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Greg Miller
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Snow Bike Mike
Change ABC Sundays American Idol is all new.
Greg Miller
Give it your all. Good luck coming out the golden ticket.
Snow Bike Mike
Let's hear it.
Greg Miller
This is a man's world.
Snow Bike Mike
I've never seen anything like it. And a new chapter begins. We're going to Hollywood. Carrie Underwood joins Lionel Richie, Luke Bryant and Ryan Seacrest on American Idol News Sundays, 8, 7 Central on ABC and stream on Hulu.
Greg Miller
Ryan Reynolds here from IT Mobile with.
Snow Bike Mike
A message for everyone Paying Big Wireless way too much. Please, for the love of everything good in this world, stop with Mint.
Greg Miller
You can get premium wireless for just $15 a month. Of course, if you enjoy overpaying. No judgments.
Snow Bike Mike
But that's weird.
Greg Miller
Okay, one judgment anyway. Give it a try. @mintmobile.com Switch upfront payment of $45 for three month plan equivalent to $15 per month required intro rate first three months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms@mintmobile.com this episode is brought to you by Shopify. Upgrade your business with Shopify, home of the number one checkout on the planet. Shop pay boosts conversions up to 50%, meaning fewer carts going abandoned and more sales going cha ching. So if you're into growing your business, get a commerce platform that's ready to sell wherever your customers are. Visit shopify.com to upgrade your selling today. What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kinda Funny Games cast for Wednesday, March 12, 2025. I'm one of your hosts, Greg Miller alongside Forbes 30 under 30 aka New York Game Awards nominated aka WWE 2K25 Poppy Blessing Eddie oh yeah, Jr. Good day, Greg. I want to fix your thing here. You got this.
Snow Bike Mike
He's the popping.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
I appreciate it.
Greg Miller
I hate when that happens to my T shirts. You know what I mean but you got guns too. I looked at the other one to make sure it wasn't a choice.
Snow Bike Mike
You know what I mean?
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
We gotta let the world know you.
Greg Miller
Want that extra inch to really let him shine.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
I'm not doing these push ups for.
Greg Miller
Not over there. It's the master of Hype Snow Bike. Mike.
Snow Bike Mike
Greg, Good morning. Great to see you.
Greg Miller
It's great to see you.
Snow Bike Mike
Love the energy today. And I love that we're talking a little wwe.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Can I tell you?
Greg Miller
Yeah.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Speaking of my guns, I. I know I'm deep down the WWE wall.
Greg Miller
Yeah.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Because like when I need motivation in the gym, I start just thinking about Roman Reigns. I'll be like, you know, lifting a thing and I start thinking. I'm like. I start thinking about Roman Reigns picking somebody up and throwing them. And I'm like, if he can do it, I can fucking pick up this weight, man. I can do it. And so. Shout out, Roman Reigns.
Greg Miller
Shout out to Roman Reigns in general. The otc. Yeah. I was rocking some of my faction stuff last night. I'm using the elite, you know, toy version of Roman Reigns. And when he does the one where he grabs the arm and then pulls them up into the power bomb and throws. God damn. This is. What a man, what a man, what a man Roman Reigns, you're a man.
Snow Bike Mike
If you man, what a man what a mighty good man A mighty, mighty.
Greg Miller
Good man oh, Mike, I enjoy your energy. How are the Pokemon mines? You're of course doing Nick's Nuzlock 2.0.
Snow Bike Mike
2.0 Soul Silver Day three in the books. Three gym badges down. We are having a great time over on the afternoon stream. So far, The Pokemon Nuzlock 2.0 has been a huge success with the community, with ourselves. We've been having fun. We've been driving subs, we've been driving. Just good moments, you know, we haven't lost one yet, but we've had a couple of. We've had a couple of missteps where maybe we weren't fully paying attention to what was on screen. Maybe reading all the prompts, you know, reading is a big thing for us at that point.
Greg Miller
He didn't want to go to. He didn't want to go to the spirit temple. Right, Exactly.
Snow Bike Mike
He doesn't. He doesn't want that. But I'll encourage you. Go check out, of course, our big marathon Stream. The past two days have all been uploaded to YouTube. We're coming at you with day four later this afternoon. If you're listening and watching live here on twitch and on YouTube. It's been a great time so far.
Greg Miller
Of course this is the Kind of Funny Games Cast. Each and every weekday we come to you with the biggest topics in video games. Whether they be previews, reviews or conversations we need to have, we come couldn't have them without your support. If you love the games cast and all the Kinda Funny content we pump out on a daily basis as a live talk show network on YouTube.com kindafunnygames, Twitch TV, kindafunnygames, Spotify and Apple, we'd love it if you picked up a Kinda Funny membership. Of course with a Kinda Funny membership you get all of our shows. That's more than 20 a week ad free and your daily dose of me, Greg Miller in a series I call Greg Way, a 15 to 20 minute podcast video series only available for Kinda funny members on patreon.com kinda funny, YouTube.com kindafunnygamesh, Apple and Spotify. No matter where you get the show, thank you. Even if you can't contribute, it would mean a lot to us. If you like, subscribe, share, ring the bell, tell your friends, leave a review, so on and so forth. Of course, if you're watching us record this live right now, be part of the show with your YouTube super chats. We need you on YouTube.com kindafunnygames to chime in with super chats to be part of the show so we can talk about the island. It wasn't a super chat. So it rolled by over here and I see people chatting it up already and I love that. But somebody was like, I've played the island. I see the vision and I'm excited to talk about that. This is a very specific review, if you will today, because we've been talking about the island for a long time, but we'll get to that in one second. Of course, we're an 11 person small business all about live talk shows. Kinda Funny Games daily. Already happened, of course. It kicks off your programming day at 10am Pacific each and every weekday. It covered Scopely buying Pokemon Go creator Niantic. Bless. I was coming in late because Ben had a singing performance. Sang today.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Wow, wow.
Snow Bike Mike
Early morning singing.
Greg Miller
I mean that's how you got to get them vocal cords ready to run longer. You let one of these little kids cook, they're not going to have anything for you. You know what I mean? A whole bunch of Mr. Sun, you know, at the end we close it out with this land is your land.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Oh, I love that.
Greg Miller
That's a good one. That's a jam. Yeah. My question for you is, how did Tim take this Pokemon Go? Niantic news.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
I mean, he was sad about it, but it's one of those things where according to him, Pokemon Go was already kind of in a bad place. So it is like when the bad people, like, devour the bad people. It's like, okay, well, it could get more bad, but already we're bad. And so it's all bad.
Greg Miller
Fair enough.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Yeah.
Greg Miller
After this Daredevil screencast is popping off where we'll be talking about episode three. And then after that, the Nick Lock continues as Nick goes to catch them all. If you're kind of funny members, today's Greg way is 15 minutes of me talking about putting your dog in dog jail. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Delaney Twining, Carl Jacobs and Omega Buster. Today we're brought to you by Monster Hunter. Now built rewards and stash. We'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be topic of the show.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Can I tell you what's dope about the Gamescast background?
Greg Miller
Yeah.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Is that every now and then I'll beat a new game and then I'll see the thing and it'll make me emotional because like I beat last night. I beat Outer Wilds in the Outer Wilds. Back wall just came up and it just made me feel something. But I'll talk about that tomorrow.
Greg Miller
You're reviewing that tomorrow. Very excited for that one. Today, however, we're going to talk about WWE 2K25. Don't turn off this show yet. Yeah, we've been talking about this very openly where I was like, oh man. Usually I review them on embargo and I was bummed out I wouldn't be able to. So I went back and looked at it like, all right, people don't watch the WWE review. So we're not doing a whole blow, a whole blow by blow review of WWE 2K25 by any stretch of the imagination. Instead, we want to dive in to just talk about the island. Of course, this is something we talked about quite a bit leading up to this when they announced this Mike has been through to talk all about, hey, I got to come in here and talk about what WWE NBA is doing in 2K game. So you can understand why this could be and what it's going to be and blah, blah, blah, blah. Snow Bike Mike dedicated his entire weekend to going through and being on the island of Relevancy with Roman Reign. I've touched it last night did a bunch of different quests in there. So I'd have some things to say. And then Bless, how much island have you been playing?
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
I played about 15 minutes before I was like, I'm out of here. I'm going to play my faction instead.
Greg Miller
And that's what I love about Bless being here is like, you're in on WWE 2K25. I've heard you and Roger talking about it. Geeking out about the showcase, going through my faction stuff, you know, that speaks to my heart. Yeah. Because I did a little bit of that last night too.
Snow Bike Mike
All right, I got the Island.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Let's go back to my faction.
Greg Miller
That's with my faction in order. Yeah, the Roguelite. Yeah.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Yeah, the Roguelite. Oh, I love it so much.
Greg Miller
Yeah. Oh, nice job. You got to go back. I mean now. Because now you can buy the bosses. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's a big deal. I love that. I love that mode. Loved it last year. Love it this year. But we'll talk about that. But this is specifically about the Island. You might not know much about the Island. What you need to know about the island and Mike's going to go through and give you the blow by blows here and stuff is this. We've been worried about the island since they announced the Island.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah.
Greg Miller
It's you creating a character, putting it on the island of relevancy for Roman Reigns. Approval going in there. And obviously we heard about it. It smacked of. What is it? The yard. The neighborhood. In a neighborhood in the city where Mike drops no less than $150 every year to be competitive to buy the.
Snow Bike Mike
Game and then upgrade my character. Yep. Got to do it.
Greg Miller
So there was a lot of concern about what we were getting here. We've made a lot of jokes about the Island. Now we've played the Island. The world is talking about The island in WWE 2K 25 reviews and it's not good. Metacritic right now on WWE 2K 25 is an 82. Notably IGN Gamespot. A bunch of other places still haven't reviewed it. Behind the curtain codes came in incredibly hot for this and we were not given a lot of time with it. So you're seeing a lot of people put up review in progress, wait for it, yada, yada, yada. What's interesting is 82. You go, Oof. About what I'd expect from an annual game. Blah, blah. That's not what the reviews read like. The reviews are very much like, this is an amazing wrestling game hampered by the Island. If you aren't familiar with what the island is, though, the official site says for the first time in franchise history, step outside the ropes and onto The island for PS5 and Xbox Series X. Greg chiming in Notably, the Island is not on PC in this immersive WWE themed world. Complete quests, take on challenges Complete I'm sorry Compete in live events and upgrade and customize your My Superstar through multiple storyline chapters. Join the fight I'm sorry Fight to join the original Tribal Chief Roman Reigns at the Head of the table let's jump into some reviews that have been posted. Chris Scullion, of course over at VGC gave the game a 4 out of 5 and wrote with a string of improvements across all of its existing modes, WWE 2K25 outdoes its predecessor in pretty much every way. Remember Greg chiming in again. As somebody who's reviewed games and wrestling games forever, played wrestling games forever, I've been very vocal that we're fooling ourselves. If we were saying WWE 2K24 isn't the best wrestling game of all time. And that's me saying that because I I love no Mercy and I love these N64 games and I love Here Comes the Pain. I'm not saying, but like the package, the gameplay, what they were doing with that I think is on another level. So back to Chris though outdoes its predecessor pretty much every way. The weak link is the new island mode with its cynical pay to win mechanics. But throw a scene of taunt in its face and pretend it doesn't exist and you'll find more than enough elsewhere in this game to keep you entertained for months. Ben Wilson over at gamesradar plus gave it a four out of five but it's there and until we he's talking about the island, but the Island's there until we figure out that new two tiered scoring system. It means the island in my faction have to factor into the final rating where in ring action is concerned. This is right on the cusp of being a five star wrestling sim. But it has to lose a star for its Cash grab mode, which land as snugly as a Logan Paul Brass knuckle shot to the jaw in which you're the recipient rather than the mega rich YouTuber Snow Bike Mike, I have seen you flourish at Kinda funny. Thank you, I think. No one can deny what a great host you are, what a great personality you are. Last year was the year of Mike of you coming into your own. I walked in today and you said I got the Doc. And you sent me your copious notes for what you think of the island. I was so excited because you have been so good on the road to this, of coming in and saying, here's what NBA is doing, here's what it is. I want to give you the floor. I have plenty to say about what I played on the island. I brought screenshots, I brought videos, but I want to hear what you have to say.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah, Greg, I have a lot of thoughts. I have completed the island season. Chapter one.
Greg Miller
Whatever you want to call your listener. Yeah. Mike's blue skies up. I've completed the Island WWE 2K25. I need to get outside more. And it says this is screenshot. Chapter one complete. You've caught Roman's attention and unlocked a valuable secret, the first of many on the island. Will it motivate you to continue your climb to the top? Chapter two is not yet available. Continue to explore the island. Impress your tribal chief by leveling up in matches against fellow competitors until additional story content drops. And remember, Roman is always watching.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah, let's just hang it there for just a second. That was a massive disappointment. Blessing to be smacked in the face with that message at the end of it all because I was competing for that WWE contract.
Greg Miller
Contract.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah, of course. That's what you get on the island of relevancy.
Greg Miller
Did you make yourself. You make somebody else?
Snow Bike Mike
I made a poorly bad look of myself.
Barrett Courtney
Yeah.
Snow Bike Mike
I put on a mask, so I pretend like it's me. I made Snow Mitch.
Greg Miller
Oh.
Snow Bike Mike
My alter ego. When I get uptight and I get hangry.
Greg Miller
Yeah, I know that. Yeah. I was very stoked for mine. I sat down. I'm like, I don't think I'm committed to this mode, and I'm not gonna sit here and customize a Greg. Right. I didn't see an option to download a created character and put it in like you can in my rise. So I was like, okay. I went through, like, the. They have the templates, which I liked of, like, all right, well, what's your back? You know, you're an indie star. You're a family legacy. You're a social media creator. I picked that. And then I looked. They just gave me a guy with a hoodie and sunglasses, and they're like, his name is Teddy Roblox. I'm playing this thing. It's Teddy Roblox.
Snow Bike Mike
I love that. Yeah, let's. Let's dive deep into the island because it is a mixed bag. There's some good that I want to highlight. There's a lot of bad that I definitely want to highlight. And I want to talk about where we stand right now with WWE and the island present and hopefully in the future, because I don't see this mode going away anytime soon because of what has been built off the back of NBA 2K in the neighborhood into the city. So let's talk about the island right now. The island for me, has some nice goods from the nice look of the island. Think Universal Disneyland theme park. All of your favorite attractions, all of your favorite themes are there. It is interest. I don't want to call it fun because you move in slow motion. So it's.
Greg Miller
Dude, what the is going on with the movement on the island?
Snow Bike Mike
We'll talk about that. That's why I told you that's how 2K upsells you. You buy a go kart with your VC and you can zoom around the city in NBA 2K. But on the island, it is fun to run around the island. Now, I say fun because running isn't fun, but seeing the detail and the love and care that this team put into all of the small little details, all the calls to all of your favorite wrestlers in this theme park, vibe is good. It is cool to see that come to life.
Greg Miller
I agree. Like, I think they've done. I. I have a lot of critiques about the island and how they've laid it out, and we'll talk about all of it through here. But to give them praise, like when we were watching the first debut thing, and you right there, you saw the Ray Mysterio outfits through the years, like, oh, that's cool. And then this graveyard, I think we paused it and did a shot by shot on one of the shows. And I was like, oh, my God, there's Pepper's grave. You know, there's memorials of the gobbledygook. He's like, it's like, okay, like, this is fucking nonsense. But it's like, I like that they're calling out wrestling stuff. Like, clearly wrestling fans built this.
Snow Bike Mike
Yes. It has a lot of great detail, and you enjoy if you're a wrestling fan running around, getting lost. If you imagine yourself in a WWE theme park, this is what it would look like, right? There's the hall of Heroes with Cody Rhodes and Becky Lynch. You go over to Undertaker's graveyard and you get lost with Paul Bearer, right? And then you go over to Rey Mysterio and his giant temple. Looking back on the years of WWE and luchador wrestling, it's very cool and novel and fun, right? And that's about where it stops for me. So that is the good I want to highlight. I really enjoy the look of the island. I appreciate the ring detail. They all have four unique rings that you can play in. From the hall of Justice Cody Rhodes to Oscar's Arcade of Tomorrow. Very cool look. Like the detail and love and care into the look of the island. Very well done. What I expect. Especially because I dinged NBA 2K. Those first early iterations of the city and neighborhood were awful and ugly to run around. And this is like, oh, somebody handcrafted this and really puts them.
Greg Miller
And again, as a wrestling game fan, like I'm always gonna be down for more arenas, right? So having more rings in there, bless them all for. And like, yeah, Arcade of Tomorrow actually is kind of dope. You knock them out and there's like the see through floor of like pipes or whatever. And I was like, oh, that's. They're doing something different that isn't, oh, it's just NXT. Oh, it's Bash of the Beach.
Snow Bike Mike
Oh, it's RAW 2001 Heroes HQ. Looks like you're in the Justice League's like, I don't know, Hero center, maybe back like Batman's Batcave. Like they got a really cool, like background to all of these rings. So that really elevates it. Like, man, that's awesome. I hope we can use those in generic game modes and the other ones. So that's where my praise will kind of begin and probably stay because now I turn my attention to, to what the island really is. And it is just this mishmash of it wants to be a beautiful shared universe like NBA 2K where you create your character. You run around this theme park with Blessing Greg and all of your friends and get to show off your cool wacky outfits, show off that your overall is X, show off your ranking is this go play matches together. But none of that happens in the islands. So you cannot play any matches with your friends in the island. It is dedicated. It's all random, just random matchmaking because it's built off the back of a competitive landscape, which I get right. So instead of NBA 2K, where you would think, oh, WWE, they're just going to put a bunch of wrestling mats all around the island and you'll queue up with your friends, you'll do the WW or the, the 2K nod while you wait and then you'll play with your friends. No, there's none of that. You'll go to the four different areas. So there's Six areas on the island that will highlight six locations. I wrote. You have the main plaza, which is your welcome area. In your shops you have Roman Reigns Monument, giant gold statue. There's clearly things that they want to build off of because there's an arena and a Hall of Legends that are just set pieces. There's nothing going on there. They're not open at all. Then you have Undertaker's Graveyard which has Ria Ripley's ink and piercings. You have Undertaker's Church where you'll get your matches. There you have Rey Mysterio's Temple, which has Ray's Mask Shop, Lorena's Face Paint and Ray's Temple, where you get more matches. Cody Rhodes hall of Heroes which has Truthwear, Hurricane Outfitters, the Hall of justice to take matches, and Oscar's Arcade of Tomorrow that just has the Arcade of tomorrow. So you're probably saying to yourself something like, mike, that's a lot of shops you brought up. Yeah, there's 11 shops in this, just so you know that you can buy.
Greg Miller
Luckily. Bless. I'm sure it's all reasonably priced.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah, yeah. We'll talk about pricing in just a moment. But what you would think is, oh man, that's so cool. I get to run around this theme park with my friends. Surely I can group up with them. Surely we can go do matchmaking together. No, none of this is about that. It has a.
Greg Miller
Which is weird because when you're in there and you can tab over and it'll say, oh, friends online.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah, you can jump into their world and see them, but you can't queue up and match together. You can't party up at all. So it's a very odd thing of wants to be a shared world, but at the same time, at its core it's very single player oriented. You have a very big single player story in this. That's not my rise. But it's its own standalone story. That's wacky that Incor rates time traveling with Rey Mysterio, Paul Bearer bringing up the Undertaker's greatest hits. Going over to see Cody Rhodes and Becky lynch fighting the Judgment Day as Heroes versus Villains. Going to see Xavier woods and his video game character.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
And no, I've not done this.
Greg Miller
So like, yeah, like, like what I'd like to dial it back to. I feel like hopefully there's a lot of people watching who don't like are just here to hear us back on the island or whatever. But to give you an explanation for it. Right. When I did the call after they announced it they did like a media call, like, oh, you know, a Q and A. And I didn't ask you a question. I just listened in. But one of the things they said that didn't make sense at the time and makes more sense now is the designer of the island said, Listen, the way 2K has brought WWE to video games, we want to bring video games to wwe. And so you hear that? And I was like, what the fuck does that mean? And then it's. You get into this and you go, barrett, can you toss up Johnny and Dakota jpeg? The idea is that it's. They're trying to do this quest based. You pop in these guys, the character models are just on screen, look terrible.
Snow Bike Mike
Terrible.
Greg Miller
They don't move, but they will move their faces kind of like in a Persona. If it was just art, it would look beautiful.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Yeah.
Greg Miller
Here they take the character models and stretch their faces into like, oh, it looks totally fake. But it's this idea of, like, you're going through talking to these people. And so you click it. There's no vo. There's no VO to this. You're just clicking it, and then it advances to another screen as if you're doing a visual novel, as if you're doing whatever. And then the stories. Yes. Are wacky. So the woods storyline. Spoilers, is that Zero, the from up, up, down, down. The, like, Xavier's alter ego, he builds every year in the video game to go play or whatever has gotten out of the video game. So it's Xavier woods on the screen talking to Zero. Also, Xavier Woods. Are you a gamer? That's great. But look at, with all due respect to Xavier, was how bad his face looks.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Yeah.
Greg Miller
Because that's not. Xavier looks bad. That's them taking a character model and, like, raises eyebrow and put his thing down. Like, he's talking. Like, it just doesn't work well. But it's like that kind of insanity. And then, like, because they're in the arcade of tomorrow and they're doing all this stuff, Dakota and Johnny have made mech gear you can wear in the game in this ring to be more powerful. And so then you put on this. You have a. If you want to throw up my video, Barrett, There's a whole bunch of terrible things there. But they put you into this mech gear to then go fight Xavier Woods. This is when there's a big reveal that he's zero, but it's like. Like it's an excuse to go wrestle. But then it's this nonsense story tossed on top, which I want to get to. I'm not all over that. Because, of course, my rise does exist. And my rise is the, hey, you're backstage and the Miz hates you. So you have to go wrestle in a gauntlet match tonight. Like, whatever. This is the weird fictional. We're on the island. Anything can happen.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah. That's the interesting part, is at the core of the island is just a single player narrative alongside a online competitive ranking system that is strictly 1v1. So you have two options here to go through, of course. Roman Reigns has tasked you with becoming the number one on the island to earn a WWE contract which will lead you all along the island with some of your favorite WWE Superstars. And it is a crime. It is a crime that we can't ask WWE Superstars to record four lines of dialogue. We have a whole year. We have cell phones. The writing on this is grade level at best. If you tell me you can't walk up to woods and say, hey, woods. And great maths. You got to read this line really quick. Insane that we have incredibly talented human beings and we can't put voiceover lines on this stuff.
Greg Miller
Do you want to get into it?
Snow Bike Mike
I mean, yeah, let's get into that.
Greg Miller
Because I feel you and I feel you saying. But it's like, I see what they're trying to do. Back to the person who said it earlier and came back to say the vision again, I see what they're trying to do. Especially with there being another chapter of, like, hey, rather than like, my rise is that if you're not a WWE player, my rise is the one you take your created character, you throw them in, and there is a narrative story that branches and does stuff, and you come off and Kathy Kelly will talk to you backstage and tell you what to do. Xavier will insult you. There's this, that, the other. Right. That's what you're getting. All of that. And I think that has to be written so far and recorded so far in advance and animated so far in advance that that's locked. Whereas this. I think their hope is going to be that they can update it throughout the year and drop in. Here's the Johnny Gargano character model with text underneath it. Mike, I'm with you.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Of.
Greg Miller
I don't think this works the way they want it to. I don't think it's impressive. I don't see anybody being like, I love this mode because of that, but I see what they're trying to do. And this is my. There's a great episode of the Blessing show I did about why WWE 2K should be a live service. Right. And I think it falls back into this of like there is an issue with WWE 2K of they try to do so much and when you do this much, nothing can get the 10 out of 10 treatment it deserves. Right? I guess I say that to step back and give them flowers. The gameplay is awesome because they've just been iterating right since they screwed up in 2020. They've just been hey here's what it is and they add to it and they change it. And like I think the gameplay is awesome. I think the presentation is awesome. Well that's great. But like you get into these things right now. We already had a super chat come through. Demon Hacker says why is terrible? Why is terrible Normal online not considered in reviews. Took three hours to play one successful elimination chamber online without issue and it's been the same for years. That Demon Hacker falls into the category we're talking about, let alone the shitty review period people are given with the game. Where you get this game, I want to say we got it on a Tuesday.
Snow Bike Mike
Roger got that on like a Tuesday or Wednesday.
Greg Miller
And then Thursday morning was the embargo. So it's like you have people who are cranking through trying to taste everything as fast as possible Online always gets the shaft on this kind of conversation in that kind of review period because there's not enough people playing online to go do it. But then it's also the thing of what do you person watching or listening want out of this game? And I think when that a game is this diverse where me and bless can just I played so much my faction last year that was like my main mode, right? Did I did one GM with you on a stream. I did a universe and stopped really early. I never played online. Maybe I played one of my friends online. Like it's. Everybody comes to these games for something different and it can get to the minutia of like man, I love X, Y and Z. But it's like okay, well I love Royal Rumbles and that doesn't work well. And I would never know that because I don't like playing Royal Rumbles. Like there's so much going on in this game that it's not impossible to review review it. But it is the reason that like IGN's got a review in progress up that hasn't been updated since I think Monday because I think they're still cranking away on it.
Snow Bike Mike
Well, sticking on the voice you are teased by the opening of the island is Paul Heyman and Roman reigns in a YouTube Ask Quick 30 second video. And you're like, oh my God, they got these two dudes together. Like, this could be dope. You get three of those total for a grand total of like 45.
Greg Miller
I got two. I got my second already.
Snow Bike Mike
I was waiting for another slap in the face on that because, like, it's exciting to see Roman Reigns in the gear, Paul Heyman next to him. And we're talking the basic of sets, right? They're in a locker room with one chair. Like, I'm not asking much out of this, right? And like, that shows you how much the wrestling fans wanted of like, holy, like they got Roman Reigns on this right now to do this. And it's like completely taken away by you. Jump in and there's the poor character model in 99 of the.
Greg Miller
Here's your text messages from Roman Reigns.
Snow Bike Mike
Here's storylines that feel like it's AI generated as well. And that's my worry is, like you, if you put at least their voices on there, it feels a little bit more above what you're reading. Because we're talking about Charlotte Flair and what's the girl? Something fire, right? The witches girls, right? We'll just call them for a minute. They're putting sleeping powder on Cody Rhodes at the Heroes hq and you're like, what are we doing?
Greg Miller
Video games.
Snow Bike Mike
And it's video games into wrestling. But like, you read these stories and you go, man, this does not seem legit. This isn't good, right? But at the core of it, you're getting to gameplay, right? And if you are a wrestling fan and you like the games and the gameplay, that's what you're getting the most out of, right? Because every single little bit leads to another piece of gameplay, right? Whether it be you and Zero battling in mech armor, you and Rey Mysterio going back in time to go fight Ricky Steamboat. Which is insane, mind you, because that is 100% ripped out of last year's WWE WrestleMania montage. Because if you remember, you fight Ricky Steamboat and Macho Man. Those are quite literally the exact same fights in this. And so you're like, oh, maybe we didn't spend too much time thinking about this one. Because that's pound for pound the same thing, right? And so there's this mix of like, I had a fun time because of the gameplay. I enjoyed running around this novel theme park setting. I hated that. It's supposed to be this beautiful cooperative world and none of it is cooperative. Right. It just feels like I'm alone on this island running around. Mind you, we're in early, right? I'm in with only the people who are buying the super edition of the game playing. So like there's minimal people. Also, there's four different game modes you can play. So if we go down the list here on my island breakdown for you.
Greg Miller
While you break it down. Hold on. Let's of course remind everybody we couldn't do this about their Support over on patreon.com kindafunny YouTube.com Apple and Spotify. That's where you can pick up a kinda funny membership to Support this small 11 person business making daily talk shows for your amusement. Of course, you get all of our shows ad free. That's more than 20 a week. You'd get the good karma for supporting a local small business and you'd get 20 minutes to 15 minutes of me each and every day in a series we call Greg Way. However, you're not using your benefits right now, so here's a word from our sponsor.
Barrett Courtney
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Greg Miller
We'Re back and we're still on the island. But blessing you tried the island for 15 minutes. Talk to me about that.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Yeah, I booted it up and I realized I didn't want to be here and I booted it out. But I also, I think for me I never had interest in the island. So it was very fascinating to hear you guys dive deeper into it and like kind of, you know, frame it as like the main topic of this version of the game obviously because it's the big new mode. But for me it's the thing of most of my experience so far with 2k25 has been pretty much the modes outside of the island. And when I tell you that in the way that you mentioned, 2k24 is the best one.
Greg Miller
Right.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Like I feel that way. Right. Right now by 2K25 in terms of how upgraded everything feels how obviously up to date because that's how these things work of like okay, cool, now I can play Jacob Fat 2 finally. But like hopping into the Bloodlines rules match me and that was one of the first things me and Roger did when he got the code in the.
Greg Miller
Pounding on the mat around you.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Yeah. Or that's a different one. I forget.
Greg Miller
Oh, you're right. I'm sorry, that's underground. You're right.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Yeah, that's underground. Bloodline rules is like the WrestleMania thing they did last year.
Greg Miller
Right.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
And like having all of our like picking our own individual wrestlers and having that come out one at a time. And like, have it be though we're recreating this WrestleMania moment, but it works within the ally system of the game. And so like, you know, depending on who I pick, like, I chose Gunther, right? And so. Oh, what's the homies name?
Greg Miller
Kaiser.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Yeah, yeah, Ludwig Kaiser comes out right in the middle of the match and he's playing somebody else and his allies come out like playing these different modes, feeling the moment to moment gameplay of man, it just feels like this game is way more dialed in than any other WWE game I've played in the past. Like, it's been so wild playing it and seeing how upgraded this this game feels compared to, I guess, any wrestling game prior. But then, yeah, hearing about the island, me being like my eyes kind of glazed over a little bit because I'm like, man, this sounds like a nightmare. And I'm so glad that I've not allowed myself to get sucked into this thing at all.
Greg Miller
And that's what's weird for me. And I will pass it back to you, Mike, because I love everything you have here. The doctor of island economics. But it's this idea of like, I am there with you playing it last night, jumping around, going into showcase mode, which is always. Showcase is always so well done. But to have Paul Heyman there. Yeah, to have, oh my God, giving you this, you know, just fucking crushing.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Like I'm somebody who obviously I came into wrestling or say obviously, but I came into wrestling in like mid 2000s, right. And so I never had a moment to learn about Yokozuna and like, what his role was, right? Even like, I don't think I even knew that he had retired Hulk Hogan for about nine years, whatever. So like hopping into the bloodline story, seeing how far back the family spans, like I've known that the family spans back, right? But getting the context of everything and being like, oh, damn. It started off with this. With like, which led to this. And like, you know, like I watched when Umaga was wrestling, right? And so I'm like, oh, fuck yeah. Like Umaga fits in the puzzle. Fucking wild shit, right? Of like learning that through the showcase mode. And yeah, this showcase mode feels even improved from previous showcase modes as far as how they fit in the cutscenes together.
Greg Miller
Right?
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
It's not cutting back to a FMV video now. It is like all recreated within the engine and it just feels more natural and it feels. So far, in my opinion, I think this is probably the best showcase they've done so far. And especially with Paul Heyman narrating and it being such a, you know, such an important story throughout the history of wrestling. I'm having such a blast with it.
Greg Miller
Yeah, I think, you know, I talked about in my preview for WWE 2K25, right. That it is a game about the little things. It is about, okay, well now LED walls get damaged or you can jump off of this thing, you know, I mean, because they. I think we're in such a great place for what I want out of a wrestling game. A simulated sim. Wrestling sim. Right. And so, yeah, I'm right there with you. Like everything under the hood is so good and going so far, but then it is like the island. And then for me it's not even so much that like you are getting there and I want to let you get there. But the thing when I'm playing it last night and I'm like, oh my God, like when I'm slowly running around this fucking island, right? And I, you know, we get the one, you get a review code. Most, most likely, especially for wwe, you get the highest, craziest edition. So we have the Deadman edition, right, which is the crazy bells and whistles one, or is it the bloodline edit? We have the biggest edition they have. Right. So it also came with a bunch of vc. So when I went and created my character, you can immediately pay to move your character up. And I started doing it because I it's free. And I was like, you know what? No, I want to see what it is like for normal. So I erased it all, started it and I'm playing the matches in the same way when I play my faction and I'm playing as a bunch of 69s and 72s, it's like, okay, yeah, I'm not a full powered Cody Rhodes, but I'm not also getting my doors blown off now. Again, your mileage will vary. That's me playing when I know I will never play online.
Snow Bike Mike
Correct.
Greg Miller
I'm never going to go PvP with this thing.
Snow Bike Mike
And that doesn't matter half of the island, right? It's like you're playing that single player experience. But the island is built off of a ranked competitive situation because like clear as day, it says, hey, rank up. We want to see that rank underneath your name every time you turn on the island. So it's like we. I can tell you right now, every time I jump in the island, everyone is 90 and above because they had the Super Edition, they spent that vc. And no matter what you're about to bang into Mike, who's 94 overall and he's gonna blow your doors.
Greg Miller
Someone in the chat if you don't upgrade a while ago was like, I tried it last night and I got a level 2 overall, 100. Beat my doors off.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah, yeah. And so, yeah, that's the wild part is we talk about the single player side of things, but also on the competitive multiplayer, whatever you want to call it, right, there's four match modes that you can choose from. So you go to the different locations on there, which there should just be a press start an instant matchmake for all four. But no, you have to run slowly to each location, queue up for that one and only match, right? So Undertaker has Hell in the Cell. Rey Mysterio has a ladder match. Cody Rhodes has a normal match. Oscar, the arcade tomorrow has extreme rules. So you run over there nice and slow.
Greg Miller
Again, run is being nice. Yeah, you are not running. You are very slow.
Snow Bike Mike
You queue up for it and you wait. Right? And so the big deal here is if you're on the early edition like me, at night, you'll get matches fairly regularly. But it's still a little bit of a waiting time this morning when I'm queuing up, oh my God, I'll never find a match. Right, because you're queuing into this one specific game mode within this larger experience, right? And so there's so much going on. And then of course, when you get in, it's still 2k online. I have never played an NBA 2k game where it felt like the real just play now version by yourself. You're always in quick stand. It's always just a little slow. And then the moment somebody quits out and you're playing on your own thing, it feels fantastic. And you're like, man, oh man, this is a nightmare. Right? So it's built off of that. It will be interesting to see when they open up the doors to the island officially later this week, right. With the full release, I believe tomorrow. So we will see what it looks like. If people are buying VC to get up into the 90s and 1002, am I just fighting people that are 74 to 80 area?
Greg Miller
And if I can stop you for one second, Barrett, give me the one.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah.
Greg Miller
Everybody, it's me, Greg Miller. Many of you have known me for many, many years. You've seen me review wrestling games my entire career. I'm begging, begging, begging. Everyone who buys WWE 2K25 and tries the island, do not spend money to upgrade your character. I know it's a losing battle. I know the majority of people are the whales will do it. But don't. Because this will be the death of my rise. This will be the death of the normal single player. This will be like right now we're sitting here, 24 is the best. This is better. But it's like got this. But it's still like next year is gonna be the year where we're like, well, they took away my rise and now it's all inside the fucking island or whatever they're calling it. And it's completely fucked and we hate it. Don't do it. Don't do it, Mike.
Snow Bike Mike
It could be sick. So we're going to talk about the future in just a moment. But yeah, that is the landscape of the island right now is this fun theme park with different areas that are very well done. A really wax story that feels like it was created by AI, but it has fun single player moments in it that you're just gonna. I shouldn't say moments. It's just a regular match, just different themes to it. So it's not really that special.
Greg Miller
Here's my problem. You keep saying, you know, a really fun theme park or whatever, right? And I don't agree. Think is well designed and they, they put love and care to it. But the running in slow motion to get there to go into the arcade of tomorrow. Load screen. I'm in the arcade of tomorrow. Walk to woods, talk to Woods. Woods says, go talk to Dakota and Johnny. They're outside the arcade of tomorrow. Walk to the thing, load. I'm outside, I talk to them. They say, go talk to Woods. I go back in, I talk to Woods. I finish the match. I'm still standing in there. Like, talk to woods again. I'm like, what the. Like, I. This is the part that I'm. I was struggling with last night where it's like, I don't mind silly nonsense. Yeah, I don't mind. Like you buy a wrestling game, in my opinion, to wrestle, right? So they are giving you more reasons to wrestle. Which again, if you wanted to dial it back to me being wrestling obsessed in high school and having my N64 and having smackdown where I would be in class drawing up my own pay per views that I would then go home, right, Play those matches. But it wasn't in a mode. It wasn't a thing. It was all my head cannon, right? Like, I love that they're giving you reasons to do that. But this bloat around it of walking over and talking, but it's like, I understand you don't want it just to Be this. But I even think of AEW Fight forever that I review, right? Where they had a very weird mode as well, where it was like, you know, you would travel and then you would go out to eat and that would give you a buff. But then little things could happen. It was like, I remember playing be like, this is wacky and weird, but okay, they're doing like, this is just so half baked of what I'm doing in like, I don't mind. I like having the matches to do it. And I don't even hate like, you're fighting Gunther and he's dressed like a space marine. Like, I don't know. Gunther would never do this. I don't know why. But okay, whatever I'm doing. But it's the now run around really slow over there to talk to the guy in the hall of heroes.
Snow Bike Mike
Well, that's to create this open world quest giver as you brought up experience, right? Once you beat that, you'll never do that again, right? All of those quests are now gone. You will never see our truth pop up on your screen again. It is literally you and the fake NPCs that walk around the John Cena team.
Greg Miller
That guy in the whole shirt, I see him everywhere.
Snow Bike Mike
Just so you know, like, yeah, that feels slow. But like, that reminds me of any other open world game, right? Go talk to Susie. Okay, cool. Talk to Susie. Go over, talk to Ben over there. All right. Go back and forth like they're making it their own.
Greg Miller
Go play. You see how fast that moves for getting your quests?
Snow Bike Mike
Oh my God, it's so boring running around some of these open worlds. But like, but even that, like, I'll.
Greg Miller
Argue with you on this because in a vowed or whatever open world game, and I'm not talking about NBA if that's your one reference, I can't.
Snow Bike Mike
Well, I'm gonna bring it to NBA.
Greg Miller
But my thing would be like running around an open world. When you're going from point A to point B, you run into objective C and side mission D and you go and do those if you want to. Or you run like here that doesn't happen. Well, here I'm running.
Snow Bike Mike
To talk to process would be to mimic the city, right? In NBA 2K, where you'd be running in and you'd see other people, you'd see their crazy outfits. You might stop for a park game, right? Or you might be running to the Pro Am. They don't have any of those things here, right? So there is no ring in the center of the island they have to queue up for. That's what this is missing. Where you would. Then you would run and go oh like they're fighting in the center. I should stand here or I should queue up. Right? And so yeah, it's a drag to run back and forth right now. They'll sell you a segue for 15.
Greg Miller
Don't worry about it.
Snow Bike Mike
It'll go faster. But I do agree with you Greg.
Greg Miller
Of like slims you more.
Snow Bike Mike
It sucks when you complete the story where you're supposed to run around the island and see all the cool points to. Now I have to run actively and run. Like you've brought up the slow run to go to these spots actually queue up for a match which sucks. There should just be a cell phone where I press a button and just say queue up. But then there would be no point of me running to the undertaker's church and all the time that they spent in making the church if I wasn't.
Greg Miller
Gotta go to the undertaker's church.
Snow Bike Mike
Weird up and down thing of. They clearly wanted to build a little mini open shared world. They wanted this NPC story to have you run around like an open world video game. They. They did that. And yeah, if you like it or not, that's clearly what they're going for. Right. The pot. The problem is is there the. The other side of NBA 2K has so much more because they've already built that over for 10 plus years. Right? This is year one. They're still figuring it all out. And also on top of that, I'm not doing it with my friends. The whole draw of this was to do it with my friends and none of that is happening. So that's why you feel isolated. That's why it feels bogged down. Because it should be me and blessing running up to Xavier woods and I go in the microphone go what the Is this blessed? He just starts laughing, right? Like that's what this whole experience should have been. And it's not.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Do you like. Do you like the city in 2K in NBA 2K?
Snow Bike Mike
Do I like running around the city?
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Do you like the experience overall?
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah, because it has Pro Am, it has street ball which I love. It has some of the best game modes in NBA 2K for a single player experience or for I create my one player and I get to play on a team.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Right?
Snow Bike Mike
Like the Coolest part about NBA 2K and Pro Am is I am my point guard playing with four others in a 5v5 rec league style basketball game. And that is the coolest game mode that NBA 2K has ever created. Right? Like on the flip side, I can play two on two street ball against two other jabronis in a park that hundreds of people can watch. That is a cool idea and experience. Now does it run well? Absolutely not. Right? Is it that I show up and the kid that spent 150 is now 99 and I'm 78 and they blow my doors off every time? Of course that's boring and dumb. But the idea of making this metaverse of my character running around and experiencing this is a cool and novel idea that I think really went far in that game style. Right. The issue is, is wrestling is not that. Right? Wrestling is all fake, not supposed to be competitive. So you should be going for the five star matches. But why would I do that when I'm just going to try to beat the brakes off of you? So like that's not happening. It should be me and my friends, tag team, triple threat. All of us should be in a fatal four way going against each other. I don't get any of that. So it takes away the fun experience that was the NBA city with my shared friends to now. There's nothing of that. But I like the city as well. I would rather run around and like experience things than just going queue up into a menu and never see anything.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Right.
Snow Bike Mike
Because that's your alternative is you can literally just play online, the same exact experience like island and just say queue up and just see a menu that says waiting online. Waiting online. Like that's fine. Every game has done that for the past three decades. But.
Greg Miller
And that's where you fall into this thing where it's like again, I want to talk about the VC and microtransactions. Right. One of the super chats we got to start, the entire thing was from demon hacker who said island of microtransactions. Rest in peace. My rise in 2K26. But it's the idea of like just playing through the stuff and completing the storyline gives you custom items, it gives you banners, it gives you icons. It's like, okay, I get that and that's cool. I like that it is this misinterpretation or at least I think miss on what the island should be. Where it would make more sense to me right, if there were these sections and maybe it's a shared world for 100 people, private servers, whatever, you know what I mean? Where you enter in and then there is the. You're competing for the deadman belt. So there's like a ladder system over here, that's going on here is the tag team division warehouse where you and me are friends, Mike. And we go in there and it's like, oh, we gotta climb the ranks and do the thing. Here's the. I mean, they would never do this, but the backyard wrestling, you know, so you're wrestling in a yard. So it's totally different. There's like, have you entered that? Then also have these storylines? So it's like, I understand more of what you're doing and why it's different. And even then, this is where, of course, 2K would throw me out of the goddamn conference room is I would have it be like, all right. It's what we see in so many action RPGs, right? Of you're gonna come in here and you're all gonna get buffed to 98, or you're all gonna get set to 85, right? And then we have. There's a free form ring and championship over here of like, go in and test your metal and it's whatever your character actually is, but find ways around it where it is. Hey, you can go do this. Yeah, go on.
Snow Bike Mike
Well, that. That's the perfect. That's the dream situation we're on, baby step one, right? Of like, could we pass this off and get people interested? That's where we need to be is right, Greg. And so that's the interesting one of, like, when I finish and I put out the tweet of like, oh, that was chapter one. They're gonna probably bring out season two. I expect season two to have tag teams, right? I expect them to build off of this and hopefully nail what that is. It will be very interesting to see starting this week and beyond what is the fan perspective of this? And will this die on the vine sooner than later, or will this be something they build off? Because my character in the island does not go on to myrise.
Greg Miller
So stupid.
Snow Bike Mike
I click on myrise, my character's not there.
Greg Miller
This is as bad as what, two years ago when they were like, all right, here's my rise. And your character that you have downloaded or whatever can't be imported here, but you can import your character out. Last year, they fixed it where it was like, whatever. You create a character, you bring.
Snow Bike Mike
And so now all of a sudden, I have just this isolated experience that doesn't share anything with this. I put money into this. I'm playing this, but it's just this. And it's very odd that, like, it's not connected to my rides. Why is my character not There. He should be there. So I feel like, oh, that's cool. All this stuff that I'm buying is just for me to slow walk around the island and show off, to bring.
Greg Miller
Me up to speed on this. This is something we have not touched on the mechanics of it. Blessings. Ready to go buy some air Jordans?
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah. I've never touched. So let's talk about the money, because I know that's what a lot of you came here to talk about. And so, of course, thank you to 2K. We were provided with the super deluxe edition that comes with like 165,000 VC, more VC than you need to level all the way up. But I gave you the.
Greg Miller
Not by much.
Snow Bike Mike
I'm gonna give you.
Greg Miller
I was doing it. I'm like, wait, what? And I was watching the number go up, like, holy.
Snow Bike Mike
When you come onto the island, I don't know what the number is. I'll say it's 74, might be 82. But when you arrive on the island, you can instantly level up your character. If you would like to be level 100 on the island, level up your care, you will have to spend161,000 VC, which comes out to about $40. But they only sell it in special increments, so let's just call it 50 bucks. You have to spend $50 to level up instantly to 161 to make it a hundred. Right there. Cosmetics range anywhere from 6,000 VC to 18,000 VC. That's sitting at a price range of about 5 to $10, depending on how many purchases you make. Right. Those purchases. Shoes, pants, shirts, jackets, hats, masks, tattoos, face paints. Right. I mean, there are a bunch of stores here, and the biggest one that I am not okay with is the Ice Slides sandals shop. The I Slide sandal shop is selling sandals that are 18,000 VC on the highest price range of any of these. That's more than $5 real world money to buy sandals.
Greg Miller
Do not do this. People who play this game do not.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Do this or do it because you deserve it. If you pay for this, you deserve what you get.
Snow Bike Mike
Becky and Seth's Drip Emporium. They range from 6,000 to 18,000 on jackets, shoes, glasses, shirts, all of them atrocious. None of them look good. I can promise you that. Ray's Mysterios mask shop is all 6,000. Tattoos are 6,000. The barber shop to cut your hair is 9,000. They already have hairstyles in the game. They have more tattoos than Rhea Ripley's tattoo shop. So technically, you can change Your hair and put tattoos on for free. But they sell you a small amount for an odd amount of money, which is like, why, why are there 34 tattoo styles already in the game? But I can buy 12 more over here.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Why not?
Snow Bike Mike
Great question, great answer. Right there.
Greg Miller
That's there. That's them arguing, right? Like, hey, we're giving you a whole bunch of stuff for free. If you want it, you can pay for it.
Snow Bike Mike
And so the weird part is, is none of this goes into any part of the other parts of the game, right? Like, that's insane that none of this goes over there. It's just its own separate thing. And to everyone out there, that's like, so we always say. I always preference this because I'd see you always in the chat. You don't have to spend money, Mike. You don't ever have to.
Greg Miller
You don't see in this game.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah, you don't, right? But here's the deal. This is a ranked game mode. It's about your ranking. If you're not paying to win, you're not gonna win. If I'm level 100 and you're 82, you best believe you're not beating me in the ring. You better be real good. And so I, I do think there's a big pay to win situation that has to be discussed here since it's more on the competitive side. And on top of that, Greg, you're not or you're not earning. I walked out of every single match and I think they gave me 150 VC after every single match. Because here's the catch. Bless. You earn 150, but you earn XP, the rest of this stuff. So if you get more stars on the matches, you complete challenges, you get XP. Those XPs go to your Battle Pass, which then level up the Battle Pass, which gives you more name tiles, sometimes more vc, new T shirt, right? So, like, none of it is making you enough Money to justify 18,000 VCI slides. If it takes me a shit ton of games to get that much money.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
I lost the words you were saying as like somewhere in, halfway through that statement, you got like too many currencies in. Yeah, I don't, I don't follow any.
Greg Miller
Battle pass, premium pass VC.
Snow Bike Mike
And the issue is just like I play NBA 2K. I already know all this. I've been through this. It's not like, it's not crazy. It's not like stopping your tracks. To me, like, all of this seems on track. Actually, it seems on the more lighter side, if it's 6,000. 18,000. That's pretty minimal right there for a five dollar T shirt that. I know that's insane to say, but like on the microtransaction side, they all seemed a little less egregious and it was like, okay. But also when you look at the WWE T shirt that you buy from our true streetwear, you go, ooh, that's not worth 18,000 VC.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
So this, who's playing this mode, like you guys talk about like, don't spend money, don't do that. But like, is there. Everything you guys are saying makes it sound like, like kryptonite to like anybody who wants to even touch from anybody even touching this thing.
Snow Bike Mike
Right?
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Like, I can't imagine. It doesn't sound fun. It doesn't sound well balanced. It doesn't sound like the moment to moment gameplay is there. Do you guys expect people to actually boot into this thing and play it?
Greg Miller
Yeah, I do.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Really?
Greg Miller
Yeah. I think, you know, when we talk about predatory tactics and you talk about gambling, you talk about microtransactions, inevitably we all. Somebody's always like, think of the children. I do think this appeals to that. Like, if you remember when Poe was here with Jack, right, And we played a whole bunch of Helldivers and it was awesome. Jack would just sit on the couch and play wwe. And he just, he had already played it at home, obviously a million times. He was just rolling new showcases and going through and remember, showcase or not showcase. I'm sorry, my rise and one of the myrise storylines had you like fighting a scorpion or whatever last year, you know what I mean? So the weird shit is already there. And so I think it would be the idea of go here. Oh, I do the Fortnite model of. Yeah, I do want that. I. You know, when I was at Royal Rumble and I was walking around Indianapolis, I blue sky to batter, but I was like, I have never seen this much merch for one wrestler. Like, the yeet shirts, shirts were everywhere and I own two of them, obviously, but it was like, like I could easily see Jack booting into this. Spending all that time making a character, running off, getting the Paul Heyman video, seeing the goofy thing of oh, I'm gonna go fight zero and this, that and the other. And not like back to what you said, Mike, right? Of like the writing is here, right? It's like bottom of the barrel of what they're doing to get you. Like, he's not gonna care about that. He's gonna run through it and then it would be the well I want to get a shirt. Oh, I want to get a slide. I want to get this. And like, like, does that domino effect out. And I don't know. But it's like, I don't know how he plays online either, if that would be fun for him, if that would be a thing. And then it is the I got my ass kicked and he's 100. So now I do want to spend on it.
Snow Bike Mike
Like, yeah, people come to these modes for the shared experience, right? Like, what got me excited for the island was the idea that me, my buddy Washy and Kevin Asx, we're all going to jump into the island together and have this shared experience that I have in NBA 2K. And unfortunately, since it's not truly shared experience, there's no reason to play this for me, right? And so I wonder if that wow factor will wear off very quickly where people will jump in, play for 15 and go, I'm good. I can't play with my friends and bounce out. That's my thing is interesting world.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
I'm trying to figure out what the hook is here because I understand and agree with, like so much of what you guys are saying, but even for kids, I'm like, if I'm. If I'm thinking to like myself at my most vulnerable when it comes to man, I want to. I'm playing going to play anything, right? Like, I want to let me buy the worst game and even play through that at the very least. Like, even kids need some kind of carrot on the stick and it could be the expensive thing. But if I one, if it costs real money or if the path to get there is too long and the journey there is just not fun because I'm getting my ass kicked by a bunch of level one hundreds. Because my dad got me the standard version. So I'm a 65, right? And I keep doing this and I'm like, I'm just gonna play another mode, aren't I? I'm just gonna play the fucking exhibition.
Greg Miller
I jump back to when I was a kid and again, I'm playing every wrestling game under the sun. And again the hundreds of hours I would sink into these things. I would think that the I would eventually end up playing this. And I don't, you know, who knows, Whatever. I don't think I would ever invest the money in it in terms of I need to be 100. I think it would just be, I'll grind and play the single player stuff because do you ever have to play online?
Snow Bike Mike
You've finished it once you Finish the single player. There's no more stores.
Greg Miller
But I mean, that's my thing is like. But they're going to give you a new chapter that'll eventually be single player. Oh, yeah, yeah.
Snow Bike Mike
So now you're playing the waiting game. Yeah, yeah.
Greg Miller
I think like that kind of thing would bring me back because I'd be doing everything. Universe mode has been around for so long. I don't know. I'm not a universe mode expert by any stress imagination. How much new stuff's been added this year to make that more appealing. Like, I feel like everybody's gonna go touch this. And I could see it being like, I made a cool character so I want to keep doing stuff with him. I don't know if you'd invest in it and do this.
Snow Bike Mike
But yeah, I mean, that's what it's all about, right? Is making that character and running around this little shared playground with your friends, right? Like that is the cell. That's the selling pitch of these game modes. It's like, hey, you made that character. Now run around with your friends. Like that's what they want you to do here. And so it'll be interesting to see they have on a look. They have it, right, Right. The theme park look is a wrestler's paradise, right? Your own universal theme park that is wrestling just detailed out. You have game modes in there that you can play. It's matchmaking, your squad, your battle and go from there. I just don't know. I. It. It's an odd one because like, I have some things of like, well, what is the future, right?
Greg Miller
I feel like that's where we're at, right? Because the. What I want to know what you think from the NBA way, if this is going to succeed, if it's going to infect everything. Because I'm like, my fear is like, this is the last time where we're able to be like, this is ignore like every saying in the reviews, ignore the island and everything's great and it's better than ever and da da da. And next year when it is my rise has been incorporated into whatever they call it, the island again.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
And that's my thing is I think from the way we're talking about this, right? And what I'm hearing, because for me, the mind blowing thing of this is, man, this can't be successful because I feel like for the amount of choices you have right now in 2k, there is no reason to play this from how you guys are talking about this, right?
Greg Miller
So you have to start forcing people to play?
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Yeah, you have to start forcing people to play. I looked at Roger as we were playing the game, I think yesterday, and I was like, dude, this game is in a bears but riches and I barely even touched this mode. It has to be the thing of next year. You have to figure out how to put my rise in it. You got to figure out how to put. If you put my faction in that thing, then it's. Then it becomes a problem which people.
Greg Miller
Already have a problem with. Right. My faction has always been the ultimate team mode that people are like, well, hey, you got it.
Snow Bike Mike
You can.
Greg Miller
You. You're. You're buying packs to get things, but it's random drops on that and da da da da da. And even then you could not do it for a long time, but your characters would be low. And then they started Persona cards last year. Persona cards being that when you get the solo SOA card of him in the black outfit, the black, you know, blazer and whatever, then that now unlocks that costume in the base game as well. And so people were starting to get there. The whole thing is the slippery slope because again, from an outside perspective, we've seen how bad it's gone for NBA.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah. I mean for all these games with what they've done. It's an interesting one of you bring up my rise. Right? And so NBA I think is a little bit easier to picture in my mind being a basketball kid of like what that looks like and how that kind of morphed into it. Right. We're talking about an NBA my player career mode. They used to have Spike Lee on it. They had Spike Lee make the series and it was bad still. Okay, don't, don't give him any credit. That was.
Greg Miller
I forgot about what year was that?
Snow Bike Mike
Spike Lee. And so you've gone down these things of like they've made their own my rise in all these sports games, right. Where you start your character off at whatever level and go forward. But the interesting1 with NBA 2K in the city is you can picture yourself as a basketball player, right? You have the penthouse loft that they give you with your own little basketball court that you'd have private little one on one and shooting sessions with your friends. You can leave the basketball court, run around the city, buy stuff that will go in the gym look. And also in the city, look, you can go play Pro am with your friends. You can play some street ball. You can go to the arena that has the single player myrise onto the next game. And progressing through the calendar, you guys have to tell me on the WWE side, is this a WWE training facility lifestyle where you have that? Because I could easily see us. You buy everything in game. That is for your matches and outside of matches on the island, I could easily see a wrestling ring in the middle where you and your friends can battle in your apartment. I could see them running around going to the different arenas, battling online and then going to the team bus or whatever and going forward with the next match in whatever city.
Greg Miller
I guess for your yes, like that. I, I, I think that's the inevitable future if they stick this mode. Because honestly, as much as I hate what we have right here from the money grubbing and how it's just not that great overall perspective. Like that actually sounds cool. That actually makes sense. If it was like you figure the entire wrestling journey, especially in my rise usually, right. Is what I'm a kid, I'm entering the performance center, I'm working my way up. Now I'm on to nxt. Now I'm on, you know the I'm in a dark match now I'm opening things. Now I'm a mid card. Now I'm a main eventer, right? So if you were to break it down where it was like we've unlocked WWE City or whatever the you call it, right? And it is like there are arenas tied to your level of like, all right, cool. You come here and you are grinding it out in this bingo hall, doing the thing. And then okay, now you can move on to work a high school gymnasium. Now you can move on to do the and eventually you're in wrestling. You're, you know, you're wrestling in the arenas, you're on RAW, you're at WrestleMania and to your point of you have a shitty apartment, you're sharing with some other loser wrestler. Throw up. One of the loser wrestlers I put in, what's his name? Scott. What? Barrett. It's one of the images. The guy who's a no name anybody. He's a creative guy. Yeah. Kyle Slickman, Slick man. You're living with Kyle Slickman in this one bedroom apartment, right? Then all of a sudden you go to this. Then you get the I'm Roman Reigns and I have this penthouse that does have a ring where I can invite my friends over like that again. I think if I'm just being honest. Sounds cool. Except for I bought the edition and I'm starting as in the. I'm starting in the bingo hall at level 100 and I have to fight you at your level 20. And it's like, you know, that's when it all falls apart and gets.
Snow Bike Mike
Of course. Yeah. It'll be very interesting to see the future of this. Right. What is the reception for month one? What do we hear from the feedback? Clearly the reviewers do not like this new game mode. Right. Me and Greg, I, I'll tell you, I was a mixed bag. I do not like this. I had some fun times with just playing the matches. But all in all, this is not a good product. This is not what it should have been in my mind. And it will be interesting to see where you build off of that.
Greg Miller
What would you give, what would you give the island on a kind of fun review scale?
Snow Bike Mike
Bring up the numbers, Barrett. Let me give you the snow. Mike. Mike. Official number right here.
Greg Miller
We review on a 10 point scale. Remember, of course, this is or actually a 20 point sc. Remember, of course, that this is just the island. We're not talking about 22k, 25 overall, which is a lot of fun to me and bless love and I assume Mike loves it too.
Snow Bike Mike
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm sitting right in the meh to mediocre range here. I gave it some props. I gave it a lot of beatdowns on that one. I'm in the met to mediocre range. So we'll, we'll go with a solid 4.5 for the the island.
Greg Miller
A meh. Okay.
Snow Bike Mike
Plenty of room for improvements. They know what it should be. I, I, I think they, I think they know what it should be, but they didn't want to create that, so they went with a more single player focused video games in the wwe as you brought up, Greg, and it just doesn't land right. You have my rise. Focus on the single player stuff there. This is for a shared universe. The WWE universe with your friends. Focus on that. Make it greats.
Greg Miller
Okay, a couple different super chats to get through over here before we let you go. Irk the imp says load screens on the island are terrible. 1 min lo PS5 Pro just to view a shop, then again to exit the shop. Welcome to the island.
Snow Bike Mike
That's how it goes.
Greg Miller
True strike says the zany scenarios you're describing from the island are actually selling me on this more than it should. And then he says also or they say also. Thanks for the cheers, Greg. Aaliyah, that's in. That's a monster hunter thing.
Snow Bike Mike
Oh, no.
Greg Miller
Aaliyah finished their little thing today, so I cheered him on. My monster Hunter now app. Don't worry about it. Andrew Brown says will Greg, admit that Will Ospreay is the best wrestler in the world. No, the best in the world. Of course. CM Punk. Come on. It's right there in front of your face. And then zombies 8 Keegan says, I'm bored at work. Just want to make someone say beep, beep, boo boo out loud. I'm a simple man. Happy to be there for you. Bless. I assume you're go home and boot this up right away.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
Oh, yeah, I'm hopping into this mode immediately.
Greg Miller
Talk to me then from the wide picture of I was very happy with you all the time, of course, but last year when you come in, you're like, I'm still playing 22k24. I booted it up last night. I did this. Do you see that again with 2k25. Are you doing a universe? Are you doing just my faction?
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
I think I'm just doing. Doing my. My faction is the sucky thing where 2K, the WWE 2K games always come out at a busy time. They're always march and march just happens in the last however many years to be always a busy time for video games. So it's funny because I think it was Gamescast or maybe after Games Cast or something where we were like, okay, cool, let's play WWE for the rest of the day so we can talk about it today. And I boot up WWE, I start playing it, and then like, probably 30 minutes into me playing it, I get a code from you where I'm like, oh, I want to play this game, actually.
Greg Miller
Yeah.
Blessing Adeoye Jr.
But even with that, I finished up what I was doing. I let the. The code you sent me install. And as it was downloading, I hopped into my faction, like the Roguelite mode, the faction wars thing, and played through and got far enough where I was like, no, I'm riding this out. I'm having way too much fun with this thing. And so I think I'm going to continue to do that. I'm like, more into wrestling now than I have been in the last, like, decade, probably, right? So I'm. I'm in it. I want to play it as Jacob fought to and get that card. And, you know, I'm right now I have the action figure Roman reigns, and I want to get the actual Roman reigns because I actually don't really like looking at the action figures. And so, yeah, I'm all the way in it. I've never really been a my rise person. I've tried it and I don't like how bad the acting is. A lot of time and how just Jake the overall experience can be of my right I do love just hopping into random exhibitions so I might do that. I want to play through more of the showcase mode because I like Paul Heyman, I like how they're presenting and I want to experience the full bloodline story. I don't want spoil how they started but they started off in the best way you could possibly start off Showcase for the bloodline and yeah I'm definitely good. I think I'm definitely going to have this be more of like I pop in for the next few months and have fun when I can.
Greg Miller
Michael, you're is going to still play WWE or no was this thing I.
Snow Bike Mike
Will check out my rise. There's a lot of love for my rise of course in the WWE community and experiencing the island and having the small fun moments. I I should go check out my rise. I will definitely put on the big 30 met 30 man royal rumble with all the crazy user generated content from Spider man to Winnie the Pooh. So I'm looking forward to that kind of shenanigans blessing bringing up the awesome highlighted mode of the bloodlines. I really loved what they did last year with WrestleMania and so yeah I should probably check that out because I really enjoy the storytelling the the story moments that we have with all these games. So yeah I'll probably check that out. Wwe, you got me more than I usually am so that's a positive.
Greg Miller
Two things you mentioned in Create the Creation Suite and downloading Winnie the Pooh and everything else shout out to Olive Party who's already uploaded Gruesome Greggy and Nick Scarpino out there for or I'm sorry Johnny Ace, Greg Miller and Johnny Ace are up there the KFW tag. I assume he will continue to do the rest and also as much as we've slippery slope all this stuff. One of the things I appreciate about the island from a very Greg nerdy thing is that they put all the island trophies on a DLC thing meaning that if you wanted a platinum WWE 2K25 you would never have to touch the island. That's a nice thing. But also they're not hard the island ones. I have three of five right now just from tinkering around. I need to get a badge and I need to compete in a PvP match. So again not terrible but ladies, gentlemen and enbies, what do you think of the one the only WWE 2K25 island sound off in the comments. So we know and of course keep on remember each and every weekday we have so many live talk shows for you to hang out and watch. You already got Games Daily, now you got the games cast. Up next is our screencast about Daredevil episode three. And then of course, the Nick Nuzlocke continues. For now, though, we'll say goodbye. Remember, if you like what you saw here, pick up a kinda funny membership YouTube.com kindafunnygames patreon.com kinda funny Spotify and Apple. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve.
WWE 2K25: How Bad Is The Island? – A Comprehensive Summary
In the March 12, 2025 episode of Kinda Funny Gamescast, the hosts Greg Miller, Snow Bike Mike, and Blessing Adeoye Jr. delve deep into the highly anticipated release of WWE 2K25, focusing specifically on its new feature, The Island. This detailed discussion explores the mechanics, storytelling, and overall reception of The Island, providing listeners with an in-depth analysis of what the latest installment in the WWE 2K series has to offer.
The episode kicks off with Greg Miller expressing his anticipation for reviewing WWE 2K25, particularly its new mode, The Island. Unlike previous editions, WWE 2K25 introduces a comprehensive WWE-themed world designed to offer an immersive experience akin to NBA 2K's City mode.
Greg Miller [07:23]: "Today, however, we're going to talk about WWE 2K25."
The Island is portrayed as an expansive, WWE-themed environment where players can create and customize their own wrestlers, embark on quests, and engage in both single-player and multiplayer matches. The mode aims to blend narrative storytelling with competitive gameplay, offering various storyline chapters and live events.
Blessing Adeoye Jr. [07:37]: "I played about 15 minutes before I was like, I'm out of here."
Snow Bike Mike dedicates extensive time to The Island, sharing a mix of positive and critical observations. He appreciates the detailed environments inspired by iconic WWE locations but is critical of the mode's execution and overall design.
Snow Bike Mike [08:43]: "I got the Island. Let's go back to my faction."
Blessing Adeoye Jr. initially dismisses The Island, preferring other game modes but later acknowledges finding enjoyment in specific aspects, such as the showcase mode and narrative storytelling involving WWE lore.
Blessing Adeoye Jr. [33:05]: "I'm hopping into this mode immediately."
Greg Miller offers a balanced perspective, highlighting both the strengths of WWE 2K25's gameplay and presentation while expressing significant concerns about The Island's design and its impact on the overall game experience.
Greg Miller [12:24]: "If you aren't paying to win, you're not gonna win."
The hosts identify several issues with The Island, primarily focusing on its sluggish movement, lack of cooperative multiplayer features, and single-player-oriented narrative that fails to engage players effectively.
Snow Bike Mike [14:51]: "I really enjoy the look of the island. I appreciate the ring detail. They all have four unique rings that you can play in."
Greg Miller [15:54]: "Running in slow motion to get there to go into the arcade of tomorrow. Load screen. I'm in the arcade of tomorrow."
They also criticize the repetitive quest mechanics and the disconnectedness between The Island and other game modes like My Rise, leading to a fragmented gaming experience.
Greg Miller [41:34]: "It's just this. And it's very odd that, like, it's not connected to my rise."
A significant portion of the discussion centers around the prevalent microtransactions within The Island, highlighting the game's push towards a pay-to-win model. The hosts express frustration over the extensive use of virtual currency (VC) required to level up characters and access premium items, which creates an imbalance in competitive gameplay.
Snow Bike Mike [49:25]: "I think there's a big pay to win situation that has to be discussed here since it's more on the competitive side."
Greg Miller [50:40]: "Do not do this. People who play this game do not."
Examples include overpriced cosmetic items and essential upgrades that only paying players can afford, undermining the game's fairness and accessibility.
The narrative elements within The Island receive mixed reviews. While the inclusion of prominent WWE figures like Roman Reigns and Paul Heyman adds depth, the hosts criticize the shallow and forced storytelling, which often feels AI-generated and lacks genuine engagement.
Snow Bike Mike [21:09]: "Here, they take the character models and stretch their faces into like, oh, it looks totally fake."
Blessing Adeoye Jr. [34:40]: "This showcase mode feels even improved from previous showcase modes as far as how they fit in the cutscenes together."
Despite these flaws, certain aspects like the Bloodline storyline are appreciated for their integration of WWE history and character development.
The hosts draw comparisons between The Island and NBA 2K's well-established City mode, highlighting how NBA 2K successfully integrates shared multiplayer experiences with robust single-player content. In contrast, WWE 2K25's The Island struggles to offer similar cooperative features, resulting in a more isolated and less engaging environment.
Snow Bike Mike [44:26]: "The coolest part about NBA 2K and Pro Am is I am my point guard playing with four others in a 5v5 rec league style basketball game."
Greg Miller [44:26]: "That actually sounds cool. Except for I bought the edition and I'm starting as in the."
This comparison underscores The Island's shortcomings in replicating the social and dynamic aspects that make NBA 2K's City mode a favorite among players.
Looking ahead, the hosts express skepticism about The Island's ability to evolve and address current issues. They hope for future updates to enhance multiplayer integration and refine narrative elements but remain doubtful based on the initial release's reception.
Snow Bike Mike [47:41]: "It will be interesting to see the future of this."
Greg Miller [58:52]: "What do you think from the NBA way, if this is going to succeed, if it's going to infect everything."
The possibility of The Island becoming a core component in future WWE 2K editions remains uncertain, with the hosts urging the developers to prioritize balanced gameplay and meaningful player interactions.
The episode wraps up with the hosts providing their overall assessments of The Island. Snow Bike Mike rates The Island a 4.5 out of 10, acknowledging its potential while emphasizing significant room for improvement. Greg Miller aligns with a similarly middling perspective, urging players to avoid spending on microtransactions to preserve the integrity of their gameplay experience.
Snow Bike Mike [63:40]: "I gave it a lot of beatdowns on that one. I'm in the meh to mediocre range here. So we'll go with a solid 4.5 for the island."
Greg Miller [64:12]: "A meh. Okay."
They conclude by encouraging listeners to share their own experiences and opinions, fostering a community discussion around WWE 2K25’s latest features.
Greg Miller [36:15]: "You are buying packs to get things, but it's random drops on that and da da da da da."
Snow Bike Mike [43:36]: "It's built off of that because we already had a super chat come through."
Blessing Adeoye Jr. [56:57]: "I'm jumping into random exhibitions so I might do that."
The Kinda Funny Gamescast episode provides a thorough examination of WWE 2K25’s new Island mode, uncovering both its innovative aspirations and its critical flaws. While The Island aims to create an immersive WWE universe, the execution falls short in areas such as multiplayer integration, narrative depth, and balancing monetization practices. The hosts' candid discussions offer valuable insights for both players and developers, highlighting the need for ongoing refinement to achieve the desired gaming experience.
For those interested in WWE 2K25, this episode serves as a crucial guide on what to expect and what to watch out for, ensuring informed and enjoyable gameplay.