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Hello guys, welcome to the first ever episode 230 of the kind of games. Yes, it's always M10. He's joined by one of the coolest dudes in video games, Greg Miller. Space Rocks, Space Rocks.
What is Space Rocks? It's Gary, what is his name? Sounds like a drug you could sell. That's right.
I've always been a fan of black shirts with shiny gold. It's like a good summertime romance. You and a bucket of buds. And Nick has returned to the kind of gamescast.
Fran Marabella, Mr. FM3 underscore. Woo! My hands!
It turns out we've been on the wrong horse. We're like, fuck Fran, forget about Fran, it's all Andrew. Put all your chips on Andrew. Then she's moving away.
For a few weeks, it was basically over, but guess who comes crawling? Wait, I can't crawl back. That was you. Exciting times, though.
We haven't talked about video games in way too long. You already talked about the news on GameCast? Andrew's? No, not yet.
Andrew's leaving us, eventually. We didn't know where. John Drake got a big fancy VP job. Disney.
He's not there at Disney. Yes, he is. They're going to LA, which means she's moving to LA once they fix the marriage house situations and stuff. I know.
It's like, we can't figure out one of those situations where we take half. Yeah, exactly. We should have joint custody on her. So we're divorcing John, and somehow we have to get Andrew up and give up Kevin.
But he's like, yeah, we have to give up. No, we're figuring all that out. I don't know when exactly. She's going to be around.
She's on a farewell tour now, basically. Yes, exactly. So it's like, get your song question now. She would have been here for this one, but we're recording this on Tuesday, because Comic-Con is this week, and I'm going to Comic-Con, and you're going to Comic-Con, and Nick's going to Comic-Con, so we're going to move up shows.
Yes. Stressful time for everybody. No, that's fine. Are you not having a fight yet?
Yeah, start penning your eulogy, though. You know what I'm thinking about, you know what I mean? I like that. I like that a lot.
What have you been up to? Where have you been? I mean, I was traveling to Guardian-Con, but that was now right around July 4th. It was actually the weekend after in Orlando, Florida.
So I went down there. Big Flo-Fo. Big Flo-Fo. My dad and grandmother are down there, so I was like, oh.
How old's your grandma? Yeah, honestly, he's taken over, and through pure intimidation, I'm giving up. Yeah. Like, he's on the show, he's got his propaganda, and he's like, point the camera at me.
Point the camera. Which camera is it? What does he say? If you're not making moves, you're standing still.
And I saw it, I was like, I'm sweating. And you're at home, and your grandma's like, I'm standing still. Dad, Grandma. Exactly.
Dad, me, Mom, I'm standing still. Anyway, no, Gary's been doing amazing. Get me a T1 line, I got a stream. But the internet was so bad.
The connection on my phone was so bad that I would grab a map out of my dad's place and just go to the gym in town, and it wouldn't work for the first, like, mile. So I was, like, back to old school, like, you know, using your brain. Where the hell in Florida are they? They're actually just outside Fort Myers, so it's not, like, it's the middle of nowhere, it's just, like, right on the edge of the water.
Did you get the Fran from your dad's side or your mom's side? Oh, dad's side, yeah. So I'm the third, right? My grandpa went by Frank, but he was- I don't mean the name.
Oh, what do you mean? Like, who I am? Yeah. We actually don't know what's wrong with me.
I'm being honest, like, my dad is a, for those of you not, he's a scientist, PhD, like, written books, very, very smart guy, very successful, retired now. My mom was the caretaker, but also, this one surprised you, she had a couple jobs, one of those was hairstylist and makeup artist, started her own line of makeup for a while. So, you know, I got a little bit of both worlds, overthinking my hair, so they all came together. You didn't read any of your dad's books?
I love it. If you can't read them, it's like spectral, it's like infrared spectroscopy, so if you want to, like, read up on that, it's fine. All right. Well, we talked a lot about a lot of the big words in the pre-show.
Yeah, of course. If you want to hear more big words and stuff, Patreon supporters of the Silver Membership or above get to watch the show live as we record it, and get the exclusive pre- and post-shows. Shout out to Patreon producers for this month, Tom Bach and James Hastings. If you don't want to pay us, that's cool.
If you want us to show, Monday, youtube.com slash kindofunnygames, brucecd.com, or search your favorite podcast service for Kind of Funny Games Cast. We want to get right into it today. We want to talk about some video games, okay? You ready for this?
Yep. Let's do it. Tell me when we're good. If you're watching on demand, we're working against the embargo, which means we have to mute the stream for the people watching live at patreon.com slash kindofunnygames so that we don't violate the embargo, but the people on Friday on patreon.com slash kindofunnygames get it, I've seen it all go wrong before, I'm not going to have it all go wrong now.
Well, my face, you know, you're a micro. I'm here, I want to talk about my Death Stranding hands on. Death Stranding, dude. Death Stranding, Death Stranding.
Wow. I told you it was Bowshock 4. Nah, right. Bowshock, I'll give it a two.
What would it be at this point? Bowshock, they'll reboot. They'll do something in another subtitle, too, I think. Are we good?
Yeah. Cool. What we talking about, right? Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3, The Black Order, on your Nintendo Switch.
Before going further, it's worth pointing out, of course, that we're doing this episode in advance, so we can go down to Comic-Con. At Comic-Con, I'm hosting the Marvel Games Hall-H panel. I'm not getting paid to host that panel, they are covering my hotel room for two nights. So, if that violates my ability to give you an objective review or information, I haven't beaten the game, so I'm still worried about it.
What's the panel about the game? It's one of the games. It's Ultimate Alliance, it's Iron Man VR, and it's Avengers. So clearly, I know people over there, but I've always known people over there, so whatever.
I'm basically saying, take this entirely from the grain of salt, if you want, no big deal. You gotta have discussions, Ben. You always gotta laugh, though, where it's like, oh, you like Marvel? Yeah, exactly.
But seriously, it's good discussion. Do you like Marvel? Do you like Marvel Alliance 3? The Black Order?
I do. I really do. Now, what I think's important about it is, I want to start from a place with probably negativity, and then move forward with it. Because I know you and me played it at E3, and you weren't stoked on it.
No, I liked it. You were very much like, it's a B1. It just felt a little repetitive and throwaway, and it felt like a lot of the things I'd be looking for from the story and characters. It seemed like they were a little, like, kind of...
Same, that's what I'm saying, they all felt very similar. Sure. And you're talking about characters in particular? It's like playing as Captain America, throwing a shield, is the same as playing as Cyclops shooting his beam.
It's just like, it's the same idea as a place. See, now, here's your chance to talk about it, then. Well, no, that's what I'm talking about the negativity thing, is that I think, when we left the E3 demo, right, on that game's cast and on game's cast since then, we've talked about it, and I'm not arguing that it's not repetitive, it's not very... I don't think it's...
It is samey. I'm not going to say it's not. I don't think it's as drastic as, like, Cap is, Venom is, et cetera. I feel like there's enough differences in the characters, but it is what it is.
It reminds me, and I don't know how it works in terms of... Please bear it on the shot, I'm like... It reminds me a bit of No Man's Sky with me and Kevin, where me and Kevin went and played it, came out, and was like, this is what it is, and I think people had different expectations. I mean, I can't speak for you.
Had a different expectation going in, in terms of what it was. Marvel Ultimate Alliance, from what I remember, right, in X-Men Legends, I remember as, sure do you love walking through these hallways, beating the shit out of things in boxes, and leveling myself up, and getting gold, and moving on, right? That's what this game is, and that's what this game nails, I think. But, it is, like, you know, I made copious notes, because we'll get to in a second, but I think the big story of Marvel Ultimate Alliance, which is surprising.
You see how there's a lot of those notes here. This is a fun beat-em-up, it is a fun hack-and-slash. It is, crawl through the rooms, beat the shit out of these things, in typical Ultimate Alliance fashion, right? You turn a corner, and here's this hero, splash screen of them, they work with you on the mission, or give you a mission, and then they join the Alliance, and you have them in your roster right now, right?
So you unlock each character's, you know. 100%. Exactly, exactly, exactly. And that was the exciting moment of those games, because I remember it the same way as you, it was like, oh, let's go into these, like, kind of generic, like, buildings and airships and whatnot, and the fun part is, is, like, collecting the new heroes, and, like, building a lot of these games, but, yeah, please get in there, so let's maybe get myself one.
Would you say it's more, like, popcorn fun? 100%, and again, for me personally, that's what I remember Ultimate Alliance being, and that's what I was ready for, and that's what I wasn't expecting with this. I think the one thing that took me aback when we saw the trailer, to remember, even for the reveal, it was, like, these environments seem kind of empty, right? Like, they seem, not simple, but that doesn't sound right, but you know what I mean, in terms of what we saw from it, compared to, like, what I think was a more gritty, realistic, uh...
Like, not complex? Yeah, not that they were ever, but I think there was more in Ultimate Alliance and X-Men Legends, this is more... There's more of a presentation, I guess. It's darker and grittier and more, like, we're trying to make it look like a real thing, whereas this thing is making it look like an anime series or cartoon.
I feel like a lot of it just has to do with how games look nowadays, and when we first saw it, it was like, oh, this looks like the Marvel mobile games. You said that, yeah, right? Yeah, a lot of people did. Sure.
No, I'm just saying not weak. That's all I didn't want to cast into that side. But it's not a sort of gritty... Oh, you don't agree?
Like Strike Force, or whatever? I guess... It just has that art style. It has that, like, that look to it, where it's kind of just a very...
Okay, okay. Like, black-colored, like, the bright colors are comic booky, but it is just not right. I thought you were thinking it was a negative or something like that. I think, yes, it has that style, and it took me a level or two before, like, okay, that's what this game's style is, and now I get it, and now I'm ready to go through the fuck show.
So you had the expectation that it might look a little grittier. Just because, like, when we watched the first trailer, it was a jarring, like, oh, that's not what you did. But you get my question still, regardless of that, like, you had an expectation, or whatever, when you saw it, surprised you, once you played it, do you think it looks good, or you kind of wish it looked a little... I think it looks good.
I don't think it looks great. I mean, at times it does, at times it does. I mean, the cutscenes look great. I think the cutscenes look great.
I think the actual character designs look cool. But there's plenty of times you're running on a, you know, what we're talking about, a flat-colored environment, right, with some texture, whatever. But it's all, you know, you're beating up hand guys in, like, their little ninja dojo. They get there.
They do things. There are secrets in every level in terms of breakable walls and things to find and go through and smash here. There's, you know, cubes that you'll find you have to do synergy powers at to actually destroy to get in to get the collectible or get the upgrade of award, right? So, I think starting from that is what I'm trying to do is build a foundation for what the game is, right?
It is a hack-and-slash-beam mode. Which, already, yeah, the combat is, it is definitely repetitive. Nick was making fun of the idea. Like, it's not ever hurt because I was just like, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Like, just over, over, over. Yeah. But I'm playing, so far, only playing single-player. You like this.
What you do is then, you know, you have three bots that you can switch to whenever you want to. Whatever. Your right trigger, or your right shoulder button is your single-player special moves. You hold down your right trigger, and then you can do synergy moves with other people.
So, like, Cap wants to, you can do, Cap has already just a shield block that any incoming attack would go back at the other guy. But you can now do it where you're calling Iron Man to shoot you. I really do. It honestly is that game right now that it has its hooks to me the way I hope it would have its hooks to me.
That I want to play through it. I want to beat it. I'm right now at chapter 7 of 10. Once you beat it, you unlock a new difficulty and more winky emojis what Mr.
Nintendo told me. Ratchet and Mr. Marvel this time around. So, not only do I am I excited to beat the story, period, I am excited to go back and do it.
Because here's what I think, I don't know if you were expecting, because I for sure wasn't expecting this. This game is so fucking nerdy. And I'm all about it. And I don't even mean nerdy like, hey, Marvel lore, obviously that's there.
And again, the story I think is cool, right? Thanos is here and he wants the stones, right? Which I think, for real in the first few chapters, you're like, this is cool, this is fun, I like this. I was not telling you and I've conferred it since then, right?
Even though this is not. This is not in the same Marvel Universe. This is not Spider-Man from PS4. This is not, blah, blah, it's a stone thing.
This really is the Marvel Games Avengers. Because it is. Hey, it's Scott Porter as Star-Lord from Telltale. It's Nolan North as Rocket from Telltale.
It's Nolan North as Deadpool from Deadpool. Hey, it's Yuri Lohenthal, Spider-Man from Spider-Man PlayStation 4. Let's put them all into this. Is Nolan Iron Man?
No, he's not Iron Man. Iron Man, I'm not familiar enough with it. But Steve Blum is Wolverine, right? It's the voices you would expect from most of these characters, at least some iteration of characters, which immediately does set it up to be like, oh, this is fucking cool.
And then on top of it, when it finally does the, I don't want to spoil too much of story stuff, obviously, but when you finally make the jump from, and I watched the trailers and I was excited and I'm ready for it. But when you go and you go and it's like, of course, Avengers, of course it is. And then when it starts being like, all right, cool, now the Avengers are with X, Y, and Z. And now this person, now this team.
And it's like, oh, fuck, right, this isn't an Avengers game. It felt like it was like, okay, we're kind of doing something similar to the movies of Infinity Stones. And then it makes that turn of like, no, it's Doc Ock, and it's this, and it's these teams, and it's that, he's fighting this place. And it suddenly is these conversations you're seeing people on screen having, like, that's really fucking cool.
And it is really fucking cool to see, like, the young class of people have that moment with Iron Man, right? And like, the cutscenes are well done, I think they're well acted, I think the story is fucking Infinity Stones, and we're going after it, that's it, whatever. But it is those moments like you're talking about, getting to be like, turn that corner, like, fuck, of course, why didn't I think about that person? And that was, like, the love-hate I had for Ultimate Alliance 2, which was just doing the Civil War story, but they had their own, like, twists and turns on it.
And it does get batshit crazy at the end, where it's like, you're fighting Nanobot Nick Fury at the end, so how did we get to here? There's still so many cool moments, like, built up to it, where they, like, recreate the moment, where the TV superheroes, like, blow up the city and stuff like that, like, actually from the comics. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so, but then, like, whoever's part of the Civil War, whoever's part of the Civil War is like, oh, sorry, the original Civil War, there was a mutant, right?
But there was a team. The event is, like, a TV show, like, a reality TV show that, like, uh... New Mutants? Maybe.
Whatever, it doesn't matter. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so, like, they do, they show those, like, big plot points, but get their own little twists and turns, like, halfway through the comic of Civil War, you've got, uh, where they're controlling the villains at one point, or, like, they're making the villains fight for them, right? Yeah, yeah. And then in the game, they twist it a little bit, where, like, the villains are way more part of the story, so you have an excuse to play as them and stuff like that.
And the same thing here, like, you know, you start off and you'll run into people who are villains, and obviously none of the playable characters are out there for the most part. But, like, you know, you, by the end of fighting them, join you. But there is cool stuff they're doing with it, of, like, all right, cool, like, you know, it's Electro and Venom are teamed up, and then Venom gets electrified because of, you know, synergizing with Electro and you have to fight him in a different way, and there are these different little challenges to it that way, in terms of it. Last night, like I said, to your point of, like, really weird, batshy, crazy, chapter 7 started last night, and I was literally, like, oof, man, I do not know shit about these guys.
I don't understand where I am right now, this is weird, but cool, whatever, it's happening, I'm in for the ride, or whatever. The New Warriors started it. The New Warriors, there you go. So that's all cool, story's crazy, but again, it's popcorn, it's whatever, it's forgettable, it's there for you to beat through.
And back to where I was driving with this point, the game is so fucking nerdy that the hook of the game, of course, is powering up your heroes, right? This is why I needed the notes on top of anything else, right? Because I'm talking about gameplay and all that stuff. So when you go to your start screen, right, and you're looking at all the places you can go, you have, obviously, the story you can do, you have Infinity Team Heroes Select Lab, co-op, of course, like, co-op online local or offline local.
Wait, this is front menu select. Yeah, and then inside, it's a very menu-based game, because this game is so fucking nerdy, right? So, Infinity is a mode that you would jump into, so you have your story going, and obviously from the main menu, you have just your unified group of heroes. Right now, by the way, we're playing, like I said, chapter 7 to 10, I have 49% of the gallery unlocked, I have 30 characters unlocked, if the screen is to be believed in all these black spaces that are on them, it's going to be 36 total in terms of the initial roster.
Infinity, though, you would jump into, right, as you have your story you're playing, you can jump from your story into Infinity 2 and menus, right, stick with me, I know, but this is also how complicated and nerdy is. Yeah, any point you can go between the different modes and fuck around and come back to your story if you got a shield logo. Infinity basically is replays of missions, you find them in the world, then add them to the Infinity thing, but they all have special modifiers, right? So, like, one of them is, right, it's a level 20 mission, it's solo Spidey.
So, you've already done this, the hand mission, right, where you went through with all four of them and fought and beat the guy. Now, you go through to Spidey, everybody's going to be level 20, you have to fight just solo and get there and beat them, right? Then, on top of that, there's stars for everyone, there's three different stars, you can earn everything. different criteria.
Beat it and do this much damage. Beat it in this amount of time. Do this. The stars individually each come with their own separate rewards.
So the separate rewards are going to be like these different XP cubes, Cosmic cubes that you can apply for XP. AP cubes are going to get to a little bit. Balls, Ability Orbs, all this different shit that you're using in a different mode. But like I said, you have this basically grid of different missions you're unlocking.
You can replay and do all these different things that are. Play through the Spider-Man. Play this one part of the Avengers Tower and beat 20 enemies and that's star 1. Does it change the story or is it the same thing?
It changes your level in the story. It's the same thing you've already played but now the modifiers are different. So it'll be like everyone is doing way more damage, your normal attacks do way less damage but you're filling in your EX gauge, your extreme attack. What cutscenes and stuff are.
No, you don't mean cutscenes. The cutscenes happen but they actually speed through them pretty quick in terms of like this guy pops up and he's mad but we don't have to listen to the dialogue again. He's just right into fighting and stuff. And I've been surprised how much I'm enjoying that, right?
Because the story, yeah sure I'm playing through and I feel like for the most part I'm just crushing. No problem, I'm having a good time. Last night was the first time I got to a boss where I was like, fuck I'm not powerful enough to beat this boss. I popped out and did more of the Infinity stuff because it's the same cast of characters.
Exactly, it's where you're grinding, right? As you're unlocking stars in the Infinity missions, you then are unlocking for that section of Infinity missions like three different rewards that are all different costumes. So it's like you can unlock a different costume for Captain Marvel. The Spidey thing, one of the rewards and why I wanted to do it was to prove a point to myself for this very conversation.
It was on top of the XP cubes and the ability orbs, right? I could then take, the reward for completing the mission was in your Spidey suit and I wanted to see what that was like. I love the grind of it, I really do. I really like getting more powerful, I like seeing these things and like oh man that's a level, you know what, at the time I'm 25 and I was like level 20 so I'm gonna let that cook.
When I have a team of level 26 people I'll come back and really clean house on it. You can come back on certain ones and farm different things and get through and do it. And again, they're putting interesting twists on it, like I said, the different things, the enemy's, and even when you beat them like okay the third star is beating twice as many so you know you have to come back and be more powerful and stuff. And the rewards of the costumes right there.
I think right now, the costumes are a bit weak, because they are just different paint scenes for the most part. Which for a lot of people makes sense. So Spider-Man was like, I wonder what suit I'm gonna get? It's Iron Spider, where it's like okay instead of being red it's silver, instead of being blue it's black.
So it does look different but it does the same thing, same thing with Captain Marvel, right? Where it's like cool now she's in the green and black rather than the red and blue, right? So I was very much of the, okay cool, I was trying to, I got a cap too, cap's like monochrome, right? I was like okay, I'm trying to figure out if for this conversation, are there better suits out there?
Because after I unlocked. Actual skin changes. Exactly, I moved in, I was like, I see the other ones now for the next three characters I can unlock but I didn't get to them. Oh Scarlet, Black Widow, Scarlet Witch is always.
Black Widow, right, hers is a white suit instead of a black suit. Okay, whatever. I don't know and I wasn't sure about it, however, today they dropped as of recording the online patch for this, which also came with the notes of like, okay cool, season pass is available now, if you get season pass which is the 3 DLCs that will come later, you get the Deadpool skin, that's like the chef skin. So I did it today, jumped in, and he does actually have a difference, he's got a different hat, he's got an apron on, so it's like, I'm not holding, I hope that the rest of these suits are going to be as varied as that, but there is a possibility for it.
And I watched the video today on Twitter, Marvel Twitter, with Bill and the writer of the game, and they mentioned that other suits are coming later on. So I don't know, long story short though, it doesn't matter too much to me, like I'm not playing for the different suits, all those suits are always great and I want them, and even with the variables I have, it is more about the fact that, cool, I'm grinding it out, I'm leveling it up, I'm doing all this thing, because that's what this game is why it's so incredibly nerdy, is that just alone, right? The fact to go in there and grind out for resources. Then of course, so you have your story, we've talked about that.
Then there's a team menu, right, where you jump in and it's what you'd expect, it's the 4 players you've already selected, right? And you get to go and see their health points, their E points, which is their lowest points, their XP, right? They each have 4 special moves, each one of these special moves, you upgrade through the orbs you're getting, through the other things you're getting, right? The AP you're getting as you level up, there's all these different currencies that play in the game, which again are incredibly fucking nerdy, but I really like building points.
It seems to be when you level up, you get a certain amount of them, right? So you have them dumped in there, so you can go back and upgrade. Tap shield throw from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4, right? That's an upgrade of the tree.
Exactly. And so, when you start, everybody has one move, and then as you level up, you start unlocking the extra moves, right? So, real quick, you start discovering what your power moves for every character are, how you're gonna use them, which ones you want to do. So I'm dumping, like, I dump my points into Cap's shield throw, I dump my points into Spider Gwen's giant web ball she slams down on people, Iron Man's spin around Repulsor Ray, and then Deadpool throwing up the bombs and letting them all explode.
To your point of everybody feels samey, it's an interesting thing, and what I think slowed down my progress in the game for the first few hours of getting new characters and jumping in and trying them and seeing who I like the most. And where, yeah, at base level, right, like, Deadpool shooting shit, and so is Black Widow, I feel they're different enough, the power levels are different enough, and again, it's the incredible nerdy nature of this, where you're on the move, and when you, the actual ability or, you know, the button press, and you're looking at upgrading them, you see it go from, if it's gonna do more damage, if it's gonna do more stun, if it's gonna consume more or less energy, or, you know, like, there's levels all that shit you're upgrading to. So, I was upgrading a one move for a long time, not paying attention, and he was doing more damage when in reality was doing more stun, because higher level bosses need to be stunned before they can actually be hurt and stuff like that. There's a whole bunch of weird, very RPG-ish.
Yeah, totally, really different, diverse mechanics that are in this game, that I think, if you're just blazing through the story, you can pretty much ignore, but it's like when you start doing the challenges and actually want to be pushed. When I was doing the Spider-Man thing last night solo, it was hard, where it was like, okay, shit, I used all my energy too early for my special moves, the blue bars are energy, and, you know, you use it with all the four face buttons you're using with a combo, otherwise you have light and heavy that don't cost anything. And using those shit, and I got to learn to dodge, and I got to do this, and it was all of a sudden that, what had been, not mindless, but pretty mindless, they're just like, run through, beat the shit out of it, where's the secret, team these guys up, because, of course, I was not going to barely hear you asking about team-up moves, and I was like, day one, I was like, I don't understand it fully. Now it is the idea that, with the right trigger, right, you can hold it and see who's around you, and then their face will appear over your buttons indicating that if you do this, they're going to do it too.
Sometimes it is as simple as, you know, Iron Man spins around shooting everybody, and Deadpool throws his bombs, it's not really team-up moves as much as they're doing something together. Yeah, exactly. To double down on the point, it's less about what they feel like moment-to-moment of everybody feeling the same, it is more of the nerd shit of what you're doing and upgrading it. It is more of a kind of Diablo dungeon crawler type of thing, which is interesting, because those are the type of games I'm not super into, but for some reason, Ultimate Alliance gets me into it so hard.
Yeah, and it's that weird mid-maxing thing, of what kind of build am I making for Iron Man, what am I using, how do I want to use him, right? Story-wise and character-wise, does it mesh well? Because it sounds like there's a ton of characters, it's not just the Avengers and Guardians, it's like Doc Ock and all that stuff. Does it ever feel like you're kind of getting lost in it?
I mean, yes and no, I guess. It's that thing where they introduce characters where for sure I'm like, I do not know who you are. I jumped into this thing and I don't know who the fuck you are, and I'm like, okay, cool. One of the moments in playing 2 was when they brought out Penance, which is the character that Speedball turns himself into because he caused the events of Civil War.
And that moment I remember playing in 2 where I was like, man, they're bringing out some deep cuts, so the fact that you're saying that. You definitely get deep people in here around, and it's like, oh, I thought I knew who you were and I clearly don't. I thought I knew it based on the Scuttlebutt or this character you're with that I've seen in other things, I have no fucking clue who you are, right? Deadpool is my other question.
How's he? Oh my god, he's fucking Nolan North being Deadpool again, you know what I mean? Where it's like, by the time you unlock him or I unlocked him, it was one of those breath of fresh air things. Everybody else is being like, we're in the Marvel Universe and this is who we are, blah, blah, blah.
It's that, you know, the archetype of what those characters are. And then when you scroll through, you're running by and he's making tacos, and you're like, oh, that's a funny easter egg. And then it turns around like, oh, no, this is actually a plot point. This is how he's joining the alliance.
Okay, cool. And then every time you select him from here, it's like, are you sure? I'll give you a chance to change your mind. Yeah, it's similar to how he's introduced in two words, like, you think he's just gonna be a boss fight, but then like, if you continue with him for the rest of the story, it is awesome.
And I just wanna point out, you said, your guesstimate of if the character selected is to be believed. It's about 36 characters. I look it up. Ultimate Alliance 2, which I assume had more characters than the first one, had 23 characters.
Oh yeah, they're on the record saying this is the most they've ever had in a game. Sweet. And so, for the ones I've jumped around at, I've been pretty set in this team now for a while, but they all seem to be well done. The ones I know, right?
Like, I obviously use Hawkeye. I use Hawkeye. I was like, yep, you're doing a good job of being Hawkeye. It's not the math ration costume.
I'm hoping I was gonna unlock it later. Maybe it'll still pop up. Believe it or not, I'm so much done. I'm sorry.
Wow. Because again, I know. So I've already talked about all the orbs and you're using those on your moves. Then there are ISO-8.
ISO-8 slots, right? Now these are these little shards and like elements you're collecting that then give you augments. So, you know, you're earning more currency. You're doing more damage, but you'll take more damage.
There's more hit points. There's more health. There's more vitality. You slot them on your characters.
You have four slots. You slowly unlock them as you go, right? So again, now it's like, well, how am I using Iron Man? How am I using Cap?
How am I using these people? When I did the Spider-Man Challenge, it wasn't very much like, cool, clear out his slots. Let's take out the, you know, the strength I put on, the 500 plus strength I put on Cap. Let's put it on him so he's doing more damage here.
On top of that, you have these different shards and slots, right? Or shards and slots, I should say. And again, you have dozens of them. They're all colors of the rainbow.
They all do different things. You can go into them, then use the other points, which one of the, you use the, uh, you use the, one of the other different, oh, here, sorry. You can break them down, you break down ones you don't want to use to get the raw resources. You're also collecting the raw resources as you go.
You can take the raw resources then and one of the other, uh, uh, brand new, uh, shit, I don't know, I can't wait. And one of the other orb currencies you have and then use that now to, or no, it's, you're using the raw resource and the gold to then put up to five times multipliers on each one of them. So you have 500 times, or 500 strength times five and you're ready to go with that there if you have a goal. Is it temporary?
No, that's a permanent buff. You're signing to that thing and putting it on there and actually making that character out to be way better and ready to go, right? As if that wasn't enough then, Tim, right? So that's, that's all in team, right, where you're signing on this shit.
Then there's the lab, where you go into this ISO 8 management thing I was talking about in the breakdown. Next to that is the Alliance Enhancement. This is where you go, and you use the gold and AEP points you have to go fill out these hexagons. AEP?
AEP. Spirit Grid? These, yes, 1,000%. Really?
Color-coded, I want my vitality to be 1.0% more, and then you start, obviously the cost goes up, you fill in this giant thing, it branches into another giant hexagon that has more shit. So you're making your entire Alliance now, Johnny Bust for your entire Alliance to go through, and make them stronger, and more fierce, and more powerful. So fucking cool. Wait, that applies to everybody?
That's your entire Alliance, that's everybody. The ISO 1's are specifically assigned to people. Every character has their own XP points that you're using then to, that on their own is upgrading their blue energy, their health energy, right, and then unlocking the ability to give you through the AP points. Also, wait, is the lab just menus, or gameplay?
The lab is just menus. Just menus. And this game is so fucking nerdy, that you spend so much goddamn... We got your AP, we got your blue, we got your AP, we got your AP, we got your AP, we got your AP, we got the silvery orbs, you got the black.
You get your tax returns, you get your expense reports. Jump back into infinity, earn more of this shit to go back and make more of this shit. Oh yeah, it does sound a lot like Diablo in a lot of ways. 100%, yeah.
So maybe in some ways it's like an arcadey comic book, but actually it has way more depth than I would have expected at face value. Yeah, and that's my thing, I'm going to knock on wood, beat the story either tonight or tomorrow on the plane. And when I do, I cannot wait to start on a harder difficulty and get more gold and keep unlocking more stuff. Is there a new game plus to keep things going?
The way they use this menu hub system, it's all the same. There's no new game plus, it'll just be like, right now I can go into chapter select and I see right now when you started, it's heroic and friendly. So I already have those and I'm playing on heroic, friendly being easier and there's going to be something above that. What's the next level?
I don't know, actually I texted right before this. Do you know what you're at right now? Right now Cap's 33, Gwen is 34, Iron Man is 30 and Deadpool is 30. I don't know what the next level is right now.
So, if you go in and do, what was it, a four star infinity fight? What's a hard fight? Well it's all levels. They're not scaling to me.
When I jump into the infinity stuff, it'll show me, hey, this Spider-Man mission is a 20. This mission to defeat 50 enemies is a 27. What are the stars then? The stars are my rewards.
There's a star for beating a certain amount of time. I'm fascinated to see how it reviews. Because it is very much that. I think there's going to be a lot of people like you that look at it and it's like, when I was playing it, before I really got caught up and I understood it.
Because again, there's literally so much shit I just ran through in, Jesus, 40 minutes. That's the tip of the iceberg I really feel on how it all comes together. So it took me a while to wrap my head around it. And so early playing, I'm like, this reminds me of the old Tim Gettys adage of, we can do better.
Of like, this is fine, this is good, but is this the Avengers game people want? And I understand that totally. I totally get that. However, this is the Ultimate Alliance game I wanted.
I didn't want or need more of Ultimate Alliance, I guess. Exactly. That's my thought. I'm wondering if it's going to be a Metacritic flat 7 for a lot of people.
If people aren't going to get into this nerdy-ass shit like I'm talking about, and if I'll be caught off guard and people think it's better than that. Tell me about that, Greg. The co-op? Offline, online, local, what's the story?
What do you want, baby? How do you want to do it? So if it's online, how does that work? Because there's no voice chat.
You've got to build the app. Sounds like you haven't done it yet. But what is the expectation if I do want to play online? Let's start with you guys.
Can I even do that? Like Mario card? Hold on, we're doing it right now. Give me my Switch Lite, Kevin.
Oh, you broke your target. Next week. My neon, magenta, teal. Yeah, it's actually mixed.
It's amazing. I'm joking, everybody. But anyway, so you go into, what is it, online? Come on, there's a co-op button.
Can you play the Infinity Missions as well, story? That's a great question. I don't know. What was your channel expectation?
In the past online today was for online play. Do you think most people are going to play local? Because that's kind of the Switch vibe? I'm pretty self-centered, so I would think most people are going to play solo.
I don't know. I hope Barrett's super into it. Oh, there you go. See, create, search, and friend for the mode.
So if I went to friend, right? Do you want a room where a friend can play? Actually, look under search. Well, this game's not out yet though, right?
Correct, yeah, yeah. So there you go. Oh, there it is. You can play Infinity mode, you can do difficulty, mighty, or what is PSI?
Don't worry about it. It's a lot of collectible. See, so Infinity, switch over to Rift, showing you what I'm doing. You can set a password.
Okay, so you can set a room. Alright, so you set a room type and other people might join it. Alright. There's weirdly a lot of online community for UA2, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people get into this.
Here's why I ask. Any time you want to play, I'm not playing. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I've got to cut it up to you.
But the way I've seen Greg consume games that I can't play, he's going to play so many. He's going to power through this a ton. You might go back to it occasionally, but you're going to hit a point where I've got almost everything. You're going to Platinum this.
Oh, sure. And that's the thing, because I would love to Platinum this. That's the highest compliment I can say. If this was a PlayStation 4 game, you bet your bottom dollar I'd be Platinum it.
And so for me, it very much becomes what you were talking about with your stupid spirits from Smash, right? Where I'm going to go after every... I'm going to go after every stupid infinity mission. Think of my mindset right now where I was like, I want to see a Spider-Man suit and it's different, right?
And so I gave him all my XP cubes, fed him all the XP, and then I went to the mission, right? And then three level over is a solo Hulk mission. I have not used Hulk once. It's like level 25, so it's like...
You have to do a solo Hulk. It's cool enough that I want to... Alright, cool. I'm either going to feed him my XP cubes or I'm going to sit there and I'm going to bearish me and let's run a Hulk with you.
So that's my thing. I don't want to say my expectations were low for it, right? Because they weren't. They were right for it.
Exactly. But as Walking Away playing it, it was what we're talking about. Especially, it's the same thing of when you do the giant XP moves, the EP moves, where everybody comes across and it's like... It's just fucking chaos and numbers flying off.
Yeah, great. And I do love building up doing it. But when we walked away for playing like 10 minutes of it, it was like, that seems like what I want, but how long would I want to play it? And now I'm in the shit and I'm literally like...
I'm like, I want to beat this game. I want to get through this game. I'd love to beat it for game casting. It wasn't going to happen, probably.
But it was, cool, I said that, and then it would be 15 minutes to sit there like, I'm going to move this and do this. And then, cool, I will knock Venom. But he feels... Should I be using the Hulk?
Because when you build your team, right, you're getting advantages if you have all the Avengers, like you get a bonus multiplayer. We have Marvel, Avengers, if it's high-flying, if it's agility people. So it's like, well fuck, Venom's cool, but he doesn't really fit the vibe on building. So when I brought the Hulk together, I did this, and then it's like...
I'm trying to get a little team of Hulk grannies. It's just a bit of fun. I do think about having the Hulk spider team. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
I guess to finish my online point, all I was going to say is I think it's really good that it is there. It feels like it might be a Reddit thing. It's like, hey, you know, there's people that want it, but it's really good that it's there because if you are playing it with a longevity to it, like, I think it's critical. And I'm glad to hear it.
I didn't think it was going to be in there for me. Just, again, like, bad expectation. But secondly, when you started this, I was like, it sounded like it might be more of this, like, arcade quarter popper, you know, like, sort of like, yeah, your abilities and fun, but teams, like, they're all feel the same. But I'm, like, totally flipped now on this.
And, like, wow, like, there's, you know, I might be playing a lot of the same areas, right? But, like, that's kind of going to play Destiny, so that's all I do. But to be able to level up in so many different ways and have so much depth, and it seems like it's meaningful. That's a surprise.
And that's a big thing for me, again, and I kept saying it, and I said, thanks for letting me rant and rave, because it's all been building up inside. It is the idea that, like, you know, I started, like, Cap has been the only person, I think, on my team the entire way. Where I was, like, I pull Iron Man off and put Spider Man in and put Iron Man back on because I like it. But it wasn't as I really got in the flow of it.
Like, I'm okay, I'm only going to use, especially with the way I'm leveling early on, one or two powers for each person. So I really need the right structure to it. So, again, back to my point that, like, sure, Deadpool's machine guns feel a lot like, I guess, Black Widow's machine guns, but I'm not using either of their machine guns. I'm using Deadpool's, stand there, throw the bombs, get a good circle.
Because, granted, there's tons of fucking area of effects, you know what I mean? Like, it's not limited to that. It's the style, it's the vibe the whole team has, and, of course, it's like, it wasn't the other Ultimate Alliance games, but the story you're building in your head is the story you're being given. You're making choices, so you're level 20 in, like, you might want to go back and play, you know, Black Widow, but you're like, I'm already this far into Deadpool.
That becomes your team, your story for a while. But even though, like, the times when somebody does drop, and, like, usually they're dropping higher, and I try them out, and they come back. Oh, they drop high? Yeah, somebody who's lower.
It is that thing with the XPQs or whatever you want to do it. I did feel like, cool. I thought a big deal to talk you back in and get you to play, let alone bring you into these higher-level missions, and it's just like if somebody was pulling you through stuff, they're leveling up quicker. Interesting.
That sounds very accessible. So we talk about the story, we talk about the affinity, we talk about the team, we talk about lab, we talk about the co-op. What type of settings do we got? Like, what type of brightness settings do we have?
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You're back. Death Stranding 2 really blew me away. It's crazy, man. Thank you a lot of people for putting up that.
Great game with notes. Notes on notes on notes. Very exciting stuff. But right now we kind of talked about this a little bit earlier, but you spent the last, it seems like forever.
Yeah. It's funny because it's only like 10, 11 days or something like that. What's the thing? What did you do?
What did you do? What's the place? What's the place? How much to do?
How much to see? I've been talking about for a really long time. I mean, it all really started with some Destiny fans meeting up and turned into one of the largest charity events in gaming. You know, for St.
Jude, they raised about $4 million this year. And that, I believe, was doubled. It's unbelievable. Yes.
It's like unbelievable. For the kids, fighting against cancer. It's really incredible. So that's where it all starts.
But it's, again, all of it is really built on community and togetherness. So long story short, this is the biggest it's ever been. And I know you guys are no stranger to like meetups that turn into something bigger and it gets bigger and bigger. Next thing you're having a problem with a bunch of friends.
And Smash Mouth. And Smash Mouth. So this year it was at a resort hotel with like a golf course and all that just outside of Disney World. How many holes were there?
I knew it was raining. Was it a dolphin? What? No, it was, the resort was called Shingle Creek.
Rose and Shingle Creek. So there's a lot of business conventions there. And it's like, it's like a miniature Vegas. You guys will understand that.
Like one row of like a couple bars, a couple restaurants that leads to the convention center. But that's what it was. So it was more than just like a hotel with like some convention space. So it felt like a place to hang out.
So long story short, it just was a really cool place to go and meet to them. That's what it always is. But it was bigger than before. So this year, Bungie, they had been there last year, but they had a legit booth.
And Borderlands did too. Yeah, I remember. So this was like a really big step forward. And actually, you know, Warframe was also there.
And I know that I'm forgetting a couple others. Those were some really big ones that you could like legit go and play stuff. Borderlands being the biggest when you think about it. Because that was like a lot of people's first chance to like play all the characters.
It was the E3 demo. So they brought out all the stuff there. And that was really cool. And it's certainly a game that those fans really like.
So yes, you can play games. But again, for me, and it always will be like one, there's a network of creators there that I know really well. And I never get to see them. You're just exchanging on Twitter.
And if you feel like you know each other, you're like, you're not even sure if you've met somebody. You're like, wait, I've been talking to you for years. Have we met? That's a question that often comes up.