We Played Mouse: P.I. For Hire! - Kinda Funny Gamecast

Be like me and head to factor meals dot com slash kind of funny 50 off and use code kind of funny 50 off to get 50% off and free breakfast for a year. Eat like a pro this month with factor. If you want to get our shows ad free and our exclusive shows, go to patreon.com slash kind of funny. what's up everybody welcome to the kind of funny games cast for thursday march 5th 20 26 i'm one of your hosts greg miller alongside forbes 30 under 30 aka new york game awards nominated a.k.a. Biceps Poppy. Blessing. And Aoye Jr. Good day, Greg. Good day. You don't wear the liquid jersey as much anymore. No, it felt out of rotation. Yeah. I started wearing it as a gym shirt, and then after a while I was like, no, this is nice. I'm going to upgrade you back. I have to call back. Yeah. You're going to get called back. Back up for the minors. You work out your junk. You're all the redemption story right here. Exactly. But I feel like I don't do just regular long sleeves as much, so I'm trying to build that back into the got these guns. You know what I mean? Kurt Warner coming back from, you know, just bagging groceries, going back to the Super Bowl. Yeah. It's like, no, you still got it. Yeah. Let's come back. Let's bring you back. He was on the St. Louis Rams. It was a big deal. The biggest show on turf. The biggest show on turf? Yeah, they played on turf. Well, that was the whole team. Yeah, yeah. Not just Kurt Warner. I'm having fall. I don't know what's happening. I'm having crazy deja vu right now. Really? I've done this before. Whoa, really? Well, here's Kurt Warner. And of course, he's a Hispanic heartthrob, Texas treat Latino. No heat clicking heads and ripping them to shreds. The globe shot and head shot and root and toot and three point shooting. Natural Ruff from twitch.tv. Andy Cortez. Hey, everybody. Did I get the order right? You crushed all of it. You crushed all of it. I think you said shot and twist. Shot and Freud? You said like globe shot and head shot. Oh, did I? I guess I'm so hung up on getting root and toot and first. Yeah. RT first. Now you're getting in your head about everything else. Did the Horizon Hunters gathering play test happen? Yeah, they did a beta. Yeah. Or whatever it was or whatever. I couldn't get in. yeah they didn't invite us i signed up and everything fuck it up you know they invited like five people i'm convinced because nobody's talked about it well i mean there's embargoes too right there's gotta be ndas on that right that's probably why they didn't invite us yeah we'll talk about on their podcast maybe i did go and i can't tell you oh wow as you know playstation just an open thing though no you just sign up through the playstation that's beta program or whatever people online were like posting um like player numbers and stuff and everybody had to remind them like no this is a closed beta like of course the steam numbers aren't going to be that high compared to a marathon or whatever. Right. I played a couple rounds of marathon. Yeah? Yeah. Not today since it came out, but over the weekend. Everything's coming out, man. Yeah, right. It's raining games right now. It was so weird to just, I was just kind of relaxing with it, you know, just by myself. Just looking at the flowers, walking around with the guns. Me and a couple of randos playing on, you know, they're playing on, you know, PlayStation over there, and it's just me on cross play, and we're just kind of walking around and doing each other, and you see what each other's missions are, and you're like, oh, we should do this. And I'm trying to talk to him like, hey, Rodrigo, can you res me, man? Thanks, Rodrigo. He was using his microphone on his controller. Exactly. It was a great time. It was a great time. How does it compare to Arc Raiders? Because Arc Raiders is the only point of reference I have for extraction. Overall, I probably like Arc Raiders more, but not by a whole lot. Really? I think the vibe is just super sick here. The visuals are awesome. Of course, I'm just so into the aesthetic. of all of it and i don't know there's something like just kind of really meditative and that's probably just the beginning portions of it because i'm you're whenever you pick the sort of early missions it puts you in the beginner zone which is like on the outskirts of you know how hot i can get and then you can dive deeper into the area if you want and those maps kind of change up and get a bit more difficult but um i would say i like i like arc creators more for sure but still not a genre for me. So when I'm done talking about it in a week and a half, don't be like, oh, Andy, fucking marathon. He said it was a contender. I was like, well, no. I play these extraction shooters for a bit and then I bounce because I just don't really vibe with them as much as I want to. But here's the thing. Here's my pitch. Moondog pitch right now. Moondog pitch, everybody. Make it a single player game or like, you know, campaign game. Nobody's heard of that one. Yeah, that's a brand new pitch. But also just the way it's all kind of laid out. They could definitely hell divers this shit. Oh, yeah. You drop into the map you see all the things on the map and it's like okay i have a mission here i can we can go here with our friends there's no other players just it's it's a you know put some big boss machines over there put some other you know uh you know encounters in this zones or whatever like you could do it yeah you know what i mean my fear is that i i because i want to try marathon but i'm scared that i like looking at marathon more than i like playing marathon because every single time I see it keeps you going along though like I I think it's so gorgeous not just from the UI stylistic perspective when you're in the game it's so nice to look at when these interiors look gorgeous I I would recommend like I know we were in kind of a spot where you're like uh should I be playing this or should I be playing this or whatever yeah I think you could definitely just get in several rounds of marathon because you don't have to know life for eight hours in one day do two to three runs in one night. That's going to take you maybe an hour. Really? Get in, get out, bounce. Because I've decided Saturday, I'm clearing my schedule. I canceled plans for Saturday. Saturday is going to be a gaming day for me. Wow. Because a lot of games are coming out. There are games that we're reviewing. I just need the time. Need the time. I called up Oakland. I was like, hey, Oakland. See you later. Call the city. Yeah, I called the city of Oakland up. Alert the city. I was like, hey, can't make it out on Saturday. People in traffic in Oakland, sitting on the billboards. Blessing would not be here on Saturday. Damn, for real. If Blessing doesn't show up to Oakland on the weekend, the mayor calls in a missing persons report of like, oh shit, he's not here to party. Oakland mayor and Daniel Lurie, they're going to call together. Have you seen him? Is he okay? Check out him. Where is he at? Go get him here. Do a welfare check. Quick question. I saw somebody in chat talking about, were you imitating my voice? Interesting. Here, I'm Greg, man. somebody said somebody said Marathon's concurrent players they were like on Steam it's this amount compared to STS2 what is that? you know STS2? what is that? South? No sick don't just guess if it's higher than the marathon we can figure it out Super Oh, Team Fortune? Right now their peak on Steam, their peak was two minutes ago at 84,872 players for Marathon. Oh, Slay the Spire! Oh! That's a game I gotta buy. Holy shit. No way that's out. It's out there. It launched at the same time as Marathon and people were struggling to buy either for a couple minutes. Do they know that Pocopias? Right now on the Steam charts Slay the Spire 2 has 135,125. Oh my. Good for Slay the Spire. Oh my God. People, hey, this is what we should do. Review it. Because I got on my fantasy. So if you're an outlet. Slay the Spire. Slay the Spire 2. Early access, man. It's a gamble. Yeah, you got to review it though. I'll tell you. It has that many players. People should know if it's good or not. I'm getting all giddy. I got a long flight coming up, guys. And I got Slay the Spire 2. Shut up. Here's the thing. Shut up about Slay the Spire and shut up about fucking Marathon. I want to know about Pocopia. Oh, I started Pocopia last night. I know you did. I want to know how you like it. Holy shit, man. I can't wait. It's going to be a problem. I cannot wait. That's what I said in the review. Holy shit, man. Can I cancel Sunday too? It's just like every little carrot on the stick. You can also eat carrots. This is kind of cool. Yeah, of course. And then you're spicy. Keep that in there. Spicy. Oh, what do you mean? Ingredients. Man, they all talk to you too. Like everybody's got, you know. The Pokemon? Hey, I smell a carrot. You got a carrot on you? Like, yeah, have this shit, dog And you eat that Wow, thank you What Pokemon is that? All of them Oh All of them I thought that was like a Bulbasaur No, it was Oddish Oddish Oddish wanted a carrot, yeah Nice And then, you know, I see a little Bless, I see like some water coming out of a piece of a wall And I had just God block smash Bam, hit that fucking wall Water comes out And it's like, oh Squirrel, you're gonna love this shit Squirrel Get over here, dude You've been kind of like Complaining passive-aggressively about your environment You've been like I wish I was a little more comfortable in this zone. Now you have water over here, Squirtle. But check this out, Greg. You could lead a Squirtle to water. You can't keep teaching him a fish. And I brought him, and he just didn't do anything. I was like, look what I've helped. He just kind of like. He wants the whole place to be wet. He wants to go back to play with blocks in Charizard. He just didn't give a shit. Good game. Oh, man. I can't wait. Great fucking game. Holy fuck. Yeah, I'm very, very excited. We have this conversation on Games Daily about if it'll be a contender. and I'm hopeful that you guys get into it as much. Yeah, I think so. Some level that I am into it. Yeah, for sure. Of course, we're doing a Gamescast plays of Pokemon Pocopia today after in review Interstellar, which is still coming up. Of course, this is your Kind of Funny Gamescast. Should I post-watch that? Ah, shit. You can fit it in right after this. Each and every weekday, we run you through the biggest topics in video games, whether they be reviews, previews, or just things we need to talk about. Of course, YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games, Twitch.tv slash Kind of Funny Games, podcast services around the globe. If you're watching live right now, you need to super chat. Be part of the conversations we're about to have, which include of course, previewing mouse P.I. for hire. Rakan super chatted already and said the most important thing I want to take away from this podcast is do I draft mouse P.I.? We'll talk about that for your fantasy critic in just a second. Remember, of course, we can do this without our producers over on patreon.com slash kind of funny. So thank you, Carl Jacobs, Omega Buster and Delaney the Somp Twining. Usually, this is where I transition to the topic of the show. But we're not doing it. Don't hit the graphic. Alright? Because I got... No, I said don't hit the graphic, Barrett. That's a strike against you. I want to see the words pop up and be like, fuck shit, my bad shit. That's it. I got a box. It's a box. I get scared when Greg busts out nondescript boxes. Right before we went live, I got a box out there. Okay. And I said, what's in this box? I know what's in this box. And I'll bring it out for my boys to go through. Because this is their kind of box, alright? What could it be? Start tearing in there. Maybe it's Overwatch? What do me and Andy have in common? We don't play the same video games. No, but you use... Is it Resident Evil? The same thing. So PlayStation has sent the Hyper Pop collection of DualSense controllers. So we have Techno Red, Remix Green, and Rhythm Blue. Thank you, PlayStation. Controllers provided by PlayStation. But I know Andy is all about the bright, vibrant colors. I know Bless always takes controllers when we get them. black and red is my favorite color combo you know what I mean this has to go to Tim I feel like I don't know how I feel about the black one and the blue though open them up see what's up blue is my favorite color though oh really I didn't know that about you I thought it was purple you're always using purple Tim sucks I like this green though wowie if you're not a listener of course these are the ones that got revealed a while back they are coming out March 12th Andy, of course, is Mr. Controller. So I figure that. I need to be a part of that. Let me open up blues. This is the one where I need to get the Marathon sticker to put on this. Oh, sure. Really? I was like, this is how the Marathon controller should look. Yeah. You get this black and this neon action yellow green. This is my new favorite one. That's going to be a personal one? You going to keep that one? You know what's also nice? I'm not used to the gloss. Yeah, the gloss is different. Oh, the gloss does feel different. Yeah. there's nothing better than a new controller it's a backpedal zone well yeah I mean you can argue about the controller but I mean just don't feel a fresh no no it feels good because the thing is at home I have a DualSense Edge which is what I use for everything so I feel like if I take it home I won't use it as much but I might use it as decoration we'll get the blue one on Tim's day at this point I'm gonna start framing controllers yeah you got a lot you got that Genshin Impact one I know I got the Genshin Impact one you could do the Ray Narvaez controller wall you could just full controller wall most expensive wall of all time yeah dual sense controllers uh thank you station for sending those over of course yeah techno red remix green rhythm blue available march 12th these new dual senses if you want to get out there and thank you to lunchbox and paulton for subscribing over on twitch using your brunchables for a second it's like lunchables oh man i can go for lunchables i'd fuck up a lunchable right now should you order some i'm serious one of the stupidest things we've done it you're all we've done it before and worry about it for now let's begin with what is and forever will be topic of the show let's strike to bear gosh sorry see what happens fuck around you find out that Andy I want to go home today you take all the pillows out of his bed all right he got to learn he got a little bit of a mattress topic of the show we played mouse PI for a hire Maybe you been living under a rock and haven seen this game The steam description reads join private investigator, Jack pepper played by Troy Baker on a guns blazing jazz fueled adventure in mouse PI for higher higher mouse combines the charm of hand-drawn rubber hose animation inspired by the classic cartoons of the 1930s with the adrenaline and action of an explosive first-person shooter it is coming out on april 16th 2026 to steam playstation 5 playstation 4 xbox series xns xbox one and nintendo switch slash switch 2 the developer is fumigames the publisher is play side uh we've seen this game for a long time it's been out there it's been gestating and then i have it open months ago xbox had a big old documentary presentation about it this big old deal and they made just about this game which was kind of crazy to see in terms of what they were going and i want to say reaction here has been mixed for it well there's been an anticipation for it but then they showed so much and it was almost why are we in are we out or whatever blessing where were you before you started this with your journey for mouse the i want to say was it a developer direct or an idea at xbox showcase where we saw that big presentation for it. 17-minute documentary from four months ago. I have it in the description, in my notes barred if you need to get to it. They closed that showcase with, yeah, that big deep dive, and I think that was the turning point for me, where I was like, damn, this seems big. They're treating this like this is a huge release. Troy Baker is voicing the main character. This seems like such a big release. My anticipation has been up. It's not like it's been, you know, oh, this is going to be a game of the year contender or anything like that. But that definitely put it on my map stronger than it was before. Okay. Andy, what about you? Yeah, it was a weird one because I think with the more that we saw of it, the more that expectations rose, the more that maybe we cast our own doubt in this video game. I think it was when we first see it, it's this really kind of novel, oh, here's this small kind of indie game that's going to be first-person boomer shooter speed, you know, with an awesome art style reminiscent of what Cuphead does and why that game is so charming with its art style. And then the more and more you see of it, especially with this little kind of deep dive, you go, oh, shit, this is kind of more than what it is. And now I'm kind of worried that maybe it's too much than it needs to be. And maybe they're kind of, you know, maybe the scope has gotten a little too large for what this game maybe should be. Because you kind of just, part of me was kind of hoping it was just going to be a- Two hour, three hour. Five hour boomer shooter. Here's a $15 video game, lots of fun. And then we might add a little challenge room DLC in a whatever, you know, a couple months from now. But then, yeah, this thing started showing off, oh shit, a lot of NPCs. A lot going on here, yeah. A lot of things in this world. And then I think that kind of naturally leads us, as the people who have seen a lot of games go through these stories of kind of, oh shit, your scope is really really expanding can you all match up and live up to this so andy after roughly an hour it took my my clock said an hour at the end that's how long it took me to play through the steam demo correct yeah yeah where do you stand i think it's a lot more fun than i thought it was going to be and i think a lot of that has to do with the boss fights okay um the the way that the boss fights are sort of uh the way that they telegraph their attacks the way that you are having to avoid them with the dash with the double jump it's exactly what i want out of a first person shooter boss fight there was also a mini boss that didn't have a whole lot of telegraphed moves it's just kind of coming at you coming at you got a dash at the right moment all that stuff just feels so good to do i've i said the last time we talked about this video game that i've never quite loved the png sort of style of the paper mario hey yeah if you're an audio listener of course you're moving through a 3D space, but you're fighting things that are 2D, like Paper Mario. Right, and so they are just, you know, 2D PNG cards that are standing in front of you, and they, you know, depending on whether the NPC will turn around, obviously they change the way the perspective is drawn, so all that stuff looks really damn good, but I've never quite been in love with this style of game, and this one definitely turned me around a bit more on it, and I think it is because of the charming art style of the, I thought Troy Baker's awesome. Dude. Troy Baker's kicking ass in this game. I really enjoy his presence here. And yeah, everything that's kind of happening with this game seems really cool and interesting. Being a detective who is, again, for audio listeners who have never seen this game, if you're maybe tuning in for the first time, hey, I'm Andy. Work for this company called Kind of Funny. I joined in 2017. And this game has a very Cuphead, Steamboat Willie-looking style of art style. It's all black and white. one really neat thing that's one really neat thing about that is something that they mentioned in the little deep dive, whenever you are playing a game with normal color like the way most games are the interactive interactable objects will be shining a color to let you know, right? They kind of did a very cool meta approach to the way that those interactive objects work in this game similar to how they work when you watch the when you watch these old cartoons you see the way the background looks and then the one object that's going to be interacted with by the main character always looked a little bit different and because that isn't part of the background that's like an actual animated object that's about to move and so those those animated objects have like kind of a different they have a stroke around them they do kind of move and bounce a little bit the way they draw your eye they draw Yeah, I think it's really cool and creative. You see the TNT bouncing over there if you're a... Yeah, they do like the 1930s cartoon bounce. Yeah, but it also just, it doesn't blend in with the background. It looks like it's part of a different drawn layer the way the animations did back in the day. Also, shout out, really cool options for audio. You can make the audio sound like vinyl. You can make it sound like a certain type of wax of vinyl. Visuals, too. There was a bunch of stuff to really degrade the visuals to look like what the cartoon would look like in modern day. I thought that was really cool. Super fascinating. But yeah, I think largely it's like I was super impressed by how much fun I had with the boss fights, but also the detective being, you know, talking to NPCs, trying to figure out what's happening with this little mystery. Really cool. It's like, oh, shit, I really want to play this now. Yeah, I'll jump in. Like I saw it from afar and many times have been like, oh, that looks really cool, but I'm not the shooter guy. like I just don't that's just not a game I usually like to be the perspective of I don't know if it would work for me I am so happy to report that I had so much fun with this like this is so high on my anticipated list I saw the chat debating yes remember it is April 16th it got delayed it was originally coming out this month it was delayed till April 16th um I had so much fun uh you know I'm not the sweaty shooter by any stretch of the imagination so boss fights I was like all right is this where we're gonna go and I'm gonna get annoyed and not have fun and like boss fights I thought were totally manageable this was a really clever one of like run out there shoot get behind this when she goes for the big attacks like okay like it called back to when i was a kid back in the day played the boomer shooters playing doom on my my family pc right but then it's not so far at least grueling in some kind of like i'm i'm ramming my head against the wall i enjoy the exploration again troy baker is phenomenal in this uh you know i think it's one of those things where it's funny with Troy maybe not so much anymore especially after Indiana Jones but for a while there you know Troy would get shit for just being Troy or whatever and we're not doing much I think he does such a great fucking 30s cartoon detective you know I'm here like this that and the other and all the different puns he did I went out of my way to text him yesterday when I was playing it I sent it to assets I'm just like hey like you're really I don't do that for every Troy performance not because Troy's ever bad but like you expect Troy to be great and so for Troy to actually be awesome I sent it over of like, hey, you crushed this. You were great in this role, right? Like, listen, you don't like me. I don't like you, but I got to admit, you're really good in mouse. I'm doing the preview, right? Like crushed it. Just so good. And this makes me so excited for that final game of what else is going to be in here. Because they have so many cute touches that we'll touch on. I want to get top level thoughts, but I am wowed by it. Not wowed like 9.5 wowed. You know what I mean? Like to Rakan, do I think, should you draft mouse? right now I think this is gonna I would say this is in this I think this will get like an 81 to an 83 that's how I feel too my my worry what if it overstays its welcome what if it doesn't hold up the humor wise what if it gets boring I don't know but like for an hour of this I was like I want more of this right but bless what about you I think I echo most of what you guys are saying I think I come in more on where you kind of land the point as far as it coming in as like a great an 8 out of 10 and 81 to 83 range because i think you know as i hear you guys talk about it initially i'm like oh damn you guys like this way more than i do but i think resetting it there that is kind of where i come in where i think the game feels good i think the art style is fantastic and i love existing in this world and when i say existing i love looking around seeing the art style seeing the black and white seeing the 1930s there's newspapers to pick up and clips to read i love um lock picking the lock i was gonna say it's like if we get into the minutia of the stuff that they put in here as a first person shooter but the things that you're doing in between of yeah the lock picking mechanic is really fun that we'll talk about the uh there are some uh like pickups that you'll you'll see that are kind of like little mini comic strips yeah that are really cool i love that kind of stuff i think the love letter to 1930s cartoon stuff that they're doing here fantastic i think playing the game felt just fine for me i i wasn't you know this didn't feel like a damn the first first-person shooter gameplay is really caring for me here. It gets the job done. Greg, you mentioned it bringing you back to playing old-school Boomer shooters. The immediate thought I had as I was playing, it was like playing a 007 campaign or playing like, I love playing Red Faction 1 on PS2. That's what I was telling you, Ryan. It felt like a PS2 or PS3, especially in some of these segments where it was, I'd walk in and see the guy all the way over there, but I hadn't triggered his box for him to attack me, so I would just shoot from way over there. Yeah, which is cool. I don't think that's a bad thing necessarily. I just don't know if that'll carry me for if this is a longer game. Like, I want this game to come in at around seven to eight hours. I fear it being longer. But I think for what it does, I think it does such a great job of it. And everything, especially aesthetically in this game, is so on point. And I think that's going to be the thing that people really rave about. The gameplay for me was like, all right, this is cool. It didn't really do much for me where I was like, damn, I can't wait to play Malice PI for Hire. Yeah, again, my gameplay take on it, I'm right there with you. of like it feels like okay you can't aim down sights right so it feels like that level of shooter which i was more worried about it trying to be sweaty or trying to be something it's not i got excited at you know you leave this boss fight you get a little bit of the world you can exist in and going there and seeing how i could upgrade my weapons and be like oh okay here's where i'm going to add on but even when i upgraded the pistol in the demo it put a big reddit iron site on it but i couldn't use that even so it's like it's that level of shooter which is for me a non-shooter fan what i'd want out of it and so yeah i'm but i am there like am i going to be bored four hours in shooting this way yeah i think i had also the reverse of andy where andy talked about the 2d enemies in this 3d zone like not necessarily um looking as great for you initially and then playing it you kind of warmed up to it for me i had the opposite where as i'm playing these shooting segments and i'm fighting the bosses or whatever something about the first person shooter impact on these 2d enemies just didn't feel as great gameplay wise like even as i'm rotating around them and they're always facing me or whatever like i get that that's the gimmick and i think that's cool from a visual perspective but something about that for me didn't work as far as like the impact of bullets on my enemies what i want that to feel like but overall i think this is cool overall i think this is a game that people should look forward to if you see the trailer and you're like damn i want to play that it is exactly that game that you're looking at and so if you're excited for it continue to be excited for it yeah i would uh i mean you know in a perfect world i would much more prefer 3d models with like good shading tech there's there's a moment where you find a little secret and then you find a dead skeleton mouse that is modeled really well and i was like oh i kind of wish that you were just kind of all the npcs or whatever and that's what i would prefer but i yeah i guess like i guess talking about the gameplay i i enjoyed the boss fights as much as I did because I was expecting just arenas of bad guys I wasn't expecting like cool telegraphed boss fights and so I was expecting you know if we're doing like the old school game pro uh rating by like sound and visuals and gameplay yeah I would say that like I was expecting a six out of ten of just like a serviceable time yeah and it brought it up to like an a for me gameplay wise we're like oh this is doing more than I was expecting I thought we we were just gonna be entering rooms, shooting gallery, blah, blah, blah, move on to the next point. I really did kind of enjoy that in this small hour we got a mini boss and a boss fight And it like oh okay if you could kind of keep up that pace and give me cool creative things that I have to jump over the rays of lasers as they're coming underneath me or dodge underneath them I had a lot of fun with it and trying to like outskill that you know layering and on top of that it is the fact that Troy's talking the entire time and giving you this story and I felt at first it was jarring kind of a disservice you're just tossed right into this demo right but as you go and even read some of the stuff they sent over it's like okay so you're there investigating this missing magician right and you go in and find some fucked up shit and then you cult you debrief on that fucked up shit afterwards when you're out of here and i was like damn this is what i'm looking for in terms of feeling like i'm playing a detective noir cartoon i guess where i'm a mouse shout out to big solid soul who called out the gameplay whenever you're upgrading the gun your your tommy gun is called james gunn yeah and i got i got a good laugh out of james gunn was killing me i also love that the shotgun is called a boomstick yeah like a lot of personality there in terms of how they're naming the weapons in to even break down the like one of the many bosses that we're talking about for audio listeners might not be watching right like i agree totally with what andy's saying as far as the bosses are designed and so you have one of the bosses that you're fighting who is like a character in the middle that is rotate has rotating lasers that are also changing um like the the height of the lasers and so you might have to duck you might have to jump over them and then at the same time you have these windows of glass that rise from the floor that'll protect you from more rays that are coming at you and so it is really a all right you gotta make sure you're timed out right okay now the i know they're entering this phase let me hide behind the window all right now let me get out get out my boomstick and start yeah blast the ads take care of them yeah really yeah really enjoyed the characters and the exploration and then loved the kind of overworld driving around oh yeah yeah it's so cool that was neat toss in there and put this under this section right there's so much personality to this game and even coming off that xbox developer direct whatever your documentary they put up right the 17 minutes you really got the vibe of how much this game means to them and how artisanal handcrafted it is and when they're talking about we're game developers we love hand animation that's what we're doing the little touches of this and so yeah i would put the overworld driving in there where you climb in your car and you drive it and it's not really for any reason other than it's kind of fun to drive his car around but then also the lock picking which i think does need to be called on its own for as in ingenious as it was right you lock pick with your tail so you go in and then you only have a certain number of moves you gotta come in it's a game of snake yeah you gotta get it in there not touch you gotta you know put up the things some of them have sharp edges eventually that you run into and can lose and get locked out it was like when i got in like you know mike and i always joke around about this with bethesda rpgs or any rpg you gotta what do we do to take lock picking to the next level and to make it so in world here that like that's how he's picking it he's picking it with his tail i've loved that little mini game yeah i sought out every lock pick or you know every lock big opportunity from there but yeah the the overworld very similar to what you see in cuphead when you are moving from you know level to level uh but you get into your little you know a little car model i don't know but you're you just kind of car you drive from zone to zone whether that's whether that's to the next mission and all those little points on the map where they had a little lock icon to show that you can't access that yet. But then you drive from the mission zone back to the hub world where all the NPCs are at. There's the bar there. There's all interesting cast of characters that you will meet. I will say this, and this may be a little bit controversial, was hoping for the mouse lady to be a bit more voluptuous. I would appreciate that. There's multiple mouse ladies in this. Maybe the next one will have bigger titties for you. Well, okay. I didn't say that. Bigger ass. We're reading between the lines. Jessica Rabbit. Oh, sure. Along that line. Okay. Curvy. Oh, that's not bad, actually. I was going to say. I was like, what more do you want? Oh, so you're talking about the mouse robot? This is the robot. I was talking about the lady at the end. More of the hometown. I kind of wanted that. What's his name? Mouse? John? Jack? Jack Pepper. Jack Pepper. I'm like, hey, lady. Good to see you. Jack Pepper? no pepper jack pepper jack cheese mouse fuck yeah there you go they're on it they're on it you get it corneally stilton you get it no we just like we're throwing every you don't get that you don't get that mouse reference all these mice puns yeah but and i really just enjoyed all the characters you know uh i thought everybody kicked out another really nice touch i thought when i when you're it's i don't know how much do we have in there or whatever. Stilton is a cheese. It's an English cheese. Shit. What about what was Wanda's name? Wanda Fuller. They like fondue. Fuller. Fuller. I barely know her. Damn. Damn. You really want to fuck this mouth? That's crazy. That's nuts. Jesus fucking Christ. I appreciate it when I got into that open area and you're wandering around looking for like go talk to whoever like you don't have a mini map but you have a HUD bar across the top and it's got their faces on it and they when you want to talk to whoever. It's like so easy to glance. Oh, that's the person. I don't know who Cornelius is. Yeah. But yeah, you see up there in the corner. You're like, oh, okay. This is fun to explore and go. And like I went into, you know, the bar or whatever. And they didn't have anything for me yet. I was like, okay. But it's still a fun world to go around. Yeah. It's back to what we're talking about, especially after watching that Xbox developer director. It's just so much bigger than I expected it to be. Like I really thought it was going to be a two hour, three hour, four hour game of running and shooting in black and white. But like this is where we bring it when you're going and exploring the world. You find blueprints. You can bring the, you can bring the blueprints back to Tammy here to then upgrade the weapons you want, which ones you're using, which ones you like. I loved it. Yeah. I had a really great time with it. Definitely shot up my like, okay, this is something that I actually do want to play because I, I just enjoy that, that sort of skill and, you know, expression. That's why I loved, that's why I loved Outriders so much. You know, like third person, first person shooters or whatever. there's there's ways to make those boss fights fun and engaging and i thought they really kicked a lot of ass with it also shout out to these death animations too i forget the name of this weapon but oh yeah the varnish gun yeah you can see like the skin melt off the enemies and then their bones stick there for a second and then they fall down oh you could kick the dudes with the shields oh i know one more thing i want to kick too i didn't know that yay one more thing i want to mention because this isn't a problem because you can remap the controls but the default control scheme for this game I think is insane. Did you guys ever change your controls? It's like, I forget what the three buttons are, but Crouch, your dash, and then I think melee are not where you would expect them to be. It's like they took them and shifted all of them into the wrong place so I had to go back and remap. I've noticed a lot of games recently having weird fucking button combinations. That's a metric system conversion thing. Crouch is on L3 which should be like dash or sprint in my opinion but i guess the dash here is more of like a it's not a sprint yeah i don't even know you're you're right dash is on r3 i don't know if i ever use dash r3 is crazy that is weird that's wild yeah and then i think circle is kick is kick and it's so weird because more important oh so well because i basically remapped it to where i put melee on L no mainly on R3 crouch on circle and then sprint on L3 as it's got intent yeah yeah you're right yeah I just I think that was bizarre there's been a lot of this going around I think right now but it would get devs are getting fucking weird with it I'm not a fan of that yeah more importantly again we're dropped into the game we don't get the tutorial whatever blah blah blah like I was infuriated playing two sections where I run I jump I land on the middle thing I run to get to the other one I fall short fall short and then you remember and then i i was like what am i doing no then i went up the wall i was like wait if i climb on this and i jump on that then i can get a beer okay cool well and then another segment happened then i realized there was a double jump and i was like yeah mother fucker it felt so good i was like god damn this double jump is great and i wish i knew it was there yeah there was like another part where you are underwater and the water is like killing you yeah and i could not figure out how to like get to the top for the life i think i probably just had a tap jump or something but i get no tutorial so i was like oh fuck i'm just gonna drown you're underwater yeah remember there was this there's a part yet where you have to like platform over barrels are floating in water uh-huh yeah and i fell i left i fell in the water i think the water was electrocuted which is why oh okay okay i thought it was awesome yeah i'm very very excited for this this shot up the definitely this is make time for it in april right away i'll be all about this one uh april 16th mouse pi for hire is coming we all seem to have really enjoyed our one hour with it. Blessing? Yes. Do you think Rakha should pick it up for their fantasy critic team? Oh, that's a good question. Has anybody on our side picked it up? I drafted it when we did our initial draft. It was my fourth round pick, I think. I think it's a safe draft. If you're looking for something that's going to be a banger banger, I don't know, but if you're looking for something that's going to get you some points, MousePi for Hire will get you some points. That's why I felt like it was a safe fourth round. I believe in this getting me 13 points roughly you know roger counter picked it on you well then maybe it's going to be the greatest game of all time this year you know because yeah that is still Roger fucking Roger he's definitely going to lose 12 points I think we'll get you an 82 yeah I put it in the chat or the whatever if everybody we'll talk about this tomorrow on kind of funny games daily but Asha Sharman CEO of Xbox has tweeted great start to the morning with team Xbox where we talked about our commitment to the return of Xbox, including Project Helix, the code name for our next generation console. Project Helix will lead in performance in play, your Xbox, and PC games. Looking forward to chatting about this more with partners and studios at my first GDC next week. Wow. Damn. Jorm, I'm dying. Just stepping in New York. Now everybody's talking snow. The bus is free now. Everybody, we have more show for you. We'll get to that after I remind you, of course, about the Kind of Funny membership. patreon.com slash kind of funny youtube.com slash kind of funny games apple spotify you can toss us ten dollars and get all of our programming ad free get your daily dose of me greg miller and of course in a series where we're going and then of course get good karma for supporting 11 person 11 year old small business but right now you're not using your benefits so here's a word from our sponsors this episode is brought to you by factor my go-to shortcut for great food fast cold days big goals and no time to cook? Factor makes healthy eating easy with fully prepared meals designed by dieticians and crafted by chefs. So eat well without the planning or cooking. I love Factor because I get to pick from 100 rotating meals, get them delivered to the studio, and then have a meal ready to eat in those precious few minutes I get between shows. 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It's time for me to talk me. Mugenics. Yeah, I'm tired of y'all not letting me talk about Mugenics. I hate cats and I hate your voice. I played so much. I mean, listen, Mugenics is a game that as it was coming out, I drafted it for Fancy Critic, never got around to it during that review period. And I heard people in the office chirping about it, not saying favorable things about it. Got it. You know, Roger McCorney. God, I hate him. Maybe Andy Cortez might have been talking a little bit of shit about me, James. Damn. You know, saying they didn't like the song or whatever. I've never been so viscerally turned off by anything in a game. Like, it's... I understand that it's not warranted. I'm in the wrong way. Hey, man, you gotta feel how you gotta feel. But there's never been anything so short into a game so quickly that it's made me go, fuck. I don't think you're alone in that, though. Like, that's something I have been hearing. Even people who like the game are like, oh, man. And it's possible that song is only for the first hour the funny thing is i've not heard that song after the first like okay 15 minutes it's totally unwarranted like it's not fair for me to do that to the game i totally get that uh but i've never just i was like through my steam bag this song fucking sucks man it's i i like i'm not as visceral with it but i definitely feel you on that song what's crazy is that there are other songs in the game that i think are fantastic cool like there's other music in the game where I like damn y are popping off with this stuff Last year late last year I made a proclamation that 2026 was going to be hailed as tactical 2026 he said this every check it this is the year where i playing some tactical games because i've always never been into tactical stuff outside of chess classic i'm playing tactical games this year and mugenix is the start of it and i love mugenix i have i've been playing mugenix non-stop for the last month and i've i guess i've stopped for playing other games or whatever but i come back to this very regularly because i don't know what it is i don't know what they put in this game all i know is that it has his hooks in me um if you're not familiar with me genics i'm sure most people are by now but it's essentially a game coming from uh edmund mcmullin uh dude who made buying of isaac worked on other games such as i believe super meat boy as far as like art and stuff like that build the ultimate cat army through tactical breeding and send them into deep challenging turn-based adventures draft abilities collect items and manipulate genetics across generations in this roguelike tactics game from the creators uh creators of binding of isaac and the end is nigh yeah have you named any of your cats after any of your steam friends like me i don't even know you can name your cats i thought they were just all automatically named shout out to the homie dylan who was like yeah your nitro rifle is a cat in this game like it lets you like yeah your friends oh you can import them yeah that's really cool because i've noticed some weird names on the cats and i didn't i like i still assume that they're just bits from the developer but if they're pulling from like other things that could make sense because i got a cat named waluigi and i was like you can do that that's crazy that's that's very fun but yeah it's a turn-based grid-based roguelite game where you are recruiting cats and you are breeding them and you are basically building up these different classes of cats to then run through these battles and get as far as you can. It is very crude in its arsenal which makes it a weird one to recommend because I've seen many people, many a person, off-put by things like the music, things like how grotesque the cats and characters can be. That was Roger. Roger was like, it's gross. I don't like it. And I was like, really, what does that mean? And I've never been the biggest fan of, like, The Binding of Isaac, Super Meat Boy, and this art style. Like, the strokes of the, you know, the... Thick lines. The line width. That's just, like, an art style thing, whatever. But I think Roger was more put off by, like, you were mentioning. There's a lot of poop. Yeah. And there's a lot of cat fucking. And, like, the cat... Well, I mean, there has to if you're going to breed them. Yeah, well, that's the thing. Yeah, if you're going to breed the cats, then cats, that's the only way to make them do that. And so, yeah. Are they not voluptuous enough for you, Andy? Is that the problem with cats? Maybe a patch could be put through, yeah. There's some mods out there. So, yeah, if you're somebody who doesn't really love the crude humor, totally understand it. Because that's something that kind of makes it a little bit off-putting to me, but the gameplay of it is so fun and so strong to me, where you go in and it feels like anything can happen, right? You have these different collars for the cats, which are essentially different classes that you can assign to them. And so you have, for example, like the fighter collar. You have the, like, there's an arrow collar that gives them long range abilities and benefits for doing long range attacks. You have the cleric one that gives them healing abilities. You have the tank one, which will give that cat a lot of health. And you have more that you unlock over time. And so you are basically looking at these cats that you've bred. You are picking one to four of them, usually four because you're going out with a full party. You are giving them these collars being like, all right, you're going to be a tank. You're going to be this. You're going to be that. And then you're going and you're navigating your map like point by point. And you all, you will either encounter a battle or you might encounter a random event that could get you an item, or you might encounter a store. But about every three nodes you're running into a battle and the battles will be there. God, there's so many different variables that can like affect what's happening. And so you might have cat enemies that have specific things going on, right? one of the cat bosses is a basically like a rainbow style cat that'll throw out bear traps and like you have to like they have to dodge around the bear traps as they're trying to take out this cat you might have another gigantic disgusting cat that will drag itself along the playing field and if you're caught in it's movement it'll take big damage this cat destroyed this cat made one of my cats explode by fucking dragging itself over. And it's a permadeath situation they're gone like rogue legacy sort of style It is a permadeath situation. Now, there is some leniency where if your cat gets downed, like they'll get downed first before they die, but their body will remain on the battlefield. And so say an enemy downs my cat. All right, we're cool. If I win this fight, they'll get right back up and they'll heal a little bit. But enemies can keep attacking that downed cat and we'll make it explode and you will lose that cat forever. Oh, okay. So the cat is resable. Yes. Can you recover any parts from the cat? Like say you put on a sick ass like arm or something. I don't know. Like, oh yeah. Cause there's definitely, there's like gear that you can put on your cats. Um, I don't believe if your cat explodes, I don't believe you recover that gear, but chat, correct me if I'm wrong. That hasn't happened to me often. Okay. Question about kind of getting into the loadouts or whatever. Yeah. Like, do you have any tips for how you're prepping your squad? Like, are you making, are you going into every battle knowing, all right, this is kind of, this is kind of how I like to be prepared. I like having the tank and then I like having these two. Or is it just like a case by case thing? It's so case by case. And I love it because I've tried to form my own meta and every run, my cats are so different that I'm kind of like, all right, we're bringing it. Like every single time I'm kind of just like, I just got to figure out what's right in this specific scenario. What do I do right now, right here? Yeah, and so I will look at my cats and, like, this cat, like, all the... I'll look at my cats. I'll look at my cats and, like, they all have, from the get-go, their own unique abilities. And so you might have a cat that has a lob shot. You might have another one that is, you know, they have a punch. This one has a little bit more health than this one. And just based off of those things, I go, all right, you have a lob, so I know you're going to benefit more from having long-distance moves. I'm going to make you the ranger. All right. This cat, I feel like they could use more protection. I'm going to make them the tank. So they're going to start off with a lot of health. Oh, I like what this cat has going on as far as like their melee attack. Yeah, I'll make them a fighter because I think they'll benefit more from those things. So you make those decisions off the bat. And then you also have so much gear. Like gear will heavily influence the way your cats behave, their additional like bonus moves, things like that. Passives, all that fun stuff. And so every run feels so completely different, let alone you have weather that'll affect things. Like last night, as I made my way to the, I think it was the junkyard or the boneyard, there was like a weather condition that made it so that there's just flies everywhere. So now at the end of every turn, every unit on the field takes one damage. I see Altered Rain in the chat says, you also get punished for safe scumming. Yes, you do. Did you find out firsthand? I found out because I was playing at my desk because I was ignoring my work. And then there was a Gamescast was about to start. So Kevin was like, oh, we got Gamescast. And I was like, shoot. And so I turned off the game and went to do Gamescast. And when I came back to my game, it started up with a screen that was like, hey, fucker. Don't do that. Don't do that. If you do that again, we will punish you. And I'm not gone far enough to learn how it does. but from what I've heard from the streets they will, like it's essentially there are specific mechanics that they'll change to punish you, I'll have to look it up in a second but yeah, they will I think one of them is like they'll automatically control the game for you, like they'll do weird shit to fuck with you if you try to save scum so if you want to hop out the game you have to do it between battles in the run How many hours do you play right now? It's not crazy, I want to say maybe 15 hours, it's the thing where I try to sneak it in whenever I can sure um and it's a it plays so perfect on steam deck and so it's one where it's like all right before bed let's do one or two battles of eugenics i've been kind of slow playing it but like whenever i get free time or i get a moment at home where i'm like i'm kind of bored oh i got me let me you know boot up me janics play a little bit of this uh it's become my go-to video game are you ready to put a score on it you think no i mean because i the percentage thing on my game says like 7%. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It has a weird progression. I don't know if this is a complaint yet because at first I didn't like it, but I think I've allowed it to grow on me where you know how in any roguelite, let's say Hades, you can go as far as you want. You can theoretically beat a run in Hades in one go if you want to. They don't let you do that in this game. Here, you have to do a region at a time where you'll get through the first region and then at the end of it, they're like, all right, let's go home. Let's reset. Okay, now you unlocked the second region beyond the first region. And so you go back to do the run. You do the first region again, and then you do the second region. And then at the end of the second region, they're like, all right, go home. And then you have to keep doing it over and over again, which at first I didn't like because I'm like, well, if I'm doing good. Keep doing what over and over again? You have to play. If you want to, if you beat region two and then you move on to three, you have to do one and two again. Again, yes. Oh, okay. So you had to do one and then you had to do one and two and then you had to do one, two, three. Oh, weird. Okay. um there there are different paths and so in the way that of hades you're doing like the four regions back to back here it is region one and then junkyard and then boneyard um but at the end of region one there is a fork where you can now do i forget what they are but let's say graveyard and then the one after graveyard and so it's just a weird format where like to do this the third region either direction you had to do the first and second region like over again don't love that um but spall says you have to unlock areas and bosses it makes sense eventually yes so maybe it becomes similar to returnal where they give you like the fast forward skip this area the last the last region i just unlocked is very much like okay thank god like now i can go directly here like there is a reset moment where it is okay i don't have to keep doing shit over and over again um i don't mind it now that i'm here because the game is so fun to play that i'm kind of like oh hell yeah i get to find different configurations of cats yeah to uh to to party up with and so it's grown on me in that in that regard but that was a weird thing starting off i like hearing about those strats because like when you're fighting the when you're you know usually when i'm fighting against a nilf guardian deck and then i go against somebody and went with a with the monster deck they're going to use a lot of close range stuff plus and i can't let that i cannot let that character you know the person i'm fighting and gwent put down a certain card that's going to then summon four more cards close range cards from their deck uh you know hopefully i have a scorch card on me hopefully i got one of them cards that adds rain you got it just to negate the middle range or whatever yeah well that's the awesome thing is this guy ever not playing which once again let's play through right now couldn't go to the basketball game first play thing but yeah there are so many oh man there's so many good um unique abilities where it is like okay i got this thing against this enemy like this enemy throws bear traps but i know that like he'll throw bear bear traps and then try to get away from you because he's like oh you're just gonna get stuck in the bear trap yeah and so i'm just gonna try and get away so like i if you have good range shit like i get really excited because i'm like okay cool well i got my ranger that has a lob shot that it doesn't matter where you're at on the map so i'm gonna mess you up regardless this right or there'll be another boss that is for the one i was talking about he'll drag himself towards you and the way he does damage is that he'll do damage very big damage in a small space as he drags himself over you oh well i have a cat that throws bear traps so i'm gonna throw this bear trap before he even gets to me to stop him in his tracks um it's really really fun to kind of like find ways to gain this game the system because it feels like everything has something that is weak to it's a cool game yeah yeah i'm glad you're loving it it's opened me up to tactical stuff in a way that's this year that's the year it's back to 2026 i'm i feel so ready for fire emblem i'm sure it's a very similar game here 100 lots of cats in that one yeah all right bless you bless you indy thank you uh duro in the chat had a pretty dynamite one a second ago that was games cast today talking cat and mouse games man oh shit everybody this has been another episode of the kind of funny games cast one of our many live programs on youtube.com slash kind of funny games twitch.tv slash kind of funny games and podcast services around the globe if you like you pick up a membership patreon.com slash kind of funny youtube.com slash kind of funny games apple spotify get all of our stuff ad free get your daily dose of me in a series we call greg way that's 15 to 20 minutes of podcasting for you each and every day and of course get good karma for supporting an 11 person 11 year old small business our day is far from over we're about to do interstellar in review. 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