Fire Emblem Three Houses Impressions - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 229

What's up guys welcome to the first ever episode 229 the kind of fun game's cast is always on to me I'm joined by one of the coolest YouTube video games Greg I put this Superman sticker. I'm gonna look wow. I've had a whole bunch of stickers for a while Mm-hmm, you know remember this she this woman who made it whose name is this gave me it's on here as tainted tweets tainted sweets I'm Marvel now. Oh, I got the right.

Yeah. Yeah, what's the notebook? This is my judge week notebook And so now that we can finally blow the dust off of some COD Right, yeah, finally show top of that today and joining us again the busiest lady in the business Andrew over there What's good Tim? Yeah, it's a good big games are cool and on the the shock Mike today for a little bit We got Tom Bach the Tom Bach who also is a picture producer for this James Hastings as well you guys making the show happen Gamescast fantastic stuff.

He's there Joey's gonna join us in a little bit to talk about the dark pictures and theology I'm excited here about this you should be some cool stuff. They're strapping buddy. He's here coward and this game's gonna break you Wow Scary cat I don't know if I would call myself as a coward. I'm scared.

I'm scared. I heard I make noises. I yelp I do it. I'm excited about it.

I like scary things. I'm like Andy Yeah Kevin doesn't play scary Kevin straight up so he wouldn't play this game this game All right, I was gonna be mean but you know You know what I was gonna say about Kevin supporters at the silver membership or above gets watched the show live as we recorded you can get the show three days early You get the full exclusive pre and post show or if you don't want to do that It's cool Monday You can get it on youtube.com slash kind of funny games or on varsity.com or on podcast services Just search for kind of phony games cast like a set up a show producers this month Tom Bach and James Hastings the men the myth the legends Thank you all for all of your sport. Anyway, which way you doing great. How are you doing?

I'm great to him I was telling every I feel like I haven't talked to her long time. I feel like I haven't talked to you in a long time Yeah, people it's hard for you to wrap their heads around that when I think in terms of such a small office Only eight of us right and then obviously contractors and every day but for you and me co-founders were in the same room But it's rare. We're actually in the same room. Yeah, we all doing our own thing.

We're all checked out Yeah, we're all on email. I'm doing Bob. I know comic-con next week. Whoo.

Marvel games panel I know you know things that we can't know I know a lot of things you guys talking about is it the fucking Square Enix put out a press release this morning announcing that they will be doing the first gameplay reveal to the public at the Hall H panel for Marvel's Avengers that was a press release so that is public knowledge I remember there was games. I just remember what the third one was. I'm a VR. There's a vendor's what's the third one?

I didn't see anything else that's probably Yeah, Marvel games without the image early on Got you. Yeah, wow. Yeah, they're coming pretty hard. They're coming super hard And that was the thing about where you know this is God, you're three three you're three of hosting the Marvel games panel and obviously each and every year I go there I'm excited to talk to that Deb see what they have their sleeves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is With me the smallest amount of games we've had on the panel before it is the longest panel We've ever done and it's the first time where every one of the games we're talking about our games that I'm super fucking Sorry for interesting because I remember last year was the first time I saw you do it My first time ever in Hall H sure exciting. Yeah, and you guys the big thing was spider-man Right, of course crazy to think that that game was now right now. It feels like it's been out forever But yeah, that was the we got to see the kind of reveal silver stable. Yeah, right, right And we got to meet the voice actress everything else and the limited edition PS4 Pro right?

That's actually right. That's what it was. That's what it was but then yeah, there was a lot of it like I would call filler games Well, Marvel games have such a you know, it's the tendrils are in everything right? So it was like strike force in this and mobile game updates and stuff like that in that was the I guess your one right where Since I came out and shot did Marvel powers unite VR and stuff like that.

There's all those things where they're adding It's more of a hey, we have a last year to I think they don't spider-man for that. Okay, that makes sense a couple other characters and that's the first they first show that two years ago Right. Yeah, I mean I've heard that there's a new character to be our son But yeah, they have a wide library right a gigantic library of games they're working on anytime And I think we're gonna get you know updates on some of those but yeah, these are the three that were coming out full guns player No, do you think Tim says I can't ask Greg? That they're gonna show the behind closed doors demo of Avengers in full at the panel And if you're saying that the press release that it's gonna be the public debut of gameplay I imagine I don't think that there's gonna be much more than that ready to show this soon That's possible and usually when you look at different, you know kind of games announce that E3 They then follow up a comic con of these usually the behind closed door stuff that they show squares on that a lot I hope I hope they do because I really liked that demo and yeah, yeah, I don't remember I did I did yeah, oh, I did see normally I'm a black widow hater After that demo I was like it's only a part of her combat was the best yeah, so totally absolutely I'm like this looks fun.

Yeah, and then it cuts a quick time Yeah, we'll see how this goes but so is there anything else for comic-con games wise that we're looking forward to because I feel like Games are common. That's never been the biggest thing. Yeah, but usually there's at least like a something Yeah, we talked about that yesterday right where we talk about like Whatever in terms of going to see the games like they normally do. Oh, do you think this was like it'll be there?

I'm gonna be too soon. You never know, but it'll be at PAX West on doubtably because coming out September comic-con was the first hands-on Like preview for the NES classic and SNES classic if I remember correctly, it's only what two months away from launch at that point I think because you would I think that would have been a beat you put your press release and the first time you can see it Even it's just behind a glass box, right? It's gonna be a comic-con. I think you would have promoted that if I'm Nintendo But if I'm Nintendo, I would have done mine out to 93 so who knows what they're gonna do why you can own the moment?

Do they have to do they have to do? Like can you get the moment during E3 to know? Exactly No, I can't do that so I won't bring a bar goes like Tim Wow Wow I'm just gonna talk about Death Stranding in the pre-show with my exclusive insight Yeah, I'm super excited for that comic-con. I think it's gonna be really really good panel I think they have a lot of really cool shit to announce the show.

Yeah I mean, I think that's great because you guys you did a great job last year, but the Marvel games guys are great sure and I feel like This is the first time that there's a line of games that like have that potential to be to matter really matter You know, not just Spider-man No, but that's what's interesting about it It's like obviously, you know, since that PlayStation VR event where they let us play Iron Man I've been preaching the word of how good that game is to see what the update is on that to actually get that to a Holiday sized panel like hey, no, this game actually makes you feel like I'm in here's a video Here's what we're gonna show here's we're gonna talk about like that super exciting on top of the fact that you figure for it For it for ultimate alliance, right the games on the next day and then the fact that yeah, Avengers looking forward actually getting a review a lot of stuff yeah, you be's backing out of comic-con this year backing out of this thing I'm gonna go back on whatever you want. That makes sense. They don't really have anything to show this year Yeah, but usually even when they don't have something to show they're in like they kind of like have a huge presence on the show Floor and they throw the big boat parties and stuff well They don't have an Assassin's Creed to promote this year and that's probably one of their more popular brands that has a comic book element to it Last year I hosted a panel for the division 2 because they released their new division Comic along with the the novel that they were talking about and how it ties into the narrative of the division 2 But obviously they don't have anything to report there because they're promoting the launch of episode 1 which is happening So that makes sense that you be not there because what are they gonna do something for ghost recon that doesn't make sense Hey, man, that's not your fault. Yeah, he's my dog.

It's me my dog. That's a burn. Cool. Yeah, it's me Tamb-tamb or something bam bam bam bam bam.

Yeah Was adorable so I love it you got a lot of it all right enough about comic-con I want to talk about a video game But it is embargoed for people watching live so we're gonna have to put the stream audio down for a little bit But we'll be back to five. Yes, okay. Yes. You ready for that bear it bring it down in three two one It should be down.

I just want to get quick confirmation from Joey to make sure that it's going to show we can hear me Can you hear me? So find out I'm gonna go comic-con though. Yeah, you're gonna get actually vacation comic-con my first Andrew This is my first ever convention period. Then I'm just going for fun.

Good for you. I have about a hundred for you Yeah, it's gonna be cool very exciting stuff. I'm trying to remember the first time I went to a con and didn't work probably No, I worked that one Chicago comic-con Miller I'm sure we get into work somehow Oh, yeah, oh yeah, I'm sure we'll see you all right. I have gone to a con just for work or just for fun before it's gonna be weird It's gonna be good we good cool.

I'm gonna talk to you guys about fire emblem. Oh houses come out very soon The Nintendo switch kind of somewhere a fun begins. Yeah, we had Mario maker 2 and then we got this and we got Marvel lines You got astral chain coming out just like You know what I mean leading into Zelda Link's way all exciting stuff. I am about two little over two hours Maybe a little in between two and two and a half hours into fire emblem three houses.

I played in my switch in bed next to G I was she fell asleep when you're playing it did you wish it was the Nintendo switch like No, not particularly I was okay with you don't need a great deep-ass game. No, um everyone knows I'm a big fan of fire emblem my first kind of takeaways. This is a very different fire really yes It they do not have the signature Kind of triangle weapon based system going on where the rocket positions check with the land swords and axes It is it's class based and it's much more similar to the last fire emblem Game that came out which was viral echoes shadow of of Lensea or whatever it was There was a remake of one of the OG original Fire Emblem games that is a bit more again class based and more focused on building your team out and instead of focusing more on the kind of like Unit per unit battles. It is more like strategically thinking about placement of everybody And I haven't told me about it yet.

I'm enjoying it a lot But I do love about the game though is the presentation of the story So it is entirely Harry Potter meets Game of Thrones meets anime Just together It's like three really good things together with the cons of those things as well the biggest con being the anime like there's a Incongruence to it all with the video versus gameplay like I'm not like the best person to be able to differentiate like frames per second I'll just share but I'm pretty sure that the cutscenes of which there are many especially in the beginning They're beautiful and they're great and the voice acting is awesome the characters are cool and everything about that's great But I feel like they're running at 24 frames per second Which is like movies looking but the game's not so when you have them back to back like they look choppy I like kind of like takes away from the visual fidelity of it all which is kind of a bummer because this is the first console fire We've gotten since fireman became relevant in the West like we had games on GameCube and obviously before that Like the NES and stuff but awakening on the 3DS is really what kind of gave this franchise like the steroids to become one of the top Nintendo franchises But it very much seems like a console version of fireman being made now It looks very targeted at people that have played persona and maybe haven't given by a shot But now I have a switch and I'm like cool. I'm gonna get into this sure you were asking me if I recommend it to you You hit me up and said you want to code? I was like do I you tell me because I don't I've never played a fireman I've never been really drawn to it. I've heard good things about it And it's weird because I love the games and based on the gameplay of the other ones I told her like give it a shot you're gonna like this But a lot of the gameplay that I love has changed so I don't know necessarily that I would recommend it to some new players off the bat Unless you're interested in playing a very long RPG that is like if the Harry Potter game of thrones anime things sounds appealing to you at all It's the enemy part that throws me looks like you can get past that.

So you're talking about big old Scannalik lad, there's a couple of days. There's definitely a fair share of titties in there one of the teachers in the game So it all takes place at school A lot of boom on some of these teachers That seems inappropriate Got your back So boiling it down there are three houses in this game and that's where kind of the game of thrones Harry Potter elements come into play here It's more game of thrones in the sense that everyone has a really stupid name that I'm never gonna Remember and I don't understand why the world needs to be called like fart side and then like the other things like Flogel songs and whatever and like whoa just like maybe Well, they want to make sure you're not your world But what they do a good job of is making everything very simple for stupid people like me and it's all color-coded So it's like oh the yellow guys got it. Oh the red guys cool So there's the three different kingdoms and it pains me you need to make the choice But I don't all about the choice it is this perma death idea where you go into battle if one of your characters dies They're gone. They don't come back in the story.

They're just they're over and it's really satisfying and you realize you're hooked to this game When your character dies you're like well, that's it. I'm restarting this 40-minute mission over again because I'm not losing my My paladin Jill, you know what I mean? But there's choices you have to make in this game more so than any of the fire moves are played so far even in just two hours There's choices you're making that are changing the path of what you're doing Okay, and from what people that are a little farther than you were telling me is that those choices kind of like follow you throughout the game And each of the three houses depending on what choice you make has a very different story beats Which is similar to the last or two fireland games ago fates. It was split into three different games That is now back in one game.

So they're not trying to milk money from every which way It's just a clown you get this the whole story You can only just be one of the houses and be happy you get a full story Or if you want to keep going this is the most replayable fire emblem That's okay, okay, which is all good stuff But choosing one of the houses is a big choice you have to make early on and God It took me way too long because I'm like I really the yellow guy man personality I'm like choosing your starter Pokemon It kind of is but it's like you don't really get enough to go in I've really understand the different like styles of these characters But I'm like I like this guy's vibe and the leader of the class is those three right there So why I was like why don't you pick the blue it's you because that's what I'm saying It was hard for me to not choose the blue blue blue blue blue blue blue just a stick up his ass and I'm like Just like you don't like you and your friends. It's like no man like I want to hang out Yeah, I want yellow man. So you're selling me once and for all your yellow. No, I'm not saying No, I'm not saying that These are tough decisions the firm will makes you make right burn blue Andy, you know Yeah, but it made cared enough about this yellow guy that I chose him over blue like that should say something that means you Don't work there.

I like homework the core of this game breaks down into the old games You see essentially just be you have your mission which is kind of like tactical RPG chess based grid system You go through you find it used to be rock paper So that's also here modified instead of rock paper scissors There's it's your weapons to great right? You have a certain amount of points you can go move your character is each character can move a certain amount of spaces It's all about spacing and then when you get near enemies you can see what they're attacking defenses What you're attacking fences? It's all number based and how many like numbers gonna go down on your weapon if you use it There's these combat arts that you can learn that are like the advanced skills those use more of your weapon Weapon decoration so it's like it's all strategy like trying to figure out how to use your units But now there's a new thing of instead of in between those matches It used to be like this whole just menu based system of a lot of support conversations where you can be like What are the characters up to you? You can kind of just it was just all text based stuff go to the store whatever It was all in menu now you actually walk around the school So you can this was introducing the last game But I feel like this one really kind of is nailing it where it is more like a traditional RPG 3D gameplay You're walking around talking people and that's what this game is all about is these characters the interactions so far?

I'm loving the writing I really care about the characters and I want to see my class succeed and fuck up the other classes It reminds me more of Game of Thrones than Harry Potter in the sense of the houses having their kind of like like one of them It's like a deer and one like they have their animals aligned and stuff and they really really care about the problem We're talking about come on But it doesn't seem like lighthearted and that goofy is like the Hufflepuffs and the the Ravenclaw's and Harry Potter side I don't know like they do take it really seriously and there is big threats going on and it's all backed up by just classic stellar gameplay of the The matches looks so it's it's really good. I just wish that the Looks of it would match up a bit more with the gameplay. Yeah, where I don't love the look of The grid system like it looks like this is the first time they've ever stuck with the same art style for like cutscenes and Gameplay itself whereas like on the 3ds was a big issue with awakening where there's three separate art styles You're either seeing your character in the text-based things like beautifully hand-drawn Cartoons or you're in the actual the grid system itself is pixelated and it looks so rad Oh, there's only four trailers to find boobs. Hey, that's her.

Yeah, and she's wearing a swimsuit to class I guess I guess but in awakening it was weird because it'd be these like polygon models of the characters as well You see in cutscenes and it was fucking hideous. So it's like each character would have three different designs that you'd have to like Understand who they are and it's like color-based. You can kind of figure it out. Sure.

Now. It's like they all they always look the same Which is good, but I miss the pixel-based look of the gameplay for because I feel you make the gameplay look a little Simple yeah, it looks simple and so I'm definitely excited to keep playing it You trust me. I want to see if you like it because there's there's also this whole calendar system now We're in between each big match. There's you get a week Yes, you get one week to deal with stuff and teach your kids different skills because you are the teacher and Then you go into the battles and stuff with the battles or against the other classes for practice or if there's actual Real threats out their story base and I'm really liking the story so far I've stayed out of really much of this like watch the direction you three back and then didn't wasn't really attention And I'm totally invested so far I think I think they're really well written characters and the gameplay is great I still have around my head around like where the challenge is gonna come from because I was so used to the rock paper scissor stuff But it's bullshit.

It's in the audience is though if you said it's because I never played fire Never do you think it is for the hardcore firemen people even though the game plays different or do you think they really are trying to get other? Jean Repple to check it out I really think that this is their attempts at making this as mainstream as possible to like just be like hey guys You have a switch like all you people that weren't Nintendo people that now aren't Nintendo people You should give this one a shot and I think that they're making it one game instead of three is like trying to simplify it that way I will say that I so far I think awakening on 3ds was a better entry point early on for people that I've never played before because you start playing that's like I get what this is and you either like it or you don't I'm a little over two hours in and like there's just a lot of story And it's like I've only really done like two of the the main additions and I'm like that's a long time to like really Tough jumping into this but also people on people like me so hook them on persona right making me care about the world in the characters Before I ever had a start I thought I would like it and it's like no and that's my thing This is a different fireman So I need to not like judge too quickly because it is different it is not what used to be there And I mean I need to see if I like this and so far I'm really really enjoying it And I can't wait to keep playing it so I mean it's just seen you sold me on it Yeah, I think you have to be predisposed to like JRPGs though to even be interested in learning about the fire and limb Characters in the storyline in the world because there's nothing that I've seen and nothing that you've said is like setting off my interest meter Like at all here's my thing That's the kind of game where I am right? I don't play the style game ever I would take you out it entirely like this It's not a JRPG. It is a tactical strategy RPG right I mean looking at it right now.

It's giving me like you know difference But like when you get into the fight fight there right like here your chronicles, but actually I know whenever I talk about Okay, people tell me I should play this it also has like ex-com overlays system in terms of X based Yeah, the grid base is a very particular style gameplay right like you have to be ready in your mind So that you're going into this type of tactical game the picture I would have for you now I'm trying to sell you on it But I would say to lean into the game of thrones side of it like it is story like the anime is just the look right story wise and like character wise It is fantasy like epic fantasy stuff And I feel like that's right up your alley it is and the way they present the story and stuff It is the battle of kingdoms and all this stuff and the other thing is like this is one of those games where you need to know Nothing about the other games. There's no connections. Well, that's good Final three houses is all you need to know you jump in and know everything so exciting stuff interesting tune for more I'll definitely be playing. Oh, I thought it was funny that the this person broke in bar go and go still for a four No, damn Unlike me I didn't break in bar go.

Oh, Barrett you can now all right hold on bring back the volume Doing a time code really quick. Please don't stop We're going back to stream audio in three two one, and so that's that's raining Great. Hey dr. Mario world right on one's favorite mobile.

So are you further than where we were talking about yesterday? Because I haven't even opened it yesterday. I have it now. So where are you in?

I'm so much tutorial like I World Let's see if 14 or something or 14 or level 14 or whatever like are you on that you're on the 14 square of the thing? Yeah, I still feel to me like I played for like an hour gotcha a little less than an hour because I still have my unlimited hearts Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean so I have no I'm not a doctor Mario kid I wasn't raised with an antenna obviously so dr. Mars I've something I've seen I'm like Oh, I should like that based on Tetris and luminance everything else never given a shot Obviously this drop on iOS down what it dropped there didn't realize it was like doing the match three thing fighting all these different viruses So I started playing on the train and again, it was this is just top level. Hey, it's not the main game I played this week.

I I am interested in it I'm still in the hour of unlimited hearts where I'm not having to get nickel and dime microtransactions or anything I was wondering more of you were gonna play it how you come down to Mario Yeah, I'm so dr. Mario. I love dr. Mario one of my favorite favorite games of those tomorrow I spent countless hours playing dr.

Mario Batter a out. Yeah, it's just right around coming to bubble. It's attack. Yeah, but that's just coming that's just attack That's just about all right real quick guys.

I've never played dr. Mario before and I skipped a tutorial Which was a mistake but I eventually got it and with like that hour of like unlimited play I got to like level 30 something nice I fucking love this game. Yeah, it's so good. Yeah, it's a lot of fun So I got to the point in I think it was level 27 where I ran out my hour ran out Um and then if you're good you can keep playing for a while because it does every time you clear a level for the first time It gives you another heart and I played for an additional like 30 minutes like the as you go the levels get harder Yeah, it's a lot of fun.

I really really like it. That's my thing is again not knowing dr. Mario Just going and playing with it stuff. I see where I could really I would really get into this as a as someone that's played the original dr Mario sensibly and now this how does the gameplay differ so what the first thing you're gonna notice is that there is touch integration so Traditionally in dr.

Mario functions a lot like Tetris where the the capsule the color capsule would drop from the top And then you would need to match it to the viruses below now This way it goes the other direction goes from the bottom up But what it's great about it is that you can free move the capsule around with your finger And then once you let go then it slowly drifts upwards and once you've let go of the capsule You can no longer bring it back down, but if you keep your finger pressed on the screen You can essentially move it anywhere you want which really gives you a lot of strategic choices because in traditional dr Mario you essentially have unlimited Capsules until you fail the level or until you clear the level and here you have a limited amount of capsules You have to very carefully think about how you're gonna use them You can't just kind of really really drop them around I've just gotten into a couple of levels where they've opened up all of the items So I haven't really dug deep into what the items do and things like that But I love how when it comes to the puzzle mechanic of the game They utilize the mobile interface to give it its own twist So it's not just a direct skin of classic dr. Mario though I would play that if available yeah, I would prefer that because I'm not I love dr. Mario, but this isn't really doing it for me and I think I just finished my Unlimited hour gotcha and there's something about the limited capsules where it's like maybe I'm just not good enough at it in this way That it just was like what am I doing wrong? Yeah, I take it like I think it's like playing right there even just a gig going on level 10 right now or whatever It was stage 10 like I can totally see where I'm gonna come back to that And even though I've run into the wall of microtransactions that people talked about it the women to play time I think for me that won't be a video since I'm not the biggest mobile gamer where I do feel like that'll be I'm on the bus okay cool I'm out of my five lives or whatever or I'm just gonna turn it off and walk away and let it refresh over those 30 minutes Yeah, I think that they're doing a lot of really neat things with the match three element It's not a traditional match three like when we first talked about it being match three I thought it was gonna be something much different than it is I thought it was gonna be a little bit more candy crush Okay But I like that the way they're incorporating the match three with this and I think it's got a lot of potential I'm gonna need to play like substantially more to see how the microtransactions are Later on because I remember the very first time I played candy crush I got probably like levels 60 or 70 before I hit the paywall Yeah, but then once you get to those upper levels you hit the paywall faster and faster and faster because the levels get increasingly more difficult And that's the challenging part about these free to play games We know we were talking about on games daily earlier this week and I was reflecting on that conversation because obviously a lot of people were leaving comments on the video about microtransactions in mobile games specifically and I think the challenge for mobile game developers is how do we extend our gameplay much like a Live service game like a destiny or division or whatever Yeah, but for a mobile market and make it feel rewarding But also, you know to continue to make revenue from it and I would love an example particularly like from a best friend or somebody who also plays mobile Games that has a game that they think is not an egregious example of these timed microtransactions That plays consistently because I think the real key is like what Greg was saying I pick up I play it for a few minutes I'm done I don't really feel the paywall but I can imagine wanting to sit down and play this for like easily now I'm making sure back in the day with pickle blast.

I loved it But the paywall sounds like well you're ruining my experience. Yeah, yeah, that's the thing where I feel like and I'm only speaking for myself I guess where with this one versus a game like pegal where I feel like pegal's like one more one more let's go Let's go like when I'm even in these early levels when I'm accomplishing it like clear and I got three stars cool I feel like that's always a good I can click it off stopping point I don't I'm gonna I'll play more sure if I have more time But if I also as you usually do get distracted by Twitter or Instagram or email or whatever like I'm gonna move on We're like I guess it's just the for me. It's a distraction game Where is just something that I don't think I'm ever gonna be like I kind of forgot about I put on there I put them on there yesterday right clearly on the ride home last night and when I got home last night I wasn't pulled to go away. Don tomorrow right like I something that's there when I want to play it And I'm not like oh Jonesing to go get into this room Maybe it's more difficult and starts, you know challenge me if we can hear something I'll be different story but Stay in the mobile game realm before we get to the earth I just wanted to give a quick shot because I keep forgetting to bring this up on the show Kingdom Rush Vengeance, baby, so good.

Isn't it so good? So good you play Andrea recommends me like months ago I didn't even know it came out Kingdom Rush classic tower defense game and that's another thing the game that we can't say the Name of anymore, but that we were talking about earlier. That's the other end right there Andrea. It's very similar Okay, maybe I'll try it.

It's very similar. So I'm straight up Wow. I'm straight up addicted to Kingdom Rush Vengeance on the flights of Florida I played it the entire way. It's my favorite playing game and it is just so that is literally what it should put it on the box Put it on the app store.

It's the best playing game ever It just sucks your time away and actually know you're landing you're just like I want to keep playing it's weird because each level lasts way too long They're like 45 minute levels, which is great when you're just trying to waste time But like it just seems counterintuitive to the mobile design. It's not globally right? Yeah, it's kind of weird But it's like this is how the game they're like I recommend playing an iPad like it is I almost exclusively played it on iPad Previously this for this new one is the only one that I haven't started on iPad yet I would love this game on switch and I'm not sure why they haven't thought about porting it Maybe they have and some it's part of the plans eventually I just a bigger screen would be great What's really fun about the Kingdom Rush series is that they have a hero system So in addition to your traditional tower defense where you're building towers and upgrading towers along the path where the enemies are moving You have a unique hero and each hero in the game has special abilities and then you can upgrade then There's a little mini RPG progression system with these heroes and then those heroes work in tandem with your towers and as you progress through the world You'll find that different heroes are better suited to different enemies because all the enemies have different strengths and weaknesses like this Towers go against this enemy for example Maybe this hero has a really high rate of fire So you want to use them and level to have lots of fast moving enemies or maybe one has a freeze attack So if you get like large waves, you know Just a deep strategy that you know ironhead games has put into this has been so much fun to see the iterations build from game to Again, because it's not the fourth game in the kingdom rush franchise and yeah, I'm so glad you're playing it again Oh my god, they nailed it this time around and it's just so satisfying It's just chaos that you're absolutely in control of and it's just like there's all these little pads and these little guys are coming I'm fucking your day up Oh shit It's really just kind of like putting your finger in holes the water's coming out But daily I'm just trying to like just control it all and like you'll totally be good until you're not and you're just absolutely overwhelmed And that's what it's the most fun is because you're just like oh man Like we got upgrade the arrow towers like go faster go faster like that's going when you're like bombing people and then you have your hero That you can at any point tap on him and tap anywhere else in that and he'll just run over and start fucking things up It's so so we've been using the girl the teleports. Yes.

Oh, she's my favorite It's just awesome I love it like it is totally an example of the one more match type thing But like the loop is so good because there's the RPG elements really like I'm so close to level in this guy up I guess I'm gonna replay it again to get the three stars to keep going fantastic mobile game, but Greg You're also playing a mobile game a fantastic mobile game brand new I haven't talked about it. Oh come on go. Whoa Everybody, you know, I mean I got bit by the bug team. It's finally half Downloading it the catterpy.

Oh, you know probably a poor guy That's all I got all bugs, you know, cuz they're all bugs. There's bugs. They're all Pocket monsters, Greg. No, no, you think I did you mom?

See I downloaded a Pokemon go obviously with all the rest of you when I first came I remember Kevin being so excited when it was originally in the office and we're playing it and it never worked for me I would have no history Pokemon, you know, and put it down every so often go far But try to get me to pick it back up. I'd screw it out that nothing would happen And then of course Ghost was just world came out last year had a great time with a ghost was just world up until like I think it was Me a month to maybe the beginning of my three really fucked up their whole in-game economy and what they wanted you to do and it Was also that point I wasn't getting new ghosts It was just the same thing day after day the same challenges day after day like it was clear like okay cool like I'll wait for them to update this and make it more refreshing more interesting to play and I turned it on Oh, actually I've done with Harry Potter go wizards unite when that happened played with that But I'm not here potter guys like what's going on? Goes for school actually kept crashing had to delete it reinstalled it went back in it's all the same shit Like it's clearly a game that they just put out and I've never really done anything with and so this past weekend We were going RTX miss my flight and woke up in a panic Re-book the flight then had a free day in San Francisco So Jen and I went out to weigh out the sunset to the avenues went and had breakfast and I was like let's walk home Let's walk through the park or whatever And so we were walking and talking just catching up and somehow we got on to maybe some walk by a book I go and it was this conversation Just like you know more the games daily conversation Just how incredible it is that that game is still around and still thriving and doing all this and I was just like I'm gonna open it up And I open it up and then we're sure enough for just walking talking I was catching up like you're playing like a little bit like I'm gonna jump in two So then she got in and then we just egged each other on this entire way. That's all we did our TX Yeah, it's all we did our TX you know in the neighborhood We were going to dinner the other night and we put our name on the waitlist and I was like I was walking on the blocks I was just walking through the name this morning We walk woke up like early because just like we haven't been spending quality time together since we got back for our taxes Wake up tomorrow early get a cup of coffee and then just go walk out looking like 100% walk through the park today Number of Pokemon and Gen 1 There's more than now there's more than now there's more I'd wait more than that Gen 1 Greg's Gen 1 more Pokemon was a Gen 1 alright I know when I get somebody down in the single digits or the teens I'm like oh this is a OG on was motherfucker shut up You don't know anything about it.

I send you photos all the time these guys you know I'm two was Gen 2. Thank you clearly that's not talking about it. I don't know I refuse remember fucking mistake We don't talk to him on game Staley Well, we don't want to show him photos. Yeah anyways though I've been having a ball with it.

I don't know how long it'll last You know what I mean who knows how long out will be obsessed with this but it's just a fun thing to do It's all Gen plays now on the couch while I'm playing I was a junior with me Joey no I got started with using it's the same thing where when I started was using I jumped in I was like okay How does this play because I was like ghost was I mean I mean I was just fan using you know the pro-ton pack and traps and stuff That was awesome mechanics It's the fact that there's not enough new ghost or things change Okay, which is unite was jumped into the world There's all these different things and it's like oh, I'm just tracing the spell and I'm like getting people out of ice blocks and getting fucking badges And what's just throwing the poke balls same thing no it's a pokeball less involved Or I'm just like I don't want to be like oh you want something simpler yeah for a hand-held mobile game What I'm just walking and talking and screwing up because that's the thing is like I'm enjoying it But it's it's a hot and cold thing we're like oh man Let's really go get some stuff and then I just have like click on any I don't really I don't need to do this That is a drawback to wizard your night that was unforeseen that you can't one-handed yeah And like you have a gigantic Hey, I'm gonna say as you're walking to lunch and I was like way behind them so stopping I should have just I should have just taken my phone and sent some spells to you But we were on a time crunch we're like come on Joey let's go yeah Yeah, so yeah, you know I've sent you photos all these funny little manum cash in I got so many fun and I'm like I'm sending me pokeball pictures and giving his caption of what he thinks it looks like And where they're from what they're like thrilling content you know what if you don't want to be my friend you shouldn't give me your phone number That's on you Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Well, I guess what you can read the name of you understand exactly what it is because it's clearly like that's exactly there They are literally just putting dogs in this game. I got a little cute. Oh, it's cute. It's fucked up record I'm like a night cargo.

He says look at the ball on this dude's mouth. Wait. Who is it? Matt cargo energy?

C.A.R.G.O What the fuck is this thing? It's like a lava like a lava snail snail Look at the ball is a snow is a snow is a snail cuz got a shell the game hat makes it He has more testicles hanging from his mouth in there Look at it. Look at how door. That's a fucking dog.

Someone called dog He's just I mean he's I'll give you a spoink. It's definitely a monster that look at that's a dog I don't know but now find spoink Spoink is definitely from another dimension that's here to fuck us up like spoink is That's cute. It's like a pig nose. It's the oink Spring oink dude, thank you Joey.

That was good. Wow. Well, I tell you get them Ninetails can get it on the panel on the panel Greg. I was talking about how fucked up It is that Dratini turns into dragon air turns into dragon night I don't think that you understood how I thought that you understand you So I want the slow reveal here Barrett.

Okay. I don't look I want to see you talk man Yeah, I like to tell you see I want a picture to teeny then a picture dragon air and then a picture dragon night Thank you. I give me a minute to do that. What is your issue Andrea?

Oh, no, I was just gonna say that I would love to be a fly on the wall of the Pokemon company when they have to come up With the names of these new all of you. It's all Japanese, but he's not goes. We were okay. You tell me go ahead Another butterfly so rudder fly done print there you go It was in a rudder man.

It looks like a butterfly would be like a water type butterfly because then they'd be like the rudder's a boat There's always reasoning Greg. There's always reasoning. Okay, I'm gonna need you to close your eyes. They're closed All right, I'm sending gifts.

All right, because here's the thing about Pokemon go to bring back to the game And not look at the characters Is the fact that to go from what my first experience with Pokemon go was because you remember it was like I You know how this started? I can actually start tell you we were walking to the park Yeah, and I we were talking about tweets for some reason and I mentioned I like that tweet from the other week that Pokemon goes launched as the closest we've been to world peace Somebody tweeted that it was so true right like I remember how weird it was to be in our sleepy ass sunset neighborhood Where we sat in the studio and find there was a gym there It was in like the dirty Nellies bar and sign up not this isn't a focus. I mean, I was like please leave Yeah, exactly It was like holy shit people were running around at all hours and I play the game like what an amazing experience And that's what I had me open to it But to go from that when I started it and it was like a broken and buggy experience to where it is now of the way gyms work And the way, you know, take stuff over works and the way gifts work Which I remember when they got launched like what you know, I just send shit to each other I guess I was dumb and then like now when I wake up and I walk poorly That's the first thing I do is go through and get clear out We send all my gifts to Scott Lowe to Jen to pass Passport passout Santa Claus in the morning, dude exactly get it back and see our friendship levels increase and I'm going out there Doing I'm transforming spoke on getting all the candies, you know, I'm using different things I'm excited when I see new ones I we you know, we beat a we beat a raid at the Austin Airport I mean a raid this morning and stuff and again fucking 715 walking on Golden Gate Park doing a random ass park and there's a raid pops off Generally, let's try some random guy Jeff it. Who the fuck is this guy walking on the park too?

You know, I mean he was all alone. He just creep around the bushes. Nobody knows, but we beat nobody No, I got things with a clack on some fucking creature. I don't know.

He's big some creature I want to say with a dragon, but I'll look at my phone. What you know interesting Well, I was trying to look now. I want to know what I'm out. You can look now So please pull this up of course this is Dratini.

Okay now Dratini, of course the Pokemon my friend the original quest was have Dratini at your side walk to teeny around get some candy with your teeny I'm just never on a quip to teeny. So so just chill that's fair. That's right. I get to do to drag it out I'm trying to do to drag it out right who looks is this who's got a ball and you're like, okay, cool You're pretty I got it.

You're gonna be hot when you're an adult You know, I's not what I think when I look at this weird snake really don't think so no I think yeah, I think I think dragon air has a potential to evolve on something super cool This is like this is Ariana Grande when she was on Nickelodeon, right? Then click over there This is Ariana Grande when she put out her first album. Okay, you know what I mean? Sure, and then this is not Ariana Grande This is Britney Spears during her fucking freak out This looks like this looks like Is this like this is literally the top evolution of one of the only dragon type Pokemon So general like they're so late usually in Pokemon is like a later in the numbers you get like more like rare and cool Like at 150.

I think he's number 149. Yeah, he's really Fanny pack Like That's straight up purse there Who have never seen dragonite smash and charming it's an orange Dragon stands upright so kind of beefy leg dragon a little little wings probably can't do much flying because normally dragon the wingspan is proportionally much larger than body size This guy He's wearing cross-body style Looks like a class at the top like a doctor's bag. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all right Well anyways, so that's what you have to look forward to for your dragon air I want to put out the person we beat in the race today, and I know have his sharp head Oh, yeah, shark not a pedo heads up just heads up. We said to the name you should eat Oh, I imagine why is it called a pedo?

I'm just saying if I was if I was a fish dad one of my fish kids going on sharp head Oh bad name Andrea the last one we were gonna talk about today Lego tower. Yes, so I'm playing this actually right now And what I want people to know about Lego tower first and foremost that it's from the team nimble bit if you guys played tiny tower The tiny tower craze you guys remember when time towers came out unfamiliar. No, I remember being I'm talking about right So they've made several iterations. They did tiny Vegas, which was really fun They teamed up with Disney interactive into tiny death star which I loved as well I'm and their latest partnership is with Lego and of course Lego makes sense to do a tiny tower skin of because everything like it was many You got the little mini figs.

They all have their little clothing pieces You've got the tiny little bits and coins and all this stuff So essentially the gameplay is almost identical to very traditional tiny tower if you guys played it you're building a tower It's in the name you stack it one floor at a time and it goes straight up and each of the towers you can Customize to make him a certain type of level So you have your residential levels which act as like apartments for your mini figs And then you have a variety of businesses that can be a recreation or a service or a food So for example, I have a bill your tall. I've got a burger bar I've got a bank and each of your mini figs Will then be assigned you assign them a job in one of the different levels and then they stock items and then you sell the items to earn Coins in the game and each of your minifigs has a dream job And so ideally you want to place a minifig on the floor to work that is their dream job So for example, I had two people who wanted to work at the burger bar So I specifically I can dream big Bigger Dream the own the burger bar leg on mini figs idiots. Well, maybe they will own it Sunday Yeah, exactly. Let's start somewhere build your money up And then there's three items per floor And then you see you have to have three people working and then they each stock a different item It's a part of the time management of the game is going in and restocking each floor as it's running out And the micro transactions come in where you can hurry the stock process by paying some bucks Which is like the in-game currency and I want to give a thank you to the PR team who gave me five dollars Try out that's what he had it actually has gone pretty far I still have like You guys they gave me five bucks in the game It is a free to play game of course and what's different about this version of the tower game from Nimble bit that I haven't seen before And some of their other games as they have a tower club and in the tower club It's like a subscription you get the first five days for you to try it out And a big thing from the tower games of the past is customization So the elevator mechanic is very important because you're constantly sending people up and down the tower And so if you're part of the tower club You can get all of these different customizations Whereas before you either had to earn enough money in game in order to buy them or you had to pay real world money for them So now you can get into the tower club and you kind of get to rotate through all these different customizations without having to pay for them One by one, which I think is really cool.

So yesterday I had the flower elevator and today I had the cupcake elevator But maybe I want the dragon elevator for later today And what's great about that is that you kind of get to change your customization based off your mood for that day And then they have background customizations lobby customizations where your your personalized many fig lives and then roof customization So for example right now, I have Garmedon's shark mech as my roof topper Which is pretty cool. So if you go up to the up to the top of the tower, you can see a Big shark up there Which is neat and so the the price of admission for the tower club is actually not that bad It's you can buy a couple of days for a few bucks But if you want to buy a box or real dollars like so for five days It's two dollars for 25 days is five dollars for 299 days. So essentially almost a full year It's 20 bucks and that gets you kind of the unlimited ability to customize and it gives you a discount on All the other purchases that you make inside the game And it doubles the rent you can collect from your tenants And so this is clearly just I don't want to call it a time waster But it kind of is it is one of those games that you kind of just check in with from time to time And if you guys enjoyed the gameplay of the tiny tower variants, then I highly recommend checking out Lego because a lot of the charm of Lego Is built into the game a lot of the floors are designed based off real lego sets that exist in the world that you can own Do they have like I feel like is there Batman and I haven't seen any licensed stuff yet But I would imagine that's probably in their plans for DLC, but since the game just launched I haven't seen any I've seen that they have the Ninjago stuff, but that's of course a Lego I'm sure I hope they do Lego license stuff That would be really neat and the minifigs are just so fun because in previous iterations You know sometimes the little characters don't really do a whole lot as they're walking around in your tower But they'll like dance they'll this one guy does air guitar and they'll throw tantrums and just cute cuz it's a little Lego minifigs I don't like a minifig someone yeah They all have like these different faces and then there's a whole collectible peace system So you can customize and if you get drops for pieces that you or you can send them to your friends Which is cool And there's different specialized minifigs that can show up at your tower for example There's a construction guy and if he shows up at your tower He can knock three hours off the construction time of a new floor And so if you don't have a new floor that you're ready to build you can also send those to your friends Which is something that I haven't seen them do before either So really kind of encourages more of a social aspect to what is really just a solitary game sure That's what's one of the things that's interesting about Pokemon go and actually like actually playing it Not just fucking off it and putting it down is the fact that I haven't seen microtransaction wall right where it is like I am a flush with items and stuff now I have put money into the game. I bought the team rocket outfit I wanted to wear the R and have glasses and stuff And then once I left over money eventually the biggest problem I have is my item bags always full and you can delete stuff or whatever And you just need to use stuff more but I did spend money to expand the bag But in terms of actually always having something to do and not feeling like ah I got to wait for this to cool down or whatever like and then also just a weird thing like and I understand this is why The game is why I'm gonna waste time I mean people already know everything about her understand But like the actual desire of like oh quick Well, let's do this and let's walk around like when we got to the airport in Austin It was like all right cool We got lunch and we just walk around the airport rather than just sit somewhere and you know check Twitter It was walking around and talking to each other and doing the raid or trying to collect this or seeing that like it's a really interesting Different game that I'm I'm very excited that I'm into with Jen We're saying that was the problem with Ghostbusters even where I was in the Ghostbusters, but nobody else was just me playing it was Super solid there even here being able to develop a problem to oh a percent.

Yeah, it was just you. Oh Like being able to see what other people are cashing and doing and you know have that thing of exchanging gifts is an interesting way that And reason to turn it on do stuff with it before we move on well You know about our sponsors support for this show is brought to you by the new audible original Stan Lee's alliances That's right Stanley's alliances a trick of light in one of Lee's final and most innovative works The legend invites audiences to unleash the power of their own imagination to bring a new universe and cast of superheroes to life Performed by Yara Shahidi one of today's brightest talents and featuring a captivating introduction from Lee himself This new superheroes origin story takes on the ever-blowing line between humanity and technology while agitating the central question of our day What is more real a world? We're born into or one that we create ourselves both epic and intimate fascinating and funny This is essential Stan Lee listen free with a 30 day trial Just go to audible calm slash kinder or text kinder to 500 500 that Stan Lee's alliances a trick of light the power to change Changes everything once again audible calm slash kinder or text kinder to stand to 500 500 Also shout out to quip how many times do I need to tell you about quip Barry uses quip I use quip Gia uses quit Greg Miller uses quit Jen uses quit Kevin. I think uses quit as well.

We're a whole little quippy fan here I absolutely love my quip toothbrush. We're not the first to say it sometimes we need a vacation from my vacation delayed flights hotel Snap foods chatty travel companions you can get away for two minutes twice a day with quip You don't need to think about anything. There's a two minute timer for quadrants of your mouth every 30 seconds Brrrrrrr there's a little vibration that means you need to switch switch away. You don't even need to think about this stuff They send you the toothbrush.

They send you their replacement brush every three months They send you the toothpaste. I just get to sit at home. I don't need to ever Worry about my teeth again because we have quit that did not go as well as I thought it would I apologize for that But my teeth are clean. You know what I mean my breath feeling extra minty feeling extra good doing the old Greg thing It smells minty smells minty.

That's the power of quip ladies and gentlemen I love that it has a little travel thing. You can take the stand literally the same stand You just take the toothbrush out flip the other way put it in it's a travel holder Wow. What will you think of next? I don't know but I'm into it.

That's why I love quip and why I'm taking it to every convention that I'm going to the summer Took it to RTX gonna be taking it to comic con next week exciting stuff quip starts at just $25 and if you go to get quip Dot com slash kf right now You can get your first refill pack for free Wow. That's your first refill pack free at get qu IP dot com slash kf fresh The dark pictures anthology man of Medan man of Medan And you got to see this great Joey no well Tell me everything cuz I don't know much about this I know that is from the same team that brought us until dawn correct super massive And they're doing the anthology series kind of smaller like not bite sized but more of an appetizer compared to a full meal of an Until dawn type situation today announced you can do multiplayer, right? Well, let me set the stage for the setting of man of Medan Going into it that name doesn't really give you any hints whatsoever about what you're going to play So this very first iteration of the dark pictures anthology of which we discovered and we talked about on games today There will be eight total games. They're aiming to do two of them a year Which is I think pretty ambitious and I very much do that they are going to be connected by a man called the curator who functions much like the Cripkeeper in the crypt so essentially he'll be like the almost like the narrator of sorts and in this story We meet two brothers Brad and Alex We meet a brother and sister Julia and Conrad or Connie and we meet a skipper named Fliss so we have five characters they all look to be in like their early 20s and Fliss is the local She's the kind of the captain of this vessel and the four friends are going on board to go on a scuba diving trip They're going to go look for Rex rec diving is like their big hobby cuz they're rich or something Yep, rich yp well, there's no the two brothers are African-American sure, but the rich white people are the ones And so then the I think presumably Fliss is I don't know.

I don't want to she kind of looks Bahamian, but she's she's like a Jamaican accent, right? Something like she's definitely from like Caribbean like how much sexual tension we talking We first learn in the very beginning that Alex and Julia are dating so there are a couple That's not a secret and then of course Conrad the brother played by Sean Ashmore Played by Sean Ashmore wants to get with Fliss the captain of the show She's pretty sexy playboy. He's had a million women in every port. Yeah, he only like known actor I recognize these calls out the fact that yeah, Sean Ashmore's in there and Pip Torrens is Curator and he was in the crown star was the force away.

I think he was Snoke This is just an old guy with a good he's an old man old white guy Interesting character design from a visual sense. He just looks like a dude. Yeah, but he was second for celebrity. Yeah I'm so we meet these five characters They're on a boat There a whole thing is we're gonna go out and find a wreck and so they head out on the water you know we get this playful banter and Some choices and stuff that you make early on and then you find you find a wreck is like the first kind of major beat in the story And it's not on record and so the captain's like well, you know We should really call this in if it's not on the map You know people need to know where this wreck is and they're like a little let's just go down there and check it out And so that's kind of like the first beat of the story But that is just the almost bush to what's coming later, which features this giant massive worship Which is why we were out at the USS Hornet for this preview event And there is a prologue which I don't want to spoil that explains why the ship is important and what the ship is going to happen And that's all I'm gonna say more about the story because I want you guys to experience for yourself But that just kind of like lays the foundation and what I loved about the setup that we got to play is that they really Nailed that interplay between these young people the same way they did it until dawn like that dynamic between that group of friends in that cabin I thought felt believable and felt real and so far from what we've played I think that they have nailed that in this one as well The interesting thing right is that what we went to was obviously hands-on But it was more importantly the embargo's up today.

Hey, we have multiplayer And so right what they showed was shared star story mode and then movie night mode share story mode is two players online And you're playing to the same story you jump around perspectives and stuff But it's the same story same situation, but then you're always you're not always but most of the time doing different things And so what's awesome about it I didn't fully get to the end right because playing it coming off of until dawn right a game I hear loves right super massive it was a great game and again They nailed it the pacing felt weird getting going in this one of there being downtime or is it does pop up like the other Your friend is deciding the other players deciding on what to say so it'll be downtime and conversations and feel more drawn out and You're doing you know It's like to pick our choices but to wait for someone else on the other side of online pick choice that we can't see is okay That feels weird that I thought it made the conversations feel still to see I didn't find that maybe because of Greg and Joey We're playing together, but I guess if you have a partner that is processing the information at a different speed than you are Then it might make the gameplay feel a little bit one-sided I was playing with all Sondra from GameSpot and there were a couple of moments where there was a hesitation So for example in the art playthrough I was playing as Conrad and Julia in the opening moments And he was playing as Brad and Alex and so you could see him like moving around on the other side of the boat doing his Conversation looking at things in the environment and then I was having a different conversation looking at different things And so what's really neat about what they've done with this two-player mode is that each player has their own section where they control all the Decisions and control whether they find a secret whether they pick up the right piece unlock a clue And then you merge your stories back together and then you're in a scene together where one character is being controlled by your friend And then they get to choose you don't actually get to see what the choice is though You're in the conversation almost like a cutscene and then there's a pause You get kind of like get a pause on the face and then it says your friends is deciding and but you don't get to see what they're deciding So you don't know how the conversation is going to play out And I think that's so cool. Yeah, and that's what I'm saying at the end of it. That's when it's revealed Well me and Joey got to catch up and actually like you know there's your on so this first part We're talking about happens on a small yacht basically right small boat And so it is a difference of yeah, we at times see people walking around But it can be even more moment to moment interesting where we went out and watched the movie thing together Which now is up to five players sitting at it in front of a TV passing control Every is assigned a character and they make the choices for that character But it was Joey's first time seeing what my character got to see which was talking to his brother I brought my brother on this trip to meet my girlfriend Julia for the first time and the brother goes to put away beer and My character brings out engagement ring in his hand and he's like, you know, by the way, bro I have a question for you like you know, it's a big life decision and the other character the bro's putting away the beer is Joey Joey doesn't get to see my character bring out the ring It's her putting away the stuff and her picking the choices So it's him you like I gotta talk to you about life and this choice I have to make and from the other room Joey gets a pinwheel of what to say and she's like what even it's not that hard like listen You're heart not thinking like her character thinks that we're talking about med school when my character thinks it's about this engagement ring And so Joey didn't see that and I didn't know she wasn't seeing that so it wasn't we were watching later You got that and in the same way, you know, I was playing as Conrad on top of the boat with the captain The guy who wants to engage and his girlfriend go underwater I think of diving into the wreck so I'm playing as Conrad having no idea what's going on underwater legitimately not understand knowing what's gonna happen here And like these pirates roll up on the ship and we yell at them like the all fan they get all weird I throw money in the water I throw money at them like they're like bitching about a whole not about so Conrad's like here's that No, I was 30 on you think I'm asshole again Just like the pirates drive off and then I there's a mishap with the grill and then Joey's group surfaces from the water And then there you see money the water exactly why is there money in the water? They do show a portion where they like focus on them like okay Well clearly that means something but I have no context for what happened or why the explosion happened and then like what?

Altercation had happened and you didn't know that I had found stuff in the wreck and stuff like that What was crazy about that scene in particular is that they have a choice where you're starting to surface like you have this Like sweet moment under the water because you're like you know deep sea diving with your lover or whatever And and then you see this explosion on the surface and you have no idea what it is what's happening And then you get this choice of like do you want to surface immediately? He's like no we gotta stay because of decompression sickness And then they're like and then you get to have to choose if you're going up or not And then it's like you don't realize until you all get to the surface and you've made the choice like why the explosion happen And I think that interplay of how they've written it so that you could play it either way is so clever and gives it so much replayability It really makes it feel I think it really ups the ante and the choose your own adventure style If a I thought did a fantastic job with and tell Don here because you can't see what the other person's doing or here what they're choosing So this sounds really cool and unique it also sounds like you're missing out on a lot though If you're not having a conversation immediately after with the person you're playing with and if you're playing online with somebody So you're not on chat. Yeah, there's no any voice chat You have to be a party or something. Yeah, okay, it just sounds like it's weird where you're not supposed to know what's happening Then you need to talk to them to know what happened But then the moment you know what happened then that's gonna affect your decisions going forward I think it's just a personal preference of how you want to play if you want to not know if you want to just go in Blind and kind of experience it for what the story is you wouldn't need to be on chat But if you want to have that moment of dialogue with your partner where you're like talk over the decisions and make the decisions together You can obviously you can obviously do that But I think what they're doing is just saying hey if you want to experience the other side go back and play it again But I mean until dawn with the same way if you made specific choices there were whole past you never saw yeah I just think it's weird like I don't get then what the point of having a being another human being is I think it's just a dynamic of being able to have that Suspense of not knowing which your partner is going to choose And I think it makes it more interesting because when we were all talking about it as a group afterwards when we went to go play the Movie night mode which we'll talk about here in just a second We were all talking about it.

Did you see this it happened to you in your playthrough? I made this choice and like we all learned about things and everybody's played through that were different now That was a cool moment definitely I just don't I don't see how this is gonna enhance that compared to until dawn which that happened It was just you're in you're playing with the computer and not having to wait for people make decisions It's not that long of a way. It was just it was enough to be in the beginning of like wait This is weird and then watching movie night where it is just one player making decisions in the computers We're starting back. I was like oh I see what was different and why it threw me off that way I think it adds a really interesting dynamic and dimension to it of yeah like I would be down like until dawn I love You play through and never play it again like I could I didn't want to go for a platinum or anything I just had a great time with it whereas if these are shorter experiences, right?

Like I totally be down for I ran through is you know player one now to come back and play play or two and see what Joey Sonderwater and make those different decisions It's a classic until dawn tropes of you know what choices do you want to make in the way that all branches right? Like you know the pies eventually come back and like you're all tied up and so then it is now Do you want to be nice to him? You want to do this do you want to do that at one point like I was in charge of trying to get to their boat and go off To get help right and they were like very clear like all right the plan is do that and get out like got it I was going going I saw nice and I'm gonna fuck these guys up and it's like I'm gonna roll the dice and see what happens and like Why not and then I'm the other place I'd love to and then after it was all done They're like cool Did you lose any when you play through like fuck you could have lost people and that like basically a 90 minutes we play Oh, yeah, you thought it was people yeah, but least it August 30. Yeah, no far away So you're talking about a movie mode.

Yeah, yeah, so the movie night mode is for two to five players locally And it's basically like a past controller mode to players one through five you put your name in then it'll say like Gregy it's your turn to play you pass the controller and then while it's his turn to play he has control of the choices and the outcomes that happen during his Section and you each we each pick a specific character to play as and so you get to pick those choices tied to that character storyline What I thought was interesting that they mentioned the press release today is that your actions and your impacts on the story as an individual player Are judged against the people you're playing with and you get achievements and rewards for each individual players decisions versus a single Play through and I thought that was kind of a neat touch because they understand that this is really more of a playable movie than it is a video game Because it's basically like you light walking you swing the controller stick back and forth to pick choices for dialogue And then there's a couple quick time events and that's it So it's pretty approachable for people who don't play a lot of video games particularly people who don't play video games with controllers with sticks Right, or maybe they're mobile players or whatever And so I think it's a nice way to maybe have a shared experience with friends of yours that enjoy the horror genre or TV movies, but don't want to play a horror video game and so I think it's a nice touch I prefer the two-player mode Or just a single player and I'll just sit around and I'll just sit around You know the online the common is it's around four hours right to do a play through it There's only different things like we're talking about but I even then it would just be like it's a weird passing controller thing It's a weird thing you have to go through the tutorial again There's nobody skip it and I was like I'm hoping that was just a build issue and not going to be Yeah, because they made us go through the entire credit sequence again But hopefully they'll just add a skip button in there because if you've played it through once on your own But then you want to show your friends you shouldn't have to go through those opening sequences again Yeah, it's so weird like I feel like they still haven't cracked the game game ranks by the way But I found out of figuring out like these games should probably especially with anthology be closer to the hour mark or hour 30 mark With a bunch of different things that could happen because like when you're gonna have five people in a room for four hours to play through this Extra left, you know Until dawn in our what's good games after our streams and so we did the first section last month Or the first section of May the second section last month We're doing the final now and so I guess if you break it up with your friends You don't necessarily need to because I mean it's in chapters right so you can easily stop playing at the end of a chapter I'm just think about that problem. I was so great and I was trying to convince my friends like we should all play and it's like They wanted if it was a complete thing like this is gonna take an hour and a half Like what's your movie were all interacting together? They totally would have done it But it's like now it's a whole video game We might need to break this up over multiple sessions like you lose the people that you're talking about that are traditionally The normal thing where I feel like you do it and you pass around and even if you don't complete it You got they got to experience and see it. They don't really care how it ends That's why I think though one-on-one online thing makes more sense I am interested to see what it would be like to play it solo now because you can still play solo obviously But if they're who's get what part am I getting right because like I definitely I was player one online with Joey and I definitely felt that Joey's underwater segment probably seemed more interesting than what I was like not that I was bored up there But it was like when she came back up I was like in the show like awesome.

I was just talking to her And I was choosing if I wanted to hit on her now, you know what I mean? Yeah, I got way more like story lore clues than I think you did Yeah, but then you got more context for the next scene of why things are happening I was like, I don't know who these other people are right? Right, so yeah I'm interested to see how they merge those or what the single player like path is because I do think that I don't know I guess it'd be just me interesting to see what it was I mean ultimately if you want to see the entire story You're gonna have to do multiple playthroughs But I think they set up that expectation with until dawn and it's just more emphasized here because they needed to split the narrative To make it compelling for two people to play at the same time Yeah, I think it's a really interesting way for them to diversify what they were doing instead of just doing essentially the exact same formula They're doing something different I think they could speed it up to your point of like make it shorter if they had taken out less of like the secret and collectible things Because you're encouraged to explore which takes time by uncovering these oh this secret you've now unlocked a premonition that could potentially unlock an Option the story later on so you want to explore some of that stuff But that exploration element is what makes it probably double the length that it would need to be if you there was no walking around at all Yeah, yeah, it's interesting. I left high on it.

I want to play more of it I did think it didn't look as good as until on graphically I think the faces looked as good as they did until again this is a multi platform game So I'm sure that's where the things come and it's also not final code sure we need to make that caveat So we don't know what it's gonna look like there's pop in and stuff So it's like okay cool, but like I'm I don't care like I'm in it for the story and the adventure and the choices and see how they all play out together But yeah, I'll don't look beautiful. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's interesting They're doing so many of these the same theology business right I hope it works. Yeah, yeah next up call of duty modern warfare.

What do you guys got for me in that little book? I'm a pull my edges. I just saw call duty modern warfare at E3 In part is always lifting who knows what's going on one of the things they showed their team was a 2v2 gunfight mode So the idea here is that you partner up with somebody against another team of two and then you're put into different areas that you then go And fight we played in what I forget the official name is King the interior of a warehouse so there was like Like a warehouse obviously and then like wooden hallways on both sides this little structure in the inside right you both start on Opposite sides of the warehouse and then need to kill each other the thing that's cool about it is that they give you the weapons Every time so this isn't like you're coming up to load out like alright It's pistols and knives alright It's rocket launcher and shotgun alright It's that in the other and it's a countdown clock it starts and you just fucking go and you have to kill the people I brought in their actual thing because I wanted to break out the actual high level like I did on games together Right so it's two teams with two players will face off against each other in a fast-paced firefight when the round starts So I'll look at the other team and defeat them if no one is killed in the first 40 seconds Then a flag will appear in the center of the map players will need to run to the flag and defend it for three seconds to get the point If no one can defend the flag within the time limit the team with the most health wins last team standing gets a point The first team of six points wins you will not need to create a class all weapons and equipment selections Hey about the game mode also you will not be able to heal after being shot all players have a set of money health the maps The maps play that the pre-beefs are where King pine which is the exterior of a dense forest and stack a desert container yard This I am not a call to you guy. I'm definitely not call to call you multiplayer guy I've already talked about my warfare right there's a single player stories interesting I'm in I'm so in for this to be party modes like this was so it was me and Brandon Jones and I forget who we're facing off against But it was it was tense.

It was fast when we did fuck up It was like okay cool get back out there I got there and then when we like started getting to the mind games because it's they're small areas on purpose Right and it is just that the shotgun whatever in a rocket launcher And so I would be trying to bait the other person come around just fire the rocket off and then try to flank them over here And then it was it was awesome It was so much fun to be in that like frantic thing and then it did come down the flag a bunch of times because the time Sounds awesome 40 seconds and then the flight comes to be everyone out. That's cool. These are quick They were describing it as almost like a fighting game matchup like I'm very very Quick and you just get in you get out because some of these Call of duty matches, you know kind of feel like they are just like endlessly responding over and over again And I like that you don't pick anything. You don't have to look at your loadouts You don't have to pick your weapons It's an even playing field for everybody and the maps that we played the interior of the warehouse was very close quarters Whereas the forest while still not a giant map provided a little bit more strategy And that's where they gave us the rocket launcher and it's it's so frenetic because you get a glimpse of somebody you immediately Just start firing out away because you don't you know the time is ticking Yeah, and so you had your force to engage right away And it's just such a fun addition and I'm so glad that they brought this on because it iterates on the traditional call of duty modes We've seen in the past in a such a different way that it's gonna bring people like Greg and I back to the table to be like Hey, let me rediscover this, you know, yeah Yeah, cuz there's just that it was just that energy of it and how fast it will I know we keep saying fast but how fast it was of because you'll start and you'll move and you'll see people at the other end of The screen, right?

It's pistols and not whatever we're gonna do right? So you see them go when you cut that way then you're gonna wait for them or you're gonna try to go engage So wait is the weapons that you get right like I know they're always the same as a random or is it like based on whatever level you're on? I'm not sure I think I think it's I don't think it's based on level because I did have rocket launchers in the warehouse because I don't think I've Played for something we mean where I was um I think it's the game doing it so I would imagine the game a specific pairings it wants to give you I think it's just like totally random where you're gonna get like frag grenade and stun grenade You know, it's a shitty match, but like I don't spot. Yeah, right?

That's the thing is it does it reminds me so much of like Yeah, it was a really really cool and I can't wait to play more of that and the 2v2 dynamic is really interesting because you Really have to strategize are you gonna roll together? You can split up random I would go to different sides and engage out right and try to get them try to flush them Center call it out that was a thing we're screaming at each other where people are this reminds me of a In halo 2 there was a match type that I really popular called shoddy snipers Yes, those 2v2 and 1% of shock and 1% sniper and like that just set up such great on Ascension, baby Let's go. Let's go. That sounds great though.

Yeah, it was really fun And then they announced that the full multiplayer reveal will be happening on first first cool And more call to do stuff or can we move on? We saw we can't talk super fast. No super fun to shoot. Yes.

There you go. See you solitude. Yeah quite a pivot here in tone So see if solitude is a small little indie art title from a team called join the games They first really kind of debuted it in in earnest at EA play last year and then Corneal Gabbart who's the lead writer and the head of the studio was back at EA played doing a bunch of interviews this year And she's on a ton of press So I've known Connie for several years I'm she's been a friend of mine the games industry and I was just really personally excited for her They got to finally launch this game because this game is such a personal experience for her even at the very beginning of the game There's a screen that comes up This says this is a story about loneliness and despair and about mental health and they'll be these very serious things that we discuss almost like a trigger warning at the beginning of the game and the journey that the lead character K goes on chapter by chapter is Essentially her confronting these demons or these monsters in her life They represent different things one is her own personal monster One is the monster that her brother becomes and the monster of her parents the monster of an ex-boyfriend And the stories of them are each very different and how they affected K's life and how K kind of needs to clear this corruption from these chapters And there's a lot of metaphor But the thing I think that really sets this game apart as an emotional narrative than other games that we've seen semi recently even like the game Like Celeste is that Celeste felt more like almost like an allegory and that there was a lot of room for interpretation for the player to kind of Make that story their own whereas this is very much Connie's story and the narrative is the focus of this game whereas the mechanics are not really the focus But you clear corruption through these different spots in the world and the corruption goes into a backpacks You're literally holding that negative energy and weight like on your back throughout the game And there was just certain chapters that really spoke to me more than others One chapter actually just full on started crying during because it was like it reminded me so much something that happened in my own life That I wasn't expecting I hadn't thought about this moment that had happened for a really long time and then the way that it represented and manifested in the game Was just really powerful and I think that's why it's been such a divisive game critically Because a lot of people don't know how to feel about this because the gameplay elements are very basic the puzzles aren't difficult The traversal is just like a very simple platforming I really love the art style and what the animator did but I think some people are upset that the gameplay isn't stronger than it is But that didn't bother me because I think I went into this knowing it was going to be a mostly narrative experience Almost like an Edith Finch type experience is what Steinmer was comparing it to and I think that's a good a good comparison It is broken up into different chapters in that way too. So it's her story and it's her different her demons What it's not hyperrealist.

It's not realistic in the way of like you're marching through a town your town fighting your brother is it's like Yeah, it's almost like a dream world So it's set in like this almost underwater version of Berlin and you start out on a boat in a lot of the city is sunken underwater And then as you go through different chapters like the world transforms to kind of match what's happening And you end up in this like frozen over world at the end and I think there's a lot of you know things that you can draw from Inspiration as to what that means in the world in relationship to what's happening in the narrative and I'm trying to speak about it vaguely Because I want to give it away because it is such a heavy narrative experience And so I don't go too much into detail about what happened in the description you're giving of like Papa. Yeah, remember that yes The kid with the giant monster that represents his dad's alcoholism, right? Which is an autobiographical like that sounds interesting. Yeah, so I really enjoyed my time that I played it in a single night It's some just a few hours I would say maybe like anywhere from two to four hours depending on how fast you explore the one thing that I think they could have just Left out altogether as they put a collectible system in it didn't really make sense to me because this is not something I want to go back and play again just to get the collectibles because it was such an intense experience But there's like these seagulls that you shoe and then I like that the seagull goes up and then it lets you see the overworld But I think the idea of like collecting 39 seagulls or whatever it is throughout the world is it felt it just felt like a miss Yeah, there's a mashup right of two ideas.

Yeah, there's not really a sense of a need to explore though I do love the way that they designed the world in this game But it's not like you're gonna go find like a treasure or an item or something around a corner And then they also have seagulls of solitude exactly and then they have a message in a bottle system going with the the sea of solitude theme But the messages on the bottles aren't particularly poignant to the overall story And so I think like they could have just scrapped the collectible system and it would have been the game would have been better for it But overall I thought it was really powerful I think games like this are very difficult to make because these issues of depression and loneliness and mental health and the Conflict that we have in our interpersonal relationships and all the emotions feelings that come along with that are inherently going to be difficult to make into a video game And that's why I feel it's almost feels more like an interactive story or an interactive piece of art than it does a game in that sense And that's why I feel it's like such a different style of experience than a game like Celeste that also had a big emotional impact on me But you recommend it. Yes, absolutely. Definitely recommend it. I mean, it's like I said, it's a smaller game I think it's 1499 EA provided me with a code to play the game.

I'm not sure I'd have to look at the platforms You can get it on but I think it's on all of the platforms Yeah, I played it on PS4. No, there's no narrative branches at all You're almost like observing the story more the gameplay really comes from you walking through the world and then clearing corruption from certain areas and then when you clear the corruption and you unlock like a Almost like a ghost of yourself that shines a light through the monster that's blocking your path ahead And so I mean that in of itself like speaks to like clearing this negative energy from your life to push through your demons Like quite literally and so as you go through each chapter how you clear that corruption or how you move the demon or the monster That's blocking your path changes chapter to chapter So I thought that was a nice touch that they changed it up It's not the same because it could it would have gotten pretty repetitive if they hadn't used the same mechanic in each chapter But each monster has a little bit of a different mechanic attached to it But yeah, the voiceover that they use is like it feels really real particularly the steam between the parents was like really hard To listen to like listen to their dialogue back and forth But and each in each thing I think will speak differently to people depending on you know what they've experienced in their own life So yeah, cool. So yeah, but the so it was released on July 5th. It's on PS4 Xbox one and Windows So I think that's through EA or gin might be on steam don't know unclear.

I'm looking ladies and gentlemen This has been the kind of funny games guys. Thank you very much for joining us this week We will return next week as we do every week because that's how podcasts work until then I love you