and watermelon and it was one of the grossest things that I've ever eaten. It was terrible. So don't do that. Take my word for it. But yeah, just this fusion, I don't get at all.

But it just cracked me up when I saw this game. And I can't believe that somebody put the effort into actually developing this thing and putting it out there. It's the most perplexing game that I've seen since Say No More, which was the most perplexing game I've ever seen in my life. It's hardly a game. And then this is like an actual game. Like, there's no doubt about it.

There is full simulation with relationships and action in these dungeons. Maybe this is just like a whole niche market that just misses us and it's for like people who like anime and things of that nature i don't know but let's go ahead and talk about a game that i know you and i are both excited to play and it's a game that releases the same day this episode comes out so So August 19th, this game is now live. It is a game 12 minutes, which we have also previewed on the pod before. But do you want to give the people a refresher of what 12 minutes is? I'm excited for this one, man. This game has flown under the radar. But again, this was a game that I think it was the Steam Festival. What was that game where it was the one where you could set up the heist

and everything was breakable do you remember that game a knockdown oh man knockdown or something like that something like that yeah i know the one you're talking about yep but it those these all came out at that same time so i don't remember if it was a demo thing or like an indie developer thing, but... Teardown. Teardown. There you go. I was close, man. I was close.

But 12 Minutes, that's where we first heard about it. And it really grabs your attention right away. It is an apartment where you see it from a top-down perspective. So the camera is kind of like in the ceiling the whole time. And it's only like maybe a 90 second video, but it shows this husband and wife and they're in their apartment cooking dinner. And obviously they're very in love and stuff. And then it flashes to like another day and then it shows them arguing and then it flashes another day and it shows some kind of

like assassins or like spies or something break into their apartment. And then you see the husband hunched over on the floor crying and there's blood. So you think like, man, they must have killed the guy's wife. And it's this very, very dramatic, well done. Everything seems very put together, like story almost. But then they tell you this game is a time loop game. And so you get to relive, I guess, every day, like over and over again. I don't know if you relive like 12 seconds, like maybe that's the game or something happens within this 12 seconds that that's like what you

need to try to change or something. Or 12 minutes even. Is it 12 minutes? It is 12 minutes. Oh, so maybe that's the time loop then. I was going to say, what can you get done in 12 seconds, man? Whatever. Yeah, but so, and then the other crazy thing is the voice acting because this is a very dramatic

story-based game. They have hired these insane voice actors. James McAvoy, who's phenomenal. mean split his his performance in split is unreal daisy ridley yeah daisy ridley ray from star wars um and then william defoe who's got such an amazing voice and you know just character to him that is an amazing cast of people right there to voice these characters and stuff. So I'm very hyped. The goofy thing is we know nothing about this game, really.

Yeah. Well, and also, I mean, granted, this is what the developer has given as the description of the game. But they basically say that this takes elements of famous films like The Shining, Rear Window, and Memento and wrap them all up to make a game. And I'm like, well, now you're talking my language. Those are three of my favorite movies. So to have an interactive thriller video game, which I have always been on record as loving, games like Heavy Rain are right up my alley, and I know that you and I both want to play 12 Minutes.

I don't know if it's the kind of game that'll have the depth for us to do a full deep dive. So we might do a full deep dive episode. Or once we both dive into it, we might decide just to briefly cover it on a future Twig episode. But that one will be a $25 game, although it's currently 10% off on Steam if you pre-order. So for a $20 to $25 game, I'm hoping it'll be a good value. I definitely want to play it. I have found, too, that I really enjoy these story-based games. I used to think that they were a little bit too calm for me,

but games like the Edith Finch game and Firewatch and Subnautica to a degree, even though that's a little bit different, it's just such a good genre to have for that palate cleanser for a lot of other things. And so it's games published by Annapurna, which they've made some very, very good games, or they've published them anyway. Take a look at the video. It's very gripping. And so I think it'll give you an example of the gameplay. And it's not always just the one little apartment room. It does take place in the kitchen and the living room, the bedroom

and stuff like that. So it's a very, very artistic looking game. Check out gameplay for it. But I'm going to pick this one up. I can tell you that right now. Yeah, time loops, discovering the mysteries behind the story, uncovering more deeper elements of what's going on. This is all very much up my alley. And shout out to Willem Dafoe, one of my all-time favorite actors. So I can't wait to check that one out. Yeah, shout out to The Lighthouse.

If you haven't seen The Lighthouse, you gotta check it out. I have not seen The Lighthouse. I always just picture him as Green Goblin. Green Goblin. Spider-Man. Yeah, what an actor. Green Goblin. Yeah. What an actor.

He's great. All right. Well, that's all that we got here for this week in gaming. Thanks so much for listening with us. Just as a reminder, please consider subscribing to us in Apple Podcasts or supporting us on Patreon at MultiplayerSquad.com. And then Josh and I will be back with our deep dive episode on Splitgate on Monday and we can't wait for it we'll see you guys then