Game Informer – Minecraft Dungeons Co-op Gameplay — New Gameplay Today

Hello and welcome to new gameplay today I am your host today Alex Stadnyk join with me are my cubular compatriots we have been Reeves and Joe Juba gentlemen how are you good good great I’m the handler I like it yeah yeah what are we playing as I guess it’s mine yeah yeah

We’re we’re exploring the coop of Mahjong and xbox game studios new a RPG Diablo like and we thought we’d give you a little taste of the coop so we’re at the camp world right now this is kind of the hub where you can get artifacts you

Can get random gear to kind of boost your character up and without further ado we’ll go to the mission select screen yeah this is where when you get money for playing the levels the only resource you’re really collecting is money and then you trade that in for

Random gear and hopefully that lines up with I know something cool that you want to do with your character yeah holy is the key there yeah yeah so we’re gonna do pumpkin pastures today and how this this the map screen works is it will if

You’re not sure what to do you hit right trigger and it’ll guide you to what it thinks you’re ready for when you look at your team power and your overall power and then what the game’s recommending so we’re gonna do this guy right here you’ll have to to vote on each map and

It looks like the guys are ready to go so so early impressions for you guys I so it is a flawed but fun time I I would say that is basically that’s pretty much the perfect way to put it for me I’m I’m sort of torn because there’s one part of

Me that really likes the approachable easygoing action that this game provides but then there’s another part of me that really loves this style of game games like the and torchlight and just the you will not find that kind of complexity here and there’s something about that for me

That’s a little might be too simple might be a little too unsatisfying mmm especially since they have some things to figure out with the loot but we can get into that later yeah yeah definitely I can say I’ve definitely had the most fun in this swamp one playing co-op on

This field and as a lot of a RPGs are but I would say this is one where you know if you have this on game past and you have buddies who have it that would be the way to play it even though you there’s some fun to be had been playing solo yeah

And there were there are certain bills that will help with solo play for a long time I was playing with a couple of pets I had a wolf and a llama that work that we rock you pieing my two of my three artifact slots that were sort of like

Drawing the attention away from you and stuff like that so it’s it’s possible and there ways to do it oh but of course then that brings you to the problem of you don’t get to really select which build you want what you’re capable of is entirely based on the loop that you have

Yeah yeah you’re at the mercy of the random drops you get to play you know like a plane pretty much a tank class because that’s the best gear I have right now mm-hmm but if I had wanted to play like an archer like I just maybe don’t have that

Gear to play so you kind of got a play where you get or just play weaker versions of what you have yeah and one of the weird like strengths and weaknesses of the game I think and is that if it’s a strength in the sense

That it lets you try out all kinds of different play styles just based on the gear that you have and your best options but then the problem with that is because there aren’t classes you pretty much completely at the mercy of whatever gear you find so like if you

Want to do what I did if you want to be a solo player and use a lot of pets first you have to play long enough until you find a couple pets that you can slide in your spa you know right or then the same thing goes if you want to be a

Magic heavy a character or a melee heavy you just have to like there’s because you have no latent abilities nothing based that you can do apart from the gear that you have equipped it just sort of limits your options yeah which is a bummer I like Joe is talking about pets

I still i’ve played you know four or five hours of this and I still haven’t come close to an artifact I’m summoning a pack really yeah I haven’t say it once yeah I’m going more of like the the souls build where you can you know the

The more you you take out enemies the the more you can boost special abilities like the one I’m using here the Kamehameha wave yeah that’s a cool looking thing yeah obviously yeah and like the cloak that I had I got lucky I did one of the side missions and

I got a cloak that like increases my my souls or spirits or whatever by like a hundred percent so like I can boost that a lot quicker or not which is great yeah yeah I mean those limitations we talked about are kind of frustrating because there are things I really like about the

Loot system I like how flexible it is like there’s artifacts you can attach to your gear that augments stuff like we’ve done a couple of times you’ve probably seen this arrow attack you can attach a fireworks to it and so it explodes on impact which is pretty neat yeah I like

That one I think this is a really cool thing about this system yeah exactly right area attack damage but yeah it is it is sometimes hard to do exactly what you want sometimes yeah you gotta roll with the punches a little bit yeah and I think what sets that

Apart from other similar games because you know obviously in games like this there’s some element of there’s Luke that you want that you just have to fight until you get it yeah for her but I think what sets this apart is like I’m imagine you’re playing a magic user in

The habló except you just can’t use magic all you all you can do is attack right like it’s so it’s not totally is the same thing because that red even with even without special gear as a magic user and you know similar games if you have a whole slate of abilities

Geared towards that place but again I mean I think I think it’s probably a give and take on the developers part if you want to maintain that approachability and if you want to keep it simple enough so that you know some people who aren’t into super complex

Games can still hop in and get some Minecraft action yeah yeah you know I mean I can understand why they did it but sure that doesn’t make it the most satisfying action RPG yeah for sure this doesn’t totally alleviate the problem but it is nice where once you find a

Figure that you like say you find that that firework ability but you just need a more powerful version of it you can go you can see at the level select screen where those items will are more likely to appear and you know replay those levels and try to hunt down like a more

Powerful version of what you want for sure which is kind of nice yeah yeah I haven’t actually again I haven’t finished the game yet so I’m I’m not quite enough go back and replay levels phase yeah for sure here’s one thing that I perks me I guess is how I feel

It’s not a strong hate or anything but like so the the big gear that you pick up in this game is instance it’s you can only see it on your screen so everyone else gets their own stuff but not the food or the ammo or the arrows which the

Arrow part is is frustrating to me because it’s you know it’s something you use a ton of and it’s and I feel like that should be a little bit more of a shared resource but sure well even even the fact that they limit arrows feels real weird to me like to me

It feels like that is in the game solely because they wanted to make it so like put in gear that would give you arrows back we’re talking lot right like they want to meet up getting more arrows the sort of benefit that you can get off of

Gear but you you use them enough and you need them enough that having them be limited feels this is thank you for alerting us yeah yeah that’s a real problem especially if you like oh hey I want to play Ranger class and just fire off arrows all the time if you don’t

Have an item that gives you back arrows when you use them like you’re gonna run out of arrows pretty quick unfortunately you know it’s these sound like sort of minor gripes but really when you’re playing a game like this how you handle loot and MIT and how you make that

Satisfying for players is sort of concern number one yeah for sure and you know like little things like that feel a little off or you know like when and we were playing some co-op earlier today and Geoff cork and I were slightly higher levels than Ben and Alex and it

Wasn’t giving Jeff and I gear appropriate for our level it was like taking the average party level and giving us suffrage means that in you know whatever hour and a half or so that we were playing neither Jeff nor I got any here that was good enough for a place

I mean where you maybe just not trying hard enough that’s what it all comes down to yeah and another thing on the on that topic of gear to I feels like and this is going to sound very millennial laughing but it there’s a lot of times

In this game where it’s like you you fight mini-bosses like the invoker or you know you go down these pathways and you know we’re usually in like a diablo or a torchlight there would be you know i like a chest or some sort of loot drop

That really made it feel like worth it oh you don’t like all the dead end no the dead ends are very frustrating oh oh I just say the strongest things ever what’s happening oh gosh what happened these fairies are running uh running amok oh where are you guys we had to we

Had to oh the pig pig pig speaking of blue pig that’s another surprising one where they they act very much like the the goblins or the lute goblins do and then something like diablo but there’s not a sense of urgency with them oh yeah because they don’t actually like

They run away from you but they don’t go away yeah yeah there we go so in which which to Joe’s point makes it more of the chill experience that we talked about but yeah yeah it says you are down when you die but I thought it said you

Are dumb okay I get a little help yeah I was dumb I’m not pushing the right button ah yeah but yeah I mean there are things there are elements of teamwork here too that’s kind of cool it’s you know someone has a shield that holds back projectiles and someone else has

Like I have this field that does deals health when you stand in it yeah you know you can you can work together to improve your odds I like that sort of it’s not deep tactical play or anything but like I like that element of cooperation they have going on

Definitely we round out our list of minor complaints there’s all kinds of like little boxes and crates and things that look like should be destructible and just aren’t yeah and it’s weird in a game like this where you can’t just destroy everything you see because that’s such a satisfying it’s a small

Thing in games like these but it’s so satisfying that I really appreciate it and it kind of feels I don’t know like they took the wind out of my sails a little bit I’m not letting me especially well especially with something like Minecraft that built its reputation off

Of breaking things and building things yeah but I think ultimately at the end of the day this is a like my I think minecraft dungeons is probably what exactly what you think it is right like a like an accessible easygoing low pressure dungeon crawler with Minecraft you know

Visual vibes I think that’s one of the best pizzas pieces of loot that I’ve gotten in this game yeah I got like a twenty nine unique armor set yeah have to try that that bad boy out did you uh did you show off that screen and just show off some of the artifacts

And stuff you have might be initial I may be doing that right now oh yeah this is your inventory screen where you know you can see your armor your all your weapons and then bottom part of this are your your artifacts and that’s what you saw me using the firework arrow to blow

Everything up you know the shields and the bottom right you can see they’re they’re like power rating so that’s how you know it compared against they they give you kind of a guide with the up and down arrows but I would encourage you to look at the stats of each because

Sometimes those arrows can just be misleading but it’s it’s just another part of the the casual experience of this so it keeps saying this is where we need to go but also we already went in there’s or maybe it’s just not it I don’t know we need to go this way oh I

See it now I have a weird thing on this TV where like part of it yeah blame the TV yeah yeah and then my controller started breaking and I just I don’t know what happened games just not doing what I want it yeah it’s the Gabe’s fault not mine

They’re really nice he’s a hundred years loose my attack power bows and arrows lets out that for a little bit all right the build I have going on right now is built a little it’s like a stunning build so I have an artifact that lets me roll towards enemies and then they get

Stunned when I land oh and then I die like a dummy yeah that’s how that billboard yeah yeah it’s done an attack loop that I have going on which is good for situations like this but not so great for bosses cuz they aren’t they don’t get stunned like jumps no I have a

Ability on this that allows you to get a multi shot every so often and I also combined it with my firework attack and it blew up everything oh nice yeah yeah I have that firework attack and then I also have my bow I upgraded it so that

Every fifth attack it explodes oh cool so sometimes like those will both go off together we’re spinning it yeah yeah there’s definitely a lot of good bones is this they they definitely got a good amount of these systems right first the casual fan it’s just hopefully they’ve

Change up some of the loot systems and add some more value to the – you know actually exploring the world yeah yeah well I think that was a pretty good looking to get quite to the end you can get minecraft dungeons starting on May 26 which is next Tuesday I believe and

It’s it’s coming to Xbox police stations switch PC and then it’ll also be on game paths for game path subscribers which I definitely feel like is a good market for this game I think a lot of people find some value out of that so yeah so

Joe Juba Ben reefs thank you so much for joining me if you liked this episode we also posted a man-eater NGT today and we have replay and GI show and all the fun that you could have asked for so thanks again for watching and we’ll see you

Next time wow that person was really good at playing that game those other people were really good at talking about it too if you find yourself saying either of these things subscribe to Game Informer on YouTube for new episodes of you gameplay today every week covering the hottest new and upcoming releases