FNGC Reviews: Helldivers 2 (ft. Eric Gess of The Unlockables)

[00:00:02] Welcome everyone to another episode of the Friday Night Gamecast, a dedicated video game podcast where two best friends come together to celebrate games and bring you industry news, game impressions, reviews and more.

[00:00:44] I'm your host Nick and I'm joined by the one, the only William. What up, what up, what up?

[00:00:51] How's it going man? You doing all right? Hey, it's going well. I can't complain. It's a beautiful Sunday we got going on here.

[00:00:56] Don't see any any terminates, any automatons. So Ella's looking nice. We're looking pretty solid today.

[00:01:01] It's looking like a great day without those things. In joining us, I'm really excited to reintroduce a great friend of the show.

[00:01:08] He is the master of the guiding keys and the wielder of all of the Keyblades you can imagine.

[00:01:13] It is our one and only friend, Eric Guest from the Alokfuls. Eric, welcome.

[00:01:18] Will and Nick, what is up guys? It's so awesome to be back. I love coming on Friday Night Gamecast.

[00:01:23] Every time you guys invite me on, it's just an absolute blast. We have such a good time.

[00:01:28] And yeah, I'm really, really excited to talk about this game in particular. When you guys messaged me, I was like, oh, hell yeah, we have to make that happen.

[00:01:34] So this is going to be an awesome, awesome episode. I can already feel it in my bones.

[00:01:38] 100 percent. And I honestly it's been a while for folks who haven't heard of Eric before.

[00:01:44] Obviously he came on the show for the first time whenever I was doing the fireside chats and we were talking about a different game every episode in Eric.

[00:01:52] Was kind enough to come on. And if I'm not mistaken, that was the episode that you came on.

[00:01:58] What did we talk about Eric? It wasn't Kingdom Hearts 2. It wasn't Mass Effect 2.

[00:02:02] We talked about Destiny. That's right. Vanilla Destiny. That's why I forget it because that is a forgotten game.

[00:02:09] It is. It really is. Oh man. But that was really fun.

[00:02:12] And then of course he joined us for our awesome FNGC review of Final Fantasy 16.

[00:02:17] And that was an absolute blast. If you wanted to give the viewers or the audience a little bit of an update as to what's going on with the unlockables right now, do you have anything to share?

[00:02:25] Yeah, the unlockables is kind of in a weird state right now. I have been working on some stuff, but I just had a really like major life event.

[00:02:36] My son was just born three months ago, so I am an adjusting parent currently still trying to have time for games and have time to scratch that creative itch.

[00:02:46] That podcasting fulfills. I'm just kind of whenever I get stuff done, whenever I manage to put it out is kind of when I'm putting stuff out.

[00:02:53] So ever since my wife has been pregnant and we knew the kid was coming, my show has kind of shifted towards a more like me doing solo things.

[00:03:01] I haven't had a chance to collaborate with as many people.

[00:03:03] So that's kind of was the catalyst behind like Guiding Keys, the Kingdom Hearts series I've been doing on my own.

[00:03:08] And then a lot of other stuff I've just been kind of writing pieces on really anything I want to talk about.

[00:03:14] I did a piece on Helldivers 2, which we're going to talk about today about a month ago.

[00:03:18] And this month I released my Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.

[00:03:23] I wouldn't call it a review, just kind of like my general thoughts and ramblings on it.

[00:03:28] So going into summer, we might not have too much going on because it's been pretty busy and it's a busy time of year for me work wise.

[00:03:35] But I have some stuff and some ideas of some stuff that I want to try.

[00:03:39] I want to try and get some collabs back up and running because I definitely need to have you and Will back on the show again,

[00:03:45] because you guys were one of the one of the earliest people that I interviewed on my show when I had its original premise.

[00:03:51] And when the show kind of took its solo turn, I kind of lost that collaboration that the show is known for early in its existence.

[00:03:59] So trying to figure out how I can get you guys back on and fit that into my schedule.

[00:04:02] And it's kind of the goal I have for summer.

[00:04:04] So that's what's that's what's kind of going on with me.

[00:04:06] Absolutely. I could totally understand podcasting right now.

[00:04:10] This day and age is like just a completely complicated version of Jenga in real life.

[00:04:16] If you just do one one wrong move, everything comes crumbling down.

[00:04:19] But yes, the baby sets my schedule so I no longer have control over my own time.

[00:04:23] It's everything's on baby time.

[00:04:25] Exactly.

[00:04:27] Will knows how I'm talking about.

[00:04:29] Yes, very much so.

[00:04:30] So it's like the fact that you're running your podcast and doing editing and all this stuff and playing the games there too.

[00:04:35] I'm like, once again, I say this a million times.

[00:04:37] I'm so lucky having Nick because he does a lot of like the kind of background heavy lifting and he's just consummate professional.

[00:04:44] So I show up all haggard and crazy from from no sleep.

[00:04:49] And he's just like, here's some water. Here's some cough drops.

[00:04:51] Let's do this, buddy.

[00:04:53] Thank you. Thank you so much.

[00:04:55] Nick is the coolest dude. He's the best.

[00:04:57] I agree. You guys are too kind.

[00:04:59] You're too kind.

[00:05:00] Well, thank you so much.

[00:05:01] Thank you so much.

[00:05:02] And to give our thanks back to the show, I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our patrons for their incredible support over this idiom years that we've been ongoing as Friday Night Gamecast.

[00:05:12] So thank you again to Lady Blake Plotks, Y.A.

[00:05:15] Pierberg, Dave Jackson, The Intergalactic Pinecone, Fabulous Brianna, Chris Ware, the one and only Eric Guest joining us for today.

[00:05:22] That's me.

[00:05:23] Rick Firestone, Chris of the Novel Console, David C.

[00:05:26] and JD.

[00:05:27] Thank you all so much again for your support.

[00:05:29] This has been incredible.

[00:05:31] And without further ado, let's go ahead and get ready to dive into hell with Helldivers 2.

[00:05:37] Cue the music.

[00:06:29] OK, so let's jump in here and just talk about what exactly Helldivers 2 is.

[00:06:35] Will, would you like to take this off to the races for us?

[00:06:38] Yeah, so we're going to talk about Helldivers 2.

[00:06:40] We're going to get into the good, the bad, and the bugly.

[00:06:43] So first off, start with our synopsis for the game now.

[00:06:46] Helldivers 2, if you've been living under a rock for the last couple of months,

[00:06:49] it's a cooperative third-person shooter where you and up to three friends or strangers use your guns,

[00:06:55] your brains, and your never-ending explosive ordinances to bring liberty and manage democracy across the galaxy.

[00:07:02] So effectively what you're doing is you're taking those guns,

[00:07:05] you're shooting robots, or you're shooting bugs, and you are just having a blast with your friends.

[00:07:09] It's something that I've been personally playing probably nonstop until the Time Dragon's Dogma came out.

[00:07:15] So I think historically I've talked about this game on the podcast previously,

[00:07:20] and when we first saw it, I was like, uh, there's no way I'm playing this.

[00:07:24] That's right.

[00:07:25] And then the day it came out, it got so much hype online,

[00:07:29] and people were just completely gassing it up that I got sucked into the hype cycle.

[00:07:33] And I can probably say this is maybe one of the only three or four games in my life

[00:07:38] where I got pulled into a hype cycle after not having really any interest in it and it living up to the hype.

[00:07:43] I don't know about y'all as far as how you kind of saw it when it was first coming out,

[00:07:47] but yeah, I got wrapped up in the Twitter discourse and the Instagram discourse,

[00:07:52] and I was pretty much along for the ride the whole time.

[00:07:55] Yeah, I was going to say I was kind of in the same boat as Will.

[00:07:58] I think I remember seeing this game on a PlayStation Showcase or one of their showcases they did maybe middle of last year,

[00:08:07] and I first kind of saw it, and I just generally didn't care for it.

[00:08:11] I guess I just wasn't that impressed because it wasn't on my radar until I started hearing people talk about it.

[00:08:17] I've kind of moved past that phase of my gaming life playing the shooty-shoot multiplayer games.

[00:08:23] I have a lot of time.

[00:08:25] Any of my game time, I'm just kind of playing more solo experiences.

[00:08:28] But yeah, like Will said, the week this game came out, it really kind of blew up.

[00:08:34] Two things going to happen.

[00:08:36] I remember in our community, Ryan from Listoff got the game, and he was hyping it up,

[00:08:41] and he was like, yo, this is great. This is awesome.

[00:08:43] And then in my TikTok feed, I started just seeing the endless amount of TikToks of just what this game was about

[00:08:49] and just the chaos and just those people screaming and explosions going off anywhere

[00:08:53] and just people having a good time.

[00:08:55] So I was like, oh man, I'm getting that itch again.

[00:08:58] So I managed to get some of my in real life friends and a couple of people in the community to pick it up.

[00:09:05] And we were running squads of four.

[00:09:07] And from that point, I was hooked.

[00:09:09] I was playing pretty aggressively for a solid month before my kids showed up,

[00:09:13] and I haven't had as much time to play now.

[00:09:15] But man, it really was the game of the moment.

[00:09:20] We've kind of had a couple games like that this year.

[00:09:22] We had the hype around Pal World that came out really, really early.

[00:09:25] And then it just transitioned right into the hype for this game.

[00:09:28] And yeah, it was awesome. I'm so happy I picked up.

[00:09:31] It's definitely one of my favorite games this year so far.

[00:09:34] Absolutely. I kind of just again echo the sentiment that you both have shared so far.

[00:09:39] Helldivers 2, I remember when it was first announced at that.

[00:09:42] So it was a state of play, I believe is when it first dropped.

[00:09:45] It was something that revealed that Sony had come out with.

[00:09:48] It was during the whole Jim Ryan push for live games as a service games that were out there.

[00:09:54] And this is one of the 17 games that we have in development when they were all about,

[00:09:59] let's reinvest into film and TV and then live service games

[00:10:03] because we got to fucking make that moola.

[00:10:05] That's kind of the route that Sony has gone down.

[00:10:08] But it's really interesting.

[00:10:10] Obviously, when this game first dropped, as you both have described, it blew up on Twitter.

[00:10:14] I'm looking at the Steam page right now.

[00:10:16] There's currently 73,000 concurrent players right now.

[00:10:21] And then an all time peak was about three months ago where they had

[00:10:25] 458,000 concurrent players on the Steam charts.

[00:10:29] This is just Steam, right? So not even counting PlayStation.

[00:10:32] And it was a sensation when it first came out.

[00:10:35] And really, it's funny because I remember Will and I,

[00:10:38] I vividly remember having the conversation.

[00:10:40] I don't know if it was like a tweet that I had shared or if we were in person talking about it on the show.

[00:10:44] I was like, are you going to play this? This looks really interesting.

[00:10:47] This looks like something that could be up your alley.

[00:10:49] He said, absolutely not.

[00:10:50] He turned his nose up at it and look at him now, an absolute defender of democracy.

[00:10:56] I remember it in real life because I looked over and you asked me and I was like,

[00:10:59] this looks like EDF trash.

[00:11:01] There's no way I'm playing this Earth Defense Force.

[00:11:03] Shout out to EDF.

[00:11:05] I was like, there's no way I'm playing this ripoff instead of shooting giant ants.

[00:11:08] I'm shooting bugs.

[00:11:10] This looks like garbage.

[00:11:11] I'm not going to just cut like a hard cut to me just saluting and dropping out of a hell pot.

[00:11:19] Right.

[00:11:20] And I had no idea that there was actually Helldivers 1 either.

[00:11:23] So jumping into this, I was like, is it 2?

[00:11:25] But this is all completely reimagined.

[00:11:27] Like it's a reimagining for the game itself because the first one looked like a top down,

[00:11:31] like Command and Conquer styled MOBA.

[00:11:33] Yeah, it was a lot different.

[00:11:35] So this is a completely new reimagination for the game and it's a reimagination of the genre

[00:11:42] or the games as a service like thing in and of itself, like the genre of game it is.

[00:11:48] So it was definitely draw me in and the whole thing that really sold me on it more so than anything

[00:11:54] else was everybody saying how accessible it was and how much they backed off from being like kind

[00:12:00] of predatory with their games of service, like micro transaction economy that's built into the game.

[00:12:06] So that jumped it in and then just pure fun and joy and like the minute to minute combat

[00:12:11] gameplay that I'm seeing from clips online.

[00:12:13] So I jumped in and I couldn't be happier with it.

[00:12:17] Obviously Helldivers 2 developed by Arrowhead Game Studios, which also developed the first one.

[00:12:22] They have a very close relationship with SIE.

[00:12:25] Of course, Sony produced this game or helped with the production and then they were the publishers

[00:12:31] this time around.

[00:12:33] And as we said before, it's a direct sequel to the 2015 shooter.

[00:12:36] That's a top down for the original Helldivers.

[00:12:39] This came out on the PS5 and Windows on February 8th, 2024.

[00:12:43] Interesting note here, they put it in the dock.

[00:12:45] The engine that they used for Helldivers 1 and 2, the Autodesk Steamray was discontinued in 2018,

[00:12:51] which they after they had already been in development of Helldivers 2, which is very, very fascinating.

[00:12:57] We have an entire episode on game engines that I thought was fun.

[00:13:01] It's like the nerdy side that we get to jump into and talk about, you know, the rage engine or,

[00:13:05] you know, all of the other the different cool ones that the game developers are using.

[00:13:09] So really interesting.

[00:13:11] They were able to make this beautiful, beautiful game on engine that's like basically just non non functional.

[00:13:17] It's just a wild looking and doing a little bit of that research because I remember first seeing that on Twitter because the actual CEO of Arrowhead Games.

[00:13:26] I don't want to butcher his last name, so but I think if you've seen him talking online, you know exactly what I'm talking about.

[00:13:31] But one very much into the community loves kind of talking to people.

[00:13:35] So I love seeing that it's so cool just seeing somebody kind of get into the trenches or, you know, sometimes on Twitter, it's more like the the Meyer, like the miasma with us in there.

[00:13:45] But still the fact that he's in there, that he's talking about all this stuff, including this fun fact that that was my first time saying was on Twitter originally.

[00:13:52] It was like, oh yeah, the engine that we've been working on us as a company, we've been working on it for 16 years.

[00:13:57] So we were all very familiar.

[00:13:59] So even though it turned into abandon where it just made more sense to stick with that and kind of work with it versus switching over to something like Unity or, you know, creation or etc.

[00:14:10] Epic obviously, you know, working with their engine there.

[00:14:13] So it's very cool.

[00:14:14] And like you mentioned, game is gorgeous if you've seen anything, if you've obviously been playing it.

[00:14:18] It looks incredible.

[00:14:20] It runs and feels very smooth.

[00:14:21] So if somebody just randomly popped up and was like, oh, you know that engine doesn't exist anymore, you know, like it doesn't work anymore.

[00:14:27] Like I don't believe you.

[00:14:29] Like we talked about this is like cutting edge.

[00:14:31] This is great looking stuff.

[00:14:32] Yeah, it's like it's like when you watch Lord of the Rings with your friends and when Air Gordon like kicks the helmet and you're like, did you know like he broke his foot when he kicked the helmet?

[00:14:40] Like the fun fact.

[00:14:43] That's me.

[00:14:44] I'm that friend.

[00:14:47] So Helldivers 2 was critically received very well by the industry at large when it first launched.

[00:14:53] Of course, it's sold, you know, 8 million units in the first two months of release, which is pretty, pretty dang good for a third person shooter, especially from a third party company that they're not even a traditional first party studio with SIEB.

[00:15:07] Even though this game is packaged like a first party game as Sony would want them to do because they don't have a lot of first party stuff coming out this year.

[00:15:14] Yeah, obviously the Metacritic as it's sitting on the PS5 and PC respectively is 82 and 83 in the steam reviews are mostly positive at 73%.

[00:15:23] I imagine that 73% is going to be attributed to something that we're going to have to address later.

[00:15:28] Kind of after we get into the meat of the episode, but just know that that that steam review rating was much higher than previously mentioned before we get into kind of what I consider the meat of this game is which is like the mechanics, the gameplay, the moment to moment like gameplay loops in and of itself.

[00:15:48] I'd like to just talk about and give folks context to like the story and what it is because it is so light.

[00:15:55] So as as well has stated here, there's no real story to speak of.

[00:16:00] It does build on the last game and then they even have things that you can pick up in the world as you're going on.

[00:16:06] You can pick up like notes and little like LCD screens that have like depictions of what people are going through kind of giving you context clues as to what's going on in a different worlds or what super earth is up to at the moment.

[00:16:20] But to kind of the story serves more of just a contextual setup to get folks out there to fight and blow up bugs and bots.

[00:16:28] We're essentially jumping in and defending a self described and managed democratic nation planet called Super Earth.

[00:16:35] Now, Super Earth is run in kind of basically just overseeing by this autocratic jingoistic military state.

[00:16:42] And they've essentially convinced the human population to participate in this two front war against this group of alien bugs called the Terminids and this group of just tankers clankers called the automatons.

[00:16:55] They're they're just robots, you know, that look real scary.

[00:16:58] Very, very similar to, you know, your classic Terminator and all of the movies that she's love seeing those in.

[00:17:05] But essentially they're they're kind of convinced through a lot of like patriotic propaganda that's, you know, within the military state of Super Earth to go ahead and protect freedom in fighting this war.

[00:17:17] And everybody is, you know, forced to jump in and become a military member of the Helldivers commanding force.

[00:17:25] Yeah, and that was and that was one of like the main selling points you saw on like TikTok and social media to where, you know, we're all kind of like, oh yeah, propaganda is bad.

[00:17:33] But as soon as like a video game comes out and like the premise is like we need to protect freedom and you need to defend Earth and we need to spread democracy to the galaxy.

[00:17:40] Everyone was just like, fuck yes, we are on board like we will fall for all the propaganda.

[00:17:45] Let's go. Yeah, no, it's funny because it's it's a satirical, you know, universe that they created.

[00:17:52] And it is like, you know, a subtle very maybe not so subtle commentary on, you know, you know, patriotism and propaganda and all that.

[00:18:01] But I think one of the things that's my favorite and will I think we also share this aspect about Helldivers 2 specifically is that it is 1000 percent primarily influenced by Starship Troopers.

[00:18:14] And I think that like and I hadn't seen Star Trek Troopers for years and years, but it wasn't until I was playing this game and playing with Will and our friends that I was like, I need to go back and I need to watch that.

[00:18:25] And so I did and I rented it on Amazon.

[00:18:27] And let me tell you Starship Troopers great movie, great fucking film, like fantastic.

[00:18:32] Like it holds up today in like the CG that they have is absolutely insane.

[00:18:37] Do you have anything to note on that?

[00:18:39] Yeah, that is just disgusting and gross.

[00:18:41] Like the way the bugs get shot and it just matches up one to one with the game.

[00:18:45] So that's one of my new favorite updates to with the game is that you keep that gore and nastiness on your character when you get back to the end screen and everyone's showing off.

[00:18:54] So just you're covered in, you know, like the green ooze in, you know, the oil from the robots.

[00:18:59] And that's exactly what it looks like when you actually go back.

[00:19:02] And if you were to rewatch Starship Troopers when like Rico jumps on the back of the bug and he's like shooting down and it's just like splatting up orange and green muck all over him.

[00:19:10] So like we mentioned with the propaganda, you know, it's so fun when it's not real.

[00:19:16] So it's like we just get sucked into it so easily and it takes on like wildfire.

[00:19:20] Like my favorite part of the game outside of actually playing it obviously is going to be the art.

[00:19:26] Like people making these fantastic like propaganda posters like don't forget all your long creek and you're like, like spill oil.

[00:19:34] Right. Like those are just like so cool looking.

[00:19:36] So the fact that the community really just takes on this game as like a part of it, it's not just people playing it, but you feel like you're a part of this big group, this big collective.

[00:19:45] I think is part of one why obviously it's so popular, but then to why it's so memeable as well, because even if you're not playing it, you can make art or you can do.

[00:19:54] I've seen people make blender videos of the actual hell diving, you know, like cadets themselves and they're just copying memes.

[00:20:01] So like if you see the meme of the person like slapping their credit card like on the table, I seen like a hell diver like with super credits in like whenever a new war bond comes out, there's like bang, bang, bang.

[00:20:13] It's ridiculous. Yeah, it is so good.

[00:20:16] I mean, it's such a community oriented game.

[00:20:19] You really have to give it up for the team there and creating something that's like does feel welcoming and it does feel accessible to new players.

[00:20:26] That said, this game is actually pretty tough. If you get down to the nuts and bolts and you start like getting in there and getting very serious and escalating those difficulty levels that you're playing in.

[00:20:37] I want to go ahead and just transition now to talking about like how this game functionally works in like what that gameplay loop looks like.

[00:20:46] So essentially you jump in your create, you go through the tutorial section. They deem you a worthy hell diver, which is very funny because there's all kinds of like, you know, schlocky slapstick, you know, humor about you being a patriot and you know, following in the footsteps of the fallen hell divers and all of that.

[00:21:02] We gotta talk about the tutorial. Like when you're first starting and it's like, you know, hell divers and before you even really do the true like diving out of the ship and everything right.

[00:21:10] One of the first thing you do is like dive in the game. You know, like I think it's double tap and hold circle if you're playing on PlayStation to like dive forward while they're shooting live rounds over your head.

[00:21:18] Yeah, very Starship Trooper style. So you're just like, okay, cool. They're putting me in deadly danger immediately before anything happens.

[00:21:25] And then they say here's yeah, this the stratagem right. This bomb that we're going to talk about a little bit. It's like we're gonna have you throw that out into the single bug that's just hanging out on the landing pad.

[00:21:34] Do not blow yourself up because you did either of you do it. Did either of you kill yourself on those part? Because I did not.

[00:21:42] I think I think I survived. Okay. Yeah, but yeah, just going through doing all that, you know, just effectively the game getting used to doing things like inputting in the pads, attacking the enemy, blowing up bug holes, things of that nature.

[00:21:54] And then your reward at the very end is your very own cape. So it's just so interesting seeing like you get the cool little cape flapping in the wind. And then from there you get frozen and then sent up into space to fight this never ending battle.

[00:22:08] So yeah, it's completely ridiculous with that beautiful voiceover too. So no, I love the tutorial. The tutorial was a blast. That really just sets the tone for how the rest of the game is going to be.

[00:22:18] And then it kind of is off to the races from there. Like it's almost funny because they shoot you up into space and you don't know if like canonically, like it's just for every single person they give a super destroyer to them to go out and just like shoot down from.

[00:22:31] But that's kind of what it seems like. And so you kind of go into space and this is when the matchmaking starts is where you're kind of in the front station.

[00:22:39] And this is either single player or multiplayer. The emphasis is on multiplayer. This game, I think I've heard it from several people that either we've played with and as well as you will.

[00:22:49] I know that you have had this experience, but Eric, feel free to share your thoughts on this. But playing solo queue and queuing up with randoms is incredibly hard, especially because you never know when someone's not going to have comms.

[00:23:02] Someone's not going to understand what you're trying to do or if somebody is just literally messing around and they really don't care about fulfilling the objectives. If you want to get things done and you want to get progression, it's better to play with your friends as opposed to solo queuing.

[00:23:14] Yeah, I agree with that. And that is the only time that I do play is when I know my friends are getting online because yeah, I've met some like random solo queue people that have been like very helpful and very like cooperative understanding.

[00:23:26] But yeah, some people just don't like have mics on stuff and it is a game that is at its core really built around. Like you said, that cooperation because yeah, going back to the tutorial, the tutorial does a really good job of teaching you what is I would be sick.

[00:23:38] Say consider today relatively simple gameplay. It's something that's like insane that we haven't seen before as people that have played video games for 20 years or, you know, and been familiar with shooters and stuff.

[00:23:49] But that doesn't really do like you said, the game can be pretty difficult and requires you to work together. I tried to play the game solo. I remember the first time I bought it and it was just like, wow, yeah, this is really tough.

[00:24:01] But it's way more fun when you do have a have a group of friends and it's interesting decision to kind of make a game based around like that's the core premise.

[00:24:10] Hey, this is high level of cooperation between people because yeah, as you as you progress through levels of difficulty as we'll talk about once we get to that shit gets crazy for lack of a better term.

[00:24:22] Like it is like when people are saying like, oh, I'm a level on Creek. Like it's space Vietnam. Like give PTSD like they're not kidding.

[00:24:28] Like it's it gets that nuts. Yeah, it gets absolutely insane. Essentially once you gather everybody, you can choose your load out for weapons. You can choose your armor and this is something that kind of feeds back into the gameplay loop is like you're basically playing the game so you can progress either through your stratagems, which are kind of your super moves that you can deploy.

[00:24:50] Essentially, this is comes from a number of things you can do either resupply drops or orbital strikes or Eagles. It really just depends on how you want to play. There's a variety of super moves that you can do and actually it's very, very strategic on how you use them.

[00:25:04] Stratagems are kind of one of the most important factors in the game. Obviously will has a note right here. Dance Dance Revolution meets thermonuclear war. Correct. That's exactly it.

[00:25:13] You literally my favorite note in the doc.

[00:25:15] It's perfect. Yeah, you use the directional pad on your controller or, you know, I guess the WASD on the keyboard is what I'm assuming that it's going to be. And then you're going to essentially enter in a preset input to use your stratagems took me forever to realize there are certain points when you drop it on a map and they have like radio, like essentially transmissions that are going to disrupt your strategy.

[00:25:39] So you never know which ones you're throwing down on the ground until you complete it. So it's better to not use them until you are outside of that radio.

[00:25:47] And you feel naked when that happens. You're like, oh, I have like my gun. I don't have my things. I don't have my Eagles. What's going on? Yeah, yes. It's a terrifying feeling. It gets really hairy. But yeah, just dropping in like 100% kind of to circle back what you guys are saying is that this game is so vibes heavy.

[00:26:05] It's kind of insane how they're able to pull it off and special shout out to the composer. I have him. I had him pulled up in my other notes here, but I have the composer Wilbert Roger. The second is what I believe is he's going to be the one that was primarily responsible for the main theme.

[00:26:20] Of course, this overall score of this gameplay. But as soon as you're dropping in, it's something you never get tired of that song. That's that obviously I played at the top of the show.

[00:26:29] And as you see the streaks of the bullets that are coming down as the hell divers, but even more than that when you're on the planets, each of the planets, surprisingly enough for me have a very like individualistic, you know, like they did a good job of making it feel like for every different planet you go to have a different feeling.

[00:26:46] Something's a little bit more like malevolent Creek seems a little bit more tropical. There's a little bit more water streams that you're waiting through in palm trees and then fog.

[00:26:54] And you see the glowing red eyes of the automatons that are behind it. Whereas there's a lot of terminated worlds that are very rocky and kind of craggy and overall just like they have that bright orange hue over the sun.

[00:27:06] And then, of course, the day and night cycles, depending on where you are, it just it looks incredible, especially on different ones that have like the they have in this game planets that are the main focus of major orders that kind of the game director, which is something we get into later, wants you to focus on on liberating items.

[00:27:24] Either from the bots or the bugs. And it's really cool. I don't know if you guys have noticed this or had any thoughts about it, but I love seeing like, you know, the the the war that's going on over the expanse beyond your immediate map that you're in.

[00:27:38] And you can see like, you know, ranges firing off or actually like auto cannons that are shooting off into space and then nukes that are blowing up like way outside of your territory is just it's incredibly and visually stunning on every front.

[00:27:51] Yeah, it would have been really easy to because essentially boiling it down to its simplest every planet is basically kind of just like a big box arena that the mission takes place in.

[00:28:01] But yeah, they did a good job to where everything kind of feels like distinct to the point where it's just not like, oh, they clearly copy and pasted, you know, 14 planets over and over.

[00:28:11] So yeah, and then they do a good job of like a lot of different planets will have like, like elemental modifiers.

[00:28:17] Like it'll be if there'll be heat. So like your weapon will overheat faster if it's colder, like your weapon will will not overheat as fast.

[00:28:23] You have a weapon that has that property to it or there'll be like electromagnetic storms that you can't use stratagems.

[00:28:29] So a lot of the planets like work with the way they're designed in like their environment to kind of introduce like secondary challenges that kind of keep it fresh because yeah, if you were just going to the same box arena,

[00:28:39] Canyon Blood Gulch thing over and over again, it might get kind of boring. But yeah, I would say that definitely freshens it up and keep its keeps it fresh.

[00:28:46] And continuing there too is just what Eric was saying with the different environments and like the ice in the snow.

[00:28:51] That's another great thing the arrowheads been doing is they could have at least in my opinion, and I'm sure people done before they have this smash hit that maybe weren't expecting.

[00:29:00] They're like, all right, let's take like a quick break then let's kind of let this play out.

[00:29:03] And then if they start to fall off, then we'll pick back up the steam and try to keep people on that treadmill.

[00:29:08] It seems like they're really striking while the iron is hot as much as possible.

[00:29:12] So we have when they first started there was just if it's hot, your gun overheats too much.

[00:29:17] But maybe you get to run a little bit more if it's cold, you can't run as well.

[00:29:20] But like your gun doesn't overheat. And then they added in more things such as like, OK, if you go to look a really hot place, that might be like a fire tornado that pops up and it's like running all around the world.

[00:29:30] Or you'll have not just electromagnetic storm, but there will be meteor showers that happen that will come and destroy your enemies.

[00:29:37] It could also blow you up too. So the fact that they continue to add on more of those things, you know, adding on even like enemies are continuing to be added as far as I kind of lose these not even truly DLC or really updates because my favorite part is that it feels so weirdly organic.

[00:29:52] How's being introduced in the game? You will have the CEO on Twitter be like, what do you mean flying bugs don't exist?

[00:29:57] What are you talking about? That's propaganda. And then next week, they'll be all over the game.

[00:30:02] People posting pictures like you see these flying bugs and was like, I don't see any. What are you talking about? You're a liar.

[00:30:07] Yeah, it is so neat. Yeah, Pyle said he's a he's great.

[00:30:11] He's actually really funny on Twitter and he's a he's part of the push for Arrowhead to be very transparent about what they're doing and why they're doing it.

[00:30:18] He's been absolutely hilarious at every turn. And then it's of course, I see like, you know, every time they tease new enemies or they you see like aliens in the distance.

[00:30:25] That's what a lot of the content that I've seen on Twitter recently is them teasing, you know, new armored units or they're teasing like the new enemies that are going to like come in and create that third sector, the third front for this war for the Helldivers.

[00:30:37] So that's really awesome.

[00:30:40] Will, I wanted to ask you this because you kind of were the one that directed me.

[00:30:45] You were the one that kind of showed me the ropes because you got quite a few hours in the game before I even jumped in there.

[00:30:50] But the overall mission objectives, can you describe for the audience how they kind of lay that out? What they want you to do once you're on the map?

[00:30:57] Well, there is quite a few that are available and some are depending on the world.

[00:31:02] Some are depending on the style of enemy you're fighting, whether they be the Terminades or the automatons for right now.

[00:31:07] But a lot of them boil down to go to a place and maybe you're working towards like a major kind of objective on the map of firing off a nuke into an enemy hotspot.

[00:31:18] So in order to get there, you have to, that's my favorite, that's a really good one.

[00:31:22] So you got like finding new codes and then a lot of times you have to carry the new codes on one of your people.

[00:31:27] So then that person is stuck with their secondary all the way to that part where the nuke is.

[00:31:32] Additionally, you may have to fuel the nuke.

[00:31:34] So there's a couple of different things you have to do to get to that main objective and then eventually you fire that main objective off.

[00:31:39] So that's just an example of one.

[00:31:41] There's a couple other ones where you're either like destroying bug holes.

[00:31:44] Some of my favorite ones are where you just kill enemies, right?

[00:31:48] Just like a 15 minute kill man.

[00:31:49] So you just hop into like a smaller version of the map and they say have fun destroying bugs or bots for, you know, the next 15 minutes.

[00:31:56] Good luck.

[00:31:57] They just send swarms and swarms at you.

[00:32:00] So those are some of my favorite ones there.

[00:32:02] Like I said, I think my favorite overall is going to be the kill as many as possible.

[00:32:07] But as far as the true objectives, I think I'm going to kind of hop on that one where you're saying with the nuke just because I love at the end.

[00:32:13] It's not just OK, we fire a new cool.

[00:32:15] Let's go run off. You can sit there and watch where the new goes and then it blows up kind of the far reaches of the screen.

[00:32:21] And then if you wait a second or two, it'll hit you with a shockwave.

[00:32:24] You know, like something flashing at you.

[00:32:26] So it's just they really want to make you feel like you actually shot off a new get a group of bugs, right?

[00:32:31] Yeah, you see the chromatic aberration and all of it.

[00:32:34] It's so it's so awesome.

[00:32:35] In addition to those main ones is a couple of side objectives.

[00:32:38] So generally the side objectives are going to be there available for you to get extra requisition points and then maybe even like samples, which are two things that you need to upgrade your ship,

[00:32:47] whether it be upgrading part of your stratagems or even purchasing new stratagems to use off of your ship.

[00:32:52] So some of the side objectives can be pretty simple, like go somewhere and kill a certain type of enemy.

[00:32:58] There can be some where you're going and potentially like rescuing certain NPCs that need some help.

[00:33:03] So once again, generally depends on the type of enemy you're fighting as well as the the planets you're on.

[00:33:09] But just for an example, as far as how long it may take to complete some of these major kind of big world missions,

[00:33:16] they generally give you about 45 minutes in order to complete it for those larger maps.

[00:33:20] Yeah. And there has been many a time, especially on those harder difficulties where it takes the full 45 plus minutes to do like every single thing.

[00:33:30] Are you going to tell them about that time that we collected?

[00:33:32] What was it will like 30, like 50 samples and then we got swarmed.

[00:33:38] We got flooded by the by the by the terminates at the end of that.

[00:33:42] That was that was a good time. Was that that was my fault, right?

[00:33:44] I want to talk about that. That was the game's fault.

[00:33:47] That's the game's fault. No, no, no.

[00:33:48] When I get there with my 30 samples and my my six super samples and my rare samples and we're all sitting there at the ship and then the game's like, oh, by the way, we're going to send the whole planet after you.

[00:33:58] That's the game's fault. All right.

[00:34:01] Not man. Joel's watching you. He's like, this guy's got so many samples right now.

[00:34:04] I got to mess with him. Yeah, Joel.

[00:34:06] He hits the button. He hits the button.

[00:34:08] I appreciate that. Joel's the lightning rod that we've all got behind to it.

[00:34:11] Second people found out that there was a member of Arrowhead that can go in and like kind of tweak how things are done behind the scenes.

[00:34:18] He is just the boogeyman of Helldivers 2 now.

[00:34:23] Yeah, so are we going to talk about Joel? Is that later in the episode or?

[00:34:27] Well, I did kind of bring it up and he was talking about the when I was talking.

[00:34:30] We can jump into it now because it kind of makes sense.

[00:34:32] But OK, there's like a game director, right?

[00:34:35] And that's that's who I see.

[00:34:36] I think Joel is at the era.

[00:34:38] It's like the dungeon master.

[00:34:39] He's the dungeon master and they even wrote, I think Polygon wrote an article on on what he was doing in his job essentially is to monitor the gameplay from all of the characters that are essentially all the players like we look at player behavior.

[00:34:52] Where are people like lacking or people falling down and then updating kind of the game objectives in game, you know, for that?

[00:34:59] He's like he's the one that's, you know, making it be like, OK, now we have a what do they call it?

[00:35:04] The border planets, the protector planets where you had to create containment on all the terminates and he sends everybody to go through there.

[00:35:11] I just thought it was it was really cool and seeing him do that and seeing that he has like that dedicated job.

[00:35:16] It kind of just feeds into that live service quality that they're able to distill into this game because it's just like you don't necessarily see a game like Destiny 2, for example.

[00:35:27] Or, you know, other other games like COD or Valorant have that type of developer to consumer connection, which I think is really, really interesting from a from a player standpoint.

[00:35:39] Yeah, the current live service model is very much like this.

[00:35:42] It's been this way for a couple of years.

[00:35:43] This like seasonal model where it's been like, OK, like the first three months, January, February, March are like this season.

[00:35:49] All the theme content is built around that.

[00:35:51] And like this is the progression, the battle past the mission set.

[00:35:53] Like that's what it is.

[00:35:54] And then when that three month season is over, like then you go to the next one and you might have like three or four of those a year or Fortnite has chapters or whatever stuff like that.

[00:36:02] But yeah, I can't think of an instance and I'm glad Nick brought up Destiny 2 because that's that was kind of the comparison I go to as a long, long well now an ex-member of the Destiny community, but a longtime player of Destiny.

[00:36:16] It's so unique to have somebody in that role.

[00:36:19] I don't think there's any other game that's kind of like that.

[00:36:21] And the way that he I don't know anything about game development or design or anything like that, but it's really insane though, like the role that he has and like how fast when he comes up with something that they're able to like respond to like what's happening in the community or change like the major order or be like, OK, like you guys fucked up this major order.

[00:36:38] So now there are like consequences and like you said that that community developer connection is is super unique.

[00:36:46] And it's almost like the community is like crafting the story and then the developers responding to it.

[00:36:51] It's like this amazing tug of war between the community and what what Joel is seeing and the way he's doing that.

[00:36:58] It's it's it's something that is absolutely incredible.

[00:37:02] I think it feeds into that feeling of because like he's when you said, when you're getting ready to launch out of your ship and drop down, you can see the overall galactic map and see up to date what the community is doing at any given time and see how many people on each planet.

[00:37:14] What needs to get done and where the enemies are advancing.

[00:37:17] And it's it's this. Yeah, it's I wrote in my episode that it's a really unique example of live service game that's like never been done before.

[00:37:25] And they're doing it in the right way with a couple of stumbling blocks that we'll talk about, obviously.

[00:37:30] But what they're doing it in in a way that really is seems to be player first.

[00:37:34] And that kind of goes back to Joel and all that stuff.

[00:37:37] Yeah, it's it's they have thought about the player.

[00:37:40] And this is something that you see in interviews with the CEO and lead developer for, you know, Airhead Studios to that said that like the player is at the center of the experience and the and he said made a specific note, you know, kind of circle back around to this like live service mentality is that something that a lot of companies don't necessarily realize it.

[00:38:01] Fortnite kind of position themselves to be a platform where it's one of the things that they kind of made a point of is that, you know, Fortnite, it has such a big market share in terms of the folks that are jumping in there and then all of the kids who obviously want to come in and jump in and play.

[00:38:18] Fortnite is that there are people who will come in and pay 30, 50 whatever amount of money for Superman skin or an alien xenomorph skin or whatever it may be.

[00:38:29] So like when Goku dropped, I was like, am I about to play?

[00:38:32] Am I about to play Fortnite right now?

[00:38:34] And I did. I didn't do it.

[00:38:35] I can't because it is free to play.

[00:38:37] It is easy to jump into.

[00:38:38] But the problem is, is that the monetization in Fortnite and a lot of these other live service games, whether it be Apex or even Destiny is honestly again to say I don't want to keep bringing them up, but they are a perfect example of over monetizing their games and creating a million different currencies.

[00:38:55] And that's just the antithesis of what Helldivers is like a lot of the stuff that you can get in the premium war bonds with war bonds are kind of like their progression pages.

[00:39:05] So if you can earn in game, you can find it on, you know, essentially they have different, what would you call it?

[00:39:11] Like escape ships that landed on the planet.

[00:39:13] Yeah.

[00:39:14] So I just thought that that was really cool that you kind of had that aspect of, you know, they specifically said they want to earn the monetization that is present in the game.

[00:39:25] And they really went out of their way to do it like they really put their best foot forward to doing that.

[00:39:30] Another example of them just once again, putting those players first.

[00:39:33] And even if you're making those comparisons to other games than battle passes, you know, we mentioned the war bonds here, which are the battle passes for Helldivers.

[00:39:39] One of the big things from Fortnite you were just talking about there is this kind of sense of FOMO.

[00:39:44] If Goku comes out of Superman comes out, if Isaac Clarke comes out as a skin, which is no fully cosmetic, right?

[00:39:50] So it's not really affecting you gameplay wise, et cetera.

[00:39:52] However, that's going to be available for maybe a few months, maybe a few weeks, maybe a week sometimes.

[00:39:57] And then from there it may get vaulted and you never see it again.

[00:40:00] It doesn't matter how much money you have, time you have, et cetera.

[00:40:02] You may never get the chance to kind of get that skin again.

[00:40:05] So then they become really rare.

[00:40:07] It really puts people in that mindset of, OK, if I don't spend the $20 now, I'll never get this again.

[00:40:12] I'll never get the chance to do this again versus Helldivers 2 that says, hey, here's this premium war bond cost $10.

[00:40:19] You go through, you still play the game to unlock the items in there so you don't spend the money and immediately get it.

[00:40:24] But you can potentially go out and spend more dollars to get the bond itself.

[00:40:29] But even to buy the things in there, those medals that you get, you have to play the game to get the medals.

[00:40:33] You can't spend money to get the medals.

[00:40:35] And then when you do get those war bonds in general and you own them, you own them for life.

[00:40:39] So it's not, hey, it's been three months and I didn't get to level 100 in my war bond.

[00:40:44] It's going to lock.

[00:40:46] It now makes it so that I can say, hey, if this war bond doesn't have anything I want right now or maybe the weapons are interesting, but they buff them in the future.

[00:40:55] I can now go back by that war bond and then start playing through and earning those items, which I think is really cool.

[00:41:01] Yeah, I think it was similar to what Halo Infinite did where it's like once you own the bond, like that's you don't lose it.

[00:41:07] You can make whatever progress you want towards it whenever you want.

[00:41:10] It's not locked. Like you said that, oh yeah, in two months, yes, Superman will be gone.

[00:41:14] So I got to just grind it out.

[00:41:16] So yeah, that's again another as much of a lightning rod is like battle passes and monetization is of in games has become.

[00:41:24] This is probably the best way I can think of to do it and gives people the option to spend money because you can just again, I can find enough.

[00:41:31] I've got the first premium war bond.

[00:41:33] I was just playing missions and I got enough super credits to get it by just playing the game.

[00:41:38] It took a while. It took probably like 20 ish hours to get enough.

[00:41:42] But just by unlocking the free war bond and the credits in there and finding them organically, I was still able to do it.

[00:41:48] Absolutely. Let's take a quick break and listen to another piece of incredible music from this amazing soundtrack.

[00:41:55] And let's come back and talk about some enemies and weapons.

[00:42:15] Now, as we jump in and talk about some of our favorite aspects of this game, which, you know, kind of come down to the core gameplay and the type of loadouts that we use as well as like their experiences with enemies.

[00:44:34] I want to take a moment to talk about my time playing with Will because this is something that I just I can't I can't not talk about.

[00:44:41] I might have said it before on a different episode, but let me tell you.

[00:44:45] OK, keeping up with this man is one of the hardest things I have ever experienced in my multiplayer life.

[00:44:51] Like, not only is he a halo like he's a master at like he conducts a master class at Halo when I went in there.

[00:44:58] I had experience of playing Halo Reach with him.

[00:45:00] It is no there is no change in here.

[00:45:03] Like the thing about Helldivers 2 is that it is like, as Eric said before, purely focused on cooperation.

[00:45:10] Like you have to look out for your sight lines.

[00:45:12] You have to look out for, you know, the enemies that are in your squad.

[00:45:15] There is friendly fire.

[00:45:17] So if you mess up and you like you get a friend that's in front of you as you're blowing up an autocannon or firing off like a rocket launcher, they're going to turn into splatter.

[00:45:26] Yep. Yeah.

[00:45:27] Mist. Absolutely. Just red mist that you have to wade through and get speckled on your armor.

[00:45:32] But it's so funny playing with Will because every single time we're together, this man like, OK, my main focus, my main focus in my mind is like, all right, whatever you do, just stick behind him.

[00:45:42] Just stick behind him.

[00:45:43] Just keep up with him.

[00:45:44] Grab whatever he's getting and just making sure that I'm doing what he's doing, because he's obviously doing something that works.

[00:45:49] And so I'm going, I'm going, I'm going.

[00:45:50] And then I see one shiny thing here or maybe, you know, I see an enemy over there that I can go kill.

[00:45:56] I go boom and I turn around and he's halfway across the map.

[00:46:00] He's already gone.

[00:46:01] He said he said, I don't know what happened.

[00:46:03] I was just playing.

[00:46:04] You got to keep up, Brooke.

[00:46:06] Don't get distracted by the shiny object in the distance.

[00:46:10] I just I just want to anyway.

[00:46:13] Eric, did you have a similar experience with this?

[00:46:18] So, yeah, the first time the first time I actually play with people, I play with Ryan from list often even playing for for a few days or a week or so.

[00:46:25] So he really kind of showed me the ropes of how the game worked.

[00:46:28] But after that, my long dormant, not that spectacular, but kind of OK, FPS skills and my hours of playing Destiny kind of kind of kicked in.

[00:46:37] And I was like, OK, like I see what this game is about.

[00:46:40] Like I've played co-op shooters before and I kind of filled that role with my in real life friends who didn't really play a lot of shooters or didn't play destiny.

[00:46:47] Or play anything that was similar to that.

[00:46:49] So I kind of filled that role for my friends.

[00:46:52] But I was also trying to be like, OK, I got it.

[00:46:54] I got to teach them and just be conscious of all that stuff.

[00:46:57] And it's not always that easy when in the chaos of like just when you're getting overwhelmed because yeah, I when I think one of the best decisions this game ever made to was to leave the friendly fire on because I just think that adds to the level of chaos because they'll be running around.

[00:47:11] And then you'd be being chased by a giant whore and your one friend's like, I'll get off this stratagem and save us and I'll bounce off a tree and land directly on you.

[00:47:17] And you're like, well, we're all dead and just get wiped out by the air strike.

[00:47:21] I can't.

[00:47:23] Which is funny every time you do it.

[00:47:26] Every time.

[00:47:27] And they find out and they give you enough lives.

[00:47:28] They give you five lives per person in your group.

[00:47:30] I think it was to call people in again.

[00:47:32] So like there's that margin to allow you to make those mistakes because they're fun.

[00:47:38] But completely opposite to the way a lot of like the games you mentioned do that, like Destiny or Halo.

[00:47:42] Like those games empower you to be like this super soldier weapon of destruction.

[00:47:47] And as a hell diver, you're just like a squishy dude.

[00:47:50] Like you're yeah.

[00:47:51] And it really kind of adds that level of just like all that stuff package together at this level of chaos.

[00:47:56] But yeah, I was able to kind of just like guide my friends through and yeah, eventually they got to the point where they were playing more than me and they are surpassed me.

[00:48:03] So now I'm trying to keep up with them because they've got it all figured out.

[00:48:06] And if the couple of times I get a chance to play, they have like the rotations down there, like we're going here, here, here, here.

[00:48:11] And like I'm yeah, I'm very much like you or Nick.

[00:48:14] I'm like, oh, there's a shiny over there.

[00:48:16] There's a group of enemies.

[00:48:17] I should go shoot over here when on the harder difficulties that it's not always the smartest.

[00:48:21] Like just go and engage like a random group of enemies out on patrol.

[00:48:24] So yeah, learning that sequence with your friends is like one of the most fun, rewarding things I've done in games this year.

[00:48:31] It's just such a good time with your buds.

[00:48:34] Yeah, I have two speeds in games like these and it's either speed one.

[00:48:39] I'm off chasing butterflies and not paying a lick of attention to the objective or B, I'm fucking Leroy Jenkins and I'm running into the base by myself without any cover support.

[00:48:49] So that's kind of like the thing.

[00:48:51] Will, was I notorious for for stratagem deaths in our squad?

[00:48:55] You can remember, was I notorious?

[00:48:57] I want to tell a lovely story about a video that I believe is still on our Instagram if you were to go watch it.

[00:49:02] But it is probably still one of my funniest clips of all time in Helldivers.

[00:49:08] So some of the planets have these cool little pods that have like little gases.

[00:49:13] And if you shoot the pod, run on the pod or if an enemy shoots the pod, it causes an explosion that won't necessarily hurt you that much.

[00:49:21] But it will send you ragdolling across the map in that same vein.

[00:49:26] Some of the bases where you have to drop on to these side missions and destroy require something called a hell bomb, which is you call them down a giant nuke that you then have to pre program and then run like hell before it goes off into a gigantic mushroom cloud explosion.

[00:49:42] Nick and I had just cleared a base completely wrecked it killed all the bots in there was perfect.

[00:49:46] We called down the hell bomb.

[00:49:47] We were leaving as we were leaving one lone robot calls in another group of enemies that start shooting at us immediately.

[00:49:54] As we're both sprinting headlong away from the hell bomb, Nick runs by one of the gaseous little bubbles which an enemy shoots sending him flying backwards right into the base.

[00:50:06] I was still alive.

[00:50:07] I was still alive until the bomb went off right back into the heart of the base.

[00:50:12] And as he like hits the ground and goes to stand up, the hell bomb goes off and you say, oh, and I had to put the controller down.

[00:50:22] I was laughing so hard.

[00:50:26] It was just a beautiful example of the kind of things.

[00:50:29] And that's like an everyday thing.

[00:50:31] If you play Helldivers to, you know, for what?

[00:50:34] Two hours a day, maybe every day, you're going to get a clip like that every single day.

[00:50:38] Like the ragdoll effects are just so silly and lovable.

[00:50:41] The fact that the not only just the desk for yourself from the enemies we already talked about how your friendly fire is on, but then not only does it just kill your character and send them ragdolling,

[00:50:51] but like their arms and legs go flying off.

[00:50:54] It just looks so goofy when you get hit by an eagle from your friend and your character's arms and legs just pop off like dolls.

[00:51:04] And then you go flying across the map.

[00:51:06] Like it's so hard to be mad because Eric mentioned you get the 20 lives, you have that room for error, and then you and your friends are generally like messing around and trying to do it right.

[00:51:15] So I have been blown up by friends so many times and it's always funny.

[00:51:19] I'm never like, oh, you blew me.

[00:51:20] You killed me. I can't believe it's just like, oh God, here I come.

[00:51:23] I'm dropping back in.

[00:51:24] Just hold my stuff.

[00:51:25] It's always just like, yeah, please just drop me on my stuff.

[00:51:27] Please. That's the only thing.

[00:51:29] Or even better.

[00:51:31] If you need that revenge, I'm like, drop me on top of the nearest biotitan.

[00:51:34] Like I'm going to come in hot.

[00:51:35] Yes, exactly.

[00:51:36] And that's so fun every single time you get to do it.

[00:51:39] I only did it once or twice.

[00:51:40] They think of all of the games that we play, but it's just it's satisfying every time your help pod completely just decimates an enemy.

[00:51:46] Also, I'm curious, Eric, how long did it take you to realize that that that Spider-Man that you're a low and thought was in this game?

[00:51:56] I didn't know that.

[00:51:57] Who's he?

[00:51:58] Is he the main guy?

[00:51:59] He's like voice number two.

[00:52:00] He's like voice number two.

[00:52:02] I didn't know the hell divers.

[00:52:03] Yeah.

[00:52:04] So it's the funniest thing in this kind of I was not aware of that.

[00:52:06] Yeah. Yeah.

[00:52:07] No, they have a couple.

[00:52:08] I think he's like the only famous famous guy.

[00:52:10] I haven't looked at the exactly at the credits, but I just remember playing it.

[00:52:13] This is like fresh coming off a Spider-Man two.

[00:52:15] And I was like, wait a minute.

[00:52:17] Is that Spider-Man?

[00:52:18] Is that Spider-Man?

[00:52:19] Yeah.

[00:52:20] And it's really cool because you talk about like the hypeness levels like just randomly every other thing that you're asked to do just leads to cinematic like movie moments like there's like other times that we've cleared out of base and then I'm running out of the main entrance.

[00:52:37] And then I see will dive out of like the, you know, out of the pill box and his caped billing behind him and he somersaults on the ground.

[00:52:44] Like there's just moment to moment cool shit that goes on this game and you can't you can't stop it from happening.

[00:52:49] It's just so much fun.

[00:52:50] But the NPCs also have these like barks that are like have a have a nice cup of liberty as your like when you hold down the trigger long enough like and you're just unloading a clip like your hell diver will just shout.

[00:53:03] He'll just literally scream like, ah, it's so fun.

[00:53:06] And it's just it gives you those like 1980s, you know, Predator, you know, Alien, you know, all of the great, you know, 80s movies Starship Troopers just vibes of just over the top action.

[00:53:18] That feels great.

[00:53:19] I want to talk about those voice lines too.

[00:53:24] We were talking about some of my favorite ones.

[00:53:25] You mentioned the liberty.

[00:53:26] I just love the maniacal screaming whenever you're holding down.

[00:53:29] Or like a turret long enough.

[00:53:30] It doesn't matter if it's like, you know, male voice, female voice, what have you, which you can also set it to random so that whenever you drop is like a new voice.

[00:53:37] It's a different one.

[00:53:38] Yeah.

[00:53:39] It just gets you so hype.

[00:53:41] I'm playing the game and I just love when the characters that you're playing as their like voices or their kind of interactions in the world match up with exactly how I feel like I've had something happen like that before where like I'm playing hell divers.

[00:53:55] I kill a big bug.

[00:53:56] I'm like, oh, hell yeah.

[00:53:57] And my character goes, hell yeah.

[00:53:59] And I'm just like, oh, hell yeah.

[00:54:02] It's great.

[00:54:03] It's so good.

[00:54:05] Let's talk about a little bit about like our loadouts and our setups.

[00:54:09] Will again, this is something that I kind of walked in the line of view.

[00:54:13] I think everybody just like is working their way towards the breaker.

[00:54:16] Am I right?

[00:54:17] The breaker shotgun, the shotgun exactly.

[00:54:19] That's it's kind of like the primary loadout.

[00:54:21] But I just love all of the different things that you can get.

[00:54:23] There's a little bit of variety when it comes to the weapons.

[00:54:26] You have a primary weapon and a sub weapon.

[00:54:28] I don't know if there's a bunch of different sub weapons.

[00:54:30] All I was able to unlock was the pistol and the submachine gun.

[00:54:34] I don't know if it goes much beyond that.

[00:54:36] Well, there are as you get more of the battle passes.

[00:54:38] So the war, okay, as you're like more war bonds, I think as of today's recording, there are I think three additional premium war bonds pass the first one that you start off in the game.

[00:54:49] And then the basic war bond that you have in the game.

[00:54:51] And I think all of that together will probably get you an additional, I think, for sidearms because the first one had the shoot the big iron or to call it.

[00:55:01] I can't remember the senator.

[00:55:02] I think it is where it's just like the forty four magnet.

[00:55:05] Yeah, okay.

[00:55:06] That's my favorite sidearm.

[00:55:07] That's a that makes you feel like a badass walk around with that.

[00:55:09] Glad he got buffed too.

[00:55:10] So it just looks so cool was like you're sitting there walking in the added a speed loader.

[00:55:13] That was the one thing people were complaining about, because whenever you shoot it, it's like, oh, I'm going to get a lot of stuff.

[00:55:17] Because whenever you shoot it, you had to put in all six bullets individually into it.

[00:55:20] Yeah.

[00:55:21] And now they made it so that whenever you empty the entire clip of your revolver, you have a speed loader.

[00:55:25] You just like it in there and you're good to go.

[00:55:27] But yeah, they got some really good ones as a laser pistol.

[00:55:29] I think one of the more recent ones before this last war bond, there was an explosive based war bonds.

[00:55:34] So they added an explosive like pistol effectively.

[00:55:37] So it's really cool.

[00:55:38] It's like a grenade pistol.

[00:55:39] So yeah, they've been adding on sidearms every single time and in primary weapons as well.

[00:55:44] So same thing kind of laser guns.

[00:55:45] They added an extra grenade launcher as like a main weapon versus just a stratagem that you can call down.

[00:55:52] So yeah, they've been trying to stamp up the weapons each time.

[00:55:56] But still, like Nick mentioned at the end of the day, I'm going with the breaker.

[00:55:59] Like I need that automatic shotgun for when some big ugly bug gets in my face a little too close and I just empty the clip into it.

[00:56:07] Yeah.

[00:56:08] And that's that's kind of like the theme of like the active combat in this game is that like you can if you're as a group, you can deal with a group of enemies a lot.

[00:56:17] But the way that the enemy likes to do it is they like to triangulate and then isolate each of the characters.

[00:56:23] So a lot of the times, even if you have like, you know, the four of your team members up in the same map and then you obviously are taking down a line of automatons,

[00:56:32] you'll get another group that gets called in and will flank you and immediately just break up your entire defensive line.

[00:56:37] So there's a little bit of strategy and a little bit of like understanding how your enemies operate in like the moment to moment gameplay.

[00:56:43] That's going to be really important.

[00:56:45] And then even with bugs, bugs are just like it's pure chaos.

[00:56:48] You never know when stalkers are going to come around the corner.

[00:56:50] You never know when like the like the little guys are going to swarm over you.

[00:56:54] And so it's just you're unloading round after round.

[00:56:57] And I understand the incendiary breaker is kind of like the top tier one.

[00:57:00] It's like at the very bottom of the war bonds, for what I understand.

[00:57:03] So, yeah, there there's a couple ones.

[00:57:05] I mean, I've seen people argue for sniper rifles, but I've never seen it like be super effective in gameplay.

[00:57:11] There's also like buffs that you can do.

[00:57:13] That's that's kind of like in that same line of stratagems that we were talking about worth the orbital strikes or the eagle air strikes that you can call in.

[00:57:21] There's like there's a modular shield that you can do that helps you a lot, especially when you're fighting automatons with splash damage.

[00:57:30] That's really, really cool.

[00:57:32] And then obviously I love the auto sentry that you can it's basically a backpack that you put it on and then a drone kind of hovers around you and shoots enemies out there.

[00:57:40] Yeah, the guard dog.

[00:57:41] Yeah, the guard dog.

[00:57:42] I love the guard dog.

[00:57:43] Will hates it because it just burns through him whenever he does.

[00:57:48] So if you have four people running, it just turns you're just like, OK, yeah, yeah, it's so good.

[00:57:53] Did you have any any other stratagems or load us that you wanted to touch on?

[00:57:56] Eric, I was going to say, like similar to you guys, I haven't played in about a month just because of the chaos of my life.

[00:58:02] But even posts on nerf, I think they nerf the breaker, the breakers still just by far and away.

[00:58:09] The best way to deal with something very quickly.

[00:58:11] So, yeah, normally I'll run like breaker.

[00:58:13] I'll run the Magnum from the first war bond.

[00:58:15] And then like as my heavy weapon, I call in I just still hasn't haven't found anything that's like as effective and dealing with groups of enemies as the grenade launcher.

[00:58:25] OK.

[00:58:26] And especially when you're on the bug planets, you can use the green launcher to close their nest, too.

[00:58:32] So you don't feel like run up and try and throw a grenade and you can just kind of like our kit from a distance.

[00:58:35] That's nice, which is nice.

[00:58:37] So that's yeah, it's kind of my standard loadout.

[00:58:39] And then as far as like stratagems go, I'm really attached to the orbital laser just because it's just super cool.

[00:58:45] I don't think there's anything as cool as the orbital laser and that gives me big halo vibes.

[00:58:50] The 500 kilogram bombs is super cool because when you call in the 500 kilogram bomb, it's just a massive explosion.

[00:58:58] So normally I'll run like those two for for offensive stratagems and then the grenade launcher and then I'll run a backpack.

[00:59:05] I've been trending more towards the energy shield one just because that extra survivability is really nice in those.

[00:59:11] And as you move up in the difficulty rankings of the missions, which I think I've done like I think it's like one through nine.

[00:59:18] Right. And like nine is like helldiver difficulty.

[00:59:21] I think I think I've gone as high as seven and completed a like seven and it gets it gets fucking crazy.

[00:59:27] Like it's nonstop.

[00:59:29] So but I think they and just because the breakers, the best doesn't mean that everything else isn't viable.

[00:59:36] I've found that most of the other stuff I've experimented with has been like more or less like pretty viable as long as you like stick together and work with your group.

[00:59:44] I like the site, which is like the laser, like assault rifle that just like shoots a laser.

[00:59:49] It's not as strong as the breaker, but I don't that has a mechanic where it's not ammo.

[00:59:54] It's heat sink so that if you overheat the weapon, then you have to change the heat sink and you have so many of those.

[00:59:59] So that kind of gives me like peace of mind.

[01:00:01] There's like, oh, I don't have to worry about ammo too much because you go through a fuck ton of ammo in this game.

[01:00:06] It's insane. So much.

[01:00:07] And I think I remember, too, seeing the CEO of Arrowhead say when they nerf the breaker and people were like, oh, it's harder for me to kill stuff now.

[01:00:16] He kind of put out some tweets that said your primary weapons shouldn't be the way you're like dealing with most things.

[01:00:22] Like the game is built around the stratagems.

[01:00:24] So when they like nerf the breaker and nerf the rail gun, which were like two really big guns like the rail gun was used for like file titans and a lot of the bigger enemies.

[01:00:31] He was like your stratagems are there to take out the bigger enemies.

[01:00:35] That's what we want you to do.

[01:00:36] So it's really balanced between the primary weapons and the stratagems is how you kind of like try to deal with everything and has made me ever since I saw his tweets,

[01:00:43] like makes me think twice before just like seeing a group of enemies and just being like, lob that grenade over there and drop an air strike on them.

[01:00:50] So it's really cool how they kind of have that balance between there.

[01:00:53] But yeah, I really want to play unlock more because I know they've added more weapons and it's just so fun to like experiment with like different things that work, too.

[01:01:02] Some of the fun meme builds I really like and I don't say meme as in like they're not viable is just because I picture them being a certain way.

[01:01:09] So I put on the jet pack, you get the flamethrower and you can do like your Boba Fett build.

[01:01:14] Yeah, so fun.

[01:01:15] Like hopping into like a top area.

[01:01:17] I got another clip to I feel like I'm plugging the Instagram like crazy, but there's a clip of me like floating up to these boxes and while enemies are coming there terminates that are trying to gum stop us from extracting at a point.

[01:01:27] I just have the flamethrower and I'm down there just like lighting them up, just like burning bugs and the characters screaming and laughing until one of the chargers comes running up a hill effectively because surprisingly,

[01:01:38] enough if you play the game, you know that the charges climb very well.

[01:01:42] Like they're effectively spidering their own right and it slams me off and says me like flying across the map.

[01:01:47] But it's just so fun.

[01:01:49] It goes to show that like it's absolutely insane.

[01:01:51] I didn't even know their models could do that.

[01:01:54] I didn't even know they could climb on objects that way.

[01:01:57] They do not care.

[01:01:58] Insanity, which is another thing.

[01:02:00] The coolest thing about Helldivers is that every time you jump into a match or you jump into a world, you dive down and you try to complete objectives.

[01:02:09] You're probably guaranteed to see something new as long as you haven't been playing for like 120 hours, which is just it's so much value for a $30 game that like it really, really does go in there.

[01:02:19] See for me, like of course I didn't play nearly as much as Will did.

[01:02:23] So I was like a level 14 loot goblin.

[01:02:26] And so I loved it whenever like my team members got absolutely eviscerated.

[01:02:29] You talk about experimentation.

[01:02:31] I just go over there.

[01:02:32] Let me pick up the shield generator.

[01:02:34] Let me pick up this rail gun.

[01:02:36] Yeah, I'm super OP now, which is great because it's like you can do that.

[01:02:40] It is there for that.

[01:02:41] And then and then you hear of the comms.

[01:02:43] Will's getting diving.

[01:02:44] He's like, you better not pick up my equipment.

[01:02:48] Every five minutes my rail gun to come back.

[01:02:50] So fun.

[01:02:51] Yeah, right.

[01:02:52] I remember one of the mean builds we did too was I think it was the week we had that first major order where it was like you have to defend the planets.

[01:02:59] That was like the first time we saw that major order.

[01:03:01] And one of the defense missions was where you had to like evacuate the scientists.

[01:03:06] And the first time those like showed up, those were so hard, even on the lower difficulty.

[01:03:11] They were incredible.

[01:03:12] Those were absolutely insane.

[01:03:13] So it was around that time that we discovered that during that time, the mortar turret was like super OP.

[01:03:20] Like the mortar turret was insane.

[01:03:22] So my group of four friends, like everyone started running mortar turrets and that just turned the scientists like escape defense mission into just like there are four mortars.

[01:03:32] They're going to shoot anywhere like best of luck.

[01:03:34] Like we wish you the best in your survival, but you're probably going to die.

[01:03:37] So yeah, it's just yeah, as long as you don't play if you haven't played for like hundreds of hours already, every mission like just feels like you might be doing the same mission types over and over again.

[01:03:49] But just like the way that the game crafts, like emergent stories of like you and your group, something different will happen.

[01:03:56] Like every time they'll have you and your friends just like laughing or because there's always situations where you like have to just like escape or like your well thought out plan.

[01:04:05] You're like, all right, we're going to attack the base from all these sides or throw our stratagems in and then everything just like goes sideways and you're surrounded.

[01:04:10] And it's just like, well, now let's just get out of there and survive.

[01:04:13] We'll regroup later.

[01:04:14] Yeah.

[01:04:15] And you talk about Malibu Long Creek.

[01:04:17] You talk about having PTSD.

[01:04:19] What are the enemies that give you the most PTSD in this game, Eric?

[01:04:23] Well, I think we'll and I shared a moment of our disgust for the stalkers.

[01:04:27] The stalkers are awful.

[01:04:29] I hate them so much.

[01:04:31] They just show up out of nowhere.

[01:04:32] So on the bug side, it's definitely the stalkers and definitely the Chargers that give me the most trouble.

[01:04:38] Not that the Chargers are inherently difficult, but I've always found that whenever you're dealing with one for whatever reason, like three or four more tend to like show up at the same time.

[01:04:47] And then you're just dealing with four or five dudes who are just like constantly charging you and take a lot of shots to kill on the automaton side.

[01:04:55] The time times just scare me in general.

[01:04:57] I feel like I always do just way worse against them than the bugs.

[01:05:01] But I think the one that gives me the most trouble we've got a pretty good system of dealing with the hulks.

[01:05:07] But the tanks are always just like whenever a tank shows up, I'm just I'm absolutely just absolutely terrified of tanks.

[01:05:15] So those are those are the big ones.

[01:05:17] I understand as long as there's not like a glut of automatons like that are very close by when you're dealing with the tanks, dealing with the tanks at close range is your best bet because kind of just hiding on their wheels and then like right around them to maneuver behind and then shoot the vents.

[01:05:31] Like the go to of those.

[01:05:34] But it's like whenever we even countered them range, you're fucked.

[01:05:36] Yeah, whenever we've encountered them, it's always been like when we're dealing with like a bigger base and we don't see him that much because I haven't seen tanks as much as I've seen anything else in this game.

[01:05:46] And then like we'll just be dealing with like a big base.

[01:05:48] And then all of a sudden, like we won't we'll be like, oh, we haven't seen a tank for like 40 minutes of this game of this match.

[01:05:53] There won't be a tank here.

[01:05:54] And then like two tanks will just show up.

[01:05:56] And then we're just like, we didn't account for this.

[01:05:58] We don't know how to deal with this.

[01:05:59] They were listening to your comms.

[01:06:00] They were listening to you.

[01:06:01] Joel says go now.

[01:06:02] Well, you said flame hulks.

[01:06:05] I feel like I fought a couple of these with you, right?

[01:06:07] Yep. Yep.

[01:06:08] So those are the ones that have the like buzz saw arms and they have flame throwers for the other arm.

[01:06:12] So it's always fun.

[01:06:13] I just love to we talk about seeing something new sometimes in the best part about the community and everyone having their videos and clips and everything too is you see stuff that I'm like, I did not know you could do that.

[01:06:24] Let me try that the next time I hop on.

[01:06:25] Oh yeah.

[01:06:26] So somebody's doing a really bad ass compilation of them fighting automatons.

[01:06:29] And when the Hulk goes to light the flamethrower, which normally for me I'm like, OK, well there goes one of my lives.

[01:06:34] They they duck like fall prone and it goes over their head and then they run away.

[01:06:40] And I was like, wait a goddamn minute.

[01:06:42] I didn't know that.

[01:06:44] I'm like this whole time I could have just dropped to the ground, avoided the flame and then taken off and shot him in the back.

[01:06:50] So I'm like, cool.

[01:06:51] Nice. I will keep that in mind for next time.

[01:06:53] But still, yeah, up to that point of knowing that.

[01:06:55] I didn't know that.

[01:06:56] That's the worst. That's a good one.

[01:06:57] Yeah, it was like exactly as you're saying.

[01:06:59] You know, the energy from social media and the community for Helldivers 2 is very similar to what happened when Tears of the Kingdom came out.

[01:07:06] And then you're seeing people craft these absolute just insane contraptions from the zone I materials and particles and stuff.

[01:07:13] And I would have never known about the hover glider that became kind of like the the meta for navigating the under the Underdark for Zelda.

[01:07:21] And the same thing goes for here, essentially using your rocket boosters to jump on top of bio titans during a stratagem and then like running off.

[01:07:28] Like it's just the coolest stuff that you can't get in there.

[01:07:31] I'm similar on your front as well, Eric, in terms of I hate the Chargers because exactly like you said, it's never just one.

[01:07:37] It's usually like eight.

[01:07:38] And then what am I supposed to do?

[01:07:40] Does I have this little tiny stamina bar?

[01:07:42] I can only jump to the side so many times whenever you get ready to crush me.

[01:07:46] And then the bile spewers.

[01:07:48] Absolutely horrible.

[01:07:49] You're out of 10.

[01:07:50] We'll not fight again.

[01:07:51] They suck.

[01:07:52] They suck.

[01:07:53] The game tricks you with the Chargers too, because you imagine, OK, this is a heavily armored front enemy and then they got that big juicy butt.

[01:08:00] So you're like, all right, let me just go ahead and shoot him in the back when they run past me.

[01:08:03] That's going to kill them in two hits.

[01:08:04] No, no, does not do that.

[01:08:06] It takes a unreasonable amount of shots.

[01:08:08] It takes a clip.

[01:08:09] It takes a clip.

[01:08:10] You have to use something armor piercing on their legs to then destroy one leg.

[01:08:14] And that's like the most effective way to kill them, which I'm like, I wouldn't have thought to just shoot at them.

[01:08:18] To just shoot at the heavily armored thing.

[01:08:20] So once again, it goes back to watching people and that's kind of where the rail gun to got like it's really big, like push from people saying it's meta.

[01:08:27] But my oh, that's the most effective way to deal with a charger, like a fully charged unhinged for lack of a better term, unhinged rail gun shot.

[01:08:35] Like you can turn it like safe and unsafe.

[01:08:36] So unsafe rail gun.

[01:08:37] Yeah, right.

[01:08:38] Right.

[01:08:39] Oh, yeah.

[01:08:40] Blows off the armor and then you charge it too much.

[01:08:42] It explodes.

[01:08:43] Pop your head.

[01:08:44] Exactly.

[01:08:45] Your head explodes if you charge it.

[01:08:47] An experimental rail gun.

[01:08:49] So there's been many a time when I'm sitting there charging it like waiting to see the whites of their eyes and then my head blows up.

[01:08:57] Charge it for just a second too long.

[01:08:59] This is what the automatons to is not truly like a straight up enemy, but we talk about those bases as well.

[01:09:05] I don't know if y'all have the same hatred I have for those sniper tower.

[01:09:09] Yeah, the sniper towers.

[01:09:10] Yeah.

[01:09:11] Oh, yeah.

[01:09:12] I'm like trying to go and sneak in and it starts to slowly turn towards you.

[01:09:16] I'm like, oh, well, you know, I have my my bubble shield, right?

[01:09:19] What's the worst that can one shot?

[01:09:21] Yeah, you're out of lives and you're responding.

[01:09:26] Yeah.

[01:09:27] Two minutes to jump back in.

[01:09:28] Oh, yeah.

[01:09:29] Those are really fun.

[01:09:30] I do love that though, you know, doing the Hail Mary LeBron toss with the grenades into the vents on those automatons, you know, stations that you're supposed to blow up.

[01:09:37] It's one of my favorite parts.

[01:09:38] We have blowing up the bug holes.

[01:09:40] It just feels awesome.

[01:09:41] Every time you get to do it.

[01:09:43] So let's keep on moving here.

[01:09:45] Obviously, we've covered almost everything in terms of like the mechanics, the story, the gameplay.

[01:09:50] I do want to talk a little bit about as we have covered before the war bonds and the monetization.

[01:09:55] Did either of you spend any money on this game besides the thirty dollars to jump in?

[01:10:00] I have not yet.

[01:10:01] OK, me neither.

[01:10:03] Oh, you guys, you guys, I'm the lone one out.

[01:10:06] I'm the loser that was like a little bit of money.

[01:10:09] I would though, if I had some extra money, I certainly would, because I think they deserve the support.

[01:10:13] Because I think this game was only like was this 40 or 50 bucks when it came out?

[01:10:17] I don't think it was a price when it came out was 30.

[01:10:19] It was 30. Yeah.

[01:10:20] So I yeah, like they said, they want to earn your money.

[01:10:24] If like I said, if I had a little bit extra, I feel like they definitely earned it.

[01:10:27] I would I would support that for sure.

[01:10:30] Yeah, and I think it's like having the having like the battle pass and having like the premium,

[01:10:36] they call the super store right next to the war bonds as something you can go and check out.

[01:10:41] And of course, earning like the super credits that you can do in game.

[01:10:44] That's part of like the war bonds page is great because it's like you don't actually have to spend any money on these like, you know, optional cosmetics if you really don't want to.

[01:10:53] But it's still going to be there for you if you want to check it out.

[01:10:55] Like there was one that looks like a halo, like an Evo helmet that are EVA helmet that I really, really wanted.

[01:11:02] And there was another one that just like looks super sick and it was like Navy blue.

[01:11:05] And I was like, I got to have this one.

[01:11:07] So it's you know, I jumped in there.

[01:11:09] I think I did it like once and I was able to just add some money to my account and you know, get some super credits and jump in there.

[01:11:14] And it just doesn't matter because for the most part,

[01:11:16] I'm late like really the only thing that armor does affect you is like how much stamina you have,

[01:11:21] how much speed you have as you're running across the map.

[01:11:23] And if you're playing with Will, you better strap in tight because you're going to be sprinting.

[01:11:26] Light armor.

[01:11:27] You better wear that scout armor.

[01:11:29] Oh my God.

[01:11:31] Because you did mention too there's the body of the armor.

[01:11:33] They each have like their own kind of individual little perks.

[01:11:36] So some of them have like, oh, you'll take less explosive damage.

[01:11:40] Some of them you'll be able to ping on the map where items are.

[01:11:43] And then one of the cooler ones is that death defying where it's like you have a 50% chance to not die when something should kill you.

[01:11:50] I had no idea.

[01:11:51] Yeah. Your friend drops a 500 kg bomb at your feet and you're like, oh, your character goes flying, but they don't die because you're just like, yay.

[01:11:57] Thanks armor.

[01:11:58] This is a coin toss whether I'll live or die from the groundfall.

[01:12:02] Exactly. Like with that 50% perky.

[01:12:04] And when I hit the ground going 180 miles per hour.

[01:12:08] But I don't know, Eric, did you play fashion divers when you were in here or did you just kind of find a suit of armor and a cape and stick to it?

[01:12:17] Yeah, I just kind of I was just kind of equipping whatever like the next thing I unlocked on the war bond was I didn't have I didn't lock too much stuff.

[01:12:25] I found I was more hyper focusing the weapons trying to unlock more of the weapons and like the little buffs you can unlock.

[01:12:32] But yeah, once I get enough like pieces, I definitely want to just make like a crazy cool.

[01:12:36] I try and figure something out.

[01:12:37] And I think it's only the chess pieces to that effect like that the different types of play styles like the scout and speed.

[01:12:44] I don't think I haven't yet come across like a helmet.

[01:12:46] Don't do it. Yeah, helmets are case that do anything.

[01:12:48] So there's like hidden stats for some of the helmets.

[01:12:50] I think there are two helmets in the game.

[01:12:52] I don't know if they've added anymore, but the scout helmet will make you a little bit faster and take a little bit of your armor.

[01:12:57] But it doesn't really tell you that outright.

[01:12:59] You just have to check your stats and like the main screen.

[01:13:01] Oh, OK. It's interesting.

[01:13:03] There are like two helmets that are like secret stat posts.

[01:13:06] But yeah, the vast majority of the helmets, they're just cosmetic capes are just cosmetic.

[01:13:10] And then it's really down to your armor as far as how your speed health and then your defense from like explosives as well as that extra perk.

[01:13:19] That may be a part of it.

[01:13:21] Awesome.

[01:13:22] Let's go ahead and move on to a little bit of controversy and criticism that surrounding Helldivers 2.

[01:13:27] Now, something that I want to mention off the top before we kind of really get into the weeds with it here is the fact that like I think that this game for what it is and the scope of this game, there is not much you really can create.

[01:13:39] Obviously, you want to give a little bit more buffing here or there.

[01:13:42] You want maybe just some minor tweaks to kind of encourage, you know, player experience to kind of get into that feedback loop.

[01:13:48] A large part of that is really just skill and take your time to learn how to play and really get in there.

[01:13:54] I wish they kind of described a little bit more like what those side objectives mean and what they could do to benefit you.

[01:14:00] But there's something again, you use your friends to figure it out.

[01:14:03] They kind of rely on the community to help people as a communal game.

[01:14:07] But something that I think was an issue that other friends of ours, you know, in the podcasting community had noted on and kind of critique them for was the fact that they launched and the game was so wildly successful that they did not have enough servers to set up the support player count.

[01:14:23] And it took them a long time to get there.

[01:14:26] Did you guys remember waiting in the lobbies for this game?

[01:14:29] Yep.

[01:14:30] Yep. And I remember being like little glitches and like different hacks, quote unquote, to get in.

[01:14:35] So I know like what PlayStation, for example, if one of your friends was in and they like invited you to the game or the party or something, you may be able to skip the waiting lobby like everyone else was in.

[01:14:47] So yeah, people were trying to do their own like little fancy ways to get in and get out.

[01:14:51] But no, there were many of these in those early times where you're just kind of sitting at a screen as it spun.

[01:14:57] And it was like, please waiting.

[01:14:58] It felt like the old school days. I don't know how many people out there may have been like, wow, players.

[01:15:02] But every once in a while, wow, get really, really busy and you'll be sitting waiting to get queued in.

[01:15:07] So it's like, all right, I guess I'll go make myself a bowl of oatmeal or something while I wait 15 to 20 minutes for me to get into this game.

[01:15:14] Yeah, right. That's it. Yeah.

[01:15:16] I remember I left I would just turn my computer on and I would just be like, all right, I'm going to queue up.

[01:15:20] I'll get in when I get in and just walk off and do something else and then check back every 10, 15 minutes, try and get into.

[01:15:25] I remember too, there was a I don't remember who wrote the article, but there's an article written about like people that did get in were just like not logging out because there was no there's no time out for just inactivity.

[01:15:34] So they were just like staying in for like 10, 15, like 20 hours and they would play for like three hours and go do something else and stay logged in and everyone else.

[01:15:41] They're just taking up a spot for somebody else to try and get in and play.

[01:15:43] So yeah, the first couple of weeks were a bit messy there.

[01:15:47] Reprehensible. It's like trying to get toilet paper during COVID.

[01:15:50] It was great. Yeah, yeah.

[01:15:52] That's very accurate.

[01:15:54] Very accurate.

[01:15:55] And the thing is, is that like for this game, it's not I wouldn't.

[01:15:59] I don't even think that like, you know, the player, it is a player support issue and at the end of it, it does fall on the heads of the dev team.

[01:16:05] But like I wouldn't contextualize like not being able to get into the game as a critique on Helldivers 2 in itself.

[01:16:11] It's more kind of just like the cloud engineer and like the play count testing or like the kind of testing your user base.

[01:16:19] All of those things that you're supposed to do as a publisher and a developer upfront, like clearly they miscalculated or they were running off of numbers that clearly they didn't anticipate this much support, which it's kind of weird because they were pushing this as like a big Sony game.

[01:16:35] This is supposed to be like a big game for everybody to jump into.

[01:16:38] Really, I just think the reception far outweighed what they had anticipated.

[01:16:42] So it was really hard for them to kind of come off their back foot at launch and then create that those servers off the top.

[01:16:49] I would say it's hard to just add server capacity to people is just like, oh, you can set up like it takes hours to set up servers to that kind of stuff.

[01:16:55] And yeah, I have to imagine, you know, I chalked it up to kind of just like a kind of like a freak business thing.

[01:17:02] Right. Because, you know, I'm a manager at my job and it's my responsibility to forecast for my department for the year and stuff like that.

[01:17:09] And, you know, you forecast based on like the information that you have.

[01:17:13] I don't think that anybody at Arrowhead thought that the game would kind of have this viral moment where it kind of caught fire and connected with so many people on social media and in friend circles and stuff like that.

[01:17:26] Obviously, that's the best case scenario and adding server capacity.

[01:17:29] That's a it's a sucky problem to have, but it's like a good problem to have because obviously you just hope you can maintain that momentum to you can kind of scale to the point where you can build up server capacity that can handle that.

[01:17:39] But yeah, sometimes just sometimes there are just things you can't account for and they obviously did not account for the fact that social media kind of blew the doors off this game and made it the hottest game of the moment.

[01:17:51] Yep. Yeah, and the big thing you talked about Steam earlier in the episode, Nick, when looking at those Steam charts, I just honestly think they had no idea because what I think looking on Steam here in, you know, there's a couple of different Helldivers games because there's like the updated version of like Dive Harder, etc.

[01:18:07] But even this like updated definitive edition of Helldivers 1, they had an all time peak of 6700 players seven years ago and then the all time peak for Helldivers 2 is 458000.

[01:18:20] So it's just I do not think they were like even with the push, they're like, okay, we'll make it like, you know, 50,000 100,000 at like the most right?

[01:18:30] And they're like up 458000 and they were like calling up Sony. They're like, send us more money now.

[01:18:37] Right? Yeah. And it is really expensive to create those new servers to kind of get in there. So it's definitely like a balancing act that they have to do.

[01:18:45] Obviously you're paying upfront to get into the game and then obviously the war bonds that are top of that.

[01:18:49] But they're not going to be as like, you know, you know, being countery as some of these other games out there that kind of, you know, incentivize more, you know, more servers, more player space.

[01:19:00] But, you know, and as Nick quoted to, I just I can't give enough credits.

[01:19:03] Like you said, the CEO was on Twitter constantly during those first couple weeks, like being very communicative is like what they are trying to do.

[01:19:11] He's like, hey, we're trying to fix this. He's like, and even one weekend he was like, listen, like we know this is going to suck this week.

[01:19:17] And he's like, our team has to go home and sleep because nobody has slept for like six days.

[01:19:21] So I think that kind of won him a little bit of time to scale up too, just because he was so honest and forthcoming, which, you know, if it was anybody else, you know, EA or something, it just would have been a press release that just had a bunch of fancy jargon and deflected blame.

[01:19:35] Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And there's a goes just be a normal human being when it comes to, you know, I think that they're starting to learn now what players want, or at least people in the Twitter gaming space want to see from companies in terms of how they interface with their their community, with their audience.

[01:19:52] And there's there's definitely ways to do it. And then there's Ubisoft and, you know, EA.

[01:19:58] You should be comfortable not owning your games.

[01:20:00] And not to mention, I mean, like this is just one more point on here that kind of just to drive home the final, you know, nail in the coffin of like why this game spiraled out of control.

[01:20:10] It released on February 8th, 2024 this year. The only thing major that I can remember that had come out before this was if I'm not mistaken, Persona 3 reloaded.

[01:20:20] And that was that was the big thing. And then I believe like later that month, Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth came out, but it almost had a full month to itself as being like a you know, third party Sony exclusive, you know, also on PC type thing.

[01:20:34] So it was a perfect storm for that. Will, can you break down for us what happened with Sony forcing this PSN account link?

[01:20:42] Goodness gracious.

[01:20:45] This is that fun explosive stuff that happens on Twitter. And I definitely found myself in here too, you know, it really goes to show that you need to get the whole picture, the full picture of things.

[01:20:55] And luckily, I'm not the kind of person that goes on social media and spouts out like half information just to be like, oh, this is ridiculous because the first time hearing about it, one of the things they were like, oh, they're like, oh, you got to make a PlayStation account.

[01:21:08] And I was like, oh, well, it's kind of silly. But I mean, what takes five minutes can't be that bad, etc, etc. What effectively what was happening was that people who had already been playing the game at this point for you know, months and things have been locked in in order to continue playing on PC and to you know, play going forward as far as buying the game you were being required to create a PSN or like a PlayStation Network account and then have that linked with your Steam account so that you can continue to play the game on that server there.

[01:21:36] What a lot of people like myself didn't recognize was that it wasn't just the kind of going in and making that PSN account and being good, but there are quite a few countries where you couldn't make PSN accounts. So people either had to spoof or lie about where they were actually at, which, you know, would technically break the TOS. I think there's a lot of the things where people would kind of look away from it, but still at the end of the day, if they wanted to, they could, you know, like cancel your account and lock you out of playing it, etc, for kind of faking that TOS. But it caused a lot of people to get pissed rightfully.

[01:22:05] So and then just like we talked about how the community drove the game and made it great and had all this good stuff for it, they will show you like look, we can turn this ship around.

[01:22:18] We can turn this car around and go home.

[01:22:21] Yeah, and then that's exactly what they did. So the steam review bombs came in quick and fast. People were refunding the game and steam started honoring people's refunds even after like playing it for a while. Right?

[01:22:36] So there was a huge, huge mess on that side. You know, the game went from overwhelmingly positive to I think at one point it turned like either it was fully mixed or maybe even started tilting towards negative for the overall.

[01:22:49] And that's where Nick you talked about earlier where we're back up now to like 73, you know, mostly positive. But this game was sitting in like what low 90s high 80s for the longest time.

[01:22:59] Like it was overwhelmingly positive. It was the highest reviewed game for its genre or its like specific like category for a long, long time.

[01:23:09] So it was it was definitely a remarkable thing. And honestly, we talk about we've talked a lot about the community.

[01:23:15] We've talked about kind of how Twitter and you know, different gaming spaces online have interacted with this game.

[01:23:20] This is a huge win in terms of like, you know, grassroots, you know, player communities mobilizing to actually like I hate to see it because it does reflect poorly on Arrowhead Studios and on Helldivers.

[01:23:32] And I wish there was a way to like demand Sony, but like really the only way that you can force a corporation as massive and as gargantuan and as draconian as Sony is by really leveraging what you have at your disposal.

[01:23:46] And in this case, it was, you know, the Steam player reviews and you know, shout out to Gabe Newell for being the guy that out there being like, yeah, refund the game because you no longer have access to it.

[01:23:55] And that's, you know, goes against it. I'm sure there's a lot of legal stuff that's baked into that whole argument.

[01:23:59] But the fact that Sony publicly came out and apologized and then backed down from the whole mandate that they're trying to have, I thought it was great.

[01:24:08] And you imagine that there was probably just some executive that never even gave it a second thought.

[01:24:13] Like you want to give them the benefit of the doubt that they didn't know this would cut off access to people in other countries.

[01:24:18] But it's just, you know, nobody is really thinking about like those implications.

[01:24:21] So, you know, these are the way things that you as a company you reflect on, you learn from and you get better as you move forward.

[01:24:29] Yeah, I think when I first read about that, it was funny because about a month after Helldivers came out, I wrote a piece on it and put out an episode.

[01:24:38] And, you know, at the end of that episode, I kind of talked about how, you know, in the in the current live service landscape like Helldivers 2 has a lot of goodwill and has a lot of, you know, good feelings from players, which is not something that you see very often.

[01:24:54] I mean, we have some of these long existing live service games.

[01:24:57] Again, I hate to keep harping on Destiny 2, but the Destiny 2 community leading up to their like this final expansion leading up to has kind of been like in shambles.

[01:25:07] Just like this has been not a great time for that game and goodwill and the good marketing and the viral marketing you have around a game like this is you can't.

[01:25:17] I could spend every marketing dollar I could possibly get my hands on and you couldn't build something like that.

[01:25:23] That just that kind of exploded from people posting clips online and the kind of the kind of like like Nick said, the vibe that the community built around this game essentially for what it was.

[01:25:34] And yeah, I talked about all that stuff and I was like arrowhead just needs to keep that goodwill and that good momentum and they'll be fine.

[01:25:41] And then a month later this happened.

[01:25:42] So never before in my content creation career have I like had something that I put out age so poorly so quickly.

[01:25:50] So that was pretty funny.

[01:25:52] But yeah, for me it wasn't a big deal.

[01:25:54] I already had a PSN account, so I already linked it with my Steam account, which is the primary way I play.

[01:25:59] But I understand I hate accounts as much as you need an account for everything these days.

[01:26:03] I hate accounts as much as next person.

[01:26:04] And for me, the angle I kind of took at about it was Sony's accounts and Sony's PSN stuff hasn't been the most secure.

[01:26:13] We've had massive Sony data leaks over the last several years, multiple times.

[01:26:18] So I can understand why people who don't want to deal with that would have apprehension about wanting to having to make a place.

[01:26:24] I've already accepted that my data is out there.

[01:26:26] So I mean, it's just it's happened to me.

[01:26:30] Somebody will impersonate me eventually, although I'm not the most exciting person to do that identity.

[01:26:35] So I don't know what to say on that.

[01:26:37] Yeah. And you're right.

[01:26:39] Will's absolutely right.

[01:26:40] Somebody at Sony massively misread the room and was just like, oh yeah, this won't be an issue.

[01:26:45] And they underestimated how quickly that would turn against them.

[01:26:51] And they should have learned the lessons from some of the people that experience that the one I think about most recently was when they put Overwatch 2 on Steam.

[01:26:58] And the people let Activision hear the way that they felt.

[01:27:02] So that's really one of the only ways that aside from voting with our wallets that we as consumers can kind of voice our our displeasure.

[01:27:10] And people put a lot of stock in reviews, not just in video games, but in everything and getting your car fixed or going to a store or seeing a movie.

[01:27:17] Like people put a lot of stock in what the way people review things.

[01:27:21] Yeah, man, that was it seems like they said that PlayStation backed off and they kind of got I saw a big campaign that people were like, OK, switch your bad reviews now.

[01:27:30] Like it's OK. We can go back to the games fine now.

[01:27:33] So but just yeah, as fast as your game can be viral and be popular and be the game of the moment, it can turn on you for one small thing.

[01:27:42] So yeah, hard lesson to learn for sure.

[01:27:44] I'm sure Arrowhead CEO is probably stressing the week that was going on for sure.

[01:27:49] He's probably yelling at Sony. I can only had to be.

[01:27:51] I'm sure he was making meetings the whole time.

[01:27:54] It's like I cannot believe all of this crap.

[01:27:57] Yeah, it reminds me of the you guys seen the social network.

[01:28:01] Yes. The Facebook movie.

[01:28:03] There's a scene where they're meeting Justin Timberlake and he was like, you don't know what it is yet, but like it is cool.

[01:28:09] And like you have that going for you.

[01:28:10] And it's like, yeah, the helldivers 2 is the same thing.

[01:28:12] Like it's cool.

[01:28:13] You have that going for you.

[01:28:14] Like don't don't ruin it with the corporate game things that we've come to hate like so much now.

[01:28:19] Right.

[01:28:20] There's even right now, like as of the time of this recording, there's 177 regions where people can't now let go and newly buy it because PSN account linking isn't available.

[01:28:30] And Steam just won't allow people to buy it in those regions since that requirement came through.

[01:28:37] So what is the thing that like anybody that had before is like grandfathered in now?

[01:28:40] Anybody going forward can't do that.

[01:28:42] That is my understanding.

[01:28:43] So I'm not too heavy into the steam, so I can't say that exactly.

[01:28:46] But from like the research understanding of like if you already have it and you're playing, then you should be good to go.

[01:28:50] But if you go to buy it now and you're in one of those 177 regions that don't have it available to buy in steam, you can't purchase it as of right now.

[01:28:59] All right. I take back what I said.

[01:29:00] Fuck off, Sony.

[01:29:01] Yeah, no, Sony.

[01:29:02] That's the thing is that like they massively underestimated the blowback this has caused.

[01:29:07] And then they also like just don't have the infrastructure set up outside of like the US and EMEA.

[01:29:13] Like they just don't and they don't really think about it much more beyond that because those are their primary ecosystems.

[01:29:18] Besides the fact and then they want to complain about profits.

[01:29:21] Anyway, long story short, I'm going to go down with the industry.

[01:29:26] I'm not going to spiral into a conversation about capitalism.

[01:29:29] Instead, we're going to talk more about democracy and I'd like to do one final exercise with you both and say, you know, if you had to make one final pitch to a friend to jump into Helldivers 2 for the first time, what would you say?

[01:29:42] Eric, let's start with you first and we'll follow up.

[01:29:45] I would just say I would kind of just talk about the things that I talked about in my episode.

[01:29:51] I would say, well, first of all, it's just chaos and fun.

[01:29:55] It's that it's primary objective and I think that it accomplishes that in says, well, first of all, the way I bullied my friends into getting it was I was just I just sent them all the viral clips.

[01:30:06] Yeah, I was like, look, this is awesome.

[01:30:08] Like, look how fun this is.

[01:30:09] Like these people are having a blast.

[01:30:10] That was the primary thing.

[01:30:12] And I would kind of tell them to especially if they were friends that were in the gaming sphere to be like, hey, you know, this is a live service thing.

[01:30:19] I know it's kind of makes people a little bit wary, but these are the differences against some of like the big established ones that people play and what makes it better.

[01:30:28] So that would kind of be my be my pitch and be like, hey, this game isn't looking to like directly take your money from you.

[01:30:34] It's its first objective is to just be a fun game that you can play with your buds.

[01:30:38] So yeah, I would absolutely bully them with with the social media clips.

[01:30:41] That's what that's how I got several of my friends to play.

[01:30:44] Awesome.

[01:30:45] And honestly, very similar, not just with the social media clips, but I'm going to take it back to just the game starting up itself.

[01:30:51] If anyone's already played the game, the intro where it shows like a little propaganda video, the guy walking in the little suburban world waves to his wife and kids.

[01:31:01] Yeah, right.

[01:31:02] Viciously murdered by bugs who just happen to be in the suburbs of this planet.

[01:31:06] Yep.

[01:31:07] The sweet liberty is covered in blood.

[01:31:09] Customs like, oh, does that guy look familiar?

[01:31:12] So that whole video itself, including when it shows the hell divers, you know, shooting bugs go see exotic locations as you covered in.

[01:31:20] That's yeah, you know, the high five and they're giving each other chest bumps.

[01:31:25] And I would just show that video and say if you want to do that with me for the low, low price of thirty nine ninety nine, you too can be a hell diver.

[01:31:37] That's right.

[01:31:38] That's right.

[01:31:39] Intro videos like that.

[01:31:40] Obviously, that's actually the perfect, the perfect pitch.

[01:31:43] Honestly, the selling point.

[01:31:44] I don't think there's been a game since like Assassin's Creed two or like Assassin's Creed.

[01:31:50] I'm trying to remember what the one that was in between the two and the other brotherhood maybe was brotherhood.

[01:31:56] Yeah, but yeah, I think it was brotherhood.

[01:31:57] That's exactly one because I like that video too.

[01:31:59] Every time I boot the games up, I boot the game up and it starts playing that trailer and I don't skip it.

[01:32:03] I watch it every single time before I get in.

[01:32:05] That's like me playing Hell Divers to I get pre-gaming by watching that video.

[01:32:09] And I'm like, all right, now I'm ready.

[01:32:11] Now I'm good to go.

[01:32:13] Absolutely.

[01:32:14] You know, if I were to jump in there and say that, I would say, you know, did you watch Starship Troopers?

[01:32:19] And if I'm talking to anybody that's like younger than twenty eight, I'm like, OK, do you just want to do what do you want to be a storm trooper and just absolutely annihilate robots and robust?

[01:32:30] Do you want to be a clone from the Clone Wars and have fun?

[01:32:33] Which, by the way, will send me something on Twitter.

[01:32:35] There is a mod now that's literally just a Star Wars mod and you can play as like a clone trooper or a storm trooper.

[01:32:41] And I didn't see that.

[01:32:42] You're protecting.

[01:32:43] Yeah, it's absolutely incredible.

[01:32:44] But if you want to do that, jump into Hell Divers to give it a shot.

[01:32:48] You get more value for your buck in this game than almost any other first party game out there today.

[01:32:54] So jump in and then do that.

[01:32:56] But that is going to be it for tonight, folks.

[01:32:59] I want to give a big thank you to all of our listeners who've joined us for this episode.

[01:33:02] If you've enjoyed our content and you want to support us further, please feel free to leave us a rating review on your podcasting platform of choice.

[01:33:09] And you can also check us out on Patreon.

[01:33:11] The lowest entry tier is one dollar and that's Patreon dot com slash Friday night GameCast.

[01:33:16] And I'd like to give Eric one more opportunity to plug his show.

[01:33:20] Yeah, thanks.

[01:33:21] Thanks for having me on guys.

[01:33:23] First of all, this was it's always a blast to get to talk to you guys.

[01:33:25] And I cherish every single time I get to come on Friday night GameCast.

[01:33:29] It's one of my absolute favorite things that exists today.

[01:33:33] So thank you guys.

[01:33:34] Thank you guys so much as for me.

[01:33:36] My name is Eric.

[01:33:37] I host the unlockables, which I bill as the story of video games and people who play them in the memories made along the way.

[01:33:41] You can find me at link tr dot e e forward slash unlockables podcast has links to my social media, Instagram, my personal Twitter, the show Twitter.

[01:33:50] I'm not calling it X because I refuse to do that.

[01:33:53] And yeah, you can find the show on any podcast of choice.

[01:33:58] I mostly promote Spotify because I use their kind of podcasts uploader, whatever you call that like their pod, whatever it's called.

[01:34:05] But yeah, yeah, that thing.

[01:34:07] But I'm pretty much anywhere you can find a podcast and I even got all my podcasts uploaded to YouTube.

[01:34:13] And I put on my first YouTube video two months ago.

[01:34:16] I played ocarina of time for the first time and I put out like a 40 minute like in the style of the essay retrospectives on my experience playing ocarina of time for the first time as a 30 year old man.

[01:34:28] So that was really cool to get to experiment with a new medium.

[01:34:32] So I definitely want to do some more video stuff in the future.

[01:34:35] It's kind of in my plans as I kind of read two of my plans and get some stuff together over the summer here, which I will be gone for.

[01:34:41] And then obviously the thing I'm probably most infamously known for is my guiding key series.

[01:34:46] We're up to 19 episodes on the entire Kingdom Hearts series that's just over, I think, 30 hours.

[01:34:53] So it's a lot. It's it's it's the most ambitious thing I've ever done for sure.

[01:34:59] And the response has been super cool on that.

[01:35:02] So yeah, that's a little bit about me.

[01:35:04] And if you do listen, just you can tweet at me or rate the show.

[01:35:07] That would be awesome.

[01:35:09] Great Friday night gamecast and go support them on Patreon because they're super awesome.

[01:35:13] Thank you so much.

[01:35:14] That's that's absolutely incredible.

[01:35:16] And yes, everybody, please go make sure to check it out.

[01:35:18] I can personally attest to that ocarina of time video, one of my favorite games of all time and also one of my favorite reviews of all time.

[01:35:24] So please go check out Eric's channel, the unlockables at YouTube.

[01:35:29] Well, if people want to find you and let you know that you don't believe in super earth and you don't believe in patriotism.

[01:35:37] Where can they find you?

[01:35:39] They can find me in a pod diving feet first into hell.

[01:35:43] That's where they can find me.

[01:35:45] But you can catch me on Twitter.

[01:35:47] It'll be real King Zozo Tide.

[01:35:49] That is at R E A L K I N G Z O S O T A I.

[01:35:54] Absolutely.

[01:35:55] And with that, everyone, please keep gaming.

[01:35:57] Take it easy and we'll catch you next Friday night.

[01:35:59] Doses.

[01:36:01] See ya playing the theme music in my head.