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Start your free trial today. They have Tuesday, March the 7th 2017 AD. This is the giant bomb cast. Do you know what AD stands for?
I know a nominee. Yeah. After Devil. It's like the...
Whoa. It's those games, right? Yeah. 25.
I always had it tonight. Exactly. There's only one left. Oh.
Let's not go there. I was thinking after Drew. Oh, okay. Oh.
True channel and official lift building. Yeah. Jason's down there. Yeah.
Bye. It's going on. Oh boy. Oh boy.
I brought a play back with you. I'm here. I'm going to stay over here. Don't get anything.
The body is not in spirit. The Lord. I look forward to you documenting every process about how to get this stream started. I was trying to formulate contingency plans just today.
Yeah. Oh boy. In my favorite dreams, I'm like, I could probably get Tay in here to run stuff. I'm like, worst case scenario, you guys don't do it live.
Because you can run recordings in here. Yeah. Yeah. Worst case scenario.
Sure. But I know I gotta make it work. I gotta figure something out. I gotta get in there.
For sure. Yes. Thank you for dragging yourself in here. You got it.
Welcome back. Thank you. Hello, Elizabeth. Hello, Brad.
How's it going? It's going good, man. Yeah. That's how you keep it strong.
Fill yourself with pathogens and then they can't hurt you. I was doing that for a while and they threatened to throw me in the clink. See, you don't have a four-year-old. So it's frowned upon.
Oh, yeah. You gotta get one of your own and then lick that one. Don't see how it goes. Don't just walk in.
Don't go around to heart and be like, hey, that's pretty good for your old. You got there. You're supposed to ask permission first. Well, I just, you know, I'm trying to build my own immune system.
I'm gonna figure that would be like a good way to go. All right. Subway turnstiles are good too. You can lick those.
Yeah. Any public service? Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. All right. I'll probably do that. I got some pen.
Yeah. Yeah. Make a little money on the side while I'm at it. Why not?
Yeah. What are we doing? I'm barely great. I don't know.
I gave a talk at GDC last week. Yeah. How'd it go? It's fucking weird to talk at GDC when I've been going for so long as you're like first one.
Yeah. Not a talker. I mean, it was good people liked it. The people seemed pleased that we were there and talked about the weird thing that we built.
Yeah. Cause there's a collection of VR focus talks, right? So imagine you were we were in the VR DC. The VR.
On the VR. I didn't speak at GDC. VR DC. That's just way more cutting edge.
A part of GDC. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So the people were there. Like people showed up. I was stoked. So that was like the fear is that you go into that room and like there's like two dudes in there and one of them is your mom and like that's not what you want.
I had a lot of questions about your process. Why do you play Nintendo for a living whale? That's where the money is. Yeah.
Exactly. Yeah. Sounds like you got around to GDC. I did some stuff.
I was a business deal. Oh yeah. You know, I saw Dave Lang. Oh boy.
Speaking of business deals. Business deals. Big money business deal himself. You can't say you can't think business deal.
Yeah. That's pretty much the basis of business. Yeah. You know, it's pretty much it.
I saw John Wick 2 one night. I was just like, I don't want to go to any more fucking parties. So and I have a two hours to kill before the next party that I'm going to go to. So I'm going to go see John Wick.
Cool. That movie's great. The second one, right? The second one.
The second one is the second one. It is the dark middle chapter of the dark trilogy. John Wick. She's saying that we will eventually think of John Wick as episode four.
Maybe. And this is the dark middle of the. You just made it even darker. All right.
I'm looking forward to John Wick pre-wise. I like how he became John Wick when he was named Jack. John Wick was a kid and a pod racer. I'm with the one where he's mad about his dog being killed.
Spoiler is man. I mean, he's mad about it. So the first three movies are just going to be him having a normal happy life with his dog. No, the dog is the dog is introduced and murdered within about two minutes of each other.
There's a montage. Right. And then some Russian hooligans. This is about an entirely different wing of the mob.
So it's a it's a it's a you know, it's a think piece. It's just about scoring one by one. Yeah, he's he's it seems like that might actually be what's happening. Okay.
You have to work. You know, this fashion and then eventually you work your way up. You kill the boss and then move on to the next the next franchise. It goes to week on wild lands in source now.
We talk about that. Yeah. Is it out? Yeah.
Oh, I guess we should talk about that. I'd rather talk about Zelda, but we should cover goes to re-color. It seems bad. Did you know into it?
I played the first couple missions and kind of run around the world a little bit. It's about five hours with it. Okay. It didn't immediately strike me as bad, but it felt very bad numbers.
Well, yeah. So I guess like it is the gameplay aspects of it, I would say, are very by the numbers, but I don't know. And the surrounding things of how the online is structured, how the dialog is like, it is some of the worst voice acting I've ever heard in a big budget game in a really long time. Yeah.
It's surprisingly terrible. And it is occasionally road warrior, esque and it's cursing. But also there's a variety of varieties. So it's just like your guy running around in like the main guy, your guy sounds like some dude who just like walked over from marketing and read some lines into the thing.
And like a whole script is just this guy's like, Hey, fuck, stick over and over again. just calling every single person fuckstick like constantly. Wow, that's really specific. And this game came out in 2017, which I, you know, it's like, you know, that seems like a 10 to 15 year ago word.
Where was this made? Was this like Ubisoft Montreal? It was like the opening says Ubisoft Paris. Yeah, I believe that is right.
Yeah, I believe that's American's talking. I guess so. I don't know. The script is just like so off in terms of, I don't know.
Like these, you know, these four ghosts, these four recon guys in Bolivia taking out cocaine trade. And it is like I was saying, by John Wickett is like, you pull out of the map eventually and it just shows this hub of people. And it's like the missions, you complete, unlock your ability to kill that person, which then lets you go after another person. And this person's the cocaine production.
This person's the security. This and eventually when you kill them for them, then you get to go over the big button. It's this whole network. You've just fight hippos?
I have not fought any hippos yet. Because you know, in Pueblo Escobar, known for his cocaine dealing, exact creation. Yeah, had it. Pet hippos.
Yeah, I haven't columbia. I haven't seen any yet. I think the one is named Veronica and is still like living on his, on the ruins of his estate. Fantastic.
Yeah. Yeah. No, nothing that good has happened in this game less far. Yeah, like I haven't seen a lot of potential for hijinks.
Like it seems well. So I think it has like four player co-op, well, yeah. High jinks of like, we crashed this helicopter into this base and then jumped out and shot a bunch of people. Like that type of goofy shit.
But I don't know that I would even count that as goofy though. Like that still sounds pretty. It seems like everything I've seen in the mission in the gameplay just seems very standard military shooter. Yeah, it's very much like, also like when you play that game alone and it is three AI teammates with you, like the AI is ridiculous because it will just work to where you are and do all the stuff.
The way a video game would. You can get a tag guys and do things. You tag guys do things shots and they just never miss. So you just walk up to any kind of camp or base or whatever, fly your drone over, tag all the people, and then pick out two at a time.
I can do two synch shots at a time right now. You can eventually play to three. And then just every 30 seconds, pop two more dead. And you just sit there and wait, pop two more dead.
That's what I meant. Like I'm not seeing a lot of potential so far for like improvising interesting solutions to mission objectives. You know, it just seems like that. It's just creeped you away through the mission.
Like I mean, you don't have to use the drone. You can use binoculars to zoom and tag people. You know, there's also like the aspect of like, oh, you can unlock mines and C4. So like I would think there would be hijinks in terms of like drive this car in here with C4 on it and do something like that.
Like AI stuff like that. But I just, none of it has seemed fun so far. Is it like the Far Cry, like the Far Cry Mercenary Camps was like playing those co-op was one of the most fun things I've done in a long time. So I jumped into, and I bet if you played this game with three people that you are friends with, like you can have fun.
It seems like it has to be played that way from one. I think you need to do that or it's maybe not going to be that entertaining. Yeah. I just jumping in and it's weird because the game, all over the game is stuff like hold X to public match make.
No, hey, do you want to public match make? Do you want to publicly join publicly a game with public strangers? They seem to pop that up every three. I never wanted to do that.
And when you do that, like there's nothing that says, like you can fast travel other players when you're connected and stuff. So there are ways to kind of work together. But also everyone can kind of go off and do their own thing. And the idea of synchronizing your movements and stuff like that is going to require everyone to have a headset and talk like that fucking e3 press conference, which no one actually does.
The only voice I heard playing that game so far was someone going like, how are you going to cover? How are you going to take cover? Hard, weird. It was just hard, hard hard hard hard.
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Just need to rework and hard air to cover. How do you take cover? You just kind of walk up by the thing and it'll automatically take cover. It's not an active cover system kind of game.
Yeah, just everything I've seen, that just seems so kind of bland, military shooter. Like the loadout stuff I've seen, it's just the guns are very familiar and it's a future again. It's pretty much a modern day. I mean, you've got like, you said, you've got a drone camera thing, you can fly around.
Yeah, it's a futuristic thing I've seen. Okay, yeah, it's not too fantastical. You know, as you kind of knock down the top targets, you'll unlock custom weapons. So I have a light machine gun that is this big gold gun.
It's very army of two looking, which is that's always where you compare someone you can talk about army to. It does have masks. It's like army of two. You can't put army of two, so I'm asking you to stop mask on your guy too, if you like, it's just not meant to put a dick on it.
I don't think so. Okay. Yeah, just that, you know, like not that necessarily people are becoming this game for its dialogue, but it just, it's so repetitive and is so poorly acted and written that it really does stick out. Like it does a thing, and it's actually nice because it's contextual and effective.
Whereas you're flying over a base with a drone and marking enemies, it's counting up that it'll know how many you've tagged. So that's six in there. That's six. All right.
That's the guy, that's seven. Plus six, seven. Yeah. But like, I'm gonna say, in my experience about 50% of the time, when you get to marking three, the guy will say, and baby makes three over and over again.
Every time you mark a third target, it'll hit you and baby makes three. It's like, you really like that phrase, don't you fucks it out. Like it's just fucking terrible. You're like, who talks like this?
Like who the fuck wrote this? This is a nightmare. They do that recurring thing, or at least in the first like hour, hour and a half that I played, I saw this like at least three times. Like when you're driving around, one of your guys seems to love telling military jokes.
Yep. He's like, he's driving along and he'll be like, so a Navy SEAL, a Ranger, and a force recon, walk into a bar, like just like that. There's a lot of really dumb shit. There's sequences like the first target they have you go after in the first area is this couple, and they are in charge of torture for the organization.
Nice. So you get like, what are they into, just basic shit, like waterboarding? You know, like it kind of just goes in some really fucked up places where you're just like, everyone here seems like an asshole. Like I'm kind of rooting for the cocaine people at this point because my four, my team before are just shitbags.
They bring joy to the world, right? I guess. I mean, pain and suffering. Exactly.
And I feel like maybe that was something that at some point they thought they might want to try to trade on is like, the, you know, oh, the American drug war, what did it really do? You know, this guy was just a farmer. And now he has to sell cocaine because of the Americans. You know, they're trying to kind of like pick at the complexity of like that type, those policies and where it went, but just in the most hamfisted way possible.
And it just, it's just really dumb. I don't know, like a lot of the radio is real bad. Like I just, the portrayal of, yeah, a lot of the voice work in the radio stuff is like, I think some people may go on to find it offensive in a few different ways. There's just stuff in there.
And this is, it's a big game. Fuckin' bad. Yeah, totally. I mean, it reminds me of mercenaries too.
Yeah. Which was a bad game. Yeah. But it reminds me of that game in terms of just like, oh, we've got this ambition for making this kind of open world thing and plucking it this and none of it comes together.
It seems like a huge world. It's a very large world. It literally does. You can get a helicopter and just fly across it.
Like the world, all those teams kind of like just cause- and the way you can hop in a chomber and just soar over it and it's gigantic. And there's all these locations everywhere. But then like I said, every time I've approached one of them, it's gone exactly the same way. And like ticking off the boxes and kind of progressing and unlocking more stuff.
And you know, it's like, there's a part of me that is still like, well, when I hit level 14, I can upgrade so that I don't get a damage reduction. I want to use silencers. Then I'll be truly unstoppable. And like there's a part and it's like, oh, that man.
Okay. So like it's not without merit, but man, like this is the type of game that like no one, like no one strives to make. Like you don't see a lot of games like this anymore because I feel like generally speaking, people are doing better than this. Well, it sounds like something you should load up with four people, three friends and just only play with friends.
It seems like you have to do that. I think that's really good. But also at that point, like, you know, there's still the appeal of like, if when I'm playing alone, I can just order these three meatheads to murder everyone. Yeah, but that's very easy.
At that point, you're just like taking items off a laundry list, right? Yeah. At that point, you're just like, all right, well, I got the supply drop and I was going to do this level 14. Exactly.
Like it breaks the whole thing down into this mechanical exercise. So just like, I'm just going to get through each of these encounters in the fastest, easy, what kind of thing. You can always kind of tell, well, not always, but this was a game that the everything about how they sent it out to us was very emphatic about like, don't play until the patch hits because then the servers will be live and you can experience co-op and make sure you play co-op. Anyway, the co-op will be active at this time.
So you should probably try the co-op. I mean, in fairness, the co-op was always the most fun I had with the Ghost Recon games. Like when you played the Advanced Warfighter and like some of those maps where you had the giant hordes of guys, Nathan Drake levels back in the game. Yeah, just getting down with friends.
Yeah, that's super good. Cool moments. Yeah. So yeah, you know, like maybe I could this game had, I'm almost certain this game would have more merit if you were playing it with three people you knew and kind of sticking in the same area, trying to move as one unit and trying to do all that stuff.
One person scouting, one person's covering. Yeah, but like the way I've experienced it by holding down X to join public matchmaking and all the other stuff that they wanna guide you into. And then like even after that, like after you kind of join up a team, like it'll stop popping things like after like 20 seconds, you and this player have played a lot of multiplayer together. Do you wanna be friends?
It's like, what do you mean alone? You mean alone bro? It's like I've been in there for 15 seconds with this person. They're on the other side of the map like we haven't even worked together.
Like it's just this weird flawed system where like they're trying to bring people together because they know the game only works if people are brought together. But the game design when you connect doesn't actually force it. So when I connect a multiplayer in a public setting, all other stuff, all I'm really doing is losing my three AI people. So suddenly missions are way harder because I'm dealing with these three other fucks dicks.
They don't know what they were talking about. Oh shit, they got me. Pretty soon it's gonna be everybody's a fucks dicks. Did they sell this in with those bundles where you can buy like four copies?
I didn't see it. No, I didn't see it. That might not actually, that might not be a bad way to go. It doesn't look like.
Oh yeah, no, but yeah, no, no. You can't buy the four ways. Well also like there's a hundred dollar version of this game. So wow, you know if you get gold and whatever it is.
So yeah, it's just, you know, it's clunky. Like I feel like the shooting mechanics and a lot of the movement and stuff is also real rough. Like how the vehicles handle your like careening down. It doesn't feel like a fun open world trip.
The vehicle seem very squirrely. Yeah. I've almost run off the side of a very narrow mountain road a couple times which would have, like if it happened, it would have been like I don't know that I have any to drive all the way back up there again. Totally.
That shouldn't have happened in this. And you have a lot of situations where like, you know, you have all four of your guys in the SUV and it's rolling down the hill and they're all just totally static. Not even saying like, whoa, you drive like an asshole. Like it's a lot of that.
Yeah. Yeah, there'd be a lot of opportunities to be like, you drive like a total fucks dick, fucks dick. I can't help, like I know goes for kind of such a different thing, but I can't help falling back on this just pause comparison because like, well, in a lot of ways they're similar. Like you're in a like a relatively rural, like tropical kind of nation trying to take down a criminal syndicate, right?
Those things are the same between the two. Yeah, I think the potential for destruction is way less fear just in terms of like, you know, dramatic explosion and ripping a world apart. Like you don't get that aspect. You don't get that much.
But also like this game feels like it's trying to be almost like hearted in spots with the way some of it is written. Like I don't think the humor lands. Right. Like you still put the Tom Clancy name on it and to me that evokes a certain level of like potential seriousness, but like this thing is written, like I'm watching it like did they write this for satire?
Like is it supposed to be this stupid? Is it kind of supposed to be meat heads on purpose? Because like they're trying to make a point about how fucking lame this all is. Like I can't read, I can't get a good read on it.
I'm less worried about the writing or at least I could ignore the writing if the gameplay ended up held up. But like that's where that stuff where like that's where that pairs and you can take a little cycle down a mountain and it's just like, it's even running down a mountain. Like they put an animation for you kind of skipping your way down, which is like kind of cool. Right.
Like it's almost like it just pause where you're supposed to drive sensibly along roads as opposed to like grappling hooking your way kind of over mountains. Yeah. And just a lot of rough stuff along the way. Some of it's just like visual stuff, but some of it is more kind of gameplay where I just feel like the shooting doesn't always feel great.
And stuff like, you know, when you're driving a boat, the boat always emerges below the water level. So it's like your boat is just usually half filled with water as it's like rising and going below the sea level. Like just looks bad. And instances like that, you know, bodies freaking out and getting stuck in environments and just weird shit.
Gotten sound good at least. It's first person you're aiming. You aim it outside like a first person shooter. Yeah.
Although you can even change that to be like the over the shoulder. But so yeah. Yeah. It's a, again, like I kind of come to it from like looking at the other stuff that Ubisoft puts out these days.
And the other stuff that like we think of as like big budget AAA games and how those things have generally. Hi, my name is Andrew Dunphy, the host of the Space Nuts podcast. Hoping you can join me and Professor Fred Watson every week, in fact twice a week for a regular dose of astronomy and space science. Yeah, we talk serious topics, but it doesn't always go according to plan.
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If you want to play a dope co-op game, Sniper Elite Four is really good. Yeah. Is that two player or is it to go to four? I can play the campaign two players, I think, and they have an asymmetric mode to be either both be snipers or one person can just be the spotter and the other person can be the sniper.
That's kind of cool. Which is fucking super super. So are you voice chatting and getting off numbers or is there just like a sighted and hit a button and then they get so you can make it it's real weird situation because it's like arcadey in some ways, but then it's also not at all arcadey in others. So the shooting can you can make it really hardcore and semi like with bullet drop and wind correction and like no assist in the site or any of that stuff.
So you play in the default mode, which is what I've been playing. When you take a breath and it gives you a little diamond that shows you where the bullet's going to hit and then you just move the diamond onto the person's head or testicles or whatever you want and then you murder people. Yeah. How is the I played the previous game just for a quick look I didn't get to it, but how is the testable destruction in the game?
It's pretty gross. You get that same thing of just like bullet rattling around inside someone and destroying bones. Yeah, you have to if you want it to not go straight through, you have to pretty much use a silencer or low power ammo. But yeah, like it's kind of like the Mortal Kombat X-ray vision stuff where you see the bones explode.
It's very reminiscent of that stuff. Yeah. When you get a heart shot or a liver shot, then you see the organ turn into pulp and the smoosh-dump bullet comes out the other side. Yeah.
It's pretty gross. Yeah. Yeah. It seems smarter.
So I play a little bit of the third one and it seems smarter. If you fast forward through that stuff a lot, it doesn't show it to you every time. If you watch it every single time, then it'll just keep showing you more and more and more of the death blows. But I've been playing co-op with a friend with that and the asymmetrical, you can play it like you're supposed to for a little while and then what always ends up happening is you're like, fuck this, let's go murder some Nazis and you just start dropping through the Italian country side murdering people.
It seems to be pasted a little better than three. You can't even do. The spotter basically is just tagging. So you sit there with binoculars and you have like a submachine gun.
So somebody comes up and sneaks up on you and can handle it. Dispatch them. Yeah. I haven't played that as much as I played the two snipers.
No, no. Essentially everybody spots. And when you spot, then you can see them through walls and stuff like that. So you can line up your shots and pop them right when they come around a corner.
Stuff like that. Cool. Yeah. Pretty good game.
I mean, it's not, it's not, it's not, it was much better than I was expecting, given that it's a franchise that I really hurt a lot. Yeah. That series seems to have picked up a little steam with each iteration. Yeah.
It's like the campaign, the maps are designed better. I think they're these big open maps now and it's not so linear like the last one. Yeah. I felt like what I did play of three was really like, like, like someone who didn't always have the patience to set up all these sniping shots.
Like it didn't feel like it was well equipped to handle any kind of medium to close range combat. Like I was just sitting there holding up a sniper rifle from like 20 yards away. And I'm like, no, that was great. This seems much better at that stuff.
Like you still, you'll climb up a church tower, you'll snipe some dudes and then like 30 Nazis will come at you and you go down with a submachine gun and roll them all down. Yeah. Or set up a couple of claymores or whatever. Yeah.
I mean, it's got sniper in the title. I don't think you could play that whole game without sniping. Oh, weird. And that's how we lead a sniper.
Yeah. You don't have to snipe. Yeah. And there's a lot of like sneaking around with pistols.
Like it does that shift that the last of us did where you switch from being like a stealth game to an action game, then back to a stealth game, which is hard to do it. Yeah. And I quite like it. All right.
You're gonna talk about the elephant in the room. You should talk about it. Wait, one more thing about fucking wild land. Okay.
Good. That's my segue then because it's good. Go ahead. All right.
Okay. So a big part of that game is about stealth to action itself. Yeah. So that's just stupid.
That shit is just straight up stupid because, you know, like last night I was like, oh, I'm infiltrating this VIPs place and I only need to kill these eight people. And if like a civilian sees a gun and then we get dropped, they go, ah, and run away. But they're standing around all these other people like the party is still going on. And they're just bodies laying everywhere.
These people are like eating fucking hors d'oeuvres or, you know, animating near hors d'oeuvres. If you shot the machine gun up in the ceiling in the middle of everyone, people freak out. Yeah. Okay.
So they do react to that. It's just they don't ever say, hey, there are people here doing bad shit to anyone else. I'm calling security. They might as well be completely blind.
Like it's this weird dark world where you just got these blind silent, like they just can't. That's Columbia man. Yeah. Bolivia.
Oh, sorry. Bolivia. Come on. Yeah.
Just crazy stuff like that. Like this is, if they had more time with this have been a better like, I keep going back to like this feels rushed. Like, did they rush it out for fiscal or, you know, because it's March? I mean, it seems, but I don't want to say it was a long time, but like it seems finished.
Like it seems like it seems like they finished putting together the parts that they needed to. I feel like it feels like barely finished as opposed to polished, I guess I would say, like every edge on that thing seems rough. But it sounds like at bare minimum either they didn't record enough voice or they, the random thing that tells it which voice to fire is broken in some important way. Yeah.
Anyway, anyway, that's probably all I have to say about that. Enough about that. Let's move from a questionable open world game to amazing. We're going to talk about Verizon's era on.
Yes, that's right. Well, I guess we could. No, I'm back. But do you really mean?
How is it all so good? Is it? I do. Like I haven't played enough of it.
We bought the EU version in a 10 minutes. Definitely getting some frame rate issues. I mean, yeah. I wasn't the switch version as a frame rate.
Yeah. I mean, I think it goes straight there, but the EU version is kind of rough. It depends on what I'm saying. I wouldn't say that there are things that are very rough.
I mean, I watched the digital foundry like frame rate analysis video and they said the switch version is just as bad frame rate. Oh, really? I don't know. Are they tested with the handheld or do they test on the screen?
So apparently handheld switch mode is the only way to alleviate it. Yeah, I haven't had any problems. I've been playing almost exclusively handheld. Okay.
I wonder if you manually drop the resolution to 720. Does that do anything? I don't know. This is shit I don't want to have to care about.
I don't know if you shouldn't have to. Yeah. But it's what the adaptive res is for. Right.
I spent like 30 minutes just climbing every tree. Yeah. There's so much to do. Like I think there's a regular Miimodo over there.
That's what that's what it is. Oh, really? It's like the anti. It's like the anti goes through wild lands because it has it has it has it has everything is the anti.
It is an open world game with no checklists and though like XP meters and though like hierarchy of bad guys to kill one after the other. It's a huge. I mean, it sounds good. That's so I know.
It's better. It's better because it is like bursting with like interesting cool stuff to find and do but they don't find you to any of it. So you just like run around and you're constantly running into cool stuff. There's a sense of wonder to that game that you don't get out of open world games.
Yeah. It's accessible. You can you you know how when you saw Skyrim and they first showed like look see that matter you can walk over to that. And I was like, man, that's the last fucking thing in the world.
I want to do is walk over to them. I know I just so I played two games. I have two games going to play with my daughter. She's like she's like co driving.
Okay. And so with her game, we kind of been dicking around and just kind of going wherever she's interested in it. And you can like the only gate is how much stamina you have to climb shit. Basically.
I don't think I like that system very much. Like it was so I started over so I played on the office switch and it was my save. You couldn't be probably working to be able to save and playing it there. I was like, I don't know about this game.
It's fucked up. And then I got my own switch and started over and instead put my first two upgrades into stamina and not containers. And because that's how much I hate the climbing that's how much I hate the limit of salmon in that game is that it's just it's a hassle. I've been in some weird like I've been in a situation where I'm climbing cliff.
I realized I wasn't going to make it to the top and was like shit. I have enough salmon left out and I'm paragliding off and I paragliding off and then fuck up landed in a pond and drowned. Yeah. So that's paragliding into stamina and swimming use a stamina and it's all one meter.
So it's kind of okay with it's a harsh limit. Yeah. The game is harsh. It's a hard game.
It's a weirdly difficult game. Like the enemies do a ton of damage at the start and you get hearts of very slow. You don't last especially in the beginning. You're not going to last at all.
Even I'm I don't know how deep in you guys are like the weapons I'm getting now we're probably doing average like 20 damage each and like some of those weapons will make it through like a fresh weapon sometimes will not make it through a single fight with like five guys. I think that has to do with the level of guys you're fighting. Maybe I think if you're fighting people that are way above your level then your weapons degrade faster. Okay.
That might make sense. I also I liked the fact that there are zones in the game that you very clearly should not go to. Oh yeah. I went north instead of East when you get the first set of quests.
I was just like I don't want to go to quests right now. I just want to explore and like the game very obvious very quickly that I should not be in that area because I was getting my ass handed to me. That's kind of awesome. Even like the areas that like okay so the first thing to talk about is it's hard right.
It is a it is hard in a way that Zelda hasn't really been since like ventures of link. Those games have been designed for you to finish them. Yeah. Yeah.
Like you just kind of go from things like this water temple is messed up or there's these puzzles are there puzzle games that you have an adventure in. Yes. But like if enemies having more health than you can deal with was not really everything that you had to worry about. Like needing better weapons was not something that it was like prevented you from figuring out where the boss's weak point is and being mechanically adept enough to hit that three times was usually enough to do it.
And this game is definitely I haven't fought a boss yet. Same here. I haven't even seen a proper dungeon. Yeah.
So I'm almost done with the first dungeon now finally. But have you had to see a boss and like the combat is it feels like a like not to be a reductive asshole but it feels like a light dark souls. Right. You have to have a roll.
I dodge. I fight and all that stuff was there before but the penalty for fucking it up is so much higher now especially if you're fighting like maybe not over world guys. Right. It's it's pretty neat.
Yeah. I mean it's a really similar system that they use in the past with the lock on targeting and all that sort of stuff but like the the parry like the shield kind of push stuff is really neat the ability to like last second dog and get attacks in that way I think is a good is a good stuff to you in this with the way that they built it. The fact that weapon arrows arrows like scale up. Have you got a boomerang yet?
Yeah. The way that worked. I was just like this is fucking amazing. I thought it was really funny the first time you threw a boomerang and then realized you have to manually catch it and really lose it.
Oh yeah. And if you hit stuff if it hits stuff that it doesn't go through it'll just drop where you go find it later. I am using boomerangs instead as melee weapons because they have good durability and they do good damage to walk people just fucking stick with that thing and that's been one of the most effective weapons I've had so far. Well so you're in a place now where you're about to find probably a lot more like high quality 20 damage weapons.
Yeah. It seems like I'm on the verge of that. Like it almost feels like they took the original Legend of Zelda and instead of going down the like let's tell stories that everybody can encounter they were like let's just make this a hard game about exploring a giant ass world with a lot of it's like an alternate like it's like a weird branching history timeline for Zelda but they did the game play that right at the same time I feel like it has more coherent storytelling than. Well it's the first thing I'm talking about the meta you know the three timelines Zelda thing or sure yeah that that matters.
Yeah it's it's like I've been having a hard time with it especially like talking to people that were reviewing it and how much they were in love with it and I totally just don't see it. And we had Mark and John from make four play in here but John Cardi was like you know yeah it's kind of like the first Zelda of just like you wake up you go you get a weapon your that's it. And that kind of framed it from you know it's like okay I guess I see what they're going for now like before I was just like you just didn't do the work on the story stuff at all huh like what a weird thing. And I kind of came around on that stuff the more the more I played it the because I actually think that the story which I guess I won't talk about here but like I think the story they're telling is really fascinating it's really good.
It is very it is both like and very unlike what the traditional Zelda stories have been and the way characters react to you in the world when you encounter them is really interesting as a result. And I think that stuff's like that's a cool fresh take on a lot of the stuff. But yeah for me it was just it's it's it's I'm still a little torn on some of the stuff because there's some stuff like inventory management sucks inventory management is stuff where you're like man when this game was meant to be played on the set. That's a good thing.
I mean I think that this game was meant to be played on the system that touch screen this would have been way better what would you like the recipe stuff is what you have. Well I think that like cooking is a bad system the way that the batch cook yes that's good you should be able to look at a list of recipes you have cooked and push a button and make it. I think I think that that stuff matters a lot less because I'm not making the same like I'm making recipes at this point I have three pages probably a material to do upper limit. Yeah and I'm just combining shit you make the thing I need that moment whatever you have that's not I wish that there was a portable pot like so I can cook anywhere that might be coming.
I saw like a someone that was like hey you see a cookbook like a looney to a cookbook makes me wonder like if there is something in there that you eventually unlock but I've got a diary and a cabin that had some. Yeah yeah like but like I just like I wish that stuff was a little bit like I don't like looking around the menus I don't like the way that you can because you throw weapons obviously so if you walk into a chest open it up it's got a sword in it but you're full it's just you're even towards full shit now I need to get rid of a thing and then do this again so so the whole process is like a maybe five to send. The problem is you need to use are super fast like there's no low time getting that you can you can you can you can drop an item even after you pick up new when I'm in a shrine that says like three weapons that are better than what I've got then that starts multiplying out in a way that is like. That would have been solved in a game that had a touch screen but because they at some point decided to make it for the switch they even went back and strip all that shit out of the way you game yeah but it's still way faster than most games like that like your.
Yeah it's like a Skyrim like a Skyrim and you are never right I wish you could drop out of the deep head menu quick quick that would really help or but you can also press plus on that inventory on that pop up in the. You can drop something I never got growing it is just about as fast but it is more for shields or both yeah. Like the thing that struck me is that I was like I was doing some straight up far cry to business in this game like the good good for us not the crazy. I'm out of the kind of malaria yeah although all the combat systems mesh in this way that just creates like what feels like the little possibilities for approaching like combat situations like that that encounter that they showed in the trailer something the one where you have the three guys run the fire and there's a little there's a bucket of.
A bunch of bombs in it like I just on arrow down next to the bombs and whether the dudes walk over look at and see what's going on and then I that I chuck to fire he torched down on on the barrels exploded the barrels and they all went flying everywhere and like they even know I was there before I straight up murder. Yeah I feel like tons of people have been having those kind of stories but all my stories have been I walked over those guys and killed them because it's not that hard. I don't want to do that though like my experience with that game is constantly the process is basically like I walk up to a situation and I go I wonder if this will work and then I try it and usually. That's what seems like so magical about the game and because the weapons are changing because the weapons degrade so fast I'm constantly trying new weapons.
Because you have literally no choice but to try new weapons. So like I had a situation last night where I walked up to camp of five guys and had one new guy that I'd never seen before and I was like I have to figure out how to thin this out because all I have is like the new club and so I lit a fire and like burned half of those guys to death and then killed the last guy with a bow and arrow from far away. And the only thing that's on that stuff so far is that when you see those wooden towers that watch the watch look out stand on they're made of wood I have a giant fucking axe and I can cut down every tree in the game. I should be able to cut those towers down I should be able to burn those towers to the ground with the guys on them and you can't seem to do.
Everything else does work like all the different systems they have going in the game all affect each other. I saw some of this morning saying that like if you are if you come upon a camp of sleeping enemies and it's in the middle of a thunderstorm you can just sneak in there and sit down your metal and walk away and maybe the lightning will just find them. Yeah I believe that. You know like a lot of interest of thunderstorms are fucked up because if you have metal equipped yeah you will get.
That sounds super bad. Yeah it is bad. Like you get one shot like the number of things that can just fucking instantly take you out in this game is like crazy. Yeah like the the flying guys shoot yeah they're like the old school Zelda one with your rod and ice rod and I thought you.
When I saw one of those I finally thought like oh man this is going to be a game where they finally put dudes in there that eat shields and it's not going to be that bad because I've got three more. Yeah like that'll be actually cool hopefully this game has that. Like like yeah I found a lightning wizard who it was like bright and sunny in the morning and I rolled up to him and he like has to spell to make it all dark and stormy and lightning. It was really awesome.
Have you had when you stole a weapon from somebody if you had him like pointed you in yell yet no so that happens awesome. Like I'm having a once or maybe twice where I like I beat a guy he drops his club I pick up his club and beat him to death with him he's super pissed off at me not about being beaten to death because I took his club. I feel like that's another one of those things that like is also a frustrating limit of the inventory system because I'm usually full up so like oftentimes like I can't actually deny the weapon because my inventory is full. So as your as your weapons get better like as my first off you can upgrade inventory right and I've done that couple of times but it feels like it's never going to be enough.
So I just don't hold onto weapons that are below like eight damage. Yeah I feel like I'm getting to that point now where I'll finally start stopping up. I've not picking up bows like travelers bows and stuff like that. Yeah and the weapons that guys drop are good enough that it's not like they're dropping those basic clubs right so you can like you can actually pick up the weapon off the ground.
Because a lot of combat like I found myself at one point wishing that the game had experience points and leveling up because I got to a point where like all this combat is pointless because I'm just taking my total. Like the combat is fun in the other cell. I'm not having an amazing time with it's dynamic and interesting in a way that most teams like this are not but also with me trading my good weapons for their shitty clubs that I'm making my way for all the world. I don't care I have ten slots in my weapon inventory at this point.
Like I have enough good weapons that I just don't mind that much with that break. Like it's just for me it's like I've been running past stuff because it's like I don't need the materials that these guys drop. I don't need more fun. It's just pointless.
So a lot of combat in the overworld anyway has just felt like a not even a zero sum game. Like I come out on the negative side of it no matter what because my weapons are taking durability hits and anything that they have to offer is not worth that loss and durability. Yeah I mean I just I that's why I like the comparison with goes to the game where the combat seems very boring and you're only doing it to increase numbers and this game has really interesting dynamic combat and no numbers to increase. It's the complete inverse of that.
It's kind of why I appreciate it. And it's easy to skip. Like if you like the only time I find him one of those camps on the overworld is if I there's some new guy there that I don't know what he does and I don't know what he does before it's like like it's bad. Yeah.
Or if I need to use a fire basically like you might need to use a fire to make more food than and they have a pot there that I'm going to go and murder a bunch of. I guess like that's my maybe my other problem with the game is like the cooking aspects and time limited increased you know like cold resistance and like that type of management is stuff that I don't know that I like in any game. So it's not necessarily this game's fault but like that level of maintenance that goes on and I think that goes back to like the inventory design stuff like that. I feel like there's just a great deal of maintenance like I need to stop here and cook a bunch of meals for later and none of this is fun and this feels like a bad use of my time and I wish that I could just get this stuff over with and move on.
But instead it's like now I go okay good and hold hold this one. I'm holding one thing it's not easier to hold more things do this now do it again. I do it again. I got muscle memory.
Yeah. I just have to find my best. I think there are amazing things in that game and exploring the world has been just killer but it is that those little things along the way that like every time I have to stop and do it is a time that I'm just like maybe I'll come back to this later. I'm so good that I can just drop that thing down and pick it up later and not have to deal with it.
All the time you've gotten back by writing fucking a Pona across the world over and over because of the fast travel system is going into that cooking now. So it's true. Like you could be writing the horse and running away from wolves. The way the fast travel in that game works is because all they have to do to make a fast travel point is put with a shrine in someplace.