Hello, and welcome to side Quest. This is our weekly video game show
here at Geek. First, I'm your host Dilmas, and I have with
me once again the clown Prince of Rune's Travis Snell. How are you doing,
my friend good? I think this is maybe a record. I don't
know. I can't remember if it's been at least five or six episodes in
a row have been on the street christ here. Yeah, so it ends
next week, but I am excited to hear some thoughts and talk about just
uh, it's what we've been playing and some stuff we've been doing everything.
So I've been jumped. I've not played what you're talking about today, but
I've been jumping my toes back in. So it's a it's been quite the
experience, Yeah, jumping the toes. How was your camping trip? By
the way, how's your weekend? It was good? Yeah, I went
with the families. That was tons of fun. I haven't been able to
squeeze like a camping trip that's like more than two days or I don't know
if it's gonna happen this year. So it is nice. But it's always
like once you're exceedled and say oh, well we're packing up again, but
it's still good going. So it's uh. And this was like the water
was warm enough to kind of go in. So no, it was a
good weekend with the and I haven't gone camping with my my side of the
family in like a couple of years, so it was a good good time.
Weather wasn't too hot, not too cold, just right. Had some
schmos, you know, had some banana boats. You ever had a banana
boat? Is that like just banana with the chocolate in the middle marshmallow?
Yeah, so I don't know if I did the marshmallow at Oh okay,
you shop. What you do is you get tinfoil, put the banana tinfoil,
cut the banana in half, you put the chocolate in the marshmallow.
You wrap it up nice and tight because like I guess you don't like marshmallow.
But yeah, that chocolate when it's like nice and burnt, not burnt,
but you know, like the nice and cooked. But yeah, try
it. Try a banana boat everyone. If you haven't, it's good stuff.
Obviously you don't like banana, then I'd say skip that one. But
well I do love a good banana. There you go, perfect. I
had a very busy weekend to most relevantly here is that there was in Vancouver
here the Vancouver Retro Gaming Correction. So I went to that, which was
really cool. There was a ton of people selling selling games. There was
like musical performances, there was setups. So played MELEEGGA and some some some
random people. Which is always time on like the laggiest TV of all time,
you know, I used to play it on my CRT. But yeah,
I went. I went on a bit of a shopping spree. I
I got Mario Galaxy two, which I've never played. Really, why have
you avoided that all these years? I don't even like I think back in
the day, I might have rented Mario Galaxy, even though I was a
big Wei kid. For some reason, the Mario Galaxy games I wasn't really
playing for whatever reason. So I played Galaxy for the full time or for
the like full game when the three D All Stars thing came on the switch,
I mean MUDs played through that whole thing and that was super fun.
And then I've been trying to get Galaxy too and actually found it like for
a pretty good price because normally games like that are like eighty dow one hundred
bucks, like you know, the old UI copies, so that was pretty
good. And then you know, in the Nindendo direct there was that Donkey
Kong remake for Switch. I found that, like the three DS port for
that for like twenty bucks, so I just bought that instead of you know,
waiting and spending eighty bucks on the Switch version. I got a physical
copy of Spelunky, which was like a limited edition thing, so that's pretty
nice to have on the shelf. And then just a couple of random like
ten dollars pickups as well, so I went, I went ham picked up
some things. I haven't played any of them yet, but I'm sure in
the next few months i'll report back on how those went on there here on
side Quest. But yeah, today's episode, we're gonna be talking about elden
Ring, Shadow of the Urch of the first DLC and maybe the only one
is out now. It's gonna be more of an impressions because of course this
DLC is freaking huge and I'm only one man. Over the course of a
couple of days, so put a few hours in, We're gonna talk about
twenty fifteen's Mad Max Hot Off Hot Off furiosa, even though it's been a
couple months now, but you know, we're gonna talk about that one month
only one month. One month, it feels like so long ago now,
I know we're so far down the road. And then I also played through
some of the Allen Wake two DLC, so I'll talk about that as well,
and then maybe one bonus came. We'll see if we get to it.
Yeah, but that's what we got on the docket for today. Let's
just get right into it. I want to start with Elden Ring. I
know you were business. We can haven't had a chance to jump in well,
and you gotta. As we learned the days leading up, you have
to beat a certain boss which I had not beaten. Yeah, which,
like how soon in Advanced did they announce that? Was it truly just like
a few days? Because if so, that is truly brutal. That's not
just like a boss that most people will have passively done, like one of
the hardest bosses in the game, who's in a very hidden area. So
that's it's crazy that they did that. I feel like it was just the
day, like I had heard nothing up until the point that I had messaged
you and then I saw lots of trending stuff and articles like how you beat
this poss and et cetera. So I'm not sure. Maybe it was something
they were never going to announce, and maybe it was like when playthroughs came
out people said, oh, well, to do this you got access,
because it wasn't. I don't think they've ever had them be like, oh,
and to enjoy this DLC, you need to do X, Y and
Z. It just felt like the player base and like the gaming community found
out about it, and that which is it's like, it's interesting because not
that they have any issues because I'm imagine it's gonna sell. Well, it
is strange to make it that you just have to beat them. I'm not
mad about because my plan is okay. As I've said before, I've officially
now signed up the backlog, so now I'm starting making my game plan list,
and my plan is pretty much just to play ellen Ring at least until
Outlaws is out. So I don't know what I'll do even I'll get to
DLC then, but that's my plan just to like, okay, play it
to them, but it is odd to do. It'd be different if it's
like the first boss, right, like you gotta beat what was the Goldrick
or what was his first song? Yeah, Marget market Mark. Okay,
that one was a different boss. Okay, so that one I think I've
beat so but but Margaret, it's like, okay, you gotta beat that,
and that would make sense. It's like, okay, it's like the
first area. It's like lime Grave, right or whatever. So it's like,
okay to get the DLC or am I wrong on that isn't live.
I'm just loving pronunciation. Lime Grave just sounds so close to LimeWire for me.
That's called LimeWire, the map, like the line wire low No.
To me, it's like dad and Star Wars names. You listen to any
Star Wars review and butcher all those names. But like that, i'd understand
because okay, that's the first area. You kind of have to complete that.
Then the DLC. Luckily, they sold very well, reviewed very well,
so I don't think it's any issue. But it was. I found
it odd and that's where it kept me from like okay, because I'd never
fully completed and I'd never gotten to this one. So I'm just gonna be
xp farming and doing some stuff I had read like, oh, the fastest
way to get your XP and ruins up is just going to those side caves.
But it's like, yeah, it's a little side caves suck, you
know. It's like, but yeah, so I think it was the game
community have figured it out or somehow found out about this cap for the DLC.
So yeah, because you think it's like, that's so far after release
that it's not necessarily like a I guess it could still be a spoiler for
some people because like you, for example, spend a lot of time into
the game, but it's like a hard game. It takes a lot of
time to get Oh yeah, so you might have the game in the time
that you've played, you still just haven't, by chance, happened upon that
guy. So yeah, it's weird. They should have if they hadn't,
they should have announced it well in advance, because because I would have,
I would have prepped more because all I want to do is like, well,
I'm just gonna get in there, fine tune, get back on the
bike, and then I'll get this DLC. But then I was like,
okay, I still got to do that, but again some extra motivation.
But yeah, I haven't even bumped into this boss yet. So that's the
thing where it was like, oh, I found him and then I'll come
back. It's like, no, I'll I still got to go that way.
From what I remember, his area like leading up to the boss itself
isn't that huge of an area, so it shouldn't take you that long.
And if you just like run past enemies and go for his uh yeah for
the touch the grace and all that, and just skip like through the areas
there, you should build it pretty quick. Yeah, but I just got
to make from HP is good because I put a lot into my U strength,
but I realized I need a bit more HP for some of these later
bosses. They can they can take you down, you know. So mm
hmm. Yeah, So I want to talk around around this game a little
bit and then get into the specifics of the deal I see here. But
yeah, like for anyone who you know wasn't listening or missed those episodes or
just forget because it's been a couple of years now, we did two fully
dedicated Elden Ring episodes, one which is more of like an impressions cast,
and then there was a full on spoiler discussion and then kind of in between
there. It came up just in the games we've been playing section. So
if you want to find all that stuff, the best place, I guess
would be the side quest specific feed because all the geek versus main field might
get kicked out by now YouTube playlist or Patreon doesn't have a limit of stuff,
right like all the old you can just search on Patrio. I found
Patreon two. If you want to get the ad free version. That's how
the X Men retros went back in the feed. I just searched them on
Patreon. They're all still They're all still there, so it worked out great,
So good to go. So yeah, three h three dedicate or I
guess two and a half I'll say dedicated Elder Ring episodes. A lot of
discussion around that, and then of course end of the year Game of the
Year stuff talked about it a bunch more. And yeah, I really loved
the base game. I definitely have a rocky road when it comes to from
software stuff like Dark Soul's three is one of my favorites, and I love
that game. But that's more it's partly about the game itself, but then
also very much part like a time and place and when I was playing it
and playing it with friends and kind of had this whole community around it.
And then the other games, like I've you know, put like ten hours
into secu Row and then kind of fell off. I've played like a few
hours of blood Born Free hours of Dark Souls two and never really got into
it. And the Dark Soul's one is the one I've spent a lot of
time with as well. I've put like forty hours into it. But then
fucking Crystal Caves, which is just the worst designed area of like maybe any
game ever. I absolutely hate that area, and that's where I ended up
quitting. So the only ones I've beat Dark Souls three and Elden Rings.
So I've definitely dabbled a lot in these games, but never I'm not really
a master at any of them. And Elden Ring, yeah, I put
like I think it was seventy eighty hours by the time it took me to
beat the final boss. And then like the main bosses, I didn't do
one hundred percent every dungeon and all that, but I've done all the kind
of main big story things and maybe not all the quests because the quests make
no sense in this game either, Oh yeah, but yeah, I definitely
spent a lot of time with it, but yeah, I haven't pl like,
you know, I finished all that stuff like maybe three or four months
after after the game came out. Haven't really revisited it at all. And
I've I've talked about this before on Side Quest how I'm very much I'm very
hit and miss when it comes to DLC for games like this. You know,
if it's like a live service game or an online focused game, DLC
makes sense pretty straightforward there. Then I feel like with other DLC for games
like this, like I always think of Horizon Zero Dona how that DLC came
out and it was like, oh, here's some really challenging extra content.
But it came up along, you know, long enough after the release that
I'm like, man, I'm bad at this game again, and like jumping
into harder content is not what I need right now, and so I ended
up bouncing off it or just even for games like Resident Evil Village, which
I loved, I just like, I don't really need this DLC. I
kind of got my experience there, and honestly, when it came to elden
Ring, I was kind of like I wanted to get into it just because
you know it's gonna be one of the most anticipated things of the year,
but my hype level was kind of lower on it because I feel like,
yeah, I kind of went through my Elden Ring journey and so I think
jumping into this it takes It's taken me a bit to kind of get back
into the flow of things. And because obviously, like from software, games
are such a polarizing experience with high highs and low lows. Yeah, and
I think just trying to get back into the cycle of it, back into
Elden Rang one, it doesn't take that long to remember the buttons and all
that, because like my build is simple. I'm a slow dude. I
spam roll and I use one big axe and to like the heavy roll and
everything. No, no, I definitely keep my weight done enough so I
get a quick roll. But like, I don't block at all. I've
never parried in this game once. I don't even really ever use the lock
on. Like I'm a very specific I love using Torrent. If I can
do any battle on the horse, I usually will, So I feel like
I'm a pretty simple play style, so it actually helped me kind of get
back into the groove of it, and I think, you know, the
first couple hours, like I went through one area was pretty simple but pretty
small, and then I started going through this other kind of castle area and
got to a boss which I think is one of the main like stories in
the DLC now or is this in the origin of the DC now? Yeah,
getting into the DLC, like it got to this one boss after getting
through this tougher area, and you know, this boss had like a cut
scene, which you know just means he's like more of a story focused one
and absolutely destroying me, kicking my ass, just like destroying me relentlessly.
I died like probably ten fifteen times, and I was getting pretty frustrated.
I'm like, man, I've seen all this discord, Like is this DLC
too hard? I'm like, yeah, this this deal is way too hard
for me. I hate this. But then it's like, oh, yeah,
I gotta remember, like this is Elden Ring and this is not a
Dark Soul's game. I can just go anywhere else and go do a million
other things instead of bashing my head against the wall. And so that's what
I did. I disappeared, went to go check out some other areas,
left that boss behind put a marker on my map, so I don't forget
about him. Uh, And then because of that, I've been kind of
enjoying the experience a lot more. I found. I'm like maybe five or
six hours in. I've just defeated five or six bosses in that amount of
time, had some some good fights, nothing too tricky after that one that
I kind of skipped out on. A couple couple harder ones, more just
like a big enemy health bar. But yeah, so far it's just like
more Elden Ring. It's more of the same, And since this game is
so good and interesting, that's really all you need, at least so far.
Like, I don't know what other kind of new interesting mechanics there is
or areas that are particularly interesting. So far, it's been more like part
of the course in terms of aesthetics and enemy types. But yeah, like
once again, that's kind of all I really need for this kind of thing.
So yeah, it's been it's been fun getting back in there, and
I think they do a couple of really smart things. One is like the
level up system in this of course it's eld drinks. It's confusing, the
item descriptions suck and don't make sense, but you know, do a little
googling. There's these these it's called like the Skadrew Tree Blessing or something like
that, and that's kind of like the way that they scale the difficulty.
They kind of it sounds like what they do is like putting you in this
DLC everyone, no matter if your level twenty. I don't know if you
can get to beat mog By level twenty, but let's say you could.
Let's say your level twenty or you're on New Game Plus twelve and your level
seven thousand, whatever. It is like you go into the DLC and you're
gonna be about the same power level as each other. And then the way
it like scales up is yeah, once again you are just like leveling up
your character more and getting you know, more maximum health and damage. But
then as you're getting these blessings, that's scaling your damage reduction that damage you
do. And then there's different ones for leveling up your horse again to get
him up to up to par. And so that's what they kind of have
done here to make the balance work. And like it's insane, like if
you compare getting one of those blessings to leveling up once in this game is
nowhere close. Like leveling up is such an incremental thing on my character is
like a level one hundred and forty or something in this game. And when
I get a level up, it's it's good, it's noticeable, but it's
like a very minute amount, whereas these like I was fighting one boss and
each my hits was doing like four hundred damage. I picked up I love
the one of these blessings, and then I was doing six hundred damage,
like a fifty percent increase. Like that's pretty drastic for like one upgrade level
in this And obviously it's you know, a smaller DLC, smaller to the
you know, base game, but I'm sure it's still huge based on experience,
like even what I've experienced so far. So yeah, like the balance
of it seems pretty well tuned in that way, and once again just incentivizing
expiration if you're gonna get like it seems like no matter what, some of
these early bosses are gonna kick your ass. But just you gotta go explore,
you gotta go find more of these blessings, and some of them are
hidden in pretty crazy spots and I'm sure there's a ton of them out there,
so yeah, definitely. That's my biggest recommendation is if this is very
hard, if you ever wanted trouble with this DLC, just keep exploring,
get more of those blessings because they do a really significant percentage to your like
damage and stuff like that. And so I'm sure when I've leveled up a
bit more and I go back to that first boss that was really stumping me,
I'm sure it'll be a bit better. But man, his hip boxes.
I could not read what he was doing. He's just spinning. It's
like a tornado. It's flying at me. So it was really hard to
keep track of what was going on. Yeah, I was gonna ask,
so is it pretty much to the DLC like when you start off, when
you're going it sounds like it's very much like just the base game where they
give you an area a map and you can explore it all. I was
wondering if it was more streamlined, like is it the same way where you're
kind of in an area to start and you have to get past something and
unlock it, or is it, hey, this map that you have you
can just go anywhere from the start. It seems like it seems like from
the very very beginning area there's kind of like three branching paths. You can
take up this castle area. You can go across this bridge, or you
can go I don't know, down this hill to this other side, and
like that one way I went, it was a pretty short area, unless
I probably missed some cave somewhere, but I think the idea of that area,
you're supposed to go down there, and then like from there you get
a crazy view and you can see often in the horizon and look at it
like some areas that you can't get to yet, but you're gonna. It's
almost like foreshadow of what's good to come. So I would say it's maybe
it feels maybe slightly more linear than like limb Grave for example. Yeah,
but even then, man, like the way the amount of forks in the
road that this takes, there's so many places so far around. I'm just
like, okay, I'm gonna drop a marker because I need to remember that.
Like I took a fork here and then that fork ended up taking me
six hours. You know, I'm not six hours in yet, but like
another I just walked for another half an hour before I found anything of interest,
and then there's another fork in the road. So it's a lot of
that, and I'm sure they'll kind of loop back into each other in some
way. But once again, that Eldon Ring thing, just looking out deep
in the horizon and seeing some castle like a million miles away and just knowing
someday I'm gonna get there. Yeah, there's definitely a lot of that in
different different regions. And you know, I think one of my favorite and
highest highs in the base game of Golden Ring is just going deep into those
caves like Ceo for River and what is it called ants Antsrialla River whatever,
Like just those areas and how they just go down and down and down and
down forever and then you're just in this whole other world. And then those
areas are just massive, as massive as limb grave as. It feels like
that's very much maybe not quite to that scale yet, but similar things are
happening where I'm just like, oh, this look is a funny little cave,
and then I go down and down and down. Then I pop out
of these waterfalls end up in this whole different area and then I'm like,
oh, I'm back at that place that I saw from that cliff, you
know, yeah, when I very much started. So it's a lot of
those moments and that satisfaction is coming in there. And it seems like the
similar kind of scale, and you know UDN Ring has that map and every
time you get a new map piece, it like three scales the overall map.
And like I've already had a couple of those moments where it's like,
oh wow, this map is bigger than I thought it was. And obviously
the basic had a ton of that, so I'm sure that that's gonna happen
again here. And is it something that kind of like there's that in the
menu when you pause you go out, there's like that round table thing where
you can go to it's like a separate area, and you yeah, with
this, is it something that's connected to the map that you can go at
any point or is it something you actually have to go in access to get
to this world in the DLC. It's funny, I totally forgot about that
round table area. I'm like, I guess I should go back there.
Sometimes I go there to from my like whatever the smitherin or whatnot, Like
that's yeah, right, yeah, keep kind of guys. Yeah, there
is other places, but it's just to go to if Okay, I gotta
get this weapon, it's safe there, I'm gonna go there. So yeah,
I so far, it's like it's a separate map and I like it.
Yeah, I don't think it connects in any way like you have to.
You have a loading screen that takes you there, and then I haven't
actually tried to leave yet, so I'm not sure how. I'm sure you
can go back to the main map at any point, but when I go
to my map screen, it's just like the DLC map, So I'm sure
there's there's probably just like hit why to toggle to the other map, but
I haven't felt the need to do that yet. And you know, funny
you mentioned that the smith and that round tailor are the one thing that I
think is cool too, Like a couple areas very early on in this DLC
you go through and like there's just a ton of the smithing stones to collect,
which I think is smart because I got to a point where like,
man, I'm I gotta really use every last one, even if it's like
the tier one. I gotta make sure I'm saving these for the right things.
And I feel like, because there's so many new items and weapons that
you're gonna be finding this DLC, I think they tried to have a couple
of areas where you can almost just farm these infinitively nice and so it's one
of those things that like, even if you're doing a regular play through the
game now, and let's say you're on nougame Plus, it might be good
to like rush down mog get to the DLC area, get to that area,
and then you can just like start farming smithing stones that you need if
you want to keep upgrading stuff. So it seems like there's a couple like
almost quality of life areas where like that area was very easy. There wasn't
even a boss there, but it's really just a place to kind of farm
smithing stones, which is which is really nice because I don't know, maybe
there's places like that in the base game, but I never really like,
I know, I went through a couple of mines, but I didn't know
if they were infinitive sources of those or just kind of you know, you're
gonna get twenty smithing stones here or something like that. Okay, that's good,
No, Yeah, and yeah, I guess uh, I don't really
feel the need to spoil anything yet, especially because you're you know, haven't
got to this stuff yet and I'm not super deep, super deep into what
we will do a more spoilery discussion when you're further into a two knows that
could take a while, but we'll do it eventually. But yeah, I
I I. One thing I've seen a ton of discourse on this online is
just people saying that the DLC is too hard and obviously set. I have
not beaten yet, so I have no idea, but I I do feel
like this understanding how powerful those blessings are and how much they affect your stats.
It's insane how much they affect your stats. So I feel like if
my inclination would be to say that, no, I doubt this DLC is
gonna be a whole lot harder, but you just have to like up,
like upgrade your character again. It doesn't matter if you're on New Game plus
seven, like you're gonna have to go through this new level up process.
Sorry if you feel like you wanted to grind hard to be ready for urg
Tree, but it seems like they wanted to kind of balance the scales,
which I think is the right thing to do for a game that's been out
for this long, and you're gonna have people, you know, at all
sorts of levels of difficulty and skills. So I don't know, maybe maybe
I'll come across a couple of bosses that are super difficult, but I'm curious
that anyone as difficult as Millennia because that boss fight was absolutely stupid difficult in
the main game. So we'll see if that happens. And for me,
I also wonder too if it's a conscious choice, because, like you said,
those blessings, so maybe people can go around and focus on that.
But it's also I can't remember what is Is there a time stamp for how
long this is? Roughly? Obviously there is, I'm not sure if you
know, but it's not as long as the main game, right, So
my idea is just kind of like they can kind of make it harder in
a way because they it's less time, but that almost makes it more time
because if you were just I feel like if they were to make it just
stream roll through all the bosses in the areas, you'd have the opposite effect.
Well, now that'd be too easy, but people be like, oh,
they made a big deal because this was like a it's like a big
dalc you pay for it separately. It's almost treated as like a mini second
game, right, So to me, then make it hard kind of makes
sense as far as hey, there's less game, but it might take you
a little longer to get through certain areas, where like if I'd say this
game was twenty hours, maybe the first twenty hours of alban Ring, you
can go a lot further and do a lot more, but because the difficulties
a little harder there, I think that's something that they can kind of make
you feel like you're getting more bang for even if it's frustering, which I
do understand, because I feel like there's a point where if you just feel
like you can't progress anymore and you just don't want to go back and go
through another cave or go just go XP farm, because sometimes it's like,
Okay, this is a little monotonous, especially in that because I won in
the main game at least right now where I am still like okay, if
this is too hard or not, like in this area, I still have
a lot kind of in the right corner of the map that I haven't explored
where I feel like in the DLC that will be something where I peell explore
a lot and they're just stuck on a boss. Then they might feel a
little repetitive. So I could see that aspect of I just can't beat this
guy, and I really don't just want to do you know this over No,
I don't just want to kill enemies. I don't want to go back
to the new game plus and update my character. So I do get a
portion of that. But that is the novelty of these games, right with
the no difficulty and stuff. So yeah, no, that's a good point,
you know which, at the DLC, like, no matter what,
it is smaller, there's less scale, there's less bosses, there's less of
all of that in terms of that element of it of like, yeah,
this is way too hard, I'm gonna go do something else. I wonder
if you'll bump in the wall where it's like, okay, well, now
there's really like the only two ways to progress would be to kill either of
these two bosses, and like they're both really hard. So I don't know.
I guess there's probably still more exploration you could do at that point,
but I don't know from like from software they said that this deal sees comparable
to the size of limb Grave, But then I saw people saying that almost
like immediately like, yeah, that's a lie. It's way bigger than That's
what I heard too. Yeah that's what I think. Yeah, Like,
I think time is so hard because even on our like when I did discussion
on this game on the base game with Cooper and Dante, they're like,
you know, masters of these played all these games multiple times, so they're
way better at these games than me. But it took them longer to like
beat the main boss because they did so much more exploration and stuff that I
didn't even know existed, and they went through like every cave mayde sure they
checked like every corner of the map, whereas I was kind of less thorough
in that way. So I think it's just there's gonna be so much very
variance on like the mileage of how long it'll take each of the into a
person. But yeah, if that's the size of it, uh, then
I don't know. I imagine I'll get another twenty hours out of it.
For myself. I mean, I'm already five six hours in and I feel
like I've barely scratched the surface. Like I said, I don't think I've
killed any of the quote unquote essential bosses at this point. I've mostly just
killed bosses that are like roaming around in the open world and then a couple
of those kind of legacy dungeon little cave entrance things too. So yeah,
I'm I'm I'm excited to play more of it. It's it's been fun to
get back into it. Man, I missed my character of Bill Jewele,
who just looks like he looks like a final boss at this point, with
like the armor I have, with like how weathered he is, the huge
acts that I use, and the different big weapons that I've used. I
haven't unfortunately found like a new exciting weapon yet because I was gonna ask you
about that. There's been a couple like one I found is like an anvil
on a stick, and I'm like, I want to use that. It's
like totally in my wheelhouse, a big, heavy, blunt object, but
it requires me to have a pretty high intstat I think intelligence, which like
my character is not. He's big, dumb and strong and that's about it.
So I don't have any of the faith or intelligence stats, so unfortunately
I can't really effectively use that. Which That's one thing I guess slightly bothers
me about some of these weapon types in these games is how ineffective they are
if you don't have like the perfect stats. I guess, especially if it's
a big anvil, like come on, I'm this big strong guy, let
me swing this thing around. But especially when it's like if it's a stat
that's like a massive jump up, I wish there was maybe, which I
get it though, because that's where you could play a new character. But
I just feel like if something to scale in a way where okay, maybe
it's just one or two sets or something, it's like, oh, you
gotta have this and you gotta be Oh yeah, I've never been at a
point where I'm like two into way. It's like I always like fifteen into
all. I'm not going to invest all these runes to get to that point.
But I guess, yeah, I guess if there's infinitive new game pluses
and like there's no level cap, I don't think that eventually you could have
high enough stats to I guess be proficient with all the weapons. But yeah,
that's not that's not the kind of experience I'm personally looking for. Yeah,
I think maybe that's a good place to leave it for eldering. I
don't know if there's much else to say for now, but yeah, it's
been a really good time so far, and I'm excited to jump into it
some more. Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back. Okay,
we are back. We're talking about an older game, twenty fifteen Mad
Max. Yeah, so this is this is a game that is made by
Avalanche, the Just Just Cause team, which is interesting. And I know
that you're a fan of at least one or two of those games, at
least three, at least three of those games. Okay, no, No,
I meant like the third number three, that's the only one I've played,
but I'm they I was an fan and on coming out around this game.
I feel like, in terms of release dates, pretty within the FIRS.
I think four was twenty nineteen or something like that. So yeah,
I could I'm making up numbers. It's tough because I feel like it's tough
because when I played it was a PlayStation Plus game, so I think I
played it after Mad Max, but it could have very well came out around
the time or before, oh, twenty fifteen? Did it come out the
same year as about two games? Look at that? Impressive? Look at
that? That is pretty crazy. It's very very impressive. So well,
this Bad Max game, so obviously you've been a Bad Max fan for a
long time. Did you play this when it came out? Yeah, I
did. I think it's pretty close because you said twenty fifteen, right,
So I think they think this was like one of those where we're like in
the dying era of they were close enough to when the movie was out,
So was that hype. I remember when they announced it and I didn't know
really studio, and that's when I was not like where we are now where
I have a good idea of studios and whatnot. They announced me like,
okay, that's cool. But the thing is for me, I was never
a big car guy, so it wasn't really on the radar. But when
Mad Max came, I was, okay, I'm gonna scratch it. So
I think if I didn't get the because I purchased the game like full price,
if I didn't get like the day of, it was within the release
window or a couple of weeks. So yeah, it was early on when
I got it, so nice and uh yeah, I know this is like
one of those games that you loved back in the day and you've always talked
about it, and then I've heard like one or two people talk about it
since it's it's so falling far under the radar. But I obviously hadn't played
it until just the last couple of weeks. I've been playing it for the
first time because it was deeply on sale on Xbox. I was like three
dollars or something like that. But yeah, what what do you think of
this game, especially like, I don't know, coming back to it after
a few years and you haven't played it, How is it hitting in twenty
twenty four for you now that you've played like a million other open world games
since then. Yeah. Well, one thing that was cool that during the
Furiosa movie there was like I think a little uptick in people wanting to play
it or people talk about like, hey, you should really do that.
Learned that the developer said that they had a bunch of DLC plan but I
got cut out from the leg so that was a bummer for me. So
because of bad sales for me, I think so yeah, because I don't
think it did that well. And like you said, you've probably heard a
couple of people talk about it, but I feel like it is a really
underrage gym, and I hadn't played it for many years. I apparently I
messaged you, and I so bummed. I lost my save file. I
even went to my PS four didn't find it on there at all, so
I really don't know what happened to it. So I was looking forward to
getting my souped up via call all and I'd done the main story done,
a lot of side quests, had a lot of the territories down, so
I was kind of starting from scratch. So right away that was a bummer.
But now I've pretty much just done. I did the few main missions
you had to do, and then I did nothing but side missions or just
taken down the territory. And I still really enjoy it. And I guess
what I've said before, Whereds, I don't think it's like revolutionary, but
there's just something enjoyable about You'll be on the road and you see a car
or they ram you, and then it's like, okay, I want to
take this thing down, especially once you get that harpoon going and you can
get that like leveled up. So it's just like I think, it's just
kind of things that we talk about, like Midnight Suns and other games we
have in common. Were For me, it's a just the the cycle is
fun. And there's so many times where I will have a mission and I'm
going somewhere but they're like, oh, this thing has some viable loot and
it like it or just has like a cool skull, and You're like,
oh, I'd like that, and here you are half an hour later because
I love it. It's not the same extent of el really we're talking about,
but like, technically, almost everything in this game you can do at
any point. It's just the level, Like how much time do you want
to waste on this? Right? You can go take down a truck in
a ramada, but if they're like certain levels, it could take you a
while. And I especially because me, I'm playing the mindset I've done this
before, I've been here, so I'm taking on these enemies that I shouldn't
really be taking on right now. It's kind of a waste of time,
but I'm like, well, no, I've beaten this game before, so
I did that. But it just it takes a while, and there's certain
I think like boss battles. Of course not but that's why, like you
can kind of go not anywhere, but for the most part, just kind
of go out and like I said, I did the main story and then
I did probably three or four days of nothing but side quest and it wasn't
at any point like, oh, you're locked, you can't do this,
or there's things going on. I think there's certain parts of the map,
but for the most part they let you free roam quite a bit. Again,
when you get into an area you're not supposed to be and you're gonna
feel it, but if you play smart enough and you're not careless, you
can get past it. And yeah, there's just something about for me,
it's the the gameplay is like the fighting combat is fine. It's like a
lesser Arkham in my opinion, it has that sort of thing. It doesn't
I don't think it's as smooth as the Arkham games. You don't have as
much gadgets as like a Spiderman and Batman, so that makes it a little
less fun. Animations are fantastic though, yeah, and the sound does have
a really good feel, even though it is quite simple. And I mean
there is upgrade trees all over the place for like, oh yeah, hand
to hand combat and whatnot, so I'm sure it'll get a bit better,
but I actually like it for what it is. If I don't, sometimes
it can be a bit tedious. But once again, maybe I just need
to get my power up so I can take people out quicker. Yeah,
you got a light attack, you gotta heavy attack, you gotta fury,
you gotta finish her. And then you can pick up melee weapons, which
actually are kind of fun when you get those, and I like that they
make them do a lot of damage. So that stuff's all fine and dandy.
But for me, it is it's the car combat. It's the there's
nothing better than you time a jump and like you hit your boos at the
same time and you hit a car and you just see vehicles fly everywhere in
parts and like I said, or if you can just time where you can
get a door off and then harpoon a driver and just pull them out.
Like that's what I like. Where at first it looks like it could just
be especially when it's a bunch of vehicles. That's when to me it's almost
like there's a chess match too, because yeah, you could just go ram
though, but no, it is a thing of Okay, this guy's door
I can take off, but this guy's door I can't. This guy can
ram, this guy can ram, but it's really not gonna do much damage.
If I could take out these drivers, then I'll be kind of two
versus one, or I could, you know, go for the blow of
try to like jump out the vehicle and go hand to hand. But sometimes
there's lots of guys and there's always gonna be one car that's like gonna keep
trying to run you over. So I love the scenarios, and for me,
it's especially as it goes along updating the car. And again, not
a car guy at all, but I feel like that I don't care so
much about the max skill tree. I actually am not a fan of many
of the options because it's just stuff like your water is better, your fuels
better, like it's very very basic upgrades. But the car stuff that for
me actually feels like it has some purpose to it, whether it's the look
or just like I said, the harpoon, I'm all about the harpoon.
So the second again, so satisfying when you can get a tire and you
go down a cliff and you rip it off, it's it's great stuff.
So I'm I'm still tons of fun with it and scratch the itch. I
put on Spotify and put on the MaDMaX and Feroes of soundtracks. Yeah,
so just doing that. So yeah, it was really good. I don't
think I'm gonna go and beat the whole main campaign again unless I run out
stuff. I think right now, I'm kind of more focused on elm Ring.
But I returned it and had it was a point where I was playing
it and you have that time we go, oh, I should have went
to bed by now, you know, and that's the sign of Okay,
I still enjoy this game. Or even the first time in elm Ring,
there was a part of me like I don't know if I want to get
back into this because not because it's not fun, but it's just like that's
such a challenge and Mad Max is not that level of challenge. But then
same thing eventually, keep going, keep going to the elm Rings like okay,
now in three hours past bedtime, I'm back in the cycle. Okay,
I found it. But Mad Max I still was having a good time.
I think that's a fun representation of the world. I like the I
think the sound design is really cool. So yeah, I think it's like
a really just fun, underrated game that I wish did do better, just
so I get that DLC, but it's it's a game that I'm happy I
physically own because it's one of those like I don't know if you're ever gonna
be always able to buy it in the future because it is such like a
lower tier game. So this, this is what I'm happying. Any license
thing, you always absolutely some days something's gonna expire, whether it's a character
likeness or a song or something, and then it's going to just be taking
off the store without any notice. Usually too, which every day because it's
also my algorithm, but not every day else like every week if I long
on Twitter, there's somebody eire talking about the old Marvel games or the Lord
of the Rings games, where it's just like, man, I would love
to get these games back, but it's like you're just you're just stuck.
Anytime PlayStations like oh, we're bringing some PS two classics. I see that
air Gorne on the cover with Gandalf everyone's like, oh, I wish So
that's why I'm happy with this one. It's owned for me. So but
yeah, we love the Retro Gaming Convention because they just, yeah, copies
of those games abound. It's unfortunately it's something like Ultimate Alliance, like you
can't go buy that DLC anymore, but you know, copies of all those
Lord of the Rings conquests and did they not have any what was it a
Game of the Year editions because they sold a couple of those after the fact
for the first Marvel Alliance game. It's like a different cover. So but
the thing is, here's the thing with an X like, because a lot
of those games to the issue is like backwards compatibility is not eligible for them.
Okay, so even if you take Ultimate Alliance Game of the Year and
s like I still have a three sixty, but like, am I really
gonna plug in my three sixty? I guess I do it in a while,
But yeah, like I don't know if you could just plug it into
your Series X And obviously that would be a PS three game. So PS
five wouldn't have backwards compatibility on m M. I wonder if they still sell
them at one point because I bought them for the PS four. They sold
remasters of them on the PS four in that era of my P four is
still plugged in, so actually for that copy. Yeah, so I'm not
sure if it's there, but that's cool. That's cool that they had though.
That's awesome. Mm hmmm. Uh yeah. So, I, like
I said, hadn't played this game back in the day, and even though
yeah, I heard you say that it was good and fun, I still
don't trust me back then. So it's not that it's just that I don't
really know what to expect for the actually, like you know, of course
it's gonna be like car combat, but that's like as much as I would
expect from it, or yeah, going into it knowing there's gonna be something
like that. But yeah, I've been really pleasantly surprised with it. I
am having an amazing time. I think this is a fun freaking game on
like just a minute to minute gameplay part of it. You know. I
feel like the checklisty open world is almost like a derogatory term these days,
but I think this game like nails it in terms of like, yeah,
there's all sorts of things you can and can't do, but I think I
mean that same kind of a cycle as you, or I'm not really doing
any critical path stuff. I'm more just like what seems fun in this moment,
or maybe I want to go for a certain base upgrade so then I
can make more currency when I'm not even playing the game, and like just
go for a certain different like there's so many different options of what I can
do, or just like yeah, maybe I want to go get take down
a base and spend the time to like scout it out or talk to local
like other wastelanders who are like scouting out the area and get some intel from
them on like a secret entrance. Like that stuff is super fun. So
yeah, like I just I think the gameplay is really fun and obviously,
like when you have one of these checklist like icon Vomit games, like obviously
there's always something to do. Yeah, it's like that's exactly what I want
from it. Like I don't want to hunt down the main story of this.
I just want like if I'm gonna spend half an hour, I'm gonna
go do a couple of quests and then yeah, maybe that half an hour
will turn into an hour because of the kind of game it is. You
feel minute stuff is just like perfect, it's so well tuned. I find,
Yeah, well it's this garticular I feel it could be like, Oh,
they'll introduce like those posts like whatever they are where you you harpoon them
and pull them down. Yeah, and you just make one, then you
do a balloon and then you go down your balloon. There's like ten of
them around and that's where I think almost that that's what this game does.
But that's where in my head cand of like planet because Max is always his
traveler, so so it's a it almost feels like it fits that game not
to just always go Streamlinemen, because like he's just looking for oil and goods.
And there's some fun I forgot. There's like some stuff where you'll go
to an area to check it out and there's like, oh, it's actually
underground and you go there and there's like there's sort of seen any of that
really. Yes, Yeah, there's one in the middle of desert. It's
like a it looks like it's one of those crates like orange or brown ones
where you have to harpoon it and pull it. And there's one where I
found that it was like a ladder that led down it was like a watery,
gross area. So there's it. Like for me, it's actually it's
funny because I feel like it's an era of games we might not get anymore.
But it's a pretty large game for what I thought a Mad Max game
would be, because I would feel like you'd kind of get half of this,
But there's it's treated like it's a assassin's screen. You it sat like
a big gonna be a pig, like a cheap license game, and it
is truly ambitious. And I think once I saw because I didn't know this
game was made by Avalanche until I was, you know, loading in and
saw that opening nikon, that's when my expectations got a bit higher. Like,
Okay, I think I like, I haven't really played just cause a
whole lot, but just seeing that gets me pretty excited to see, like
I'm sure like the crazy physics and just oh yeah kind of gameplay that you
can expect. But I think the other thing that surprised me so much about
it is just like how many freaking systems there are in this game. Of
like upgrading your vehicle is one thing, and there there's you know, twenty
different ways you can upgrade your vehicle, and then there's different vehicles you can
bring into your garage and work off those, and then there's like the I
forget the archangels, right, yeah, like the special cars on top of
that, which I don't even understand really what they do yet, but I'll
figure that out at some point. And then yeah, for like Max,
there's like that toke that guy you can bring tokens to or something, and
then there's just like, yeah, the base upgrades you can do on your
character for like Melee columbup but then also just for your character's based stats,
and then you're capturing bases and there's all these upgrades you can get in the
bases. So there's just like all these different mechanics going on, and like
you know, they're pretty well interconnected, and it's a bit overwhelming if you
want to do it all. And a lot of it's just like you gotta
get scrapped, but then there's ways you can get like more efficient at getting
scraps, so it kind of all connects together. But it also means that
like, no matter what you're doing, you're fueling into some upgrade because it
all uses like the same currency. For the most part there is like other
you know, minor currencies, but yeah, just it's all really well tuned.
And I I love cars in games. I love driving games. I
think I like driving games more than I like racing games. Just when I
can screw around like GTA. I think that's my favorite party about GT is
just if I'm to boil down what I love about GT the most, it's
just driving and like the car mechanics feel so good in this game, with
the physics and as you mentioned, the harpoon like ripping doors off cars or
ripping people out of cars. Yeah, yeah, and then whenever you let
go and it like slingshots them like a hundred meters out. It almost feels
a bit too strong to do that. But then I know there's certain cars
that are like way more armored and it's really hard to actually hit someone with
the harpoon, So even in that way, it feels really well balanced.
But yeah, I'm just absolutely loving this game so far, and the destructibility
of those different towers, like taking down a sniper's nest or those like half
the time I will shoot my harpoon and bringing those towers down, but most
of the time, like how can I get the most speed, and yeah,
fly off a cliff as much as possible when you hit that triple boost
too, like he hit it back to back. That's great, And I
know it sounds dumb, but I think they did way more in the skame
than they had to. All they really had to do is the side missions
and really nail the car combat to me, because like, I know,
it's a goals bad maxikin, but like there's tons of games that they don't
a game where you don't get out of your car, and yeah, it
would have been totally acceptable for what it is. Yeah, or it's just
like you hit a car and they instantly explode, like that's not the main
purpose of the game. So that's where for me it was something where it
like other than I'm trying to think, like you said, like GTA has
like cars can ram into each other, but there's not car combat. And
even when I think of like Twisted Metal, that's a very different thing because
a lot of times you're switching to guns and you're shooting, and you're shooting
bombs, like that's almost closer to like what a Mario car would be.
So like this way, it's like I don't think there's too many games that
there, at least ones I've played that are very focused on car combat and
car fights where it's like you can ram, you can shoot, you can
do the harpoon. There's other ways like the side ram and everything. So
I feel like that way, it's very unique in a sense. It feels
like it just didn't catch on the same way like Lord of the Rings when
they had the enemy system, I was like, oh, oh, I
love that. Like I feel like if more people found this and fell in
love with this combat, it could have had a chance. But I don't
think people ever really did. But it's something that I don't think we'll see
in a game anytime soon as well, either, because I just don't think
a game that would be like, oh, we got to make sure this
car combat's really yeah, you know. I feel like oftentimes in open world
games like this, cars are pretty disposable, like I was talking about Watchdogs
recently and in that like, I don't think you can really upgrade or change
cars anyway, and you can get a couple extra skills for them, but
for most parts, like you may just grab a car off the street and
use that for a bit. But like GTA, obviously, you can customize
your cars pretty significantly. I think like Crackdown did a really good job of
that, where like driving is one of the five stats in that game,
and then there's this certain like agent vehicles, and like if you're driving stat
is like you know, high enough the cars like transform like transformer styles into
like upgraded versions in real time, then you get like way more control with
them. So I don't know, I think in open world games, when
there's like customization to the vehicles and like meaningful customization, that's when it gets
pretty pretty good. How I wanted to ask you about that, like,
because so far I feel like car combat it's like pretty simple. You know,
I'm ramming into people. I have like the ability to like chisel into
them. I guess, I don't know what you call that when you hit
them on the side and just keep kind of keep bustling into them. Oh
yeah, the harpoon. I of course have the sniper, but you're never
really gonna use the sniper like mid fight. And so obviously I'm seeing in
the skill trees and whet of like there's other things. But do you remember
much of how it kind of evolves or the layers that you found the most
interesting when you get later into the I guess for me because that's where I'm
streamlining. I feel like the Harpoon because I've put so much work into it
now again because that's what I do like, where it's like you just gotta
take down the territory and have the money, especially when you hit like Harpoon
level. I think I'm on four or five. It costs a lot of
money to the point where you should be doing the main mission to get it,
but I'm not wanting to do that. I feel like that's the unfortunate
part where the vehicles just get tougher, and maybe it's something where you might
need to pull up more or you might need to ramp more, but I
don't think there's anything too much more than that. It just feels like it
gets more action pack and fast paced with these vehicles are gonna be a lot
harder and it's not I feel like near the end of the game, when
you start mainlining it, there's not many vehicles like there are when you're out
on the wasteland, but when you're doing the main stuff, there's not too
many that you're just gonna be able to get a good, nice ram and
just explode it right away. It's like it's stuff that you're gonna do some
damage. But that's what I really think is they just kind of increase the
difficulty of the cars or the amount of cars, but only there's too much
more Like obviously you got the shotgun as well too, we didn't talk about,
which that is always fun when you get a vehicle that has that the
fire like a fire gasoline and then that takes them. Yeah, so that's
always nice. So because I don't really use the shotgun when I'm fighting,
I don't you have a little AMMO for it at least yes, early levels
of the game, like maybe you're gonna have two shots in it. Yeah,
it was pretty quick, which I feel like the first play through I
did this, I'm doing it again. I'll many times accidentally shoot the shotgun.
I don't know why. It just slips sometimes. But yeah, so
but that's where the shotgun for me, that's a game changer. With the
vehicles, so I think they just get harder, maybe some more, but
not not anything massive. I think it's just expanding upon the things you have
already, right, is there like trucks or bigger vehicles like to fight or
to drive either. I guess I think, yeah, you do get bigger
vehicles, especially like I think there's a couple of boss battles where there's some
that are more souped up. I think with the driving, I don't think
it's any more than like a regular truck, and you can kind of suit
that up, but I think they kind of keep to the more faster,
speedy I feel like that would have been a DLC type things. Possibly,
Yeah, And how about the you have a dog in this game that you
kind of you find him and then you lose them and I'm like, I'm
and then you get him again, and I'm pretty sure he's on the box
art, Like does he do you get an upgrade where you can put him
in any car or is it just in chum Buckets car that you can bring
him around with? If there is an update. I never got that.
There's been so long that I don't remember that because I remember him not being
a big vital part of the because I know he helps you with like minefields
and like in theory he was once for me, but like I could not
understand what he was telling me, so I just drove into a landmine in
the car blew up. So I don't know, but I thought it'd be
interesting if that was like added to I guess it would be more like groundhand
to hand combat. Root he would, Yeah, it would be like a
special attack, like an al your spirits and you can send the dog.
But yeah, I feel like that was me probably something that hit the budget
of like, oh, like to do this, but we can't. So
what are some minor things we do? Oh, the mine phillies in the
car. But I don't think there's anything I can think of where it's like,
oh, yeah, he can do attack off the ground from the vehicle.
Nothing that I would recall, gotcha. Yeah, I'm really enjoying the
I mean, any one of these open world games. I feel like the
highlight open world thing is usually going to an enemy outpost and taking those down.
Like in Ghost of Sushimi that was like, you know, one of
the highlights for sure, and I really like it in this game, as
I mentioned, kind of scouting it out, finding information. They give you
the binocular, so you're supposed to go down a hill somewhere and then usually
there's someone yeah, giving you info. But I like that idea of like
kind of going around perimeter using your sniper, maybe taking out some snipers or
taking out some points of interest, taking out those explosive barrels to get your
way in, and then you can like take your car in a little bit
and maybe take out a couple enemies. But then it kind of transitions into
the ground combat and I just feel like that that flow is really fun so
far. I feel like I've done a few of those, and I feel
like, no matter what, those are always gonna be engaging because the level
design of them is pretty interesting, like they yeah, some of those camps
are really cool. Mm hmm. Yeah, there's just like because some of
them are basic where you that's why I like, you never know what you're
gonna get where it could just be a ground level and that's it. And
then some have like a big I can't remember the first territory. I think
one of the last ones I did was like a going out multiple layers and
there was like a big tower and you had to like swing on everything like
it was a lot and plus two. I like that Maybe this people that
wouldn't like this, but I enjoyed that. I feel most of the camps
when they have like, oh, you can find your insignia and all the
things. I feel like they don't hold your hand. But I also just
personally like that there is a counter and it kind of you have an idea
of Okay, it's not just like a percentage or they give you a percentage,
but imagine if you went to every campus, like you found twenty percent
of the things there. I like that it's actively like, no, you're
looking for four more of these things. You're looking for one more thing of
this, because I think with this game, there's already so much that does
help, and then that makes it that I think I double back. But
I feel like the good thing is with most of these campsites, even some
of the main mission stuff, it's never too huge where I feel like,
oh, if I miss something here, it's gonna I'm gonna have to go
replayers start all the way over. It's like there's usually like a ladder or
some other maybe way to get back. So I appreciate kind of maybe it's
a little hand holding to get you those all the collectibles, but I like
that because it gets gets you a little more gears and whatever nuts and bolts,
So I appreciate it I mean, I think it's it's good to have,
especially in a game like this that is very minimal and like the color
palette and so things can kind of blend in with each other, not like
usually the scrap like is glowing and the insignias are red and all. But
even just in the environments, it's like maybe not obvious where a room or
a door is, so it can be hard to find some of that stuff.
But yeah, working well for me. Do you what do you think
of like the story and characters, like, how does it kind of stack
up to your I don't know, just general Mad Max knowledge, or do
you remember much about the main I remember the day, I remember enjoying quite
a bit. I feel like it's the usual mascots in some trouble, there's
some more alerts. I think it's definitely more in the Elk of Furiosa and
Fear Road, just because it is made around that time. So even like
the characters like the war Boys and stuff like that, those those aren't like
constant in the Mad Max franchises. You know, It's not like the war
Boys aren't always coming back. It's usually new film, which is funny because
in the movies he has a little boy, but then in this game he
loses a little girl, so it's strange, like they even changed some stuff
there, so it's like semi connect to the movie. So might not,
but no, I think there's some good high jinks, like even the first
boss you fight here, he's a big war lower that has like a big
I think he might be funny enough. I think he has the name of
one of the characters we were talking about, like what happened Stuman Furio,
So I think it was like Scrotus or something you fight. But no,
I think for the most part there's a fun little twist and turns. But
I think it's like a good nothing or shattering, but everything feels right within
the world. And yeah, like Max isn't going a big journey, but
I feel like there's a few different spots as far as feeling somewhat variety because
it is tough. You're in a desert, right, but just certain missions
or characters. So and I think what could have been annoying as Chum Bucket,
but I think he actually ends up being an enjoyable character because I remember
the first time gating the game night. How many times do you have the
annoying sidekick that you don't care about, but they almost make them so pathetic
and annoying. It's almost like the gall of effect. So I think between
upgrading the car, that character and a little people mean along the way,
I think the story is solid because it was one that completed years ago,
so I think it's a good time. Yeah, I mean I have way
less knowledge or history with these movies seem Furio and Furiosa of course, but
only one time each. But yeah, like everything seems consistent and like the
on terms of the world building side of it, I'm I'm buying into it.
And I do love chum Bucket. I think he's a break so yeah,
and I have really like two he's obviously on the car with you at
all times, because yeah, I think that's one thing that as we talked
about with like other open world games, cars end up being disposable and so
they kind of like the car itself usually didn't have personality, like games with
a horse as a companion, as like the Motive Travel have more personality like
I love Torrent in elden Ring or the horse in Ghost of Sushimi is awesome.
Even like Shadow of Classes, you get like really attached to these characters
as like an extension of you. And I feel like that is kind of
happening in this game because Chump buckets there with you, and as soon as
you hop out, he like starts repairing it. He's giving all these things
names, the cars have names, You're getting to pick even the body of
it, so you're feeling more ownership over it. And so I think that
really works to it. But yeah, do you ever get like more people
or switch people out into your car? Is there like a roster? I
remember they just chum bucket with you. I think it's just chum Bucket.
Yeah, I don't recall anybody. If it was, maybe it's for like
a sole mission, but no, I think chum buckets with you majority of
the time. That also that guys will jump onto your car. Yes,
too, like they'll ditch their own car just to if they feel like maybe
they can't keep up with you, that's their next best effort. And another
thing that I really like too, that keeps the momentum of the game.
Again, some people might view it as like almost a cheap but I like
that when you exit your vehicle and if it's damaged, Chum buckles chum buckets
working on it because, like you said, there's alreadys so much stuff you
have to go on with finding gears and gas. I like that gas is
the thing that, hey, if you run onto this, you're kind of
script pretty generous with that, and they are right, but at least that's
the thing you need to get, which all the movies are usually about fuel,
So I like that. I just there's a version of this game where
they make it almost more punishing of your vehicle getting damaged, and I think
that would kill that cycle of imagine if anytime your vehicle got like down to
zero, it's like, well, you gotta go walk from miles and find
another one. It's like, oh, boy, like is this something I
really want to dude? No, And that's where I think it's fun that,
Okay, if your vehicle gets destroyed, you gotta get out. Maybe
you gotta wait five minutes, but there's stuff to do, and most of
the time for me when it gets destroyed, I'm in the middle of the
fight, so by and it does. Like. The good thing is it's
not that chump bucket has to get it all the way to the top.
It's usually just to get it back past like the fire and the green,
and then if it's like twenty five percent, you can get in there and
maybe you get away from the fight, or maybe if that vehicle's just like
a few more hits so you can feel like, oh, I could sacrifice
this. So that's just like it's a simple one. But I think that
was smart to do, even if it would have been like, oh,
you have to destroy other vehicles to get your vehicle back. I just think
for time wise as well. I really like that mechanic because the first time
I forgot about that when it broke, like, oh no, what's gonna
happen here? And again because it does have a sense of ownership because imagine
too, if that was if your car breaks, you gotta get a new
one, you would just they would feel like interchangeable. Even if you could
go back to your shop and put all those same parts in there. I
feel like you said, you would just lose that like specialness that you had,
that connection you have through the vehicle. So a little time, but
I liked it. It seems it seems like when you because you can,
like any car you find in the world, you can take it, bring
it back to your garage, add it to your library, so to speak.
That's the very crackdown thing as well, which I really like. Okay,
but it seems like once you've done that, like any upgrade that you've
done on your I guess any other vehicle, you can do for free on
this new car as well. So I think that's a nice touch as well.
You don't have to kind of grind pay because sometimes you pick up one
of these cars and I don't even have a freaking boost on it, so
it's like, I'm not going to start for very much and like spend all
this money to get all this boost going. So then chum Bucket's like,
this vehicle is amazing. So you're like it must be. Were some parts
right, but it has no movie. Maybe I have some cool new weapons
on it that I want to use, but yeah, if it doesn't have
boost, it's it's no good. Yeah, it sucks. They did this
whole camp and that was one of those where he said they're like, oh
this is great, you got to bring it back, but it was in
the middle of the main mission that didn't complete, and it's one where I
had to open up the garage, So it sucked. I had the spain
one. I just I just lost a school vehicle. I found it and
strip for any parts. So that was that was my bad. Like,
okay, I better go open up this garage. So I did. Yeah,
good call. Yeah that was actually that was something I found kind of
funny when you're taking out of camp, Like the final step of dishrining camp
is to like blow up the water filtration system. But then it's like,
oh, your allies have moved into this camp and like could we not have
you know, saved the uh water filtration system and maybe just up there like
like am I gonna have to rebuild this? And so far I haven't really
actually gone back to those camps, and I don't know if you upgrade,
do you up can you upgrade like any camp or would it just be like
I don't think it's a name and you go to like that one fortress up
on the hill like that in the first area and that was your first home
base, right. I think some of them just become it's a safe haven
place and that's about it. Maybe there might be some water get like yeah,
but nothing where I think every camp is as big as that, so
mm hmm, yeah, yeah, no, I I love this game.
I think it's a really good time. Definitely recommended. I think it it
holds up really well, like it it plays like the just the second and
second game play is really really good. So I like, anyone looking for
like a Mad Max kick off furiosa here should go go pick this up.
Think it's on switch, but yeah on Xbox and PlayStation PC, I'm sure.
So a good time all around nice. Any other thoughts on that where
you want to move on? Yeah, no, I'm ready to move on.
Like I said, I was happy to scratch it and it's a fun
game. So again, yeah, if anyone even thought about it that missed
it lot, Mostly everywhere this game is like five ten bucks, it's worth
seven. Taylor was thinking about picking up, like all you should do it
because it's I think that thing where it's like, even if you play it
for a little bit, it's even worth that amount of money, not saying
you have to complete or anything, because there's hundreds of games nowadays, dozens
every month where it's like, oh I want to play that, but it's
a if I do at least feel they have is that other games do.
But there is a uniqueness to it. That. Like I said, I
would compare it to that Lord of the Rings and Enemy you know whatever they
call it? Is it Enemy System? I thought there was a different name
for Snificis. I think, yeah, it's like that. Where again,
not that it's to that level, but it's something that this game has that
others don't. So yeah, yeah, I know it's the kind of game
that's just gonna sit on the hard drive for months and months or maybe even
years, and just like you know, Friday nights late, I just want
to drop this on and play for a couple hours kind of thing. So
I'm excited to do that. Cool. How about uh? I want to
talk about another talk about Shadow Shadow of the Urge here earlier. Let's talk
about another DLC that recently released, so we talked about at Summer game Fest.
There was a kind of not out today but an out tomorrow release for
Allen Wake two Night Springs, which is a three episode DLC expansion for Allen
Wake two. I have, hmmm, where do I want to start with
this. I'll say that I played through about half of it, so like
an episode and a half, and then I uninstalled the goh no, that's
not good. Now that really really did not vibe with what they were doing.
Do you think any of this would have helped if you had played because
I know you'd played Gosh, what's the game that control control? Yeah,
so you'd play that, but Quantum Break, I know he hadn't. Would
that have helped at all? Or no? I mean, so it's like
it's the guy from Quantum Break, but like it's his character from Alan Wake
too, so it's like I know kind of who he is, and like,
yeah, I played enough of Control. That's not necessarily what it is.
So yeah, for anyone who forgets Night Springs is kind of it's very
much like a Twilight Zone type of thing, where it's these almost what if
scenarios, fantasy scenarios within the world of Allen Wake. There's two elements of
it that are pretty disappointing to me. One is that there, at least
through the episode and a half that I got through, there's no new locations,
Like there might be a new color filter over an area you played through
before, but it's like the same areas that you've been to before, but
now there's just like new content there and you're playing like a new character as
you go through here. But the main thing is, like, through these
two episodes, it's pretty much like combat trials essentially, it's just that doing
fighting, which is the thing I liked the least of Allen Wake Too.
It got to a port where I just put the game on the easiest difficulty
because I'm like, I don't want to engage with this combat. It sucks,
it's boring, it's not fun, it's janky, and I just want
to get through them and then I can get back to the exploration, the
detective work, the finding cool areas, the trippy stuff. That's what I
want to be there for. The combat is not it. And so the
fact that that's kind of what this delC is is that's why I'm inzaw because
like I just I don't care, Like I am deep enough of a remedy
head to need to see this level of like interesting what if scenario. It's
like the gameplay and it's not even that long, but it's just that's how
little interest I had in doing the rest of this. And it was,
yeah, one fight that I died through or three times, because it's just
one hundred enemies and like you're giving like a million, you know, a
million rounds you have like infinite ammo. It's not really meant to be like
a survival horror thing more just like combat challenges. And yeah, it's just
absolutely not what I wanted. So ultimately, I think I'm just not the
audience for this. But I was like, yeah, I liked Alan Wake
two. This seems like fun. What if scenarios I'd like even if they're
an hour long cool. I'd love to do like a little hour long mystery
with some crazy like character that you don't know get to play as. But
that's not really what it is. And like from a story perspective, maybe
there's something that ties it together at the end, but I didn't really care
much for the story in the first one or even what I was doing in
the second one. There wasn't really much to it. It was pretty simple.
Even if there's like you know, voice acting, new new cut scenes
and whatnot, it just just was not for me. So I don't know
what the recommendation here is. I guess just like if you're deep into Remedy
and you need to see everything they do, obviously you're not gonna wait for
my recommendation. But if I guess if you played Alan Wake two and you
didn't like the combat, don't buy this. It's not gonna be worth your
time. It's like, I don't need more of it. I got in,
you know, just the right amount, I guess in the main game,
playing on easy mode and just really engaging with it. So I think,
yeah, you should still buy this game, Travis Alan, Wake two,
you don't pick up you don't need to pick up Night Springs. Just
pick up the Bass game and play through that and then maybe the second deal
seapack will be something different. But on that one, I'm definitely gonna wait
for impressions. But they are doing a second deal s pack. Yeah,
they announced two sections. The other one's called lake House, I think is
the second one, and so I don't know if that's supposed to be more
of like a story expansion. They've really talked about it yet other than just
like the name of it, unless I've missed something. I just wonder because
I remember last when I we did the review that I was saying that I
was probably gonna buy it in October. When they're doing that whole that physical
collection of Wake one two in this delC, I'm wondering if that's gonna be
I would imagine maybe on there, I would hope, because then you kind
of get the whole. Yeah. I mean, if you're getting the deal
of one and two, I guess, and it's I presume it's the remaster
of one, I believe, so yeah, so I mean that's probably worth
it. If it's like eighty bucks, that's probably worth it. I think
it is. It's for all, it's like a kind of a game add
on, but you don't yeah, yeah, so, And I mean maybe
you'd like the combat and for you, maybe you'd want to go for these
extra combat challenges or maybe even just like because you can pick any of the
episodes, you don't have to go. You don't have to finish one to
get to two. So if you're a control head and you just want to
play as Jesse some more in this mission, you could just jump straight to
that and do nothing else. But I will. I wish I had maybe
waited and listened to like reviews or something, but I just impulse bought it
because I'm like, hell, yeah, I want some more of this.
But that's what I was saying with Shadow of the Ur Tree, like it
is rare for single player games like this, for me to even care enough
about the DLC to want to buy it and play it. Yeah, but
even rare for me to actually like it. And this is a case where
yeah, it's that fifty to fifty once again, Eldering, it's great,
Alan Wake two not like it not worth worth my time and thank for this
is like fairly cheap, I think. So I don't feel like I've lost
it a lot. I think the second DEALC is like a separate purchase.
I don't think I bought all of it, but I could be wrong.
I'm clearly not super knowledgeable on this stuff. No, thank you. I
just added control to my backlog list there, because that's another one. Have
you have you started? Because when I saw your account, you hadn't really
done anything yet. Yeah, I I So I have my two lists right
now. It's your name is TBS one right, yeah, just one on
one Yeah, yeah, so I just have my games I'm waiting for.
So those are just games that I just don't want to forget about. That's
listed as prior and now I got to change it the public right now,
just replacing Killer being the whole. Maybe that's why, yeah, change the
public. I want to see what you're doing on here and anyone who is
on backlog. I know Clay made a backloged account. I guess Pubs did
to make sure you had Travis on there. It's very website my games to
finish and or play I have going on. And that's like a mix of
either games like ELDM Ring that I want to finish or games that I like.
Another one in Shadow War, I never beat that sequel Lord of the
Rings game. And then there's games like Downweight games, Ragnarock Control Now and
then Balder's Gates. That's where it's like. So it's a mix of games
that I kind of know and I have them in right now order of plan
way through. I think I gotta change a couple of them, but right
now the plan is el and Ring and then now like I guess Star Wars
will be there. But it's like I I'll remember that one because Taylor will
Taylor bug me about it, and right now I'll make it public eventsgry.
But I just got replaced in Killer Bean because and I should have added it
there. I guess I forgot to save. Is I finally I've been told
most game for years and I think they said it sold or did like fifty
units, fifty units in Xbox. I finally want to play Hypercharge, and
I think I want to get that for the stream as well, because I've
had that, like because for I think for like the first year or so
or even year and a half, it was just on PC's I didn't get
round to and that I remember when to switch, and now it's on Xbox.
But this game is like again what happens is every couple of years,
this thing trends. Was like, this game is fucking awesome, Like look
at it, so cool and it's like everything. I'm like, yeah,
it does look cool, Like that looks right in my alley. So I
think I'm gonna get that, and I probably I'm gonna motivate myself by having
it for the stream and doing some stuff on because I feel like it's a
game. We can have some fun with it. But I don't know how
it's played, but that's been a game. I think it's having twentys and
I played for a few hours and it's you know, a good time.
Yeah, it's just you know, yeah, for anyone who doesn't remember hyper
Charge unboxed, that's the game where you kind of play as action figures,
so you're kind of small characters in a regular sized world toy stores. Yeah,
and it's like my love of toy story and also I loved Army Men
back and then Nintendo. I'm me and every day are waiting for a remaster
remake of Armyment. I think we've talked about you've never played Army Man right
where you were see a couple of copies of that this weekend. Oh yeah,
you're playing as if you didn't know, you play as toy soldier.
I think I have one or two of those games on my backlog list.
Oh it's good. I want to check them out at some point, but
I don't even know the platforms and one Yeah, and there's missions like you're
in your mom's kid and like the alm and you die. Like it's it's
very similar Toy Store where it feels like the kids are playing it, but
you are the soldier in the story and you're the green And multiplayer was great
too, because that's when like, oh, you could play as the blue
one. So but yeah, that's that's rare. But yeah, that'll be
interesting. I'll have to wait and see the combat because seeing that almost sounds
like if you were to tell me, oh, hey, uh Hell has
some DLC, but it's mostly just combat for me, as I've always thought
it was my my biggest critique of that game, I go, well,
that's not something I would dive into, right, Like, so that's where
I'll have to wait and play it, because the same thing I whenever I
my intention of playing on Wake is not the oh I want to play like
combat fighting. You know, that's not what anything they have seen, like,
oh I hope it has this, you know, so yeah, like
I I I you know, I'm coming there for the detective war for the
horror stuff, and it just seemed a bit one note, like that was
something where God of War Ragnarok had that Valhalla DLC which was like a roguelike
mode and there was story elements to it, but it was like advertising,
this is like roguelike where you're doing combat challenges and stuff, and that was
great marketing for me. It's like it didn't I didn't buy it, even
though I loved the game, but it was like it told me exactly what
it was, and so I don't know, maybe I'm just dumb and didn't
do my research, but I kind of felt like, that's not really how
they advertised this night spring Steam. But it didn't look like that either.
I think it was more head trippy, and so I think they focused more
on like the characters and like the setting rather than what the actual gameplay of
it is. But it is so short anyway that yeah, I don't know,
it makes sense. Still installed it, though it's that was probably a
bit hasty. I probably should have just like cooled down and come back the
next day. But I was like, you know what, I could use
the hard drive space right now with Eldon Ringing and install that again. And
so you know, I was like, see you later, Alan Wake,
I'm not not into this. You know, there's only so much time of
the day. I don't I don't have time to play games that I don't
like. You know, that's not the way you want to spend the time.
There's too many games, you know. So let's take one last break
and then you know, I'll bring up one more game for the day.
We'll be right back. Okay, we are back. Last game I wanted
to shout out here is a game called Humanity, which came out last year
on a PlayStation. It was a PlayStation exclusive and then you know, after
that year long exclusivity, it is now on Xbox via game Pass as well.
So you're backlogged here popular friends, and yeah, I'm playing it right
now. I don't know. I don't know if you remember this one,
Travis, but if you don't, you should definitely do a quick YouTube doing
that right now, or yeah, just google image it. But this is
a puzzle game. There's a three D puzzle game in which essentially masses of
people come out of one door and you got to lead them to another,
another door, another exit. That's like the core, you know as the
core conceit of like the actual puzzle mechanics of it. So it starts out
pretty simple. You plays this cute little dog and you just put arrows down
essentially, and that will tell the people to like turn at this corner,
go around this way, and you lead them to this gate. So it
starts out with that. It's pretty simple. People, it's a lot of
people. It starts out pretty simple. You know, you're telling them to
go around this corner. Eventually it's okay, I got to push this block
first, and then and then it's like, oh, there's a conveyor belt.
And then eventually you're getting like a jump command, so you can tell
them to jump at a certain point. But I think there's there's a few
layers to why I'm loving this game so much. One one is what you
just said, all the people this game is insane. I don't think I've
ever seen this many characters on screen in any game in my life. It
gets to a point where there are literally thousands, maybe even a million,
like humans running around. They're so dirty. It looks like roller coaster Tycoon
or something where they're just aimlessly walking through the park. But they're just you
know, doing exactly what you tell them to and nothing more, nothing less.
They have no brain of their own. And yeah, so like that's
kind of the first Like Also, one thing I find really interested with this
game is like I feel like puzzle games don't really usually have like an act
structure to this to them, but this game does kind of have like an
overarching narrative, and there are like distinct acts where the first I'd say,
the first act is really just introducing all those basic mechanics jumping, turning,
throwing a couple of hoops that you you know, puzzles eventually get more difficult
and then there's added challenging these level where there's a Goldie who's like a giant
gold human, and if you lead the people through the Goldie and bring them
to the exit, then you get like bonuses which give you like different costumes
gonna put on the humans and other unlocks and things like that. And then
Travis, I'm guessing you're not gonna play this game at any point. This
is not going on your back log list, is I don't think, Sorry,
not with what I have, no, but it looks interesting. I
like to let me spoil a couple of things then, and for anyone who
does not want the spoiler. Once again, this is on game pass.
I don't know if it was on PS plus or is I don't know how
much it is, but I love this game. If you like puzzle games,
I highly recommend it. So there's my you know, if you don't
want to hear the spoilers, there's my partying gift to you. But getting
to the spoilers in acts too, it gets even crazier where eventually there are
others that are introduced, and others are different people that you do not control,
but they are a potent there. Yeah, they're they all position to
you, and so they will get in your way, they'll push blocks out
of the way, and then eventually the others get like fucking lightsabers and like
laser pistols, and they'll start like gunning you down and killing you. So
your people are vulnerable to getting killed, and so you have to lead.
And it starts out fairly simple. You have to like you know, hide
behind walls or like push blocks in the way so they can't hit you,
so that way you can get to the exit. But then Travis, it
gets more and more crazy, where you eventually get a command just called gun
and hit, and so you can now equip your people. If they walk
through the gun or hit, they'll get equipped with these laser pistols, all
laser batons. And then it essentially turns into like an RTS game where there
are these huge battles of thousands of these people with guns and batons and they're
just wailing into each other, flying off cliffs, all sorts of crazy stuff
happening. All the while you still just have to lead your people to the
exit. Like that game, that core gameplay is always there, but then
like the just layers and layers and layers upon it gets even crazier into like
these humongous, freaking battles that are insane, and like the gameplay mechanics of
it are like fairly simple. You know, it's two enemy types and they
auto attack, so you're like only controlling them to a certain extent. But
man, like the puzzles that they build around this is because like, yeah,
at the end of the day, it is always still a puzzle game,
and so like to find the puzzle solution to win this RTS battle.
It's such a crazy idea and not where I thought this game was gonna go.
I thought, like near the act, near the end of act one,
I thought I was like about done the game. I thought I was,
Oh, I'm probably a couple more difficult puzzles. Oh, I'm going
into like a boss type puzzle level. And then like yeah, went into
that whole section with all these people, and now I'm in this section where
I'm getting other commands where like I can just get this direct follow commands,
so rather than just following arrows that like follow me around directly, and so
that feels once again very much like an RTS type thing. Yeah, and
you're going and you're doing like stealth sequences. There's like, you know,
enemy sightlines and you have to kind of sneak them around this. It just
it's crazy how much this game keeps layering on top of itself in totally unexpected
ways, crazy ways, and it just makes for this thing where, man,
in the first hour or two, what I was enjoying, this basic,
kind of simple, fun, block pushing puzzle game has just evolved into
this insane, insane game that I can't even like describe in one genre anymore.
It's just an amalgam of all these different things. It's doing so much,
and it's doing it all like super well. Like there hasn't been like
maybe one or two puzzles that were kind of tedious and annoying, but out
of like I don't know, fifty or sixty puzzles that I've done, like
all of them are interesting in some way, and those goldies add like extra
challenges. So if you, like, you know, if you just want
to get to the end of the level, usually it's not super duper challenging,
but then to get like one hundred percent completion on all of them this
whole other thing. So I cannot praise this game enough this is gonna be
one of my favorite puzzle games of all time. I think when I'm done
with it, it is it's so good. Yeah, Like the mechanics are
great, it's goofy and silly, and like the aesthetic of it is so
special and weird, and the story it's telling and like obviously there's you know,
there's there's kind of this meta narrative to it of like humanity and what
people do and choice and like you know, people warring against each other and
they're doing it without really thinking can you know about what they're doing? There's
this element to it if you really want to think on a heady type level
of what's going on, you can really get pretty in the weeds on it.
But it's just so freaking good. So yeah, once again, Game
pastor up highly recommend. I think I'm almost done with it now. I
think I have one or two more worlds to go, but yeah, just
so. And there's even like a custom level editor, so I'm sure I
can just down the more levels if I want, and it's all said and
done. Challenges, Like, there's some levels that I have skipped the Goldies,
so I'm gonna go back and get one hundred percent completion. It's just
such a freaking great game. So uh, it's cool and nice, nice
surprise game pastor up there. Highly recommend. Yeah, well that's it's the
lasers and stuff intrigued me. So I don't think it'll be anything soon,
but that that that's an interesting turn. So yeah, like I said,
not, I mean maybe it was in those trailers, but I kind of
forgot or something. But yeah, it's just not where I expected the the
game to go. So uh yeah, good stuff, show us to humanity
as a whole and shows you press. This is a very this is a
very fun episode, just a classic games we've been playing episod so ended up
being a lot. Since we've been doing all these showcases and whatnot, I
had a chance to catch up on what we've been playing, so it's nice
to kind of debrief on what we've been playing for the last month here.
So yeah, it was that in hell Blade pretty much for us. It
was nice just to kick back and everything. So mm hmmm. Yeah,
next week's episode, it's a little up in the air right now, just
because it's a holiday here in Canada, so we might pre record something.
I might just do a solo episode. Not sure yet, but all you
gotta do subscribe to the feed, stay tuned, and you will see what
we are doing next week. Thank you for joining me, thank you for
listening, and we'll see you again next time. Bye bye,