what's up and welcome to the kind of funny games cast for tuesday march 4th 2025 of course i'm your host i'm joined today by the big daddy himself greg miller hello timothy it is christmas in march joey noel i'm not happy with this side i'm here today but hello and i was like oh not the way i want and the new face of video games blessing out of your jr hey tim can we split your hair i'm going to start today everybody of course this is the kind of funny games cast each and every weekday we get together to talk about video games and all the things we love about them whether that's reviews previews predictions going through lists we talk about everything you want to hear when it comes to video games of course you can get that wherever you are whether it's podcast services youtube twitch we're live we're vod we're podcast we are trying to serve you and if you like that you should get the kind of funny membership we can get the show ad free and you get a daily exclusive greg way greg what's it about today grief that's i don't like grief you know they wrote in about it they're going through it i'm there to help them you can help you too if you need the help when i say when you come to the chicago thing do you want me spit in your hair you just say it i'll do it kids please don't ask i don't want to deal with that i don't want to deal with whatever good repercussions from that i'll do it uh for just being part of this show uh you can submit your thoughts and opinions as youtube super chats we are talking about split fiction the latest from hayes light so if you have any questions about that please super chat that in and we will get to those a little housekeeping for you you already got a reaction to tony hawk's pro skater three plus four on kind of games daily god is real i guess religion is something i care about now and we're safe thank you great uh who knows the kind of podcast will be right after this live for everybody uh with our new schedule where now all of our shows are live we are a live top show network thank you so much we appreciate you hanging out with us each and every day all day starting with games daily going through the games cast following that up with whatever other show we got and then a gameplay stream whole bunch of cool stuff for you speaking of gameplay streams stream today less is returning to dark souls 86 so we'll see we'll see less might be returning to dark souls he's doing something though it's gonna be fun if you're kind of funny member you get a great way about grief thank you our patreon producers carl jacobs don't make a bus there you're the best of us today we're brought to you by monster hunter now but we'll tell you all about that later from now let's get into the topic of the show split fiction our review everyone at this table has played it multiple other people are kind of funny have played it whatever that makes sense because the only way to play this game is with multiple people that's right it takes two greg yes not the name of this game to actually do it um steam description reads as follows embrace mind-blowing moments as you're pulled deep into the many worlds of split fiction a boundary-pushing co-op adventure other developers hazelite publisher ea the release date march 6 for 50 and it comes with bunny pass which allows you to for free play with another friend um very very cool metacritic is currently sitting out as of 10 a.m. today at a 91 it takes two the previous game was an 88 also a game awards game of the year where and no way else got a 78 um and uh some exciting news for you we did something different for this one we've never done here kind of funny before greg and i recorded our entire playthrough of this game that we're going to post on thursday if you want to watch us play through the entirety of the game for this review for the purposes of us editorially thinking about this game so you kind of get a little bit of insight into how we review the game and uh like we give our updates kind of like as we're playing a different style of content than we've normally done a little less on the like let's make a whole bunch of jokes in the stream yeah yeah that's actually cool yeah we'll laugh out loud at the part exactly exactly so a lot there's you'll be able to actually see that entire thing maybe on the thursday and right now the plan is that's taking the place of the stream because it's like uh and that'll be a youtube premiere right if everything goes correctly if everything goes correctly sometimes things don't go right with youtube but you put a thing into it so we'll see what's up but we're gonna try and let's check that out later this week uh but enough about all that i want to get into it listen i want to start with you what would you get a split fiction on the kind of funny scale before i say the number i want to wax polite for a second because i've been looking forward to this game as we all have right i think haze light is one of those developers that you look at and you're like oh man they're something special they're unique they are small yet small on the triple a side i don't even know how to categorize them anymore whether they're indie triple a obviously they have games published by ea and their budgets grow with every single game right and this game split fiction is their biggest is their biggest endeavor yet um jumping into split fiction my expectations were over the moon as far as what this is going to be because i love it takes you we love it takes you i even loved um a way out many of us love the way out as well right by the way i screwed you over i wrote no way out because of course that's an wb pay-per-view i'm sorry way out um upon playing through split fiction fiction split fiction i'm so light down about the story and characters in this game there are three major characters here right we got zoe we got we got raider none of them work on me right i didn't believe in the chemistry really between any of these characters i think thematically there are things with the story where i'm like oh man i see what you're going for but i don't know if this is the right format for the kind of story and the kind of things you want to tackle here and so much of those things i think overall let me down to the point where i look at a game like it takes two and even a way out and i'm like i don't like the stories in those games better that said on the gameplay side of split fiction he's like fucking has it it is absolutely wild as far as the amount of ideas the amount of mechanics the amount of creativity to where i look at he's like now in the same regard as i look at timosobi or even as a nintendo as far as their game their gameplay design action their chops here i there are moments that i had this game playing alongside barrett where we're saying we're like we're saying wow wow wow we're blown away we are you know surprised by things whether it be art direction whether it be the amount of fidelity where at any time before you're playing split fiction it's a game so it is split screen and the fact that we're seeing things that are rendered twice on the same screen at the same time we're blown away by what we're looking at um the amount of different ideas here as far as wow you guys like when we visited team soviet me and roger um for astrobot right like they showed us how they come up with ideas it was like a note card thing or sticky note thing where people come up with ideas on sticky notes we just got to see the wall it was crazy to see how many different ideas uh that they had there at timosobi i imagine hazelite has a very similar system of hey we're coming today what ideas do we have let's fucking try them out and it is crazy to see moment to moment how things change moment to moment how like you know things work together and they allow you allow you to feed off the other player in very interesting creative ways i'm blown away um the one last thing i'll say before i pass on i'm gonna give you a 9 out of 10 video game for me and i think the thing that's you did is there is a moment in this game that's later on in the game that i think will go down as the best video game moment of the year i think it'll be very tough for any other game to challenge it and i feel like there's no doubt about what you're talking about oh this will bless this meeting um this is my first hazelite game i haven't played it thanks to you or way out or brothers um i think i have like watched some of you all play in different amalgamations whether it be like maybe andy or mike playing on screen anyways i didn't really know what i was getting myself into i just know that it looks cool and i want to play um so i went in kind of not really having any expectation because i just didn't know um i had an excellent time i terrible at platformers i tried i pushed really hard through i didn't even finish astrobot i played with my friend maria it took us like we pretty much played like oh yeah that's all we did it was an excellent weekend um so i terrible at platformers this game i feel like it's really accessible in terms of platforming i didn't think it was like overly hard which i appreciated and i do think that and i can't really confirm this because i haven't actually talked to you about it uh i do feel like some of the bosses if you're struggling with them get easier oh interesting but i don't know if that is just me getting better or if it seemed like some of the elements maybe were like dialed back a little bit so it'd be easier to progress if they like obviously you're having issues which as a terrible platformer i really appreciate i do think the game does a really good job of because it's co-op like giving you opportunities to choose the system if you need to with like one of you guys the other just has to stay alive yeah i think that maybe that like inherently makes it easier because you do it like you kind of get used to that stuff because i don't think that's easier like from a gameplay perspective but i do think there's a lot of systems that aligns yeah i'm getting better um i agree a lot with um blessing i think the story overall is like very fine i think that there's part of the story that for me felt a lot stronger than the other one so i think that's my story issue is just that they feel a little bit unbalanced um the gameplay and what they do and all this i think is incredible and it's there's so many this is the game that i think the less you know about going into it the more fun it's going to be and like i kind of it's going to be a hard game for me to review because i don't really want to talk about a whole lot because i think there's so many cool things and reveals and stuff like that um that it's going to be really fun and i would i don't want to spoil anything for anybody so i had a great time oh i'm an eight five oh nine for the last eight five from joey greg miller i don't know what score you're gonna play the entire thing with you i know i talked to you the whole time through it but we didn't talk after we didn't talk at the end i feel like purposely doing it we didn't talk like where are you scoring what are you feeling yeah yeah there's so much i want to say about split fiction and a lot of that goes what bless said in the front i am disappointed in this game uh the narrative did not hit for me um in a world where we talk about video game writing being cheesy being cringe being all these different things like i think it's especially bad here um i thought this was very much you and i say it multiple times especially as we're getting going but like this is written and performed like a young adult novel which games should be for all ages i'm not i love young adult stuff often so it's not like i'm knocking that but it is as i said at the end i think what i was saying talking to people about it like this game is as subtle as a sledgehammer like from the moment you meet the three characters like i see we're going i wonder how this is all gonna wrap up and go to the point that for me then when you battle up these hills to get to that payoff it isn't worth the narrative structure of it like i just i early on and it was like oh like you and me turn to each other throughout this game let's play you'll see on say it before the character says it because we know like what's the most cheesy predictable thing you'd say here this is what you would do and for me that hampers the entire experience because it takes two getting sucked into this kids playroom being the dolls being the toys added this whimsical playbox nature to the game and the narrative where suddenly i thought that made sense of how you're mixed up and what you're doing and this is so crazy but we're okay coyote you know like there was something to it that also skews young adults i think right but worked for what they were doing overall where this feels like i'm playing a disney channel original movie which again isn't me throwing shade at that i'm not the audience for that though right for the most part so that was a bummer to me because i was never like when you and i would sit down the couch i was never like i can't wait to see what happens next i can't wait to get this action to see the payoff to this because real quickly i learned oh like i know where we're going i know what it's gonna be this is very by the basics whatever what i would say though to then bring it back to the positive is that nobody does this better co-op gameplay than hazelite you want to talk about an industry littered with the corpses of developers who have due to you know the head of their studio the head of their publisher had to go and do something that they aren't passionate about that they shouldn't go do a game that is outside of their genre hazelite sitting here and now doing this three times in a row like we are the co-op studio and we're only getting better at it technically here's a 50 game that comes with a pass to play with your friend for free cross-platform exists yes you can give the pass to somebody cross-platform and play with them you can do all these different things do all that and still say the best way to play this is on the couch with somebody that's how you want to experience for them to do that the finale of the let's play is what i mean it's all one big video but our final session is the one i would point to because not only is it the best stuff in the game that it's arguing i say this should be in the game this should be in the game the game's great as is don't get me wrong this is just so holy fucking shit when it starts happening right what i would point to is let's peel back the curtain and you don't see us review games often i sit down on the couch and i am upset it is a long day of content things are not going my way on a few different projects time wise we're in a crunch because of this and so i sit down not in a good place and you'll see by the end me grinning holy shit this is great blah blah blah like it did what i always talk about tales from the borderlands doing right it's an old great story being i'm super grumpy i don't i go through games i don't want to play i'm not finding what i want to play i sit down and play tales and suddenly i'm laughing i've forgotten my troubles it's the same thing here the gameplay is that good and it takes two and i want to i think it's gonna be an interesting look in because i think the majority of time maybe i'm just skewing negative on my own thing it's a very just again we're not handing out the camera we're playing it and reviewing it and trying to process all the information i think so many times in there it's me mocking the game in the dialogue or it's me saying this side story is what the content should have been like why are we doing yeah you say that so many times but i do think that's something like there's so many great ideas there that like but i can't take away from the fact that even like i think i say in the second the last one we're doing a section and i'm like i think i do it hey real quick just to point out i know i'm saying x y and z and making fun of this but like this is so good and we have our own language now how we're playing this game and what we're doing in this game is running flawlessly and doing all this different stuff like the gameplay is so good i give this an 8 out of 10 i think this is a great game it is not my favorite haze light game i think we can get into as we get into the weeds here about more of i think it overstays it's welcome again i think uh i'm not i wasn't into the fantasy setting of zoe's world versus uh meo's world of being this like cyberpunk future kind of thing which kind of takes which then makes half the game like but like that's a personal thing i'm not trying to talk about the quality of it i think the story pulls it down for me but there's still so much amazing gameplay here eight out of ten for great great yeah it's so fun going last year and here everyone's last in the green with so much of what's being said i i want to kind of just jump off of what greg's saying but the flip of it i'm gonna start with saying i'm giving this 8 out of 10 uh it's 8 out of 10 that i would recommend to anybody though i feel like this is a game that literally anybody that's ever held a controller is going to enjoy playing it might not be their favorite game ever the best game ever but there's going to be so many moments in it that are worth playing this game baseline has done such an amazing job of creating gameplay that can own and experiences that can only happen with another person and i think that is so commendable and important and beyond that come up with so many creative new ways to play games that i've never seen but bringing up the astrobots and that nintendo magic like there's so much of that here and like that i don't say lightly that is a very big deal because i don't think that many developers have the ability to do that let alone do it over and over and over again for a what i think our final count was probably 14 hours or so because we did all of the side stuff as well which i love the side stuff i have three that i missed and i need to go back to it i never popped that trophy and i thought i did all the you know side stories it's not gonna go back to it which one did you miss um and yeah so from a gameplay perspective which i do think is the most important thing to talk about here because i think that it is so good um i feel like gameplay wise though for as good as it is i give just that a nine out of ten i don't think it hits that 10 astrobot levels of creativity and it just feels so good there's a lot of moments that i'm like this could have felt a little bit better um having said that i do think it's very forgiving i think that uh they designed the game very well to not frustrate you like the checkpoint system is very very good um and there's a handful of times it was like but it's not just stood out because it's so good the majority of the time i almost don't even criticize that the checkpointing is great but uh and again like the things you're doing they're different but they're immediately understandable there's maybe in 14 hours two moments that were like what we do and that lasted a minute maybe and then we figured it out and one of them was yesterday when i was all bent out of shape i couldn't i was like hitting r2 when i should have hit my l2 oh yeah i'm like i'll nominate you this game is so brilliantly designed that when you're playing it no matter what new gimmick gameplay mechanic puzzle they throw in front of you you know how to solve it and you're kind of excited to solve it so i think like that to me is like wow they really pulled that off i totally agree with the story stuff um it was a major major major by down for me similar to bless i was very excited this game i had very very very high expectations uh and i was hoping that since they were going a different direction with the narrative and clearly putting more into it like maybe it's just because they're a bit more humanoid but it still has the fun gameplay stuff of it takes two um but they're these are more human stories we're dealing with i mean i guess it was as well story-wise but like in terms of like how they're presenting it it seemed a little bit more like hey we're gonna try to tell the story that matters and like i was very very let down by it i think it's very funny i think that there's a lot of well-written jokes i laugh a lot it's just like easter eggs and oh i was hopping off left and right for things like a lot of great stuff with the writing i just think that the characters and plot are like that i mean disney channel original movie i think is such a good thing as far as like what the vibe is of the story who these characters are where you get like you get later on and they're trying to have emotional moments i'm sorry like this isn't working on on me that way but i'm yeah i don't have to say too much more but yeah i'm very much let down by the story of the characters and i think that is a bummer because i think that a different tone different direction like the talent's there they have the stuff i just feel like they went too far in a direction that i don't feel like was in service of what this game is when you look at the quality of the gameplay and what they ask you to do in the environments you're in which are beautiful and there's so many of them and dozens of times i was like how are there this many assets in this game like it's so impressive we're using stuff and yeah exactly similar to what greg was saying i also prefer the cyber punky stuff over the fantasy stuff and that's just the type of person i am i mean i'm more of a sci-fi person than a fancy person in general but i think by the end of it i kind of like both i wasn't dreading going into one or the other and i'm not either and i don't really like sci-fi much or fantasy and i was like i'm picking the sci-fi side of the sci-fi girl and i ended up liking the fantasy stuff way more yeah i was ever dreading going into the fantasy stuff but i always prefer to go into the sci-fi stuff for me the dread which i don't i would not use as a word it was more the fact like oh we're gonna be here a while like one of the days we can see this is one of those modules i think where we came out and it was like these levels are long in levels i'm using loosely chapter i guess or whatever we came out and it was like there's like i'm like we did what we were there now and a half i feel like we did one maybe hour 15 or whatever and so it's like this is where it is again for me like i wish it was just quicker i wish it was just faster again like this is such a weird one but with the narrative not being great being good even after you being saying it's just straight bad if i was at home and jen and i were playing this we would have never rolled credits we would have we would enjoy this for two nights and like oh man the gameplay is cool but inevitably it would have been especially with jen who's like a way higher bar for what she wants to play or do with the time she would want to watch something over this and i feel like that's always my critique of uh these games of our as much as we love supermassive as much as we love dark pictures and until dawn kind of games like i really feel these types of games should be four hours tops and should be like you're doing two movies and being done that's my personal preference because even for us trying to schedule the time to do the last place became so tough because we're so much going on so many things so it's like getting in there and stuff i would have preferred rather than being these levels for so long get the levels the same you know sci-fi or fantasy but then have it be way quicker as we're switching what we're doing because as you get these things you get all right this is going to be this chapter's mechanic for what you're gonna go through and do and mechanics good but when it's not great i was like okay i'm ready to move on to the next thing you get out of here the side stories fix that so much for me yeah well i wanted more side stories i would love to get those all that way yeah like for context people right so you have these two characters you're playing as one person's playing as meo the other is playing as zoe both of them are meo is more of a sci-fi person is always more of a fantasy person and like dictated by that that determines the world that you're in so when you're you know more than like zoe's mindset you are playing in like these fancy worlds but when you're more like on meo's side of the thing you're playing way more sci-fi worlds but you have these side stories that pop up and when you're in zoe's when you're in zoe's fantasy world meo's sci-fi worlds might start popping up you don't know what kind of sci-fi what kind of cyberpunk type thing is going to be and i absolutely love like you know i'm playing with barrett and every time a meo side story pops up i'm like okay we're gonna get that good shit and it often was like such a breath of fresh air to go from fantasy to be like okay we're doing five to ten minutes of a sci-fi thing real quick before we continue what we're doing or vice versa where we are in the sci-fi world and it is like all right let's see what bullshit zoe's got for us pop into it i'm surprised many times because the stuff we do is always uh side stories because they can't get so wacky because you know fantasy is open to so many interpretations of it i just love where they go with that stuff i think if you want to go you can go oh i was gonna kind of beer into like oh i think one of the things that in regards to what they do with the genre because i think the genre side of the stuff is fun and interesting because they are throwing at you different types of sci-fi different types of fantasy the thing that i kept looking at barrett and saying is that i don't like that this is a story that's about storytelling because zoe and mio are writers right so like the idea of these stories is that these are stories they're telling their books that didn't work for me because oftentimes i'm like these aren't stories these are just gameplay segments like i'm hopping into a side story and it's like oh like you know fly through the thing and get to the end and i'm like man this will be such a better story feels about game design if there are game designers and all these different things we're hopping into we're different like video game genres because the game like the split fiction tackles so many different types of video game i guess genres and styles that that would make way more sense now for me that was a lockdown of hopping into a side story being like all right let's see what story you got for us and being like oh this wasn't a story but this was a cool gameplay segment like why couldn't this game be more about that so yeah this side stories i truly loved every one of them well i mean that's the thing but like even i was like the payoff was good to that one right and so it was the idea of i said early on i said the end of the game but every side i was like man why isn't this a game and what i mean by that i would like it to be that we were just in and out of stuff faster and faster and i know you're gonna say well that takes more work to do stuff but yeah that's why i'm saying condense the game give me the side stories to break up the things i'm doing here to make the main chapter shorter like at this point i'm just monday morning quarterbacking a game i've never done anything so what do i know but it's back to the point of me as a consumer like oh i don't care about these characters and yes i'm enjoying playing this but i have no desire to see all the way through just because i want to see that i was surprised how much this game didn't track for me i'm not at all for me yeah on the side of it takes you i was well i'm definitely one of the people that thought that games went on way too long and by the time being bare finished this game like yeah it could have been for me i was like it could have been two levels shorter but even by the time we finished i was kind of like man i could have used more like i kind of and by the time we get to the last level it was more like oh i want more of this but yeah i was surprised by how much i felt like i wasn't the pacing felt right for me there's a clear moment in the game that i feel like and i got spoilers here like there's two levels towards the end i think that they could have cut or just changed and moved somewhere else i actually feel like uh a criticism i have the games i don't feel like gameplay wise it's paced that well throughout it where i feel like some of the earlier stuff is like harder and more hype and set pc than some of the later stuff is um or the balance of whatever those things are just i feel feels better in some of the earlier stuff than the later stuff and that's not 100 true the entire time but i just feel like the a to b to c to d was kind of in the wrong order at least not the order that i would put them in um and i just feel like taking out there's a clear like story that we could have just jumped to the end i think that would have been more satisfying package overall um but there's still a lot of fun to be had in the other stuff it just kind of felt more like more content as opposed to like oh we're really focusing on just the good stuff here especially when you see the highs of this game and like when the game is at its most creative and most like wow like when we out loud are saying wow or holy shit or look at that like there's so many of those moments that the amount of other moments i'm just like oh it's cool i feel like we can cut a couple of those and i think it went a longer way but um overall though i feel like it doesn't outstay its welcome i just think that it could have been stronger if it was a little shorter interesting um to hear you guys talking about the story because i've never played a game playing through it i think i just didn't put that much weight on the story because to me it seemed like do people play these games for the story do they play it for the cool game mechanics do you story like a driving factor in these games honestly that's why i went more to nine because i do i mean they are i think stories are as much of a driving factor in these like games as is presented in split fiction it just so happens that the story i just don't think is as good as the other stories where it takes you does have like it takes you about a divorce and like it is i think that story makes more sense for what you're doing in that game than this game i guess makes sense for what you're doing with the story i think this story almost feels like they sat in the studio and went all right what's the kind of story that we can tell that allows us to do crazier things than we were able to do like the other games and the story allows them to do that because it's all fantasy shit right it's all like it's within the mind i don't know like it's in a crazy scenario where they can give you 2d they can give you 3d they can give you top down they can give you all these different you know ways of playing and i think because of that they kind of had to put more emphasis on making this story feel a bit more i guess grounded or i don't know like it feels like they weren't able to put as much focus in making the story as good as it could because it was more focused on the gameplay which worked for me because i am i think at this point i'm more on the side of yo just get rid of the story in fact in your next game don't even have a story just have any levels if it's like me and my friend plays two characters and call it a day because i think the gameplay shines so so much that it's almost a thing of if these weren't human characters that we're dealing with if this was a um i don't know like a ratchet or like maybe a ratchet is a bad example if this is a 3d platformer with like anthropomorphic animals or some shit and i don't and we're not worrying about story at all this is a 10 out of 10 for me i think the 3d mascot platformer point is very very apt because i think that you gave that level of stories in this game uh because again i do think the writing's funny and i think that like the tone that it's going for with the jokes the humor backing up the gameplay the quips back and forth between the characters more often than not i was like i'm into this stuff it is just the amount of cutscenes which there's a lot they clearly were trying to tell story story was a uh priority for them in this game like in development this game and i feel like yeah what you're saying like take that stuff away just like have a save the princess type story like would really go a long way in this one too again there's somebody more quarterback this thing just take away the antagonist like the idea here right this is not a spoiler right is that there's this guy who's invented this machine where writers can step into these bubbles and then basically play because as blessings say it'll make more sense for a game design but play the story out that they have in their head so they're a character in there and they go and do the thing and then that would write the story and that would be the end of it right uh these two women find themselves in the same bubble bam they're split fiction something's gone wrong but then they add in this like enemy to it where you could have just been like oh shit we fell in together and now our worlds are merging and somebody else i could have been like find the glitches and get out you know what i mean and it just is you're playing through and doing the thing and if you want to have them try to become friends enemies whatever you want to tell the story between the two of them they'd be fine look like they wanted to like say something with the way that they presented it i don't think you don't need a job subtle as a sidechamber as soon as this starts you know where we're going on all this it's like i don't think you nailed that you ask him like you know are you playing these for the story yeah my thing would be i am playing pretty much every game for a story right that's why i choose this as my entertainment factor and i think you know monster 100 wilds right even there i'd be like well the story there is the monster i'm wearing the thing i'm going for this is my home this is my home but like no i wouldn't even think of like my character is the story that i'm going and doing so like for this to play this way and have this like i'm these are meant to be the way they've always been talking about is a co-op playable movie you're doing with your friends right that's how it's always played out and i guess why kevin and i have such fond memories of a way out of him coming over and us going through and doing that you know i have so much with jen of playing uh it takes too and i enjoy the experience we had here but again if it's just us playing stuff that could have been a let's play rather than a full play i would have been happy and satiated right um one more thing before you do that yes let's take a quick word from our sponsor this episode is brought to you by monster hunter now whether i'm taking ben to the playground soccer practice or on a hike with jen i'm wandering the outdoors more than ever that's where monster hunter now comes in it's an authentic monster hunter experience on your mobile that lets you find and hunt monsters in the real world using your phone whether you're out on a walk commuting or just need a quick hunting break between your console sessions and right now there's no better time to jump in because monster hunter now is running an epic collaboration event with monster hunter wilds packed with surprises that any monster hunter fan won't want to miss let's talk about the good stuff for the 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your point about you think that it would have worked better if they were like video game developers instead of writers i think that the gameplay is so clearly a love letter to different genres and different types of games that making them devs would have really narrowed it yeah it's like for the story that's already pretty on the nose that would have really made it one note and i think that they probably thought like hey we want to do all these different types of gameplay what other forms of storytelling we think that would work well for this and decided writing is like the next best option speaking of gameplay real quick uh something that i really appreciate about this one in comparison to it takes two is i do think the difficulty was ramped up i don't think it's like impossibly hard in any way but i feel like it's the right level of challenge and there was multiple things that felt good when we achieved them right and there's certain boss fights in particular that i think do really really good jaws of throwing a bunch of things at you you're constantly moving the control you're shooting this thing moving this way jumping a different way and on top of that there are very funny jokes happening and the boss is attacking you it won't like talk to you but what they're saying is funny and like there's a lot of like meta jokes based on game design references to things like that's what i think the game sings the most is when it's actually challenging you and it's not just the hey hold forward and keep jumping which there is a fair amount of in this game but i think that it isn't it's rarely a point that i'm like okay just keep going keep going because the environments are so varied and there's even if you are i mean i don't know what i was gonna say there's a lot of moments they were just jumping from like pedestal pedestal pedestal but because every time you're doing it it looks completely different it feels different and i think that's very impressive for this game because there's a lot of that my question about that i agree with you that this game is harder than it takes you there's a difficulty increase here right and i enjoy that we played a normal difficulty you can't crank it down there's other stuff there do you think playing this if you were to play with gia could she have gone through this not a chance you could not have got through this game i was having that thought while me and bear were playing the fact that um about like a year and a half ago for christmas i went over to my sister's house right in houston like um me and my nephews were like booting up their their xbox and seeing what games you had and they're like oh yeah we played this game it takes you a while ago we got stuck and like you know boot up it takes you i got and passed the part they're stuck at but like looking at that game i was probably how far they even got because one of them was like eight years old the other is like four years old and i'm like oh man i know you working with this four-year-old is gonna be a struggle if you try to get past these parts when i was like oh they're not gonna pass half the shit i don't know how they're gonna be doing this something that we talked about too was because there's so many homages to different uh types of games like that i think even for me i didn't have maria who has like a wider breadth of game knowledge i think it would have been hard for me because she inherently was like oh i know what they're going for with this what the inspiration was this is what we have to do and so i think not having that kind of historical knowledge of different games and genres and types and stuff like that is like a i do wonder if there's something that is back to what you're mentioning i really do think it is because like there was one point where i was like oh we don't have turrets trying to kill us anymore because they've murdered us multiple times yeah so i think it's small things like that where it's like okay we'll give you some little bus i was able to confirm this right but it felt and i think for a game like this you have to design it around some kind of rubber banding because you have two people doing a lot of set pieces a lot of set pieces maybe more set pieces it's an entire game of set pieces yeah but the fact that you have some set pieces and you have people that are playing in tandem you have to build in some things to be like all right cool even if you're falling behind we're gonna find a way to get you forward whether it is you falling then responding up to where your partner is or whether it's us just finding ways to bring you together i think you have to do some stuff under the hood and i wouldn't be surprised based on the kind of game it is it is a family game it is a game that you want to be playing with you about playing um hold on because i want this question i have it pulled up oh yeah uh from i see me here yeah this is my son is five what good games can he play this uh if he's good at games i think yes i think it will be a challenge but i think that he will be able to to learn and figure out like how to get better at games and beat this game i do think though that this game and the joke actually i think kind of hit the nail on the head there where because it does reference so many gameplay styles previous games there is like an inherent um like offer people that have a history playing different genres um i do think this is a great way to kind of learn the genres i also think that the game does a very good job of having the exact same control scheme the entire way through like you're always your r2 is always your ability your l2 is always your like alt ability or like ability modifier r1 is always a form of grapple x is always a jump and i think that because of that and then swears like a dash like every single gameplay style whether it's 2d 3d top down whatever it still controls the same and i think that goes a long way in um allowing people to like kind of push themselves if they're not comfortable but me and greg joke multiple times and we were joking but we're like this carpino couldn't do this uh i'm clearly he can uh but like it did have that moment of like oh you get frustrated with this like he wouldn't want to keep playing friend of the show patrick of course has a whole bunch of different things going on one of them is cross play which is a newsletter he does about parenting and gaming today's is i'm playing with my kid and it rules playing this new co-op game with my eight-year-old has been a special experience uh to join in progress this so long as your kid has basic platforming competence and you're okay with hearing a few swears and a little violence along the way you should have a great time parentheses split fiction got my four-year-old accidentally hilariously say shit uh both both players need to die for progress to stop it's only a few moments before the other person hops back in and what we play it's possible to carry the other player to victory. A few times, we've swapped controllers so that I can help her navigate those hard parts. It's not a process without friction, and I think it's best to explain what it's been like playing the game and walking through a few clips.
And I think that's super vital for it. Because when you look at it takes two in the sales of day two, it stole 20 million units by October 2024, right? Like, that's a large number. That's an astronomical number, and I think a big part of that number is the fact that you're selling families.
You're selling to a wide consumer base. And I don't think, I would hope that in the studio, they're working meticulously to be like, all right, we gotta make sure that kids can play this game, at least with their parents, at least with each other, right? So I think the simple button press is as far as the only things that are really changing are your R2 and L2, and even when they're changing, you're still sticking with the same concept, the same control scheme for a long enough time for it to grow on you for it to sink in before you switch that up. But the game comes down to like four different ones.
I think that helps a lot. And yeah, the response thing that Patrick was talking about, I like that helps a lot. So I wouldn't be surprised if, even though for us, we're like, oh, this shit is fucking tough. Like, how are kids going to play this?
I'm sure the kids are going to be fine playing this game. Sure. Shout out to the kids. I had multiple times.
We didn't say this. I never said this to you. I really won. I won out here.
I think I had the better gameplay. Oh, interesting. See, what I think is fascinating about it is this. I didn't connect to the fantasy world in the levels, but I never didn't like being Zoe.
I thought I was always doing something as interesting as you. So I was never like, oh man, Neo's got this cool thing. And I was always like, oh, you're doing that and I'm equally as cool or it's fine, whatever. Something's going on.
I will say there, I don't think the genre of character you choose really determines the kind of gameplay that you have because both characters are usually in the sci-fi thing. Both characters are going to be in the fantasy world. You just get different abilities. I feel like they do a good job of swapping them between worlds.
Yes, where like, I'm somebody who in a game like this, if there's a scenario where somebody's like, I don't know, if somebody's like moving the world around or somebody else is like in the world jumping around, I want to be the person who's in the world jumping around because I believe in my platforming ability. And there are times where I'm like, all right, Baird's obviously the dungeon master here, right? Or like the next level, I'm the one that's controlling like, all right, I'm a turret. We're spinning this and doing that.
Yeah, exactly. So they switch it up enough to give both people both experiences. Boo's like in the chat says, is it worth a replay like it takes two of them? The different abilities actually encourage us to go back and play it again recently.
Here's the thing, it's funny because I'm not interested in doing that. I do think that the gameplay styles are varied enough that there's gameplay there. Like if you were like, I'm craving more of this game, there's another game to go back and play. Like the United Times of the Great Scream, he's doing something completely different than that.
I was very impressed by it. And there were a handful of times I was like, oh, I do wish I was doing that thing right now as opposed to what I was doing. So there's a lot there. And it's incredibly well designed in terms of let's have this area and you have this ability, you have this ability.
You both need to work together. There was a lot of communication necessary. Mainly when we were fucking up is when we were talking. Exactly.
When we thought we knew what we were doing. That's so interesting because I felt like with Maria and I, honestly, both of us were so lucky. And Marie was one of my best friends so this makes sense to me that we didn't have to do a lot of talking until we got to things that broke both of our brains essentially. But for us, it was very much a we're vibing and in the flow state kind of a thing.
For us, it was less like talking things through about can you go up there and whatever. And it was way more like we're fucking sick ass US Navy SEALs. You know what I mean? I got to a point like we need to like talk back it was just like we'd start making sounds and like we got his eyes.
I also think it's maybe potentially an inherent difference of like not necessarily men and women but just maybe that too. I was just saying we're just locked the fuck in the entire time. Anything that was like a time like all right. You guys are really top of a lot.
Yeah, no, because I think we were the same kind of person. Like we're both good at video games. All right, let me be real here. And so like as we're going, anything that was all right, we got to fucking race to the finish in this platform but we got to stay together.
We didn't have to communicate that shit. We know that we're just going just jump, we got to jump. Like we're going to stick together. We're good.
Thanks, dude. Do you want me to get the trap for a sec? Yeah, and I don't remember what this was said so that's all I got. Anything else you want to talk about with Swift Fiction?
I'm still so impressed with Hayeslight. You know, I think it's always interesting to have these critical reviews. I'm going to give it an A to call it great, right? But it's like that thing of like I think even like I saw it go through it sucks that he's not here.
I would like to know if he thinks it's a contender, right? Right now, he owns the contender a bit. Oh, I don't know this. Oh, don't worry about it.
It's a contender and the game will be on your top 10 list, right? Like for me, this one won't be. I don't see Swift Fiction being on my top 10 at the end of the year. Not because it's bad.
I think it's great, right? I think the gameplay's so good. It just didn't give me the experience I think I wanted out of it. And that goes as far as to just like you're doing so much stuff in here and there's so many assets but still like how many times I'm like, oh, it looks dumb.
You know, like dumb shit like that. Like just a game as a whole for what I'm talking about and what I want out of this kind of thing. But I don't want like my criticism of it again. And you're laughing at the writing nonstop during the last bit to get in the way of like Hayley is so good at what they do and what they do is make badass co-op games to be played with friends.
This will be a contender for me but I feel like again, the disappointment comes from I think it's going to be in the back half of my 10 as opposed to I wish this was in my top five. This game will not be in my top five at the end of the year. And unless a ton of incredible games come out that push this out I think this will firmly be sitting in that five to 10 spot somewhere. This will likely change by the end of the year but I know it's my number one.
There's not another game I played this year that would top it. And I think this comes down to I think my prioritization for this game of gameplay over story where I was like down to the story but I also wasn't coming in for the story I was coming in for the gameplay and the gameplay for me is like for me on the level of other things that I will look at as contenders like I'm coming out of this on the gameplay side being like yo I think the platforming here for me worked as much as an astrobot works for me I think it is on that level as far as what they're doing on the gameplay side so it's a strong contender for me. Yeah I mean I don't usually I play games that I know I'm going to like pretty much like I feel like I definitely play way less than a lot of people at this office I think it'll be on my list mostly because too like the thing that I don't know that we've ever talked or that we really touched on is like I had so much fun with Maria like we laughed like crying laughing multiple times in this mostly when the parts we weren't good at and it's just like you have to throw it at me you can just throw it a while and I'm like fuck that's right but we've been playing this for six hours and I kind of forgot about that part of the game like this will go in my list of like favorite gaming experiences like we just have so much fun playing together that I think that that'll it'll being on that list will definitely be the next my top list of the year even if I don't play full 10 games. We have a final super chat here from RIVL Knight how's the boss fights?
Oh I love the boss fights I think they're fucking fantastic like for me I would put the boss fights next to the side stories is one of my favorite parts of the game but I'm curious how you guys go. I did not love the boss fights and that definitely could be like a get good kind of a thing of like dying all the time doesn't make it particularly fun I do think that a couple of them stand out as being like maybe we can take out one element like I don't know if we need this and this and this like because at that point we're just hopping around someone trying to stay alive so I would say that I kind of played through a lot of this kind of despite the boss fights and that was like the part of me that we really had to like suffer through to get to the more fun stuff for me. For me I like how you what did you like most right the boss fights would be right behind side stories side stories are number one for me by a long shot and then behind it it would be the not the destination but the journey the stuff we did on those moments so boss fights for me I didn't hate but like what I think what did I think of these boss fights I think of when I was annoyed by something like how fucking this guy was doing this the shark came by this way and that's the only just it last time I put the boss fights right behind the side stories for me where I really really loved them I think that my biggest criticism of them is multiple times I wish I had the full screen for them like that was the only time in the game that I was like they throw so many particles at you and there's so many moves and so many things and again they make the game easy enough that like if you die a whole bunch of times you're right back in the action it doesn't really matter but I feel like I would play it a lot better if I had just a little bit more real estate to see what's going on but I think the boss fights were so creative and to me they just kind of like were a perfect example like a microcosm of the things I love most about this game of like great gameplay gimmicks being used to their utmost great fun music playing cool set piece moments with the boss and I think that was the funniest dialogue in the game was the boss fights and the quips that they would have and like the one in particular right the one guy so I really enjoyed that stuff and that's it everybody split fiction Joey gave it 8-5 I gave it 8 Gray gave it 8 Les gave it a 9 and this Thursday you can see Tim and I play the entire thing after this exactly let us know in the comments below if you are excited to play split fiction like I was saying I recommend it to everybody I think it's a great time also at a discounted price discount is not the right word but at a lower price point for entry plus you can play free with somebody that's awesome stuff so support this type of game I think it's a really important shout out to Hayes Light for continuing scratch stuff but stay tuned everybody right after this you're getting a kind of funny podcast live for everybody on Twitch and YouTube I'm on that it's going to be fun until next time love y'all goodbye