DCP+SideQuest Ep. 429 - Marathon Delayed - Nextfest Demos & Indies - DK Bananza - Destiny Community Podcast

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, and welcome to DCP episode four seven and
thirty two. We're here the tippity top of the.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
News totally accurate.

Speaker 3 (00:13):
Are you gonna You're gonna have some random live question
for us ons like Brian?

Speaker 1 (00:18):
Oh yeah, just pick Frank.

Speaker 4 (00:23):
So if there was poison in a glass of water
and the blaze.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
And the police showed up as a what's this mysterious substance?
Would what would you do?

Speaker 3 (00:36):
The question is always just some aspect of Bride's life.
He's looking for loping bots about.

Speaker 5 (00:41):
Yeah, it's definitely experiential. Usually, Yeah, the.

Speaker 1 (00:46):
Cop the Coppa is right about to sniff it, and
you're you're standing there knowing it's poison, knowing you're gonna
get found out. What do you do?

Speaker 5 (00:53):
Okay, so I'll ask them because Briar's gone so watts
right now? The doorbell rang, Yeah, and you're like, and
it keeps raining, I gotta go get it. And you
go down and it's Briar with a police officer at
your door. Okay, when is your first thought of what
is going on?

Speaker 1 (01:12):
My first thought is that he's definitely the one in.

Speaker 6 (01:15):
Trouble and like they're.

Speaker 1 (01:19):
Bringing him around and being like, do you know this man?
Does he look familiar?

Speaker 3 (01:26):
My first thought is once is an alibi for something
Briar's done, and he's gone honestly yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:35):
Yeah, yeah exactly. So my initial reaction Briar's in trouble.
They're here because they need me to lie about something.
Ticket la.

Speaker 2 (01:46):
He's in trouble and he clearly needs you to lie
about something.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Yeah yeah yeah. So he's like, the cop is like,
I found this man. Uh. He says that he was
hanging out with you on Friday night, but we have him.

Speaker 6 (02:02):
Yeah, he's like, but we have him on CCTV camera
being at the Polo club where there was a massacre
calls by a Molotov cocktail bomb that he says he
had nothing to do with it.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
I'll go yeah, no, yeah, he's with me. I think, uh,
I think your camera is a line ar. Yeah. You've
seen what the kids are doing these days, losing their
brain cells to AI. Yeah, there was a study about it.

Speaker 5 (02:31):
Oh, because like they're just grabbing answers and copy pasting
so to speak.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah yeah, it says so they don't.

Speaker 5 (02:36):
Learn anything, but they are testing out like oh wow,
I mean I finished my test.

Speaker 1 (02:41):
Yeah, they did a they did like a little bit
of a look at it, and it initially started with
people using like chat GBT kind of like how would
you use You would use Google right just to get
like an answer in one place, and then they would
use that to write their own stuff. But then they
found that as they kept using it more and more,
they ended up just copy and paste m yeah, yeah,

(03:02):
not doing any Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:04):
I mean it is wild having access to that now, right,
There's nothing that's like before, you know. I mean even
Google was helpful, but you could probably find like message
boards where people could just like trade or who knows.
But now it's literally like the AI. You know, servers
will write your essay if you want it to and
you can even pay a monthly subscription to improve that

(03:25):
quality probably yep.

Speaker 2 (03:28):
And you don't even have to read it, bro. I
mean it's amazing.

Speaker 4 (03:32):
I remember when I was going through a Uni mac
in my day when I was doing assignments, you had
to get a physical like often there was a you know,
like you have to get a physical generalonical at some
point for your references.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Like that was just like, yeah, we don't want we
don't want you using the internet for everything.

Speaker 1 (03:52):
We couldn't even use calculators. We weren't allowed to have
calculators in the class or the book. In the class,
you had to like act, actually learn how to problem solve,
how to well, don't blame when when you say, look
at these old people being old. Don't blame me when
the world goes to crap because no one can figure

(04:12):
out how to fix problem unless the AI knows how
to do it. And then the AI overlords decide that
they want to be the one in charge and you
don't know how to do anything against it.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
You can't run the world without it.

Speaker 1 (04:23):
It's happening. It's gonna happen.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
It's funny. It is really relevant. Don't know if you've
seen that.

Speaker 5 (04:28):
It's floating around and you can access it the AI
mode on Google now, but it's getting defaulted for some
or you can opt in as a default are yeah, well,
AI over Well, the search is giving you an AI result,
But there's an AI mode. If you haven't seen it,
it's like I have, and so it creates the full

(04:49):
like chat, GBT style experience, et cetera within the Google results.
So now you're getting the full article creation and breakdown
and so in other words I typed in, is fire
Break any good? And you know it'll do the usual
reviews or mixed. Well, some players are saying this is
enjoy other others express disappointment. Uh, it's got a co
op focus with so it's writing the you know, IGN article,
et cetera, but without you know, it's pulling from all

(05:12):
those sources and so anyway, it's putting everybody you know
who's creating in those platforms in danger and in theory.
You know, it's the still in our future too. It's like,
eventually they'll just comb all this audio.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Oh dude, I've seen click on.

Speaker 5 (05:27):
The podcasts or the plays because it's just gonna comb
through a transcript.

Speaker 2 (05:32):
And I think, but like, in other words, are people
still gonna click or do they just stop caring about
all this?

Speaker 1 (05:38):
I saw an aimkbung so and the AI streamers and stuff,
and yeah.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
Yeah, all the video ASMR stuff as well as uh
out there, have you seen this yet? There's like a
bunch of cutting three Yeah, yeah, like that's one of
the ones that popped off. But like unusual but super
hyper realistic looking a SMR stuff.

Speaker 2 (06:03):
That stuff is actually really neat.

Speaker 5 (06:06):
Like on one side, I would Actually, I don't have
a problem with that idea.

Speaker 2 (06:09):
If it's like it's clearly AI. You know, it's a
weird thing. You want to watch it?

Speaker 5 (06:12):
Fine, it's like watching you know when we used to
like just put on the TV like a screensaver style
audio thing, you know, or or even today, I'll well,
actually a lot of that's AI generated. I'm like lo
fi you know, Japanese. It's like a background and AI
generating music. So actually you gotta be careful, but I
don't mind if it's like clear. But then you get

(06:33):
into the question about well, what are you still going
to watch the ASMR creators if you're into that, right,
or it's just going to take over that it's some
some AI junkie with a budget, by the way, so
they're paying for this, and then they can just take
all your food out of your mouth.

Speaker 2 (06:46):
Really, you know.

Speaker 1 (06:47):
I I saw one thing where I was like, this
is what AI is cool to do. And it was
someone who hand like sows and weaves and all of
this stuff, like little very intricate characters and the backgrounds
and like tables and the food, like they make all
of that and then they use AI to animate it.
Because they don't know how to animate. And I was like,

(07:10):
this is the kind of thing where it's just like
elevating your art. You're doing something that you want to do,
you don't know how to animate, but all of the
everything that you've created is yours. It's like that's that's
something where I'm like, oh, yeah, that's that's like a
good use of it.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
But everything else, Yeah, I've been using I've been trying
to teach myself some new skills because I think that
sometimes better bit on my phone some learning like Blender
at the moment.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (07:33):
And there's definitely like AI plugins that can can help
you do stuff, you know, like like rigging and stuff
like that, but still using like all my own assets
or like video game assets. I want to make a
thumbnail and like rigging in and three ding in and
then putting in Blender and like moving around. There's heaps
of stuff that you know can be used to help

(07:54):
you in your every everyday job. I think when it's
just like you're one percent using AI and the product
is one hundred percent AI, is when it's like you're
in that end game of you're not creating anymore.

Speaker 4 (08:07):
You're not actually doing anything. Yep, like you're it's doing
when it's doing all the work and it's producing all the.

Speaker 1 (08:14):
Skills, you're you're not actually you don't have any.

Speaker 4 (08:16):
Ski like anything.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
If you're using it as a tool, like I use
a lot of thumbnails because now I can generate, like
if a background's not the right resolution and I've got
like a piece missing, like it's in Photoshop as.

Speaker 4 (08:29):
AI generate and it would just take those pixels. You know.

Speaker 3 (08:32):
It's like I'm just using it as a tool to
you know, get a tenady p thumbnail.

Speaker 2 (08:37):
Yep, yeah, that's weird exactly.

Speaker 5 (08:39):
That's I would say, good use of it because you're
just like expanding some pixel range, whereas the opposite side
and discussion would be, well this is where it gets trigger.
It's like I can't afford and even hire someone to
make my thumbnails.

Speaker 2 (08:53):
I would love to, but I can't.

Speaker 5 (08:56):
So it is going to get smart enough so that
I'm just going to ask it to do it. And
so there's all the above, like you we're gonna run
more and more into this. It's like, well you can't
afford it, so you wouldn't have anyway, but now you're
using it. So where did they ever have the chance
to be hired anyway, And so that's where I think
about it a lot. I use in a lot of
different ways too like that, and uh yeah for me,

(09:20):
that's I guess what I'm trying to say is the
AI stuff, there's no way of avoiding it.

Speaker 2 (09:24):
You should be aware of it.

Speaker 5 (09:27):
But I mostly boil it down to can you afford
to hire someone for this job? Because please do if so,
and try to think about In other words, I still
take it's the irony is I'll still take an Uber
over Weimo and San Francisco, the self driving, not because
out of fear, but I'm like, man, like, Uber already.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
Killed taxis driver problems now.

Speaker 5 (09:45):
Granted the taxi driver issue is like they're kind of
worth toxic and problematic. But putting all that aside, I
think mostly about, like, you know, maybe that's good example.
It's like, hey, there's people driving an Uber, Like fine,
that's just how it is.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Are you going to start using.

Speaker 5 (10:00):
Self driving just because it's going to happen anyway and
put people out of work faster?

Speaker 2 (10:05):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (10:06):
I want an AI that cleans my dishes and washes
my clothes, and then I have AI do all the
like boring stuff I have to do so that I,
as a human can use my creative humanity to create
wonderful things. That's what we should be doing.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
This is the argument, of course from every like top
of the tech.

Speaker 4 (10:28):
Does this stop from a Brian conversation? Is this at
the beginning?

Speaker 5 (10:34):
I don't know how we got to the AI part
after Briar got arrested, but but yeah, I was gonna
say the argument the CCTV was AI.

Speaker 1 (10:44):
The CCTV video of Brian committing the crime was AI.

Speaker 4 (10:47):
Yeah that's how we got here.

Speaker 5 (10:50):
But yeah, the idea that like it'll take over these
menial jobs, which then we can be more productive as
a society, and somehow that works. You know, there's more money,
there's more creativity, there's more right, like a renaissance because
of it. That Like, why would you go and wash
dishes as a job, because now you know you can
do this other thing?

Speaker 2 (11:08):
The missing piece that it's never been described to me.

Speaker 5 (11:10):
I'm like, yeah, that sounds great, Like let's all start
painting and sell art again.

Speaker 1 (11:15):
Sure, instead of you could you could be an inventor,
or make movies or create video game content.

Speaker 5 (11:26):
In the ecosystem, Right, that's what I wonder. Seems like
it's just the CEOs that are just going to take
more billions.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
It's the problem.

Speaker 1 (11:33):
So Franz says, we should eat the billionaires and take
their money.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
Yes, them eat.

Speaker 1 (11:43):
Speaking of billionaires, A bungeee big big bungees BBN.

Speaker 4 (11:57):
They actually uh said not release the marathon, monsieur. And
when don't have a release date, is that that's.

Speaker 1 (12:04):
Done indefinitely the indefinite word. I listen, like we were
saying earlier that technically that is correct, that it is
indefinitely delayed because they don't have a date. But when
people here indefinitely, they hear forever, So I know what

(12:26):
you're doing.

Speaker 2 (12:26):
Yeah, everybody exactly.

Speaker 5 (12:28):
All it's saying is they delayed it and they didn't
give a date. Yes, and so until we know more,
it's just delayed. It's this report is further confused. I
don't have the quote in front of me, but it
was days before this happened, and maybe this put pressure.
Herman Hallst on a fireside chat, I believe right the
head of the all the development teams, et cetera. Ahead

(12:49):
of I think he's Sony Interactive I forget it's exact.

Speaker 2 (12:53):
Title, but you all know Herman Halls.

Speaker 5 (12:55):
But anyway, he had been talking about their live service
lineup and Marathon, and it sounded more like and there
was some related stuff that it was in the fiscal
twenty twenty five which ends at the end of March. Yes,
you have a situation where it sounded like looked like
it's in there. They didn't officially, you know, announce that
as like it will be out before the end of
March twenty twenty six, but you had that news him

(13:18):
talking and then days later Bungie's like, we've delayed it,
and the important part, we're going to update you in.

Speaker 2 (13:24):
The fall about that date. Yes.

Speaker 5 (13:26):
So yeah, so really Marathon officially delayed until we tell
you in the fall.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (13:32):
So they put out an update. This was June seventeenth,
so it was like two days if you're watching this
the day of the podcast, and they basically said that
obviously there's a lot going on with Marathon, but these
are the things that they want to immediately focus on
when it comes to trying to make the game better.

(13:52):
So they're wanting to focus on more challenging and engaging
AI encounters, more rewarding runs with new types of loot
and dynamic events making combat more tense and strategic. So
those are the main kind of focus. But what they
did say is what they're trying to create is compelling
survival under pressure, mystery lore around every corner, read like

(14:14):
endgame challenges, and then of course Bungee's FPS combat. So
the first thing that they're doing is upping the survival
game with what we just listed. What do you think
about that?

Speaker 3 (14:27):
Yeah, yeah, I think honestly, this is almost a checklist
of all the things that I said our grad has
had and Marathon didn't, And I kind of made this
point that I think, honestly, I think our crad has
saved Marathon in a roundabout way, because if our creators
open beta didn't come out, and and if Marathon didn't
and continue to have a closed alpha, I think we

(14:49):
could be in a very weird timeline where Marathon drops
in a really poor position.

Speaker 4 (14:56):
So I think, you know.

Speaker 1 (14:58):
They've probably saved them a little.

Speaker 2 (15:00):
To be honest, all that needed did not happen.

Speaker 3 (15:02):
But yeah, I think I think the interesting thing about
extraction shooters is, in my opinion, it's the feel and
it's very hard to describe all the components that go
into making an extraction shooter feel tense that gets your
heart pumping when you're getting loot out, and I don't

(15:22):
think Marathon had the feel. And they're kind of talking
about things and I think will help the feel the
survival aspect, the raid like endgame stuff, you know, the
world feeling a little bit more alive and environmental storytelling,
and combining that with what.

Speaker 4 (15:36):
They say is you know, bungee genre divining FBS combat.

Speaker 3 (15:39):
So I think, well, I think we're in the same
boats before is like these are all the right conversations.
I guess it's just disappointing itself further along and like
this question is still going to be like whenever you
do decide to release it, like what state are these.

Speaker 4 (15:51):
Aspects going to be in? And can you fix it
before then?

Speaker 3 (15:55):
But I agree with the aspects of I do think
challenging and engaging AIS need to be there, because anyone
who played longer into the alphab probably found that everyone
was starting to avoid AI combat because.

Speaker 4 (16:09):
It just reveals your position.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Then you get a third partied and it was like
and it wasn't a huge reward for taking them out,
So it was kind of like, Okay, we're just gonna
wait to hear gunshots and then pursue that later. Whereas
when you start, you know, increasing the ord and having
like AI that seeks you out and it's maybe hard
to scoot around, you know, then everyone gets caught up
in AI combat, and I think that's a better scenario

(16:32):
to have, is like everyone's fighting their own battles and
they come together and punch on.

Speaker 2 (16:37):
Yep, yeah, yeah, I want to let you finish those.

Speaker 4 (16:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:41):
I was just having to look at other points they have,
like rewarding runs and loot type I think, you know,
I don't think I did this very well either. And
this is what happens when you simplify like loot in
extraction shooters, where you've just got like a tear system
or it tells you how much it is. But in
other extraction shooters, like you'll find something drop and it's
kind of like Galahrn dropping for you in a raid

(17:03):
you just got, but you can lose it, right, So
that's the kind of like excitement I think lut needs
to feel is like oh I'm doing this raid for
the twentieth time. That holy shit, Galahoun just dropped and
now I got to get out, and I want to
take that out with you because I don't want to
lose it. And I don't think Marathon had that feel
yet of like having really valuable things to get away with,

(17:25):
so that I think that's important to and then combat
tense and strategic. Yeah, I think that AI. I think
like the types of enemies also just felt like shooting
the face.

Speaker 4 (17:36):
It was one of the shield and that.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
But like there were humanoids, you know, I didn't feel
like there were more strategies to take them out than
apart from just making sure everyone was shooting at the same.

Speaker 4 (17:46):
Time or just avoiding them.

Speaker 3 (17:47):
So there was the one friend of the podcast Holtzman,
original DCP member the design, which I think was probably
one of the better ais, which was the ghost one
that went like invisible and like made clones that went
out and was like quite terrifying if you by yourself. Yeah,
but that was probably the standout enemy, right compared to

(18:08):
everything else was just lack bolts.

Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, yep, yeah, I was gonna. I think you made
a really good point with Arc arriving on the scene.

Speaker 5 (18:16):
I mean, competition is always good, but I think you
have a combination of things happening.

Speaker 2 (18:22):
I'll start with the I talked a lot about. I'm like, well,
it's just a closed outfit.

Speaker 5 (18:25):
Let's see what they got, And it just seems more
and more apparent that that. I think that was a
lot of what they had. It's a little surprising that
even though some was a little limited, but they had
the hands on preview, and like, the point I'm trying
to make is like, if that's what you had, like
you're not really selling on you were you had much
more to show, but you want to take time and
polish it up. I think there's some of that that

(18:47):
it just was not ready and they needed the time.
And in other words, Ark Creators has really above all
allowed them to get there with Sony, probably because without it,
it's more like, hey, like you had your time, get
it out there, and now they're staring Arc Raiders in
the face as a direct kind of extraction experience, and
Sony has to answer they don't want egg on their face,

(19:09):
you know. With that, I think it's a little bit
of that, and it's like, fine, you need more time.

Speaker 2 (19:13):
Let's see what you can do.

Speaker 5 (19:14):
We're going to give you until basically probably when it
was supposed to come out in the fall, and then
you show us what you can change in what direction
you're moving in, and that will give you this extra
six or seven months or whatever.

Speaker 2 (19:25):
Yeah, so that's really good in the end.

Speaker 5 (19:28):
And I think you're hearing from Bungee in a way
where they're like, there's just gonna stick to like we
want to build this with you.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
Thank you for the feedback. They they I said this.

Speaker 5 (19:38):
The myline, and it could be wrong or right, but
I'm like, if you read through this, it's like, you know,
they want to have challenging and engaging AI, rewarding runs,
tense combat, you know, better visuals, and it's like, what was.

Speaker 2 (19:50):
The plan then?

Speaker 5 (19:51):
You know, Like to me, it was more like we
hear you, we're not there yet, but we're not gonna
say like we just it wasn't finished. We're just gonna say, yeah,
you're right, and we need more feedback. Not that the
feedback isn't I mean, it's super valuable to them. So
I think you have a combination of those things and
I'm more than happy that it's delayed, Like give them time.

(20:14):
I thought the game had, you know, some potential in there,
but I was always like, there's got to be more,
you know.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
So it's felt very empty, right, It was like, it's
I really like the I like a lot of what
they're doing, but in terms of an extraction shooter, it
was just had none of the elements that really make
you want to pick an extraction shooter over any other shooter.
So the thing from this first point that they put
that I would be excited about is dynamic events for sure,

(20:43):
because it's like when I think about night Rain, right,
and how more God can invade you and you've got
this really dangerous thing that is now just roaming the
map trying to murder you. If you had something like
that from the Marathon universe, because they have a wealth
of enemies to pull from, that really creepy aliens in Marathon,
and you throw that in the map and then maybe

(21:05):
you even make it to where one team alone can't
take it down. So now you would be incentivizing people
to actually work together. Because further down here they do
say that they will be adding prox chat, but in
my opinion, Marathon has literally zero reason to talk to anyone.
There's nothing that encourages teamwork in any way. Nothing's hard enough.

(21:28):
Nothing is stressful enough, and like you were saying, Myelin,
you don't really find anything that's valuable enough to where
you want to beg for your life. So there's really
no reason for proxchat. So if they could add some
dynamic events where something happens you're like, oh my god,
there's that crazy alien there, and then you hear that
someone's around you and you're like, okay, guys, we can't
take this out individually. We got to work together. Then

(21:49):
we start seeing more of I think what we would
expect from Bungee in this universe and making this genre
and not just like yeah, shooting feels good, like that's
that was kind of it. Even extracting, I was like,
I'm chilling. There was never any worry about extracting ever, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (22:10):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (22:13):
I think they took a lot of the pain points
out of extraction because I think it is a legitimate
issue and extraction shooters where you get exit campers people
who are sitting right on an extraction point and just
kind of sniping you as you approach. But they did
it to such a point there was probably no tension
anymore when it came to extracting. Every under either left

(22:34):
or you just were on different sides of the map.
And I do think they spoke about it in their
first stream back when they addressed the art stuff. I
think so a little bit about the extraction part of
it as well.

Speaker 4 (22:46):
There's some other dot points here.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
We should probably go over to the Marathon doubling down
on the Marathon universe. This is kind of an interesting
DoD point in general because the originally you're like, well,
it looks nothing like the I played the originals.

Speaker 4 (23:01):
I played Marathon one or two.

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah, and there's a very different vibe than what we're
seeing here, Like there's no real direct esthetic link between them.

Speaker 1 (23:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:15):
Spaceship horror, spaceship what's that I said, Marathon? Would you
say it's like a shiny you know, spaceship horror?

Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, I guess with the theme of kind of like
space horror. Sure. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (23:28):
I mean it's hard when it's something so old right
to like be true to the universe, because there's only
some mumes you can do back in nineteen ninety four.
But you know, to be true to the Marathon universe.
I mean, the the usec robots, like I don't even
think they're in there. There there are some Cyball clones,
but all the rest are like other aliens, Like the

(23:50):
Four look like the Fallen. There's like Hulk units, the
Fit kind of Destiny's version of the Scions. They're like
a species enslaved door. They enslave everyone else, and then
they have like this, you know, they're like a Sion
mixed with a vax. Like there's some cool alien species
in there that just we don't see in Marathon. And

(24:11):
you know, I think the usec robots were not super
well received just from their design, I guess.

Speaker 1 (24:18):
Yeah, So I think the where they say a darker tone,
they could keep the same aesthetic because we've seen like
the other like the trailer that they had, the crazy
one that was give me creepy, that was a darker Yeah,
they could definitely pump up the creepiness, like cosmic horror
kind of stuff.

Speaker 3 (24:37):
Definitely like indoor obviously the outdoor areas, and they's had
an increased visual fidelity here and I'll likely refer to.

Speaker 1 (24:44):
The outdoor sections, Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 3 (24:46):
But the indoor sections, Like the first couple of times
I played Marathon, I was like, oh, this can be
creepy sci fi like this some of these corridors and colors,
like I think you can do some really good juxtapositioning
when things are bright and still make it kind of creepy.

Speaker 4 (25:02):
And definitely I think they capture that and the music
actually they do.

Speaker 3 (25:06):
The music does a really good job of doing like
that sci fi horror. So it's you know, bunge. You
can definitely do it. I think the outdoor areas are
a lot harder to deal with. Yeah, two, definitely, you know,
and the way that ARC deals with that is by
putting big ass robots and just making the outdoor environments

(25:29):
feel very threatening from like an environmental point of view.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
And so every time you're outdoors that nothing like stumps
on me.

Speaker 1 (25:37):
You know, well, actually, you know what that kind of
reminds me of. You know, the very first Traili Wesa
of marathon, and there was the person running and on
their back there was like a countdown timer that Initially
I was like, I wonder if that's some kind of
like oxygen or toxicity or something they could even experiment
with that where you know, there's weather changes in the way,

(26:00):
there is gonna mess with maybe your your HUDs, your map,
you're it's gonna start making your health go down. I
think just and more threats. And it's kind of what
I said about, like if you think about random weather events,
if they added random weather events that were truly threatening,
then you'd go outside and go, guys, we got to
get to that other building. But we're gonna start taking

(26:22):
damage like halfway through this. So I think I think
there's not They don't have to like fundamentally change everything
about the game in order to make it more threatening, creepier,
a darker tone. They can just kind of fiddle with
things they already have.

Speaker 4 (26:39):
Yeah, I think. I think.

Speaker 3 (26:40):
I think a push scenario between outdoor and indoor environments
really helps with the pace of extractions, where it's like
you kind of feel threatened a matter where you go.
Let you go inside, like we could find players also
taking cover in here. And you go outside and there's
patrols and there's robots and there's sentry tire heads and
there's dynatic events.

Speaker 4 (27:01):
You're like, fuck, I want to be a tie. You get
back and high and you're like, hey, don't shoot me up, dolf.

Speaker 3 (27:07):
You know, like I don't think Marathon it's current state
had that push and pull between trying to pick like
an area where you're not going to get messed up.
It was just kind of like outdoors were just routes
to get to the next indoor section.

Speaker 1 (27:21):
You were just chilling. You were kind of just chilling
the whole time.

Speaker 3 (27:25):
The only the only part that I felt that is
the ticks, Right, You have those little narrow like canyons,
and you had to make a decision between making noise
and shooting the tick and then coming down through like
a you know, a funnel where someone could just snipe you,
or you deal with running away from enemy. I think
that's like starting the beginnings of something like in the

(27:45):
environment where like oh, someone's been through here, so we
should be careful, or no one's been through here yet,
we've got to make gunshot noises, or if we don't
address them, they're going to start attacking us and.

Speaker 1 (27:55):
Them we're gonna die. They hurt.

Speaker 3 (27:58):
Like you got all these multi layer is like threats
happening from what is a pretty simple thing.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
It kind of makes more of.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
That rod, Yeah, I need to be more threatened, and
that's ultimately Like I haven't played a lot of extraction shooters,
but the one that I did like was The Division
Dark Zone and The reason I liked it is because
of the intensity and always feeling threatened and making the
decisions of do I want to take this out because
I know people can hear me and I know they're
not very far away. But there was I really never

(28:27):
had any of those thoughts while playing Marathon. Marathon plays
like a br but it is is an extraction shoot.

Speaker 5 (28:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah. My bigger issue was actually the PvP stuff.

Speaker 5 (28:38):
I mean, all that stuff is accurate and it needs
all of that, but I personally, yeah, I did feel that,
like I just didn't want to get in PvP engagements.
And part of that came from, you know, is the
population shrank quickly with the alpha there. You know, it
was easy to get farmed, and like the time to
kill I thought was super fast, and that yeah, I
felt like I wasn't going to find anything that was

(28:59):
going to help with this. I couldn't really come in
the next round, even like unless you killed someone, and
even then it was.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
Like maybe you'd get out with a purple gun. And
so I was like a lot of that.

Speaker 5 (29:09):
As I always said, I'm like, well it must be
because it's the closed alpha, Like you're not gonna walk
out with a legendary gun or something with that's like
totally dope and come back and be like Okay, now
I'm getting a few kills. So I never really felt that,
and it just felt like I was trying to get
I was just trying to get out, you know, electronic
pieces and stuff to do my skill tree upgrade. Yeah,
but that took like forty hours of that stuff and

(29:31):
then like through that loop. My point is I still
always felt like every time I got an engagement, it
was like two people are down, it's just you or
I'm down.

Speaker 2 (29:39):
Two people are up, but they got a I'm already
down and they don't have a good chance anymore.

Speaker 5 (29:43):
And it was like that, how do you get better
at that without, you know, having a really good team,
and just I didn't know where to go from there.

Speaker 2 (29:52):
Well makes sense.

Speaker 3 (29:52):
I mean, it's interesting to come up with that because
the tom to kill a marathon is a lot longer than.

Speaker 4 (29:57):
Other extraction shoots in general, like.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
Tag off, you won't even see an enemy. You get
one taps, you're like, okay, I don't even get to participate.
I think most of the time in marathon like you'll
have some time to like react or go Invisible Seek Cover.
But I think more to your point of how PvP
should be after playing Arc Radors, I think that the

(30:24):
the way to make extraction shooters is to first make
a really good tv E game. Apparently that's how ARC
started as like a looting shooter, and then the PvP
is just the cherry on top. And I think if
that is the overarching, like guarding principle of your developments,
I think you will make all the right decisions to

(30:45):
make a proper survival game that has PvP elements rather
than making a battle royale yep. And I think if
Bunget can do that and just focus because they're fucking greater.

Speaker 1 (30:59):
Agreed making things like creepy and unnerving without it being
you know, like horrifying and gory or anything. We saw
what they've done on the when we went on the
ship in Destiny, the creep ship with flowers stuff that's creepy.

Speaker 3 (31:14):
Can do that, yeah, like any I mean Hive. The
Hive has always had great horror themes without you know,
having to decapitite stuff.

Speaker 1 (31:24):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (31:27):
Presage, Yes, yeah, yeah, it's like I would like to
That's the game I would want myself. But it also
understood it.

Speaker 5 (31:36):
It seems like they wanted to make a very PvP
focused game, but that's where like the balance felt to me.
I was like, yeah, yeah, I'd rather play Apex because
the time to kill is a bit longer, especially when
you get your higher shields.

Speaker 2 (31:47):
But also like you're not the grind is different.

Speaker 5 (31:51):
You know, you just might find some good loot in
a box within a twenty five minute run.

Speaker 3 (31:55):
So and I think I think if you think of
like what bungee strengths are, like, I's surprised I didn't
double down and like make it really PvE centric exact
instraction shooter.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yeah, obviously I absolutely just prefer that period.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
And obviously it would it would do a lot better
across the Destiny fans too, And like, I mean, this
is kind of what I've said to a lot of
people who are thinking about playing ARC and they're like,
I actually want to play this because there's so much
PvE involved in it, and like, yeah, I'm going to
run into some players, but maybe I'll talk to them
and say, listen, I'm pretty busted up here. Do you
want to work together? And I think you need a

(32:30):
PvE Like what said, there's no reason to chat to
people in marathon and you need a really strong PvE
focus to encourage teamwork, and.

Speaker 4 (32:40):
It's all kind of absent.

Speaker 2 (32:43):
Yeah, I do think it's funny.

Speaker 5 (32:44):
It's the exact opposite of what I think they were
going for. Is they wanted, Yeah, they want to BEP
hungry encounter and in the midst you might get into
some PvE and some other stuff and that's like.

Speaker 1 (32:55):
Not an construction shooter, is it. It doesn't really work. It
doesn't give you the right it given be the right
tension or pressure or anything. If you're if it's not.

Speaker 5 (33:04):
If you can't not if you can't put those gates
in like you're getting at. And that's where like I
think there's there's a balance either way. Is like you
get more PvE stuff in there where like that gate
is there, it's hard to go chase people down because
you can't just barrel through everywhere.

Speaker 3 (33:19):
You know.

Speaker 5 (33:19):
I haven't played Tarkov in a while, but that that
was also the difference. You could get hosed by PvE
really easily, but also a huge difference in Tarkoff you
could lay in the grass and hide and somebody will
literally walk over you. As a solo player and like,
you can't do that in this game. It's no comparison.
It's very hard to hide anywhere, especially they have like
wall hacks, you know, to find people.

Speaker 2 (33:40):
So it's very different in that respect.

Speaker 5 (33:44):
So yeah, it'll be interesting to see, like what can
they do with probably what is the push for six
months right, get out before GTA late March. Yeah, it's
always been a window for bungeie revenue as well. Now
they're back on I think we're seeing what bungee June
and December now again for the two expansions. So I

(34:06):
think they would love to get it out at that
time because then they would run into lake right March June,
December probably another March, and then in between the Desney stuff.
Just from a revenue perspective, I could see them wanting
to get it out in March, plus the avoiding slower
summer as well as just the GCA bom whatever that is.

Speaker 4 (34:24):
Let me picture this right and see how this sits
in your mind.

Speaker 3 (34:27):
Right, So elder Ring cook enemies from elder Ring, the
base mechanics from elder Ring.

Speaker 4 (34:33):
And made a rogue light.

Speaker 3 (34:35):
Imagine they just took all the assets from Death Seas, right,
all the enemy types and that was the game, right,
and you could get an exotic drop Galahrn as the loots, right,
and then you run around with Gallahrn. But but you see,
like I feel like in that in my head, having
all those PV mechanics with the PvP on top and
having to gather loot actually starts to make sense for

(34:57):
me of like.

Speaker 4 (34:58):
We see you really fun game.

Speaker 2 (35:00):
We're saying you want the Destiny branding though, you know, I'm.

Speaker 4 (35:03):
Just saying as an example, like oh yeah, like.

Speaker 3 (35:08):
Imagine if Marathon had as much PvE assets as Destiny
and that was it with enemy variety, enemy types, how
you tackle different enemies. Ones that charge you, ones at fly,
ones that move around once I have shields, Ones that
don't have shields when they are vulnerable to punching, ones
that you know, and you think about.

Speaker 7 (35:29):
Like, oh well, yeah, that design of the stuff chance
like there's all this stuff before, and I actually think
it can be applicable to an extraction shooter, and that
would be a point difference from every other attraction shooter.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Yeah, I keep I mean, I guess I do give
them too much credit.

Speaker 5 (35:44):
I keep thinking like, well, clearly that's what they want,
but you look at it and you're like, none of
that's ready or there. I just think they did it's
not ready above all, And now they're like, how do
we get something out there? You know, in the six
months of extra time we may have I'm making up
that number based on these recent reports.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
It could it could go longer.

Speaker 5 (36:02):
And we'll know in the fall. You know, yeah, let's
see what they get in the fall.

Speaker 1 (36:08):
I guess, well, see, I'm just like, man, there's so
many cool things that they could pull on and and
it it does make you wonder what was there because
we heard from people like Scarro who was talking about
how the Marathon Ship has like dungeon esque mechanics and
it's really hard and it's like really intense, but we

(36:31):
haven't seen it, so it's hard to say, like, well,
what is there? I don't know. And then in order
to make like the Marathon ship, let's say the Marathon
ship is really great, it's got all those things, you're
gonna have to put that on your other maps as well.

Speaker 2 (36:47):
It can't just be in like one thing.

Speaker 5 (36:50):
That's what I was just thinking is I don't think
it's designed to be that. In other words, it is
a special intense focused mission, but it's not exact actually
the main GAMEPLU. Now again I'm guessing, but that's based
on like Tarkov has certain missions where it's like, dude,
it's like lights out in you know, dark hallways, and
like it's a very different intense experience versus like, okay,

(37:14):
you have some sunlight to deal with maybe, or they
have night missions as well, but but the point is
they're very specifically super intense, and so yeah, I could
see them having that. And I always bring up the
Call of Duty as well with the Black Card Labs
or whatever it was in DMZ, which is really awesome.
And I could see that the ship was sort of
intent to be like a Pinnacle type activity and it's

(37:35):
a simple way to put it in Destiny Charms, and
you can't everything can't be a Pinnacle. So what is
the core gameplay that you know is where they just
got to fix it or show it one of the two.

Speaker 4 (37:47):
It's a lot on the plight. They can get through it.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
I hope get through I really hope. So I will
always root for literally any game from any dev to
do well because the more good games that are available
is good for me, And clearly there's a lot of
people working on all of these games, Destiny and Marathon,
and I would love for them to get a W
instead of constant negative sadness. That'd be great.

Speaker 3 (38:14):
I mean, if they if they actually achieved this tick list,
Marathon will be in a really good spot. I do
believe that it will be a really good spot to
keep developing and and secure a play base. It's just
a matter of how much of this checklist, how much
they're going to get fifty ninety percent done, Like, how
much this can they get through?

Speaker 2 (38:37):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Yeah, and obviously they they are.

Speaker 4 (38:42):
You know, they've really changed it in a prox chat
and I'm glad for it.

Speaker 3 (38:44):
I have I'm obviously listening on that they've listened and
talked and made a decision to include it, and I
think that's fantastic.

Speaker 4 (38:55):
Yeah, I think you'll add.

Speaker 5 (38:59):
Yeah, usually project it's you can just turn it off
you don't want it, you know, Yeah, that's usually a
good way to solve if you find it toxic, et cetera.

Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (39:08):
On a side note, Yeah, I play Division one this
week and specifically Survival Mode, and I can't believe Ubisoft
basically had all these extraction elements before was even a
fucking thing.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
It is annoying, isn't it?

Speaker 4 (39:29):
Oh? Good?

Speaker 3 (39:30):
The environment, I don't know. Do you do you know
anything about zavival mode in Division one?

Speaker 2 (39:35):
I do.

Speaker 3 (39:35):
Yeah, you're basically like, it's a blizzard outside, and like
I said, you have this push pull between keeping warm
and engaging enemies and potentially engaging players. Not many players
playing anymore because it's ten years twenty sixteen, so there's
a couple of people there, but like.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
Yeah, you're seeking shelter.

Speaker 3 (39:55):
You have to keep up your food, your water, so
you have to keep looting and then and it's got
all your lut and shooter elements in it too, so you're,
you know, like night Rain, you're putting together a kit
as you play, potentially meeting players are going to take
resources from you. You can choose PV or PDP. It
is like an insanely good mode. And literally every single

(40:18):
time I've played Division two or Division one, people talk
about survival mode still. Yeah, from twenty sixteen, probably the
most common comment in my streams when I did Division two,
So I miss survival mode.

Speaker 4 (40:32):
It's basically an extraction shooter.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Yeah, what was the year that Survival Mode hit. By
the way, do you remember twenty sixteen? Oh you say that? Okay, yeah, yeah,
it's wild right.

Speaker 3 (40:45):
It looks amazing. It looks amazing too. It's incredibly polished
for that year.

Speaker 1 (40:51):
It's it's annoying because they had the Dark Zone, which
everyone was like, oh, this is really fun and really
intention You've got all of it, like really well done.
And then they had Survival as well, and they just
didn't do anything with it. They did not.

Speaker 2 (41:05):
It's just ubie sauce DNA, right. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (41:06):
From the top they were like, well, we're these big
open worlds with side quests.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
Every game is going to be that, right. I mean
I think that was just the top down for the
most part. Anything outside of that, Like I'm trying to
think did they have like much of a multiplayer online
anything going.

Speaker 3 (41:22):
I don't know how popular it was, but there was
a multiplayer. There's a multiplayer like playlist maybe playlist, but
that that was kind of the hook really is the
docks in Survival And it's like, I might just comment
how hot people for that scam game?

Speaker 4 (41:39):
What was it the day before Tomorrow Tomorrow whatever it
was called. We didn't it before we had survival already.

Speaker 3 (41:51):
It is a thousand tons better than whatever that garb
Whige was. People just wanted to be in an urban
environment like Daise that wasn't dise and kind of have
extraction elements, crafting elements, surviving elements and just run around
and be a pest to people.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Really yeah, yep, well yeah, I wish them nothing but
the best, and God, I hope they can fit in
a lot of stuff. Let the creators create and create,
because we heard from all of these reports that like
people at Bungee were like, we really need should have
like a PvE portion of this game, and they just

(42:31):
clearly again did not listen to the people that they
have hired to do the job.

Speaker 5 (42:35):
Just listen to them just that and like that back
and forth of no, go this way, go this way,
go this way, go this way, versus that focus of
like we're just doing what we know feels right and
you get a very different result.

Speaker 1 (42:48):
Yep, real quick destiny stuff. Because there is a stream happening,
so I want anyone who's interested to know about that.
June twenty four worth at ten am Pacific, they're doing
a developer live stream for that Edge of Fate, So
if you are interested in that, there's also going to
be a twitch drop for an emblem, which looks pretty cool.

Speaker 4 (43:12):
Edge of Fight coming out. Why don't we look at Ace?

Speaker 1 (43:14):
I don't know, I thought I thought it was May
but mat on the ground frame, we can't hear your
ground friend.

Speaker 4 (43:23):
But wasn't there also some previews of Edge of Fight
And wasn't there some.

Speaker 5 (43:28):
Well, yeah, they had people did go hands on with it,
and we're allowed to release a little bit of footage
like all the you know creators that have stuck with it.
So that already happened early June, and now you got
this dev live stream, and there was also the Right
of Nine.

Speaker 2 (43:41):
Uh right.

Speaker 5 (43:42):
They changed the schedule with all the rotating dungeons stuff
so that I think every dungeon is up now, and
so all of that coming together I think confuses folks,
as well as the fact that it is no longer
a twelve month expansion, but it's split into two six
month size expansions and the next one is December Star
Wars themed. Trying to mix all that up, including the

(44:02):
major updates in between and the no longer whatever the
season it is called.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Right, Yeah, And they're doing. They're doing. There's a you
want to read about it. There's a ton of like
weapon changes, exotic armor changes. They're changing the way that
melee works and glaves and all that, so raiz stuff
going on.

Speaker 2 (44:24):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it will be. It will be
a big rebalancing across the board right now.

Speaker 1 (44:27):
It's a big one.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah, it's a zero, zero or ten or all.

Speaker 1 (44:31):
It's a big, like fundamental change to the game, which
is honestly, that is what they need to do to
continue having Destiny find new players and bring people back
and have people be invested. So you got to do
the gotta do the foundation first, and they can start
doing this stuff.

Speaker 3 (44:49):
As you just do what Eldering did. I'll jump into
a rug lot, Destiny. Just give me a big map
with bosses.

Speaker 2 (44:55):
Yeah, build it at man.

Speaker 3 (45:00):
And then make it like make it like, well, Pokemon
Home have a central hob. It was like, oh great,
they've got gallahourn in me fucking rugline, Destiny.

Speaker 2 (45:10):
Yeah, just give us a version.

Speaker 5 (45:12):
You could give us a version of the old Tower
and you can theme it around that and then have
like this kind of sentimental feel to it. I think
you could have a banger set up with that. Yeah, yeah,
I mean I was gonna say the thrum Soft formula was.
I mean, they just like they just don't miss their
storytelling and craft.

Speaker 4 (45:30):
Do you reckon? We're gonna get like, do you reckon?

Speaker 3 (45:33):
This is the next thing, Like elden Ring has just
done something that's just basically apply all their assets into
a completely different game mode.

Speaker 2 (45:41):
Yeah, do you reckon?

Speaker 4 (45:42):
We're going to see other games follow suit.

Speaker 1 (45:44):
It's honestly, it's a really good thing for like if
you are a successful studio, and I really appreciate successful
studios doing this, handing their more junior devs are ones
that they've been training for a while, a game that
they can make that they're not having to like make
assets from the ground up and being like here, go
and get some experience actually making a game, the workflow,

(46:07):
producing it, releasing it, like updating it, keeping up to
date with feedback, get some experience with that without like
us banking our whole company on this game doing well,
Like if it goes well, great, if it doesn't, it's
not going to be the end of the company and
you're not all getting fired. And that's that's actually why
they did it.

Speaker 2 (46:29):
Yeah, that was the back end point of what I
was trying to make.

Speaker 5 (46:32):
Those Well, those the formula that from South has of
they made this incredible single player experience that made you know,
over a billion dollars.

Speaker 2 (46:39):
Bungee is not in that position.

Speaker 5 (46:40):
But like, in other words, wouldn't be nice if Bungee
just made a new whatever Destiny campaign driven or marathon
campaign that made the billion or even half a billion.
That then allows them to experiment more with live service. Instead,
they're like all live service they.

Speaker 3 (47:00):
I mean, how many Treadmill was like Destiny community asking
for spin offs of whatever?

Speaker 4 (47:06):
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 (47:07):
It's like that could have been another revenue sauce rather
than trying all these other new I pads. It's like
you had everyone by the balls. You could have done
some Destiny.

Speaker 1 (47:16):
Spin community is also really passionate and very loyal, So
if they released like a spin off game, I bet
it would actually do quite well. Because Riot did a
similar thing with They did a thing with League of
Legends where they were working with indie studios to make
single player like mini stories of the different characters and regions,
and they didn't do very well. But I think that's

(47:39):
because of the community difference. I think if it was Destiny,
I think it would have done pretty well. To be honest,
you think it well.

Speaker 5 (47:45):
I mean they were making that third person Destiny game
right that Luke and Mark were working on, I think
at the time. But I don't know if we knew
if it was live service or not, or it sounded
like something still in there, so probably to mean, that's
all I here is like Bungie's whole deal is like
we make a bunch of money on live service stuff,
So that's all we're gonna make as opposed to from Soft.

(48:07):
I just it's interesting, like they made well, I think
over a billion dollars on just Elder Ring alone.

Speaker 2 (48:15):
It's very easy to break out.

Speaker 5 (48:16):
Probably, I mean, I don't know if that game costs
one hundred million dollars, but that would be a lot.

Speaker 1 (48:22):
Actually, I'd be surprised.

Speaker 2 (48:23):
We're gonna, like, as an example, we're going to talk
about fire Break.

Speaker 5 (48:25):
I don't know the budget from Remedy right control all
that that was a.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Forty person team. Like it's practically an indie game.

Speaker 5 (48:32):
I mean, that's already a studio that barely is making
profit as like relatively independent on their project. So, in
other words, from Soft, what a what a nice model
for them, and then of course they have the backing
of Gobandi if they decide to publish and all that.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
Jess and Nolt Night Rain just because like it's when
it first came out, the reviews were mixed. It's now
very positive. So it went from this thing where people
were like, eh, there was a lot of like growing
pains if I think people expecting more of a Soul's
like experience and being very much not that. And then
as people kind of realized what it was and they're like, oh,

(49:08):
it's like a Frumsoft co op party game to play
with your friends and like you know, have a have
these like forty five minute sessions. And now it's people
are picking it up and really enjoying it.

Speaker 5 (49:18):
Yeah, but once you were comfortable with it and everybody
started to get more comfortable, that's what changed from I
was like, holy cow, wait a second. There's a lot
of depth in the changing hub and everything in the storytelling.

Speaker 1 (49:29):
The storytelling is actually incredible, Like I almost cry doing
Revenant story. It is like really intense. I was like, well,
I was not expecting this. There's always a lot more
to their games than that you expect, like with the
recent update, which I guess we could talk about a
little bit about face. So night Rain had an update

(49:55):
and in their patch notes they're like, yeah, no balance,
some stuff and some chefman and then they dropped hard
mode big mouth, grip draw, gaping face maybe more Adele
I believe is his name. Uh, they dropped the like

(50:15):
hard mode of so yeah, if you played Monster Hunter,
it's literally like dropping a tempered version or an at
version of a monster. So he is, he has a
couple new moves, he's always in his angry phase. He's
always enraged. Also very monster Hunter. And then when you
kill him, you get a different currency that hasn't been

(50:37):
in the game until now, and you can use that
currency to buy more urns, which are the things that
you put relics in, So you know how you have
like blue, blue, green, and then you have you have
relics that are blue, relics that are green, relics that
are yellow. They added more urns that will be different
color combinations that you didn't have before, so there's a
bit more freedom with your variety. They also added more relies.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
Can't do some builds.

Speaker 1 (51:01):
Yeah, yeah, and they also added more relics for everyone
and also for individual characters. You can also buy all
of the outfits with this currency, and it is like
a lot cheaper to use the currency than your your
other currency. And then they also with this new currency,
you can choose to use it to summon a Shifting

(51:21):
Earth event like the volcano, the city, the Scarlet Rock place.
Because currently we're like when you fit after you defeat
the final boss, it's like, when do I get Shifting Earth?
It never happens. Well, now you have a way to
do that. And the way that they've set this up
is also literally a monster Hunter. This is an event

(51:42):
for a week with this hard mode gaping job.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
I didn't even realize that.

Speaker 1 (51:47):
Yeah, it's a week they're going to I think, so yeah,
I think what their plan is is they're going to
introduce the hard mode of each of them and then
after they're all done, they would probably just put them
all up.

Speaker 2 (51:57):
Yeah, I've got a beat, got to beat him. So
you only get the currency if you beat the new
ever Dark Boss here. Yes you don't. You just get
it if you because you know how, you get some
ruins if you lose.

Speaker 4 (52:10):
No, I might be playing some more elder Ring after these.

Speaker 1 (52:13):
You want to play, go hurry up. All right, guys,
thanks for joining us.

Speaker 2 (52:20):
We'll see.

Speaker 4 (52:22):
No, I'm just I'm waiting for to go live at
three pm.

Speaker 3 (52:27):
Oh yeah, about three hours after podcast finishes.

Speaker 1 (52:31):
Give you a couple of.

Speaker 2 (52:38):
Full addictives.

Speaker 1 (52:40):
No, it's it's so weird because you wouldn't think that
this game would make you want to put like three
hundred hours in it, because it's like we have eight
bosses and like eight classes, but you're like, a, yeah,
with one map, and I'm like, well, actually, I want
to make new builds, and I want to try new things,
and I want to perfect my stuff.

Speaker 3 (52:56):
And there's a there's a lot of and we're probably
gonna ge to fire Break in a second. But I
think elder Ring is actually, you know, a mirror example
of taking a franchise, right, elder Ring and then the
applaying a different game, and fire Break is in the
Allen Waite universe, very similar, like they are usually single
players story modes, and then now it's like a hordeshooter

(53:17):
cop hordeshooter the first person, right, But if you have
a look at all the things that elder Ring does,
and one of those points is like repeatability and how
you your gameplay loop has so much randomness to it,
it is still fun to repeat and difficulty and it's
just like from soft f I don't know what the
fuck they do, but they just seem to get They

(53:39):
seem to get all those things right from the get
go all the time. It's good design, it's good testing,
and even like the rollout of these things, like it's
almost perfect, like we're starting to get the point of
people like, Okay, I beat all the bosses. Now you know,
I've played all the characters, maybe I've unlocked all the characters.
I'm just kind of go bang, like Okay, new boss,

(54:01):
new difficulty.

Speaker 1 (54:03):
New currenue.

Speaker 3 (54:04):
Yeah, you know, even that is so well timed because
you can kind of start feeling it when the lobbies
go down. Like even I was trying to get some
matches solo over a couple of nights and it's like
just taking a little bit longer to get people, or
really had to change what boss I was on because
no one wanted to did that boss anymore. And then
now it's like probably just going to surge again, especially

(54:25):
with this boss.

Speaker 1 (54:26):
Yeah, yeah, it's crazy. It's it's really fun. Oh, and
he's really hard. I don't know what he's doing this purpose.

Speaker 4 (54:35):
I don't like his weakness. It doesn't seem to vomit
like the first one.

Speaker 1 (54:39):
I don't think he does.

Speaker 4 (54:41):
There's different mechanics, so I don't even know if the poison.

Speaker 1 (54:44):
I wonder if people have figured out it does more damage,
but the poison does to him, Yeah, I don't know.
He definitely doesn't puke anymore, that's for sure. Uh, speaking
of Firebreak, would you like to speak about Firebreak? FBC? Firebreak?

Speaker 3 (54:59):
Ye?

Speaker 1 (55:00):
Do you want to argue? I'll start being negative Nelly,
and then you guys can talk about your wonderful twelve
hours in Heaven together. So once you stop, I have
about an hour in the game. I will say that
I think the game is not very good. I think

(55:23):
it is bare bones for an early access indie game,
let alone a full act, full release of a video
game from I know it's a smaller studio, but they
clearly they they've made games before. It's not their first
ever game. I'd super bare bones. So here's the things
that I'm not gonna touch on, like the how much

(55:45):
content is in there? Because I haven't played enough to
touch on that. Uh, I'm not gonna touch on like
enemy variety. I'm not gonna touch on those things. But
right away the presentation feels kind of weird because you
load up the game and there's nothing. There's no cut scene,
there's no intro, there's no voice log. It's just here's
a lobby and here's how like, here's your load out

(56:06):
and like a job thing, where As even just having
a small even if if it's not animated, it's just like,
you know, an ink blot or something like that, being
like we are the fire Breakers, blah blah blah blah,
We've been tasked with, you know, something to kind of
set up why I'm here, what I'm doing, who these
people are, Who am I What's going on? So it

(56:28):
wasn't any of that. I'm like, that's fine. And then
they also don't have like a tutorial mission that they
take you on. They just have little tips that pop up.

Speaker 3 (56:37):
They would have applied the Elder Ring formula to a
game that's not Elder Ring, which.

Speaker 1 (56:42):
An elder Ring had had an intro cut seed. Night
Rain had an intro cut scene and an intro mission
that taught you the basics, because I'm just thinking about
like if I went in there and they taught me
about the showers, right, or like here's how to tell
when you can fix something, or whether you can spray something,
or whether like what you're using can do something, just
something like really basic. Just here's a very basic intro

(57:05):
to the game and your characters and the basics you
need to know. So that also wasn't there. And then
when we loaded up the game, I gotta say, shooting
doesn't feel great. And I mean that in terms of
like feedback, both when I'm taking damage and when enemies
are taking damage. It just feels really off. And then

(57:27):
the UI that they have is the top middle is
like your shield and your stamina. It's your team shield,
your share shield, and your stamina, and then the bottom
left is your health. And I'm like, why would you
do that? Why not just put like another bar up here?
So all of my stuff that I'm looking at for
myself is in one place. That's really weird. And then

(57:48):
it's it's kind of just the missions. I know that
you can do Clearance level one through three, but Clearance
level one is like you can do that in like
five minutes it's like, what is going on is so strange?
And then Clearance level two you're like, well, in Clarence
level one you had to fix three fans. Well, now
you fix six fans. Aren't you excited? So it's just
it felt very it felt super unfinished, or like very

(58:12):
early access. If you said this was the beginning of
early access, I'd go, Okay, that kind of makes sense.
But it just seems like there's there's not a lot
of polish, there's not a lot of not a lot
of and the characters. When I saw the trailers, it
looked really goofy. And I know you can get like
you know, you're you're shooting a tea pod at them,
and there is some goofy looking weapons. But I would

(58:33):
love I would have loved some more personality from the
characters to really like juice up those vibes of like
I'm just an average person being a firefighter, like trying
to deal with these weird ass aliens, like something that
kind of gave it a little bit of personality, but
a seasoning.

Speaker 4 (58:51):
Weird thing. He's a thing.

Speaker 3 (58:53):
I don't disagree with anything you've said, and I think
I mean this, this happens a lot with reviews, and
it kind of have with me when I reviewed you
in Awakening, Like at the end of the day, it
didn't grab me, and nearly everyone who loved it would
agree with all my criticisms of it, like, yeah, the
combat is not the best, and I also a lot
of great things about it too, but it's like we

(59:13):
came to different conclusions, and I'm kind of in the
boat with Firebreak is I actually I agree with every
you've said. I've read all the Steam reviews and I
agree with most of them too. But I did end
up having a fun time, and I think that there
was a reason for it, and I might just delay
that for a second and address some of the other
things you said. I think a lot of issues with

(59:33):
it was a lack of tutorial and a lack of
like basic mechanics of the game. This game's pointed difference
from other hordeshooters like Dark Tide, like Left for Dead,
is a really heavy reliance on these like status effects
and teamwork and it just.

Speaker 4 (59:51):
Doesn't tell you that.

Speaker 3 (59:52):
And to give you an example, there's like an area
that you're always on fire, so if you don't have
someone would like the squirt kit and I'm not yelling
able to squirt me, squirt me to like he said,
trust me to keep you with like the moist effect,
you just catch fire, and like that to me was

(01:00:12):
the defining fun part of it is having friends on
other kits and working together because it is a central
mechanic in the entire.

Speaker 4 (01:00:22):
Game that it never talks about.

Speaker 3 (01:00:24):
And I even saw reviews and people didn't even realize that,
like when you were doing the repair things, like certain
kids could do it instantly rather than having to play
the minigame. And people were complaining about this minigame, which
is literally like hell Divers. You know, Hell Divers has arrows.
It's basically that, but it's only Q and E. But
you really should never be doing that unless you're refilling

(01:00:45):
Ammo like your other teammates who have the right equipment.
So for example, something needs to be like repaired. You
need the monkey wrench. The guy the monkey wrench is
waxed it and it's done. But if you try to
do it, you go, You're gonna tippy tap on a
Q and E or a bumper.

Speaker 4 (01:00:58):
A bumper.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
It makes me fix sad because like imagine, right if
you loaded into a tutorial and they could use this
to inject some personality too, and they're like, you see
Jimmy over there, he's on fire. You know what we
do with people that are on fire. We squirret on him,
and then they can have like this, you know, we
pull out your squirt guns, shoot Jimmy. He needs to
be on something to like, yeah, introduce you to oh yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:01:20):
And it does actually have a lot of personality there
that just needed a little bit more polished, because it
is well within the weird and wonderful like Alan Wake universe,
where there's a bit of goofiness.

Speaker 4 (01:01:32):
There's a bit of.

Speaker 3 (01:01:33):
Like FBI horror too, but also just kind of weird
like post it notes monsters.

Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
And yeah yeah guys flying around an office chair.

Speaker 3 (01:01:43):
So it's like, you know, it's got the right setting,
but they didn't they didn't quite finish it. So I
think a lot of negative reviews off the bat, I
think do stem from no real explanation. I do think
they went for the we're not going to tell everything
because everyone's gonna like the game and they're going to
work it out and there'll be video tutorials on like

(01:02:03):
this effect does this, So this is why you should
do this, and it's like it's just not that level
of game or polish to get that level of like reception,
I think you just needed to put in a tutorial
really on how some of the things work. And even then,
like we still don't really understand some aspects of the game.

Speaker 4 (01:02:21):
But there were actually quite a fair few bits.

Speaker 3 (01:02:23):
I'm like, oh, there's there's multiple levels of this that
the game just doesn't tell you about.

Speaker 4 (01:02:27):
And that's kind of what I enjoyed.

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
Like I was like Fran like when you wet them,
you can wet the enemies and then I can shock them.
But I think when there's multiple together and they actually
get like multiple shocks, you go to the next stage
of the effect and they get like blown up, which
is like different again, Like it's almost like how it's
freeze and then frost, you know, or like slow and
then the frost breaks.

Speaker 4 (01:02:50):
So that's the aspect of the game that I really liked,
but I.

Speaker 3 (01:02:55):
Wouldn't Also, I think a legitimate criticism is there are
some games that are only on in a team, and
there are some games that good to play solo.

Speaker 4 (01:03:05):
They're good to play solo matchmaking, and.

Speaker 3 (01:03:06):
They're good to play in a team, and I really
don't have any motivation to play this, not in a
team with comms, and it has no proximity chat. It
has no team chat, which I just thought was so
odd for a game that essentially is saying, we're a
Horde shooter with more cooperative teamwork, and you're not going
to give them prox chat.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:03:25):
Yeah, it's a little like night Rain that eventually you
don't really need it, But why isn't it there?

Speaker 2 (01:03:33):
Right?

Speaker 4 (01:03:33):
You know?

Speaker 5 (01:03:34):
So I completely agree on the chat like it's it's
like and yeah, like imagine that, like I can play
with someone and teach them like Watts was getting at there.

Speaker 2 (01:03:42):
It's like and yeah, like this is what I'm seeing
a lot of Watts. You know, you played for like
an hour or so or yes, maybe.

Speaker 5 (01:03:48):
And it's not to take away from you're right, You're
like the onboarding is terrible.

Speaker 2 (01:03:52):
It's it's so confused, what do you want me to do?
Where's all that personality?

Speaker 5 (01:03:56):
I completely agree with that feedback, but I do think
that's it's one of the biggest thing the game suffers from,
combined with the fact that it's Alan Wake and control
and remedy. Everybody had expectations and then you go in
and you're like, what am I doing? And so here's
one big thing I would point out, well, two things, one.

Speaker 2 (01:04:14):
Which I can talk more about.

Speaker 5 (01:04:16):
If you filter Steam reviews by just over one hour,
it's mostly positive, but otherwise it's mixed and disastrous, and
I think it gets painted as a game that is
like disastrous. Open Critic is you know, you can kind
of parse through there too. There's a lot of truly
mixed reviews there though, so it is mixed. I think
that's fair, but it's interesting to see that people who

(01:04:37):
actually basically you have to plow through and figure stuff
out and have people explain stuff to the you and
you get to the point where you're like, okay, I
see what's going on, and like Mylin was saying, you
play a level and you think you literally are just
going to be repairing fans, and like that's one of
those jobs. Of there's five levels, but within each level

(01:04:58):
there's three zones usually and that's where there's some variety
and you get a little bit mixed up to when
you get into there's like corrupted items and rules. But
the biggest thing I would point out not to get
sidetracked here is it's a job game. The more I
play it, it is so focused on the jobs and stuff,
and I agree the combat feel like I was surprised

(01:05:20):
by Yeah, the gun upgrades, they feel a little better,
but like there's actually.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
A networking feel and general gun field. Something is just
off there.

Speaker 5 (01:05:30):
They're just coming to like scratch your eyes out, and
you're just like popping off bullets to get them off
of you. And that's where, like what Mylin was saying,
suddenly you realize it becomes very satisfying. And I had
the same impression when I played the early hands on
from the April build. I was like, I just want
to use my statuses and stuff because it is nuking them.
Once you figure that out, it feels very satisfying. But

(01:05:51):
the point that I would put out there is you
start to realize you're mostly just trying to get them
off your back so you can do the jobs. What
I would say to you is you're interested in this
game if you're not interested in some powerwash simulator vibes
and I mean this sincerely and job type stuff. That's
why I'm like, yeah, like they didn't do a good

(01:06:12):
job of marketing and explaining I'd love to hear you
responded this after I finished my own, but I just
started to realize. I'm like, yeah, man, it's about taking
this furnace over to this thing, and they're just trying.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
To scratch your eyes out.

Speaker 5 (01:06:23):
So of course there's combat, you know, and you have that,
but it seems like it's more focused on doing those jobs,
doing it quickly, and then yeah, what happens? You know,
how do you shut down a huge wave of enemies
with your skills and perks when when you put it
up on higher levels. So I went in and played
the twelve hours on the day that we played together

(01:06:45):
for like ten hours or eight hours or whatever. But
then it came back the next day and I did
totally just random match made at higher levels, and I
was actually I was like, oh, they know what they're
doing now, like for the most part, sometimes they.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Didn't, and I wish I had prox chat, but overall
I was like, Okay, I'm kind of chilling just getting
my stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:07:04):
I would have a lot more to say on like
the grind, like do the perks feel really useful?

Speaker 4 (01:07:08):
Etc?

Speaker 5 (01:07:09):
But within that it's okay, you know, there's something when
you're doing the jobs and building your kids out and stuff.
I think that that's where the fund can be at
if you're interested. But it does have all the problems
that you mentioned.

Speaker 4 (01:07:23):
I think this is probably the biggest issue.

Speaker 3 (01:07:27):
Like I think so, I think the early bad reviews
is obviously and objectively, I think you could say an
issue with onboarding. If you're getting mostly negative reviews under
two hours, that's an issue with onboarding, right, Or it's
issue with onboarding, and it's an issue with not delivering
the gameplay loop early enough that's satisfying, And it's also
an issue with it's just not feeling good straight away, right,

(01:07:48):
And it actually suffers from all those things as an
issue with onboarding tutorial. It has an issue with kind.

Speaker 2 (01:07:56):
Of doesn't feel good immediately because you have.

Speaker 3 (01:07:58):
A good immediately, and the reason for that is you
don't unlock your second and third ability until like how
many hours in I don't know, Like it's it's it's
a few pages into the battle pass it is, which
which would give credit for is you know, there's no
micro transactions. It's it's a Hell Divers style battle pass.

Speaker 5 (01:08:17):
And then that point was comboed with the fact that
people were confused it like not even understanding what to
do but continue.

Speaker 3 (01:08:24):
And then the last thing I think is this idea
of polish and it is hard to try nail down
why it doesn't feel as good as other games in
the genre, because I think we should compare it to
things like Dark Tide and Hell Divers. There are two
great I guess you know, co op Hordeshooters, and if
you play Hell Divers, like the moment to moment gameplay

(01:08:47):
feels good and the reasons fall out. It's a gun
sound effects, it's the effects and the like bombasticness of it.
It's the enemy types and I think when you put
all those things together, like you don't have anywhere near
that level of polish for like the gun effects and
the feel of.

Speaker 4 (01:09:05):
A gun, And I think it's.

Speaker 3 (01:09:07):
It's not the way it looks, it's it's a special
effects and how it interacts with the enemy. Like if
you've got a shotgun that they get blown in half,
do they get ragged old?

Speaker 4 (01:09:15):
You know?

Speaker 3 (01:09:15):
These are the things that Hell Divers did really really good.
Like I've got a nuke. This thing opens up the sky,
like you know, bits of enemies go flying everywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:09:24):
You'll go flying in that game, you go, you know
what I mean, Like I think any wildly impressive.

Speaker 4 (01:09:30):
Yeah, it misses.

Speaker 3 (01:09:31):
It's very basic in that sense that the special effects,
the sound effects, the overall feel of wielding a weapon
or abilities is not as good as other games in
the genre, even something like Dark Tide, even though they
add a pretty similarly bad Launch is in a good
space now. But it looks better and it feels better,

(01:09:52):
and some of that polishes is just kind of there
to keep you going a little bit longer into your
unlock more of the game.

Speaker 2 (01:10:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:10:01):
All though, I think you can have a good time
with friends. And this is this is the thing I
think if you if you think about it from this
point of view, with the teamwork and you all pick
a different kit and you have two other friends. I
don't know if I recommend it for the price points,
but if you do have game passed, I think you
can have a fun Friday night. I really do think
you can have a fun Friday night. And I heard

(01:10:21):
some reviews people like you know, sometimes I don't want
to play a night range because I can't fucking talk
about me week and how shitty it's been. Sometimes I
just need a game that we can be in together
and maybe turn off. And I think this game could
be that, but I probably wouldn't pay it forty bucks.

Speaker 5 (01:10:37):
Yeah, it's really interesting on the like they intentionally wanted
it to be more accessible. That's why they have so
much mode settings like just jump in, maybe do the
job like really easily, and like literally it's funny once
we start dialed it back right now and you're like,
there's nobody here. You started to realize that you needed
a certain amount of intensity depending on your knowledge level

(01:10:58):
as well as skill level. But yeah, I don't think
there's anything wrong with that goal, but I did want
to hear your thought on that. My mind, do you
feel like that the job part of it and working together?
Obviously you're fighting off enemies, but the polish is more
on like doing the job of like spraying down a
bunch of foam and cutting your way through it versus

(01:11:19):
fighting or you're like no, like it is a combat
driven game.

Speaker 3 (01:11:23):
So I'm just thinking, like what does hell divers do
and what do they do to increase the repeatability?

Speaker 5 (01:11:29):
Right?

Speaker 3 (01:11:29):
Like, I think that's probably what you're talking about here,
is like I've done these jobs so many times it does.

Speaker 4 (01:11:34):
Feel a bit repetitive. Repetitive, and.

Speaker 3 (01:11:39):
I don't know if the sandbox is like interesting enough
like hell Divers. Like Hell Divers didn't have more planets
more like people talk about not have enough content like
Hell Dives pretty much just open environments for every planet.
Like that looked a little bit different, but like the
repetit like the replayability was like getting cool new weapons
and using them in interesting ways on the enemies. And
I think even you lack that in something like Firebreak

(01:12:01):
than you're just you are just doing jobs. Yeah, And
other games usually give you other objectives that aren't tied
to your class, so that they've kind of gone very
niche here, like it is a job game with your
class that will excel at a certain job. But I
think they could layer that as well. And I think
the the corruption does that a little bit. So you

(01:12:21):
have these corrupted objects that change the way the game plays,
like low gravity, everyone.

Speaker 4 (01:12:27):
Gets slow, things like that.

Speaker 3 (01:12:28):
Definitely, you know, balance it out to be a bit more,
you know, different. But I yeah, think that mission where
you've got to put the barrels into the into the oh, yeah,
Like I think that's a better example of you have
some jobs, but you also need like an objective like
like I hold the point where you actually have to

(01:12:48):
hold a point, like I don't think there's any areas
where you just have to fight, which is kind of
like the most basic thing in Horde modes is like
you usually have one SEXU like, all right, the ghost
is hacking the door, just hold the point, you know,
which I think you should use some of those things
as well as well as all the jobs you did.

Speaker 5 (01:13:06):
It's funny hearing you reflect on it because you're it's
it's so like it needs the combat, I guess, is
what I hear from that, And I'm like, I totally
agree with you, and I started to think of like,
I guess that's why I landed on it's more of
a job game. But I do truly think that's what
they were like kind of focused on is the interesting part.
But the combat feels very like it's not there but

(01:13:27):
it needs it. Of course, that's what Hell Divers had.
I would actually argue Hell Divers has flipped. It is
so combat driven and occasionally you go into a hive
and explode you but overall it's all about the combat,
and I don't think this needs that is what I'm saying.
It needs to feel better with the combat, and frankly,
I think there's something going on with the networking, like
right when you shoot an enemy and the speed at

(01:13:48):
which it reacts. But then of course you get on
top of that, the animations and what you can do
to like take down an enemy doesn't feel like when
I give them like a wet status or shock status
is not like it's not visually exciting and in fact
it's struggling even had I got the level three shock
bullets by the way last night and I was like
using them and I was like, these are not building

(01:14:08):
up that fast, So like that is all problematic.

Speaker 2 (01:14:10):
But also the visuals are no longer there.

Speaker 5 (01:14:12):
Maybe they were, I say no longer because like in
the April build, it was insane when you shock stuff,
the entire room was white lightning.

Speaker 2 (01:14:19):
It was actually like epileptic, like scary.

Speaker 4 (01:14:22):
I think it back too much because I really don't
think you can say the impacts of your abilities. And
that's another thing. Rang Like another great comparison to.

Speaker 3 (01:14:31):
Hell Dog is like you put on an ability or
a bomb, like you know you've used it, do you
know what I mean?

Speaker 4 (01:14:36):
Sometimes you play this game, like, is it working? Did
I shock? Then shocked?

Speaker 5 (01:14:42):
You know, and yeah, round it all out? I think
that is. Let's just say the game is a six
or seven for most.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
I think it's gonna go either way.

Speaker 4 (01:14:49):
With friends, that's fine. With the caveat with friends.

Speaker 5 (01:14:52):
Yeah, yes, you of course, yeah, you have to and
you and you have to get past that first, like
honestly a couple hours understand. Yeah, but I was gonna say, yeah,
all that stuff that works well, I think we just
need to see more of it. I would like that
they're doing a December update.

Speaker 2 (01:15:07):
Let's see if they can. I'd love them to not
drop it.

Speaker 5 (01:15:09):
In other words, and say, can they polish this stuff
up make it feel a bit better. Whether or not
it's a success, I don't care about so much. It's
like I would love to see Remedy complete the job.

Speaker 3 (01:15:19):
I agree, And I think you know, a lot of
people complained about them only being like five levels, and
I do think that is a bit light. But I
also come back to the idea of like Hell Diver
was like Hell and I was didn't have the levels.

Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
Were hardly different.

Speaker 3 (01:15:35):
It's like it's it's it's more about repeatability than it
is like the amount of levels. And I think what
we're talking about here is like doing the similar task
every time is not very fun to repeat. So it's
not so much of an issue of like five levels.
It's like I feel like I've seen everything very quickly.

Speaker 1 (01:15:54):
Everything.

Speaker 5 (01:15:54):
Yeah, and you have to I believe you have the place.

Speaker 2 (01:15:59):
If you don't, I don't do quick play.

Speaker 5 (01:16:00):
In other words, and land on. Let's say there's a
rocket launch. Just like hell divers, you actually do control
the point. I was gonna say, my own that stuff
is in there, but it's not as often as you think,
like escaping on the elevator.

Speaker 2 (01:16:10):
And but anyway, you literally launch a rocket kind of
like a new and actually visually it's like incredible. I mean,
I'm on a PC and it has all of that
North Light engine magic from them, like you that's what
you expected more of, Like when it gets those portable
furnaces up right and it's refracting the air, like and
you put it in this frostbite anomaly and I like
all the lights refracted. I like this is cool.

Speaker 5 (01:16:32):
But then the enemies come at you, like you know,
and it's like a fifty thousand of them. And then
you're just shooting them and they go like kind of
pop like balloons and you're like it just but then
it even feels like weird there. So anyway, I would
just like to see more of what's good. It could
be a lot of fun. Like I actually went back
to that foam one and I started using my my
squirt gun and treated it properly. I didn't realize you

(01:16:54):
can really hose through all that stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:16:55):
It just takes forever.

Speaker 1 (01:16:57):
I think it's the thing that's the I've played a
lot of these kinds of games, and I've never had
one of them not be fun, like right off the bat,
like they're all actually quite exciting, you know, like I
played I played GTFO for like four hours and right
away where like it's really exciting. There's a lot going on.

(01:17:20):
We're like panic gggs, go like oh god was a
day coming. You're trapped to the corner. Oh my god,
he grabbed me, and it's like chaos and fun and exciting.
And this was very like as like Franz said, it's
literally you're you're going to your nine to five. But
they made it like the most boring nine to five
you possibly can when it would have been nice if
they could have done a little bit, maybe a bit
more exposition, like you're a fight a fighter fighting these

(01:17:43):
like weird alien things and you're like, it's just it's
just I just found it a little boring. And that's
that's what makes me put down a game faster than anything.
It can be janky, it can be like, it could
be laggy, it could be all sorts of things. But
if it's boring, I'm like, get me the house.

Speaker 3 (01:18:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:18:03):
My CONSTRUCTI feedback was actually that I was like, they
needed to give you the Metroid style of like full kits.
Fine if it's if it's even AI at your side,
they should have given you a full kit mission with
a bunch of persons and showed you the power because
I actually still have some of that question, like the
feeling of yep when like I haven't don't have my
level three tool yet, right and I've played like twelve
plus hours, and I think they gave you that up

(01:18:23):
front some of your power, but pointed you to the
good jobs, let's say or something, and just.

Speaker 2 (01:18:27):
A little tutorial with that, you'd be like you'd understand
what they.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
The good going is, Yeah, what you're working instead.

Speaker 5 (01:18:35):
You're like, I I'm just repairing this fan q e
q e q eq and I'm like and as my
wind say, it's like, wow, that's not really how you're
supposed to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:18:43):
Yeah, which is not your fault.

Speaker 1 (01:18:45):
By the way. You can just go back and forth
doing this on the Q not actually hit the right ones,
and it's just as fast so hot tip.

Speaker 5 (01:18:53):
Well you should fail occasionally, but yeah, it was a
small penalty.

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
But yeah, it's that's part of it too. None of
it is clear.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
Yeah, it's very it was very I was very purple,
little bit more like I I've never I have not
come away from a game being just like perplexed and
confused and like I was legitimately a little flabbergasted for
like probably solid twenty four hours coming away from it,
like this feels like this is like a two people

(01:19:20):
made this game and they put it into early access
on Steam, and like, pray, it's it's it's it's it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:19:27):
It's not that it's I don't think.

Speaker 5 (01:19:30):
Yeah, I think the first impression is like that once
you play all these other levels. It didn't help that
all they showed was paper chase and the fan fixing
in all their trailers. But again, I've got no skin
in the game on this again for me, actually I
might do a review of it in full, but it's
definitely in that sort of six and seven range for me,
in the same way I always talk about Anthem and

(01:19:50):
I'm like, look, I understand there are things I absolutely
disliked in that game, but some of it I was like,
this is pretty neat and I wish they developed.

Speaker 3 (01:19:57):
I think the hard thing for recommending this is the
price point and what else you can get for it,
even in different genres. It's like, well, you can get
Night Range for the same price, and if you don't
like that, you can get you can get Dark Tight,
I think, for cheaper, and it's in a better spot.

Speaker 4 (01:20:11):
Yeah, it's probably in a great spot right now as well.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
So it's like, yeah, if you look at things in
the same genre, you're like, well, you can probably pay
less or the same amount for a substantially more enjoyable
experience game pass.

Speaker 3 (01:20:24):
But I think I think it's similar to Dark Eyes
did launch well either, and they kept supporting it, and
it's in a great spot now. But I did lose
a lot of his momentum as well, and we haven't
really had. You know, we had Back for Blood, which
which flopped Dark tied launch pretty poorly, but it's in
a good spot now. Like I haven't had one of

(01:20:44):
these games that have just kind of launched with great
momentum and like maintain this momentum either.

Speaker 1 (01:20:51):
The GTFO was actually one of the better ones on launch.
I think it was about an.

Speaker 4 (01:20:55):
Eight and that's quite a niche audience too. Now, like
they never they're making a new game.

Speaker 1 (01:21:01):
Came out in twenty twenty one, so yeah, if they
were to make a new one, maybe hopefully they can.

Speaker 3 (01:21:05):
They're making a new one called Yeah, I mean I
think it's called wolves Den or something.

Speaker 1 (01:21:09):
Oh yeah, those good GCFO I think was Den of Wolves.

Speaker 5 (01:21:14):
Yeah, Den of Wolves, Yeah, and Wolves. But anyway, maybe
the finish up on Firebreak. I yeah, I do forget.
I was like matchmaking actually is going pretty fast still,
and given the feedback, I was surprised. But I think
because it's on PC Game Pass and Ultimate Game Pass
as well as PlayStation Plus, I believe that's all right. Yeah,
maybe people are homping in to try it, so I
think again, if you're just interested in, at least from

(01:21:37):
my perspective, the job type stuff, learning past stuff, and
that stuff can be fun. I wanted to be more
rewarding with what you're getting from it. And honestly, one
of my biggest gripes in the game outside of all this,
that I didn't get a chance to mention, is I
just don't get searching for the There's a health shed
and an AMMO shed that is integral to staying alive

(01:21:57):
and replenishing, and you have to like search for them
every map and you gotta ping them and I apps
is so tedious every time I play. Now, I'm like,
I'm I keep saying like this is so part of
the gameplay. You don't want to die when you're searching
for them. And then I'm like pulling my hair out.
Why am I searching for the healing shed? It's killing
me inside. So I personally I hope they fix that.

(01:22:19):
But I've done mind like that.

Speaker 2 (01:22:20):
I think it's tedious.

Speaker 3 (01:22:22):
I think that is the mind raising and keep playing
is just learn all the spoons and everything and the
map so you do a quick.

Speaker 4 (01:22:29):
Like I feel like that's the bottom work. Yeah, it's like,
all right, I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:22:33):
Gonna check spawn one. You check spooning to it. You
check Spawn three, we'll find with the sheds.

Speaker 5 (01:22:37):
But in other words, I get why they did it,
and you only have so many lives, but it's like
we're just trying to do the job and stay alive,
and they add that element. But I personally don't find
it fun to find the AMMO shed or you.

Speaker 2 (01:22:48):
Know, I see what I'm saying. That's that's I'm like, I'd.

Speaker 5 (01:22:50):
Rather that not have to be a focus every time,
but because it means he is dragging me down every
time I hop in to just have some fun, I'm pulling.

Speaker 2 (01:22:57):
My hair out.

Speaker 5 (01:22:57):
Without that, I could focus more on maybe the parts
I like. But anyway, they are releasing free content. I
assumed there's still their plant later for free. I hope
they have kind of a message to the community in
the next few weeks. They're pretty good about like, hey,
we hear you. But I hope it's not Ooh, this
didn't land how we want it to and it's dead

(01:23:18):
in the water. I really hope it's not that because
kind of like we talked with night Rain, even like
their networking and stuff, there's less stuff to be desires
and still does right. We can't all gather at the
roundtable and be together. Things with matchmaking, we would want
to be better, but it's really good. They're getting that experience,
so I hope they kind of stick with it.

Speaker 2 (01:23:36):
To that end.

Speaker 3 (01:23:38):
I mean, here's the thing, Like, I know it's got
a lot of negative press, but it's got seven hundred
and eighty positive reviews on Steam and four hundred and
twelve negative reviews. There are a bunch of negative reviews
of people just like I want to lock this game.
There's something here, but it just needs more time to cook, ye,
and don't come out. I can review this, change it
later if they If they cook more, so I think

(01:24:01):
it's enough to justify that keep supporting it, I hope.

Speaker 1 (01:24:04):
So yeah, ye, do we want to jump into Steam
Next Fest drop some bangers on the folks at.

Speaker 4 (01:24:18):
Home, many bangers.

Speaker 1 (01:24:21):
If you're unfamiliar, yes, no.

Speaker 2 (01:24:24):
I was just gonna say.

Speaker 5 (01:24:25):
I also would love to quickly comment on DK but
Nanza at the end maybe after Oh yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:24:29):
Yeah for sure. So if you're unfamiliar of what Steam
Next Fest is, it's something that they do. I believe
it's every quarter now where it's a time where a
bunch of devs just release their demos all at once,
and it's like runs for a week and it's just
everyone targets Steam Next Fest to drop their demos so
they can. You know, it's easy to find because you

(01:24:50):
can literally click. It's a lot. I think they said yes,
uh huh.

Speaker 3 (01:24:55):
Yes, m hmm hmm, because I thought I thought it
would be like maybe one hundred. I want to play
as many as I can. Then I looked at like
how many were included in Next It's like, I don't
know if it's just one of these genres, was like
a thousand in that.

Speaker 1 (01:25:07):
Genre's so many, So you're going to find something that
you like in here. And both me and Mylon we
played through some demos and we're gonna tell you.

Speaker 4 (01:25:18):
Some of the good ones, right recommendations? Do you want
to start with that top recommendations?

Speaker 3 (01:25:23):
Yeah, you said yeah, so we'll go.

Speaker 5 (01:25:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:25:27):
My my top recommendation is.

Speaker 1 (01:25:31):
Dispatch Dispatch Baby, And guess who has it on their
Fantasy critic list.

Speaker 4 (01:25:36):
It's me.

Speaker 2 (01:25:36):
I win.

Speaker 1 (01:25:37):
Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:25:37):
Anyway.

Speaker 3 (01:25:38):
The writing is so so good. It looks like a high,
high level animation you would watch on Netflix, broad to
you by people that made The Walking Dead, The Wolf
among us towns with borderlands.

Speaker 2 (01:25:51):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:25:52):
Oh, you basically a superhero dispatch officer and you have
a rag tag team of degenerate superheroes that you support
from the office and you essentially get given these call
outs and you're going to try send the right superhero

(01:26:14):
to the right job.

Speaker 2 (01:26:15):
Yeah, that's the game.

Speaker 4 (01:26:16):
Yeah, it's very witty riding. It's a very good experience.

Speaker 1 (01:26:19):
So imagine you're like, I guess, Like you're a dispatcher, right,
You've got your your PC in front of you, You've
got calls coming in, there's a cat stuck up a tree,
there's a fire going on over here, and you're tasked
to look at what the job requires and it can
require like mobility, intelligence, charisma, but they don't tell you
what it requires ahead of time.

Speaker 4 (01:26:41):
You just have to like by the key words.

Speaker 1 (01:26:43):
Yeah, you got to guess. So you're like, okay, So
that they're wanting us to like infiltrate a bank and
like apprehend a criminal who's trying to rob somewhere, So
you're like, okay, they might want to be you know, fast,
Maybe you want someone with portals who can portal in
and out of there. And you're trying to match the
ragtag of really they're kind of villains, but they're superheroes.

(01:27:03):
Put them on the right job, and if they have
the right stats, and all of the superheroes do have
stats like mobility and charisma and intelligence, if they have
the right stats, they end up doing a successful job.
And that's the game. But within it, there's there's like
voice lines while you're actually looking at the screen, which
is really funny. You have, like, like Mylon said, really

(01:27:24):
well done animated cutscenes with incredible voice acting and incredible writing.
And just right away from opening up the demo, I
was already laughing. It's it's incredible.

Speaker 4 (01:27:35):
It's really funnyling of the opening scenes it's really well.
I'll give you I'll give you an example of online.

Speaker 3 (01:27:47):
As you yeah, as you as you entered the office
and you made some of the crew there, you get
a hug and you didn't know who this person was
any guys, it's a hug, not a hand job, dickhead
or something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:28:01):
And then one of the trailers is another one where
you know you're you fall over and you drop twinkies
on the floor and the little bat hero guy comes
along and he says you're gonna eat those twinks and
then you're like, you.

Speaker 4 (01:28:12):
Know that critical from YouTube?

Speaker 1 (01:28:17):
Oh yeah, a lot of Pierce, isn't it as well?
Voices one of the characters. Yeah, she's the devil Lady Lady.

Speaker 2 (01:28:27):
Okay, it's all making sense to me.

Speaker 1 (01:28:29):
That's all really good.

Speaker 3 (01:28:32):
You might still be added some of these things, even
though next probably give it some of them.

Speaker 4 (01:28:35):
You can still download.

Speaker 1 (01:28:36):
The demo is still ail looking at her on Steam,
so if you are interested, just just go play. It's
also it's a pretty short demo, so yeah, I want.

Speaker 4 (01:28:44):
To take you together, super short.

Speaker 2 (01:28:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:28:48):
If that it's it's really good. Added to your wish list,
wishlets help dev's a lot?

Speaker 4 (01:28:55):
Yeah? Was that? Was that your top pink one? So
did you have another top pinch?

Speaker 1 (01:28:58):
I have another top pick.

Speaker 4 (01:29:01):
Is? Oh yeah, yeah, I can guess. I can guess.

Speaker 1 (01:29:07):
I'm yeah, no, I'm not a human. So this was
put on my radar probably about a year ago now,
and it was put on my radar because I heard
that it was like creepy papers please, and I was like,
oh okay. And the premise is that there have there's

(01:29:31):
these visitors that have started happening and they kill people.
But there's also this other event happening where the sun
in the daytime is so hot that you literally can't
be outside. You will burn, you will die. So people
are always looking for shelter to go into because you
can't just be out there when the sun does rise.
So people are coming to your door, and there's this

(01:29:53):
whole thing of like you have to let people in
because they're gonna die. So your job is to figure
out if these people are humans or if they are visitors.
And in the papers please, where you know you're in papers, please,
you'd look at their documents and here you're talking to them,
you're looking at their teeth, their hands, their eyes to
try and figure out if they are visitors.

Speaker 3 (01:30:14):
Yeah, So like each day you might get like a
news report about what to check. So like the first
day you get they've got perfectly white teeth, right, So.

Speaker 4 (01:30:22):
Then you're checking everyone's teeth. But you've only.

Speaker 3 (01:30:24):
Got so many actions to use every day, so if
you let too many people in, you might not be
able to check everyone, and then you're going to die.

Speaker 4 (01:30:31):
But it is very atmospheric, It is very creepy.

Speaker 3 (01:30:35):
You have similar paper please, Yeah, I liked it a
lot at a really good time on it.

Speaker 1 (01:30:40):
Yeah, it's it's really really cool. It's cool and creepy
and it is a little spooky, but it's not like
a scary game. It's just very unnerving, right, there's a
lot of lot of weird.

Speaker 4 (01:30:53):
Yeah, not scary, Chris creepy.

Speaker 1 (01:30:55):
It's creepy. I'm so excited for the full release of
that game. It's also I think the demo is still available.
It is, and the demo is sitting it overwhelmingly positive
on Steam, so everyone who has played this demo is
pretty much loving it. Nine people are loving it.

Speaker 4 (01:31:15):
Yeah, it's great. I played a bunch.

Speaker 3 (01:31:19):
There is like a million rogue lights that I played,
maybe five rogue lights, yeah, and my top pick was
one called Moross Protocol okay, and it just had a
great vibe to it.

Speaker 4 (01:31:39):
It was like a I'm going to bring it up
on stream if you're watching, but.

Speaker 3 (01:31:43):
It is like almost like a pixelated doom, like a
like a pixel doom kind of vibe, but a rogue
light very very you know, rogue lights. You want to
hit that. I want more, like, give me more, I
want to do one more run. And all the ones
I played this one. I just kept wanting to do
one more run. I want to get to the boss.

(01:32:05):
I don't think it does anything like crazy different from
Rogue Lights. It just is a really good looking game,
really nice art style. It's got bosses in its far
as a pretty Rogue Light similar pace, and you make
builders you go. I had a really good time with it.
M O r O s moros Moross protocol mm hmm.

Speaker 4 (01:32:29):
Recommend that will look good.

Speaker 1 (01:32:31):
It look good start style a lot. I I'll give
a shout out to a game that I think maybe
a lot of people maybe don't know about, but I
And also it wouldn't be on my radar, but I
thought it was really good. This is called Eric Sholm
e r i K s h O l M. This

(01:32:53):
is an exploration like stealth game, which normally I'd be like, yeah,
I'm not really interested in that, but my god, the
art in this game is in sick.

Speaker 4 (01:33:05):
Can you expel it again for me?

Speaker 1 (01:33:06):
E r ik s h O l M saw The
cut scenes are some of the like best facial animations
I've seen. It's insane. The voice acting is really good,
and then the actual world itself is just gorgeous.

Speaker 4 (01:33:27):
So pretty yeah, I did not see this right, So
what kind of game is it?

Speaker 1 (01:33:31):
So it's an isometric, narrative driven stealth game, and so
you do have that isometric look, but you can zoom in,
you can zoom out. You can also you're not just
locked on your character. You can actually move the camera
all around like the area that you're in. So you
might hear an NPC having a conversation. You can move

(01:33:52):
your camera and like go and zoom in on them
and see what they're doing, which is really cool. And
it's set in I believe, like some kind of Nordic country,
but it's like the nineteen hundreds, lots of factories, you know,
all families are working in the factories, and there's a
big push and pull of authority versus the common folk.

(01:34:13):
And yeah, it's it really impressed me in so many ways.
It's just the storytelling was incredible. That the gameplay. I
normally am not a huge fan of stealth gameplay, but
I thought they introduced it to you really well, the
way that they kind of onboarded you into this experience
and letting you know what to look for and when
to run and went to crouch and what kind of
things you can creep through. That was done really well.

(01:34:37):
They let you understand right away what you're supposed to
be doing, and then also the save points when you
mess up. Because this is another thing that can make
me go nap. I'm putting it down is if you're
playing a stealth game and then you get seen and
you get sent back like forty five minutes, and I'm like, nope, yeah,
this one does not do that. They have very reasonable
save points where if you do mess up, you're not

(01:34:59):
severely punished for it. So yeah, cool, this is a
super cool game, super super cool cool it was.

Speaker 3 (01:35:06):
It was a very very good Eric Eric Sholm one,
just look good, Eric Schulm, U go one friend.

Speaker 4 (01:35:14):
You haven't made a suggestion in what you got? Well.

Speaker 5 (01:35:16):
I didn't get to participate in Next Best, but I
wanted to shout out. Came out this week. I didn't
get to like play it, but had some friends that
I indies a lot. It's called cast and Chill. I'm
as a fan of folks that try for the cozy
games because deep in my heart I wish I sort
of did that.

Speaker 2 (01:35:31):
Sometimes.

Speaker 5 (01:35:32):
I always enjoy it when I make time for it,
but there's too many other good games out there. That
being said, it's called Cast and Chill. For all your
other fishing fans. I'm always a fan of a good
fishing like mini game in any game, but also.

Speaker 2 (01:35:45):
Fall on games. This one's called Cast and Chill. The
art is really pretty, so it.

Speaker 4 (01:35:48):
Looks like a two D pixel. Almost looks like Day
of the Diver a lot.

Speaker 5 (01:35:52):
Yeah, although visually I guess you could say that, but yeah,
a lot of like really cool or sixteen bit style,
just really pretty for fishing, like painterly. But it's a
cozy game and it's about fishing, and it's getting a
lot of positive reviews.

Speaker 2 (01:36:06):
It's just came out this week. Cast and Chill.

Speaker 1 (01:36:09):
Man, I'm don't have to I'm gonna have to put
that on my Steam deck. I love those those kind
of games. Well, because I loved Dredge. The vibes and
Dredge were immaculate. But that game's too scary for me.
I can't play it. It's legitimately terrifying. I tried, because
I loved it so much. I tried so many times
and I was like, no, nope, I can't do it.

(01:36:29):
It's given me chest pain. I can't do it. So
that is like.

Speaker 3 (01:36:36):
Play another ruge lot, and this is the only two
rug lights I really liked, Moonlighter two the Endless Volts.
This actually has mixed reviews because Moonlighter one was incredibly
well received and people feel like this one was maybe
dumb down, and I think is maybe the general impression

(01:36:57):
I got from it. But the only other rug lot
that I want to complete the whole demo for. And
the twist on this is when you complete like a run,
you're collecting relics and then you're bringing them back to
a shop to sell, and then I guess that's like
Day of the Diver. Right then you got to like
you've got to manage this shop. You've got to clean
up after people, You've got to bargain with people to

(01:37:19):
like get a better price. And there's also like mechanics
in the shop that can increase the price of items.

Speaker 4 (01:37:25):
So you get so.

Speaker 3 (01:37:26):
Many basic abilities that you use to increase the price
of the items you have in this shop. And so
you just try to like run this shop and also
do like I really I actually found the combat quite enjoyable.

Speaker 4 (01:37:39):
It was.

Speaker 3 (01:37:41):
Very slow combat compared to something like Haitis, where it's
more can I fill the room with a certain combination
of like perks with you know, fireballs or something. This
is more like I can't spam attack, I've got to
like attack dodge, Like I felt I was playing almost
like dark soulsy stuff in a rogue light.

Speaker 4 (01:38:00):
I can't like it a lot. So it's called moon
Lighter two.

Speaker 2 (01:38:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:38:07):
I think I'll just call out one more because I'm
trying to mix the genres up, and that is dead
as Disco. Oh yep, disco yep. So this is another
one that is overwhelmingly positive. This is martial arts mixed
with hitting enemies on the beat. They call it beat

(01:38:28):
Kundo is what they call them.

Speaker 4 (01:38:30):
Martial art was it?

Speaker 3 (01:38:31):
It almost feels like safe safe with what was that
other really good rhythm beta.

Speaker 1 (01:38:41):
Uh yeah Seafood high fire.

Speaker 3 (01:38:47):
Rush Yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:38:50):
So yeah. The idea of this game is you are
playing a game that is like a beat him Up
three D beat him Up, and you're punching along to
the beat. Now, this crazy thing is so they.

Speaker 2 (01:39:00):
Have double dragon yeah to the beat. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:39:03):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:39:03):
They have their own music that you can do, but
you can also import your own music. Yeah, so you
can import any song you want and You can play
these levels punching to your own favorite music, which is
really really cool. A lot of people were saying it's
like Arkham Games and Seafood combined with custom songs where

(01:39:27):
you have to hit on the beat. People are saying
it's the most satisfying rhythm game they've ever played. It's
uh yeah, it's really really really good.

Speaker 2 (01:39:37):
Need it?

Speaker 4 (01:39:37):
Lots of fun, a lot of fun. Demo is really
really short dem I too.

Speaker 3 (01:39:40):
If you want to just give it a crack, like
take it fifteen minutes or twenty minutes.

Speaker 4 (01:39:44):
It gets pretty quick. Good duh, Yeah, it goes to
the length of the song.

Speaker 1 (01:39:49):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, give it a go. Really, people are
having a lot of fun. People like, man, it hooked
me right away, and now I'm just like importing all
my music into there and keep going.

Speaker 4 (01:40:01):
Yeah. I mean just quickly I played Baby Steps.

Speaker 2 (01:40:06):
Did you talk about that last week or now?

Speaker 4 (01:40:10):
Maybe? Yeah? Maybe about Holton.

Speaker 5 (01:40:13):
Yeah, I'm just saying it sounded familiar. I was like,
wait a sec, we are last week?

Speaker 4 (01:40:22):
You know the other ones?

Speaker 3 (01:40:23):
Actually I will mention Pioneer because I know it's got
a lot of kind of interest and I just had
an awful time with it the reason it has interest.
It is similar to the Cube, which also has a
lot of interest at the moment, which is an MMO RPG.

Speaker 4 (01:40:39):
So the everything kind of like destiny persons like the
first person MMO RPG, who have my interest?

Speaker 3 (01:40:46):
Uh and this was similar MMO RPG. There was a
demo available. I crashed two or three times in the demo.
I did a full reinstalled because I really wanted to
give a shot. Does that thing where you don't get
into your server until you complete the tutorial? So the
tutorial is fine, but as soon as you try to
get into your server, it's just like, you know, you

(01:41:07):
can't get in. There's too much population. The servers were dying.
Like then it bugged out, then had to reinstall. Eventually
did get in, But I just don't think they did
a very good job with a demo, you know how
I feel like a demo should chuck you in two
hours after onboarding, you know, like when you're kind of
the thick of the action, you can kind of get
an understanding of the gameplay loop. This had just like

(01:41:31):
an hour of meeting all the NPCs in the village
just chat to everyone, and not enough like can I
go see the open world now, and then they have
like raids which are pretty much Destiny Strike missions you
can match paid for. But I couldn't find matches for
and have to change the region I was in to
try to get a match, and so it was not

(01:41:54):
really a well delivered demo, and my hype substantially went down.

Speaker 4 (01:41:59):
So if you say anything about it, just maybe give
it some more time.

Speaker 1 (01:42:05):
Give it a yeah, lots, this is this is the
thing guys, like, if you ever feel like you are
burnt out on the game you're currently playing, or you
can't find anything, there are literally thousands of demos dropping
damn near every day on Steam and it's for every genre,

(01:42:26):
so and you could get to try all of these
for free. This is what's really nice about like PC
gaming is you do have access to so many small
studio in the double A games that a lot of
the time they can't get the funding to make it
onto console because it is a larger barrier to entry.
But yeah, there's so there's so many Just get get

(01:42:46):
out there and give them a try. You will find
something that you love. I promise you.

Speaker 3 (01:42:50):
Okay, I know I said I was done, but this
is my last this is also fun bull XP. Now
I'm thinking a lot of my I told you there
was a lot of rogue lights, and these are just
my top list of rogue lights.

Speaker 4 (01:43:03):
I play a lot of just not good. This is
ball ex pit. Yeah, this is a great another great
like rogue light. One more, one more.

Speaker 3 (01:43:13):
One half of the mode is ricocheting off the walls,
off surfaces, and you know you'll get rogue things that
like you know, your ball freezes, your ball does bleed damage.

Speaker 4 (01:43:25):
If you hit them from behind, it does ex critical damage, right,
So you've got to do that. And then the other part.

Speaker 3 (01:43:31):
I don't know if this demo is going to show it,
but you go back to like your base building, and
the mechanic for building your base is you have the
area where you put like farmland down, you put buildings
to build that give you permanent This is like your
permanent upgrades for your runs. But then the little people
are like balls, so you aim them and they ping

(01:43:52):
pong off your area and that's how they collect the
weeds and they drop the wood. So if you don't
get the right angle, you don't end up building the buildings.
So you've got to rearrange your a way to pinball
the workers off them to get the most resources each
run and the most like permanent buffs.

Speaker 4 (01:44:11):
And it is a pretty chill. That's pretty good. You
can you could waste hours on this, you really can.

Speaker 1 (01:44:18):
All Yeah, I had so many that I wanted to play,
and I had a really good mixture of genres this
time around. I had like Survival Horror that are very
like og Resident Evil I had. I had, so I
had such a huge mixture, but I wasn't able to
play a little quite a lot of them that I
wanted to play, actually, but that's partly because I was

(01:44:40):
in the cat er for two days. She's fine, now,
don't panic everybody, She's fine. But I was there for
like two days.

Speaker 4 (01:44:52):
And we played Altars too.

Speaker 1 (01:44:53):
I'm only two hours in. Uh we'll talk about it
when I'm further in. But all I can say is, god, damn,
that's a good looking game. I loaded it up. I'm like,
what is going on? It runs at like one hundred
and thirty fps. Everything maxed. Beautiful game. It looks really

(01:45:16):
really good.

Speaker 2 (01:45:18):
It is nothing that Rave reviews.

Speaker 4 (01:45:22):
It's a what do you call it?

Speaker 3 (01:45:23):
Like a you know, like a like full out shelter,
it's like, yeah, so it's like there's a two D
shelter building pot and base management combined with.

Speaker 4 (01:45:33):
Survival exploration.

Speaker 5 (01:45:35):
I guess like they describe it as that blended survival
adventure and base.

Speaker 2 (01:45:40):
Building it is.

Speaker 1 (01:45:41):
Yeah, so this is it's from the guys who made
this War of Mine frost Punk, which are very you know,
you're managing people, you're managing supplies, you're managing building things,
so it's very much that kind of game. But then
you also have this very kind of death stranding vibe
to your outside exploration. You have to go out and
get recent sources, so they have a full three D

(01:46:03):
kind of world that you're going out in and getting
these things. And then the big kind of story hook
is that you're alone on this moving home and you
have to have more people in order to fix it,
to keep it going, to keep everything running. And the
way that you get more people is that you are

(01:46:23):
creating alternate versions of yourself. So you literally will look
at all of your past memories and you'll go to
like maybe nineteen year old you, where you made a
very pinnacle decision that changed your life, and you will
pick the other one and that will be the altar
who will come and work on this chip with you.

Speaker 4 (01:46:44):
And it's really interesting because, like the.

Speaker 3 (01:46:48):
The alternate versions of you end up having stats based
on when they branch off your timeline. So like the
alternate version of you that ended up working on the
mind side with your dad is good at mining. Yeah,
the alternate version of you that like you know, ended
up loving gardeners is like your botanists, you know. So
it's like a game about Siva and like recolonizing planets

(01:47:12):
and the moral ethical issues with having some resource that
can just like super create anything very quickly, and it.

Speaker 4 (01:47:23):
Explores a lot of that really well. It's very it's
very funny.

Speaker 1 (01:47:26):
No one else. So it's also something from playing it
that I didn't expect for them to do well because
it's a really interesting mechanic and I really like the
mixture of base building and exploration and all of that.
But it also because you're you're looking at the memories
of people throughout you know, this guy is like thirty
something years old, his thirty years of life. It really

(01:47:47):
gets you thinking about your life and like decisions that
you made and how you might be different in an
alternate timeline. If you literally just did this one thing
different and they've done such a good job in writing
that that it really makes very introspective on your own
life as well. It's really, it's really it is.

Speaker 4 (01:48:05):
Word a Warning is a pretty heavy story.

Speaker 3 (01:48:07):
Like it's got domestic abuse and stuff in there, and
like it will most likely make your reflect on your
own life regardless of like how much you see yourself
in the characters. So it's not gonna it's not a
chill story, but it's a very very very interesting sci
fi story and it's very interesting just people's story.

Speaker 4 (01:48:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:48:28):
Yeah, it's kind of kind of incredible. I can't wait
to play more of it.

Speaker 4 (01:48:32):
Yeah, I'm at the point now I'm like I'm just
so bad at base management, and.

Speaker 1 (01:48:36):
I'm like, oh, I'm gonna have to put it on easy.

Speaker 4 (01:48:39):
I really am.

Speaker 3 (01:48:42):
Everyone's getting pissed off of me because all your alternate
versions of different stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:48:47):
So like one of my guys, what's a ping pong
table that the lab guy wants more upgrades.

Speaker 3 (01:48:53):
We're running out of the radiation stuff, so everyone's getting
radiation sickness.

Speaker 4 (01:48:57):
Fucking we don't have enough food. Someone wants to like
better cooked meals. I got it.

Speaker 1 (01:49:02):
In fact, I've never reached the end of a base
management game. I always end up failing. Everyone dies.

Speaker 4 (01:49:09):
It's bad.

Speaker 2 (01:49:10):
Yeah, did you do anything that made them happy? Uh,
it's sounds like they're all mad.

Speaker 4 (01:49:17):
Well, here's the thing, here's the thing.

Speaker 1 (01:49:20):
From sometimes you make them mad to make him happy
as well.

Speaker 4 (01:49:22):
I would rather than be mad than dead.

Speaker 3 (01:49:25):
I had to fix the fucking the radiation shields before
I can make a pin punk.

Speaker 1 (01:49:31):
It's like Ras says that studio is very good at
making plate spinning games, and they really are. Same thing
happened in this war of Mine's gone great, gone great.
Oh Grandma needs medication, but also Timmy needs medication. We
can only do one medication. Oh Grandma's dad. Oh god,
we've got foods running out, and it just gradually just
gets more and more on top of you, and you
just you'll lose it. It's gone.

Speaker 4 (01:49:54):
Yeah, they'll fall on apart.

Speaker 3 (01:49:57):
Yeah, but I don't think some people of oss like
is there any common But no, I don't think there
is combat. But the survival aspect is more about like exploring.
Actually it's a bit of Metroidvania, like you kind of
encounter things that you can't get past until you upgrade
your base and get more tools to deal with them.
It's more of an environmental combat than like fighting aliens

(01:50:20):
or anything. It's more like, oh, there's a cliff face here,
I need to like craft something to get up at,
or this is anomaly that I don't know how to
deal with. I need to, Like, I'm at a point
where there's something that I need to create the right
version of myself to know about it, like to solve
this puzzle, Like I need to go find the right
altar for an alternate version of myself to work out

(01:50:42):
what this thing is and how to deal with it.

Speaker 1 (01:50:45):
Yeah, it's really cool. It's really really cool, very and
very cool, very clever. Yeah, I'm excited to play more
of it. Fran would you like to talk about.

Speaker 5 (01:50:59):
Well do we want to since it's up to you, guys,
since we're kind of at time, so you make the call.

Speaker 1 (01:51:04):
We've got it's got six minutes technically, but no, you
talk about the thing you're excited about.

Speaker 2 (01:51:11):
Yeah, yeah, No, it was no big deal.

Speaker 5 (01:51:13):
There was a DK bonanza director if you didn't catch it,
but that is like really the first uh in my opinion,
I mean, Mario Kart world is the first like switch
to big exclusive, but like it's very expected, I think
in a lot of ways. So for me seeing DK Bonanza,
especially in a world where you're like, man, I really
want a new Super Mario game and they're like where
is that at? You know, and like this is probably

(01:51:35):
that team that's working on the next Mario, mixed with
you know, other teams, but probably driven by De Tokyo.
But in any event, DK Bananza, if you haven't caught it,
it comes out around July seventeenth.

Speaker 2 (01:51:47):
Nintendo had already showed you.

Speaker 5 (01:51:48):
Know, playing the game and everything around Switch too Luch,
but it was like one level and people were like,
I don't know, like you break through the ground and
throw rocks around and it looks like an action platformer yep,
But now we got.

Speaker 2 (01:52:00):
To see a lot of that. So it absolutely is.

Speaker 5 (01:52:02):
It's a full on Donkey Kong and Pauline's story actually,
which was the big reveal, and so it does have
She's like on your shoulder.

Speaker 2 (01:52:10):
You're mostly playing as Donkey Kong.

Speaker 4 (01:52:11):
This surprised me.

Speaker 3 (01:52:12):
I've known nothing about Pauline, but this I don't know
what what's the lore of this matchhop, Like I don't
even know who Pauline is.

Speaker 1 (01:52:19):
Pauline's but it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (01:52:22):
Wasn't Pauline the one at the top of Donkey Kong that.

Speaker 4 (01:52:25):
He was like trying to get the Princess of Donkey Kong.

Speaker 2 (01:52:29):
I thought that was Pauline. See, now you're testing my antenda.

Speaker 5 (01:52:33):
But I don't know how more accurate or I don't
know if people figured out because she's like sort of
born out of this meteorite rock that lands and like
I'm standing with it, yes, and she's trying to get
back to the surface and light. So I don't really
know what it's trying to tell us and probably how
it ties into like maybe even Mario Odyssey as well

(01:52:55):
in that but anyway, not but I can't do the law,
how dare I read some of the comments that tend
to direct and people was saying pretty happy that Paulon
was in there, So I think this is, you know,
pretty on the big.

Speaker 2 (01:53:07):
Deal on that front.

Speaker 5 (01:53:08):
Yeah, But but the real news is they actually showed
like a lot, like a lot of the powers you're
gonna have shown off, just tons of like what would
the charm of it be? And yeah, like it looks
really fun it's got Yeah, it actually has I'll here,
I'll throw this out there.

Speaker 2 (01:53:21):
For Donkey Kong fans.

Speaker 5 (01:53:22):
One of the levels you go full on Donkey Kong Country, right,
the pre rendered old school like side scroll, but it
obviously is like an action platformer mostly kind of spun
out of you know what you saw from Super Mario
Odyssey and stuff, and yeah, so it looks like super fun.

Speaker 2 (01:53:37):
You can get like superpower Donkey Kong. You be Ostrich
Donkey Kong, you be Zebra Donkey Kong, And it looks like.

Speaker 4 (01:53:44):
A Donkey Donkey Kng.

Speaker 5 (01:53:47):
Can you be Donkey That is a great question because
he could absolutely do stuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:53:52):
I mean you have literally, you know, tons of puns
in the game.

Speaker 5 (01:53:54):
There's banandium, there is the big yeah, well I call
big Banana and it. But there is now an energy
in the game which is like a superpower element. And
they've got also like inget Island, right, so they love
that stuff. But yeah, no, the direct I think showed
really well. It shows their charm and variety, So I'm
more excited about it now that I've seen more. But

(01:54:16):
it is still a big question of like, oh is
this going to be you know, a good loop, but
it kind of took me back to why I liked
Astrobot so much. Right, very action focused, and you know,
for Nintendo to do you know that their version of well,
I mean they've already done action platforming, but kind of
bring it back, let's say, and have Donkey Kung in it.

Speaker 2 (01:54:35):
It looks fun.

Speaker 5 (01:54:36):
So that's July seventeenth, and for me, it's the real
test of why did I buy my switch to obviously,
other than I mean, here's the Kingdom upgrade, and you know,
of course Mario Kart World is just like so expected,
but this one, I'm like, okay, cool.

Speaker 2 (01:54:51):
Yeah, I kind of wish that it was able to
launch with it, but it looks cool.

Speaker 1 (01:54:55):
Yeah, it does. It looks good.

Speaker 2 (01:54:59):
Ro yay. Alright.

Speaker 1 (01:55:02):
Media game video games, there's so many fun ones. We've
got Death Stranding coming up next week and uh it,
we're launching on the twenty fourth if you get the
deluxe edition twenty six access. Yes, yes it is.

Speaker 4 (01:55:19):
That's a stream of that's a stream of fucking tax Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:55:24):
It's also the Monster Hunter player text because on the
twenty six there's gonna be this is not just for
Monster Hunter fans, but there's gonna be a Capcom showcase.
It's forty five minutes long, and they're gonna be going
over Title Update two, so if you're unfamiliar with Monster
Hunter stuff, that's they're adding Laggy Acres to the game.
They also said they're adding they said monsters. So we

(01:55:46):
don't know anything else except Laggie is going to be
in the game. It's the only thing we know. So
they're going over the content that's dropping in Title Update two.
They're also going to be talking more about Pragmata, which
is really cool to see them talking about that again
so soon gives me hope that it might actually come
out next year. They're also gonna be talking about Resident
Evil nine, and then they're gonna be talking about the

(01:56:07):
new street Fighter collection, So it's gonna it's a I mean,
that's a pretty packed showcase and Title Update is supposed
to be dropping at the end of June, so I'm
gonna guess they're gonna be like, it's available now.

Speaker 5 (01:56:21):
I was just trying to do that death Stranding math
in the background of all that too. I was like,
wait if it comes out on the twenty six, and
it's forty eight hours early does that mean, like in
our terms, wat's West Coast that it's out Monday night
like nine.

Speaker 1 (01:56:32):
Probably all who knows who knows when it's.

Speaker 5 (01:56:34):
Happened Monday night could be otherwise. I assume it's sometime
in West Coast time.

Speaker 2 (01:56:40):
So, but that's like days away.

Speaker 1 (01:56:42):
It's days away. It's Thursday right now. I know it's
happening right now. It's happening right now. If you are
trusted in playing Death Stranding two and you're like, should
I play desk Straining one? I mean, of course, in
an ideal world, you play dust Stranding one and then
you play Dust Training two. But they did put out
a video on the story so far That's Stranding put

(01:57:03):
out an official video, so you can watch that. Really,
I mean honestly, I was watching it and I was like,
I didn't know what was going on in the game.

Speaker 2 (01:57:09):
In the world.

Speaker 5 (01:57:09):
I would not replay the first one because that great
games of playing, like just watch it and then play this,
like I'm assuming that this is like the kind of
fully formed idea of it. Death Stranding, though, is really
cool the first one, But I just remember the first
like three hours being like even different than like where
you eventually get with the like, oh I get it,
you know, and so you might save your cell phone

(01:57:30):
a lot of time, but play both of you got time.

Speaker 2 (01:57:32):
I put time.

Speaker 1 (01:57:34):
It's a big ass game. Yeah, big game. Yeah, So
join us next week for Shenanigans. Lots of things are happening.
We'll be I guess playing Death Stranding by next week.

Speaker 2 (01:57:49):
Definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:57:50):
Oh yes, I'll be playing All to See in hopefully
four hours time. Which is a MMO. That point of
difference is meant to be the combat. It's not meant
to be tab targeting. It's meant to be I mean,
they say souls like but everyone's I'll just say I

(01:58:12):
think action is.

Speaker 4 (01:58:13):
Probably a better Yeah, it is a better description, which
is exactly what I want.

Speaker 3 (01:58:17):
And this always has put me off on MMOs. Is
I just I just don't like tab targeting, you know,
I just find it a bit boring. And then it's
just it's really just a slot machine simulator just trying
to get the right gear.

Speaker 4 (01:58:29):
So I'm gonna give it a shot.

Speaker 3 (01:58:31):
Look, it's been received really well from the early playfews
that've had really really open dialogue with credits.

Speaker 4 (01:58:38):
Just watch a video before.

Speaker 3 (01:58:40):
Because it's a Cream company and they're like, everyone expects
us to be pay to win, like tell Us, and
they've and this creator went ham on them, like said
all the different variants, like it's not paid a skip,
it's not pay for a currency that you can use
to up, like there's no version of paid, and they
seem to say there isn't. So if it nails the

(01:59:01):
combats and it's not paid to win, this probably should
be on your radar, and I guess we'll.

Speaker 1 (01:59:06):
Get in on my radar. Yeah, I do. I am
definitely interested in it. It's also because the other point
of interest, which is good for me besides the combat,
is that they are making this game with the plan
of having smaller teams fighting bosses. So in a lot
of MMOs, you know, how good can a boss fight
truly be when you have like forty people fighting. So

(01:59:29):
their focus is on making a smaller team so that
everyone can experience like a really good bossing involved and
be involved. Yeah. So it's taken interesting.

Speaker 3 (01:59:39):
Too, right, because it's like that's kind of the destiny
formula too, Like you feel like you're part of an
open world, but when you go and do an activity,
there's three of you.

Speaker 4 (01:59:47):
Well there's Max. You know there's six of you if
you're doing a ride, do you know, So it feels
like that where there'll be a dungeon that you'll go
into your own instance, that's going to help with your latency.

Speaker 3 (01:59:56):
And especially if you're doing like action, you want combat
and powery and dodgers and stuff to be pretty up there.
So there's no Aussie service, So I'll see how it
feels as someone probably playing on a different server and
what people are like.

Speaker 4 (02:00:12):
And yeah, I'm suppressing the hype for it at the moment.

Speaker 1 (02:00:19):
Yes, we'll see. I also want to try it. We'll
see if I can get in. I applied a long
time ago.

Speaker 4 (02:00:25):
Do you have lurk its that that I do.

Speaker 3 (02:00:30):
I've got a coach for that today. Just have a
you probably automatically. I've requested another one, so if I
get another one, I'll send it to you.

Speaker 1 (02:00:38):
But oh yeah, let me know.

Speaker 4 (02:00:41):
Yeah you might get access to.

Speaker 1 (02:00:43):
It to that all right, everybody, Thank you so much
for joining us for episode I believe it was four
thousand and ninety two. That was yep. Thanks for always
listening to us, for watching and liking on all of
the podcast platforms. They for liking the YouTube video and
for joining us live in twitch chat, and we will

(02:01:03):
see you next week.

Speaker 4 (02:01:05):
Goodbye, bye, bye bye they

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DCP+SideQuest Ep. 429 - Marathon Delayed - Nextfest Demos & Indies - DK Bananza

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}DCP+SideQuest Ep. 429 - Marathon Delayed - Nextfest Demos & Indies - DK Bananza