Yo, what's up? Welcome to Confunny Gamescast for Monday, February 24, 2025. I'm on your host, Blessing, Adialya Jr., and joining me is Christmas and February, Joey Noelle. It's me.
We're also joined by WWE superstar, Greg Miller. Hello Blessing, how are you? I'm doing well. How are you doing?
It's good. I'm good. I'm good. It's good to see you.
It's good to see you. It's you too. Andy, Cortez, I gave the night rifle. Good to see you.
I'll be on the scene. I'll be on the scene. I'll be on the scene. I'll be on the scene.
I'll be on the scene. I'll be on the scene. God, we're dominating last night. We're just fucking dominating last night.
We're gonna be walking around last night. I was like, oh, my God. I'm running around. I can't find any dung.
I'm like, it's got to be all going to be joined. I was looking for a cuck on the ground. I was just going to open your nose, get a smell around. Of course, this is Confunny Gamescast.
Each and every weekday, we get together and talk about the biggest reviews, previews, and topics in video games live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast, services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with a kind of funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify or Apple podcasts to hit all of our shows, free, watch and support them live and get a daily exclusive show. For a chance to be a part of the show, some of your thoughts and opinions as YouTube chats as we go. How's it keeping for you?
We're an 11 person business all about live talk shows. So, KTV right before this was about the return of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater right now as the Gamescast. And after this is a stream with Nick, do we know what that stream is? Avowed.
Oh. Nick playing some avowed to go check that out right after this. I'm doing that in the video stream and now he's in, huh? I just don't play an hour while.
That's why I did one stream with that. I don't know. I think you were more worried about streaming that in like, you know, it's a bit of a tougher game. I'll tell you what, man, the magic in Avowed, I think I fucked up.
I should have gone magic. Yeah, there's a whole cool spell. Dual spells. It's one of the fact that you ruined Outer Wilds for him.
He was all going home and it wasn't. You were like, because he was going to build and play and review with you. And then you're like, I'm too busy. I'm not going to have a chance to.
I mean, what was I wrong though? No, I'm just going to review Monster Hunter Wilds. We got so many things happening. How much wild did you play?
Oh, man. What wild are we talking about? Outer Wilds. I'm 17 hours in.
Of course, my PS5 and I'm not stopping. I'm loving that game. But we're going to talk about some Monster Hunter Wilds in a sec. If you're kind of a member, you can get today's Gregway, which is.
It's about how Monster Hunter Wilds ruined today's Gregway. Oh, OK. Love that. I like that.
I like that. I like that. I just want to say that I got yelled at by my mom for your Gregway last week. Which one?
Why didn't you kind of a podcast? Thank you. I wasn't expecting to get there. I'm just saying.
I'm driving. I think, oh my god, they forgot the kind of funny podcast, which is bad enough. And I get here and they go, no, we all we just agreed not to do it. I say, what did you tell anybody?
I'm like, ah, fuck. I don't know what we did. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster, and Karen Lindenner. Today, we're brought to you by Greg Miller's live Chicago show and BetterHelp.
But we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with topic of the show. I love that. Monster Hunter Wilds.
We've all played slash touched this game to some degree, to some of us, more than others. But I'm very excited to ask you guys talk to you guys all about your experiences with Monster Hunter Wilds. I think most of you guys are not all you guys have played it more than I have. Super chat in with your questions about Monster Hunter Wilds.
We have any questions for the crew that have played it. Let us know before we get into it, to set the stage off of what you can expect out of Monster Hunter Wilds. I'm pulling this from the website page, The Fates of a People in Nature in Twined at the center, a boy named Neda and the mysterious White Wraith. Dynamic Ever-changing environments, a story of monsters and humans in the world with two faces, one in which the lands are harsh and unforgiving, where monsters fight for scant resources, and another in which the lands are vibrant and brimming with life.
Get fucking hype, come on! You play as a professional monster hunter, protecting the balance of the ecosystem and hunting monsters. Use the resources you gain from hunts to craft ever more powerful weapons and armor, and your quest one ravile the mysteries of the new lands. Experience the most evolved action and improved immersion in any monster hunter to date.
Greg Miller. Yes, right. Before I joined Conifunny, I was listening to Conifunny, and I'll hear you and the crew talk all about Monster Hunter Worlds. Yeah.
The previous big game I guess before Monster Hunter Rise. Correct, yeah, the last major, major mainline entry. What are your thoughts on Monster Hunter Worlds? Man, Monster Hunter Wilds is a 9.5 out of 10.
I think this is an amazing game. This is the highest score I've given on Conifunny since we changed this review score to the 10 points. It's the most passionate I've been about a video game in a while. As you know, we play all manner of things here, and we enjoy doing that, and we love doing that.
But there's always that thing where there's that special game you get that gets under your skin that you can't get away from. It's got to focus on you. You're thinking about it even when you're not playing it. You're so excited to play it.
That's Monster Hunter Wilds for me. And to take it to that next level that gets so close to a 10 from Conifunny Wright, for me, it is the fact that when I'm playing it, I'm sitting there in battle. I'm sitting there on my secret running around doing whatever, whether, you know, sharpening my weapons, healing myself, drinking antidote or something. I'm literally, I'm cognizantly in the moment going, God, this is so much fun.
This is so good. It is so, to steal Janet Garcia's favorite word from Back in the Day, frictionless. I think it's going to be an interesting review cycle. Monster Hunter World, of course, broke open for so many different people, Monster Hunter.
It really brought it to a well spring of people who had never played Monster Hunter before. For old folks like me who reviewed Monster Hunter Freedom 2 in 2007 on the PSP, right? Like, I remember after doing freedom 2 and after doing freedom Unite, doing like a op-ed for Eigen, and this is years later probably, but like what they needed to fix, how to make it big in the West. And World did all that.
Monster Hunter World did all that. And I was like, holy shit, I can't believe they did it. To see them iterate on that again, I think people will jump into this and still be very turned around. Like, what am I doing?
How does it, like newcomers to this, newcomers to series? But once it's still the most approachable Monster Hunter of all time, it is the easiest way to get into it. And again, it is frictionless in terms of how you want to enter into combat, how you want to craft, how you want to make your armor, what do you want to do here? There's a lot to talk about.
Lots and lots and lots to talk about it. I've played 30 hours right now. It's what my game clock is at. As a Monster Hunter sicko, that is nothing, obviously.
I booted up Monster Hunter World and jumped back in there to go back and forth. And they're like, my save there is at 140. You know, like 140 hours in Monster Hunter World. Like, OK, cool.
So a little bit more to go on Wilds here. 108, 25, you know, I'm in the end game. I'm deep in the end game. I'm working on X, Y, and C.
I don't want to spoil anything for you. But there's a lot to talk about here. And I think a lot they did incredibly well. You know, what I think holds it back from being a 10 for me is that even as a Monster Hunter sicko, and again, this is one of those 21s where it's like, if you're a real Monster Hunter sicko, I realize my 140 is nothing.
You've played way more than that. I understand that I'm not that like in the grand to a Monster Hunter fan. I'm not a sicko. But I think as somebody who reviews so many different games and talks about games critically and has been with the franchise for so long, there still is a lot of even for me.
You're playing and it's like, all right, cool. How do we team up? And I'm like, all right, well, do this. And I'm following you, but you're like, but we're in the same.
OK, Andy needs help, but we're in the same. Well, you're invited. OK, well, you know what I mean? It's like there's that thing and then like some of the stuff are just like just minutia menu stuff where you I'm going to eventually call them and how they simplify the number of menus.
But Monster Hunter is gorgeous. It is great to play. It is an interesting story. And I can't wait to go home and play more.
I got a question of what the biggest feature changes are. But I want to get Joey and Andy to the conversation. So think about that, Greg. But Joey, what are your thoughts so far on Monster Hunter Wells?
I'm having a really great time. This is my first dive into Monster Hunter, which is so crazy to think because it feels like a game that we would have played together before. Lauren and I were trying to figure this out, too, because she was like, I didn't play with you. Who did I play with?
But it's really fun. I do feel like I got a really big warning from Andy that was like, this is going to be janky. It's not going to play the way that Monster Hunter plays, which is not necessarily the way that you might want to play this. And it will forever trip me up.
The role is X and why would I never do that? Does not mean that I've ever played it. And I'm just like, I hate this. And you can't remit.
No. So I was like, let me tell you kids about when we did have a second stick. Can you have your finger curled over the PSP? It's a swit.
Clawed up. This is the camera. Yeah, I'm having so much fun for me. This is definitely a game that I think will get infinitely more fun when I play with other people, especially as it gets its official launch.
And I know that I'm playing it wrong in the sense that I'm hoarding everything. I'm not crafting anything because I'm usually a guide person for all of that kind of stuff. And I just know that I'm going to get to jump in with people and they're going to teach me how to play. And then I'm going to have all of the things.
So that's what I'm excited for. But I will say it is pretty overwhelming jumping in by yourself for the first time. So I hope that the Monster Hunter community is nice and will help Shepard be through it. We're doing the marathon stream, Joey.
I'll show you. We'll get you going. Andy Cortez, again, the last part of this blur reads, experience the most evolved action and improved immersion in any Monster Hunter today. In a Monster Hunter game.
Yeah. Yeah, it is. I'm not as far into Greg. For any time you want to, any time you want, I'm not watching the Venom view.
You guys. I'm not 30 hours into the game. I'm about 17 and a half. There's a lot of a lot of previews.
I knew Greg was going to be playing the most of it. So I didn't feel compelled to like, I got to get to end game, like I do usually for a lot of these reviews. And I'm enjoying it. I think it's awesome.
I think it's so much fun. I think it's great. When Greg said the word frictionless. I kind of went like I don't know.
I think there's a lot of friction in this game. I think in modern standards, I think if you try to change up the formula for what menus look like in this game, you will anger the larger Monster Hunter crowds. I understand not wanting to do that. But I think this game is still really tough to kind of understand what you're doing in menus and what you're doing with inventory and all sorts of things.
But when you're in the action, you know, I was warning blessing about this and warning Joey about this where as a soul sicko, no, the way that I play, the way that I'm used to action game sort of operating this game. Monster Hunter is very much like, honestly, like a soul game in how they sort of operate where it's like, no, this is the way it works and you will acclimate to the way our game is made, right? And at first, when the first console beta released or whatever it was, test on Steam, when that demo released, I was like, oh, this, you know, it's hard to play. I don't really fully understand.
I put like 30 or 40 hours in a Monster Hunter world. Why do I feel like I've never played this video game before? That was a long time ago. But then when the PC beta came around and also I was able to get a lot of frames and it looks amazing and holy shit, like this game just looks gorgeous so much of the time.
And then in other cutscenes, it's like, they do bother putting a light source in here. Why is nothing? There's no shadows anywhere. Why is that texture the lowest res ever?
When that piece of beta came around, I was like, oh, I get this now. And luckily Twitch chat was helping me out a lot with weapons and how to fully kind of get the most out of the experience. And so far I have been meaning the Switch Axe. Nice.
I'm having just the most amount of fun. This game kicks so much ass action wise. I love this weak point little thing now. You focus in, you see where the weak points are on the enemy.
And all of that stuff just makes, I'm surprised that the feature was never in the older games because it feels like it's so perfect. And it fits into the rhythm so perfectly now. I'm having just an absolute blast with it. I love the visuals.
I love the monsters that were fighting. I love the hunts. And kind of getting into the rhythm of going back to the home base, going to seek out the next thing I was trying to play with Mike the other day. And it was a little bit tougher trying to add a friend and it's not the easiest thing.
Trying to get Greg into my game last night was a little cumbersome, but then we finally got it going. And whenever I would start a mission, you would get notified and you'd be like, oh, do I want to join Andy's mission or not? One of the things I think that we are at a disadvantage for is the fact that, you know, this is a game that relies so much on multiplayer and it's just reviewers with it right now. And we were on a trip.
I was at DICE Awards and we got codes. You know, every time I get off hours, I have such a limited experience with getting in there and trying it. Like, once I made the kind of funny guild, bear throw up the image. Once I made the kind of one of the kind of one of guilds.
You can join, I think it's, ah shit, I should've written down. I think you can join five different guilds or six different guilds, maybe even more, whatever, 50 people in each one. So as you can see, if you see here, if you're a video person, I'll read all right. You see kind of funny, uh, four F nine CD five K M.
That's the official kind of funny claim that I'm running. You can go and join on that. I will add you when it comes out. If you want to go full screen again, though, Barrett, uh, yeah, they go, I put up there.
My Hunter ID is eight V four and T five DX. Of course you can go watch the videos and you can please send me. I want to follow everybody. I want to be part of it.
I do want to call out. This is not my actual armor. This is not my actual Palico armor. Okay.
I'm going to take a photo and they are very, very worried about spoilers and where you can stop. So I was like, you know what? I will go just put on basic leather for this and just showed up. Greg did hit me up and was like, Andy, I'm going to need you to kind of go into the character crater and, you know, because when I created it, uh, you know, I was kind of rushing through it and I'd like for you to change up some of the facial features because I don't really look like me.
And I was like, Greg, I had to break it to you. You can change your hair. You can change makeup. You can change facial hair.
But you can't change like the structure of the way your face looks later on. Yeah. I mean, I'm good enough. It's just like, you know what I mean?
I was like, ah, Andy, it makes me more. I'm like, all right. Greg, what's in the same? You're up in here for me, right?
Like I love the character creator, right? Like that was for me. That was the first impression of me. How much did you play?
So I played about six to eight hours and this is one for me to preface of I'm so not the monster on a person. In fact, it's to such an extent where I went with Greg to do the monster on a preview and while playing wild, I was like, all right, cool. I can see what they're doing here. This seems to have a lot of the presentation, but this is dissuading actually from playing more just because it is, it felt like it was proving more of like, oh, yeah, I'm definitely not the monster on a person.
But I think the thing is, I think it is such a specific game to what Andy's talking about. It is we have a way we do things here and this is what this game is going to be, but somehow I did come back to it once we got the review code out, I think I was kind of like, all right, I'll give one more. I don't want to experience the FOMO, right? Like everybody's gonna be playing it, I want to try it out.
And I think the thing I'll say in the hours that I played this game again, probably six to eight somewhere around there, the more I play it, the more I'm feeling the pull of, oh, there's something here. Like I think there is, I think it is the specificness of it mixed with, I don't know if I'll call it approachable. Just in the sense that I am in the inventory. I have no idea what I'm doing.
I know. There's so many, many. There are so many menus. Once I open up the inventory menu, there's so much going on in it.
I know I'm supposed to be eating food before I go out on these things. And I'm not because I'm like, I don't know where to get the food. I don't know if I'm supposed to cook. They keep telling me that there's a portable campsite that I can do.
And I don't know what's the right time to bust. I just, there's so much going on. And I think it's so relatable. Yeah.
It's a different thought though. Like, even though there are all these things about it that feel so specific to what Monster Hunter is and the kind of game that it wants to be, even though I say, I don't know if it's approachable. It is kind of welcoming though. Like there is something about it where I'm like, oh, I kind of just want to be in this world.
I went and read some of my old Monster Hunter reviews before I got here. And one of the ways I described it back then, because keep in mind it was like still very new to the Western audience to a degree, right? Was that it's an RPG without a story is how I was describing it there. And what I still, and I still think that DNA is here.
And I think part of it is that at some point, I think, especially when I'm saying this is frictionless, I mainly talking about combat, I'm mainly talking about getting in there. Yeah. But I'm also, I think in the way of it, it's hard because I know what to look for. Yeah, because you're however you want no problem.
Thank you. But the idea here is that this, you are playing the role of a Monster Hunter and this thing, right? And so there are the, okay, you should eat before you go. You know, there's a whole dramatic, you're cooking and there's the whole thing and you're chopping up and frying.
Like there's all that stuff because that's the world they're building what they want you to do. And they do want you to slow down, right? It is like before you rush into that next battle, go into your tent and refill your items and the things you put into your item thing, put them into your chest instead. All of that I think is overwhelming to look at and to dive into.
But I think when you just go and play, that stuff kind of opens up as you go because you can just go and jump in and kill things and whatever. And then eventually someone's going to tell you to cook or you're going to see that you have your barbecue grill with you all the time, your portable ones so you can just do it there. And then it is that idea like, oh man, I know I unlocked a trap. Why isn't it here?
So you go to your tent and see the difference between your item box and your actual item thing. And then oh, well, I put the berry in my pocket and that doesn't really help me. So put it into the, like you get into this thing where all of a sudden I think the beauty of Monster Hunter when it's working for you, because obviously this is every, every different, but it is that idea of like, okay, cool, kill the thing. Now I got, it's time to do the meat drop off my stuff, refil my stacks of, you know, my potions or whatever and then head off on the next one.
Like there's that rhythm to the whole thing that they do that I really appreciate about it where you do, I think in a very interesting, not story way feel like you are role playing that character. Which is like, I think that the thing I am appreciating, right? Like I, I think the thing that feels welcoming about it that I do like is that there's presentation around everything that makes it, that makes this world feel like, oh man, there's something big here, right? There's something here that I don't know that is enticing.
Like when you quit out to the main menu and it is the thing of like, you don't realize you're in the main menu because the way they do a scene to have like a character like put down a paw and it is all right now it's you hanging out with your chocolos. It's so lovely, right? It's you and your little palico and your chocolos and chocolos, right? And your sacred.
There's a lot of positivity to the tone. There's a lot of like hope in this. I mean, the first armor set you get is called like the hope armor set or whatever. Yeah.
So I totally agree with you. I think it is welcoming in that sense for sure. Like I just want to hang out in this world. Yeah, exactly.
And I think that for me that is the gateway to eventually learning the mechanics, understanding the game in a deeper way, right? It's kind of the same way that for souls games, right? Like I picked up Bloodborne and started slashing shit and I'm like, all right, cool. I know I'm not doing all the right things but hopefully I get there and then I got there and then the magic spot.
As you know about it, as you go through this in play, it is like the deeper you want to get into the deeper you can where you could just run through. I don't credit 21 hours, right? Oh, you beat the game. Oh, yeah.
I'm probably close. I mean then getting here and doing all that stuff. Cool. Doing temper, doing high value or whatever.
I'm working on the other set of armor and all that stuff. But I think as you go through it, like they put you on a, not short leash but you are being pulled through that story to the point that it needed a classic hunter. Like it was very unnerving when it would be like, all right, I go in, I kill the thing, roll to the cut scene, what we're talking about. Oh, no.
Another one showed up and I'm writing that fight, I need to restock. This is how this works. When you go to camp, I need to sit for a second. Like, no, no, you're right into your right into your right.
My stamina is 60% of what it should be, because I just went through a really tough fight. I need to go eat some fish. Yeah, I've got to go. Maybe I will go fish this time.
As a big monster hunter person, somebody who's been playing the franchise a very long time now, what are the big feature changes this time around that separated out from Alzheimer World? So again, it's iterating on everything worlds in. And I think again, I remember playing world with Kevin with Jen and being like, wow, like this has come so far from what it is. They've actually listened to the audience or people like me that were screaming for X, Y, Z.
I think it's them iterating and doubling down on all that and taking the lessons they had from what was the switch one that came to- Thank you very much. Right. People loved having the grappling hook there or whatever, right? The way they've iterated your slinger here, the way they- But for me, to get back to that frictionless thing, I have so many examples of that happening here, right?
Where SOS flares have always been used to, hey, I'm playing single player, I'm gonna fire it off. So any random can come join my game, right? If they're looking to help out. You can still do that here.
You can also turn it on to do it automatically. So anytime you start a quest to fire off, which I love, but more importantly, especially right now, when we're playing with no one you play with, if no one joins AI comes, like the characters from the camp, the NPCs that you've been working with come out and do the thing with you. It's cool shit. Yeah, and they're helpful and they talk and they do this.
I'm like, man, that's a really nice feature. Again, for one of these games, I compare it to Hell Divers, where when we review Hell Divers, when I review Hell Divers, I love this game and it's awesome. And so many people are like, I don't have people who wanna play with me. Like this is a nice way to, again, ease you into that.
Cause you will get human beings that do it, who will then probably invite you to the guild, who maybe wanna do the online friendship, or maybe you don't, maybe you just can run with AI. I love that about it. But it's those kind of fixes. The biggest one for me personally, and again, I think to make this frictionless, would be the secret, the secret, the secret, whatever, the joke about it.
I know and I've spent 30 hours with it, I have customized the hell out of it. I love my kind of funny blue in the pink eye. I'm like, Andy would love this. I'm doing it.
I liked it. Yeah, I liked yours. They have gone, it's my cup, I put it too closely. I bought it.
It's Captain's Fun. The secret is like, I think Paramount II, hey, let's make this game fast and fun and fluid. And what I mean by that is even when we played World and we liked World, it would be cool. I put up the quest we're going after, you know, this is a raffy or whatever, right?
Every 60-50, cool. We start camp and then we just run. And we run, run, run. You go over, you have to go and there's a few shortcuts, whatever.
But like, you had to move that out and you're, you could stop and collect things or whatever, but well, jump to wild, right? Where it is. Cool. If you haven't set up any of the base camps around there, right, which are like, you know, get you closer to certain objectives if you have them set up in the right place, which I didn't, I really, I've not fucked up that I just haven't seen the point.
You start a base camp, I immediately hit up in the D-pad. My secret runs in, I jump on them. I hit up on the D-pad again. I was like, oh, shot, right?
So as I'm running through, you pass an herb, I pass whatever. It's like playing on real shooters. Yeah, I'm just collecting all this stuff into my pouch, right? Which is so helpful because before it would have been, run, run, run, oh, there's something I need or want, run, run, oh, there's something I need.
I want, you know what I mean? Like, I'm always looking for spider webs because I use so many traps, right? To be able to arrive through, see them on the HUD coming up, okay, bam, bam, bam, bam. Like Spiderman, you collect them.
Fantastic. That then jumps to gameplay as well. And again, this is the frictionless thing of, in the past, you are in a battle with a monster. It starts to turn the wrong way, right?
And you get poisoned. You need to drink your antidote, right? You need to heal up about it. So you got to run backwards.
You got to drop your, you know, to go out of weapon mode so that you're trying to run faster, try to dodge. Get there, stop there, drink the thing. You see the monster running at you. It can be obviously tense and fun.
It can also be annoying as shit, right? But you get knocked down, you get killed, you faint, you come back, it can't be. You got to run your ass back over there. Now, whenever I need to heal, whenever I need to use something on the item bar, that's in its most of the stuff, you can, right?
I'm in the call on the sacred, mid fight. It runs in, I jump onto the sacred, named Cole, of course my Palakos Portillo. Jump on Cole, and then just I ride in a circle, right? And I heal up there, I drink my potion while I'm on the sacred.
So I'm a moving target, so I'm not getting lambasted, right? Same thing of like, you beat the monster, you know, you finish a wave of the monster and it retreats to a different location because you move around the map to fight all those things, right? It takes off, for me as a dual blade hunter, right? In the olden days, they take off cool.
I collect everything on the ground and then I have to sit there and I go to my wet stone and I sharpen my blade. And I can't move while I do that. Now you can use the wet stone on the sacred, right? So it is, I am actively going to the next thing, I'm chasing the monster, I've beaten the monster.
That's what I thought I'd glitch. Where I got up to the top and I was fighting, flying beast of a mermaid nameless. And I was like, I got up there, I was like, where the fuck? And I saw it off in the distance and I thought it was like, hung up because it was about to, it was like, you know, fucked up, so it was like, oh shit, it's glitch.
I was like, oh no, you're just so fucked up from this fight that you're taking that long to get to where you're going. Like that's kind of nice, I like that. Again, you're just in, you're going, you're flowing, you're not having to stop, you're not having to sit there this kind of sucks, it's cool to sharpen my blade of course, but it would be better to be able to walk into it. Whereas at least here you're riding and you're going and you're just, I feel like the game is almost constantly in motion and one of the things that I know, they called out a lot in their preview materials and when they were hyping up, I didn't touch much of it.
I'm still doing it a very traditional way of, what are my quests, what are my things? Okay, the game does a good job in end game, no spoilers, this really isn't, if you're captain on combat, this isn't it's what. But it is the idea of like, alright cool, like you're objective right now is to get your hunter, rank up and do expeditions. And that means going to a place, seeing the creature tagging it, creating your own, so I'm just starting to do that.
But one of the things they've talked about is the expeditions and how they do them here. Before in world, right, that was a whole thing you went into to go off and do it. Whereas now it's just like, what kind of camp and you can just do whatever you want in the world. And if you see a creature there, you can fight it right there, the quest will start.
And then when it's done, you're still in that world and you can run around and keep doing that and keep exploring, I feel like you're just in constant motion and not in an overwhelming way, almost in a way of like, it feels nice to be here, it feels nice to be living this dream. And then there's a bunch of like quality of life stuff, like when you beat a monster on a quest, there's a whole countdown for 60 seconds where you carve it up and you collect stuff, but inevitably you're done with that in the first 15, and you stand around, right? Now they have a thing where you can skip it, whole touchpad on PlayStation 5. If you're with a multiplayer thing, everybody has to vote on it and you can skip through it.
And the quest immediately. I thought somebody in chat a little while ago asked a question that is not really, just asking, is it cross-play? Yes, I was on PC, I was playing with Greg, who was on PlayStation. Yeah, great stuff.
You know, I think personally, especially compared to World, the monsters are a step up here. Like I don't, sorry, I want you to talk about that. I have many questions about the monsters, you guys have built in a lot of things, but before we do that, I wanna ask you, they go to patreon.com slash kindoffunny and youtube.com slash kindoffunny games where you can get the kind of funny membership, which allows you to get shows ad-free. And speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.
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Visit edc.ca to learn more. And we're back. And I want to talk about Stained Out monsters for you guys. Once it's starting.
Well. That's spoilery, kind of right. They were very clear on what did you look at the review and bar go thing. Because they were very clear where you have to stop talking.
Oh, no, I did not. Well, I'm not even far enough. I was going to say, you didn't get from, so we already know, because I helped you fight Ram Po Polo. I got slowed down to say these words that you're correct, Miller.
You got to slow down. It's going to happen. I called it, uh, Ralph, Ralph Polo the other night. Well, that's the one that I also played in the preview.
We also saw a glimpse of it in the trailer a while ago. That dude's probably my favorite. Only from a visual standpoint. It's a creative ass looking monster blessing.
This dude just looks like a weird kind of bird crow. It's always like in a wet kind of oily landscape. But then when it gets threatened, it like inflates its body. And it's like balloons around its body that like kind of get filled with poison air.
It's awesome. And then it sticks its tail into the ground. Turns the, it'll turn it all the way, bubbly, hot oily and shit. And then the ground will just get to avoid that.
But this thing looks so, it's such a creative looking dude. And again, I don't remember shit about Monster in the World obviously world because I, as I was playing so much of this wild, I'm just like, man, I don't, I, I'd love to look back at myself playing that game back in the day because clearly I had no idea what I was doing while playing that video game. And I know that Monster Hunter, the hardcore fans love seeing the big enemies return, right? They're always like, oh shit, this dude's coming back nice.
We haven't seen that one since whatever Monster Hunter that was out. And I know that's a big part of it's kind of similar to like Final Fantasy having the, uh, the summons, you know what I mean? Like it's a very similar vibe. Um, so yeah, that dude's probably my favorite.
I think he just, it's a creative ass looking boss, but I love so many of these. I have for mine, I was freaking blast. My favorite was a new Udura. Though this, have you seen this one?
No dude, it's like this fucking octopus guy. He's fucking sick and his armor is sick. Like I am in this game. I am, so it's funny.
Actually I should throw that up to the ass public. I'm blue sky. There was another reviewer who had bumped into me. I was, you know, answered the call, whatever SOS went up.
And they were playing, well, there it is. Matthew, Matthew Fig, he bumped into me, started playing with me. And I was like, okay, cool. And I thought he was just a stranger.
I didn't think I thought he was a video game reviewer, whatever. And all of a sudden he's like, oh my God, I can't believe I'm playing with Greg Miller. And so anyways, he took a screenshot and put it up today, or whatever, I was playing, which is fine. This isn't where you could probably where you think it is.
The first comment underneath it is Greg. Why is your armor like that? And I look like I'm in the hangover for whatever, where it's like something went wrong, and I just put the wrong whatever clothes and rolled out of there, right? Because it was like, when I'm playing it right, I'm especially early on, right?
You burn through armor really quick, I feel in the game. So it is stats, stats, stats. And so like I'm throwing whatever up on it. When I finally got to feeling where I was confident and I was like, new Udura was the first one where I was like, this entire outfit is so fucking sick but I was just grinding that boss over and over again to get what I want.
There he is, that's my boy right there, right? So I'm out there grinding it on. It was one of those that I think it was Barrett, maybe it was Andy, maybe it was both of you, walk by and you saw me in the mask and everything. Oh, that's a fucking sick mask.
It's like, he's fucking sick, it's hell. So he's my guy, this is my guy. You know what I did run into this dude last night? Did I do?
You say, what's up? I mean, I was like, I think Greg loves you. But I was like, I never said I was going, I think I did run into it. Oh yeah, you see that?
Bring that image back up real quick, if you can please. Dude on the bottom left, Rompopalo, this dude just explains it in flames, it's such a cool look. That image you saw before where I mismatched, the top is his top, whereas you can see the bubbly things on my shoulder when I'm hanging out with Matthew. I have such a freaking fun time fighting any of these really.
I was like overall monster design is hitting for you guys. Monster design is hitting and then, because I'm similar to you. Like now, World feels like it was a lifetime ago, because we've played about 700 games since then. But it is an idea, even when I was playing World, I always felt like, I know this is a little too dragon based.
You know what I mean? I feel like a narrow gaunt, a ravolose, whatever. Like 20 dragons. 20 dragons.
This one's white, this one's purple, black, whatever. So like to get here and find the variety. That's the thing about it, where I was like, okay, I shouldn't say that. I was, Andy wanna be last night.
I was like, hold on, I'm fighting two blanks in the sky right now. I was like, he looks so different than he, who looks like different than that. And it's like, I fucking love that. Like, I love that variety of it.
And then again, it is the theatricality of all of it, where again, for World, I talk about it, and I ran like him a gajillion times, trying to get the best armor at the time or whatever. But it was like his fight, I remember having the lightning strikes and all sorts of crazy effects. Like, oh, this is a really cool fight. It stands out.
All of these, I feel like, for the most part, have something going on. We have the exception of like, you know, you're running into that fucking dog face guy. You know, whatever, he's just running around the jungle. But when you're getting to the major ones, I'm down in the lava, I'm fighting this guy over here in the poison.
This one can cause ice. Here is the purple electricity. And like, it's almost like a fucking PlayStation 4 mark-surning demo of like, here's all these like fucking little pieces of glass we can shatter around and do it. It's like, there's a whole bunch of awesome shit going on here, let alone then when I'm in the throes of these fights and I do get knocked.
It's like, you know, there's a very catalytic game. I get knocked and I fly off, right? And I have to whistle for my sacred who grabs me and we run up the side of the wall and up there because again, in the Monster Hunter Switch game, right? Why can I not fucking remember that?
I played it, I played it, I played it, I played it. You know, grappling, cooking up all that stuff. The sacred takes the place of that, right? Where that's how you're using your scaling and going and like, they have a whole bunch of different like shortcuts and things where you're jumping off rocks that are just floating in the sky for some reason, whatever.
But it's like, can you control the sacred to bust out its wings? Because when you jump off, I think you would do it. I've played the intro million damn times, right? With all the different demos.
And then if you've played the intro demo, what happens in the first five minutes of the game where sacred does a big jump and it starts floating down and you can rotate the camera and say, wow, this looks amazing. But ever since I've never seen a sacred do that again and I've been dropping down like skyscraper heights. In this game. Did you switch on?
Did you switch on? Okay, cool. I keep you fine on it for PC. I'm playing on control.
I don't want to say anything. Speaking of C-Day Slitson, C-Day writes in with a super chat and says what weapons are blessed in Joey meaning and that was actually a question I wanted to extend everybody. I'm playing dual blades. I saw people recommending dual blades before I even got cold for the game saying that that was pretty accessible and I'm having a report.
It is pretty accessible. I like using the dual blades, especially because of the new mechanic, the focus mode thing of highlighting the weak points. With the dual blades, you do a cool ass move of connect and then you do a fucking spin into the air and then spin across the body of the monster you're fighting. It feels pretty good.
But then also you get a secondary weapon which you can switch out while you're riding your choke on the other side of your boat. You're saying great. And I got a big ole hammer. Haven't used it much yet.
But I took it to the practice area and was just trying out different moves and I was like, well, I like this thing. But I'm typically not a big weapon user in action games. But I kind of want to try it out because you got two slots. So I might as well explore what that is.
And so I'm excited to try that more. Yeah, I'm using the bow, which I think is really fun. I it's a lot easier when there's more than one person with me. Because you have someone who's like me.
Especially trying to like dodge and create some space and not be like right up in the fight. So I need to figure out a secondary. I think I just need to like run around with a bunch of different weapons. It took me a while.
I was using one of the light guns. Like both of them. Yeah. And then that wasn't really working either.
So I just might need to get better. I recorded me and Greg taking on the Zapdos last night. That's what you're doing. And it's just some of the coolest shit ever.
I don't know if you noticed. I was trying to pull the Zapdos to knock down the mountain, the interactive stuff. And it was so close to getting the son of a bitch. But I was trying to like pull aggro towards it because I really love taking advantage of those moments.
You feel like such a calculated hunter or whatever. The abilities to look at a cavern above you, put down a trap right below it, have the monster get stuck in there, look up and grapple the rock to then bring it down on the enemy and seeing that gigantic damage number. It's even more satisfying to an already insanely satisfying combat. And that's where the replay ability I think comes in.
Where when you go through the first times, right? You're just trying to survive. When you double back and suddenly you have traps, suddenly you have a trunk bomb. You're working on this.
And then also now you're way more accustomed, first hour of 25 versus five. Oh, turn off my weapon. Use my slinger to grab that to yank it down on them. One thing I do want to double back to, because I think we're understandably glossing over it because of course, yeah, secondary weapon, big deal.
That's huge for how monster hunter works. I've been dual-blades since 2007. And it's just like, I know it, I love it, I'm great at it, right? The idea that with the sacred in battle at any point, I can hit right on the D-pad and they'll ride in.
I jump up on coal, I take out of the bag, I take out my light bow gun and start using that. That has been not a game changer, but a very interesting one for me. Question from Dean8149 who writes with Super Chat, how does it work if you want to switch weapons? If I spend most of my playthrough with one and decide to try another, am I grinding back from zero?
You're grinding, I mean from zero, yeah. But it's like, especially for weapons in this game, like I don't feel, I change armor like that all the time, right? My dual blades, I very seldomly move to a different kind of dual blade because it is such a, not mountain decline, but you're upgrading weapons less frequently than you are armor. So with my light bow gun, even right now, it's still just the gen one light bow gun, maybe slot two gen, second gen bow gun.
But I don't feel like it's so underpowered, it's not worth it because for me, it's a very different situation. All right, cool, I have the dual blades and I'm hacking at something, but if somebody takes to the sky and they're up there for awhile, then I'm like, well, fuck it, all right, call the sacred, grab the thing, do all these different 12 damages, damn it, I haven't even considered that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a great call, that's what I do.
What it does? Another two chat, Garrett, read and writes and it says, you can update your face after launch with free customization tickets in DLC. So there you go, Greg, gotta pay for that probably, right? You said free DLC?
Free DLC. They do the thing where they put it up. And I think you get the daily walking bonuses too, like there's probably something like, I mean, I'm hypophidizing it. Well, I'll help you out then, you let me know.
Thank you, whatever that happens. Also, bear, can you bring up my hunter because he just looks so fucking good. Like, you look really cool. Okay, I'm on some hunter hunter, thank you, for allowing me to get the mustache and the beard disconnected because there are two facial hair options, bless.
There's not just one single thing where it's all encompassing, I can do one sort of chin strap beard, I can do one single mustache, and then my three makeup slots I used because the facial hair here, probably tough to notice, but I perfected it, the facial hair, really just the long time, because the facial hair here is only a chin strap, it ends like right here, height-wise, right? So you have no cheek hair like I do in real life. So then I use the makeup and I went to the freckles and I use three different freckles to then- You can hit not parallel, but a symmetry. So I've got two separate freckles settings and put them on the cheeks to make it look like cheek hair, otherwise, this character creator kicks so much ass.
It was really fun. This looks like an actor is playing Andy Cortez. I'm in the Andy Cortez movie. The much more- It's all Jon Snow.
It's Jon Snow as Andy Cortez. I was like, I say, you got to see a Bernal, which is kind of a, really tough reference that a lot of people won't understand. Oh, really? Very famous acting.
Yeah, super famous. Oh, really? Oh, really? Oh, no, no, I was, I was.
I'm not even sure. It showed me, maybe I would know. Yeah, very handsome, dude. Flying Penguins writes in and says, blessing, think of it like a fighting game, which I'm gonna need more context in that, because if I pick it up now, I'm doing down four, that's gonna help me find things, but I appreciate it.
And then I like this one from George Corona, the third, who says, how's the difficulty? A few reviews mentioned that series fans may think it's much easier in streamlines in the last few games. Yeah, I think this is a great question. You know, I woke up this morning, the review mark was seven AM, I was up long before that because of Ben, and I was just like, oh, I was talking, I was at times at times at times, I want to see, this is one of those rare ones.
When we moved games, rare ones recently, where when we moved games cast to the daily schedule, one of the things I was excited about would be, oh, you can read the reviews from your peers, and then jump off, and then it's like the last three reviews I've done have been. I don't know what he's gonna say, we're recording because whatever. So yeah, you know, I actually gave it an eight, that's Tom Marks over there, he was a monster hunter expert. I could get in the way of you grabbing any of its exceptionally fun weapons and planting them firmly in a monster's hide.
But in that quest to make Monster Hunter more approachable, Wiles has carved a little too close to the bone in some places, streaming its challenge back so much that I barely needed to dig into its in-depth equipment system at all at this time to become an apex predator. It's more flexible combat as some of the most fun I've had in the series, but like the blustering lightning storms of its gorgeous deserts, it burns brightly but briefly until Capcom unleashes some real end game beasts to challenge. I read that and I was like, oh, sure, yeah, like Tom's actual review talks about the fact that I don't think I fainted once during the thing, and I was like, yeah, I didn't either. You get knocked down in a monster in a game, you get dragged out by a palico, you get dumped at your camp, you come back in the battle.
And it wasn't till end game stuff where I wasn't even like, I'm getting my ass kicked. It was like, ah, I didn't climb on the sacred. I didn't listen to my own advice. I did this.
I got poisoned in double ball. I think since I've only been down twice. So that's a legitimate complaint for sure. It's not one I share.
At no point playing it was I like, I really wish I was getting my teeth kicked in right now. And I understand people want that challenge and want that thing. I do expect it to be here in the end game as I keep grinding for stuff. Tom said it wasn't for him where he was.
He still doesn't have all the armor and stuff like that. But I think it's a reasonable complaint. It's just not one of mine, where that's not what Monster Hunter is to me. Monster Hunter is the Gear treadmill.
It is the stuff you have with your friends. It's me jumping into Andy's game and helping him while I was looking for a dunk pod or whatever. And so that's there, but yeah, it wasn't. It didn't, I think maybe also the different kind of gamers, everybody is.
That's not a downside to me. I was very much like, oh yeah, they're right. I haven't been pushed to the limit. I haven't had that Gear Check moment, which you usually do, and they just go, oh fuck, clown.
Instead, it's like, I've been on the open world and I go to attack it at Monster. And it's like, oh, you can't, you're not high enough Hunter, right? Because they're roaming the open world. Okay, I kind of would have preferred to try to do it.