Test Episode 2 (Remote)

The speakers are discussing their podcast, which they are recording remotely. They mention the upcoming Summer Games Fest and express excitement about upcoming video games, particularly Spider-Man 2 and Remnant 2. They discuss the improvements and additions in these sequels and express their anticipation to play them. And we are live well as live as we can be remotely as live as we can be insert intro music. Oh, yeah, this is the part where once again, we would have intro music playing us in. So I refrained, I refrained this time, I thought you were gonna go for it. So this now leads me to things feel a little bit naked now. But that's okay. I mean, I can, I can, I can, you know, go ahead, go ahead, play me in, okay, here we go. Welcome to the and what do we call Justin? We are called cave talk with just the cave talk podcast. Yes, sir. Okay, that is our pending name might be our finalized name. I think we're thinking we're leaning that way right now. But yeah, welcome back to our second test episode. So I'm pretty excited about that. If you found a little different, ie terrible, that is because it's our first time recording remotely. So I am in my cave, or my still under construction cave, to be honest with you, Adam, you are in your cave right now. And so we're gonna see if this works. We're gonna give it a shot. So yeah, forgive sound quality and forgive any time there might be us talking over each other because you know, technology, technology, yeah, right now we're seeing we can remotely do a podcast. So yeah, we're gonna give this a shot. You can't see this right now because we're still figuring out video. But don't you worry, we'll have it done soon. Oh, this is gonna sound very Square Enix, but in development, there's no release date for when we're gonna be seen on video here. But speaking of which, man, bro, I've been busy. Extremely, extremely busy, man, I've been gaming a lot, like I finally had time to catch up on some stuff in my library, just in time for Summer Games Fest a couple weeks ago. Oh, man. Dude, I gotta, I'll tell you this, I got a lot of games that I need to go ahead and like get my fill of. Because in a couple months here, man, I'm gonna be busy, dude, we got a lot of games coming up. We are we are eating. We are eating to say we are feasting. We are feasting. We're feasting right now. I got a couple I'm excited about. I know you have a couple that you're probably excited about. Actually, I know you do because we were texting each other during a lot of those trailers. So I know we've got a couple to talk about. I'll start off with my big one, man. Spider-Man 2 from Insomniac. A Sony first party, who would have thought? But no, yeah, it looks, yeah, you go first, but yeah, first thought, awesome, awesome. It looks amazing. Like from the trailer, I mean, OK, the first one, in my opinion, was an amazing game as it was. Like it felt very good, it played very good, it had a great story, there's plenty to do. The fighting was a blast. This one, I mean, it's gonna sound very simple, but it took something and it's built upon that perfection. Oh, I am extremely, extremely excited for this one, man. You get to play more as Miles Morales. You get the symbiote suit, which looks friggin', looks awesome. The amount of nutkicks in that trailer, a lot of nutkicks, a stunning amount of them. Not at, it looks, it looks ferocious, that's all I can put it like, when you set the black alien symbiote suit on him, it looks like an alien suit. Now, the best that I have to compare it to is like Spider-Man 3, the live-action movie. And like, if you remember, that one just looked like they like, dyed his suit black, is the best way I can kind of describe it. This looks like a legit, like an alien goo slash armor on him. It's got like muscle to it. Yeah! And it, the combat looks brutal with it, um, at no point does there appear to be any kind of jazz involved or anything like that. At no point are you gonna say like, now can you dig this, and break into a dance number. This is like legit, this is a brutal, brutal Spider-Man game. It is, uh, at no point am I, oh gosh, I'm flashing back to Spider-Man 3 right now, by the way. Justin, Justin, are you prepared to die on the hill in 2023 and say that people don't want emo Peter Parker in 2023? Are you, are you ready to die on the hill? People, people don't want My Chemical Romance, I Hate My Dad, I Drink White Claw, and emo. Well, not to go off on too much of a tangent here, but to be fair, it, it, oh man. That one, that Peter Parker may have been ahead of his time, and the reason I say that is like, yeah, he did look emo, but he, oh, this is gonna, this, this, I think this is gonna make sense. He acted like a guy from 2020, actually, and can you imagine, like, just a really awkward guy who bet, who made all of a sudden a bunch of money off of, like, Dogecoin or Shiba Inu or Ethereum? Like, this guy's clearly, like, a nerd or, like, a weird individual, but all of a sudden he hit it big. Can't you imagine, like, a crypto bro acting exactly like that, though? Like. For sure, for sure. Finger gunning everywhere, the weird dance number outside of the store. The point is, though, just, it will, the point is that, no, that is, that is not this one. This one appears to be, like, a much darker Peter Parker. How Miles is gonna react to that. You can see a lot of that in the trailer. Even the gameplay, though, like, they're really stretching the PlayStation 5's legs, it's a solid stage ride. So, like, being able to switch between the two Spider-Men, which is apparently gonna be a pretty, pretty focal part of the game, it's almost seamless. Like, it's virtually instantaneous, like, snap of the finger. Yeah, for sure. Getting around New York, low time. I think that now we're really getting a lot of those games that really, like, show off kind of, like, what this thing can do, so to speak. Only three years in. Yeah, only three years in. And I think Spider-Man 2 is gonna be a big part of that. The game looks massive, man. I'm super, super, super excited for it. I know that you kind of have some thoughts on that as well, and I think you had a couple games that you were kind of buzzing about, you were a Twitter about, man. What do you think as far as Spider-Man 2? Was that a Twitter pun, Justin? Was that a Twitter pun? Oh, absolutely not. No, for sure. I mean, yeah, I reflect everything that you say tenfold. The gameplay, I mean, I think you made a very poignant statement where they took what was already good and made it the same but a bit better, and I think that that's okay. I think that we, you know, late last year in 2022, we had the issue of, you know, people were worried about God of War Ragnarok. How are we going to follow up on God of War 2018, which, you know, I mean, how do you follow up a game that is that perfect? And, you know, I think they added just enough to make it slightly different, but I mean, it really was more of the same, and that is okay. I mean, I loved God of War Ragnarok more so than the first one. From the gameplay standpoint, from where they were in the story to the development between Kratos and Atreus, I mean, fantastic. But back with Spider-Man 2, everything you said, that wingsuit, bro. I mean, there's going to be a measurable percentage of my gameplay that's just going to be me using that wingsuit back and forth. Traversal was already such a great part of this game. I mean, it was very simple, like, you know, hold R2 and point where you want to go, and you're pretty much, you know, you're Spider-Man. But adding the little thing like that wingsuit, like, that's going to make it even more fun. From what it looks like, you can pretty much get around, like, not primarily using that, but you can go pretty far using it. So between that, the parkour, the web swinging, and even, like, the motion kind of differences between Peter and Miles, getting around New York City is going to be half the fun. Like, just with the last one, but, you know, to touch on what you had mentioned about, like, you know, taking something perfect, I think there's nothing really wrong with that. Like, you know, God of War, Spider-Man, even Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse, the animated movies. If you think about it, like, the first entries in those, we all said, we're like, oh, man, it was perfect. And then they just ran it back, but added on to it. It's a pretty tried and true business model, man. Like, they gave you what you know works and what you know you love, and then they just add on to it. I think that's what a lot of what Spider-Man 2 is going to be. I know we have another sequel dropping that you're all about. All of us. Oh, yeah. Remnant 2. Remnant 2. Yeah, buddy. Oof. I don't think I've ever asked. Have you ever put any time into Remnant 1, Remnant from the Ashes? Not enough. Honestly, that's a game that I should have put more into. Honestly, I'm not going to circle back around to Remnant and go at it. Because from what I've played, 1, it's an amazing looking game. And 2 is really fun to play, just in general. So, no, I got to play more Remnant 1. But from what I see, Remnant 2 honestly has me excited to go back and play Remnant 1 more. Well, you know where I game, man. Hit me up anytime. No, Remnant 2, it's taking everything that Remnant 1 was and just cranking it up to 11. Remnant from the Ashes came out, I believe, in 2018. I'm going to have to fact check that for the proper episode. But, I mean, it really is, and this is putting it in the smallest of boxes possible. It is Dark Souls with guns. You have three characters that you can pick from. But, I mean, at the end of the day, you really can make your characters do whatever you want. You start out of these three and it just basically gives you a leg up in a certain direction. I'm a damage guy. I like watching tiny numbers get bigger and bigger and bigger on my screen. But Remnant 2 just seems to be taking that concept of playing with friends, going out. It's very much a podcast game. You don't really need to care about the story, at least not in the first one. But, yeah, I think it's beautiful. I think it's also taking advantage of everything that the current generation of hardware has to offer, the SSD. You got your frames per second, which, you know, that was not my gig in the last generation. It wasn't until I got a PS5 and have it hooked up to a 4K 60 FPS capable TV that I was like, oh, wow, here we are. I can't go back. I cannot go back. You know, that's one of the things I'm so excited for is that, like, summer games. I mean, it's not just that with a lot of the trailers that we've been getting. We're really starting to see those legs stretched on some of the new consoles. I'm really starting to see, like, yeah, here's what this thing can do. And, man, I'm so, so excited about that part of it. Oh, for sure. I mean, I know the old gimmick is like, man, things are just getting shinier and shinier. And I love that. I love how shiny everything is. Oh, for sure. I mean, and I'm more of a performance kind of guy. And I've leaned more and more that way over the years. I love how smooth everything is now. I love being able to pan my camera 360 at Mach Jesus and having no screen tear, just having it be as buttery smooth as possible, like watching a film such as Across the Spider-Verse. So, no. Yeah, Remnant 2, it's up there with my most anticipated games for the rest of this year. That's including big games like Spider-Man 2 and, you know, for me being the Xbox guy, Starfield. I mean, Remnant 2 is in my top five. It's not my top three. I think that's completely fair, man. I'm telling you, that's why I'm trying to, like, I got some library I got to burn through because I got to get my schedule cleared, man. I got to get my schedule cleared for Within the Drops. Like, right now, I kind of have, as far as, like, games I'm regularly playing, I'd say I've got about four, kind of five in my regular rotation right now. So, I talked about this in a little bit of a while back, actually speaking of beautiful games, Gran Turismo 7. So, still kind of working my way through that. It's not necessarily like anything, like, you know, I got a story I got to finish, but just unlocking more of these beautiful tracks and beautiful cars and messing with this and messing... There's just so much to play with in that game that, like, I'm really trying to make sure I sink my teeth into it properly and as well as, like, you know, use my Logitech racing wheel and such like that to play with it. Um, shout out Logitech, if you know, you know. But, uh, we can't, we can't, we can't, we can't. Between that one, um, recently finished just about maybe, like, a week or so ago, if even, uh, Crisis Core Reunion from Final Fantasy. Final Fantasy Crisis Core Reunion, man, to be a not complete remaster or not a complete remake, but more than a remaster, somewhere kind of in between there, that was an absolute blast to play. Enjoying that game, enjoying that really unique fighting engine that they did for it. Really, really, really enjoyed that one. Highly recommend. I mean, and to kind of piggyback off of Test Episode 1, you didn't have a PSP original. I didn't have one. This is my first proper, uh, my first proper go through with this game. Okay, I mean, because the original Final Fantasy Crisis Core on the original PSP was my first full completed through modern day Final Fantasy. So, I, I, I think it's, I think it's great that people, including you, are getting to re-experience this in 2023. I mean, I thought it was phenomenal. 100%, man. That was such a blast to play through. Um, recently finished that one, uh, Street Fighter VI that dropped recently. Now, that one is also just a gorgeous game. It plays really well. Uh, I know that I'm more of a fighting game fan than you are. I will tell you this. I am still not, I, I haven't enjoyed that one as much as I'd like to because I am just shaking off so much rust when it comes to that game. Like, I can't play it online even really yet because I just get absolutely smashed. Like, I feel like I'm playing in quicksand, to be honest with you. Like, I, and it's weird because I grew up with the Street Fighter games. I grew up with Street Fighter and Tekken, mainly. And I wasn't like, you know, I can't go to like PAX or I can't go to any tournaments or anything like that. But, you know, as far as like among my group of friends who also had the game, like I was pretty up there. Like that Smash Brothers was a fighting game. But like, I feel like I've never played Street Fighter before with the new one. And it's such a bummer because the game looks so good. It is extremely colorful. Like, it's got a really great design. And like, I feel like I am just like, it's being wasted on me right now because I am struggling to get off at the most basic of combos. But is Street Fighter, I mean, this year and like this next six to 12 months is really kind of a renaissance for fighting games between Street Fighter 6, Tekken 8, Project L from the guys behind League of Legends and Valorant. I believe that's the same team. And then, of course, you know, there's Mortal Kombat 1. I mean, with this renaissance, I mean, are you excited in general? Because like you said, Street Fighter games, fighting games are not my bag. And that's to be very clear because I suck at them. Oh, I get it. I get it. I'm pretty excited. You know, Mortal Kombat, and if you guys remember from my last episode, like I did not grow up with a lot of being allowed to play a Mortal Kombat. That was a very tricky one to sneak and play just because, you know, all it took was like our parents seeing on the news one night, like, you know, fatality and then somebody giving his spine ripped out. And now they're convinced that their child is like a Satanist and is going to go like murder small animals and kill people. All it took was seeing like five seconds of Mortal Kombat for my mom to be like, oh, this game is not allowed like on our block, but like in our house. That this game is not allowed in our neighborhood. So I didn't grow up with Mortal Kombat as much as I would have liked outside of like going to arcades, like going to arcades and friends houses. So like I am I am deeply novice when it comes to that game. Like for me, it was inexplicably. I guess it was less brutal and and Street Fighter, I guess it is less brutal looking game. But, man, we got so many good fighting games. I would I would call it like a little bit of a renaissance, man. I would definitely call like a little bit of a fighting game renaissance. This is what's out right now with just how much is available to gamers. I think that we're going to see, you know, even things like tournaments kind of take a little bit of an uptick here. Hopefully even kind of talk about eSports or like GT7, like it's a really, really good time to be competitive. I guess that's what I can describe it. Oh, for sure. I mean, it's been with Evo, like the big Sony owned fighting tournament. I think this next this year and next year. I mean, honestly, from this year going forward is going to be keep an eye on it. That's all I'll say. Keep an eye on it. It's going to be a place to watch. Yeah, for sure. It's going to be fun. And then, I mean, it's kind of the other side of the pendulum here. I've got my next big immersive game. I'm sinking my teeth into, you know, I sunk my teeth into Final Fantasy 7. I'm really excited for Rebirth. I sunk so much time in the remake. But speaking of which, our next mainline entry, Final Fantasy 16, which was dropped about a week ago, I am not crazy deep. So we can't, I don't know how deep you are in it. Deeper than you. But regardless, we're not going to do spoilers here, because we're not either. No spoilers for anybody. But I will tell you this, visually, storyline wise, engine wise, it checks all the boxes for me. It checks all the boxes. I almost want to slow down, because it's almost like I really got to savor this game. I almost don't want to play it too, too much at once, because I really just want to savor the experience. I am enjoying this one so much. And I mean, this is somebody who, you know, the mainline Final Fantasies I've played were 7, of course. And I was like, that will be 1 for a lot of people. 8, which its only crime was following 7, to be honest with you. 15, now 16, Crisis Core, and I only dabbled in like 10, 13, ones like that. I don't have a PhD, so I'm not going to touch 14, because I'm not educated enough for that one. But as someone who's been a long time fan of a lot of different Final Fantasy games, even like, you know, I kind of count it, but Kingdom Hearts as well, games like that. I'm loving 16. It's bringing me all the best of some of the more recent Final Fantasy and Square Enix entries, man. Absolutely sinking so much teeth in that one right now. Oh, for sure. I mean, and real quick, can we shout out two things? One, Square Enix. What a development team. What a publisher to put out a game whose main character's name is Clive. Clive. Yes. You would think that a guy named Clive would be cool, wouldn't you? Yeah, and yet here we are. Man, what an incredibly portrayed, acted out, voiced, and just dived into character in 16. I mean, the whole cast is phenomenal, but my boy Clive, man. I got his back. I got his angsty, caped back. Can I just say that as a company, honestly, I mean, and this is what I like so much about these immersive, large, cinematic, almost kind of grandiose games is, like, they do such a good job at giving me these characters and giving me these stories and making me care about them. Like, it's genuine. I get, it's easy to immerse yourself because the storytelling they do for the characters, like, the fleshing out of the characters and everything like that, it really makes it enjoyable. Like, things like Final Fantasy VII, things like God of War, Spider-Man, The Last of Us, of course, and then now continuing on with Final Fantasy, they do such a good job at, like, just immersing me in these characters, really breathing life into these characters. I think that Square Enix is probably one of, Square Enix, I'd say, I mean, of course, Naughty Dog, Santa Monica, but, like, Square Enix is probably one of the top tier companies, in my opinion, at doing that. So, yeah, absolutely a shout out to them. But, yeah, that's what I'm playing right now, man. That's what I'm sinking my teeth into. I know you've been busy, uh, hopefully not committing, like, war crimes on Tears of the Kingdom on your Switch. Hopefully you're not one of those people who are, like, torturing, like, torturing innocent, like, creatures. Listen, history is written by the victor, okay? And what I'm doing in the process of saving the entire Kingdom of Hyrule, you gotta break a few eggs, Justin. You gotta break a few eggs. You gotta break a few. Now, just so you know, like, you're dabbling. Just so you know, we're about to talk about A Legend of Zelda game, and you're using quotes that, like, I could probably attribute to, like, you know, Vladimir Lenin. Listen, history is written by, like, all you're missing is, like, pounding your fists right now. That one might sound like a podium. The first voiceover work that Link ever does in a video game is, I am become death. And it's just Korrax, it's just Korrax running into Hyrule Field. As you're calling it, like, orbital strike. Instead of, like, oh, you're watching Oppenheimer? Oh, no, no, no, I'm playing Legend of Zelda. Conspiracy theory, the Zonai are direct descendants of Oppenheimer. Or, again, Oppenheimer's a direct descendant of the Zonai. Oh, yeah. How are you, man? Like, when it comes to, like, sinking your teeth, I know you've been busy with a lot of games. What have you been busy with, man? I know, obviously, Tears of the Kingdom being one. Well, I've also, I'm a few hours further into Final Fantasy 16 than you. Love that game. Don't need to say any more about it, but love that one. And I would really like to come back at some point, and maybe more of a spoiler, once more people have had time to sink their teeth into it, and for you as well. Like, I want to come back to that. Tears of the Kingdom is probably my most played game of the year so far. And prepare yourself for some sacrilege. I did not like Breath of the Wild. I could not get into it. I tried multiple times. I think, all in all, I've got maybe 12 plus hours into Breath of the Wild. A lot of that is restarts, refreshes. I have spent a lot of time on the Great Plateau in Breath of the Wild. Couldn't get into it. And prior to Tears coming out, I would have said that was purely because of the weapon system. I do not like weapons that break after a while. I do not like weapons named the Master Sword that break after a while. And for those of you out there saying, oh, well, it recharges after 10 minutes. I don't want the most powerful sword ever forged to have a cooldown time. That being said, I had no hype. No hype for Tears of the Kingdom. I wasn't one of those that was, like, dying in my bed at night going, I can't wait for this sequel to come out. But no hype. And then it dropped. And it was everywhere. And I was hitting people up going, I don't know why, but I got this itch. I got this. I got a fever. And the only cure is more Zelda. More torture and Korok. And I dropped the money. $7 is a lot for a Switch game. But I dropped it. And yeah, man, broken weapon system and all. I'm 120 plus hours into Tears, and I love it. Haven't rolled credits or anything. But no, it's incredible. Absolutely. And then between Final Fantasy XVI, Tears of the Kingdom, my next most played game of this year has been Destiny 2. And we can hear the cries of joy and the cries of sorrow from the people out there because it's Destiny. And there's no such thing as a pure love-based relationship with Destiny. It's love-hate. You love to hate the game. You're never happy. And I mean, perfect example, Lightfall. You, me, and our good buddy, we put some hours into Lightfall, brother. You think, I am in a Destiny 2 Lightfall. Yeah, we have. Oh my God, yeah. We're honestly about to probably get out of here and go take some more time into it, to be honest with you. Yeah, after this podcast, yeah. We're going to go take more time into it, yeah. And we haven't been doing it as much lately because, I mean, I'll say a few pieces and I'm sure you've got some words. Season of the Deep. I don't care. Okay, well, there we are. There we are. Yeah, I just, I don't know, man. You either grab me or you don't, and this one just didn't grab me. Like this one, this one didn't get me. I don't know what it is. I don't know if it's the aesthetic, that the missions are fun enough. But that also might be buoyed because by like the fact that I'm playing with you guys and we're on our headsets and gaming together, the social aspect of it. Playing by myself or just in general just doesn't really do it for me. It's falling flat. I hate to put it. Yeah, I mean, out of the four people that we kind of have in and out of our fire team, man, we were putting some hours into vanilla Lightfall. I mean, we were probably locking 20, 25 plus hours a week doing what we can. And yeah, I think that I've got less than five hours into Season of the Deep because I just, there's nothing in that battle path that I care about. It makes me really sad because obviously we had a death in the Vanguard. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, I'm in a point where I should be further into Destiny, and this season has just completely knocked the rails off the momentum for me. That's fair. That's fair. You know, I guess that's maybe just one of the things with an ongoing game like this, is it's going to hit or it's not. Like that might just be the nature of the beast with a game that's kind of a continued service like this. Like some seasons you're going to be all about it. You're just like, dude, I cannot put it down. We had that last season, dude. I feel like we could not put it down to the point where we ran out of road halfway through it. And we're like, well, we've done everything. I guess let's just kind of hang out a little bit. I don't want to say that I was shirking responsibilities to play this game or losing a lot of sleep. But, you know, I'm not going to say that I wasn't doing that. We've thrown some sessions into it. We've thrown some sessions into it. But then like, yeah, like this most recent one, we really haven't. Like we have not really dived in. Like, dude, honestly, for me, it became almost part of a process where, OK, every Friday, I'll log in. Uh, nope, there's no new exotics I really want. Are there any shaders I want? Cool. Well, the boys aren't on, so I'm going to go ahead and log back off. And that's about all of it for me. And I'll see you guys next week. Like, it just, I think that's just the nature of, like I said, just games like this that are continued services, so to speak. Every now and then when something new drops, it's just not going to land for you. It may not be for you. And that's kind of what this season is, I think, is it's just not one of the really worst. Uh, the mission, the dungeon, I got to still kind of look into and stuff like that. But for now, like, yeah, it's not super bad. Now, does this mean that, you know, when we wrap up the show here in a little bit, am I not going to hop on with you guys? Well, don't be ridiculous. We're going to be in there. Like, that's the rest of my Thursday night, most likely. For the most part, like, yeah, it's just outside of the social aspect, not grabbing. I guess it's the nature of, well, it's a good thing it's a test episode, but that's the nature of an MMO. And I can literally hear people telling me that Destiny is not an MMO. Stop talking, people. You're wrong. Stop talking. You're incorrect. But yeah, man, we definitely both kind of have what we're sinking our time into. And I'll probably have more games. I got to get these things wrapped up here. But no, man, it's not like we both definitely have a lot of games to play, a lot of games that we're excited about. I'll tell you what, sounds like that's a bit of a show. Now, just so you know, listeners, we are not cutting you short so we can go game. Just remember, this is a test episode. So, yeah, I can't prove anything. Yeah, we're talking about it, and I was like, yeah, so where's our plans for the night? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, yeah, we'll talk to you guys later. This game that we just talked trash about for the last five minutes, we're ditching y'all guys for. Yeah, man, this thing sucks. Anyway, let's go ahead and just blow this obstacle, man. But no, like I just got to say, you know, quick shout out to everybody, all three people listening to this probably. But thank you guys for listening to these tests and giving us this feedback. Obviously, this episode probably sounds pretty terrible quality wise. Just so you know, I know. But I think that, you know, Adam and I are definitely getting more comfortable. We're getting more things ironed out. Hopefully, we should have a fully fledged, bouncing new baby show for you guys here coming up soon. For sure, for sure. Right now, we should, the part that you're listening to should have outro music. We don't have that yet. Doesn't know that we're going to get it. And instead, real quick thing before we hop off here. As Justin said, thank y'all so much for the feedback and for listening and tolerating the baby steps that we got going on here. Echoes, we are going to address that. That's a big thing that we are both cognizant of in the moment. Cave Talk, the title, let us know what you think. How do you feel about it? You know, again, throw us some options. And yeah, as Justin said, thank y'all so much for everything that y'all guys have given back to us. We're looking forward to more feedback. Let it be as brutally honest as possible. It's only going to make what we're putting out for you guys that much better. Absolutely, absolutely. Well, that being said, the outro music is playing. We've said our thanks. And guys, this is Justin. This is Adam. And this is, thank you guys for listening to another session in our cave. We will copy our food and everybody have a good one. Have a good one, guys.