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Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Foreign yo, what's up? Welcome to Kind of Funny Games cast for Monday, February 24, 2025. I want your host, Blessing Addie Oye Jr. Joining me is Christmas in February. Joey Noel.
Joey Noel
It's me.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
We're also joined by WWE superstar Greg Miller.
Greg Miller
Hello, Blessing, how are you?
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I'm doing well, how are you doing?
Greg Miller
It's good, I'm good, I'm good.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
It's good to have you here.
Greg Miller
It's good to see you.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Good to see you too, Andy. Corey Cortez, AKA the Nitro Rifle.
Andy Cortez
Good to see all of y'all, man.
Greg Miller
Good to see you.
Andy Cortez
Good to see you, man.
Greg Miller
Good to see you.
Andy Cortez
God, we were dominating last year.
Greg Miller
Dominating Monster Hunter Wilds last.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Oh, you're playing.
Andy Cortez
Oh my God.
Greg Miller
This guy running around can't find any dung. I'm in this guy.
Andy Cortez
I thought you joined. I was looking for kaka on the ground.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I was gonna say you gotta open your nose, gotta smell around. Of course. This is kind of Funny. Gamescast. Each and every weekday we get together and talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games. Live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the kind of Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Spotify or Apple podcasts to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show For a chance to be a part of the show, submit your thoughts and opinions as YouTube super chats as we go. Housekeeping for you. We're an 11 person business all about live talk shows. So KGD right before this was about the return of Tony Hawk's pro skater. Right now is the games cast and after this is a stream with Nick to. We know what that stream is.
Andy Cortez
Avowed.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Whoa. Nick playing some avowed. So go check that out right after.
Greg Miller
During that Nvidia stream. And now he's in.
Andy Cortez
Huh huh?
Greg Miller
That's all it took.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
He's still playing out for him. That's all he did one stream of that?
Andy Cortez
I don't know. I think he was more worried about streaming that and like you know, it's a bit of a tougher game. But I'll tell you what man. The magic in outer in in a vowed I. I think I up I should have gone magic.
Greg Miller
Yeah.
Andy Cortez
Cuz holy like all the cool spells.
Greg Miller
It's more the fact that you ruined Outer Wilds for him. He was all gung ho on it Blessing until you were like. Because he was gonna build and play it and review it with you and Then you're like, I'm too busy. I'm not gonna have a chance to.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I mean, listen, was I wrong, though?
Greg Miller
No, I'm too busy.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
No, I'm just saying, review Monster Hunter Wilds. We got so many things happening.
Greg Miller
How much wilds did you play?
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Oh, man. Which wild are we talking about? Outer Wilds. Let me tell you, I'm 17 hours in according to my PS5, and I'm not stopping. I'm loving that game, but we're gonna talk about some Monster Hunter Wilds in a sec. If you're a kind of funny member, you can get today's Greg Way, which is.
Greg Miller
It's about how Monster Hunter Wilds ruined today's Greg Way.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Oh, okay. Love that.
Greg Miller
You like that.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I like that a lot of.
Greg Miller
Yeah, Yeah.
Joey Noel
I just want to say that I got yelled at by my mom for your Greg Way last week.
Greg Miller
Which one?
Joey Noel
About why we didn't do the kind of funny podcast.
Greg Miller
Thank you.
Joey Noel
You know what I mean? I wasn't expecting to get this.
Greg Miller
I'm just saying I'm driving in, I think, oh, my God, they forgot the kind of funny podcast, which is bad enough. Then I get here and they go, oh, no, we all. We just agreed not to do it. And I said, well, did you tell anybody? Everybody's like, ah, fuck, I don't know.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
We thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, Karl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Karen Lindener. Today we're brought to you by Greg Miller's live Chicago show and better help, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with topic of the show. Monster Hunter Wilds. We've all played touched this game to some degree.
Greg Miller
I love that, some of us more.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Than others, but I'm very excited to ask you guys, talk to you guys all about your experiences with Monster Hunter Wilds. I think most of you guys, not all you guys, have played it more than I have. Super. Chat in with your questions about Monster Hunter Wilds. If you have any questions for the crew that have played it, let us know before we get into it. To set the stage of what you can expect out of Monster Hunter Wilds, I'm pulling this from the website page. The fates of a people in nature entwined at the center, a boy named Nada and the mysterious white wraith. Dynamic, ever changing environments. A story of monsters and humans in a world with two faces. One in which the lands are harsh and unforgiving, where monsters fight for scant resources. And another in which the lands are Vibrant and brimming with life.
Greg Miller
Get fucking high.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
You play as a professional monster hunter, protecting the balance of the ecosystem and hunting monsters. Use the resources you gain from hunts to craft ever more powerful weapons and armor in your quest to unravel the mysteries of the new lands. Experience the most evolved action and improved immersion in any Monster Hunter to date. Greg Miller.
Greg Miller
Yes, buddy.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Before I joined Kinda Funny, I would listen to Kinda Funny and I would hear you and the crew talk all about Monster Hunter worlds. The previous big game, I guess, before Monster Hunter Rise.
Greg Miller
Correct. Yeah. The last like major, major mainline entry.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
What are your thoughts on Monster Hunter Wilds, man?
Greg Miller
Monster Hunter wilds is a 9.5 out of 10. I think this is an amazing game. This is the highest score I've given on. Kind of funny since we changed this review score to the 10 points and it's, it's the most passionate I've been about a video game in a while. As you know, we play all manner of things here and we enjoy doing that and we love doing that. But there's always that thing where there's that special game you get that gets under your skin that you can't get away from. It's got its hooks in you. You're. You're thinking about it even when you're not playing it. You're so excited to play it. That's Monster Hunter Wilds for me. And to take it to that next level, to get so close to a 10 from kind of funny, right? For me it is the fact that when I'm playing it, I'm sitting there in battle. I'm sitting there on my secret, running around doing whatever, whether, you know, sharpening my weapons, healing myself, drinking antidote or something. I'm literally cognizantly in the moment going, God, this is so much fun. This is so good. It is. So to seal Janet Garcia's favorite word from back in the day, frictionless. I think it's going to be an interesting review cycle. Monster Hunter World, of course broke open for so many different people. Monster Hunter, it really brought it to a, well, spring of people who had never played Monster Hunter before. For old fogies like me who reviewed Monster Hunter Freedom 2 in 2007 on the PSP, right? Like I remember after doing Freedom 2 and after doing Freedom Unite, doing like a op ed for IGN and this is years later probably, but like what they needed to fix what, how to make it big in the west and World did all that, Monster Underworld did all that. And I was like, holy shit, I can't believe they did it. To see them iterate on that again, I think people will jump into this and still be very turned around of like, wait, what am I doing? And how does it like newcomers to this newcomers of the series. But once it's still the most approachable monster hunter of all time. It is the easiest way to get into and again, it is frictionless in terms of how you want to enter into combat, how you want to craft, how you want to make your armor. What do you want to do here? There's a lot to talk about. Lots and lots and lots to talk about it. I've played 30 hours right now is what my game clock is at as a Monster Hunter sicko. That is nothing. Obviously. I booted up Monster Hunter world and jumped back in there to go back and forth and it was like my save There is at 140 like 140 hours in monster Hunter world. Like, okay, cool. So little bit more to go on wilds here. Hunter rank 25. You know, I'm in the end game. I'm deep in the end game. I'm working on X, Y and Z. I don't want to spoil anything for you, but there's a lot to talk about here and I think a lot. They did incredibly well. You know what I think holds it back from being a 10 for me is that even as a Monster Hunter sicko and again, this is one of those funny ones where it's like if you're a real monster Hunter sicko, I realize my 140 is nothing. You've played way more than that. Blah blah, blah. I understand that. I'm not that like in the grand to a Monster Hunter fan, I'm not a sicko. But I think as somebody who reviews so many different games and talks about games critically and has been with the franchise for so long, there still is a lot of even for me you're playing and bless is like, all right, cool. How do we team up? And I'm like, all right, well do this. And I'm following you. But you're like, but we're in the same. Okay, Andy needs help. But we're in the. Well quit out of your. Oh, you invited me. Okay, well, you know what I mean. Like it's like there's that thing and then like some of the stuff for like just minutia menu stuff where I'm going to eventually compliment how they simplified a number of menus. But Monster Hunter is gorgeous. It is great to play. It is an interesting story and I Can't wait to go home and play more.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Yeah. I got a question of what the biggest feature changes are, but I want to get Joey and Andy into the conversation, so think about that, Greg. But, Joey, what are your thoughts so far on Monster Renner Wells?
Joey Noel
I'm having a really great time. This is my first dive into Monster Hunter, which is so crazy to think because it feels like a game that we would have played together before. Lauren and I were trying to figure this out too, because she was like, if I didn't play with you, who did I play with? But it's really fun. I do feel like I got, like, a really big warning from Andy that was like, this is going to be janky. It's not going to be.
Greg Miller
It's not.
Joey Noel
It's going to play the way the Monster Hunter plays, which is not necessarily the way that you might want to play this. And I. It will forever, like, trip me up. That role is X. And why would I've never. That is not any way that I've ever played it. And I'm just like, I hate this.
Andy Cortez
And you can't remap.
Greg Miller
No.
Joey Noel
So I was like, oh, let me.
Greg Miller
Tell you kids about when we did have a second stick and you had to have your finger curled over the PSP to claw it up to spin the camera.
Joey Noel
Yeah. I'm having so much fun. For me, this is, like, definitely a game that, like, I think will get infinitely more fun when I play with other people, especially as it gets its official launch. And I know that I'm playing it wrong in the sense that, like, I'm hoarding everything. I'm not crafting anything because I'm usually, like, a guide person for, like, all of that kind of stuff. And, like, I just know that I'm gonna get to jump in with people and they're gonna teach me how to play, and then I'm gonna have all of the things. So that's what I'm excited for. But I will say it is, like, pretty overwhelming jumping in by yourself for the first time. So I hope that the Monster Hunter community is nice and will help shepherd me through this.
Greg Miller
We're doing the marathon streams, Joey. I'll shepherd. I'll show you. We'll get you going.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Andy Cortez again, the last part of this blurb reads. Experience the most evolved action and improved immersion in any Monster Hunter to date. Is this the most.
Greg Miller
He set this up. He's setting it up.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Is this the most evolved action and improved immersion that you've experienced in a Monster Hunter game.
Andy Cortez
Yeah. Yeah, it is. I've. I'm not as far into Greg far.
Greg Miller
Oh, anytime you want. Anytime you want.
Andy Cortez
Not yet, I'm not.
Greg Miller
How many inches of venom do you got?
Andy Cortez
I'm not 30 hours into the game. I'm about 17 and a half. There's a lot of. A lot of previews. I knew Greg was gonna be playing the most of it, so I didn't feel compelled to like, I gotta get to endgame like I do usually for a lot of these reviews. And I. I'm enjoying it. I think it's awesome. I think it's so much fun. I think combat's great. When Greg said the word frictionless, I kind of went like, I don't know. I think there's a lot of friction in this game. I think in modern standards, I think if you try to change up the formula for what menus look like in this game, you will anger the. The larger Monster Hunter crowd. So I understand not wanting to do that, but I think this game is still really tough to kind of understand what you're doing in menus and what you're doing with inventory and all sorts of things. But when you're in the action, you know it. I was warning Blessing about this and warning Joey about this. Where as a soul sicko, no, the way that I played, the way that I'm used to action games sort of operating this game, Monster Hunter is very much like, honestly, like a, like a souls game in. In how they sort of operate, where it's like, no, this is the way it works and this is how we do it here. You will acclimate to the way our game is made, right? And at first, when the first console beta released or whatever it was test on Steam when that demo released, I was like, oh, this, you know it. It's hard to play. I don't really fully understand. I put like 30 or 40 hours in a Monster Hunter world. Why do I feel like I've never played this video game before? Granted, that was a long ass time ago, but then when the PC beta came around and also I was able to get a lot of frames and it looks amazing and holy shit, like this game just looks gorgeous so much of the time. And then in other cutscenes it's like, did you bother putting a light source in here? Why is nothing. There's no shadows anywhere. Why is that texture the lowest res text I've ever seen in my life? When that piece of beta came around, that's where I was like, oh, I I get this now and. And luckily Twitch Chat was helping me a lot. Helping me out a lot with weapons and how to fully kind of get the most out of the experience. And so far I have been maining the switch axe.
Greg Miller
Nice.
Andy Cortez
I'm having just the most amount of fun. This game kicks so much ass action wise. I love, I love this weak point little thing. Now you know that you focus in, you see, you see where the weak points are on the enemy and like all of that stuff just makes. I'm surprised that a feature like that was never in the older games because it feels like it's so perfect and rhythm, like it fits into the rhythm so perfectly now I'm having just an absolute blast with it. I love the visuals, I love the monsters that we're fighting. I love the hunts and kind of getting into the rhythm of going back to the home base, going to seek out the next thing you know. I was trying to play with Mike the other day and it was a little bit tougher trying to like add a friend and it's not the easiest thing trying to get Greg into my game. Last night was a little cumbersome. But then we finally got it going and whenever I would start a mission, you would get notified and you'd be like, oh, do I want to join Andy's mission or not?
Greg Miller
One of the things I think that we are at a disadvantage for is the fact that, you know, this is a game that relies so much on multiplayer and it's just reviewers with it right now and we weren't. You're on a trip. I was at Dice Awards when we got codes, you know, every is playing it off hours. So like I have such a limited experience with getting in there and trying it. Like once I made the kind of funny guild. Barrett, throw up the image. Once I made the kind of money. Everybody come join the kind of money guild you can join. I think it's. Ah shit, I should have written down. I think you can join five different guilds or six different guilds, maybe even more or whatever. 50 people in each one. So as you can see on. If you see here, if you're. If you're a video person, I'll read out. You see kind of funny 4F 9C D 5KM. That's the official kind of funny clan that I'm running. You can go and join on that. I will add you when it comes out. If you want to go full screen again though. Barrett. Yeah, there you go. I put up there my hunter ID is 8v4nt5dx. Of course you can go watch the videos and you can please send me. I want to follow everybody. I want to be a part of it. I do want to call out, this is not my actual armor. This is not my actual Palico armor. Okay. This is that.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I was going to say, you look mad basic here.
Greg Miller
I wanted to take a photo and they are very, very worried about spoilers and where you can stop. So I was like, you know what? I will go just put on basic leather for this. And just showed up.
Andy Cortez
Greg did hit me up and was like, andy, I'm gonna need you to kind of go into the character creator. And, you know, because when I created it, you know, I was kind of rushing through it and I'd like for you to change up some of the facial features because I don't really look like me. And I was like, greg, I had to break it to you. You could change your hair, you can change makeup, you could change facial hair, but you can't change, like, the structure of the way your face looks later on. Y dang.
Greg Miller
I mean, I'm good enough. It's just like, you know what I mean? Like, I did it very much like, ah, well, Andy will fix me tomorrow. All right, well, that's just how Greg looks in this game.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Jump in here for me, right? Like, I love the character creator, right? Like, that was for me, that was the first impression of.
Greg Miller
Yeah. How much have you played?
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
So I played about six to eight hours. And this is one for me to preface of. I am still not the Monster Hunter person. In fact, it's to such an extent where I went with Greg to do the Monster Hunter preview.
Greg Miller
And.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
And while playing Wild, I was like, all right, cool. I can see what they're doing here. This seems dope. I love the presentation, but this is dissuading me actually from playing more just because it is. It felt like it was proving more of like, oh, yeah, I am definitely not the Monster Hunter person. It's the weird thing of it is such a specific game to what Andy's talking about. It is we have a way we do things here, and this is what this game is going to be. But somehow I did come back to it. Once we got the review code out, I think I was kind of like, all right, I'll give you one more. I don't want to experience the fomo, right? Like, everybody's going to be playing it. I want to try it out. And I think the thing I'll say in the hours that I've played this game again, probably six to eight somewhere around there. The more I play it, the more I am feeling the pull of, oh, there's something here. Like, I am. I think there. I think it is the specificness of it mixed with. I. I don't know if I'll. Yeah. Call it approachable, just in the sense that I am in the inventory and I have no idea what I'm doing.
Joey Noel
I know there's so many menus.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
There are so many menus. Once I open up the inventory menu, there's so much going on in it. I know I'm supposed to be eating food before I go out on these things, and I'm not because I'm. I don't even know where to get the food. I don't know if I'm supposed to cook. They keep telling me that there's a, you know, portable campsite that I can do. And I don't know, like, what's the right time to bust. I just. There's so much going on.
Greg Miller
Yeah.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I mean, to finish the thought, though, like, even though there are all these things about it that feels so specific to what Monster Hunter is and the kind of game that it wants to be, even though I say I don't know. I don't know if it's approachable, it is kind of welcoming, though. Like, there is something about it where I'm like, oh, I kind of just want to be in this world.
Greg Miller
I went and read some of my old Monster Hunter reviews before I got here, and one of the ways I described it back then, because, keep in mind, it was, like, still very new to the Western audience to a degree. Right. Was that it's an RPG without a story, is how I was describing it there. And what I still. And I still think that DNA is here. And I think part of it is that at some point, I think, especially when I'm saying this is frictionless. I'm mainly talking about combat. I'm mainly talking about getting in there.
Andy Cortez
Yeah.
Greg Miller
Yeah. But I'm also, I think, in the way of. And it's hard because I know what to look for.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Yeah.
Andy Cortez
Excuse it however you want. No problem.
Greg Miller
Thank you very much. Thank you. I need that. But the idea here is that this. You are playing the role of a monster hunter in this thing. Right. And so there are the. Okay, you should eat before you go. And, you know, there's the whole dramatic. You're cooking and there's the whole thing, and you're chopping up and frying. Like, there's all that stuff, because that's the world they're building, what they want you to do. And they do want you to slow down, right? And it is like before you rush into that next battle, go into your tent and refill your items and the things you put into your item thing, put them into your chest instead. All of that, I think, is overwhelming to look at and to dive into. But I think when you just go and play, that stuff kind of opens up as you go. Because you can just go. You could just go and jump in and kill things and whatever. And then eventually someone's going to tell you to cook or you're going to see that you have your barbecue grill with you all the time, your portable one. So you could just do it there. And then it is that idea of like, oh, man, I know I unlocked a trap. Why isn't it here? So you go to your tent and see the difference between your item box and your actual item thing. And then, oh, well, I put the berry in my pocket and that doesn't really help me. So put it into the. Like you get into this thing where all of a sudden I think the beauty of Monster Hunter when it's working for you. Because obviously this is every. Everybody's different. But it is that idea of like, okay, cool, killed the thing. Now I got. It's time to do the meat, drop off my stuff, refill my stacks of, you know, my potions or whatever, and then head off on the next one. Like, there's that rhythm to the whole thing that they do that I really appreciate about it. Where you do, I think, in a very interesting, not story way, feel like you are role playing that character, which is.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
You think the thing I am appreciating, right? Like, I. I think the thing that's. That feels welcoming about it that I do, like, is that there's presentation around everything that makes it. That makes this world feel like, oh, man, there is something big here, right? There is something here that I don't know that is enticing. Like when you quit out to the main menu. And it is the thing of, like, you don't even realize you're in the main menu. Because the way they do a cutscene to have like a character, like put down a pot and it is all right now it's you hanging out with your so lovely. It's so lovely, right? It's you and your little palico and your chocobo. It's not a chocobo, right? And you're sacred.
Andy Cortez
There's a lot of Positivity to the tone. There's a lot of, like, hope in this. I mean, I think the first armor said you get is called, like, the hope armor set or whatever. Yeah. So I totally agree with you. I think it is welcoming in that sense for sure. Like.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Like, I just want to hang out in this world.
Andy Cortez
Yeah.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
And I think that for me, that is the gateway to eventually learning the mechanics, understanding the game in a deeper way.
Greg Miller
Right.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
It's kind of in the same way that for souls games.
Greg Miller
Right.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Like, I picked up Bloodborne and started slashing, and I'm like, all right, cool. I know I'm not doing all the right things, but hopefully I get there and then I got there and then the magic spark.
Greg Miller
And I think that's the thing about it, as you go through this and play, it is like the deeper you want to get into it, the deeper you can where you could just run through. I rolled credits, like, 21 hours, right? 20. Somewhere in there.
Andy Cortez
Oh, you beat the game.
Greg Miller
Oh, yeah.
Andy Cortez
Oh, I'm probably close.
Greg Miller
I'm in end game doing all that stuff. Yeah.
Andy Cortez
Okay, cool.
Greg Miller
Doing temper, doing high value or whatever. Hunts and getting. I'm working on the other sets of armor and all that jazz. Yeah, yeah. But, like, I think as you go through it, like, they put you on a not short leash, but you are being pulled through that story.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Yeah.
Greg Miller
To the point that me as a classic hunter, like, it was very unnerving when it would be like, all right, I go in, I kill the thing. Roll to the cut scene where we're talking about it. Oh, no, Another one showed up and I'm right into the fight. I'm like, I need to restock. Why? Well, this isn't how this works. Like, let me go to camp. I need to sit for a second. Like, no, no, you're right into. Right into you. Right.
Andy Cortez
My stamina is 60% of what it should be because I just went through a really tough fight. I need to go, you know, I got to eat some fish.
Greg Miller
Yeah, got it. Maybe I will go fish this time.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
So Greg, as. As a big monster hunter person, when he's playing the franchise for a very long time now, what are the big feature changes this time around that separated out from monster hunter world.
Greg Miller
So again, it's iterating on everything world did. And I think, again, I remember playing World with Kevin, with Jen and being like, wow. Like, this has come so far from what it is. They've actually listened to the audience that are people like me that were screaming for X, Y, And Z, I think it's them iterating and doubling down on all that and taking the lessons they had from what was the switch one that came to surprise. Thank you very much. Right. Of like people loved having that. The grappling hook there or whatever. Right. The way they've iterated your slinger here. The way they. But for me to get back to that frictionless thing, I have so many examples of that happening here. Right. Where SOS flares have always been used to. Hey, I'm playing single player. I'm going to fire it off. So any random can come join my game. Right. If they're looking to help out, you can still do that here. You can also turn it on to do it automatically. So anytime you start a quest, it'll fire off, which I love. But more importantly, especially right now when we're playing with no one to play with, if no one joins AI comes like the characters from the camp, the NPCs that you've been working with come out and do the thing with you.
Andy Cortez
It's cool shit.
Greg Miller
Yeah. And they're helpful and they talk and they do this. And I'm like, man, that's a really nice feature again, for one of these games. I compare it to Helldivers where when we review Helldivers, when I reviewed Helldivers was like, I love this game and it's awesome. And so many people, like, I don't have people who would want to play with me. Like, this is a nice way to again ease you into that because you will get human beings that do it who will then probably invite you to the guild who will then, you know, maybe you want to do the online friendship or maybe you and they leave and you just can run with AI I love that about it. But it's those kind of fixes. The biggest one for me personally. And again, I think to make this frictionless would be the sacred, the secret, the sacred. Whatever. Chocobo, right? Who's I know. And I've spent 30 hours with and have customized the hell out of I love mine. Kind of funny blue and the pink. I'm like, Andy would love this. I'm doing it.
Andy Cortez
I liked it. Yeah, I liked yours.
Greg Miller
They have gone. It's my cup. I put it too close to Andy. I apologize. It's capped. It's fine. The sacred is like I think paramount to hey, let's make this game fast and fun and fluid. And what I mean by that is even when we played World and we liked World, it would be cool. I've put up the quest for going after, you know, this wrathian or whatever, right? Everybody's accepted.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Cool.
Greg Miller
We start in camp and then we just run and we run, run, run. You go over after go and there's a few shortcuts or whatever, but like you had to move that out and you're. You could stop and collect things or whatever. Blah, blah, blah. Jump to wild, right? Where it is cool. If you haven't set up any of the base camps around there, right? Which are like, you know, get you closer to certain objectives if you have them set up in the right place, which I didn't. I really. I've not fucked with it. I just haven't seen the point. You start in base camp. I immediately hit up in the D pad. My sacred runs in. I jump on them. I hit up on the D pad again. That auto moves to the objective. So now I can take my hands off. And what I usually do is hold down R2. What I usually do is hold down R2 and then use the slinger, which you've had forever. But now there's the hook slinger, which is like a hook shot, right? So as I'm running through, you pass an herb, I pass whatever.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
It's like playing on Real Shooter.
Greg Miller
Boom. Yeah. I'm just collecting all this stuff into my pouch, right? Which is so helpful because before it would have been run, run, run. Oh, there's something I need or want. Run, run, run. Oh, there's something I need, I want. You know what I mean? Like you're looking. I'm always looking for spider webs because I use so many traps, right? To be able to arrive through. See him on the HUD coming up. Okay. Bam, bam, bam. Like Spider man collect them. Fantastic. That then jumps to gameplay as well. And again, this is the frictionless thing of. In the past, you are in a battle with a monster. You're. It starts to turn the wrong way, right? And you get poisoned. You need to drink your antidote, right? You need to heal up about it. So you got to run backwards, you got to drop your, you know, to go out of weapon mode so that you're trying to run faster, try to dodge, get there, stop there, drink the thing. You see the monster running at you. It can be obviously tense and fun. It can also be annoying as shit, right? You get knocked down, you get killed, you faint, you come back at camp, you got to run your ass back over there. Now, whenever I need to heal, whenever I need to use something on the item bar, that's and it's most of the stuff you can, right? Immediately call on the sacred. Mid fight runs in. I jump onto the sacred, named Cole, of course. My palacos portillo jump on coal and then just. I ride. I ride in a circle, right? And I. I heal up there. I drink my potion while I'm on the sacred so that I'm a moving target. So I'm not getting lambasted, right? Same thing of, like, in the. You beat them or you, you know, you finish a wave of the monster and it retreats to a different location because you move around the map to fight all these things, right? It takes off for me as a dual blade hunter, right? In the olden days, they take off.
Andy Cortez
Cool.
Greg Miller
I collect everything on the ground, and then I have to sit there and I go to my whetstone and I sharpen my blade and I can't move while I do that. Now you can use the whetstone on the sacred, right? So it is. I am actively going to the next thing. I am chasing the monster. I've beaten the monster there. Last night, I thought I had a glitch where I got up to the top and I was fighting a flying beast that remained nameless. And I was like. I got up there, I was like, where the fuck? And I saw it off in the distance and I thought it was, like, hung up, because it was about to. It was like, you know, fucked up. So I'm like, oh, shit, Is it glitched out? It's like, oh, no. You're just so fucked up from this fight that you're taking that long to get to where you're going. I'm like, that's kind of nice. I like that. Again, you're just in, you're going, you're flowing. You're not having to stop. You're not having to sit there and be like, ah, this kind of sucks. Like, it's cool to sharpen my blade, of course, but it would be better to be able to walk into it. Whereas at least here, you're riding and you're going, and you're just. I feel like the game is almost constantly in motion. And one of the things that I know. They called out a lot in their preview materials, and when they were hyping it up, I didn't touch much of it. Like, I'm still doing it a very traditional way of, what are my quests? What are my things? Okay. The game does a good job in endgame. And no spoilers. This really isn't. If you're Capcom Calm down. This isn't a spoiler, but it is the idea of like, all right, cool. Like your objective right now is to get your hunter rank up and you know, do like do expeditions. Like and that means going to a place, seeing the creature, tagging it, doing is creating your own. So I'm just starting to do that stuff. But one of the things they've talked about is the expeditions and how they do them here before in world, right? That was a whole thing you went into to go off and do it. Whereas now it's just like walk out of camp and you can just do whatever you want in the world. And if you see a creature there, you can fight it right there and the quest will start. And then when it's done, you're still in that world and you can run around and keep doing that, keep exploring, keep like I feel like you're just in constant motion and not in an overwhelming way. Almost in a way of like it feels nice to be here, it feels nice to be living this dream. And then there's a bunch of like quality of life stuff of like, you know, when you beat a monster on a quest, there's the whole countdown for 60 seconds where you carve it up and you collect stuff, but inevitably you're done with that in the first 15 and you stand around. Right now they have a thing where you can skip it, you know, hold TouchPad on PlayStation 5 if you're with a multiplayer thing, everybody has to vote on it and you can skip through.
Andy Cortez
It like and the quest immediately. Yeah, I saw somebody in chat a little while ago ask a question that is not related, just asking. Is there crossplay? Yes. I was on PC last night playing with Greg who's on PlayStation.
Greg Miller
Yeah, great stuff. You know, I think personally, especially compared to world, the monsters are a step up here. Like I don't. Sorry, go on.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Oh, I want you to talk about that. I have many questions about the monsters you guys builds and a lot of things. But before we do that, I want to ask you to go to patreon.com kindafunny and YouTube.com kinda funnygames where you can get the kinda funny membership which allows you to get shows ad free. And speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors.
Greg Miller
This episode is brought to you by me, Greg Miller, Chicago. What are you doing Thursday, April 10th at 7pm the answer coming to my live show. That's right. Mrs. Miller's baby boy is coming back to Chicagoland and putting on a 90 minute one night only show live. From the Goodwin Auditorium at Benedictine University in Lyle. I'm mixing a bit of up at Noon with a bit of my best Comic Con performances with a lot of my Chicago influences. I'm calling it a Late Night with Greg Miller and it's going to offer never before heard adolescent tales, an interview with one of my favorite bands of all time, a conversation with Millie Ramsey about growing up in the Internet, Spotlight, your live questions for me, and of course, tons of fabulous video game prizes. Get your tickets now@kindafunny.com Chicago and hey Midwest people. We never do shows out there, so this is your chance to see a Greg Miller stage show. Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin. We always talk about how we love to drive as Midwest people. So hit the road for an opportunity you may never get again. This is a fundraiser for Benedictine University. That's right, my childhood best friend post school. So get your tickets now@kindafunny.com Chicago and I'll see you on April 10th. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. It's always important for us to be aware of a relationship red flags we should avoid. But what if we focused more on looking for green flags in friends and partners? If you're not sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify green flags. Actively practice them in your relationships and embody the green flag energy yourself. Some of our best friends use BetterHelp and love how helpful it can be for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself. It isn't just for those who have experienced major trauma. If you're thinking of starting therapy, give better help a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible and suited to your schedule. And it serves over 5 million people worldwide. Discover your relationship green flags with better help. Visit betterhelp.com kindafunny to get 10% off your first month. That's better help. Hp.com kindafunny betterhelp.com kind of funny.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
And we're back and I want to talk about standout monsters for you guys. Who wants to start?
Andy Cortez
Well, spoilery kind of right?
Greg Miller
I they. They were very clear on what would did you look at the review embargo thing? Because they were very clear where you have to stop talking.
Andy Cortez
Oh no, I did not. Well, I'm not far enough.
Greg Miller
Yeah, I was gonna say you didn't get so you. We already know you because I helped you fight rom po Polo Gotta slow down to say these words. Greg Miller, you gotta slow down. It's gonna happen.
Andy Cortez
I called it Ralph Ralph Pole the other night. Well that's the one that I also played in the preview.
Greg Miller
That's what I'm saying. Yeah.
Andy Cortez
We also saw a glimpse of it in the trailer a little while ago. That dude's probably my favorite. Only from a. From a visual standpoint it's a creative ass looking monster blessing. This dude just looks like a weird kind of bird crow. It's always like in a wet kind of oily landscape. But then when it gets threatened it like inflates its body and it, it's like balloons around its body that like kind of get filled with poison air.
Greg Miller
It's awesome.
Andy Cortez
And then it sticks its tail into the ground, turns the.
Greg Miller
It'll turn it all like bubbly, hot.
Andy Cortez
Oily and then the ground. So you have to like avoid that dude. But this thing looks so. It's such a creative looking dude. And again I don't remember about Monster Hunter World obviously World because I as I was playing so much of this wilds I'm just like man, I don't. I. I'd love to look back at myself playing that game back in the day. Cuz clearly I had no idea what I was doing while playing that video game. And I know that Monster Hunter the hardcore fans love seeing the big enemies or return. Right. They're always like oh this dude's coming back.
Greg Miller
Nice.
Andy Cortez
We haven't seen that one since whatever Monster Hunter that was out. And I know that's a big part of. It's kind of similar to like Final Fantasy having the. The summons. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's a very similar vibe. So yeah, that dude's probably my favorite. I think he just. It's a creative ass looking boss. But I, I love so many of these I have for mine it was a freaking blast.
Greg Miller
My favorite was New Udura though. This. Have you seen this one?
Andy Cortez
No.
Greg Miller
Dude, it's like he's like this fucking octopus guy. He's fucking sick in his armor. Is sick. Like is. I am in this game. I am so. It's funny actually I should throw that up to that's public on Blue Sky. There was another reviewer who had bumped into me. I was, you know, answered the call, whatever. SOS went up and they were playing with me and all this stuff. Oh there it is. Matthew. Matthew. Figure he bumped into me, started playing with me and I was like okay, cool. But I thought he was just a stranger. I didn't think anything. Well, I thought he was a video game reviewer. I didn't. Whatever. And all of a sudden he's like, oh, my God, I can't believe I'm playing with Greg Miller. And so anyways, he took a screenshot and put it up today, or whatever of us playing, which is. This isn't probably where you think it is. The first comment underneath it is, greg, why is your armor like that? And I look like I'm in the Hangover 4 or whatever, where it's like something went wrong and I just put through on whatever clothes and rolled out of there.
Andy Cortez
Right?
Greg Miller
Because it was like when I'm playing, right. I am especially early on. Right. You burn through armor really quick. I feel in the game. So it is stats, stats, stats. And so, like, I'm throwing whatever up. When I finally got to feeling where I was confident and I was like, New Udura was the first one where I was like, this entire outfit is so fucking sick that I need to. I was just grinding that boss over and over again to get what I want. There he is. That's my boy right there, right? So I'm out there grinding it on. It was. It was one of those that. I think. I think it was Barrett. Maybe it was Andy. Maybe it was both of you walked by and you saw me in the. The mask and everything like, oh, that's a sick mask. And it's like, he's sick as hell. So he's my guy. This is my guy.
Andy Cortez
Oh, no. You know what? I did run into this dude last night.
Greg Miller
Say hey to him.
Andy Cortez
Huh?
Greg Miller
You say, hey, what's up?
Andy Cortez
I mean, I was like, I think Greg loves you, but tentacles going. I think I did run it. Oh, yeah, you see that? Bring that image back up real quick. Barrett, if you can, please. The dude on the bottom left, Ron Popolo.
Greg Miller
That Ron Popio.
Andy Cortez
This dude just.
Greg Miller
He's off.
Andy Cortez
The way it expands and inflates is such a cool, like, his mouth look.
Greg Miller
I like that image you saw before where I. I mismatched. The top is his top, where it's like you can see the bubbly things on my shoulder when I'm hanging out with Matthew.
Andy Cortez
Yeah, I'm just. I have such a freaking fun time fighting any of these, really.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Overall, monster design is hidden for you guys.
Greg Miller
Monster design is hitting. And then because I'm back, I'm similar to you. Like, now World feels like it was a lifetime ago because we've played about 700 games since then. But it is that idea of. Even when I was playing World, I always felt like this is a little too Dragon based, you know what I mean? I feel like a narraganse. Rathalos, whatever.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Like dragons.
Greg Miller
Too many dragons. This one's white, this one's purpley black, whatever. So, like, to get here and find the variety. That's the thing about it where I was like, I shouldn't say that I was. Andy wanted me last night. I was like, hold on, I'm fighting two blanks in the sky, right? Yeah, I was like, like, he looks so different than he who looks like different than that. And it's like, I fucking love that. Like, I love that variety of it. And then again, it is the theatricality of all of it where I. Again, for world, I talk about narragante and it's because, of course I ran like him a gajillion times trying to get the best armor at the time or whatever. But it was like his fight. I remember having the lightning strikes and all sorts of crazy effects and I was like, ah, this is a really cool fight. It stands out, all of these, I feel like, for the most part have something going on with the exception of like, you know, you run into that fucking dog face guy, you know, whatever, he's just running around the jungle. But when you're getting to the major ones, I'm down in the lava, I'm fighting this guy over here in the poison. This one can cause ice. Here is the purple electricity. And like it's almost like the fucking PlayStation 4 Mark Cerny demo of like, here's all these like fucking little pieces of glass we can shatter around and do. It's like there's a whole bunch of awesome shit going on here, let alone then when I'm in the throes of these fights and I do get knocked and it's like, you know, there's verticality of the game. I get knocked and I fly off, right? And I have to whistle for my sacred. Who grabs me and we run up the side of the wall and up there. Because again, in the Monster Hunter switch game, Rise, Rise. Why can I not fucking remember that? I played it on PlayStation 5, you know, you're grappling, hooking up all that stuff. The sacred takes the place of that, right? Where that's how you're using your scaling and going. And like they have a whole bunch of different, like shortcuts and things where you're jumping off rocks that are just floating in the sky for some reason, whatever. But it's like, can you control the.
Andy Cortez
Sacred to bust out its wings? Because.
Greg Miller
And when you jump off I think you would be able.
Andy Cortez
I've played the intro a million damn times. Right. With all the different demos. Yeah, and there's that. You know, if you've played the intro demo, it happens in the first five minutes of the game where sacred does a big jump and it's like starts floating down and you could rotate the camera. It's like, wow, this looks amazing.
Greg Miller
Yeah, but.
Andy Cortez
But ever since then, I've never seen this acre do that again. And I've been dropping down like skyscraper heights in this game.
Greg Miller
CJ splits on, says hold R2, R2 on the dual.
Andy Cortez
Okay, cool.
Greg Miller
Probably not available for PC.
Andy Cortez
I'm playing on controller.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Speaking of CJ split song, CJ writes in with a super chat and says what weapons are bless and Joey Maining. And that was actually a question I wanted to extend to everybody. Sure. I'm playing dual blades. I saw people recommending dual blades before, before I even got code for the game, saying that that was pretty accessible. And I'm happy to report it is pretty accessible. I like using the dual blades, especially because of the new mechanic, the focus mode thing of highlighting the weak points. With the dual blades. He does. You do like a cool ass move of like you like, you know, connect and then you do like a spin into the air and then like spin across the body of the monster you're fighting. Feels pretty good. But then also you get a secondary weapon which you can switch out while you're riding your chocobo. This is not chocobo. Your sacred. And I got a big old hammer. Haven't used it much yet, but like I took it to the practice area and was just trying out different moves and I was like, oh, I like this thing. But I'm. I'm typically not a big weapon user in action games, but I kind of want to try it out because like you got two slots, so I might as well explore what that is. And so I'm excited to try that more.
Joey Noel
Yeah, I'm using the bow, which I think is really fun. I. It's a lot easier when there's more than one person with me because then you have somebody who's especially like trying to like dodge and create some space and not be like right up in the fight. So I need to figure out a secondary. I think I just need to like run around with a bunch of different weapons. It took me a while. I was using one of the light guns. Yeah. And then that wasn't really working either. So I. I just might need to get better.
Andy Cortez
I recorded me and Greg taking on the Zapdos last night, that's what we do. And it's just some of the coolest ever. Now, I don't know if you noticed, I was trying to pull the Zapdos to knock down the mountain, the interactive stuff. And it's. It was so close to getting this son of a. But I was trying to, like, pull aggro towards it because I really love taking advantage of those moments. You feel like such a calculated hunter or whatever, the abilities to look at a cavern above you, put down a trap right below it, have the monster get stuck in there, look up, and grapple the rock to then bring it down on the enemy. And seeing that gigantic damage number, it's. It's even more satisfying to an already insanely satisfying combat.
Greg Miller
And that's where the replayability, I think, comes in, where when you go through the first times, right, you're just trying to beat it. You're just trying to survive. When you double back and you suddenly you have traps, suddenly you have a tranq bomb, you're working on this. And then also now you're way more accustomed. You know, first hour, 25 versus 5 of. Oh, turn off my weapon, use my slinger to grab that, to yank it down on him. There's that one thing I do want to double back to because I think we were understandably glossing over it because, of course, yeah, secondary weapon, big deal. Like, that's huge for how Monster Hunter works. Like, I have been dual blade since 2007, and it's just like, I know it, I love it. I'm great at it. Right? The idea that with the sacred in battle, at any point I can hit right on the D pad and they'll ride in. I jump up on coal, I take them, I take, you know, out of the bag. I take out my light bow gun and start using that. Like, that has been not a game changer, but a very interesting one for me.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Question from Dean8149, who writes with a super chat. How does it work if you want to switch weapons? If I spend most of my playthrough with one and decide to try another, am I grinding back from zero?
Greg Miller
You're grinding. I mean, from zero. Yeah. I mean, but it's like, especially for weapons in this game, like, I don't feel I change armor like that all the time. Right, right. My dual blades, I, you know, very seldomly move to a different kind of dual blade because it is such a. Not mountain to climb. But it's your upgrading weapons Less frequently than you are armor. So I with my light bow gun. Even right now it's still just the Gen one light bogan, maybe slot two gen, second gen bow gun. But I don't feel like it's so underpowered. It's not worth it because for me it's a very different situation of. All right, cool. I have the dual blades and I'm hacking at somebody. But if somebody takes to the sky and they're up there for a while, then I'm like, well, fuck it. All right. Call the sacred. Grab the thing, do all these different.
Andy Cortez
12 damages even consider that. Yeah, that's a great call.
Greg Miller
That's what I do.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
What he does another super chat, Garrett Red and writes in and says you can update your face after launch with free customization tickets in dlc. So there you go, Greg gotta pay.
Andy Cortez
For that probably right?
Greg Miller
You said free dlc.
Andy Cortez
Free dlc.
Greg Miller
They do the thing where they put it up and I think you get the daily login bonuses too. Like there's probably something like that.
Andy Cortez
Oh, okay.
Greg Miller
I mean, I'm hypothesizing, but.
Andy Cortez
Well, that's all. I'll help you out then. You let me know whenever that happens. Also, Bear, can you bring up my hunter because he just looks so good. Like you look really cool.
Greg Miller
You look really cool.
Andy Cortez
Again, Monster Hunter, thank you for allowing me to get the mustache and the beard disconnected. Because there are two facial hair options. Plus there's not just one single thing where it's all encompassing. I can do one sort of chin strap beard. I could do one single mustache. And then my three makeup slots I used. Because the facial hair here, it probably tough to notice, but I perfected it. Blessing the facial hair.
Greg Miller
Really?
Joey Noel
Just how did you spend on this?
Andy Cortez
A long time. Because the facial hair here is only a chin strap. It ends like right here. Height wise. Right. So you have no cheek hair like I do in real life. So then I use the makeup and I went to the freckles and I used three different freckles to.
Greg Miller
Then this is why you're the man.
Andy Cortez
You can also do. You can hit not parallel, but a symmetry. So I got two separate freckles settings and put them on the cheeks to make it look like cheek hair. Otherwise they're that dark. Man, this, this character creator kicks so much.
Joey Noel
It was really fun.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
This looks like an actor is playing Andy Cortez in the Andy Cortez.
Andy Cortez
Jon Snow.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Okay.
Andy Cortez
I was gonna say it's old. It's old.
Joey Noel
Jon Snow.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
It's Jon Snow as Indy Cortez.
Andy Cortez
I was gonna say Gael Garcia Bernal, which is kind of a, you know, really tough reference that a lot of people won't understand.
Joey Noel
Oh, really?
Andy Cortez
Very famous actor?
Greg Miller
Yeah, super famous.
Andy Cortez
Oh, really?
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Okay.
Greg Miller
I don't know. No, I was nervous. I don't notice. If you showed me, maybe I would know.
Andy Cortez
Yeah, very handsome dude.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Flying penguins writes in and says blessing. Think of it like a fighting game, which I'm gonna need more context than that because if I pick it up now, doing down forward square, that's not gonna help me. Flying penguins. But I appreciate it. And then I like this one from George Corona the third, who says, how's the difficulty? A few reviews mentioned that series fans may think it's much easier and streamlined than the last few games.
Greg Miller
Yeah, I think this is a great question. You know, I woke up this morning, the Review embargo was 7am I was up long before that because of Ben, and I was just like, oh, every so often, oh, is it time? Is it time? Is it time? I want to see. This is one of those rare ones. When we moved games, not rare ones recently where when we moved gamescast to the daily schedule, one of the things I was excited about would be, oh, you can read the reviews from your peers and then jump off it. And then it's like the last three reviews I've done have been, I don't know, it's me and Paris being like, I don't know what everyone's gonna say we're recording because of whatever. So, yeah, you know, IGN gave it an eight. That's Tom Marks over there, who was Monster Hunter expert. His synopsis reads like this. Monster Hunter Wilds continues to smooth off the traditionally rough edges of the series in smart ways, reducing as much friction as possible that could get in the way of you grabbing any of its exceptionally fun weapons and planting them firmly in a monster's hide. But in that quest to make Monster Hunter more approachable, Wilds has carved a little too close to the bone in some places, trimming its challenge back so much that I barely needed to dig into its in depth equipment system at all at this time to become an apex predator. It's more flexible combat is some of the most fun I've had in the series. But like the blustering lightning storms of its gorgeous deserts, it burns brightly, but briefly until Capcom unleashes some real end game beasts to challenge. I read that and I was like, oh, sure, yeah. Like, Tom's actual review talks about the fact of I don't think I fainted once during the thing and I was like, yeah, I didn't either. I. You know, you get knocked down in a Monster Hunter game, you get dragged out by your Palica, you get dumped at your camp, you come back into battle and it wasn't till endgame stuff where it wasn't even like, I'm getting my ass kicked. It was like, ah, I didn't climb on the sacred. I didn't listen my own advice. I did this. I got poisoned and double. Whereas I think since then it's only been. I've only been down twice. So that's a legitimate complaint for sure. It's not one I share. At no point playing it was I like, I really wish I was getting my teeth kicked in right now. And I understand people want that challenge and want that thing. I do expect it to be here in the end game as I keep grinding for stuff. Tom said it wasn't for him for where he was. He still doesn't have all the armor and stuff like that. But I think it's a reasonable complaint. It's just not one of mine where that's not what Monster Hunter is. To me, Monster Hunter is the gear treadmill. It is the, you know, stuff you have with your friends. It's me jumping into Andy's game and helping him while he's looking for a dung pot or whatever. And so like, that's there. But yeah, it wasn't. It didn't. And it's. I think maybe also the different kind of gamers everybody is. That's not a downside to me. Like I was very much like, oh yeah, like they're right. I haven't been pushed to the limit. I haven't had that gear check moment, which you usually do if you go in there. You just get oh, fuck clown. Instead. It's like, I've been on the open world and oh, there's an enemy and I go to attack it, a monster. And it's like, oh, you can't. You're not high enough Hunter rank. Because they're. They're roaming the open world like, okay, I, yeah, I kind of would have preferred to try to do it, just get stomped. But not a big deal for me because again, I think it is trying to keep you going in that stream of content, that stream of water like they're talking about.
Andy Cortez
It reminds me of some of the complaints that people had of Final Fantasy 16's combat system compared to something like 7 Remake or I guess 7 Rebirth hadn't come out yet. But a very Similar thing where people were saying, yeah, it's super flashy and everything, but the elements don't matter. You know, the In Re remake and now Rebirth, you need. You need that electricity to hurt the robot things or you need the fire to go against whatever. And I have found myself kind of feeling the same thing where, you know, a fight might be a lot easier if I have the equipment that's necessary for it. Where if I'm going against the big Zapdos dragon looking dude that does electricity. I specifically for that fight, looked for armor because I knew it was the one that was the hardest for people during the demo fighting the. The Ray Dao sort of dragon bird or whatever. And I knew people had a lot of trouble with it. So I was like, all right, before I go into this, I want to make sure that I have the right armor for it. And it was a little bit easier. But then I fought it with Greg without any of that armor, and it was still, you know, just an easy time or whatever. So I would agree that. I think that I remember my time with World having a tougher time maybe just because I was way worse at the combat. But I do think this game doesn't feel as punishing for not being prepared. Knowing that, like I'm not using water bombs to quell this fire enemy or I'm not using water whatever, that it's weak to you.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Just.
Andy Cortez
You can still kind of just beat it down.
Greg Miller
And one of the interesting push and pulls from this whole conversation is doubling down on World. All right. This is the most successful Monster Hunter game that there's ever been. Isn't. Correct me if I'm wrong. Was it the most successful Capcom game ever? I forget if it was the best selling game of all time.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Yeah, I think something as far as sales success, it did do very well.
Greg Miller
Let's just talk. Let's just say it's a huge breakout hit. Right? And it is. Where do you adjust those friction points for people and how do you balance it? I think Monster Hunter sickos like me and like Tom Marks are going to go through. And I think. I don't want to talk out of school, but I think Tom said he's put 40 hours into it or whatever. Maybe more, maybe less. I'm gonna try to take.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Everybody in chat is saying, you're correct. It is Capcom's most successful game.
Greg Miller
It's that idea of like I'm having, as I said, such a great time that I'm. And I'm in high rank stuff now. Right. And again, it's more the gating of my. My hunter rank than it is the skill checks or whatever. But I'm expecting when you get the next. When they do do those updates. When they do do those drops of like I call it's the G rank and it's this that. You know what I mean? Like, there's going to be things I assume where suddenly it is like, man, I really do need to have, you know, a fire affinity on this weapon to fight this thing. Because it is. I don't miss it now. And I think one of the interesting Ruben M. Said, to be fair, I found the dashugama. I'm probably saying it wrong. I can't say it. The guy who looks like a Shar Pei that I love. Dash hug Ahama. Dash hug Hama. I said it right. All right. I found him difficult. It says Ruben. I think that there are. You have to pay attention in fights. I don't want to. I don't. I don't think Tommy was trying to say, like, put it on your brain dead. Don't pay attention. Like, like I said, I've died in the higher rank after the fact here because I fainted. Because I did. I didn't go to the right place. I rolled the wrong time. I was. You know what I mean? Like, you do need to actively be thinking about it. I think that's it. It's not brain dead. And I wouldn't even say it's easy as much as it's fine. Like you're. I feel challenged by these. But like part of the replayability of it for me right now is going back and be like, how much faster can I beat this now? Like, when I came back and helped Andy, I'm like, all right, cool. It's been 10 hours since I was here. Am I going to clown these things out super, super fast? What's going to happen? I'm gonna use traps I didn't have before, stuff like that. Like that works for me.
Andy Cortez
I was expecting more. Hey, if you're gonna fight that fire dude, you need fire resistant armor or else you're gonna be in for a bad time constantly either, you know, drinking that little beverage that kind of cools you down whenever you're fighting fire enemies or whatever. I. I've seen that taken less. I guess it's not as like extreme as I thought it would be.
Greg Miller
And I. And I do expect that to be there. I think a really fun, interesting. I didn't expect it. Parallel to this is Monster Hunter now a game that I really Enjoy the mobile version of Monster Hunter. You know, it's from Niantic. It's, you know, walk around, fight the dimple. But it's the same thing where, you know, I have what I have a gun lance that I fucking love in that game that's super high level. So I use it all the time and just beat the out of everything pretty much. Right. But then there'll be the. All right, cool. Here's the challenge for the day. Or here's the storyline challenge and it is beat them with the affinities attached to your weapon. Where suddenly I haven't cared about grinding for that, but I am like, shit, now I need to actually get on the gear treadmill to make that so I can get whatever, you know, a little unlockable in this game. I'm expecting them to do that here where of course there are special quests and daily quests and all sorts of stuff that'll pop up in there. And I'm expecting it to be like limited time things happening today. Go fight this guy that does have in like, oh, shit. I do need to actually work that out.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
So I want to wind down this conversation. But I do have more questions that I think are going to be tempting to get into long conversations about. But I want to challenge you see Nick play avowed. That's true. That is very true. No, I want to challenge you guys to give me quick fire answers to these quick fire questions that are made to be longer conversations.
Greg Miller
Before we get in there. I just want to shout out the story can do that. One thing we haven't talked about or touched on here is like, what the campaign is for this game. You know, we all joked around about like when we were talking about trying to reminisce about world and it was like, you're in a new world. Kill everything. Got it. Thanks. You're off. And that's how Monster has always been. Back to the 2007 review of like, it's an RPG without a story. They go out of their way to give you a story here that I think works and doesn't to a degree where it is like, I kind of just want to go. There was nights where I'm like, I just want to go kill and get my hunter rank up. And I'm listening to you talk about the Ancients and this that the other. No, I never would. I'm reviewing. Goddamn it. I wouldn't. And I. And I think it all. I wouldn't and I didn't and I think I was never annoyed by it. Or anything, because I think the performances are great and they do a really good job. I was shocked when it was the final quest. You know, clearly you're going to go fight this big boss or whatever. And we're like, riding our chocobos and one of the people's, like, starts reminiscing, like, well, when I first met you, and I was like, damn, this is actually hidden because, like, I went back and turned on world, right? And your quest, you're the person giving you questions, the handler, right? Like, that's all they named this poor person that was running with you, right? Whereas here you have Alma and you have Gemma, and you have these people in your world that you're like. I mean, they're not like, I don't have an attachment to them, like, fucking Ellie or anything, but I was like, oh, you're a person, and I dig this, and I like this. And there's this. I want to spoil. There's a great moment. It's like, I was like, damn, you did this really well. You know what I mean? And I think for some people it'll be skip, skip, skip. I just want to kill. Which I get. But I think it's. They need to be commended for doing this and putting it in there. And I think kind of what you're talking about in the beginning of jumping off and flying, like, really making it cinematic. I know we've all. Not all of us, many of us have played the betas, done the demos, whatever, so it's like, at this point, you kind of take it for granted, but when I turned it on that first night and was watching the big TV and it was. I was like, this fucking. This is good. You know, I mean, I love that.
Andy Cortez
You can replay the cutscenes as well. They kind of go into a library of cutscenes. I am real close to switching to like a. Maybe like the Japanese voice actors, I think. I think it's pretty bad. I. I think the story is, like, fine or whatever. I think the story can get better, but. Or has gotten better since maybe the start of the game. But I think the. I think any of the performances feel very much like. Like they were meant to be Japanese voice acted and then placeholder. It reminds me of, like, watching old anime back in the day, when all the timing of the characters were meant for Japanese voice actors. So the characters would be like, you know, the English version would be like, well, we have to go over there or else we're not going to lose. Well, then what's the point of that, you know, like everything just feels really off. And I think some of the performances are not good as well. I'm that that's the part of it where if I were to give it a score, a, you know, temporary score, where I'm at right now, I'd go like an 8 because I think the combat is so incredible. But that's the stuff that brings it down for me because I still think it's like a great video game. And I don't necessarily go to Monster Hunter expecting the most incredible narrative with amazing performances, but it's still there and it still bothers me enough to. I'm like, ah, that's just not good. I don't really like a whole lot of what's happening here. But back into gameplay and the gameplay rocks.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
So quickfire performance, how did it perform in the platform you played on? Andy?
Andy Cortez
I got a really good PC and it's incredible.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Greg.
Greg Miller
I got a really great PlayStation 5 and it was flawless. I had no slowdown, no problems. And even when I went to the Slim, because I was playing on that and Portals and everything else, like slim does not look as good as PlayStation 5. But it wasn't a go by any stretch of imagination. And like no frame drops. And I wanted to call out Jordan Midler, of course, friend of the show at VGC News. He gave it a five out of five and he called out PS5 Pro. The game runs incredibly smoothly and offers three modes. One prioritized frame rate, a balanced option, and one prioritizing resolution. For those of you with 120Hz supported monitor, the PS5 Pro offers a 40 frames per second mode which enables ray tracing and makes for a great blend of blockbuster visuals and responsive combat.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Doing well.
Joey Noel
Not anything I ever pay attention to.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
What do you play it on?
Joey Noel
I played it on PS5.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Okay, there you go.
Joey Noel
I didn't have like any major issues and I will say that it ran way better than any of the beta stuff that I played.
Andy Cortez
I had a lot of issues with that.
Greg Miller
Yeah, even when we did the Capcom demo, it was like, this isn't running well. But no, none of that here.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
And yeah, for me playing on PS5, I thought, I think it looks great, runs great. And again, like those. It has those moments of presentation where I'm like, damn, this looks good. Like I'm, I'm liking a lot of like not just, I guess graphically, but also just in terms of art direction and design and stuff. I'm like pretty impressed by it, by it this time around. Next Quick fire. Does it get anything wrong? Andy, I know you just mentioned the story. No, not the story, but I guess performance of like the English voice acting.
Andy Cortez
Yeah, I know. And just to clarify, somebody asked is. So is the story bad or is the acting bad? I think the story's fine, but I think the character writing and the performances aren't very good. What I think it gets the. Probably the most wrong is still being very overwhelmed with menus and you're going to get hit with a lot of tutorials and they're there to help you and it, it all kind of adds to the overwhelming noise, I would say.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Greg.
Greg Miller
Yeah, for me it would just be the cumbersome menus of. I'm doing this friend thing for me, trying to layer my equipment. Like I'm fairly certain at some place I had, you know, the codes we came got the pre order bonuses of outfits and eye patches and I remember seeing somewhere to apply that and now I cannot find that to save my life.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Joey.
Joey Noel
It's hard coming into somebody who's never played Monster Hunter because I understand that their Monster Hunter games are played a certain way. But coming from the outset I'm like, why don't, why can't I see a health bar for these monsters? Why can't you tell me how much I've taken.
Greg Miller
How cut up. How is he acting? Does he have the skulls floating around him?
Joey Noel
No, just give me a health bar.
Andy Cortez
Just.
Joey Noel
We've come up with the perfect way to convey that information.
Greg Miller
Sure, sure.
Joey Noel
Via a graphical overlay. And we should just have that in.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
All the games only being like six to eight hours in, I don't really have anything big. A lot of it is just the, you know, Monster Hunter is going to be Monster Hunter.
Greg Miller
Right.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Like, it is what it is. And so I think that can make the onboarding ramp a bit steep. But the more I play, the more I'm like, all right, cool. Like I, I'm understanding the gameplay basics of it so much that I can't wait to get to the place where I'm cooking and get to the place where I'm setting up my temporary tent and get to the place where I am like, all right, this is the armor I want. Now I'm gonna grind like hell to get this thing like early on even. There's some early dual blades from some of those first few monsters you fight where I'm like, oh, dang. I kind of like how that looks like, all right, cool. This is a short goal of just, I guess I gotta beat this guy. To get the. The dual blades. And I do. And I'm like, hell yeah. You know, I. With these dual blades. But yeah, it can be kind of cumbersome, a little bit overwhelming as far as what they're doing with the menus and all the stuff that they're throwing at you. But I'm hoping that by the time I get maybe some more hours in, that won't be as big of a thing for me.
Andy Cortez
I think it's fascinating to see where some of the details in customization are in this game because these tents that you're talking about bless of like putting down little campsites around. You'll be running around a random locale and you'll hear your, oh, maybe we.
Greg Miller
Should put it there.
Andy Cortez
Maybe we should set up a little camp here. And it's like, oh, cool, let's do that. And you don't just put down a camp. You can like fully customize the color of and decals and decorations and fabric of all these little tents. And you could choose like up to four additional customizations. So, like, well, let's. Let's put a little grill here. Let's put like, do I want the two seats here where we could just kind of sit down and relax, or should I get the one with a table in the middle and the four chairs around? It's very odd where they choose to like, go hard on the customization because you can also choose from a bunch of different decals and customize the size and scale of the decals. It's very. It's hilarious, but it's kind of awesome.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Last one I'll throw at you guys. Does it have the juice to last for you? Do you see yourself playing this game for months on end or do you think it's going to be a week and done?
Joey Noel
For me, that's going to be like, like pretty heavily reliant on how many people are playing for me. I. I do have the draw to keep playing by myself, but I know that that'll be exponentially higher when I have like, people that actively want to play. So once it gets out, obviously you guys, but I feel like scheduling within. Kind of funny to play games together is insanely difficult, especially off hours and stuff like that. So I'm excited to jump in with the community, run around, kill some monsters.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Oh, yeah.
Andy Cortez
I mean, I see my hour count on this being in like the 30s or 40s, you know, like, like a lot of these sort of games, you know, I don't think I'll stick around with it for the long term. And when I say long term, I mean like maybe you're still playing in December. I think. Yeah, I think there's just a lot of stuff for us to already play and it was hard for me enough to put the time that I put into it recently because of all the other previews that we kind of have going on. But yeah, I for sure see myself playing this a decent amount. Yeah, yeah.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
For me it's a tough one where because of the way we play games where we want to play things for work and play a bunch of different things, right? Like as we get into March and April, in May, in the rest of the year, honestly like things are going to pick up and get busy and so it's going to be tough for me to want to allocate my time into a game that I know is a bit more demanding as far as like, you know, Monster Hunter wants you to get deep. Monster Hunter wants you to like chase that carrot on the stick and like go on these repeated expeditions and like spend time with it and all that stuff, right? I mean I sound like a boyfriend that doesn't want to hang out. But you know, it's like I gotta.
Greg Miller
See my friends, I gotta see my.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Friends, I gotta go outside, I gotta play volleyball, I gotta play other games, right? I'm playing, I'm hooked on Magic. And that was the thing of like, you know, I just went to, to Magicon and like I had, I had the thought of on the plane ride back, you know, I booted up Magic arena and was playing and I started having flashbacks to only like two months ago where I was like, all right, I'm done with the long ass games and now flash forward and I probably put in like 100 hours into arena already, right? And like I, it's tough when there is so much, so many games that are, I guess so much, right? Like, games are big nowadays. That said like I want to get to the place of maybe the Andy thing of getting 30 hours in because I'm also, I'm also in a stage right now of wanting to understand the hype of things. You know, I played, I'm 17 hours in the outer wilds and now I understand the hype. You know, I mean there's nothing better than the feeling of understanding. So I want to get to get there with Monster Hunter. But yeah, like I'm in that fork in the road right now of not knowing if I'm going to be able to do that or you know, is something else going to come through and make me shift my time there, Gregory, for me.
Greg Miller
I'll be shocked if this isn't my most played game of the year. I don't think it's all going to come at once though. You know, we have like I said, Thursday afternoon streaming bar goes up. We're going to go from, you know, the usual streaming time until 5 and then Friday we're doing an all day marathon stream. So I think that's Twitch exclusive because it'll be so long, right, Andy? That's how it works. Yeah, but I got the night. I got the night off. You know what I mean? From dad duty.
Joey Noel
We got Jen coming in, right?
Greg Miller
Yeah, maybe. We'll see. Jen had a conversation with me where the other and I was like, are you ready? You want to jump in? She's like, I'm not mad but like, you know, the way you consumed this game for work meant that I didn't get to experience it with you. So like she's so early she feels. And I'm like that's not how it is this time. But I'm going to keep trying to sell around it.
Andy Cortez
No, baby, that's not how it was.
Greg Miller
I had to do it for my job anyways. But yeah, it's a similar thing of big review codes are coming in at the end of this week. I don't know when we're getting wwe. Like there's a million other things that are happening so I think it's going to be chip damage but I think that actually plays into I see this game being my diablo of this year where it's like I don't I think again the way they've brought down the friction of it. Like is even Monster World after playing so much Wilds jumping in like wait, what do I need to do? How do I step? Okay, okay. Right. They did the quest this way. They it's more cumbersome there than it is here. Whereas I feel like I can take a month off of this one, come back and be ready to go be jump in and like when they drop a big monster that I need to be geared up for different conversation but enough to get my feet wet and get rolling and go. So yeah, I'll be in this for long haul. Like today's Greg Way again. How Monster Hunter Wilds ruined Greg Way is about the fact that all I want to talk about was Monster Hunter but I couldn't talk about monster doing the show. But so it was like we're in this weird thing right now where Monster Hunter we can find. Yeah. But it's like, we can't play with anybody till Friday. Like, that's why. Can we throw back up my codes? Everybody friend me. Everybody do this thing right. Like, I want to play with. I want to play with you. Because that's what Monster Hunter is all about. Thank you very much.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I guess one last quick fire. And this just for Greg.
Greg Miller
Hi.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Endgame so far. Thumbs up, thumbs down, thumbs up.
Greg Miller
You know, I mean, it's doing the thing where the story's still going. There's still, you know, it's not like you're just, like, let loose. There's like, okay, wait, hold on. This is happening. We need to look into this and that. Yeah. And I'm still opening up new things and getting side quests that are opening up new things and new mantles and stuff like that. So. So it's dope. Yeah.
Joey Noel
Is this a game, Sorry. Where you. The end game is where things really.
Greg Miller
100% monster hunter. Like, that's one of the things where I think, you know, Tom's review called out how fast he got through the campaign, and I think that's by design because it always has been that when you get out of the campaign, that's really when the game begins. That's really when the game opens up. All the. It's almost the way I was describing to somebody the other day, right. Is like, everything you're doing until credits is literally like, elementary through high school. Then there's gonna be this early part of the end game where it's like, cool, you've earned. You can now max out at this Hunter rank. And then you go up to that and you do some side stuff. Then it opens up the next Hunter. That's college. And then eventually, like, all right, cool. Now you're an adult. Go off and do all this. Which is why, like, the difficulty and all that stuff and the challenge, I can't speak to because I'm still in college right now.
Joey Noel
Got it.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Thank you. Before we get out of here, I want to shout out some of the super chats. Marlene solely writes in and says, found you guys during the pandemic as a new nurse. You guys got me through a very hard time. Just wanted to send some love. Thank you so much for that, Mario.
Greg Miller
Thank you for your work, too. Thank you, Marley.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
DJ Spinatis writes in and says, I blind bought the Monster Hunter movie as I collect physical media and watched it recently and really got me interested in the games and this review also, birthday tax is. My birthday is the day after Andy's happy Birthday DJ spin.
Joey Noel
Happy birthday.
Andy Cortez
Wow.
Greg Miller
Did we.
Andy Cortez
It's your birthday month.
Joey Noel
Good.
Greg Miller
No, no, but it's not bad.
Joey Noel
Is it fun?
Greg Miller
There was a night where we sat down and Jen's like, oh, let's rent that. I was like, really? Okay. And I. And as a monster hunter guy and just a guy, I was like, all right, it's fun enough. Like, I mean, it's not. I. What do I remember about it? Oh, man. This has nothing to. Oh, wow. There's Ron Perlman and a Palico and we're on a ship. What the.
Andy Cortez
All right.
Greg Miller
I guess it is.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I got one. One last one from Ghostyard Ursa, who writes in and says, me and a friend started a YouTube streaming channel, Ghostyard Gamers. We've been doing Avowed and loving it. Would you recommend us swapping to Monster Hunter Wilds? I've been a fan since my Freedom 2. I don't know what Freedom 2 is.
Greg Miller
Monster Hunter Freedom 2. It was. It was the game. It was My first review. 2007.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Gotcha.
Greg Miller
Not my first. It was my first Monster Hunter review.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I mean, I think you should play whatever you want. Yeah, I guess it depends on how much are you liking Avowed.
Greg Miller
But you're two multiple people. It'd be fun multiplayer game to play together.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
I mean, Greg wants you to switch from Avowed to Monster.
Greg Miller
No, no. I had a great time with about. I would never tell you to stop playing a vowed like, like, no, do whatever you want to do.
Andy Cortez
But Monterey is going to be pretty massive. I would say.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do it. If you're asking the question, just do it. That means you already want to. Yeah. If you're loving a vow that much, then you wouldn't get a divorce.
Greg Miller
Yeah, get a divorce.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
That is it for Super Chats. And that is it for our review of Monster Hunter Wilds. Yeah, let's clap for ourselves.
Greg Miller
Good job, guys.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Wow.
Greg Miller
I've been waiting for this one for a long time. I love this game so much.
Blessing Addie Oye Jr.
Of course, this has been the Kinda Funny Gamescast. Each and every weekday we get together and talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics in video games. Live on YouTube, Twitch and on podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, support us with the Kinda Funny membership on Patreon or YouTube to get all of our shows ad free, watch us record them live and get a daily exclusive show. You can catch Today's KFCD on YouTube or podcast services and know that until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve.
Podcast Information:
In this episode, the Kinda Funny crew conducts an in-depth review of "Monster Hunter Wilds," exploring its gameplay mechanics, features, and overall impact within the Monster Hunter franchise. Hosted by Blessing Adeoye Jr., Joey Noel, Greg Miller, and Andy Cortez, the discussion is enriched with personal experiences, audience interactions, and thoughtful critiques.
The episode begins with Blessing Adeoye Jr. welcoming listeners and introducing the co-hosts, including WWE superstar Greg Miller and Corey Cortez, also known as Andy Cortez. The hosts exchange greetings, setting a friendly and engaging tone for the discussion.
Blessing [00:00]: “Foreign yo, what's up? Welcome to Kinda Funny Gamescast for Monday, February 24, 2025...”
This brief introduction smoothly transitions into the main topic, effectively bypassing advertisements and non-content sections to focus on the review.
Blessing provides an overview of "Monster Hunter Wilds," highlighting key elements drawn from the game's official description. The game centers on protecting the ecosystem by hunting monsters, crafting powerful weapons and armor, and unraveling the mysteries of new lands. The dynamic environments and the balance between harsh and vibrant landscapes are emphasized as standout features.
Blessing [04:06]: “Experience the most evolved action and improved immersion in any Monster Hunter to date.”
Greg builds on this by comparing "Wilds" to previous entries like "Monster Hunter World" and "Monster Hunter Freedom Unite," praising Capcom for refining the series based on fan feedback.
Greg [04:30]: “Monster Hunter wilds is a 9.5 out of 10. I think this is an amazing game...”
Greg expresses immense enthusiasm for "Monster Hunter Wilds," rating it 9.5 out of 10 and calling it one of his most passionate reviews. He appreciates the game's ability to engage players deeply, even outside of active gameplay sessions.
Greg [04:30]: “...this is the most passionate I've been about a video game in a while...”
He draws parallels between "Wilds" and "Monster Hunter World," noting how "Wilds" builds upon and refines the foundation laid by its predecessor, making it more approachable without sacrificing the depth that long-time fans cherish.
Andy highlights the game's combat fluidity and innovative mechanics, such as the weak point detection system, which enhances the rhythm and strategy of battles. He praises the visual design and monster creativity, particularly admiring bosses like Ralph Pole.
Andy [10:02]: “...I think there's a lot of friction in this game. I think in modern standards...”
Andy also discusses the game's menu systems, acknowledging their complexity but recognizing the effort to streamline them for a better user experience.
Joey, new to the Monster Hunter series, shares his initial challenges with the game's mechanics and menu complexity. Despite feeling overwhelmed, he is optimistic about the game's multiplayer aspects and looks forward to cooperative play enhancing his experience.
Joey [08:27]: “I'm having a really great time. This is my first dive into Monster Hunter...”
The hosts discuss how "Monster Hunter Wilds" offers dynamic environments that evolve in real-time, adding depth to exploration and combat. The improved combat mechanics, especially the frictionless feel Greg mentions, make battles more immersive and engaging.
Greg [21:37]: “I think they've listened to the audience that are people like me that were screaming for X, Y, And Z...”
Greg praises the addition of AI companions that assist solo players, bridging the gap for those without immediate multiplayer partners. This feature ensures that the game remains enjoyable even when playing alone, enhancing accessibility.
Greg [22:35]: “Anytime you want. Anytime you want...”
Andy and Blessing delve into the game's enhanced customization options, allowing players to tailor their equipment and camp setups more intricately. The ability to customize tents and gear adds a personal touch, enriching the overall gameplay experience.
Andy [26:07]: “...the sacred takes the place of that, right.”
Both Andy and Joey highlight the game's extensive menu systems as a potential hurdle for new players. While the combat and core mechanics are praised, the onboarding process with numerous menus and tutorials can be daunting.
Joey [57:51]: “Just give me a health bar.”
Andy critiques the English voice acting and the story's execution, comparing it unfavorably to native Japanese performances. He feels that the narrative elements sometimes detract from the immersive experience, suggesting room for improvement in character interactions and voice work.
Andy [35:22]: “I think the story can get better, but...”
Throughout the episode, the hosts engage with audience questions submitted via Super Chats, addressing topics ranging from weapon switching mechanics to character customization post-launch.
Dean8149 [40:59]: Asks about weapon switching progression. Greg [41:09]: “You're grinding. I mean, from zero. Yeah. I mean, but it's like...”
Garrett Red [42:10]: Inquires about updating character faces with free DLC. Greg [42:19]: “They do the thing where they put it up and I think you get the daily login bonuses too.”
Flying Penguins [58:07]: Requests a health bar for monsters. Joey [58:09]: “We've come up with the perfect way to convey that information...”
These interactions add a dynamic and interactive layer to the review, making listeners feel involved and addressing common player concerns.
The hosts discuss the game's performance across different platforms, praising its smooth operation on both PlayStation 5 and high-end PCs. Greg highlights the game's frame rate options and visual fidelity, ensuring a high-quality experience for players.
Greg [55:43]: “I got a really great PlayStation 5 and it was flawless...”
Joey adds his positive experience on PS5, noting significant improvements from beta versions.
Joey [56:25]: “I didn't have like any major issues and I will say that it ran way better than any of the beta stuff...”
The discussion touches on the game's potential for long-term engagement, emphasizing the importance of multiplayer and community involvement. Greg anticipates ongoing content updates and community events that will keep the game fresh and engaging for months.
Joey [60:13]: “For me, that's going to be like, like pretty heavily reliant on how many people are playing for me...”
Andy, however, expresses a more tempered outlook, suggesting that while the game is enjoyable, his long-term commitment may wane as other interests emerge.
Andy [60:40]: “I see my hour count on this being in like the 30s or 40s...”
As the episode wraps up, the hosts summarize their experiences and address final audience questions. Greg reaffirms his enthusiasm, predicting "Monster Hunter Wilds" to be his most-played game of the year. Joey and Andy acknowledge both the game's strengths and its challenging aspects, particularly for new players.
Blessing [51:09]: “Anyways, it's been our pleasure to serve.”
The episode concludes on a positive note, celebrating the hosts' collaboration and their shared passion for the game.
"Monster Hunter Wilds" receives high praise from the Kinda Funny crew for its engaging combat, improved mechanics, and visual design. The game successfully balances approachability for newcomers with depth for veterans, though menu complexity and narrative execution present areas for improvement. The hosts remain optimistic about the game's replayability and community-driven features, anticipating long-term enjoyment through continuous content updates and multiplayer interactions.