We Played Highguard - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Summary

Kinda Funny Gamescast: "We Played High Guard" – Episode Summary

Date: January 26, 2026
Hosts: Blessing Adeoye Jr., Andy Cortez, Snowbike Mike
Episode Theme: In-depth hands-on impressions, analysis, and discussion of High Guard, a brand new PvP raid shooter, after an exclusive hands-on event in Los Angeles.

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Episode Overview

In this episode, the Kinda Funny Gamescast crew (Blessing, Andy, and Mike) break down their experience attending a hands-on preview of High Guard, a just-released surprise multiplayer shooter from Wildlight Entertainment. The team discusses gameplay, technical aspects, content plans, similarities to Apex Legends, and answers live viewer questions. The episode is characterized by their signature energetic banter and candid critical analysis.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The LA Event & First Impressions (01:05–05:22)

• The trio shares travel anecdotes—a Froyo first, funny Uber moments, and initial excitement.
• They detail how their schedule at the event led to multiple delays before they could actually play the game, highlighting the unpredictable nature of game preview events.
• Notable quote:

  "We were the first interview squad. So we were delayed quite a bit in playing the game." — Andy Cortez (04:10)

2. What is High Guard? Core Gameplay Explained (05:22–07:06)

• Blessing’s Summary: High Guard is a free-to-play, PvP "raid shooter" launching with full crossplay on PC, Xbox, and PS5.
• Two teams of three select unique "wardens" (characters with hero abilities), pick customizable bases, and then alternate defending and raiding bases across several structured phases:
  1. Base Reinforcement (à la Rainbow Six Siege)
  2. Open Map Looting/Harvesing (for gear, weapons, resources)
  3. Fight for the Shield Breaker (capture-the-flag style, to enable a base raid)
  4. Raid (Search-and-Destroy Mode) (plant bombs, destroy bases)
• Matches last 8–30 minutes and loop if neither team destroys a base.
• Notable quote:

  "High Guard is a free to play PvP raid shooter ... the match happens in phases... matches can last anywhere from around 8 minutes to around 30 minutes." — Blessing (05:26–07:06)

3. First Reactions: What’s It Like to Play? (07:09–09:19)

• Mike: “It is something different, it is unique. … it’s Apex Legends at its core … if you like Apex, you’ll probably like this.”
• Andy: The team intended a shadow drop, but TGA exposure changed plans. Wildlight (the devs) are excited and better prepared for content rollouts than they were with Apex Legends.
• Notable moment:
  • The entire core Respawn/Apex development team now at Wildlight.
  • “We launched Apex and then we're like, shit, we don’t have any content to follow it up with… we're launching an awesome game and we have a lot of content launching with it.” — Andy (09:19)

4. Live Service Plans & Content (10:34–11:19)

• At launch: 5 large maps, 6 bases, 8 wardens, mounts, 10 weapons, 3 raid tools, mods, 44 launch cosmetics.
• Full year of post-launch content in development: adding free new maps, bases, wardens, modes, weapons, and loot every two months (split into two “episodes” per cycle).
• All gameplay content is free; microtransactions are for cosmetics only (no loot boxes, no RNG).

5. Apex Legends Comparisons (11:19–19:50)

• The game is designed by former Apex Legends developers and is intentionally familiar—gunplay, time-to-kill, and movement all evoke Apex.
• Mike: "It feels like Apex Legends. The gunplay is like Apex Legends. ... If you like Apex or if you're ... bad at Apex, I would be mindful of that."
• Blessing: The "wardens" are very Apex/Overwatch—one even has a Bloodhound-like scan.
• Notable quote:

  "If you didn’t tell me this was a different studio, I’d think Respawn made this game." — Blessing (15:59)

6. Unique Mechanics: Mounts, Bases, and Loot System (13:24–31:14)

• Mounts: Adds fast, fluid movement (horses, bears, panthers); getting shot off puts mount in cooldown.
• Bases: Multiple base layouts, chosen by each team, modularly placed at either end of a “large middle” map. Reinforcing/destructible walls adds Rainbow Six tactics.
• Looting/Shopkeeper: Between rounds, 2 mins to loot/harvest. “Vesper” resource spent at vendor (Flynn). Weapons can't be upgraded in-place; must buy new ones.
• Health auto-regenerates; shields are collected and carry over after death.
• Notable moment:

  “It’s almost like if Apex Legends just kept creating different modes to see what stuck.” — Mike (20:17)

7. Match Flow, Modes, and Replayability (31:35–29:02, 35:16–53:21)

• Each match unfolds:
  1. Warden and base selection
  2. Base setup/reinforcement (like Rainbow Six Siege)
  3. Open map looting phase (no PvE enemies—just looting and/or chance encounters with the other team)
  4. Shield Breaker (sword) fight and chase (mounts play big role here, has CTF/Halo vibes)
  5. Raiding/search-and-destroy phase
• Discussion on whether matches/flow feel repetitive; concern about long-term variety (no guarantee of additional modes immediately, but future roadmap teases more teams per map etc.)
• Notable quote:

  "I don't know if I see myself playing this for like a full year, right? ... The matches were more similar than they were different." — Blessing (25:09)

8. Monetization, Ranking, and Accessibility (26:31–57:27)

• All gameplay-affecting content (wardens, maps, bases, modes) will always be free.
• Cosmetics only—no pay-to-win, no loot boxes.
• New content, ranked/competitive mode added two weeks post-launch to help with matchmaking/skill balance.
• Major concern: skill gaps and potential for game to become “un-fun” for casuals as dedicated players dominate (echoing worries seen in Wild Gate, Apex, etc.).
• Notable quote:

  “…The smartest move is not to try to replace the big battle royales … but if you can make something different that feels good enough—this feels great." — Andy (29:02)

9. Dev Team, Indie Status, and Critical Perspective (54:08–63:14)

• Wildlight is an independent, 100-person team (no external publisher, self-funded).
• The crew commends the ambition:

  "This is an independent team that is putting out something that is not an IP… new and fresh… People have been dunking on this game … this really does not deserve the amount of dunking this is." — Blessing (54:28)

• Devs frustrated by unfair negativity after the game's TGA debut and radio silence (was initially meant to be a shadow drop).
• The team is confident High Guard will find its niche, but hasn't over-promised; it’s designed to “fit in your rotation,” not be your forever game.

10. Closing Thoughts (63:31–End)

• All hosts eager to play more and stream the game on launch day.
• Blessing is especially interested to see how the broader community responds after the negative pre-launch buzz.
• “[High Guard] is free to play. Make your own opinions, play it, see if you like it.” — Mike (63:31)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "If you didn’t tell me this was a different studio, I’d think Respawn made this game." — Blessing (15:59)
• "All core gameplay content, including new maps, bases, wardens, and modes will always be free." — Blessing (63:00)
• "We think of this game as being an awesome game to fill out your rotation. ... We want to be slid into the rotation, not your forever game." — Mike (27:51)
• "We are so planned and prepped... as soon as we finished kind of the core stuff, we immediately started working on other things. So we have a lot of stuff... ready to go." — Andy (10:04)
• "The ping system is the best in a multiplayer shooter. In fact, I believe the person that made the ping system for Apex also made the ping system for this game." — Blessing (29:33)
• "It's Apex at its core... feels like four different multiplayer modes pull into one big [game]." — Andy (14:14)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

01:05 – 05:22 | LA trip stories, delays, event setup
05:22 – 07:06 | Blessing’s "What is High Guard?" game summary
07:09 – 09:19 | Initial reactions, TGA story, dev team's background
10:34 – 12:21 | Content at launch & live service roadmap
13:24 – 13:49 | Mount mechanics and strategy
15:59 – 18:46 | Apex Legends comparison, character design
25:09 – 26:46 | Replayability and concerns about mode variety
29:33 – 31:14 | Ping system, Apex DNA in core mechanics
35:16 – 38:13 | Detailed match flow: phase-by-phase gameplay
43:32 – 45:59 | Looting system, shopkeeper, health/shield mechanics
54:08 – 55:17 | Indie studio status, handling post-TGA negativity
63:31 – 64:23 | Final verdict, setup for stream/playthrough

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Conclusion & Recommendations

• High Guard is a solid, unique entry into the multiplayer hero shooter space—and may appeal strongly to those who enjoyed early Apex Legends and are looking for something familiar, yet fresh.
• The Kinda Funny crew recommends giving it a try because it does enough differently and launches with a good content foundation and strong live service roadmap.
• The game is not expected to be anyone’s “forever” game, but well-placed as a change-of-pace title for group nights or competitive variety.
• Concerns remain about long-term diversity and skill gap, but optimism remains high due to developer preparation and enthusiasm.
• Closing sentiment: "Make your own opinions, play it, see if you like it."

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End of summary—see episode and live streams for gameplay footage and more in-depth questions!

Transcript

[A]

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[B]

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[C]

If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows go to patreon.com kindafunny.

[D]

Yo, what's up? Welcome to Kinda Funny Gamescast for Monday, January 26, 2026. I'm one of your hosts. Blessing. Adio Yea Junior. Joining me is the master of hype, Snowbike Mike Blessing.

[C]

My man. Happy Monday.

[D]

Happy Monday.

[C]

Great to start the week off with your smiling face but also great to be on this gamescast. Yeah. Because we get to talk about a game but we also get to talk a little about a trip that you and I and Andy had. Now much fun we had together.

[D]

Yeah. Of course we're also joined by Nitro Rifle AKA Andy Cortez Idol.

[A]

So, so many cookies, man.

[C]

Where were you pounding cookies at there

[A]

at the event, man.

[D]

Oh yeah. Talk about the things Mike was saying when we were down there cuz. Well we went to get frozen yogurt.

[A]

Never had froyo before. A little bit intimidated. Somebody said in my comments Froyo is possibly the least intimidating high school employee.

[C]

Just stunned looking at me.

[D]

I stunned hearing it. I love Mike cuz Mike can make conversation with anybody. Yeah, like Mike will find the thing to make conversation about. And for some reason at the Froyo place, it was Mike telling the cashier that he was intimidated.

[A]

First time meeting him.

[D]

It was his first time meeting froyo.

[A]

Intimidated.

[D]

What was the thing he said earlier out loud? You're in the Uber. We didn't, we hadn't even started the trip yet.

[C]

How about the Uber driver with GTA 6?

[D]

I mean that was crazy. That was, that was a really fun.

[C]

That was crazy.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

We were on the way to the airport to go down to LA to play high guard, which we're going to talk about this episode. And on the way I'm sitting in the front seat, I'm like you know, texting somebody and Mike sees me and he's like Mike's like, my phone has that.

[C]

I started to try it.

[D]

Mike's like, oh, you see that? That's interesting. He's, he's drawing on his phone and just making words.

[A]

Blessing John on his keyboard typing out stuff.

[D]

And we, we're like, yeah. What do you mean? He's like, yeah, like he's just drawing on his keyboard and it's making words and it's like. But you mean swipe text. Swipe texting. It's been around for a very long time.

[A]

Shocking real. So in a 24 hour period had never heard or seen a swipe text.

[C]

Never once.

[A]

And then also ate froyo for the first time.

[D]

Crazy, crazy. 24 hours.

[A]

That's an all timer.

[D]

But this episode is not about the froyo. It is about us talking about a game that a lot of us had many questions about called High Guard. Of course. Super chat in if you want to ask us your questions about High Guard. The three of us got to go down to LA to check it out. Of course. Super chat in to YouTube.com kind of funny games. Also shout out to our Patreon producers over on patreon.com kind of funny Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney the Psalm Twining for now, let's begin with topic of the show. We went down to LA last Wednesday, Tuesday, Wednesday we went. We spent the day playing High Guard, of course. Like I said, super chat in with your questions because I know y' all got questions now. We got to the event, they showed us an overview trailer that should be out now. Of course we're recording this live. 10am is when the game went live to play. Theoretically I'm not checked because we're live right now doing this. They showed us the overview trailer. They let us interview people who worked on the game and then eventually we got hands on on the game.

[A]

It took a while.

[D]

It kind of took us a while to get hands on on the game

[C]

with the interview team. We had questions to fire off. We were digging.

[A]

We were the first interview squad. So we were delayed quite a bit in playing the game.

[D]

Yeah, it was one of those ones where we sat down at the stations like they showed everybody the overview trailer. We sit down at the stations, we're like, all right, let's do the tutorial. We finish the tutorial, we start queuing up for our first game and then we somebody comes up to us and they're like, oh, hey guys, you actually have the interview to go do. And we're like, oh, all right everybody. We're about to play the game. We're the first interview. Like, we don't even have hands on.

[A]

We're ready to play the game. Everybody's playing the game at 10, 4, 40. And Greg texted me at one something. So how's high Guard? I was like, I don't know. We're about to play right now.

[D]

Yes. Because we did really. Which were really good interviews, by the way. We got a lot of good questions in a lot of information which we'll talk about. But yeah, we then get back and we're like, all right, time to play the game. We queue up, we start the match, and then immediately somebody comes up and they're like, oh, hey guys, there's the group interview now. So, like, everybody's gonna go over here.

[A]

You're gonna want to be there.

[D]

You're gonna want to be there. They're gonna talk about the road map for the game.

[A]

Mike. Mike looks at me, goes, we're not going to that. And I was like, no, we go, Mike, we gotta go.

[D]

And so we did that. Eventually. We got to finally play High Guard and we got to play quite a few hours of it. So I'm going to start off answering the first question.

[C]

Oh, okay. Kick us off, big dog.

[D]

Which is what is High Guard?

[C]

What the heck is High Guard?

[D]

I wrote down blessing summary. I want you guys, if I miss anything here, you can fill in the gas.

[C]

What is a PvP raid shooter?

[D]

What is a PvP raid shooter? So what is High Guard? This is what I've written down. High Guard is a free to free to play PvP raid shooter, available now on PC, Xbox and PS5 with full crossplay. Two teams of three face off. You choose wardens with special abilities akin to legends and Apex Legends. And you choose a base as well. The goal of the game is to defend your base while successfully raiding the enemy base. The match happens in phases. Phase one, after you choose your wardens and base, the match starts with you reinforcing your base a la Rainbow six Siege.

[C]

Nice.

[D]

Phase two, you go into the map and loot and harvest resources. You're looking for shields, better guns and other resources during this time.

[A]

You got two minutes on that one.

[D]

You got two minutes to do that. You could also run into the enemy team during this time, right. And get into skirmishes. That's phase two. Phase three, the shield breaker forms somewhere in the map. The shield breaker looks like a sword. Like a magic sword, essentially.

[C]

Yep.

[D]

The game becomes a capture the flag style battle for the shield breaker to take it to the enemy's base and infiltrate their base. Once a base has been infiltrated, that starts the next phase. Phase four is basically search and destroy. At the infiltrated base, your goal is to plant bombs and destroy that base. If you do, you win the game. If you fail that loop, speak that loop begins again. Until a base has been successfully rated, matches can last anywhere from around 8 minutes to around 30 minutes. Is there anything I missed there?

[A]

Nailed it.

[C]

Well done.

[A]

Nailed it.

[D]

Very well done.

[C]

Great job.

[A]

Bless.

[D]

Oh yeah. Mike Howard.

[C]

Yes, Bless.

[D]

Where do you want to start in talking about High Guard?

[C]

Well, I think you did so well at describing the game. I'll probably talk about my experience with it because it is something different, it is unique. It is a lot of different pieces, a lot of genres into a pot that is all stirred together and surprisingly comes out pretty fun. I think a lot of us had some trepidation going into this. You know, after a big end of the TGA announcement, into a month of silence, a lot of people said, is this game going to be any good? What's going on with this game? And after playing it, I'm surprised. It's a good game. It's a really fun time and I'm excited to dive a little bit deeper in there with you guys. I think my big one for the fans to know about because as you read that out, there's a lot of cool moments within the matches that will happen. But at its core, it's Apex Legends. It feels like Apex Legends. It moves like Apex Legends. The gunplay is like Apex Legends. I would even go as far to say the time to kill is very similar to Apex Legends. So I would just say like for people out there, if you like Apex Legends or if you're like, ooh, I'm really bad at Apex Legends, I would be mindful of that at the, at the beginning of it all.

[A]

Well, one of the things you mentioned Talking about post TGAs, they had told us this was always meant to be a shadow drop. There was never supposed to be information about this game until we just dropped it. Maybe they would have done a tweet or some bullshit, but nobody would have had any record or knowledge that this game existed or that this team was working on this surprise, out of nowhere video game. And then Jeff Keeley approached them and said, I would love, I played this, I really want to do this at the game Awards. Can we have it for the game awards? And they were kind of, you know, given this situation of that's a really good opportunity, like, damn, that doesn't really come around a whole lot. Yeah, let's do it. But marketing and stuff just wasn't planned post tga. So that's why a lot of radio silence happened. One thing I'm very, very excited about was their excitement about content rollout.

[D]

Yep.

[A]

How stoked they are for the future of this. Because this is pretty much what seemed like all of the core respawn team that created Apex Legends and them being a live service game and them saying that's their first live service game when they launched Apex. And it seemed like every dev had the same kind of thing to say from. From Wildlight, where they all said, we launched Apex. And then we're like, shit, we don't have any content to follow it up with. We. We launched this game and it was like, wow, big, massive, awesome success. And then a month and a half in, people are like, where, hey, is that y' all doing more stuff with it?

[D]

Yeah, where are the updates?

[A]

And the team was like, shit, we gotta make stuff for this video game. And the amount of excitement that they all had that, man, we are so planned and prepped. We're launching an awesome game that is really, really fun to play. And. And we have a lot of content launching with it. Eight wardens, five maps, four whatever's, you know, base selections or whatever. And then here is going to be our massive content rollout. And it's so like, they're like, as soon as we finish kind of the core stuff, we immediately started working on other things. So we have a lot of stuff in the sort of timeline ready to go for this video game, which is really, really cool.

[C]

Yeah. You can tell we're kind of in, like the generation two of teams developing live service games. Right. Like, this is clearly a team that has done live service. They've learned a lot from it and now they're even better for that on the second time around. It is exciting, Andy, when you hear about that. But it is cool to think, like, you know, you saw Halo Infinite launch and what happened there with like, hey, we had no content afterwards. Now we're getting the teams of like, oh, we've been there, done that. We're prepared this time. Which is cool, right?

[D]

Yeah. To break down a little bit of that, because I have here some of the. Some of the factoids. This comes from the press release at launch. The game features a wide array of content. You got five large scale maps, six distinct bases, eight wardens. The wardens are, like, I mentioned, are kind of like your legends, your heroes, your characters that you're choosing. You got three mount types, which we'll talk about mounts later. You got 10 weapons, three raid tools, 11 weapon and raid tool mods, and a wide range of lootable items. And then that's just at launch. As far as long term play, this is what the press release says. Wildlife brings decades of experience operating live service shooters at scale, applying those lessons to highguards launch and beyond. With a full year of post launch content already deep in development, HighGuards Live service is built around episodes each lasting roughly two months and split into two parts, with new core content arriving each month throughout 2026, including content such as maps, bases, modes, wardens, weapons, mounts, raid tools and additional loot items. Core gameplay content, including new maps, bases, wardens and modes will always be free, delivered through regular updates with the first wave arriving in two weeks following launch. All in game purchases are cosmetic only, direct purchase only with no effect on gameplay and no loot boxes or RNG. All players receive the episode one war chest free forever featuring 44 items including 11 legendary skins and emotes for wardens, weapons and mounts.

[A]

They really want to do another Apex. This is all so much of the core Apex team mentioning how much fun they had with all the legends over there and now the Wardens over here and creating lore and creating this universe around, around their heroes that is going to come along with, you know, these really rare cool legendary skins. I wonder if they'll do those really rare artifacts in Apex. Remember when you pulled one one time, Mike and everybody. Yeah, the heirlooms. Everybody got mad at Mike for pulling one. He had no idea like how rare. Yeah, I, I think this game was again, shockingly very, very good even. It, it was funny hearing some of the other press talk during the interviews and going, hey, I just played a couple matches actually. Really cool and fun. Like I think this game controls great. Obviously it's feels very, very familiar with Apex. Swapping to the mount mid battle feels so good and smooth and fluid. Quick and very fluid. Yeah. None of it feels kind of like a pain unless you're just hitting the wrong buttons. There are a lot of moments where I was like just flubbing the button I was trying to hit.

[C]

I like the punishment of like when you get shot off your mount as well. Like there's a big deal of like if an enemy team comes by you, you shoot them off their mount. That mount goes into cooldown, right? Because it is so fast and fluid to jump on your mount, go a thousand miles an hour, jump off, do your thing get back on it.

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

But when you are in battle and, like, you see someone fly by, it's like, hey, if you take down that mount, they're in trouble now. They're on their feet and you're going to collapse on them, which is cool.

[A]

I think my favorite matches were the ones that. Where we took it to the distance. And the way the game works is the game is all about destroying the enemy's base. It's called. They're calling it a raid shooter for that reason. They were like, what kind of. Can we kind of find a genre thing to call this? Because it's not. It's not quite capture the flag. It's not quite search and destroy. It's a lot of different meldings of different things.

[D]

It feels like four different multiplayer modes pull into one big.

[A]

Yeah. And so the idea of having to destroy the enemy base and, you know, getting this, the big sword that will eventually start the raid and start the next phase of the game. Right. Either a raid for you, unless they take the sword to your base, then it's a raid for them. Right. And then you go into defense mode. But some. The most fun matches that we had were the ones that went the distance and the ones that you never quite felt out of the fight, even if it was a crazy score. And whenever you start the raid, that's going to do a certain amount of damage to your base. And then if you successfully plant a bomb at either of the sites, that's going to do extra damage. But if the enemy defends well enough and diffuses all the time, and then time runs out, then you, as the attacking team, take damage to your base. And we had a stalemate going on a couple of times where every. Where both teams were consistently diffusing and defending perfectly.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And then the raid would end, and it's like, all right, go back there and loot. We're starting the new. You know, fix up your base if you need to. Here's a minute there. Here's a minute to go find out in the world, get more money, upgrade your. Upgrade your weapon or buy a new weapon. Buy, you know, refill your shields, whatever. And I really loved the pacing of it. It felt so cool to like, oh, we just. Let's take a little breath. We just kicked ass on that defense. If we would have let them plant and succeed, that would have been the game. But we successfully defended. Now we're into this next phase. We're back at it again, and it's. We only have 10 health each out of 100 and it's a tie and hopefully we can get this done. I think the game was like super well paced out. I really enjoyed it.

[D]

I want to bring in a super chat from Openness prime who says this game looks like it'll feel very Apex Legendsy. Does it seem more promising than Concord? Is there a battle royale, team deathmatch, other modes and this? We're all coming with my thoughts, right? One of the things. One of the first things I mentioned after we first got hands on with the game, I turned to Mike and I was like, this feels like Apex Legends 2 to me. Not in the sense that it's another battle royale. It is not a battle royale. It's not a team deathmatch. I don't think you can neatly put this into a multiplayer mode. It does feel fresh and new in that way. But I say that in the sense that it feels. You could have told me if I didn't know that this was a different studio. You could have told me that Respawn made this game and I would have been like, oh, yeah, of course they made this game. Like, that's how much this feels and flows like Apex. Whether it be the time to kill and the gunplay and how the gunplay feels, whether it be when you pick up shields and the rarity system and all that. So much of it feels akin to Apex Legends. And I'm somebody who really, really dug Apex Legends. I would say Apex is my favorite battle royale game. Probably one of my favorite multiplayer games, at least at launch. It's been a while since I. I dove in heavy into it, but I love Apex and hopping into this. This kind of restored the feeling for me. For me. I've been thinking about this game since we left.

[A]

Me too.

[D]

Where I'm kind of like, damn, I kind of want to go back and play more High Guard. And I'm not.

[A]

It's not even a kind of. For me. It's like I've been wanting to play.

[D]

Yeah. Like I've kind of been looking forward to today, for the game to open up and for us to get on stream and play more matches. Because it was fun, it was a good time. It does feel different. We can get into, I think, a bigger conversation about longevity and staying power because I have a little bit of worry there. But as far as what's here, as far as what this game is, it's really fun. As we're describing it, I know for a fact it probably sounds very complicated and confusing when you're playing it. It's not.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

When you're playing it, it's very straightforward of like, okay, cool, let's put up the things to make sure our base is fortified. All right, cool. Now we go in. Let's loot real quick. Okay, cool. Let's get the thing. Let's get the MacGuffin, the shield breaker. Take it to the enemy base. Boom. Now it's search and destroy. Like that's the game.

[A]

And they're always communicating what's happening really well to you as the player.

[D]

You're never really confused. Because I would describe this game as more fast paced and more. It's almost closer to like an arena style thing than a battle royale, like semi kind of thing. There's an energy here where it's almost like they're keeping you. They're ushering you from like kind of like an arena based mode to a next arena based mode. And so it kind of keeps the fun locked in there. I had such a good time. I love the. To the question about, you know, is this going to be. Is this. Does this seem more promising than Concord? One of my issues with Concord, and I think probably everybody's issue with Concord is that the personality and the unique characters weren't really there. Like they had characters, but they weren't. The personality didn't really resonate. Right. There's something that felt kind of basic and kind of missing when it came to the character and personality of Concord.

[A]

But at the end of the day, it was also just. It was game modes that we were very familiar with also.

[D]

Exactly. Yeah.

[A]

Team arena, shooter.

[D]

Exactly. We've been there, we've done that. I really like the wardens in this game. They remind me so much of Apex Legends, honestly, where there's even a character, the character that I kept gravitating to, to their name is Condor, I believe.

[A]

Right.

[D]

She plays just like Bloodhound. She has. You use the. The special ability. And Bloodhound in Apex has like a scan or whatever. Hers isn't a scan. Hers is that she sends out her. Her like little hawk, I think to then scout the area and let you know where players are. And I felt in this game, dude, I felt so enabled to like, you know, we're in the raid. I see Mike over there, I see Andy over there. It's like, okay, we got enemies. Boom. Let me scan real quick. All right, now we know where they're at. Where they're at. I felt like there was a use for all the different things we're using. There was also another character I Used. I want to call them flambe for some reason.

[C]

I don't know why.

[A]

Definitely not that it's not flambe because

[C]

that's the fire guy that looks like Ken.

[A]

Yes.

[D]

No, not him. Actually. Actually, that is who I should call Flambe. No, it's the guy that can, like, leap. Dist is.

[A]

And we'll Red Main right there.

[C]

Red man, the COVID Flambe.

[A]

Close.

[D]

Yeah. Yes. Red me. I don't know why I flopped me on the brain, but Red Main was the other one I was using and it was cool because with these different bases, there's one base that has, like, lava and. And so when you're using Red Main, he has. He's like the only character with the ability to jump long distances. And so it's like, okay, cool, I can now jump across the lava and get the flank on the enemies. And I think stuff like that is cool.

[C]

So, yeah, I. I like that you bring up Apex Legends. I think it's Apex Legends, when they did the arena mode, it's like as if Apex Legends, they were like, hey, just keep creating different modes. Let's see what sticks. That's how it feels.

[D]

Hell yeah. To bring in some more super chats for you, Science Dog official says it sounds like these rounds have the potential to be very long. How long did an average game last?

[A]

Yeah, the. They mentioned to us, and we experienced it as well. The. We beat Khalif's team, one team or one time in 9 minutes and 10 seconds or something because it was. We just found momentum and kind of like rolled and then we beat him another time in about 30 minutes because that one went the distance because that was one where no team was successfully ever planting. So, you know, it just went longer because nobody was successful in those raid portions. And when you're not successful, there's Then you inevitably, inevitably go back to the kind of looting and, you know, Sword, what are the shield breaker sort of phase, which is their capture the flag phase, which becomes another cool little thing. You know, the shield breaker will randomly spawn on the map somewhere and it's got a countdown. And if they get there first, who cares if they get there first? You might be able to kill them and stop them. Oh, and it becomes very CTF in that moment where you're chasing after him. You see where they're on, where they're at on the map, and it becomes like, oh, my God, get there before they could plant that thing. Because as Blessing mentioned on the ride back on the Uber on the way to the airport was that like, man, I you kind of wish that the shield breaker took like one more second maybe. It was very, very quick to just kind of walk up to the base and hit that animation and then start the raid. But they do want to get you into the raid.

[D]

They.

[A]

The devs brought up a lot when they brought up Rust a lot while they were, you know, kind of in the R and D phase of what the next game was going to be after they left Respawn. And they just loved raiding in Rust. They loved the idea of it. And apparently at one point this game had a lot kind of more different modes. And then they only ever looked forward to the rating portion. So they kind of like cut out a lot of the fat and said like, this is where the big fun of the game is to bring another super chat.

[D]

Oh, I lost it. Oh, here it is. Rogue four says, how did the overall Time to Kill feel? It felt very similar to Apex for me. The thing that I will say is that I think the game does a cool thing with how they level up gear and how gear progression goes overall through the match. Because like we mentioned, right, all right, in nine minutes we beat cause team that one time. And so Gear during that game never really got that high because when whenever the game resets back to like, all right, we tried to raid, Boom, we failed a raid. All right, cool. Reset. Go. The rarity shifts up a level and so it goes from basic to blue to purple to gold being the highest. And once you get to that higher to those higher levels, that's when like the shields really start to fill up or whatever. But Time to Kill felt right to me. Again, it felt like Apex maybe even slightly faster than Apex. But I think there's something here where because it's more arena based as opposed to being battle royale, it doesn't feel as bad as Apex. For Apex, it's like, damn, all right, I try to kill that person. It took forever to kill them. Now I'm dead. And now that's the game.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Here it's like, all right, well I'm gonna get another chance. Like, here you respawn, you go again. And so I think that makes the Time to Kill feel even better than it did for in Apex.

[A]

For me, the respawning felt a lot. Just generally respawning in games. Compared to, you know, the kind of quick sudden defeat of battle royales, that could be a pretty defeating feeling. And there were just so many times where we were all playing and I. Even if we were getting Our asses whooped. I still never felt out of it because you were going to come back and you may find a cool relic or upgrade that might kind of change the game where suddenly your ultimate is charging much faster than it was at a certain point or you are generating your tactical ability way faster now. I. I don't know, man. It was definitely surprising with how much I enjoyed it. And then kind of once I got into the. The Apex feeling and remembered like, all right, you don't ads when you're close up. Once you kind of got back into that rhythm, I. I had a freaking blast with it.

[D]

Yeah. I keep. So I also, I also keep saying arena and I feel like I'm misusing it. But when I say arena, I just mean fast paced and you're respawning. Not necessarily. It's like a closed environment, like an arena game usually is. AK Dot writes in and says, did you get any hints to feature events slash more modes? They talked a lot about Roadmap, but they didn't really talk about modes. Which comes back to my longevity thing where my only worry with this game is that I had fun. I don't know if I see myself playing this for like a full year or whatever. Right. Like, I'm definitely here in the moment.

[A]

Right.

[D]

I'm definitely. I can't wait to finish this and then get to the stream and play. I'm probably going to play more throughout this week. Next week I want to see what that first chapter looks like, that first or episode looks like. But I think when I look at this compared to Apex or even Overwatch. Right. Overwatch has the luxury of having different modes and so there's more variety there from game to game as far as what you're doing. And the maps really, you know, have variety there as well. And then Battle Royale is like every time you jump in, the game feels different, at least for me.

[A]

Right.

[D]

As far as the encounters you're getting into how they evolve and do all that, the one thing I'll say to High Guard against it is that I felt like the matches were more similar than they were different. Like, I didn't. I. I think there were encounters that felt fresh. There were definitely like times where it's like, oh, okay, we're locked in, we're communicating. Damn, we're doing good. I don't know if I would say though that like there was any match that felt like super different from two matches ago. I think the game flow kind of feels similar a lot.

[C]

I'm right there with you. On that one. Bless. I think future stuff, right. We spoke with the dev team and they talked about having multiple teams on the map and I think that's probably as weird as you will see in the first year or two, right? I mean, at its core, you are seeing if you're watching on screen or if you are playing when you finish listening to this, that is the core of the game. Right. I think it's hard to probably Jenga set a whole new game mode into this, but I would say I bet you'll see something later on. Maybe a capture the flag. Maybe it is four teams on this screen instead of just two, but they have a little bit of wiggle room to play. But I do think that they are kind of trapped into this game mode that they have right now for sure.

[A]

Yeah, I. I guess for me, the. The game mode still felt fresh enough to where I didn't feel like I was kind of like, all right, I wish there was another game mode here. But I. I also just love the idea of generally with a lot of multiplayer games of like, I want to get as good as I can at this one thing. And yeah, instead of kind of being, you know, jack of all trades, the. I. I will say though that as far as longevity goes, I think this game is different enough and packed with enough content for the future, at least based on what they were telling us and how confident they were with that that I. If this game succeeds and does well and has an average of, you know, 20 to 50K on Steam or whatever, and that's not counting consoles, because this game is available free to play everywhere, then I could. I could see this game kind of being this niche in their. In the rotation of games they brought up a lot about. You know, we. We think of this game as being an awesome game to kind of fill out your rotation.

[C]

Yeah, that's the big one to speak on is like we're seeing a lot more devs become way more aware and understanding just like the players are of like, it is very tough to become your forever game now. You already have your forever game. We are trying not to be that. Take over your forever game. We want to be slid into the rotation.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And right now you have a really good game in front of you with high guard that can be slid into your rotation. I'm confident in saying that it is fun to play, it is unique. It is something different. I don't think it's your forever game, but I do think it's like, hey, when you want to break from that Forever Game. You and your friends can definitely find a really good time with this. It actually reminds me of a game that we played last year, Wild Gate, that just does something different that is unique and fun. Wild Game was that Sea of Thieves spaceship multiplayer game. And it's like, hey, these are teams that have really figured it out of like breaking away from the extraction battle royale shooters and they're giving you something a little different. We can go, oh man, like this is fun to play, right? It's not my forever game, but I could slide this in on a Friday night. The boys are like, hey, let's get, let's play something different. Hey, let's play this game, this high guard game. Really good. Let's play, let's play that.

[A]

Yeah, I think that's the smartest move is to not try to replace the big battle royales or replace the big search and destroy. You know, when we're talking about Counter Striker Valorant, I think those markets are just so unbelievably tough to, to break into. But if you can make something different enough that feels good enough, like, and this isn't just feels good enough, this feels great. Like this is again, these, this is primarily like a lot of the, the respawn team that made Apex.

[D]

I think one of the things too, you know, one of the things I initially said is that this game feels a lot like Apex. And I can't overstate how much of a compliment that is. Like this game has the ping system from Apex. That ping system is one of the best, is the best ping system right in a, in a multiplayer shooter. This game has that. In fact, I believe the person that made the ping system for Apex also made the ping system for this game, if I heard that correctly during the interview.

[A]

Well, like, yeah, designed, you know, created the contextual ping system which was, you know, one of those sort of revolutionary things that every shooter adopts in the future. But also designed the core like mount system and the mounts are really awesome movement to get from COVID to cover and to just kind of get out of a situation if you're. Yes. You know, getting pressed a little bit.

[D]

Speaking of that, I want to bring in a super chat from Science Dog who says I often find controlling shooting from a mount is cumbersome. How is it here? We haven't talked that much about the mounts.

[A]

I. I mean it's as hard as it is to shoot on a fast moving object than that you would expect it to be. But that's not, that's more of like maybe you shouldn't be shooting on a mount. Yeah.

[D]

You should not be shooting from like

[A]

I tried a couple times and got a couple kills. But it. You're better off. Yeah. Getting off of it to shoot them.

[C]

Yeah. You're going to jump off the mount. But I will say it felt good.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I was actually surprised. It didn't feel like it was bumping all over the place. It felt like you could get a hold of it. But. Yeah. No, I don't think you're doing all of your fighting on your mount. For sure.

[D]

Well, it's the idea that the mount is for specifically when you're out in like in the. In the map.

[A]

Right.

[D]

It is. You're not using in the base or anything like that. It's when you're out in the map and you are going after the shield breaker and the shield breaker. I like it a lot because it ends up being a chase.

[A]

Right.

[D]

One team gets the shield breaker. They're fucking.

[A]

They're on their horses.

[D]

They're on their. They're on their horses and they're trying to zoom to the enemy base to break into it. And the other team. Team is chasing after them like you're in a straight up horse chase, which is really cool. There's also mechanic where if you press. I was using controller. If you press left on the D pad, it'll then teleport you back to your base so that you can now approach them from the front instead of like chase them from the back. And what happens is that.

[C]

Cool.

[D]

These people are in a rush. They're on their horses. I am now grounded with my gun. They're now big targets because they're. They're on mounts. And so it becomes a game of like, all right, I got to knock these guys off their horses. And then it turns into another skirmish encounter. I think it's paced really well in that regard. And I. I like the mounts a lot. I think they feel good to. To use on controller. I'm basically double tapping jump in order to get on my mount. It feels. It almost reminds me of Torrent in Elden Ring where it is like Spawn. Right in. All right, cool. Now we're going. And I think cosmetically they have Cool too, where it's not just horses. You can have a bear as your mount. And I stuck with that bear.

[A]

Well, I think. I think the. I think the mounts were determined by the warden you were using.

[D]

Oh, is that it?

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Oh, I always thought it was like, so.

[C]

I don't think so.

[D]

I don't think so. I think it's a cosmetic thing. Right.

[A]

I didn't see where I was.

[C]

I was riding on the panther all the time.

[A]

Oh yeah.

[D]

Even when I switched characters.

[A]

Oh, neat.

[D]

Okay.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

Yeah. And it seems like they were going to roll out new mounts as well.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Over. Over time.

[A]

Oh yeah. They. I mean, obviously they have a micro transaction plan for this in order to get cosmetics. And so not only can you get new warden skins or whatever, but mount skins will be a new thing or just mounts period. Along with, you know, when we talk about what the game will be dropping content wise, it's not just the wardens. You know, new warden here, this person's a defensive tactic tactician or whatever. This person's a more of an offensive type. The. The new maps that will also be dropping in the future along with the bases, which are their own thing. Yes. Which do we want to talk about?

[D]

I want to talk about bases and I want to talk about maps. After a word from our sponsors.

[A]

Yeah, you're right there, Don.

[B]

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[C]

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[A]

Speak English, Mom. Welcome to Ethnosync Ethnic Modification. What is this place? We help you reach your true potential. How are you feeling? It's good to be Hawaii. Hey, new girl.

[C]

Hey.

[A]

Look at what you've done to yourself. For a new plan to grow, the

[C]

seed has to die.

[A]

Slanted Rated R. Only in theaters March 13th. Side effects may occur.

[D]

Andy, tell me about them High Guard maps.

[C]

Here's what I'd like to do. Let's go through the match from the start to the. From the start to the end. That will allow us to go through each base, the maps, and what you're doing in between each thing. Because I think Blessing did a great rundown, but I think there's places we could dive a little bit deeper into.

[A]

Okay.

[D]

We're not even talking about shopkeepers. There's a shopkeeper in the game, by the way.

[C]

Let's start with the beginning. Of course you will. After you choose your wardens, which I think we've done a good job at, like, highlighting the wardens. They all have some pretty good unique abilities. I think there's a lot of abilities you've seen on different characters before in other games, but this is, like, each ability is kind of tailored towards the raid part of the gameplay, I would say, Right. Like, you have Brisbane, Red, Main, Red Mane. His goal is, like, to rip through the walls of bases on the opponent's team. You had someone, the sand lady that Andy was playing, which turns all of the walls of opponent's bases into sand. And you can traverse through the sand, which was very cool, Right? I was playing as Ken from Street Fighter, and he had awesome fire grenades. He could also rain down fire in an AOE attack.

[D]

Not literally. It's not a crossover for those listening and watching, but he did look exactly like Ken.

[C]

Like, after you choose your warden, you go into base. Base choice, right?

[A]

And the base choice is another piece of content that they can will be dropping in the future. The base choices are different. There are different themes. Whether it's like, this one's kind of desert looking, this one has like a lava kind of feel like a dungeon. And the bases, they compared them to being approximately the size of just like an arena map. If you're like playing Slayer and Halo or whatever, they're kind of that size of a little area with kind of that feel in terms of verticality or levels and three lanes, all that sort of shit. That's how the bases are kind of built. And the bases will have different sort of, I would say, architectural benefits.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And based on, like how, you know, if those. If this base you plant, if the A side plant is really, really high and the B side plant is way over there, then that might make you go, oh, well, if we're gonna go with that base, I should go with this warden then. Yeah, you know, there's a lot of like strategy that kind of will play into there. We'll see how deep that actually gets. Because at the time while we were selecting the bases, whenever you start a match, you select your warden and then you go to the base selection. I did kind of feel like we were just saying pick whatever because I didn't really care in the moment, but I feel like a metal. I feel like a metal will.

[C]

I think we were picking, hey, let's pick every single one so we could see them.

[A]

All right.

[C]

I think you will start to see there will 100% be a high competitive meta being picked there. As we spoke with the devs, like, they were talking about it, they've played so much of the game that they now are removing walls to be able to see two different bomb sites at the same times. They know what walls to reinforce as. Like, when you first play, it's going to be, hey, let me see every single, Let me see every single base there. But it was interesting. It was very mixed. It was a good mix of like Rainbow six Siege, where it was, hey, we're picking this base because it has opportunities to have part power plant A and B separated by whatever. There's walls in between that. Maybe we can remove the C site lines or we want to reinforce to be stronger. But it was awesome that each base was unique. But they all have three plant points, A and B which are your smaller plant points, and then C which is the ultimate plant point of like, if you go for the main generator off the bat, you can win right away. But it takes longer to plant, longer to the fuse, a little bit longer Defend longer to longer to explode.

[D]

And one of the things I'll add in there, right. As we're talking about the base, one of the things that we keep talking about is reinforcing the walls, kind of like Rainbow Six Siege. One of the things that we've not talked about is the destructibility and the raid tools that they have in the game, where essentially, if you're trying to raid a base, you might have a building where it is. All right. Point A is inside this building. I need to get into this building so I can plant on point A. The way you get inside that building is to blow up the wall, usually. Right. And so to do that, you can either shoot it down or you have raid tools, which could be a rocket launcher or a sledgehammer. And so for me, I always chose the rocket launcher. Boom. I'm going to blow down the wall with the rocket launcher. Now, if the wall is reinforced, it's going to take a lot more to take it down. And so instead of taking one rocket launcher missile, it might take three instead, which does matter because I believe I was starting off with two every round. And so it is this math of like, all right, what are the walls that I'm going to reinforce in order to make it a lot harder for enemies to come through this wall?

[C]

They did a great job on defense as well. So you'll notice all of the walls. A lot of the walls have windows and doors. Those close automatically when you jump through.

[D]

Yes.

[C]

Which is very cool because when you're on the defense and they're pushing in, you could really play with the attackers by jumping in and out of the windows and the doors and making them kind of follow you and do, like, the ring around the road. And I loved that.

[D]

Yes. And so is that it for bases? Should we move on to. When you get into the actual map,

[C]

every single base is designed differently. It looks different. Yeah. You will see more bases coming on the post launches.

[A]

Andy said different layouts, different entries of breaching, different. You know, you'll know that. Oh, I like picking this one because this one has one entry point here, which is good because I'm playing whatever here. There's a lot of, like, there's different strategy there that I couldn't quite see, but I know a strategy will develop.

[C]

And so it's really interesting of, like, the map is designed with two bases on either side.

[D]

Right.

[C]

Because each team is picking their own unique base that will be put in there, right?

[D]

Yeah.

[C]

So you're never matching bases unless you both decide on that. And then in the middle is a larger open open world map, large scale map.

[D]

What's the Halo map?

[C]

That's like.

[D]

Yeah, it's almost like each map is like a different blood.

[C]

Like the size of blood. Go. It's a large, big team battle map. But that has how many maps, Andy? I think there's like five or five. So every single time you'll have five

[A]

bases, four maps, I believe large middle

[C]

map that will change every single game you play.

[D]

It's kind of crazy because yeah, the maps are essential modular where like Mike just said, right. You have that middle thing which is the big map that is kind of like Blood Gulch. And then on both sides you have the bases that the players chose. And so you're getting these different iterations. So even though these numbers sound small as far as five bases, four maps, you then have so much variety with how those are kind of changing as you're picking different ones on each side.

[C]

And so as you finish up the setup of the base side of the map, then they give you two minutes to go out into the open. The large scale map, the open world we'll just call it for right now and go out and loot. You can loot. You can also resource harvest and manage resources to buy at the shopkeep. But this is where I think a lot of people would think, oh, this is where you put the AI in, right. This is where you'd have that PVE style battles. And you don't know. This is a completely quiet large scale map where you and the two teams will start to run around in different areas and you'll have the options of either looting chests which you'll see two colored chests, red and blue. Blue for shields and red for guns.

[A]

Right.

[C]

And so your goal is to either go to the marked locations on the map for more a higher population of chests, or you can go out to the smaller areas that will have chests and maybe the resource material to harvest the.

[D]

The harvest material which essentially works as currency because there's a shopkeeper that is placed around the map that you'll go to in order to buy whatever rotation of guns or shields or items. He which speaking of the Papa Piper in Super Chats writes in and says two questions. What types of guns are there and how do you acquire them in the match? And how does shield slash health slash healing work?

[A]

You start off with whatever weapons you want. There are two shoddies. I would say that day one will be filled with complaints about how Op the Paladin Shoddy is I love the power. It is an auto shotty that we got dumpstered on by a couple of times. And then once I started administering the dumpstering then it became. I was like, okay, this is a very, very broken. Very broken auto shoddy where I'm doing the Call of Duty thing. I'm sliding in and I'm just holding down left click and jumping a bunch and ducking and it's just like very, very OP. There's two shoddies. There are two SMGs. One is kind of a triple burst SMG. A three shot burst SMG. And then there are three ARs. One of them is like an AK. Another one is more similar to. It kind of reminds me of the. I'm blinking on the name of the gun in. In Valorant. But then the other one is a three point burst shot. But there's two like automatic ars.

[C]

It's almost like a certain. It's almost like Counter Strike or a. Or Valorant.

[A]

Right.

[C]

How it's laid out.

[A]

Right, Right. Yeah.

[C]

There's pistols, there's shotguns, there's assault rifles, there's. And it looks just like that when you put choose your first free loadout. It looks like that when you go to the shop of like what options he has for you to buy. But it feels very much like any other. Yeah. I don't think there's anything special coming out of the guns there.

[A]

Right. Yeah. It's kind of what you would expect. I assume they're gonna have buttload of different gun skins as well to, you know, have you have the coolest gun out there.

[D]

Big difference from Apex health. Auto regenerates.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

You don't have.

[C]

And shields.

[D]

And shield.

[C]

As long as you're picking up extra shield.

[D]

Exactly. You don't heal mid match. It Auto generates.

[A]

I love that.

[D]

Which is great. Yeah, I love that as well. And the way shields work is essentially you collect them and so it's not like an APEX where you see a blue shield and it's like all right, well I already got blue shield so I don't need this anymore. You can essentially keep hoarding shields because what happens is when you die, you then get the next shield that you have. Right. And so the higher the legendary or the higher the. I guess Rarity goes in the match. It's like, all right, we're at the gold tier of where Rarity is at. I want to keep collecting the gold. The gold shields or the gold or the purple shields or whatever.

[A]

Right.

[D]

I want that high level. And so you're going to hoard them, die, and then go on to the next one.

[A]

And how do you buy it? You use it with a. You buy stuff with a currency called Vesper. And Vesper is gained throughout the map. If you are a video watcher. You saw me mining different blue crystals.

[C]

Fortnite. Fortnite harvesting.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. You're like breaking crystals. Or if you kill the enemy, you get Vesper from them as well. And if you die, you can. While you're dead and waiting to come back after your little cooldown. At your respawn cooldown, you can buy stuff in the death menu or at various points across the map will be the vendor. I believe his name is like. I don't know. Come Alex. I have no idea.

[C]

He's got a cute pet.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

I feel like in this game his name would be Xander. I feel. I feel like he goes. You know what?

[A]

You know, he kind of does remind me of Xander from the. From Arcane. From League of Legends. Yeah. They definitely send us, like, documents with all the information.

[D]

Oh, yeah. At the bottom of the dock.

[A]

Yeah, I have, like, a lot. Flynn. Flynn. That's his name.

[C]

Thank you, Shadow.

[A]

So he's at different points around the map. And you can see a little green icon around the map to show you wherever Flynn is located. And from there, you can. You can't upgrade the weapon that you have, which is one thing I thought was odd. Maybe that's to, you know, engender more of a spontaneity, you know, sort of sense of, I'm gonna. Oh, I'll buy this new gun instead of sticking with what you kind of have. Yeah. So you can't upgrade the current weapon that you have. But every time you go see him throughout the different rounds, he'll have new, different weapons sort of at random to offer you, along with different little raid tool stuff along with different passives where. Again. Yeah. You know, if you get that legendary one that gets your ultimate back super fast, that could prove to be super beneficial. You could buy rocket ammo to then break the walls a little bit better. The rocket stuff isn't really for destroying people or. No, it was more meant for.

[D]

I never shot a rocket at a person.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

I only shot it at buildings.

[A]

Yeah. Definitely meant to, like, break walls or there's also, like, these kind of wall devices called, like, bunker busters or that. That.

[C]

That's what I. Bumper, I think. Yeah, I think it's bumper.

[A]

Yeah. Something like these ones. Thumper bumpers.

[D]

Yes.

[A]

Thumper sounds right. Thumper sounds right on a thing. That's also from Dune.

[D]

Yeah. I feel like this game just took everything from everything. Yeah, we talked about this game. I keep, I keep having to reference other games to describe this game, but it really is like, hey, we took in all these different elements from all

[C]

these different things, but they did a great job. As Blessing said and as Andy's talking about, it's like between each round we'll call it right. Between each raid, all of the chest gets upgrades, all of the vendor gets upgrades. So you'll start off with like gray to blue weapons. Then all of a sudden you're going to make the jump up to blue and purple weapons and then gold weapons by the end of the match. Which I thought they did a really good job of being mindful of that. Right. You'll never feel like, oh, I'm really outgunned here because every round you're going to kind of have a pause of like, hey, go out and reload and you'll have better guns for the next round. And that is one thing I wanted to talk about. It's like this loot section here is very quiet. There's two minutes in this like large scale map can be very quiet and silent. Or of course you make your own adventure. Right. Like when there's no NPCs on the map, it is you and the other team, which is only three people. The map is very large. You will either run into them and hide or engage or you'll be on the complete opposite side of the map and never see them. And I think it's good and bad. I think it's good that I enjoyed Luton and getting ready.

[D]

Remind me about a Royale.

[C]

It was just very quiet. It was kind of boring.

[A]

Yeah, I don't, I disagree. I know like Mike is definitely the. I want all the action all the time. And the amount of times I looked at the map and saw Mike was 242 meters away. So I'm fighting and like, okay. God damn it. He's soloing like Khalif over there. You were alternate pretty good at one point. I, I don't mind that calm before the storm because I know things are going to get super intense.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And it kind of allow me time to think on what we failed at in the last thing.

[D]

And you know, I like it because it, it creates a moment for strategy around the shield breaker because like you mentioned, you have two minutes and then in two minutes the shield breaker is going to form and so you're going to be, want to be the first team to grab the shield breaker and go. And so really it is like, all right, let me build up my loot. Let me have this quiet time real quick to build up where I could. There's a small chance I could run into the other team, but most likely it's just going to be me trying to get as powerful as possible and measuring do I want to keep looting or do I get in position for the shield breaker? Because the shield breaker is the most important thing in this moment. So let's. Let's jump into the shield breaker. Right. Shield breaker forms in three.

[C]

Three different locations per map.

[D]

Yes. And so there's three possible locations that the shield breaker forms when it first starts forming. It'll pop up on your mini map of, like, hey, this is where it's at. It has. You have a minute to get here and, like, for it to fully finish forming. It forms. Whoever grabs it, like, grabs it. And then it is a rush to the other team's base.

[C]

This was the Halo capture the flag field. This was like the most fun of having that engagement of who will get the shield breaker. Okay, we've grabbed it. Now run for it.

[D]

Right.

[C]

And there's this moment of you'll probably have two opportunities to die and respawn before they arrive. With your shield breaker from first engagement, if you die, you will respawn for sure between them and your base. Then you have another opportunity to cut them off before your base have a fight. And if you die there, you'll definitely respawn as they are kind of like sword.

[D]

Yeah, it is like nidhogg. And so, yeah, that's that phase right. Where it is capsule, flag, boom. You're trying. You're continually trying to stop the other team so you can grab their flag and take it to the other side. And then if it lasts too long, it does have things in place where it's like, all right, now, whoever touches this thing essentially is automatically going to raid the other base.

[C]

Yeah, they go into overtime and they have a halfway point line on the map or the big, large scale map. And so wherever, whatever side you're on and whoever has the sword at the very end, you start to eliminate each player. So it goes into perma death, you'll respawn afterwards. But it will go from like three on three to three on two, three on one. And if you eliminate that team and they have no players, wherever you are on the map, that's where the raid will begin.

[A]

Right.

[D]

So you get the shield breaker, you make your way to the enemy's base. You press square on whatever, like their thing is. Right. You put the. You put the shield breaker in there. Twist. Boom. Now, next phase starts where you have a big. I forget the name of it, but a big battering ram essentially comes out of a rift.

[C]

A trebuchet.

[D]

A big trebuchet comes out. I don't think that's what it's called.

[A]

The siege. The siege something. The siege. Whatever the hell.

[D]

Yeah. The big siege thing comes through and it fucking punches through the enemy's big shield that's protecting their base. And now it is. The raid starts. It's essentially search and destroy inside the enemy base, where it is. All right, do we want to go to point A or point B? We're using our raid tools. Try and break down the walls that they have. Protecting the points. You're planning the bomb and then trying to protect the bomb. If you're able to blow up both bombs, you win the game. If you're able to blow up one bomb, then that's good. And. But like, if you're not able to do the second one, you might get you. It might be a reset, like, we're going back to phase one type thing. Depending on where you're at in the time limit. If time runs out, then, yeah, you reset. But yeah, you're trying to destroy both these.

[A]

Yeah. You could successfully plant both bombs on both A and B and win the game. If you're.

[D]

Yeah. If you're goated. Yeah.

[A]

If you're goaded enough. And I. And I. I think that definitely will happen in a lot of matches. And I did like the sort of the. The respawning. Right. Like you could in the different phases. I could respawn near the shield breaker if. If Mike's out there in the wild. Or I could. Whenever you die during the raid, you could grapple back in and kind of like respawn right where the. Right where the siege device is, which is like right outside of their base. And it just. I don't know, it allowed for a lot of like, all right, I'm coming back. Like, just stay alive for a little bit. I'll be right behind them. You know, there's a lot of cool moments of this. We're gonna continue this fight and we can actually see this through.

[D]

Cool. And that's a game. That's the game to bring in a super chat. Unrelated. But I like it. Currently working. Right. Then it says to open this can of worms. Lol. Is this an indie? And to that I'll say, of course. We got to Talk to people that work at the studio. It's a hundred person studio. It is an independent studio. And so however you take that, no

[C]

publisher, all by themselves.

[D]

They're doing this all by themselves, which I want to commend. And I want to take this moment to say, man, do I kind of feel bad and I feel like they're going to be fine, whatever. Like, I think the game is going to be successful enough for them, who cares? But like, they got so much shit for, for the last few weeks as far as, you know, the game awards placement and then not having the marketing and then kind of being silent. People have just been dunking on this game and I'm like, y', all, this is an independent team that is putting out something that is not an ip, right? It is something that is new and fresh. I understand that a lot of people don't, like most player, don't want multiplayer. We're upset to see it close the game awards. But yeah, like in the last. I think after we got hands on the game especially, I'd be kind of looking at the, at the Internet, like, man, y' all are dunking on a thing that really does not deserve. Yeah, the amount of dunking this is.

[A]

Yeah. And. And you know, they. A lot of them mentioned that their feelings about this was kind of similar to how it was with Apex when they just shadow dropped out. An order was, yeah, we want the gameplay to speak for itself. We think it's fun and awesome enough that give it a shot. If it's not for you, then it's not for you. But you know, we have a ton of fun playing it. We're constantly testing it, even when we don't need to be on the weekends because we just like playing the video game that much. Yeah.

[D]

And so, yeah, that's. It's the tough thing where. And you mentioned it from the start when we asked them, right? Yeah. This is supposed to be a shadow drop, but Jeff Keeley was like, yeah, we'll put this in the game awards. And they're like, how do you say no to that? Yeah, honestly, for this new game that you're trying to market and you don't have the EA machine behind you and all this stuff. They didn't say that, but I'm adding that in there. Of course we got a lot of super chats to talk about, but as I'm looking through them, is there anything that you guys still want to get off your chest about this game?

[C]

My only concern for this game is one thing, and that is going to be the, the, the skill level and how fast it will change in this game. I, I hope that skill based matchmaking is like really good and prominent in this because my worry is, is two weeks, three weeks down the road when people have dove into this and you've either played a bunch of, you've fallen off or you're just not that good. I worry that you're going to have a really bad time when you collide with kids that are really good in this game because that will be the make or break for. This is like, man, oh man, when you play this, you quickly know you're outmatched and you're, you're not good.

[A]

I don't think it's any different than Apex though.

[C]

I'm thinking more like Wild Gates. A game that came out that was unique, different and fun. And quickly a week later it became, oh, those kids are way better than us. We will never win a match. This is not fun to play.

[A]

Well, one big thing and one thing they're very excited about is that when season two starts in two weeks, which is an awesome quick rollout and you know, quick kind of where, hey, new content's coming in two weeks when season two starts in two weeks. They are also introducing competitive ranked which I think will help out a lot with the, you know, the player base and, and skill based matchmaking. But I don't think it'll be any different than like at its core it's still. The gunplay still speaks the most.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

And you know, when I watch my, my nephew get destroyed constantly in Apex Legends, that's the thing. And then boot up a game immediately where I'm like, God, you're not discouraged, you're just gonna keep on going. Like that's just kind of the way the game is. I think, I think this is the

[D]

answer for you guys with Apex Legends for like how much I love that game. But I also know the frustrations as far as jump in, get your rocked and it doesn't feel good. And I put up with that more because I'm like, I like this game enough that I'll put up with it. But I think this is a game that's going to be more friendly in that regard because you're gonna jump in and if you get your rocks, guess what, you respawn and you keep going. And like Andy says.

[C]

Right.

[D]

I think the competitive mode will help out with that. Hopping into super chats, we had a few unrelated to the game ones that came in at the very beginning of the show. That I do want to shout out. Z Speak writes in and says, the people united will never be defeated. Amen to that, brother. Roman. Ronan. Ronan writes in and says, spent all weekend fighting against ice here in Minnesota. Just wanted to say the only way they win is if we lose hope and give up, which is their goal. Get out there and protest. We have to stand together once again. Hell, yeah. Amen to that. Thank you for that, Ronan.

[A]

Welcome.

[D]

And then Mobaexw says name is pronounced like the Pokemon, which they've said before, but I still don't know what that means. Mob. Mob. Mobby. What Pokemon is mob?

[A]

I don't know.

[D]

Mob.

[A]

Underscore. Mobifet.

[D]

Mobifet.

[A]

No idea what the hell they're talking about.

[D]

Yeah. Name is pronounced like a Pokemon spelled wrong and said wrong on purpose. I know. Besides, Greg, y' all have bad or hot Takes. When can we get an episode where we get to roast your hot bad takes? We've done those episodes before, but we might be overdue. Yeah, I'll look at the calendar. Maybe. Maybe we could do another Hot Takes episode.

[A]

Greg's episode might be about eight hours long.

[D]

I think that's the problem, is that Greg has too many hot takes.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Where it's like, whatever we plan the next Hot Takes episode, we're just like, oh, let's just make it a Greg episode.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

Because, man, that man be talking.

[A]

Also, Bear, can you bring up the stuff I put into Assets, por favor?

[D]

Locke, Lamora153 says Mike can only have one High guard or froyo.

[C]

Oh, Froyo, man. You put your own toppings.

[D]

Oh, I do like froyo a lot, though. I was gonna say you're crazy, but Rodeo's real done that.

[A]

This is just a kind of a visual. Look at the three mounds in the bottom left with 10 weapons plus three raid tools.

[D]

You cannot tell me that's not. That's not Ken from Street Fighter right there.

[A]

Yeah.

[D]

That's crazy.

[A]

I think his name is Slade.

[C]

Slade.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

I'm only gonna play as that guy

[A]

along with the maps up top, six bases. And then the other doc that I sent through is the sort of the approximated game plan of, you know, how they want things to be released, and the roadmap or whatever, which is very, very cool stuff.

[D]

One that we can knock out real quick from Mr. Person, which is kind of already answered. They say with the game being like Apex, do you think it'll have the same problems Apex ran into over time and again? We talked about that. Right? The Big problems with Apex, at least in my opinion. Playing a lot in that first year was the robot and cheaters, but it was the rollout of content. Right. I. I felt like I had a content problem. And here they. That was one of the first things they talked about in the group interview is. Yeah, no, we looked at Apex and like how we felt for that year. One of Apex not having content ready. And like Andy mentioned, right. You look at that and it's. They have a plan here.

[C]

Right?

[D]

Two weeks we're going to be playing ranked, which is, I think better than I can say about Apex because I forget how long it took ranked to come to that. We tackled quite a few of these already. Oh, this is one stick 88 says fun to play solo with. Random randoms or friends required.

[A]

No idea. I mean, just like any other game, friends are probably better to have to play the game with because communication will be easier. I don't think. I don't think that changes here necessarily. Things might be easier because the ping system from Apex is. Has helped out stuff a lot over the years, but it's still going to be one of those where I'm like, yeah, if you got friends, definitely play with them. If not, you know, you. You'll probably have a couple matches where one person doesn't pay attention to you and goes off and does their own thing.

[D]

So Max, you writes in again and says, pokemon is named Axu. Look him up. Spelled it wrong. This is who it is. I've never seen this Pokemon before in my life. Okay, what generation was this?

[A]

This I have no idea. He's cute, though.

[D]

Really cute. So honestly, this might be my new favorite Pokemon.

[A]

Wow. Okay.

[D]

I really like this little guy. I with this little guy.

[C]

Hold on.

[A]

He's a Dragon type.

[D]

He's a Dragon type.

[A]

Somebody tell me what Gen Gen 5 people are saying.

[D]

Okay, I miss Gen 5. Hey, yo. I with this little guy.

[C]

It's love at first.

[D]

You only have is this second of this is cool too.

[A]

Damn, he's got a good. This is a good.

[D]

I found my favorite Pokemon, guys.

[A]

That's a great, like evolution right there.

[D]

What's his moveset like? I'll figure this out.

[C]

There we go.

[D]

Damn, that's huge. EJRPG5495 resonance says. You probably already said, but will future wardens and bases be free or paid? Oh, pretty sure we already said, but I forgot. I forgot the answer already.

[A]

I. I don't remember if you'll have to pay for wardens or not. I feel like you Might have to like you do with a lot of the other games.

[D]

Well, they said cosmetic only for paid stuff, which would mean that wardens are free.

[A]

Yeah, they did say cosmetics are. It isn't paid away.

[D]

I have the whole thing down here.

[A]

Right.

[D]

Core gameplay content, including new maps, bases, wardens and modes will always be free. Okay, hold on. That's kind of insane. Yeah, I didn't take that all in when I read it, but that's actually pretty insane.

[A]

That's massive. That's really massive. Yeah.

[D]

Huh. You don't. You usually don't get that. That's kind of wild. I think that's it for Super Chats and I think that might be it for this episode of Kind of Funny Games Cast. Do you guys have any final thoughts on High Guard before we go play it later today for the stream? As long as the servers let us

[C]

in, the game is free to play. Yeah, make your own opinions, play it, see if you like it.

[A]

Yeah, I'm stoked to. I'm stoked to play it. Been thinking about it since we did the event and yeah, I'm excited to get back in there.

[D]

I'm really excited to play this game and yeah, like I've been win for today for a good four days now. You know what I mean? Can't wait to get in there and yeah, let us know what you think. I'm really curious on how the world thinks about this game because I really liked it while playing it and I think a lot of people are going to like it, but I am curious to see what people think. Of course that's not it for Kind of Funny Games cast today. I should have said earlier in this episode that there is no KFC today because we had two big embargoes.

[C]

Watch the buzz.

[D]

Watch the buzz.

[C]

Watch the buzz.

[D]

We just got done with our games cast about highguard. We're about to do another games cast. About what, Mike?

[C]

About horror games because I got to play Resident Evil 9. Whoa. I'm gonna talk about it.

[D]

How much Resident Evil 9?

[C]

A lot.

[D]

All right, Mike's gonna tell you all about Resident Evil Requiem, as it's called. But of course, this has been your first kind of funny gamescast for the day. Each and every weekday we get together and talk about the biggest reviews, previews and topics and video games live on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services around the globe. If you love what we do, remember to support us with the Kind of Funny membership on Patreon, YouTube, Apple or Spotify to get all of our shows ad free and get a daily exclusive show. That is Greg Way. Have fun listening to us talk about Resident Evil Requiem. And until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.