Latest / WASD and Beyond / Episode 250: MARATHON review in progress!

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Episode 250: MARATHON review in progress! · WASD and Beyond

0:16
You know what Dave got there would want?
0:18
To know about the latest sponsorship deals that we have
0:22
the the latest knowledge potentially, yes.
0:25
Why don't you tell the the listeners in Dave got there what
0:29
we got. OK, welcome back to the show
0:32
everybody. We are host Nick and Evan and
0:34
this is the WASD and Beyond podcast.
0:36
We are sponsored by Final boss and Doc Longy.
0:38
Go check them out down below. Go pick up some merch or don't.
0:43
If you don't, you're a fucking weenie.
0:44
Go pick up some merch. Don't.
0:45
There is no or don't just. Go, don't go to Weenie Hut
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Juniors. Yeah, don't Weenie Hut General
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is where you'll be. Salty spittoon.
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You got to go there. While you're at it, please check
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out the shows it came from, Screenbox, WAC and Beyond, and
0:59
Rule for Deception. Join the Spawn Camp discord down
1:02
below. Emails WACBEY ond@gmail.com More
1:05
to come at the end of the show anyways.
1:07
Hey radio fast voice. What do you think of that?
1:12
I thought that was pretty good. Thank you.
1:14
Thank you. A lot of games have come out.
1:20
So far so good. I think The what?
1:22
This is the bomb. I'm just getting it, getting
1:25
right out in front of us. You could you consider yourself,
1:28
you know, because of the show, right?
1:29
You would consider yourself someone who's pretty plugged in
1:32
to gaming news, right? Yeah.
1:34
What was today? Today, yeah, is today March.
1:40
It's March 12th. What was today?
1:48
He doesn't know. He doesn't know future game show
1:52
before you can Google it. It was future game show bro.
1:55
Oh fuck we suck. What came out?
1:57
Well, GDC is also going on right now too.
2:01
Because we suck. I watched it.
2:04
How was it? It was good.
2:06
That's where the, the, that's why I wanted to just bring it
2:09
out in front because I figured we could talk about this first
2:11
before we moved to the main topic.
2:15
There was a trailer for that 1348 X Voto game that looked
2:19
cool, but it's out today and the reviews are in on at least
2:24
Fantasy Critic and it's got a 50.
2:28
So not good. Sorry, Russ, you're getting a
2:30
shout out on the show because you have lost 15 points.
2:35
He's lost, he's lost, he's lost 15 points and he is -2 as is
2:39
total right now. So you got some got some ground
2:43
to make up there Russell other than that that game had a
2:47
trailer, but it was released today.
2:48
Blight survival had a trailer with a little bit more of a deep
2:52
dive. They have over one and a half
2:53
million wish lists on steam. They did open up the opportunity
2:58
to sign up for play test of which yours truly has already
3:00
signed up. I will not be able to talk about
3:03
it though it's we signed or I signed an NDA so I.
3:06
Can't. Did you get approved?
3:08
They have not invited me, but they were like thank you for
3:10
your interest. So we'll see.
3:14
That should be exciting. There's a couple other games
3:17
that got shown off that looked kind of cool.
3:18
A Little Nightmares VR game was shown that looked kind of
3:23
interesting. The Ready or Not DLC was was
3:26
pretty cool. Which you were playing before
3:29
the show, correct? I am playing and I am on the
3:32
last mission of the three that have that were in this one.
3:38
It reaffirmed why I like that game so much and I knew I was
3:41
doing it for some reason because I had just been modding the game
3:44
like a week like a couple days ago.
3:47
So it was very interesting that I was doing that.
3:49
And then I realized that the update was being shown last week
3:52
or this today. I thought they were going to do
3:54
a bit more of a deep dive, but it was like no, it's out.
3:56
Come and come and play it. I'm getting flash banged again.
4:01
This is this is not good for my eyes.
4:03
I know it's not. I'm trying to find the rest of
4:05
the trailers. There was Cordura, which looked
4:09
pretty cool. That one had like a a bit of
4:13
like some. It was a Co-op psychological
4:16
horror game with mimicry and sanity mechanics.
4:19
I think I watched this trailer with Noah.
4:21
I'm trying to find. Yeah, actually no, this was at
4:25
the beginning or I must have walked away when this happened.
4:26
This looks kind of cool. This looks actually pretty sick.
4:31
I'm sure we'll be playing that one.
4:33
Stupid never dies. I also didn't see this one.
4:36
Where did we come in on the 7th guest remake?
4:39
That looked kind of OK. Project Shadow Glass was one
4:41
that I was really interested in. That's like a like 3D pixel art
4:45
game. That one looks pretty good.
4:47
They showed more Lego Batman Legacy of The Dark Knight which
4:50
looks. That's cool.
4:52
Defender of the Crown The legend returns.
4:55
I don't know if you've ever heard of this game.
4:57
It is a 1986 medieval strategy game.
5:02
It has been restored, remastered and reimagined.
5:05
So you can play in the classic mode as how it was in 1986 or a
5:08
like newer version that they've done that improves on some of it
5:12
and just makes it look a little bit more interesting.
5:14
Adorable Adventures, which is basically looks to be.
5:17
What was that? What was that game with the cat
5:19
that you love so much? Stray what?
5:22
Was it? Stray.
5:24
Stray Sorry I didn't do the beginning of that.
5:26
Adorable Adventures looks kind of like the same thing, but you
5:28
play a baby boar. OK, I love that.
5:32
Unboxing Mr. Ku was probably one of my favorites of it.
5:35
It's a it's a solo developer. His name is Nacho Rodriguez.
5:41
It is a hand drawn frame by frame graphic adventure game
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with no words. It is all told just through the
5:48
stuff happening on screen and it is hilarious.
5:50
I'm going to tell you why because you're going to look at
5:52
this image that I'm about to send you and it's.
5:55
Not. Oh well, whatever.
5:57
Well look at it on your phone. Sorry I'm forcing him to do
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this. It looks like one of the
6:02
characters from Smiling Friends, which made me instantly more
6:06
about it. That's just Charlie.
6:14
There you go. It looks like Charlie.
6:17
Cal Cal X looks kind of cool. It's a puzzle adventure game.
6:23
Like I said, Blight survival. One thing that Noah and I made
6:25
fun of was a game that's that coming out called Clean Up.
6:27
Worth where? Clean Up Earth, where it's a
6:29
beach clean simulator and you can play with up to 25 friends
6:33
and Co-op. And I know.
6:34
And I were like, just go do that.
6:37
Just go. Clean up, I'm not doing work.
6:39
Just just go, just go do that in real life.
6:42
If you're going to like, don't buy a game and play it.
6:45
You pretend to clean up the Earth Directive 8020, which is
6:51
like another Dark Pictures Anthology game, like one of
6:54
those Until Dawn games. There's like a couple more.
7:00
Silver Pines looks kind of cool. A lot of these I I did not see.
7:04
I had seen some stuff about Silver Pines.
7:05
People seem to be really stoked on it.
7:08
That one looks kind of cool. I I, I thought that was kind of
7:10
interesting. Yeah.
7:12
There's a lot of these and we can't, I can't go through all
7:14
these. This is kind of crazy.
7:15
That's fine. There's a there's a lot.
7:18
Yes. Gate guard simulator.
7:21
We only have like three of those.
7:23
Not even going to. I mean, well, no, we have the
7:26
zombie one, we have the other one, and now we have gate
7:29
guards. So like they're different vibes,
7:31
they're different settings. OK.
7:33
Fine fine, I just wasn't vibe maxing with you dude.
7:36
I'll kill you. I don't know what that truly
7:39
means. I don't.
7:41
I don't know if I just did a racism or not.
7:43
You didn't. No, you didn't.
7:44
You did. There's remothered Red Nuns
7:47
Legacy. OK that is coming to PC and
7:50
console. Does that look cool?
7:51
Kind of like some sort of like Silent Hill style game and
7:56
another one called Samson, which is the next game from the
8:01
creator of just 'cause it is an action brawler heavily focused
8:06
on like driving and like fist fighting.
8:09
That one looks kind of that one looks, Yeah, it, it looks like
8:12
it'll, it'll capture a couple of us.
8:14
I think it'll be kind of fun. If the story's good, it'll it'll
8:16
probably hold me. But yeah, those are some of the
8:19
big ones that I saw. That looks kind of cool.
8:21
Very good dude. Yes, I did the journalism today.
8:26
Well also GDC is happening right now.
8:29
Xbox is celebrating 25 years where they're showing off all of
8:35
their like consoles, all the developer kits, all like the
8:39
prototypes and just celebrating 25 years of Xbox.
8:43
So I think that's really neat. I like that a lot.
8:45
I wish I could see that live right there.
8:47
There's some cool free swag they're giving out if you're at
8:50
the the panel and shit where it's like a 25 year like D pad
8:55
you can get for your Pro controller and all that.
8:59
Valve is there with all three pieces of hardware.
9:02
People have been testing out the the Steam frame, the controller
9:06
and the machine. Everybody who's touched touched
9:10
that. The hardware loves it.
9:13
Good Says it's a fantastic stuff.
9:17
I know that people were kind of confused about Valve coming out
9:22
saying to be Steam Machine verified 1080P has to at least
9:26
hit 10801080P30 frames. So people are confused about
9:30
that saying, oh, so these are going to run at 30 frames?
9:33
No, but for a game to be verified it has to hit that
9:36
metric. That's the confusion.
9:38
Well, and I'm sure and at the end of the day that also is
9:40
probably with some sort of upscaling technology after the
9:43
fact, right. So you're not going to be
9:44
getting just 30, I hope. But like you said, that's not
9:47
the minimum that people are going to be shooting.
9:49
For 60 FPS at 4 Ki think is what they were shooting for.
9:54
We'll see. I mean, that's going.
9:55
To be I, I I just. It's it's going to be hard to do
9:57
just based off how games are these days.
9:59
How? 1080 teams will be I don't
10:01
remember, I have to look at the specs.
10:03
Yeah, I mean, we'll we'll see, but hopefully that works out for
10:06
them. Speaking of other Valve news,
10:07
they responded to the New York a GS like lawsuit, which was a
10:13
very good letter. I thought it really it shows
10:17
that Steam always our Valve always, it really has the the
10:20
consumers back. It is really what I took from
10:23
that is. Like what?
10:24
So I didn't they. Were like, I read it, I don't
10:26
remember all of it verbatim, but I remember them saying something
10:29
specifically that was like, we could have just made a deal with
10:36
the New York AG and we could have taken care of this, but we
10:40
felt that wouldn't have fostered the relationship we have of
10:44
protecting our consumers, you know, or whatever.
10:47
Something, something along those lines.
10:49
I can find the full letter here. It's cool man, Valves in like 4
10:54
lawsuits right now that they seem to just be steamrolling so
10:57
I don't know why you'd even want to sue Valve.
10:59
So this is their statement in full.
11:01
Dear New York customers of Counter Strike 2, Dota 2, and
11:04
Team Fortress 2, you may have seen the New York Attorney
11:07
General recently filed A lawsuit against Valve claiming mystery
11:10
boxes like crates, cases and chess and some of our games
11:13
violate New York gambling laws. We don't believe that they do,
11:16
and we're disappointed to see the NYAG make that claim after
11:19
working to educate them about our virtual items in mystery
11:21
boxes since they first reached out to us in early 23.
11:24
We rarely talk about litigation, but we felt we should explain
11:27
the situation to you. We shared with the NY AG that
11:30
these types of boxes and our games are widely used not just
11:32
in video games, but in the tangible world as well.
11:35
Our generations have grown up opening baseball card packs and
11:37
blind boxes and bags and then trading and selling the items
11:40
they receive. On the physical side, popular
11:42
products used in this way include baseball cards, Pokémon,
11:45
Magic the Gathering, and Laboobu.
11:47
Love that they set the poop. Yeah, I love that they did that.
11:49
And the Game Space digital packs, similar to our boxes,
11:52
date back to 2004 and are in widespread use.
11:54
Players don't have to open mystery boxes to play Valve
11:57
games, Valve games. In fact, most of you don't open
11:59
any boxes at all and just play the games.
12:01
Because the items in the boxes are purely cosmetic.
12:03
There is no disadvantage to a player not spending money.
12:06
In the process of cooperating with the NYA GS investigation,
12:09
we share with them our efforts over many years to shut down
12:11
accounts found to be using Valve game items on gambling sites in
12:14
violation of the Steam Subscriber Agreement.
12:16
We also share with them our efforts to combat fraud and
12:19
theft of users items and our extraordinary measures to stop
12:21
gambling sites from taking advantage of Steam accounts and
12:23
Valve game items. Valve does not cooperate with
12:26
gambling sites. To date, we've locked over
12:28
1,000,000 Steam accounts that were being misused by third
12:30
parties in connection with gambling fraud and theft.
12:33
We've also shipped features like Trade Reversal and Trade
12:36
Cooldown to discourage gambling sites abilities to protect and
12:40
or to operate and protect Steam users from fraud.
12:43
We and we forbid any gambling related business to participate
12:46
in or sponsor tournaments for our games.
12:48
That's true. You don't ever see FanDuel.
12:51
At GG FanDuel. You never see any of that stuff
12:57
we have. We have serious concerns with
12:59
many of the alterations the NYAG claims are necessary to make to
13:01
our games. 1st, the NYAG seems to believe boxes and their
13:04
content should not be transferable.
13:06
They appear to assume digital mystery boxes and items in our
13:09
games are different from tangible items like baseball
13:11
card packs which contain random cards, and to take issue with
13:14
the fact that the users have the ability to transfer the items
13:17
they received through Steam trading or user to user sales on
13:19
the community market. We think the transferability of
13:22
a digital item is good for consumers.
13:24
It gives a user the ability to sell or trade an older unwanted
13:26
item for something else and the waste.
13:27
And the same way an owner can sell or trade a tangible item
13:30
like a Pokémon or baseball card, NYAG proposes to take away users
13:34
abilities to transform their digital items from Valve games.
13:37
Transferability is a right we believe should not be taken
13:39
away, and we refuse to do that. I like that they just said and
13:42
we refuse. That's awesome.
13:44
The NYAG also proposed to gather additional information beyond
13:47
what we normally collect in the course of processing payments
13:50
each about each game user, on the off chance someone in New
13:52
York was anonymizing their location to appear outside of
13:55
New York, such as by using AVPN. This would have involved
13:58
implementing invasive technologies for every user
14:00
worldwide. Similarly, the NYAG demanded
14:03
that Valve collect more personal data about our users to do
14:05
additional age verification, even though most payment methods
14:08
used by New York Steam users already have age verification
14:11
built in. Valve knows our users care about
14:13
the security of their personal information, and we believe it's
14:16
in our and their interest to only collect the information
14:18
necessary to operate the business and comply with law.
14:21
We respect New York's right to determine the law's governing
14:24
behavior in the state. We will, of course, comply at
14:26
the New York Legislature passes laws governing mystery boxes,
14:29
something it has not done despite considering the issue a
14:31
few times. Such laws would be the result of
14:33
a public process, presumably with input from the industry and
14:36
New York gamers. The type of commitments the NYAG
14:38
demanded from Valve went far beyond what existing New York
14:41
law requires, and even beyond New York itself.
14:43
It may have been easier and cheaper for Valve to make a deal
14:45
with the NYAG, but we believe the type of deal that would
14:48
satisfy the NYAG would have been bad for users and other game
14:51
developers and impacted our ability to innovate in game
14:54
design. In addition, although this is
14:56
although this case is about mystery boxes, we feel the need
14:58
to address comments made by the NYAG about games, real world
15:02
violence, and children. These extraneous comments are a
15:04
distraction and a mischaracterization we've all
15:06
heard before. Numerous studies throughout the
15:08
years have concluded there is no link between media, movies, TV,
15:11
books, comics, music and games and real world violence.
15:14
Indeed, many studies highlight the beneficial impact of games
15:17
to users. Ultimately, a court will decide
15:19
whose position, ours or NYAGS is correct.
15:22
In the meantime, we wanted to make sure you are aware of the
15:24
potential impact to users in New York and elsewhere.
15:27
March 11th, 2026. Great letter.
15:30
Wow. We'd love to see, we'd love to
15:32
see a spine. We'd love to see a spine from a
15:35
lot of other people that that aren't.
15:38
They're not. Wrong and I I'm not they're 100
15:40
and I've seen a lot of people I've seen a lot of people
15:42
posting me and where it's like Nintendo and it's like stop
15:47
picking on the billionaire company, the billion dollar
15:49
company and that the next one is like Valve and I'm like Valve is
15:54
Valve these different than any other Triple H?
15:57
Very pro consumer. Yes, and they're very they, they
16:01
treat their people who work for them good, incredibly good to
16:05
the point where, and I only know this because I'm a fucking
16:08
freak, if you work at Valve and you request a certain type of
16:14
food because they have on premise chef chefs.
16:18
On premise. Chef, they will get you that
16:20
food. If you're a vegan, they will go
16:23
out of their way to make sure there's vegan menu.
16:25
They're like, there's a vegan menu for vegans at the like this
16:29
company is. It's so beyond most other
16:32
companies and what they'll do and they're being sued like 4
16:35
different ways. They've won two, 3, two or three
16:38
litigations already. And it's just like, yeah, keep
16:41
suing Valve keep. You have to give them more
16:43
money. That's fine.
16:44
Give them more money so we'll get cooler shit I guess.
16:47
I guess, yeah, we'll. Say mom Donnie, mom Donnie, just
16:50
tell this person to stop. He's.
16:51
Got nothing to do with this. I know, just tell the AG to
16:54
knock it off. Just he's got more pressing
16:56
concerns right now. But yeah, that's that's kind of
16:59
the the most recent stuff in news right now for for gamer
17:04
stuff. Well, a hot Topic item that
17:08
we're going to discuss fully today is Marathon.
17:12
More specifically, you were all fucking wrong.
17:16
I don't know, it was our. Audience, whoever is out there
17:21
just bitching and moaning about the game that they're not
17:24
playing because you don't have to like extraction shooters,
17:28
that's fine. But if you play, if I go go to
17:32
your profile and I see that you have 40 plus, fuck that 20 plus
17:37
hours of Arc. O20. 20, we'll go down to 20 and
17:42
you're saying you don't like extraction shooters, therefore
17:45
marathon bad. I'm going to go to your house.
17:47
I'm going to punch you in your throat because you're a liar.
17:51
This game is not perfect. It's far from it.
17:55
What this game is though is very fun, very smooth to play.
18:00
It's very optimized. The gunplay is fucking Bungie A+
18:05
standard gunplay. The quest lines are very neat,
18:10
even though a lot of it is fetch quest, but what you're exploring
18:14
and doing in this fucking world is interesting.
18:17
The Arg that is happening as we are putting this, we are
18:21
recording and putting this episode out is insane.
18:24
People are decrypting entire websites.
18:28
They are going across the map and decrypting panels to then
18:32
upload to the websites to then coordinate on the maps where
18:36
they have to go to get more information about Durandal.
18:40
Durandal Durandal, however you want to say it him rather to
18:46
unlock the next map and gain more information on what's going
18:51
on here. This game is what they're doing
18:54
is awesome. Yeah, it's not.
18:56
They didn't just go here's your game.
18:57
They went, OK, here's more puzzles for the community.
19:00
You don't want to play the game right now.
19:01
Fine. How about you go do some
19:02
puzzles, right? Still play the game.
19:05
But you're not in the game. You're you're going to do it
19:07
through the websites, through the Twitter, through the
19:08
Discord. This is awesome shit they're
19:11
doing. They didn't have to do any of
19:13
this. They could have said here's the
19:13
game. Oh, it's dead.
19:15
No, this the player base is going up.
19:17
It's staying steady at the very least Yeah, with some dips and
19:21
dives and going right back up and steady.
19:24
This is great this. Is good stuff.
19:25
They're also dips and dives too, because they're probably going
19:27
to work. That's when people are calling
19:30
it out the most, when everybody's at work.
19:32
I mean, I just don't like I've had such a blast.
19:36
Like I'll give my side of how I felt about this.
19:38
Since the game has come out, I have had a blast.
19:42
I've had such a large amount of fun with this extraction shooter
19:46
in a way that I I feel like I probably talked up arc Raiders a
19:50
couple times on this show or I talked positively about Tarkov
19:53
and I have and I and I do think that those games do certain
19:57
things well. If I had to put them in a list,
19:59
though, if I had to rank my extraction shooters right now,
20:02
marathons at the top. Arc Raiders is second, Tarkov's
20:06
last, and I think those are the only. 3 Tarkov could stay last
20:09
forever, by the way. I don't know what they're doing
20:12
with that game, but some. Steam now, man.
20:16
Arc, I mean, yeah, great. 12,000 players.
20:20
Arc has arc is a pretty cool loop, but I fell out of it
20:25
because I just wasn't really interested so much in the quest
20:28
and I felt like they weren't really like giving me a lot of
20:30
like I wanted a little bit more lore about the world and what
20:33
has happened to it and how like like the history of Speranza,
20:38
Things like that would be cool. And just I wanted more variety
20:42
in like the the arcs a little sooner.
20:44
Things like that. It's taking a while for them to
20:46
kind of get going. And I get it, it takes time and
20:48
you're doing a lot of other stuff.
20:49
Unfortunately, having to develop a lot of cosmetics instead, in
20:52
my opinion, I I would maybe not want that Like, like, and
20:57
granted you get a lot of, you get a lot of premium currency in
20:59
that game just by playing it. So you can get a lot of things,
21:02
yeah. Which is great.
21:03
That are really nice but I would rather see more about the story
21:06
and like more content. But like marathon has has it it.
21:12
Marathon has become my favorite extraction shooter by far
21:15
because of the things that Nick has said, like the gunplay is
21:19
great. I didn't play Destiny one or
21:21
two, I didn't care for them, but I love the gunplay in this
21:26
because it feels dangerous fast, but also you're able to like if
21:35
you know what you're doing, you're able to kind of hold on,
21:37
you're able to fight and and those fights feel good when you
21:40
get into a gunfight with someone and that you're, you're both
21:43
ducking back and forth between cover and one of you gets the
21:46
lucky shot off. I got a clip that I posted in
21:48
our Discord that you should join because it's free.
21:51
And it was a guy who put down a supply drop and I was starting
21:56
to loot it and I started looting it and he shot me from behind
21:58
and I somehow managed to survive, heal up a little bit
22:01
and eventually took him down. And I was like that, that just
22:05
wouldn't have happened in the other two games.
22:07
And and like, my stupidity is certainly a thing to be measured
22:10
in this because I just went and started looting because I'm a
22:12
goblin. But like, I know how the
22:16
situation has gone for me in every other game where Tarkov is
22:19
like pretty much every interaction I have in Tarkov
22:21
with another player, I lose or I get so severely injured I use
22:24
most of my heels to then get out of rate.
22:26
I suck at Tarkov. I'm terrible at it, which is why
22:28
it's at the bottom of my list. I don't like it.
22:32
Arc is is a bit different because I'm more aggressive in
22:35
arc because I see every extraction shooter as a as a
22:39
combat zone. I don't.
22:40
I don't necessarily try to be friendly.
22:42
Play them like Daisy. Yeah, I play them like Daisy.
22:45
I play them like everybody else is out to get me in Marathon.
22:48
Excuse me? Marathon has solidified that for
22:52
me and it's it's fits my place out perfectly.
22:55
I like to be aggressive in combat and I like to have a PvP
23:00
element. I also like the Pve aspect that
23:03
I have with the UESC robots. I think they're challenging, I
23:07
think they're dangerous. I think they're incredibly good
23:10
at revealing. Excuse me, Jesus information.
23:14
Like you can be sitting, like the sound design is a huge thing
23:19
in that game. Incredible.
23:21
Like you can be sitting in a room in hall around perimeter
23:26
and you can know that someone's approaching because you can hear
23:29
the UESC robots get aggressive and you can listen to that fight
23:34
happen and pick your moment. You can choose, do you want to
23:37
go outside and try to fight this person?
23:38
You want to wait till they clear out the UESC bots and get in
23:41
because now you run the risk of what if they heal?
23:43
You know, what if they got plenty of ammo?
23:45
What if they heal? Now you're just fighting them
23:46
again, you know, do you jump out there and try to take them down?
23:50
You know, you give yourself a lot of tactical options, which I
23:52
feel like doesn't happen in the other two games that much.
23:56
I feel like because of the sound design and because of how I like
23:59
to play solos, I can very much just have a single player
24:04
experience. I feel like even when I'm
24:05
fighting other players, I don't feel like I'm fighting other
24:08
players. I feel like I'm fighting like
24:10
just other runners. They don't feel like necessarily
24:14
like players, I guess, so to speak.
24:17
Like it just feels like it's part of the world, especially
24:19
because I even have procs chat on it.
24:21
Most of the time people don't say anything.
24:22
I think I got, I think somebody called me a slur today when I
24:25
killed them when I was playing earlier that.
24:27
Wasn't nice. We've been having a lot of
24:29
people say a lot of nasty things to me.
24:32
I bet. But yeah, it's just, it's been a
24:35
blast. I love the factions, I love the
24:36
setting, the vibe. Everything about it is great.
24:39
I don't listen to the music in games because I need to hear
24:41
things, but I love just the entire setting of it all.
24:45
Like it's futuristic in a way that none of the other games
24:48
are. It's got its own style to
24:52
things. Everything looks cool.
24:54
I like how the colors are bright and poppy.
24:58
They they have some great color design, I think in some of these
25:01
maps and there's just an incredibly immersive vibe as
25:05
well. Like the the weather effects,
25:07
environmental effects that change on every run are very
25:11
fun. I like that it's not tied like
25:13
in it. For instance, Arc Raiders does
25:14
this where it's tied to like timers.
25:16
I like that this is you load in and you're just going to get a
25:19
random seed. Essentially, you're going to get
25:21
a random version of the map. I like that the next update or
25:24
the next season is going to have dire March at night.
25:27
I can't wait. They get so fucked.
25:28
Up I'm curious how that's going to work.
25:31
I'm just excited for the future of this game and I hope it
25:35
survives because I think they really have something here and I
25:37
think they need to just trust that they're going to have
25:39
you're not gonna get I don't know what Sony has as a target
25:43
for this. I don't know what Bungie has as
25:44
a target for this, but it's like it's foolish to have a target
25:48
for a game like this, in my opinion.
25:49
Like I think it's you just ride it and see how long you can keep
25:52
people playing it by giving them free content.
25:55
And just like how they did Destiny, I guess.
25:57
And maybe they did that wrong and somebody can tell me I'm an
25:59
idiot in the comments. There was a lot of wrongs they
26:01
did in Destiny. Right.
26:02
And I, and I hope that it doesn't go this this way for,
26:05
for marathon. I hope that they've learned from
26:07
those mistakes because I think that there's a real winner here.
26:09
Like, and I think again, it, it should not fall to how many,
26:13
Well, how many. Like, I think the whole argument
26:14
about the player base or how many people are playing is
26:16
stupid because at the end of the day, none of the companies are
26:20
going off of those. Like they're going off of these
26:23
metrics in a way that they I don't think are going to
26:25
accomplish. EA has.
26:27
They want 100 million people or some shit like that to play
26:30
Battlefield every year. It's like, are you like, Like
26:34
what? Like that's insane.
26:38
Like, yeah. It's dumb.
26:39
It's unrealistic. It is, it's it's like, it's like
26:44
you guys, you guys got lucky last year because you had you
26:47
went up against the most poop butt Call of Duty there was.
26:51
Literal shit from a butt. Exactly.
26:53
And like they have this insane metric and and like, I hope that
26:57
that Sony and Bungie are not doing that with this.
26:59
I hope that they're just going to give it space to breathe and
27:02
just let us let us get to the at least the prior archive.
27:04
I mean, give us longer than Highgard.
27:08
Highgard, I think. 45. Days plans.
27:12
That sucks. I think there are plans to go
27:15
beyond cryo with some of the things we're finding in the
27:19
community right now. The shore, the alien shores.
27:23
We're seeing in the in the riddles and the rhymes.
27:26
We've yet to be introduced to any of the aliens.
27:30
There's two different fucking aliens that can come from this,
27:35
so we've not seen any of them. We've not met any of the AI
27:38
other than Durindal, but we haven't even met him.
27:44
He's hacked players and like comms and he's on.
27:49
If you go to the correct panels, which is cool that those are
27:51
throwbacks to the original marathon panels that you find on
27:55
the marathon. If you click those and they're
27:59
the same noise that they make when you click them, which I
28:03
also I'm just a sucker for. But if you click those in a
28:06
sequential order and are the right one in sequential order,
28:11
he will talk to you, giving you more clues and giving you the
28:14
password to the website. And it's impressive what they're
28:18
doing. And there's a, you know, over at
28:22
bungee, there is a entire map of OK.
28:27
How are we going to lead to YEAH?
28:29
Where do we go next? Because that's the thing that I
28:32
don't like the burnt peanut. I don't like any of those.
28:34
You know how I feel about streamers.
28:35
I don't like them. Him and his little buddies were
28:39
saying something that I thought made sense.
28:41
They're like, this game is giving me like a purpose now,
28:47
but I feel like I'm playing towards something, right?
28:51
Yeah, that's exactly microsystem of of Arc, right?
28:54
Like I feel like it just wasn't building towards anything.
28:56
What am I doing? Like what am I assisting in
29:00
other than just like fulfilling a past?
29:01
But what does that tangibly change for me?
29:04
Does it do a? Marathon.
29:04
You don't. The past don't mean shit if you
29:06
don't want to touch it. Well, exactly.
29:08
Yeah, yeah. I think the game has a lot of
29:13
deep customization too that I think is impressive.
29:17
Like I like that you have cores and implants, and I like that
29:20
they do sort of unique things. I like that all the guns have a
29:23
chip mod and that chip can be anything from I've seen golden
29:28
chip mods that turn certain guns that we haven't even seen yet
29:31
into Full Auto weapons that are not like changing the fire like
29:37
mode to things like one that you get a like I I got a moderate
29:42
amount of credits every time I killed a UESC robot or commander
29:47
and it's like, OK, so I'm just going to use this gun whenever I
29:49
want to run and just kill a bunch of bots and leave because
29:52
I'm just going to get a bunch of credits on the way out.
29:54
And then there was another one where it's like you lose your
29:58
shield while using this weapon or, and you like fire after it
30:01
has a moderate chance to refill ammo in the gun.
30:04
And it's like, it's things like that where it's like you don't,
30:07
you're not paying attention to it in the moment necessarily
30:09
because you might be so focused on trying to kill whatever's in
30:12
front of you. But like, it's those little
30:14
things that make you pick your build that can can be so
30:18
customizable in some ways that I really, really, really enjoy.
30:21
I love it. It's great, dude, and it all
30:24
feels thought out. The only thing I think they need
30:26
to do is really clean up the UI. Well, I don't think the UI is
30:31
confusing. I think that it's not the best
30:34
it could be. And I think some of the cores
30:36
and the chips and a lot of those types of items need to be
30:41
cleaned up and addressed. I think that there needs to be a
30:44
clearer picture on them. They things need to be labeled
30:47
more clearly. They need to have clearer just
30:50
anything because you're looking going through your stash going
30:52
Oh my fucking God, like, right, It's just a mess.
30:56
And you know, for me, I think stacking, they need to add
31:00
better stacking. They just have to.
31:02
I think they need to give us the ability to The thing is and.
31:06
Modify the weapons in the fucking in the stash.
31:11
Oh, to add. Things throw attachments, be
31:14
able to double click them and throw attachments on that would
31:17
instantly clean up everyone's loot.
31:19
Or stashes. I mean you can do that the other
31:21
way. That is just the workaround to
31:23
it, which is just equip the gun and then put.
31:25
Attachments I understand that but if you but like OK but when
31:29
your stash gets full you have to clear to then continue.
31:31
On no, no, I agree with what they should add, but I'm saying
31:35
there is a way around it right now that can somewhat help.
31:38
But also I think that's also just kind of like for me, I, I,
31:43
I agree with it because I, I, I run into the problem the same
31:46
way. Like it's very frustrating
31:48
sometimes, but I also just, I kind of like the vibe though,
31:52
because the more I I have that, the more I realize of like, Oh,
31:56
this shit doesn't really matter. It's there's No Fear.
32:00
That is perfect that you did that because a lot of people are
32:03
also saying like you and I have, I don't got loot fear.
32:07
There's no gear. Fear.
32:08
Yeah, I got no gear. Fear.
32:09
There's no gear fear in this game compared to like Arc.
32:12
There really isn't because you have free loadouts and like but
32:15
yeah. But my issue with Arc is more
32:17
personal to me and that I just, I'm not a big crafter.
32:22
I don't really care about crafting.
32:23
I like that you don't. Gotta do fuck all in marathon.
32:25
I like that there's no crafting in marathon.
32:27
I like that it's very much you just use the salvage to upgrade
32:30
or trade or barter with the with the factions.
32:32
So like whatever, that's fine for me, but like I didn't really
32:37
vibe with the whole crafting stuff to for, for Arkansas
32:42
wasn't my my jam. But like the gear fear or lack
32:47
of it in Marathon is what I am also drawn to because with
32:50
Tarkov, when you get good gear, you want to keep it and not
32:53
actually use it right in the next rate, especially depending
32:55
on your situation and what you're trying to do.
32:59
And like for me, when I would play Tarkov and I was playing it
33:03
when I was a couple years ago and I was enjoying it and
33:07
actually not too bad at it. I remember like getting great
33:12
weapons and then just leaving them in the stash.
33:14
I just wouldn't use them. I would have no, because I
33:16
because I knew if I was like I I can run in with the crappiest AK
33:20
and like crappy ammo and I will walk out with a bunch of great
33:23
loot. But I know that as soon as I
33:25
bring in like this RSAS or this, you know, M1A or whatever, I'm
33:30
going to get domed immediately as soon as I bring.
33:32
By a hacker too. Yeah, by a hacker or just by my
33:35
own stupidity, I'm going to make a mistake.
33:37
And like even in this game when I have had as of right now, my
33:41
best guns have been blue. Even when I lose those I just
33:45
kind of go like damn it that sucks.
33:49
OK. Like time to move on, time to
33:51
time to get, time to get that gun again, because they're so
33:53
common to get or whatever. And, you know, see if I can add
33:57
some chips and stuff to make it a blue gun.
33:59
Like it's, it's within my power and I, I appreciate that.
34:03
I, I, I like that it gives me the ability to sort of control
34:07
that and yeah, just have fun with it.
34:10
I like the factions too. For you got cyber, Acme, new
34:14
caloric Traxxas, Yep you have Arachne, Mida and Sakaguchi.
34:21
Yep, they're all cool, all the AI and or not they're not all AI
34:26
because Traxxas is literally or Arachne is not an AI.
34:32
Arachne is an the cult, yes. Yeah, they have a liaison,
34:37
right? Yeah.
34:38
Yeah, the liaison right there, Maida is like just super
34:42
anarchist cool shit, dude. Like it's just all good.
34:46
Like there are times when I'm playing the game like fuck, man.
34:50
Like I there's a huge part of me that's still sitting here going,
34:55
I think at one point this was, this was a single player game.
34:58
And Sony said no, turn this into a live service.
35:01
Mm Hmm. And I would love to see that the
35:03
single player game that was prior to this.
35:05
I would love to see that from Marathon.
35:07
But I'm not as angry as I thought I would be.
35:12
And I'm having a blast to the point where I am hooked on this
35:15
game. I'm at work and I'm constantly
35:18
thinking I need to get home to go play more Marathon.
35:20
It's it's it's, it's good. It is so fucking again.
35:24
It is so smooth and optimized. And that can't be understated
35:29
here because we're so used to shit from a butt, but we
35:32
literally just got RE-9 and marathon and both came out
35:36
without a hitch. Well, we've got and yeah, I'll
35:39
say that goes kind of hand in hand.
35:41
I was going to bring this up, but then you kind of LED right
35:44
into it. Yeah.
35:44
It's like the spider too, for all those who are playing that.
35:47
Well, I'm just thinking more so in the sense, yeah, I mean, to
35:50
those who are playing that great, I hope you're having a
35:51
great time with it. I saw it got released early
35:53
access but Battlefield 6 came out last October and great
35:59
performance and Marathon has come out great performance.
36:02
RA 9 has come out great performance.
36:04
Crimson Desert by all accounts has great performance on their
36:09
engine and we are we have not seen yet.
36:12
Playing high guard. Yuck comes out Thursday, I think
36:17
next week, Crimson Desert as well as I think some other game
36:19
I can't remember, but I think it's going to run great.
36:24
And, and I think the problem where a lot of issues with
36:29
players have been dealing with in terms of performance for
36:32
certain games, that is UB5 and the fact that it's just not
36:37
optimized yet. It's it's just not ready, I
36:41
guess, or they just need to do more work on it and and improve
36:44
on that. Like Alan Wake, great
36:46
performance. It's their own engine, like
36:48
every every engine that has been a studio like built thing death
36:52
training too. Like that's what it is.
36:54
That's what comes out next week for PC players.
36:59
Like all of those have run great.
37:00
Marathon especially has been a dream.
37:03
It's it's very pretty. I love the way that everything
37:06
looks like I said, everything looks 3D printed.
37:09
It's all like geometrical, like sort of design.
37:13
I like everything about it. It just has a very cool vibe.
37:16
And yeah, I'm, I'm running everything as high as I can on
37:21
performance with DLSS on. And I'm getting, you know, 90 to
37:24
120 a piece depending on the weather usually can make a
37:27
difference. But like I don't care because
37:30
it's that that Thunder and lightning on outpost when it's
37:33
like pitch black outside. It's it's golden, It looks it's
37:37
so beautiful and it it pulls you right in.
37:39
It makes you want to just stay there and keep fighting and and
37:42
just like not even worry about the extract like let's.
37:45
Talk about the maps, because it's not just the players that
37:47
are dangerous, the actual maps and the UESC bots are so
37:53
dangerous and some of the AI is so good that they will try to
37:57
act as players with the movements.
38:00
Oh really? Have you noticed that?
38:02
Yes, nice quick turnarounds and like twitching and shit like
38:05
that. It's like is that a player or
38:07
not makes you double it makes you second guess yourself.
38:10
Sometimes you're like, OK, I don't know if I want to engage
38:13
that because if it's a player, I I I don't know.
38:16
This game makes you think when you're when you're engaging in
38:19
other players because you're like, OK, I, I you know you need
38:23
to plan out shit. It's not just a bull rush in and
38:26
I love that and I. Agree.
38:30
I'm I'm just, I'm I'm happy to see where Marathon's at because
38:33
I love the original series. Yeah, and this is cool for this
38:38
generation, right? I think this is really good for
38:40
this generation who are playing marathon now.
38:43
I would agree. I wish they, I think Bunchy
38:46
doing also a really good job with the lore because they're
38:51
really doing it in a such a marathon way.
38:56
This is great, man. It needs some touch ups.
38:59
It needs a little bit of love to it, but that's not saying it's
39:03
not great and that it's not doing well.
39:05
It's got me hooked. As soon as we're done here, I'm
39:08
playing marathon. Yeah, like it's fucking awesome.
39:12
We cannot fully give this a review until Cryo comes out.
39:17
Yeah, but we'll wait to give our full review or our full thoughts
39:20
on it until after we get to play with the new maps for a little
39:24
bit. But right now, tentatively, I
39:26
say I'm giving it like an 8/8 and 1/2.
39:30
Yeah, just a little if it had a duos mode.
39:34
That's kind of my biggest, yeah, that's probably my biggest
39:36
gripe. There's no duos mode.
39:37
So it basically for me, it either forces me to play solos
39:41
or trios. I basically, and much to the
39:43
dismay of Nick and everyone else in the Discord, I, I do not, I
39:47
just simply won't. I, I refuse to play duos because
39:50
you're just putting, we're just putting ourselves at a
39:52
disadvantage and like. It's an immediate disadvantage.
39:55
It's an immediate disadvantage because the game is so quick and
39:58
it's time to kill. And it's not Even so much that
39:59
it's quick time to kill, but it's that the weapons are very
40:02
strong like. So in essence, it is a.
40:04
Quick time to kill, but it just, it feels different.
40:06
It doesn't it it's, it's certainly not an apex where you
40:09
can survive a lot of bullets or like, you know, things like
40:12
that, you know, especially certain weapons.
40:14
But it's so quick and dangerous like that, that, yeah, like Nick
40:19
can take 1 down, I can take another, but that other guy is
40:22
going to take one of us down. And I, the other one is going to
40:25
be reloading, you know, the other one is going to be doing
40:27
something else. And like, it becomes a, it
40:31
becomes a gunfight. And in the same process, that
40:34
guy can get his teammates up or they have a self revive.
40:36
And it's just you're, you're like I said, down a player is,
40:39
is pretty terrible. So yeah, get out of duo's mode
40:42
and I'm I'm singing this game's praises, probably.
40:45
I'm also going to say that I'm happy that Bungie has rallied
40:48
the players to be bloodthirsty lunatics.
40:51
There is no love on Tao Seti. I love that.
40:57
I don't want to play a game where I do and I don't.
41:01
There's a there's a time place in marathon.
41:03
It is you are told by your AI that is talking to you prior to
41:08
the match or to the to the run. Rather, you are the only thing
41:13
special here. Treat other runners as hostiles.
41:17
It's telling you affirmations like affirmations, protocol,
41:21
engage and all these neat little things.
41:23
And I I think that's awesome. I think it's great that Bungie's
41:26
like, no, no one here is friends unless you're going in with
41:29
friends, right? And even then it's like I'm
41:31
going to get my loot. I I baited Evan by accident the
41:34
other day. You get a quest on.
41:35
Not by accident. But no, this is this.
41:40
This is great. They're also being in before we
41:43
tie up. They're being incredibly fast on
41:45
these updates. Yeah, that's, this is what
41:49
today's Thursday was the update come out yesterday.
41:51
So that was a little less than a week.
41:54
Not bad. Yeah.
41:57
Like that's that's great for an opening release, so.
42:00
Yeah, give it a shot, guys. Just give Marathon a shot.
42:04
I, I, you know, just try it, try it with some friends.
42:07
Try it, try it. Single player.
42:08
You can play as a Rook. Rook is great.
42:10
Yeah, yeah, he's fun. So Marathon man, can't say
42:14
enough about it right now. I'm loving it until later in the
42:17
year or next year when we do an episode about Marathon and it's
42:20
Oh my God, Bungie ruined it. They had lightning in a bottle.
42:23
They fucked it. So right now, I said.
42:28
Bookmark this one. Yeah, bookmark it, come back in
42:32
the air, but no, man, love it, love it, love it.
42:35
Thank you all for listening to this episode.
42:36
We really were stoked. Talk about marathon.
42:39
Let us know what you think. e-mail us WASDBEY ond@gmail.com.
42:43
If you like what you hear here, please subscribe, like, follow,
42:47
share, do all that cool stuff across YouTube, the Amazon
42:52
podcasts, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and all that good stuff.
42:56
Shows to your friends. I'm falling asleep.
42:59
Time to go play marathon. Everybody take it easy and be so
43:01
you can go check out final boss.com.