Get Played - Game of the Year Watch 2025

Episode Date: November 2, 2025

Heather, Nick and Matt take a look at the frontrunners for Game of the Year and discuss who they think will take home the title. We talk Clair Obscur Expedition 33, Hollow Knight Silksong, Blue Prince, Donkey Kong Bananza, Ghost of Yotei, Hades 2, Split Fiction, Kingdom Deliverance, Death Stranding 2 and more! Check out our brand new merch at kinshipgoods.com/getplayed Follow us on social media @getplayedpod Music by Ben Prunty benpruntymusic.com Art by Duck Brigade duckbrigade.com For ad-free main feed episodes, our complete back catalogue including How Did This Get Played? and our Premium DLC episodes and our exclusive show Get Anime'd where we're currently watching Serial Experiments Lain go to patreon.com/getplayed Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail] Advertise on Get Played via Gumball.fm All of our links can be found at linktree.com/getplayedpodSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a headgum podcast. Hey, hey guys. I'm so excited to do this episode. I'm so excited to talk about what could be the game of the year this year. I love it. I love the idea of us going through a little bit of video footage of these games, just to refresh our memories. Yeah, of course, yeah.

But I also have some pretty crazy news. Oh, wow. My grandma has been in a coma for 40 years. Oh, my God. And she just woke up today. And I want to introduce you guys to her. Hey, everyone, this is my grandma. Wow, hi.

Hi, Grandma Campbell. Hello, everybody. Hi, Grandma Campbell. It's so good to meet you. That's similar to what I kind of say. You know, my granddaughter, she used to play the podcast on my ears and I could hear it even though I was asleep. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, so you're how you're experiencing that.

I feel very familiar with your voice. Oh, the last five to six years of your four-decade coma. So you went into a coma in 1985. Yes, I did. You didn't remember one of the last things I saw was Nintendo Entertainment System. Oh, wow. So you would have just seen maybe Super Mario Brothers. It was such an incredible game.

And I, you know, I heard what you're talking about today. And that was game of the year that year. Yeah, Grandma, I hope you're ready to get your socks knocked off because games are a little bit different now. Oh, is that so? Is Mario still running around? Well, actually, yeah, here's the thing. He actually kind of is. Oh, I love that little guy.

We can show you some footage of some of these games so you get a sense of what gaming is like in 2025. I would love to see what I missed out on. You just talked about Nintendo. You maybe remember Donkey Kong. Oh, Donkey Kong. Yeah, before you went to camera. How did you get into your home anyway? I hijacked a train because I needed to get my husband across the border.

Wait, what? I hijacked. You hijacked a train? I had to hijack my... Like a freight train? Yeah, I hijacked a freight train. I just needed to get my husband across the border. And that was that this is, this is Heather's grandfather.

Yeah, yeah. What, yeah, it's a Heather's grandfather. And when I got off the Canadian Mounties, they shot me with a beanbag. And they knocked me out. But my husband's lived 39 years longer. Oh, my, wait. Oh, my God. So you missed his passing.

You just missed his passing. That's what they tell me. But I'm glad that he lived a good long life. You know what sucks that he died a year ago? Because he never got to see Donkey Kong Guanza. Yeah, let's take a look at Donkey Kong Guanza. Wow, look at that. Oh, my God.

God, that looks like a cartoon! Yeah, it's pretty crazy, right? Well, that's gotta be game in the year right there. Well, get a load of this. This one's called Death Stranding To, and there's a little too much to explain. Oh, my God, that's a real man! Yeah, it's based off a real actor.

Look at that, that looks like a real man! Yeah, it's almost a real guy. This is a video game, no! And he's riding a coffin that comes with Todd. That's when I felt like I was riding while I was in a coma. That lady looks real, too. Oh, my, well, that's got to be game of the year. Well, there's also this game.

This is another, this came out pretty recently, Ghost of Yote. What? Oh, am I in a time machine? Look at that. That looks so real. Oh, this is what the games are now? You just run around and it's real. It's pretty crazy.

The graphical fidelity has come so far. Oh, my God. Look at a car. 40 years. Those boys! Yeah, those boys. Oh, my God. You kind of weren't a time machine of sorts.

It felt like it. I can't believe the games look like they're so beautiful. Look at that mountain. Yeah, really beautiful stuff. Wow. That has to be game of the year. You might think this one is kind of interesting because I would imagine you've been, you spent some time in various rooms in your past.

Various rooms. This game is called... Yeah, you spent some time in various rooms. in your past. I've seen various rooms. That's true. This game is called Blueprints. Okay.

Okay. Wow, that is beautiful. Look at that. Oh, you like it. It looks like a cartoon. It kind of does look like a cartoon. But hold on a second. Hold on.

Is that, how's it coming out of my eyes? I'm the one walking in the room. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. You've never seen it. It's not your. Wow. That's amazing.

Oh, my God, I'm walking forward. I feel like I'm going to fold. That has to be. Has anybody done that before? Yeah. That's incredible. Yeah. It's, yeah, it's just a common perspective.

Pac-Man was just a sideways little son of a bitch. Like, I was never inside his head. What does the man look like that I'm inside of? Well, actually, that's less the point of this. You can't find this character. but it's like it's it's more about just embodying this individuals put me in front of a mirror so i can look at myself that's inside that has to be game of the and are these rooms changing these rooms are different every time you'd start a new day the game the day of the rooms are different oh my i wish my husband could have seen this only had yeah lived another year oh well he lived a happy life with all that money from the bank i did live another year Oh my God, Grandpa Campbell? That's right.

My husband's a lot! I went into a one-year coma, but I just woke up. Wow, is this what games look like that? It looks like this, honey. Oh, they look so different in 2024. Here's a gun. Let's go get a break. We prognosticate and sooth say as we make our predictions for Game of the Year 2025.

This week on Get Played. Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell. with my fellow host, Tiger Weiger. That's me, Nick Tiger Weiger, along with our third host, Mr. Games, Matt Apodaca. Hello, everyone. Hello, everyone. And welcome back to the premier video game podcast where it is almost time for the game of the year.

And what does that mean for our podcast? We're here on the 2025 Game of the Year watch. Didi-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-de-dee. Yeah, for those of these that are just listening, that's primarily the only way you could experience the show. otherwise you'd be seeing clips. There's not a way to watch the show completely. We have one of those big screens that you can touch and then like expand images on and stuff in front of

and there's like a map of the world and some of it's in different colors. The games are represented on that map as well. And then for no reason we also have superimposed over that flood damage. So I am now currently 18 feet below where the storm surge is. Various parts of the map are just crossed out. Right They're crossed out

Some of the natives And stuff has changed Yeah But the games are on the map And we're gonna be talking About some of those games The games are on the map The games are on the map

And so is the circa 2002 George W. Bush Terrorist Threat level And we are at yellow We're all wearing khakis Up to our fucking necks We're ready to go

God I forgot about the Terror Alert level It was like I feel like it was just At level three For like 15 years And they're like Eh, we're just not going to do it anymore.

He's discontinued it because there's no help to anybody. I guess it just kind of like this. Also, there was a time when it did go to red. Remember, it went to red, and we were all like, what can we do? Yeah, but then Night Owl and Dr. Manhattan and Roorshack all got back together and sort of stopped it. Or I guess they didn't really stop it, did they? Well, I mean, it depends on your interpretation.

Yeah. I was eating shit out of a paper bag. this city sucks this city fucking sucks and this fucking stinks but I love eating

this shit in a way Ozymandias was you know he had a whole false flag thing yeah

I watched a rat fuck a dog at a McDonald's and it didn't even order the city sucks what would happen if a giant alien

squid got teleported in to Manhattan and killed a bunch of people I got your answer. Absolutely nothing. You think we would just be normalized. We would normalize that shit within one month.

We'd be like, God, that was crazy. Yeah, the fucking giant squid. Remember that alien that came by and just, first off, aliens are real? And then also, like, thousands of people were killed. Nothing. Nothing would happen. Yeah. Nothing would happen.

The only thing that would happen, really, is that more places would start selling Calamari and we would just have it more available to us. And then someone would have, like, a shirt that said, like, I'm the tentacle bitch. Yeah. So, somebody kind of gets fucked by. Within, I bet within two minutes of the attack, the first meme would hit the internet. That would be pervasive. Right.

I remember while Hurricane Katrina was hitting, I saw someone post a meme of Zangif spinning pile driving the city of New Orleans. I was like, this is insane. You can't do this immediately. So many things I wish... We could just put back in the tube. We can't because phones and the internet. I would love to do this show on the radio, just like the regular radio. Yeah, we all talk like this, and we're welcome to get played.

Welcome to radio. We're radio guys here on the radio talking on Get Played. I'm over here with Matt Appadacca, Mr. Games. Oh, we love Matt. That's right. They love me. Jesus Christ, it's your Lord and Savior. Yeah.

This is our most lucrative episodes. Your donations! It's just interesting that their people are catching on now because from the jump, this has been a Christian podcast. Always been a Christian podcast from day one. We got you. Guess what? You love God, actually. Sorry.

Looking down at their crucifix necklace, at least get on here. What the hell? Wait, what's this in my mouth? The fucking little cracker? Yes, the fucking little cracker, yeah. How? You take the Holy Sacrament and you get the fucking little cracker on your tongue. You know, priest, give me one of fucking little crackers.

Usually, Matt is 100%. And that was the first time I've seen him fire at 3%. It's an honor you think I got more than that. It was great for you to cover for me like seconds before not being able to find the word necklace. So thank you for doing that. How do I get this Netflix around my net? That's the kind of show you're in for today, everybody. It's the watchdown of the game of the year running's odds.

We obviously have our own awards that we'll do at the end of this year as we do every year, as we have since we've, I think since we started the podcast. Maybe that's only about a recent format thing. No, we've done it. I think we did it in our first year. I think we've been doing it for a while. Stop. Anyway, but we're looking at the larger gaming consensus, I think.

I think we're more like saying, like, hey, the game awards, publications, you know. Yes. The Steam Awards, whatever, what have you? Like, like, what is going to potentially end up on top? What is the tea? What is the talk? What is the goss? Right.

And what is the game? Yeah, exactly. We're going to get to the bottom of it. We will get to the bottom of it. You never have a really grim breakfast? Oh, yeah. Let's go. Yeah, like, what do you, like, I mean...

What are you talking about, like, gravy? Not like, maybe like, eggs with a bunch of shell in it or something? Straight gravy. Also, that's not that bad. I have that all the time. We did figure something out when you were not around recently. We did, we did. With that, um, I do think brown eggs are tougher than white eggs and Heather only uses brown.

I exclusively use brown. Is that true? Yeah. Can we confirm that? Anecdotally, I use... This anecdotal. I use white eggs large, I get large white most of the time. Yeah.

Had brown recently. Got some shell in there. But I'm, I'm graduating. I've graduated on two things. Yeah. I've got, I bet a 50% egg ratio now. Yeah. I can also do latte art, which took three years.

And again, this is deflecting. That's not about eggs. Three years of leveling in order to make a heart and a little leaf. Very impressive. Very, very, very, like, also what's funny about leveling up when you're trying a skill like that, the day before, you can't do it. The day after, you can do it. it over and over. What a feeling. It's like finally cranking out a pull-up when you're trying to do

that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Or cranking on your pull out. Or crank it off, you know. Yeah, some days I just like can't quite figure it out. Can't. What is going on here? Yeah. Too many big parts. Yeah. Accidentally

starting a fire rubbing my hands together like this. What the fuck's going on with this thing? My favorite way to improvise jerk off is to only pull. that's funny like to just like a magician pulling hankies out of your sleeve

I did see somebody one time I think maybe it was in a class or something with our pal Will Hines has been on the show he said when you're I think he was noting somebody in a scene

he's like everybody does this everybody when they're standing at a urinal they gesture like they're holding like the fucking biggest hog he's like

you know how much funnier it is to just go like this just like But I was like, that is funnier. An improviser that Nick and I used to work with all the time. This guy, Jim Woods, he would very often do the very small penis at a urinal. He also, his way of jerking off at a scene was straight down. A maniac, so funny.

That's incredible. I remember Jim Woods doing a scene that I still remember where it was like, he was like a vet treating a spider. and then the spider went into like cardiac arrest. He was doing CPR in a spider with two fingers. And then he's like, it's not working. And he tried to jack it off. It's a little invisible like spider-sized spider. Then he tried to blow it.

I saw that guy in a scene. I saw that guy in a scene in Amsterdam. Somebody rang the door and like a doorbell, you know, and improvised giving him a pizza. And he goes, thank you very much. Threw it on the ground, stomped on it. And I love that shit. I love just silly people having fun.

Scene work is fucking great. That rocks. And you can't see the work we're doing because this is an audio podcast. It's true. On 1085 a.m. Yeah, that's right. 1085 a.m. The jizz.

Cages. I think because I was a kid and I listened to the radio so much. I wanted to be on the radio so bad. I did want to be on the radio. I thought the radio was like the place to be and then eventually the radio. Now it's like you can be on the radio

and you have a bigger audience than a podcast for like a lot of the, you know, a lot of the, these terrestrial radio shows have like absolutely massive listenerships in terms of raw numbers. But it's just like a relevance thing. It's like the difference between having a network TV show

and like, you know, a prestige show on HBO Max. more people are watching blue bloods on CBS than are watching, you know, um, uh, what's the, what's the, uh, what's the white lotus? You know what I mean? Or white lotus is in the Zykeyes. Yeah. I have a question about that. Yeah. Which is that I don't know. I feel like the Zykegeist, as is defined by online presence, actually isn't the zeitgeist. Like I think when I see the numbers for shows like Yellowstone or whatever and they dwarf everything, I'm like the true, it's not the true America, but the true public, the most popular song on television, if it were, is, is it were, as it were.

If it was, I don't care, is a thing that we just don't listen to. Sure, yeah. And I don't think that makes it less popular. And I certainly don't think that makes it less zeitgeistee. I think people in our little online circle just aren't talking about it. It's like how Mad Men was topping out at 500,000 viewers a week. And it's like, I was releasing YouTube videos with bigger numbers. Right. We all, like, it's, it's interesting, like, in terms, because we also all have,

of our own, like, little gated ecosystems now. And so, like, I think, like, like, a lot of, like, for instance, a, like, country music, which is, like, enormously popular, like, just in our circles is just kind of, we, we don't hear, we don't hear a ton about. But it's, like, it's so fucking, yeah, I, I guess I don't know how to characterize it. I guess I am thinking in terms of, like, what the media like outlets that I consume you know are talking about but you know like what is that

that's that's also like self-selected I do the yeah the the the zeitgeist is probably not dictated by the size of the audience of the thing but the medium it's discussed on yeah right so like oh interesting like millions and millions of people

watch a second spinoff of the big bang theory called George and Mandy's first marriage wait that's a big bang theory Spinoff? Yes. What's it about? It is about Sheldon's brother. Yeah, young Sheldon's brother. As a young guy? Yeah. Young Sheldon's brother getting married. Yeah. Young Sheldon's brother's not on Big Bang theory. I don't think he is. No, he is. He appears. He's Jerry O'Connell and he's older. Oh, he's Jerry O'Connell. Hey, if you can get Jerry O'Connell

on your show, that fucking rules. I like Jerry O'Connell. He's awesome. Good guy. But wait, hold on, so on, but it's not Jerry O'Connell and George and Wendy's first marriage. No, it's some young guy. I wonder if Joe O'Connell gets residuals for helping establish the character. For originating the character, yeah. Oh, interesting. I hope so. It is the, but wait, the premise of this is, like, by the end, it's like a reverse how I met your mother by the end, they get divorced.

You know, I actually, it was a tough example because I actually don't know anything about this show at all. But I, to illustrate, I brought it up to illustrate a point. That's a show that, like, none of us know anything about, but millions of people watch this show. It's true. But I would imagine that, like, the size of, like, the Reddit, community is either non-existent

or small. I think that the only place where the zeitgeist aligns with and I'm going to wrap it back up to our show, the zeitgeist aligns with what people are playing is video games. Yeah. Like, if people are talking about the video game, it is also a

big hit. Yeah. Like, there are not video game, like, I know you guys don't specifically talk about Fortnite, but it's certainly online Fortnite is spoken about and is a massive hit. it's not like it's not like everybody was talking

about blueprints but it didn't sell even 20,000 copies. Right, right. You know what I mean? Sure, but I do think there are games that are absolutely massive that don't get discussed much. Like I imagine like a clash of clans is like played by so many more people. Or Genshin Impact.

Yeah, exactly. These games are like absolutely fucking massive and so and also I think like the call of duties kind of get short shrift in the gaming press because they're just like coming out every, the maddens of the fiefas of the world get a little bit less talk and those are games that are like played a ton so

I think it just depends somebody's gonna be so mad. Somebody's gonna be like I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. I don't care. Let him talk about call duty all day. I don't care. I don't care. Let him be mad. It's okay. Let him be mad, I don't care. I'm talking about like if you go to like, you know if you're looking at gaming the gaming press if you're looking at just kind of like where

what people are actually talking about and also I think there is something to there's a different sort of fandom for something like that, you know, versus, like, the kind of people who, again, would, like, go super deep in Reddit threads. Then again, the Call of Duty Reddit, Reddit is probably absolutely massive.

Yeah, probably, uh, locked down. I mean, I get, like, is it battlefront? I get battlefront clips on my timelines all the time. Of, like, somebody, like, jumping out of a fucking plane, bazookaing another plane, and then getting in that plane. I get that shit all the time. It's only, but it's all, like, it's all bubble stuff, though, right?

Like, like, you're going to, gonna be fed stuff that like you don't maybe have like a passing interest in that necessarily but because you like video games and these are like popular clips that's gonna make its way toward you versus something like country music or this show that uh i mentioned a second ago that i'm not gordon madge marriage yeah uh or just like anything like that like people love the new matlock and i just like don't know a single person that you have heard the new matlock's good i i look i'm happy i'm happy that is it a fucking girl did they make matlock a girl it's They did.

They made it awoke. Un-fucking believable. I fucking knew it. I knew it. But I think the thing about it. I fucking knew it. I think if I have clicked on a headline. By the way, that was my line.

Yeah. I'm now, I'm now red-bilt. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Look, uh, welcome to the resistance. You know, like the guy I saw in the Dodge Ram driving over with a bumper sticker that said not woke. Dude, we saw your truck. Kind of a hat on a hat, buddy. Yeah.

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I've seen so many cyber trucks this week I thought I thought I had I thought cyber trucks had crested and I wasn't going to see them anymore I've seen so many fucking cyber trucks this week you're at the dealership yeah yeah every time I see one I have this reflex

that I'm not in control of anymore where I just go like this you know what sucks you know what sucks is that between the cyber truck and the Optimus Robot. Yeah. Elon Musk is making the world I want to live in, but he's an awful fucking person,

so I don't get to indulge myself in any of these crazy things. He's like, I'm also doing all this other bad stuff, but this other stuff. Yeah, I know. Like the Optimist is the... Is this a new thing? It's his robot that he's going to make. I built something because people have decided they don't want to fuck me anymore, so I'm going to fuck this thing.

Well, there's a, like this week, there was this big robot that, announcement called the Neo, where they're like, yeah, where it's like 20 grand, you get one next year, it can do your laundry, you can wash your dishes, walk around your house, but also, damn, that's all. Also, it is potentially remote operated by an offsite person. Oh, who's in like a VR helmet. If the task is too complicated, if it's like, hey, I need you to sort these cards, then it gets booted into a real person and the real person sorts the cards, which is, unethical. But what I'm saying is...

Hey, I need you to shake this corn dog. Sort of near your mouth, kind of. I'm going to put a blindfold on your robot because I don't want you to see how gross my corn dog is. He's only doing it this. Only pulling. But that is the conceptual extension of the ibow, which was Sony's dog that it released in like 99 and 2003 or

whatever, right? Yeah. Like, that's the dream is to have a robot walking around your house that does shit, right? I kind of don't want a robot. I do so fucking bad. Here's the thing. We have a fucking Roomba, and I think it's a pain in the ass. I was like, sometimes it's just a vacuum.

You got to dump it out. You got to, like, there's all sorts of maintenance you have to do. There's all sorts of things you have to replace. There's more shit that you have to. maintain then on an actual vacuum and then also it's like things like like it's just like like rumba is stuck because it's like okay i thought this thing was automated now i gotta go find this thing i got to flip it open flip it over i got to like pull some like you know hair out of it or whatever the fuckers just got a dog stuck in a trash can in his house they named rumba so i don't know

i mean i could see it being more one of those things where it's more trouble than it's worth it's like the sort of thing when you read about all the appliances that came about in the mid 20th century all the things like dishwashers and washing machines and what have you that like like this stuff actually made housework take longer because what happened is the standard for the expectations um for housework became higher because it was automated it was like well now you should be able to do more you know we should like things should be at a higher level this is a tangent that we certainly don't have time to go down i think yeah i wonder what the what the last most necessary invention was. But one of the last

invention that was like as a that had a net good. Air conditioning. Yeah, it probably was air conditioning. You're absolutely right. Air conditioning might have been a net bad. Because then now you know it's hot. For the environment? Yes, bad for the environment. Oh, sure. And it also led to a bunch of people moving to areas where it was really

energy efficient. Like it's like like the gigantic populations in for instance Arizona. No, no offense to our Arizonans out there. But it's not a particularly efficient place for people to be living. It is interesting. Like, I bet you you have to go back further than you think to find the most, the last necessary thing we actually, like, needed. I think, I think the telephone probably helped. Yeah?

The telephone feels pretty good. But now look what the phone is now. The phone's bad now. Well, yeah, the phone is bad now. But I mean, like, the old school wired telephone. Yeah. Or you could call somebody, you know. But you could argue that it, that killed Violet Evergarden's job.

That did kill Violet Evergarten's job. I forgot about the toll it took. on Violet Evergarden at the telephone. Here I am singing its praises and yet look what it did. Unemployment line? What is soup? This is all references to our sister show Get Animated. We watch a show about a weird lady.

Yeah, we watched a show about a very slow time in the world where you wrote letters and had somebody else write them for you. Well, I think you're kind of characterizing in a negative way. It was at the auto time of auto memory dolls when they would people be enlisted and time when not everyone was literate to... I can't believe you remember

the term auto memorandal. I thought it was not a bad I enjoyed the show okay, sorry for liking Violet Evergarten I thought the last movie I didn't love the ending of

but I thought overall was a very satisfying series. Let's not forget there was a romantic subplot that had an age gap and a power dynamic too, okay? That was also part of it.

Are you talking about the major? She loved the major. She loved the major who was effectively her boss. Yeah. Yeah, and her dad.

And her dad. Ah, great. All right. All right. This is the show. Anyway, back to my breakfast. Oh, yeah. So I had a, so I was just like one of those things where I was just like, I was like, what am I'm going to fucking have?

And I opened it up the fridge and I had like half of a leftover turkey sandwich. So I'm just like having a fucking turkey and cheese sandwich with like old lettuce at like 7.30 a.m. That's not nothing. You could do worse. You could do worse. But it was the kind of thing I'm just like, I'm like, I guess I'm just. gonna eat this because I gotta eat it at some point. I think you're right, Heather.

We were saying something before we started, but something's in the air. I had my breakfast today. It was the same breakfast I eat pretty much every single day. A chicken sausage, some spinach, an egg, and a piece of toast. I think you get four different items there.

Christ. An Ezekiel, like a piece of Ezekiel bread. What do you sauteed that spinach? I do, yeah, yeah. Fucking hell, man. But I couldn't eat it today. You couldn't eat it. Like, I ate some of it and was just kind of like,

I think I was just like stressed out about the week or whatever it's like work stuff but like I was just like I can't I got to eat it I got I was sort of eating it just to eat it and then I was like I don't even want this anymore and then I just left I have the same thing I have it every day yeah which is a single piece of sourdough bread covered in organic peanut butter and manuka honey yeah and a cup coffee and that's real fun I did have my espresso today and I loved it yeah good god it's so good ranch breakfast check um Greek yogurt muesli

mucely, and blackberries. Oh, okay. That sounds pretty good. That's good. That's good. Yeah, but I was doing yogurt at breakfast pretty consistently for a while. Then I pivoted to cottage cheese breakfast. Always with some sort of berry.

Always with some sort of fruit accompaniment. So I was like having like yogurt and fruit. And then I was having cottage cheese and fruit. And then I'm now I'm in an oatmeal phase. And that's mostly what I've been doing. Oh, I love oatmeal. Love oatmeal. It's a little cooler in the morning.

It's a little harder. It's a little hardier. I kind of also find myself like like wanting. Usually I'm, I'm, I'm fueling before I go to the gym and I want some carbs. I don't know if that's the most efficient thing. Like, I don't know if that's like, but I just like, I find if I don't do that, my energy dips a little bit.

There's probably like a better way, like a better pre-workout meal to eat. But I just, I find myself wanting a little bit of carbohydrates. So I usually have some, some, some, uh, some oatmeal with a, with a banana tossing that some bitch. Oatmeal used to be my pre-boxing workout, a meal all the time. Yeah. But then I, I pivoted to sourdough toast. I got a good toaster and so I love using my toaster.

Yeah. Toast is really good. Toasters are good. Maybe that was the last invention that was really necessary. Toaster's pretty good. I wonder when the toaster came about. I'm trying to think of like what else happened in the 20th century. There's a lot of telecommunications, obviously.

You can argue the microwave, maybe. Microwave sucks. I don't think the microwave's good. I think it's just kind of, yeah, and I think it's just lowered the overall quality of home food. Led to a lot of ultra-processed, like meals and shit. Can't even heat up a hot pocket the right way. Yeah. I think microwaves are probably.

net negative even though they're convenient uh let's see you got i mean any sort of like like like electricity infrastructure i mean maybe like uh maybe like electric rail yeah come about it's either that or like the switch two switch two you know switch two is a good answer so that was what uh 20 25 earlier this year actually yeah maybe not so far back so i guess we're doing pretty good actually everything's perfect Hey guys. I've talked about this on the show before. I use NordVPN and now we're doing ads for it. So I feel like I am specifically qualified to talk about using NordVPN. Look, there are stores you can only shop at if you have a Japanese address or a Japanese like IP address. And if you want to get these goods, these Gundam goods, the only way you can access the website in order to buy the item is to go through a proxy. service or a VPN like NordVPN. It's not the only thing you can do with NordVPN, though. You can watch TV shows and films which aren't available in your region by switching your virtual

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the time. Man, I get cool t-shirts. To get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to NordVPN.com Get Played. Our link will also give you four extra months on the two-year plan. There's no risk with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. The link is in the podcast episode description box. I should do this. Why haven't I taken advantage of our own offer? I'm so dumb. The countdown is on. Holiday shopping season is officially here. Uncommon goods. Take the stress out of gifting with thousands of unique high-quality finds you won't see anywhere else. Don't wait. The most meaningful gifts get scooped up fast, and now is the perfect time to cross names off your list. Uncommon goods looks for products that are high-quality, unique, and often handmade or made in the U.S. Many are crafted by independent artists and small businesses, making every gift feel meaningful and truly one-of-a-kind. Guys, I won't lie. I have been targeted by

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I did have one thing I want to talk about before we get into games, which is... Really? I did. I have one thing. This is games related. Okay. And this is something that maybe has been discussed in the podcast at some point. I don't remember it. And it was new to me. So anyway, obviously in the news this week, as of this record, we'll see what happens. Maybe there's a complete stock market crash by the time this episode is out a couple days from now. But NVIDIA is now valued at over $5 trillion and is something like 10% of the S&P 500. It's just like it's such a bubble. There's so much of the U.S. economy isn't this one company because of AI speculation. And it's just crazy that we went from, you know, high-end PC graphics cards

to crypto mining to this. Now it's like the backbone of the economy. me. Yeah. I was looking into NVIDIA a little bit, and I found this 2025 Yahoo article. NVIDIA nearly went out of business in 1996 trying to make Sega's Dreamcast GPU. Instead, Sega America's

CEO offered the company a $5 million lifeline. I'll read some from this article. So how exactly did NVIDIA end up getting such a reprieve from Sega? It stems from the history of the Sega Dreamcast, which initially Sega went to NVIDIA to develop the GPU for. While NVIDIA's following work in

low-power GPUs may have helped the company make more power-efficient chips down the line. These low-power graphics were ultimately not up to the spec that Sega needed for the cutting-edge dream cast ahead of its 1998 release. Thus, the conclusion of the Sega-in-Vidia contract seemed to be doomed to failure for both parties. Invidied spent lots of time and money on R&D and had nothing acceptable to show for it, which put NVIDIA CEO, Jensen Huang. Do you know what I say his name? Huang Wang, in the unenviable position. Still the CEO, by the way. He wound up coming clean to Saga about not having their needed graphics hardware, but still asked for a payment despite this.

And ultimately, NVIDIA was still paid for its failed attempt at making the Dreamcast GPU thanks to then CEO of America, Shoeichiro, Iramajiri. The answer picked by Iramajiri and Sega wound up being a $5 million investment into NVIDIA. This investment was cashed out for $15 million afterward, helping keep Sega stable as a company departed the console business. You scratch my back, I'll scratch yours. Sega put a, gave Invidia lifeline, kept the company afloat, and as such, they were able to parlay that into a $10 million gain, which kept the company going. What we are, though, looking at is a like a fortune, like a fortune globe. What do you call those?

Sliding Doors moment. Orb, a sliding doors moment where Sega received financing from another source after making the initial investment. in NVIDIA and then cashed out once it's a multi-trillion dollar company and then became the dominant hardware on planet Earth, like, released the like headset that was like light

as glasses and then like let you see through walls. Put this on and you can run as fast as Sonic. What if, guys? What if? What if? They know wild. How much the dream cast, such a pivot point of history. Yeah. And people

look to it, not just for stuff like this. Like you can always trace back sort of any sort of historical moment straight back to the Dreamcast. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. People were always talking about it. Yep. Why, Ellen got canceled, right? That was part of it. That was a big part of it. Ellen.

Actually, I mean, it's a lot of the, a lot of the people that got canceled. It's all going back straight to the Dreamcast. What else? I'm thinking of, like, horrible examples that I shouldn't say. Yeah, I was going to say every joke I can come up with would actually get me arrested.

here in our new America. All right, let's get to what we're supposed to be doing here. Let's talk about the video games we're playing now. It's time for, what are you playing? What are you playing? Hey, it's me the resident in Virginia. And I'm here with my friends talking about what they're playing. And I'm talking about what they're playing by asking them what they're playing.

Very comprehensive. Yeah, very good. Very well done, R.E.M. A, what. B. R. C. What?

I was helping you. You looked like you didn't know what the next letter was, so I was just trying to help. What are you talking about? Never mind. Well, so here's the whole thing with pattern making. You don't know until you get to the third one. Now, I hear A, B, I naturally assume C is coming next, but who knows, could go back to A again. Who's talking about what?

Never mind. What? You did A what, B, R. It's not like you're going to say C, U, D plan. That would be my assumption. B, no, C comes after B, not R. Yes. A, B...

Is it R? It's kind of one of these situations where I don't know if I'm allowed to be upset. I mean, WX, Y, Z. You can be upset, but maybe it's not appropriate to express it. Yeah, you're right. Yeah, you're right. What? C does come after B.

Sequentially in the alphabet, R, we're not referring to the letter R. We're referring to its homophone, the word R spelled A-R-E. I'm so fucking lost. It's okay. It's okay. Why don't we just, we'll just, look, why don't you start over? We'll start over. Land the plane.

All right, all right. What are you playing? Like that? That's good. Yeah, pretty good. That was actually, that was a great read. That's smooth. Maybe we'll just use that.

I really appreciate you guys printing this script for me every week. Yeah, no, thank you for reading the lines that we just did really well. It would be, I mean, like, just, you know, again, just to re-up this, if you want to bring, like, your, like, an iPad, or, even just a phone and we can just send you a PDF, it will save us the hassle of actually putting out. Okay, I got that. I got it. It's a little easier.

Yeah, and he's got a tablet, really. You guys got rice? You know, we might. We can certainly get some rice. Yeah, if there's only, I just need to be able to put my device in some rice. It's all wet. It's always wet. Before, like, maybe I'll show up like 45 minutes so we can hang out.

I don't know if rice can bring back a device from the brink of death if it's been soaked for so long I think it's like a time limit type of thing I went to back when I used to swim at the public pool I went to the pool to swim some laps and you know whatever got in like a good like like a good long stretch I was in the pool

for a while I love this story yeah anyway I got out felt some of my pocket the story so far is that he went to the pool and swam laughs you love it? You love it? I was in there in the pool with the warming up and everything and cooling down is in there for about 45 minutes I get out I feel something

in my pocket, my phone. My phone in my phone in my pocket the entire time. Yeah. Just immersed in like chlorinated water. Wow, did it work? No, it was, no, it was fucking dead. Some of the new phones. Yeah, whatever, room. Some of the new phones, you can, I was at, I was in Palm Springs with a bunch of my friends as I typically

go once a year. Yeah. Palm Springs. Oh, mother Tiki. That's right. Um, I actually don't know. I can't, I can't sign off on that because I don't know I actually don't know that to be true I can't speak on it but my friend of mine

we were all drinking in the in the pool and stuff hell yeah I mean I was y'all know me I was slamming beers there you go just like crushing

yeah yeah yeah and a friend of ours dropped his phone in the pool and nobody knew but like at some point later all of us were like hey there's a fucking phone

down there whose phone is that And our buddy was like, oh, that's my phone. And he pulled it out, and it just, like, worked normal. Wow. How long was it in there for? I mean, here's a, nobody knows. We have no idea.

It wasn't, it didn't just get down there, but it, it was down there, like, flat. I need a new phone. I need one of these water. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Is this water coming out? You have, like, a special case or anything? Inside of my phone. Yeah.

And I don't, the screen is dry. Yeah. The inside is wet. Okay. Is it possible? It's like, it's one of those, like, little toys? with little floating rubber rings and like two buttons

and the water inside I'll get you one you will I'll get you one I'll make a call on anything call my friend I don't know if it Murdo

Speaking of Manabodaka What are you brought Thank you so much Resident Evil for Merchant I'm gonna make this brief I'm almost done with Pokemon Legend ZA

Oh almost done I'm ranked D Actually I think right now I'm ranked C Which means I only have Three more ranks to go and then I'm assuming it's done there's a lot to be said about this game I think

Oh Is it Completely bad I would say no I think in terms of The way it looks Yes you sound like a hostage Here's just what I think

I mean it's like I mean I want to save my judgment My full judgment for it once I've finished it Where I'm at currently I would like to be done I would like to be done I would like to be done with it It is

I think for my money And this is rich For a Pokemon game It's a little bit too repetitive for me Oh boy Wow It's a little I wish there was just more to do

Like I mean there's a lot There's like side quest stuff that I'm just like Kind of at this point fully ignoring Because it's a lot of like Get this Pokemon with this specific move And I'm like I'm just like not interested Really in catching a bunch of the same kinds Hoping to find the right one with

the thing or whatever. Rank battling online is extremely fun. I think that is probably like the best part of the game. But even that sort of has like its limit because like what I'm going to, I'm going to get to rank A online. And then when the season starts over, do that again, just keep doing that maybe. But the stories in these games are always, what do you call? They're like, they're just kind of like nothing.

They're just, they don't have any stage. ever like it just kind of just feels like you know and this I'm a you know nearly 35 year old man these games are for babies so they don't necessarily need like a gripping story at all but like there's just so many great games with great stories that it's kind of just like you know it sucks that the franchise hasn't hasn't grown up to a certain to a certain degree it's got me wanting to check out this new digimon game everyone's saying that this new Digimon game is eating Pokemon Zia's fucking Lunt. I've heard this

about the Digimon game. Yeah, yeah. I downloaded it the demo on my Steam Deck, so I'm gonna see what that's about at some point. But I'm just kind of like I don't think this is even like my least favorite of the Switch uh Pokemon games, but it's just kind of like, it's just not it. It's just, I liked Archaeus the best. Yeah. And that was like a high watermark and is in the top of like the franchise to me. And I just don't think this one

clears it. It's just it's a little worse than that version of it. But I hope to finish it soon so I can get back to my beloved this is the thing. I stopped playing games I fucking love to play this and so it kind of feels like I want to finish it because I know that it's

there's not much left but I wasn't going to drop it completely. It's a compulsion at this point. Yes I got yes it is. I have a disease but I'll hopefully get back to Silk Song and Ghost of Yote very soon. That's my update currently. I'm not really.

I kind of want it to be done. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Heather, what are you playing? Well, I've got a few updates across a bunch of different fronts. One, I continue to play the Ghost of Yote. I played it so much that I bought myself a beginner's Shammisen.

Hell yeah. Wow. I'm going to learn how to play Shammisen. I don't know how long I will play Shammisen. Maybe it will only be for a few months. And then I'll be like, this was not for me. Yeah. Or maybe you'll see me being the extremely awkward white woman.

at the Japanese cultural center during like Shami Sen night. Yeah. Who knows? Why not? Probably not the latter. But yeah, playing Ghost of Yote. Love that sweet spot that I found with the difficulty.

I actually had a clip that I was going to show you guys where I go through like a little barricade and another character's talking to me as we're like rating a thing. And she goes, Atsu! And then I'm just stabbed and die. And I'm like, that's so. of what the game has become for me is if I, if somebody gets a drop in me, it's done. I don't, there's nothing I can do. Love it. Um, two, this is the one year anniversary of

Pokemon the card game pocket. Wow. Huge quality of life update was, uh, was released today as a record, uh, along with a new, uh, booster. Um, they have made it possible for players who have missed bonus cards in the past to access the chance to get them by engaging in the current event. So that's a real quality of life for people who are like missing those one card in a bonus set. They've made trading easier. They've made it so you can give cards to your friends. Oh, nice. So you don't even have to do the trade. You can just be like, hey, bro, I know I know you need this card. What else have they done? They made like just UI improvements. Really excited to sort of dig in.

I played it for a while today. Had a blast. I'm like really surprised that a year later I'm still playing a card game. Wow. This weekend, the Simpsons comes to Fortnite. Oh, yeah. As of right now in the last 50 hours left of Fortnite's current season, season six, whatever, the aliens from the Simpsons, those little guys.

Hang in Cotos. Those dudes. They're flying up beside the battle bus. making fun of it. I just saw something. Yeah. Fortnite. Fortnite's pretty good.

I got one for you, which is what the ad campaign is, which is that Bart is spray painting over the signs, like the signs in New York Times Square. What are the union stations and stuff? Yeah. And so he's spraying an A, so it's his fart night. Pretty good. And then he signs that El Barto was here. That Bart's always one step ahead.

That's good stuff. Yeah, so it's Fart Night is the next season, Fart Night. So, though I am not a fan of The Simpsons, just missed that bus. Yeah. I am excited to get on the battle bus and see what that season has to offer. And then finally, finally, I got goods to show you guys. Heather's got goods. I got goods.

So this last summer I pre-ordered the Death Stranding 2 ring from, I think it's Anicorn. Anicorn and Kojima Productions. And it comes in this fantastic drawbridge wrapper that has all the barcodes and shit on it. And then the drawbridge steel case. Here's the thing, boys. I have to treat this like it is a... Like the way that when you buy a limited edition

or a premium edition of a game, you get like an item that you don't necessarily use but instead sort of appreciate. Yeah, sure. Because this ring is so much larger than I expected that it is unwearable for me. Oh, sure. And not larger, it's adjustable.

Yes. But it turns out that the ring itself as is mapped in the game, which is a full metal replica. Yeah, that's a big boy. of the thing is just a massive fucking ring here. Yeah, the container it's within is kind of like a, you know, like a thing of, a container of shoe polish or like a container of, you know,

pomade or like one of those stubby prinkles can. You can put it on. It's pretty substantial. And then the ring is a big honker. I mean. Yeah, it's a giant ring. That's some bitches. Matt has it on his thumb and is giving a thumbs up.

It's very cool. It glows in the dark and it has an NFC code built in or a thing where you tap it to like a phone or whatever and it brings up a website. The website is just the ring and like Kajima Productions. Like it doesn't do anything. But people are talking about hacking that so that it brings you to something else, like a UI or whatever. Yeah. It is really cool. I will say that the way it clasps, which is kind of.

of like, you know, like a hair band. It's the, you know, it folds in on itself. Yeah, it has a little hinges. It hinges. It doesn't slide down like a traditional ring. So it feels a little bit flimsy. But the nice thing is you can expand its circumference. You want to put it on your hog. Give that ring back to me right now.

Just saying it's an option. Just give it back to me. It's happened at this point. I think it'd have to close it a little bit. The thing about this, though, is that I wish if there was a ring like this, Yeah. That was like a phone. Your phone was the ring.

Yeah. I would just have that. Right. I wouldn't have the, I wouldn't have. I, Matt, I hate that. What do you mean? I want a fucking, I don't want a phone fucking ring. I'm going to be looking at my ring the whole day?

I don't know. You give your thumbs up. You get a little sort of like, you get a little HUD. Yeah, a little, like an AR screen of some kind. You also have glasses. I mean to look at my fucking thumb all the time. I'm looking at my ring. Yeah, but I didn't be looking at a thumbs up.

I know you didn't play as much Death Stranding, too, as us. Every time you paused the menu to look at the menu, he gives a thumbs up. Yeah. It goes like, it's a POV thumbs up. Right. It just made me feel so good the entire time I was playing it. Just like every time, just like, I got to open the menu. If I just had all my stuff, I would, I...

My life would be better. I feel like you'd just be staring at that getting angry. Because you just be, like, reading headlines. That starts going like this. Yeah, exactly. No. Yeah. I mean, I don't want to, I guess I just want, like, I want it to have the social strand system so I could talk to everybody that, you know, I'd talk to you guys on there.

I would do then a map. I mostly just want it to have a map. And then maybe, like, phone. I don't need to have, like, the news on it or something. It would be, it would just be on there. It's just like how, like, what, like, now I open, Apple Maps just has fucking ads in it now. You just can't get, like, it's just inescapable. I wish that this ring had a recharge.

I wish I had like a USB rechargeable LED in it because I do wish that the light was brighter. I like that it glows in the dark, but ultimately like when I look at this ring, what I have is something that's going to sit on my shelf next to my BB and that's all it's going to be. Whereas I was really hoping to wear it. Like I had a vision of wearing it the way that like the characters wear that ring around. Do you think you might try wearing it? You haven't taken it out for a spin, I'm guessing. No, I have. You have?

I wore it around the house and kept giving Mary a thumbs up, and she's like, okay. Yes, but basically what I would do. And it's just a little bit unwieldy. It's just a little too chunky. I guess I don't need a special ring to annoy my wife. But it helps. But it helps. It's easier.

It's a faster way to do it. Yeah. Give my wife a thumbs up as she packs a cardboard box. Like Yeah I think it's really really cool Not that I'm encouraging The ring

Like that would be the reaction No she would Yeah She would be doing I think what's great about the ring Is the manufacturing of the ring Is Like it's pristine

It's the You sometimes will order something like this And it's like The key blade from what And you get it And it's like You can see the seams Where they like

Melted it together And like It doesn't have the quality Of the action item as you conceive of it, this is, I mean, other than the fact that the screen doesn't work, that's the ring. Or even if it was just like... It's metal and it's heavy.

A collaboration with like, you know, the aura ring or something. Like if it had some functionality, that'd be so, that'd be great. Well, the fake windows that I have also had a death stranding collab. That's right. And you can look at the windows and see like the landscape of the first game and that's really nice. And that's the sort of, I don't know. That's the kind of collab I like.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. Can I ask a question? Sure. What do you all think about ring guys? Like, guys who wear a lot of rings? Guys wear a lot of rings? I don't know.

That's not for me. I don't know. I think it can be a good look. But it definitely is like, like, that's a, that's a choice. You're a ring guy. I had never worn a ring before until I got married, of course. So, like, I thought it was going to be very resistant to the way it feels. But like, I just, like, didn't notice it 10 minutes.

And it's after we're wearing it, basically. Right. I, you know, there's like a, I think there's a certain type of, it depends on the fingers, doesn't it? I think three fingers for rings are safe. For guys, there's like a power-moved thumb guy, power-moved pinky guy. Yeah. And it's tough. I know, you only got that one, you got the one on the index.

Yeah, I got an oral ring that I have to switch from index finger to index finger because my hands swell when I get warm. which is also why I'm currently not wearing my wedding rings because it's too hot in the studio and so it cuts off my circulation when we record. Yeah. I think that's okay. Pinky and thumb, it's kind of tough stuff. Ranch, what's the ring count?

For a boy? No, well, for you, and then for, like, in general, where, how do you feel about ring guys? I don't usually wear rings because they annoy me. Yeah. I like how they look on women. On men. Getting like Pirates of the Caribbean vibe.

It's like they're bad. Not a good way. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're like cover for us. They're like they're either a magician or a Kri-Gi. Too many drinks at lunch, kind of a guy. The one thing, one exception I will say is, and also like whenever we're listeners are ring guys, hey, God bless you, do whatever you want.

No. Okay. Ritch says no. Right. It says no. Yeah. I guess ring guys aren't welcome according to our producer of Shellton range. Turn it the fuck off.

I think there is a place. Ring guy tears streaming down his face. There's a place at which your aura outpaces the rings. Yeah. And like if you're like that kind of a guy, then it doesn't matter. Yeah. But that's a rare, that's a rare Venn diagram overlap. You know, the ultimate ring guy is Sonic.

Sonic is kind of the ultimate ring guy. So it's a good point, Matt. And, you know, he's never really outpacing the rings because he's running right into them getting them for himself. He can't get enough of them. Yeah. You're shaking your head like, you mean no, but you also kind of have to admit that I'm right. Because I am right. And it's okay.

Yote, you're still having a ball with. Having a ball with Yote. You put a substantial number hours into the game and do it at this point. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because I've been waking up at 5.30 in the morning from like errors in sleep. Yeah. And playing until I go to work in the morning. Wow. So I've gotten, I think I'm above 50 hours now. Wow. Because it's typically too early for me to write at 5.30. Yeah. But I can have coffee and play Ghost of Yote. And so yeah, I'm, I don't know, murking my way across

the landscape. Wow. It's fucking great. Wow. How about you, Nick? What are you playing? Heather, thank you so much for asking. I enjoyed asking. Yeah. I like being asked. Okay, great. Nick, what do you play? plan. Matt, I liked hearing that, too. Didn't like it as much, but that's okay. No, I also liked it. I just like it was, I liked it too. I like both versions. It wasn't a competition

and I wasn't trying to win or anything. Fuck. Ranch? What are you playing? That one was working for me. Okay, interesting. Interesting that mine's last somehow. You did good. You did a good job. Everyone did great.

What are you playing? Tell us. Thanks for asking Matt. I've been playing a game that I've been anticipating for some time that is on PC GameBass from Obsidian, The Outer Worlds 2. Whoa! Now, I really enjoyed Outer Worlds 1, which came out back in 2019, which I can't believe, year one of our podcast. Yeah. That's fucking, that made me want to edit.

But, like, the, I was, I was just, like, that was one of those things where, man, the slow decay of time. that was like pre-pandemic and then like six years happened now we're with part two but but i did like part one it was a little bit less robust than this game which is which feels like a straight-up triple a game it has it's a much more expansive design as higher production values and apparently had a development cycle that was about twice as long so it is a it is a it is a meaty boy that feels very polished um and is uh you know i've heard some performance issues but it's running pretty pretty well on my gaming PC, um, so far. I love the writing and the acting. It has this satirical tone, uh, which is obviously, you know, it's, it's coming from, uh, the, some creators of

fallout. Uh, also, you know, like it evokes bioshop to some degree, like also with its aesthetics, but it's that sort of thing. Like, like, like basically, if you want to call this game, these games, and I know, I know people know this and I know people are playing this, but if you're not familiar, if you want to basically characterize this as fallout in space, you really wouldn't be wrong. That's pretty much what it is. And so it's kind of like fallout grafted onto mass effect. Okay. Right down to like you

having like a kind of a ship that you're flying around in that you can go to different biomes which are represented by planets here. But yeah, it's like genuinely funny. It's got like a ton of time of interesting dialogue options that are like feel substantially

different. It feels like a you know like a And like a game, like I'm not saying it's necessarily on this tier yet as I'm playing it, but like a disco Elysium or a Baldur's Gate 3 type of thing where it feels like, oh, these are substantial choices that change how the game is played. And it feels like I can really, you know, roleplay this thing as far as going through these dialogue trees. And hey, I love when people remember things. Don't you love that in a game when someone will remember this?

I do like it. Even if it's a choice that I was not proud of, because I'm like, I'm interested narratively how they're going to be upset with me later. Right. Yeah. That's my only experience of playing these games. So the character creation in Outer Worlds 2 is really fun.

Obviously, me being me, as I've talked about before, one of the default options was pretty much good to go. physically, I basically just change the facial hair and eye color, and then there we go. I was looking at a mirror. But it's also one of those games where it's like cyberpunk, it's an FPS. So for me, I didn't want to spend a ton of time in the character creator. But, you know, it's fun if you want to tweak the physical aspects a little bit. What's really interesting is getting into who your character is and how you're going to roleplay it.

The character has backgrounds, like as options. So you can choose, like, basically, like, are you a long? man were you like a professor were you kind of like a rogue I went with gambler that's awesome yeah you know you got to know when to hold him you got to know one to fold him fuck yeah I'd lean into it but no I was like

I was like this isn't normally what I would pick but that feels kind of fun and it feels kind of like the kind of choice to make in this game and also you know reminds me of Han Solo and his famous dice that's the thing that I was hoping you'd get to because when I

think of Han Solo well first of all when I think of gambler, I think of Han Solo first. Yes, yeah. And then then I think of his famous dice more than anything. I love those things. I hope he made it to Canto Bight before he got fucking iced by I hope that. Because he would have loved it.

Maybe they did like a sort of family vacation before things went south. That would have been fun. Can you imagine how cute that would be? Like did you take in little Ben Solo, Leia and Han, young parents going to Canto Bight? And you know Chewy's there too. You know, Chewy's going to tag along

Yeah, he's part of the family Do you think that's maybe part of I know that like They sort of made it so that like You know, Kylo A Ben Solo going to the dark side Was sort of like the big thing That Leia and Hans' relationship

Like couldn't stand Yeah Do you think maybe I don't know Chewy being around so fucking much That they couldn't ever have a moment to themselves It was kind of like a fableman sort of situation With Seth Rogan

Like who's this guy just lingering all the time What's going on? Wait a minute I got to watch some home movies Get at the bottom of this Yeah Ben Solo

Just watching He watches what Like the Empire Strikes back He's watching 8mmeter film Yeah he's watching Empire Strikes back Wait a minute Wait wait

How do they have that My mom kissing Kissing her brother What the hell? My uncle Anyway so You pick your background And then

From there And that affects Some of your dialogue Options And then you have your Traits And your traits And your traits

Are tangible bonuses To your character So for me, I took two of them, lucky, which gives you a boost to a crit chance and also gives you additional dialogue options, as a lot of these do. And brilliant, which brilliant allows you to take an additional skill, which we'll get to in a second, or I give you an additional bonus skill. So the way traits work is that you can take one for free or you can take two, but you have to take a negative one as a tradeoff. And that is really fun. And I was just like, I kind of want to do that. So I took Lucky, I took Brilliant, and then the negative traits are abrasive, which basically gives you a charisma penalty.

You can never go above neutral with any sort of faction. It's basically saying you're just annoying. Yeah. And I was just like, I just don't want to role play an annoying guy. Would have been a good fit for you. Whyger should have taken abrasive? Go let that person in. I don't know, but come on, leave me alone.

I'm trying to live my life. Yeah. I listen the podcast every week, and I like her is abrasive. I listen every week, so I think I can make fun of you the same way that they make fun of you on the show. Anyway, so you have abrasive, which is criminal penalty. You have dumb, which just means you're a fucking idiot. and it also limits the number of, I think, skills you can take bonuses from. I went with Sickly, and Sickly gives you a penalty to your health.

But I was like, you know what? I'm playing this game on normal. I'm not necessarily worried about the difficulty. I think I can take like a 15% bonus to my maximum, or I'm sorry, penalty to my maximum health just to mess around with another trait. And then as far as skills go, like I took lock picking, medical. And then observation, which just sort of like, you know, gives you more environmental cues. But again, like, like, like something like medical as I was playing opens up a surprising number of dialogue options. Yeah.

Which is an additional possibilities for solving, you know, like solving quests, solving puzzles and what have you. So we know the drill with these sorts of games. There's a cold open slash tutorial and then a time jump. And, you know, and then when you have the time jump, it's the, the one time you can respect. After playing, because the rest of the game, I guess, respects are just not a possibility. It's like, you're really, like, just locking into things, which I kind of like, as opposed to cyberpunk, it felt like, Cyberpunk 2077, which is a natural comparison for this game,

even though tonally, I guess tonally, it's also, cyberpunk is also satire, just like that's, like, more of an edge lord approach. This one's a little bit smarter and more wholesome. Yeah. And I really like cyberpunk. We all love cyberpunk here. Oh, yeah. But anyway, but the, that one you can, you can respeck endlessly.

And in fact, most of these, like most games like this, you can respect endlessly, right? Like you can, like sometimes there's some sort of currency cost or something like that. But usually you can just do whatever the fuck. You can completely change your build part way through. I do kind of like that, like, no, this one, you're going to roleplay this character and you're just going to stick with them all the way through. It seems like a fun way to play it. And I like just kind of committing something.

However, when I did have the opportunity of respect, through the first section, I found lock pick to be pretty boring. And basically, since I was using the brilliant trait, what it pretty much got me was the skill of lock pick because I got a bonus skill that I could pick. I was just like, I don't know if I need this. I don't know if the tradeoff of being able to lock pick is worth the health penalty. So, you know, I just ditched brilliant and sickly and got rid of lock pick and just sort of simplified my character a little bit.

He's a lucky gambler, which feels like the kind of thing that, again, the game is sort of steering you towards, but why not lean into it? I love the palette of this game. Like, art-wise, I love the environmental design. I think the art direction is very strong. You know, it's not the most, like, like, absolutely, technically gorgeous game on the market, but it's a good looking game with, again, just a good aesthetic. When you get to the first planet, especially, I just, like, love the way the environment looks. It's very lush. It's really distinct. One thing I'll say about the combat, I think it's like, you know, it's, it's FPS combat, which is, like, I think it's well executed.

It seems to be, it seems to be fun so far. The stealth kind of feels like I'm compared to cyberpunk again, cyberpunk stealth. It's that not super robust FPS sort of like, you know, just line of sight stuff. There's not a ton you can do with it. There's some distractions that you can have that you can create, but it doesn't feel like there's, as I was stealth in my way through a big part of the early game, I was just like, I don't know how much fun I'm having doing this. I feel like I'd rather just kind of start blasting.

You know what I mean? I do. Yeah. And also there's a piece of gear, speaking of cyberpunk, like the Sandeveston, which lets you dilate time, which is pretty fun. Hell yeah. Yeah. That's what you say, right? Sandeviston.

San Devastin? San Devastin? I don't know. Who remembers? We put collectively like 600 hours into this game. We don't have said. All three of us played it twice? We all played it twice.

We all watched Edge Runners twice. It's all just like, it's all gone. All the creases are just fully smooth now. What a waste of a life. No, it's worth it. Even the dumbest, the dumbest life possible is worth it. Overall, I'm really enjoying it so far. I think it's fun, it's funny, and I think it's just a cool, vibrant, well-fleshed-out world.

I love the world building. I love this satire. I like that it lays it on thick. And because, you know, why not? It's like reality is a fucking cartoon. Oh, no, you go. And hey, if you like The Outer Worlds, be sure to check out my episode

of Secret Level on Amazon Prime where I wrote an Outer Worlds animated short. Hell yes. With CG. Would you say the game, the second one, is worth jumping in on if you had not played the first one?

Yeah, I don't think you need to play the first one. Okay. I think it seems very, It's very self-contained. I am interested in it. And I think I own the first one on multiple platforms because I was like, oh, it's on sale. And it's like just always now on sale, it's like $10 and I'll just get it. Like maybe I'll play it on this and just like, I never, never played it.

I bought a game on Steam sale this weekend for 74 cents. I was like, I guess I'll just do that. Am I going to play it? No. But 74 cents are a game. With Fallout New Vegas on, I bought it on Xbox because it was. It was like $2. I was like, oh, yeah, I'll just have this because I don't have game pass right now.

It's like if I ever feel like playing my Xbox again, maybe I'll play Fallout in New Vegas. But, you know, who knows? Who knows? So that's what we're playing, right? That's right. But what about the greater world? What were they playing? It's interesting to consider.

What was the greater world playing? Yes, what was the greater world playing? I just talked about the outer worlds, but what about the greater world, meaning this blue marble we all stand upon called Spaceship Earth? Me personally, I don't think it's a Marvel. I think it's like a blue sheet of paper or something. Oh. Kind of like a thing of Plexiglass. We're just standing on top of it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just kidding. A horrid thing to think. I think they're about a thousand worse things. Honestly, give me back. Bring back flat earthers. Remember when people were concerned about flat earthers? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

God bless them. It's all, even the most benign sort of like conspiracy, though, is always rooted in something bad. Yeah. But, yeah, at least when you could sort of like be like, well, actually, no, this is a fucking globe, you idiot. This one's pretty easy to prove. I feel like if you dig like six layers deep on basically like any conspiracy theory, that's hard, it's just I'm racist. Yeah, 100%. Yeah, I remember talking to a guy on a, when I was a friend's bachelor party, and he was in the Navy, and I just was sitting next to him.

I didn't know this guy very well. so I just asked a question that I immediately regret it because I was like, oh, maybe I don't actually know what this person thinks about this. And I just immediately, I just asked, hey, does it bother you when people ask you if the earth is flat or not? And he goes, I've seen the fucking curve.

I lived on a ship for years. And I'm like, all right, this is my guy. And then we got wasted in Vegas. I'm right now, right now, though, because I feel like that was like a gauntlet that was thrown down. I do think maybe. that we didn't land on the moon

is not a racist conspiracy theory. Sure. I was, I was being hyperbolic. I was, I was like really going in on it. I was really going in on it. I was like,

yeah, you could make an argument that certain J.F.K. ones are still racist because of Lee Harvey Oswald. Like, you can, like, navigate your way there.

Maybe the moon landing is just pure. Moon landing is like, is base, Fun. Like, that is a fun one. I will let you have that. Oh, you don't think that. It's interesting. They showed it on the news and stuff. I mean, it's, look, again, compared to a lot of what we're dealing with, it's relatively harmless. But it is like one of those things where you're denying scientific reality. And you're, you know, you're saying that the media is lying. What I'm not saying the media doesn't like is always 100% truthful. But it's like those are those kinds of things, those sorts of doubts about institutions are one thing that is kind of poison. the well about discourse and politics in general. Without the conspiracy, you don't get Buzz Aldrin punching a guy. That's true. That's pretty fun.

That was really funny when I did punch that guy. What about Mr. Mime is Ash's dad? That's pretty good. That's pretty good. That one doesn't have racist undertones, does it? Well, actually, you got to dig deep. You haven't seen what I've seen on the internet. No, no, no. That one seems fine. I regret

saying the racist thing. I was making a joke. I was not arguing a thesis to be defended. A lot of them do go that way I'm chewing on it I'll say A lot of them do go that way I would say 95% to 99%

I agree with you Here's a conspiracy A new one that I've dropped it I texted this in the group chat last night I think something's going on Between the red M&M and the yellow M&M They're not in commercials right now together They're putting yellow with green

They're putting yellow with orange What's going on those are the guy There's some sort of schism going on They're just like yeah The two big guys The classic comedy duo from the Santa, they do exist spots, is just, they're, they seem to have fractured. Red is plain and yellow is peanut?

Yeah, that's right. Oh, I don't know the ads, but I already, I have, it's enough of a per, perm, it's permeated culture enough. Yeah, it's permeated enough that I know. They all have their individual, their individual personalities. They do? Yeah, oh, yeah, they're all, they're all, and they're all like interesting characters. Oh, right, because yellow's dumb.

Yellow's dumb. Red is kind of like, you know. Oh, and there's one that's like a slut, right? The green one? Well, hang on. I don't know if I call her a slut, but yes. She's the one where you can see her vagina online. The green one is supposedly the horny one.

I think it's more she makes people horny. But the brown one also makes people horny. Look, the female ones make people horny. Those are their attributes. They're sex objects. Nobody wants to fuck the male M&M's, the blue ones, or the, the, the, the, the, the female ones are incredibly fuckable

Is the blue one a girl too? I think so actually I don't know Is the blue brown and blue Are ladies? You know what? I think it's just green and brown I'm not sure about blue

Yeah yeah yeah And then the orange is the Blue's like Hey guys Orange is caramel Right Yeah orange is caramel Or peanut butter

I think it might depend Anyway They're not in the commercials Right now And I think something's going on Yeah And the Mars corporations Silence on this issue

is deafening. I like to hear it and it's not an ad. It's just Apodaka talking about Eminies. I've seen two different commercials where the two guys,

the two stars, you wouldn't put, you wouldn't put you wouldn't put Garfunkel with a different guy. You wouldn't put I'm a Mac,

I'm a PC. With the Verizon guy. Yeah, you wouldn't be like I'm a Verizon. Yeah, you wouldn't do it. But just like you're just taking Justin. Long. Like Justin Long is being, I'm a Mac guy, and he's the Verizon guy. You'd be like,

what's going on? You wouldn't do it. Between him and Hodgman. Yeah. I'm a Mac and I'm a KitchenAid. Paskett played guest, John Hodgman. That's right. The PC. Okay, I came on and just talked to an untitled goose game. Did we ever talk to him about PC gaming, actually? We should have done that. What a missed opportunity. There's so many sort of different sliding doors windows where you're like thinking this show could be good. If we had asked a question like that, that would have been great. The show is good, But if we'd made Colton a fourth host. Colon, Amy, here's a thing.

We'd all be the richest people a lot. You hit your wagon, the Colton done? Forget it. But you were teeing us up for the... Yes, what about the games of the greater world? That's right. We're talking GOTY Watch, GoT-Watch, Go-T-Watch, 2025. I mean, Matt, how are you thinking we should go through this?

I was kind of just thinking... I actually pulled up a list of, like, just like, some of the big games from this year that are... yes um by many by many publications count in contention for game of the year sure and i thought we would just kind of go through them possibly one by one and uh and and talk about them or i could just read the list right now let's let's take them one at a time okay uh well the first one on the list here is is on my list that i'm working off of anyway and then i also i thought about this real quick too i'll just i'll just flag this as a as a potentiality i have a metacritic

list of games released in this year by their meta score. Yes. And I just think that's just interesting data to see where we're at. The first two are, of course, I'll just read this real quick, are Legend of Zelda Tears the Kingdom Switch 2 edition and Breath of the Wild Switch 2 edition. I don't think that counts, of course. No, I don't think those. I mean, like, even if you wanted to say they were technically qualified, if we're talking about what's going to be considered the consensus game of the year by the time this, we move on to

2026, it is not going to be either of those. No. It's not going to be re-releases with upgrades for a new platform. If the metascores are to be believed, the highest rated game of this year is Hades 2. Okay, so Hades 2 is an interesting case. I love Hades 2. I loved Hades 1, one of my favorite games. And Hades 2 comes out five years later, definitely improves upon it, iterates upon it, is a, like, like, you

already like a perfectly tuned gameplay experience that is just even more expansive and refined and polished. The thing that I think Hades 2 is missing is novelty. Like I feel like because Hades itself won, I think Game of the Year at the Game Awards in 2020. Yes. It was just, it was just already like such a, or was it 2021, whatever year came out. I think it was 2020.

I think it was. And it like it already has. that commendation, it's kind of hard to see Hades II repeating when it is, in a lot of ways, in a very good way. And, you know, for people who are deeper into the game than me and maybe have a different take, I don't want to mischaracterize it. But it is kind of more of the same. It is like a, like, hey, you know, this is how do you improve upon perfection?

Well, you know, it's like, this is, again, just such a well-crafted game. Let's just do an even, an even better version of it. and that's what a lot of Hades 2 feels like to me. Yeah, I think, I mean, I have not completed Hades 2 yet. I'm still just something I'd like to get back to. I spent quite a few hours with it, though, I think at least more than 10 hours with it. Something that I think about with Hades 2 in particular,

it's that it's a real example to me of you're damned if you do, you're damned if you don't. Because I feel like after playing at Hades 1, there was like not maybe a groundswell, but there were probably people that were like, wow, I loved this game so much. I wish there was more of it. I wish that there was another one I could play immediately

that was just like this. And then that exact thing comes out where it is more of it and it's just like that. And it's just kind of like, okay, yeah, like it's good. It's exactly as good as you wanted it to be, but like, you know, that's still sometimes not enough. That's also the curse of death stranding too. Yes.

Was people were like, I love death stranding. I want more death stranding. And they got a refined and elevated version of Death Stranding and Stranding 2 that continued the story. And a lot of the complaints, mine included, was that, oh, this is the same game. And in fact, less weird in some way. Let's come back to Death Stranding, too. Let's take these one at the time.

But I think that's the, I think there's the difference between Death Stranding and its sequel and Hades and its sequel is that Hades was universally lauded. Yes. And Death Stranding, the first one, was a little bit more polarized in terms of. of its reaction, especially initially. Yeah. But Hades 2, like, it's, hey, there's a case that it's maybe the best rogue light ever and because, you know, it's a better version of Hades 1. But I just think the absence of novelty and again, the fact that Hades 1 already kind

of, you know, like, like tick that box already has that trophy. I think it'll just be a little bit harder for Hades 2 to repeat. But we'll see. And the thing that Hades 1 has over Hades 2, for me, me is Hades 2 doesn't have Dusa Yeah I mean Yeah but I mean

But I mean this is the thing like First off I'm not deep enough into the game where Yeah maybe do some extra Actually you know what it's a good point I'd say retract it Matt I'd say retract it Matt I don't look like a fool At this stage I don't have enough information

I must retract I'm sorry I deeply Apologized to anybody have offended by you know mischaracterizing whether or not Dusa is in the game or not. And this will be, no, this will be in a notes app. And this is actually a good time for me to just, like, maybe listen and learn a little bit.

Yeah, bring back the notes app apology. In fact, be one of those guys who writes it up on an iPad and it takes a picture of it with your phone. Always like that move. I don't know how to take a screenshot, but I did have this. I was going to say the, the, the, the, the, but you do bring up something interesting about Hades 2 specifically, which is that because it's like a,

largely a new roster of NPCs, People's reactions to it may partly be like, I miss my guys, I miss my old friends, you know what I mean? It's kind of like a, not exactly, but like a new, you know, a new Final Fantasy. It's like a whole new roster of individuals to, you know, and you may just have more affection for a previous cast. It would be interesting if, I mean, it'd be a completely different world, of course, if Final Fantasy was like, it's the same people every time. You get the same people, every game it's the same people. Well, you always got a Cid. Yeah, you always get a Cid.

You know, there are some constants. Yeah. I guess it would be more like Resident Evil, I guess, where, like, sometimes the characters just, like, are back. Yeah. Should we do, like, how, what are you thinking for this, Matt? Should we have, like, a list as we're going? Should we, or should we just kind of basically say whether we think it will or won't?

I think there's a case for Hades 2, but I just don't think it's the front run. I have a, I have a spicy take that I just want to, I just want to rush to the finish line here. Yeah. And I have a spicy take. Go for it. And it's not because I thought this game was perfect. It's not because I thought that this game wasn't frustrating. I think Game of the Year is Blueprints.

I think there's a strong case for Blueprints. The thing is because certainly its initial reaction was so rapturous. And it is so distinct and singular. And it is a really, really impressive achievement. And, you know, certainly indie designs are very often lauded when these commendations come down. So I could very much see it at being Blueprints. It's hard for me to say

about any other game that I had an experience in that game that I had absolutely truthfully never had before. And though, obviously, you know, if you listen to our Blueprints episode,

we spend more than half of that episode complaining about the shortcomings and frustrations. Yeah, people did listen to it and they did get mad. Of Blueprints. But...

I can't think of a game that I will always think back on and always remember. For example, the first time I played Demon Souls, I was like, oh, this is a shift. Like the first time I play, you know, like, the first time you play a Mario game, you're like, oh, this is a shift. With Blueprints, I was like, there are going to be games, and this is the genesis of this thing. And they're going to be descendants of Blueprints. Yeah, I mean, I had that feeling playing vampire survivors fairly recently, which I talked about. And obviously, that's been, that's become a whole thing, you know, like that game like Ball Pit owes its existence. Megabong.

Yeah, exactly. There's all these games now. It's, the, you know, the sort of auto shooter genres all comes from that. So I'm sure there will be Blueprints derivatives that will, you know, for sure. Blueprints likes. It was not my personal favorite game of the year. Like, that's also important to say is that I think that in terms of whatever the metric is here, I'm not saying Heather's game of the year. I'm saying what was the game of the year.

It's really hard for me to see an argument against Blueprints. Go on. I was going to say, like, it does sort of, the experience of playing the game sort of does mirror the year itself in a certain way where, like, you go into one room and it's not what you wanted at all. And you go into a different room. You're like, well, this is worse, actually. And then you're like, okay, what are my options for another room? Like, okay, none of these help me. Yeah, this is all bad.

I'm just fucked. I guess I'll start over. Actually, that's the difference. You can't start over in this reality. Yeah. Like, I guess maybe if I go to sleep, I'll clean the slate. Try again. No, yeah.

You're just stuck with the same shitty house now. You just wake up and you have this shitty house and that's where you live. Atonda Ross, the developer who, you know, made it solo, a labor of love. And just such an, again, we didn't necessarily personally respond to it. My big issue with blueprints is I just thought it was not, like, respectful of the user's time. Though I know some people, though I did put a ton of hours into it and I was transfixed by it for a while, I know a lot of people have put a hundred plus hours into it and just like love getting super deep into the lore and figuring out absolutely every secret in this thing. All of the lateral thinking puzzles are really impressively crafted. Just the core design, this sort of rogue like kind of pipe dream sort of like building a house as you go and just sort of like all these decision points.

that you have to go, that you have to make like really, really just like incredible stuff. As far as your argument, Heather, yeah, if we're going through these, I think Blueprints has a stronger case than Hades, too, for winning game to year, just because of the novelty and also because the solo dev story is so, the kind

of thing that I think the gaming press graphs on to. I saw a clip of blueprints, like within the last couple of days of somebody doing a puzzle that I had never seen. I was like, I played so much of this fucking game. What is this person doing? I never even seen that before.

They're like screwing a faucet in or a rabbit. It was the grid. It was like an image of the same grid that you're building houses on, but there was a single letter at the bottom of it, and it was like a letter puzzle. So you have to then figure out what other letters occupy which space is based on something. I can't remember exactly what it was, but then you use that to like, that's a clue somehow.

Not for me. Yeah, no, no, no, can't do that. It's the kind of thing you read about this, and it's like the individual spent eight years making this game and then I just rewind the clock eight years and I was like what was I doing man just imagine like if I just like started now I was like hey you know what I'm to spend eight years on a creative project something that like I care about and that I want to make that's going to be fully my own it may not have the sort of I mean it would it would not have the sort of success of some of a blueprints because

it's like such a like it's a phenomenon and people are speed running this game but it's like the kind of thing of like like i bet that would be an incredibly creatively satisfying endeavor to come out on the other side of it i feel like a million bucks i don't think so i i disagree like when i turn in scripts i get so depressed like for like for like three days afterwards i'm in an emotional and creative creator yeah and i think that my experience of like giving birth to these fucking anything that i make yeah like if it's a show if it's a script if it's anything like a drawing I always feel so miserable on the other side yeah and I think a lot about when I I think a lot about the way Hideyakiano talks about evangelicalian ruining his life

when I have very small moments of creative output then that then leave me miserable and I think if I spent eight years on a project no matter how it was received there's a likelihood I'd need to be committed afterwards. I, like, I, you know, when I, when I, when I, when I, when I, when I, when I, when I, when I, I, when I, when I, when I used to, when I used to, when I used to make videos, when I, when I, I, I, finish a video and, and, and finish editing a video and post it and see the, even if the reaction was, like, muted, but sometimes the reaction would be, like, people would love it.

I, I know, Heather, I know you just used to make videos as well. It's like, I, I, I, I, I, I don't feel that, the, like, that sort of reaction that you have. Like, I don't have that feeling of emptiness. necessarily i more i'm necessarily i more feel like like a series like a feeling of finality and like like accomplishment um but also so often i'm doing things that are just for hire and i guess maybe that's the sort of thing you're talking about when so like like that's the difference i guess i'm saying it's like something that's purely passionate a passion project versus something

where i'm like doing this for money that's those are the ones where i have a little bit of of emptiness afterwards for me i hope to have a good idea someday um yeah i think blueprints more so than Hades, too. I think that's a good argument, Heather. We should also talk about Claire Obscure Expedition 33. Yes, I do want to talk about this because a lot has been made about this particular game and this particular show, I think. How so? Because people on, like, on the Discord in particular, great community of folks.

Yeah. Truly, like, honestly, in the last couple of weeks, I will say, just as somebody who, I think, of the three of us is in there with the people, honestly, have just been, like, really, like, like, honestly, like, touched and just blown away by the community. The people, they're all so nice in there. I thought that was going, oh, the good way. They, I feel like they all, they all help each other in different ways, too. Like, somebody had an issue with, like, figuring out how to get their Patreon sorted out.

And the community stepped up and helped this person. I was like, this is just great. I just, this is what you hope for when people listen to the show and get together. No, it's a wholesome community over there. Yeah, I really love it. They're all really good. Is Discord.g.g.g. slash get played?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They are really great. They're all so lovely and nice, but they piss me the fuck off when they talk about me not finishing Claire Obscure Expedition 33 and I'm like, look, sorry, I do want, it is a game that I intend to pick back up.

I would love to pick it back up once, but like this year, there were games that, like, because Claire Obscure for me came out of nowhere, kind of, right? Like, for a lot of people, I think it took people by surprise. It's this turn-based French JRP that people just were just delighted and surprised by. And I was too when we played it for the little bit that we played it. But there were other games this year that I personally was more hyped for that when they came out, I had to put away childish things.

How dare you? Yeah, how dare you? I think this game I think this game rocks I like like I'll speak for myself and I this has been a this has been a really trying year for me both just in terms of I've I've gotten extremely busy which is a great which is a great problem to have I'm very very lucky to be to be working more but I've just like I've gone from being uh you know like like a like very to having a lot of from having a lot of time for gaming to having minimal time for gaming so I unfortunately games like Claire Obscure which I normally would have devoured I've just had minimal time to get into, and then also as we're going, as the years been going, I've been battling some mental health issues, which has also made it harder for me to focus on as particularly more expansive gaming experiences. I do think Claire Obscure is a triumph. I loved the parts of it that I played. My brother, my alpha brother, Nate, is almost done with it. He loves this game.

We got to get Nate on the show. Nate rocks. Yeah, do it. But anyway, it's such an impressive design and also like akin to blueprints, like you were saying, like Matt, just to reiterate that it is kind of out of nowhere. It just wasn't on anyone's radar. And I think that's a sort of story that people like when they're awarding a game of the year. Yes. I think that, I mean, not to jump too far ahead. I do think that the story of Game of the Year this year is between Clare Obscure and Silk Song, probably. So you think you'd put Claire Obscure about blueprints because I would too. I think it probably have the ones we're going I think so. Not talking my personal order in terms of how these games are, I'm just talking

in terms of how they'd be ranked for a day later. Yeah, because I put blueprints all the way at the bottom if it was my personal list. I would be surprised if Silk Song, I wouldn't be surprised if Silk Song 1. Yes. Well, let's talk about Hollow Night's Silk Song, which I have not played. Ranch, you've played, and Matt, you've spent a ton of put a lot of time into. Yes. I've obviously not fallen off of it. And this is the thing I actually want to do we got to just rebrand this narrative we got it we fall it fell off of it uh no sweetie i put it away for a little bit i'm gonna get it back i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna get back to it uh just because i'm playing Pokemon doesn't mean i fell off a silk song i'm gonna i'm gonna get back to it

it's in the it's you know it's not so deep in my backlog that i'm not gonna not gonna see it to the end i'm gonna finish that game this year i think but it i you know i finished the first Hall of Night, the night before Silk Song came out. So I feel like I have a little bit of stolen valor there where, you know, lots of people waited for seven years. And I was just like, oh, great. Now it's ready for me. But even so, it's such an impressive feat. I think Team Cherry is three people. And all the reporting about why it took them so long was just that they kept thinking of stuff and having a good time making the game. And, you know, that's all you could hope for, and especially just with how tumultuous, you know, game production, game development

is, you hear about that on other studios. So, like, the fact they're able to stick to their vision and execute it in an extremely high-quality way, I think is extremely impressive. And then also just, like, I think the game fucking whips ass. It's so good and so fun. And even the parts that are very challenging, I just, I think are, it's just incredible. I think it's like, it's my personal favorite game this year. And you were saying it's creeping up of your favorite games all time. Yeah. And you like it better than Hollow Night. Oh, I think I like it like, at least twice as much. Twice as much as Hollow Night. Because it's harder. It's like there's like, not that I disliked the, I don't think, I don't think, oh, I don't think Hallinite's an easy game. Yeah.

At all. But like, I think that the, you know, it did my alpha brother Nate. He didn't actually say it was easy but he did 180% or whatever it was but it's also like in the same way that i like i i think death stranding one yeah is a more unique experience right but i think i like death stranding two more yeah sure because it's just it's just more fine so like you're just getting more out of the already good formula and i do think it's just like uh i just like it more i like um hornets move set more i like the things that they've added like crests and tools I really like, so I think that's just a little more exciting to me.

Ranch, what about you? What are you thinking about Silk Song these days? Do you like it more than Hollow Night? It's hard to say because since I also played Hollow Night pretty recently. It kind of feels like I'm playing the same game. Right. So I don't know if I, if there's like,

I feel like one is better than the other. I think I like both equally. Well, and it's also, I mean, Silk Song was at one point originally DLC for Hollow Night One. So it is really just like a lot of these sequels are 1.5s, right? Or it's like it's just

more, just a little bit better. But I do think yeah, there's just something, I wish, I hope that there's a certain point you have time to try it out and see what it's like. I would love to. I think you both would really love it. I'm sure I would.

And I also owe a full playthrough of Hollow Night, which has been you know, lingering for too long now. In my backlog, I will say that I think that my, my, as from my outsider's perspective, is that I would just compare Hollow Night's Silk Song to Hades 2, but it does seem like there's a little bit more, even though Hades 2 has a higher meta score, it does seem like Holonite Silk Song has more of a, like, just sort of, what's the word I'm looking for? More of an energy behind it, more momentum in terms of like people saying that this could potentially be the game

The year, again, maybe because Hades won was so lauded back in its day. I would say, all that said, where does Silk Song rank versus the other ones? I don't know. I could even see the groundswell for swinging back to Blueprints by the time we're making the, we're picking these awards versus Hollow Night Silk Song, which is benefiting a little bit from recency bias right now. I do think, though, that like the impact of the release of Silk Song, though, should be noted to hear as well because other games moved out of the way.

Like they self-delayed, even though they were basically about to come out at the same time. And just like just to get out of Silk Song's way. And the only other game that has done that, Granthadot 06 when it was supposed to come out, games moved out of the way to make room for granted 906 and then it didn't even end up making that, you know, shelf date. Yeah, I just think there's something, there's a, I don't know, there is an energy. It's like sort of like a, you know, kind of like not like a romantic story, but like, Like it is like there is like a bit of, I don't know, you kind of like that something like that people have wanted for so long came out and it was good.

That's a great point. It was like it could have been vaporware. It could have been like, you know, Guns and Roses Chinese democracy, this thing that's long promised and then ultimately kind of underdelivers or Duke Nukem forever. I mean, it was never going to be Duke Nukem forever, obviously. But I mean, just like like I'm hornet and I throw shit at people. What's that coming out of my dick? Oh, it's right. It's piss.

I forgot what piss was and where it came from. I shit, straight rice. And no, I know what you're thinking. That's not tapeworms. Let's talk about split fiction real quick. We should just touch on it because this is a game that I've seen on some of these lists. My case against split fiction, which is the co-op game. I fucked a stare.

And the other stares got jealous. I shaved my teeth down to look like little penises. It is hard to stop doing here. It's not hard to stop. My pubes tell me to do things.

So split fiction I want to marry my computer My computer said no to my proposal We're in couples counseling You gotta help me I threw my computer in the dumpster Don't know if I got a new computer Oh no we killed Heather

The thing Here's what I'll say about split fiction I think it's awesome that a company is making games like this. I think it's cool to me making co-op games. Totally good. Because co-op is, you know, that was like me and my brother's only played games together and stuff. So, like, that was, this would have, if I was, if I was like 20 years younger and this game was out, I'd be so excited to be playing this with my brother. We got to release a mod.

We should just record, like, a thousand of these. Just release a mod for Duke Nuke. My favorite candle scent is carrot. My dick plays co-op with my balls. But only one of them. The other one won't participate. He's jealous. So here's here would be my one argument against split fiction.

Which I have not played. I don't think any of us have played this game. No. I put a sandwich in my ass the wide way. I'm going to get my ass crack surgically removed. I want an outy butthole. Why don't they make steak-flavored gum? Because it takes two one game of the year at the Game Awards, I just don't think they're going to do it.

I just don't think it's going to be repeated with split-factor. They can't risk it. They can't let that guy on stage and let him cuss. They can't do it. But I just, I feel like there's, there's other options that are maybe just like a little bit less niche and a little bit more. I kind of wish I played it because like the stuff I've seen if it looks fucking awesome. And I just, it's hard to, you know, a game like that if you don't have somebody in the house who wants to play who, because like I feel like that, it's not just like playing Mario Kart or even just at a sort of. sort of like casual game.

These games are like, you have to like really know how to play games and like play like difficult platforming sections. So like getting my wife to like play a game like this, we would just never finish it. No, I mean, that's one thing I've heard about this just in terms of people

who are criticizing this game again. I haven't played myself is, is that it is a little bit challenging and because very often co-op is like, oh, I'm going to play with my non-gaming partner. I'm going to play with my kid. You know what I mean? It's like who maybe is, you know,

not like some kids are awesome at games. my kids a little bit younger. It's like you maybe want it to be a little bit more generous or have some sort of assist mode or something like that that makes it just like

a little bit easier to get through. When I have a kid and they're bad at games they're going to go to bed with no dinner. Matt. I love it. Oh, you got a game over

and split fiction with me? Go to your fucking room. I love it. Wait till their mom here's about this. I'm going to be in so much trouble. Go to your room, Duk-Nookum. My dad grounded me in the bathroom. My bed is the toilet.

My best friend is a soap dispenser. I, yeah, but it, like... What is this game? What is that happening? I can't get a feel for who this guy is. The character's just like obviously in a straight jacket. It's all over the place. Yeah, I wish that there was like a, I mean, maybe there is, like, maybe in an assist mode or like maybe you can adjust the difficulty, you know, on the other side of it, right?

I know, but like, I know that there's a version of it where you could play it with a friend who's not in the house. They're like, if you buy the game, you can get a code and send them the code and they can, they can play it with you, which I think is really cool too. No, I did play It Takes 2, and I played It Takes 2, and I played it takes 2 remotely. And I played, you know, yeah, so I imagine it's the same thing that was supposed to do we shouldn't spend too much time speculating about this. This info was out there. Yes. Do we just, we just can't speak to a first hand. No.

Donkey Kong, Bonanza, I loved, I love Bonanza. Ooh, banana. Oh, banana. Oh, banana. Oh, Bono, no, no. He's holding grapes. I don't think Bonanza is going to win. Even though it's so, so fun.

It's such a hoot. It's such a blast. And I think it's just like, it's like such a, again, a triumph for what it's trying to do. It is a big game, maybe bigger than it needs to be. Yeah, I could have shaved five levels off of it easily. Just like Donkey Kong himself. Too big. Maybe just a little too big.

And maybe, you know, just does not quite have enough to it versus some of these other games that are a little bit more substantial. And also, I just think I think the fact that it's just sort of like this, it's a platformer is just going to be a little bit of a strike against it in terms of it actually winning the award. I feel like I've seen a lot of people considering Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, which I know you spent some time with Heather. Gentlemen, let me say that this game was a triumph. Wow. It was a thrill. It was as granular or as broad as you wanted it to be. I never got out of the starting area.

I played at least 12 hours, if not 20, of the game. Yeah. There was so much to do that it reminded me of being a child. with a copy of like, I think it was called Daggerfall. Oh yeah. Where it was just like a game that was just like, I was like not,

I was a baby and I was given a world. And I was like, what do I do? And I think I just spent most of the time in like three houses in that game. And that's very much what my experience of, kingdom come deliverance was, was I went to like four houses

and I was so over. overwhelmed with the freedom and the and the scalability of that freedom like the like do I want to talk to this cop or whatever they were nights cops whatever do I want to talk to that cop and like see if there's a relationship to be had there so that I can do a thing later like it's it's massive massive massive and I don't know I think I think for people who want to that kind of game. I think about you a lot when I think about that game. I'm sure I would love it if ever I'd dedicate some time to it. That for people who want

that kind of game, that kind of game is like the apex of that kind of game. It was staggering. And I can't believe I got it on a whim and then probably spent an hour and a half

in the menu screen being like, wait, I can change the thread on my pants? It's like, why do I need to do this? Yeah. It was, it's, I don't know, I, I, I look back fondly, I'm afraid of it. I don't, I'm afraid of it.

It could consume you if you let it. It's like, it's like being like, I want to read a fantasy novel and somebody hands you the entirety of everything Brandon Sanderson has ever written and the, and the book list just goes down the block. And it's like, okay, I'll start on page one. And like, maybe I'm going to read like, I don't know, 100 pages of this over and over again and then look down and there's still 52,000 pages to read. It was crazy.

And it was gorgeous. Yeah. Not game of the year. Yeah, I've heard nothing but good things about this. I think for this exercise, I can't imagine it winning game of the year just because I don't think enough people will have played it. And I also just kind of feel like it's, you know, it's. if we look at some of these other games,

there's just a little bit more critical consensus behind them. But speaking to sequels that were considered substantial improvements over the original Death Stranding 2 on the beach. Now, this is one, going back to this, you were talking about this earlier, Heather. And I want you to like please, if there's anything else you want to fill in, please do so. But like, I think Death Stranding 2 on the beach actually is a very strong case, partly because it is just like, like, Death Stranding 1, people were like, What the fuck is this game?

A lot of people play, like, at first, a lot of people were like, this sucks, this is nothing, this is a walking simulator, what is going on? And then over time, especially the director's cut comes out. There becomes more of a fan community behind it. There becomes more groundswell support. More people are like realizing kind of the genius of its core design and what it's saying about humanity and about our current world. And it becomes this, this like, this like beloved game. And then Death Stranding 2 on the beach comes out in the aftermath. of that, wherever one kind of understands what a Strand game is, and it just feels like

it has just, again, just like this rapturous reception upon its initial launch. I think that the, wasn't there like a game awards recently announced, like some, I don't, not the game awards, but a game awards. And I think Stranding only got four nominations. One was Troy Baker for Best Supporting Actor. One was, what's his name, Ludwig Fossil? Something like that for, no, no, no, the other guy. A Wood kid?

Yeah, yeah. For score. And then it got like an effects or something or like sound design. And none of the categories, and I didn't even investigate what this list was. It popped up on my Twitter feed because I follow Stranding on Twitter or Blue Sky or wherever the fuck I saw. But I was surprised that since this was an award show that clearly had both soundtrack and score and performance, that I would assume it would also be game of the year or like, you know, best game or best writing or whatever. And none of those categories were represented by this, again, thing I saw. Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, no, no, no.

You're doing the best you have with what information you have. Let me look it up. Let me look it up while you guys, while you guys. Well, muse a little bit. I would just say, like, I mean, Matt, you sunk a ton of time into Death Trending 2. Maybe just give us your thoughts. For me, I would say it's on my personal list. I have finished it, of course, so it kind of feels like, for me, it's between Silk Song and Death Stranding 2 if I had to pick,

even though Silk Song, as of now remains unfinished. Or your personal list. from my personal list. I do think it deserves a wider shot at Game of the Year just because of what we've said before that it just took everything about the first one and not only just refined

the systems and game plan stuff but somehow made it more normal like the Death Stranding 2 is I think less jarring of an experience for a new player than Death Stranding 1 is

and that's only simply because there was not a Death Stranding before so it felt crazy but because there's one there's a second one the second one just by default is more normal because you're used to it right so I and I do think that it you know but

people have asked if you could just play Death Stranding too and I'm like yeah you could you could but I think you got to experience the whole thing because it really is both it's not where like the second game is like a completely different story or something like that

the story of two the story of one is necessary for two like two doesn't happen without one so it is just I think it's a it's a triumph of course and I think it's maybe and this is gonna you know people who love Metal Gear Salt 5

are going to be coming from me with this I think it's Kojima's best game play in any game that he's made. I think it's all-time great stuff. But yeah, Death Stranding 2, I think there's a strong case for it. I wonder if the wider sort of quote-unquote gaming public agrees. I know it's highly reviewed, but I kind of feel like people are maybe more likely to go with a blueprints over a Death Stranding 2, I think.

May I read this list? Yeah, please. Because I found the list. It's the Golden Joystick Awards, which is the longest running game awards. that there are right um and so for your best storytelling you've got clear obscure silent hill f blueprints mafia the old country lost records and the hundred line for best multiplayer you've got battlefield six peak elden rain night rain split fiction mario cart world and rematch like there there's for best storytelling if you're not if you're not nominating stranding two for storytelling then it seems

to me like it's a little bit on the periphery of what might be considered game of the year. Because that's primarily what that game is doing, telling you a story. It's fucking telling you a story. Well, I guess, you know, we're prognosticating here. So it seems like that is something of an indicator that's some source that is saying that we're going to exclude it from the nominations. But I think we're talking about overall game of the year. I don't think it's like it would be out of the running. I would think that's trending 2 actually has a better chance of getting an award than Hades 2,

even though Hades 2 is maybe a bore or a better overall game but like less so than like Silk Song if we're comparing to we're talking direct sequels. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And certainly more so than Kingdom Come deliverance too. Oh yeah, by far.

It's not a shoe in but it's not completely out of the conversation. No, I think I think it's, I think there's a case that it like it could ultimately happen. So while we're talking sequels, we should touch on a couple that we've talked about in the podcast.

One we just talked about, I just talked about here. We'll see what happens. I think just like keep an eye on Outer Worlds, too. I don't think it will end up being Game of the Year. I think it's just like a little bit too. It's a little too specific and it's also like probably feels a little too familiar tonally because of the fallout, you know, like lineage that I don't think it will actually.

And the gameplay is not quite as, you know, revelatory as some of these other games. It's pretty conventional gameplay. But I'm really liking it so far. Ghost of Yote, the other one. Ghost of Sushima so well regarded such an awesome game. Ghost of Yote, I don't know, I could see a case for it, but also I could

see it being a sort of like a game that kind of gets lost in the shuffle because there's just so many heavy hitters this year. Yeah, there's just a lot of big dogs this year. Yeah, it wouldn't necessarily mean that obviously it doesn't mean this for any of these games that it's less than if it's not nominated in some way.

because, you know, it's arbitrary, of course. But I think, like, so far, the story of Ghost of Yote is unbelievable. It's like, it's a great, maybe one of my favorite stories of in a game that I've played this year. Yeah, it's been really satisfying to play it. And it's, you know what I like? What I didn't like, but now I like about Ghost of Yote is you can't skip through dialogue. Yeah, me too. Like, you have to watch it and you have to watch all of the scenes of all of the people giving these performances.

and you can't just tap, tap, tap. At first I was frustrated because I like to go to the next fight. But the longer I've played it, the more I'm like, wow, I really appreciate that I'm spending time theatrically in these moments where I get to really see some like acting on these characters' faces. Yeah, so far I haven't seen something that I was like, I wish I could have skipped that. It's always been pretty enjoyable to me.

I think, I mean, is there anything else we should note? I mean, I guess just because it's been an indie darling lately Ball Pit. I just kid, ball pit's awesome. I just can't see it winning if we're going for an indie over blueprints. Yeah, as much as I like Ball Pit, I don't think it has the same sauce that Vampire Survivors has. Like, even though it's... Yeah, that's a good point. It's similar in how you play it, but I think you got to do a lot to sort of get to that seat, I think.

So should we make a call? What do we think we should... I kind of feel like that's part of the exercise is. We should just, like, say what our prediction is. If I'm going to go on the record, I think it's going to end up being clear, obscure Expedition 33 as year. I think that's what's going to happen. I kind of think that just because of how much people really enjoyed it and just down to the performances, down to the music and just the gameplay and people, then being like, oh, actually turn-based combat is fun and good. Or it can be fun and good.

It's just such a complete package, and I know that I would like to get back in there, of course, and finish. it once and for all so everybody gets off my fucking ass about this thing. To be the outlier just in the votes. Yeah. And to give the podcast a little bit more hope of actually nailing it, I think it's going to be Silk Song.

I could very much see it being Silk Song. I think it's there. It's between the two of them. Because like the other games, maybe yeah, there's going to be some, there's probably going to be multiple nominations and maybe some that we didn't even get to. But the two big, the biggest dogs this year are Silk Song and Clear Obscure for sure. I'll show you a big dog.

It's called my butthole. That on a big dog shirt, like on one of those shirts. Your stepdad wearing it a barbecue. Wait, what's that shirt saying? What the fuck? What is this game? it's time for a segment let's get let's get into this one uh guys we're back at the bargain bin we're back at the bargain bin i love it i'm giving you all $15 who and you all get to spend

this money that i've given to you i love it on games of the year oh uh so these are all various games of the year uh from last year down to 2004 all right so you get $15 they can either spend that it's on games of the year or a one macha latte. Yeah, yeah. Or a half a piece of avocado toast. Oh my God, okay. So we got some really heavy hitters obviously, so in the $5 tier, so starting at you know. And how did you source these as games of the year? I just picked a single publication that and

with like the most available and went back. Look, look at this list. So this is 20 years of games of the year. And so in the $5 tier, we have Astrobot, Balders Gate 3, Vampire Survivors, and Returnal. Returnal Game of the Year, okay. I mean, I haven't finished it, it's incredible. It's so fucking good. In the $4 tier, we have Hades, Outer Wilds, God of War, and What Remains of Edith

Finch. In the $3 tier, Uncharted 4, a Thief's End, Fallout 4, Destiny, and The Last of Us. In the $2 tier, we have dishonored, Portal 2, Mass Effect 2, and Batman Arkham Asylum. And in the $1 tier, Super Mario Galaxy, Bioshock, Ghost Recon, Advanced Warfare, or Advanced Warfighter, excuse me, and Half-Life 2. Oh, boy, that last one made it tricky

because I thought I had a pretty, a garden path here. But I'll go first. There you go. $5, my favorite game, Baldersgate 3, got to pick it, endlessly replayable, and just, you know, like an incredibly satisfying. gaming experience. $4 tier Hades.

I'm playing Hades. Again, just speak of endlessly replayable. Yeah. Play the shit out of that game and, you know, keep jacking up the heat and just, just keep doing more runs. Man, you hit me keep jacking. Okay, Duke. I'm going to keep jacking.

I jack limp. $3. I'll take Last of Us. I mean, I love Last of Us. I like it better than part two and I just it's a pretty perfect game $2 tier okay I think I got to do portal too man as much as I I yeah I mean I just like Arkham Asylum is is great it's so good and you know I I I still like like for me our asylum hit me so I know I know Arkham City is like a more realized fully realized game

but just like the way asylum hit me and just I was we're so surprised at someone a game just like finally fucking nailed Batman slash being a superhero. That first rock steady Batman is awesome. But I'll take Portal 2, even though I really love Mass Effect 2. I just feel like I already got another Meteor RPG. And then the $1, well, I guess I got a Valve game because I was going to say Half-Life 2, but maybe I'll pivot over and go Super Mario Galaxy.

So yeah, those will be my five. Balder's Gate 3, Hades, Last of Us, Portal 2 and Super Mario Galaxy. A lot of good options. A lot of great ones. Heather, are you think you ready to make some choices? I don't know how to spend enough money. Because you don't want some. I don't want enough of them.

Well, spend, spend what you want. Spend your budget. You can spend 15. I can't, no, I'm saying I don't, I can't make it. Yes, you can. You can figure it out. I don't even want enough games on this list. How is that possible?

Because all I want is Mario Galaxy. $1.14 left. The last of us. Okay, that's $3. So that's a $4 spent. You have $11 left. God of war. $4.

That's what, seven? An astrobot. There's not, I don't have enough money. You got $2 left. You have two, oh. So you don't want anything from the $2 tier. I don't want anything from the $2 tier. You don't want Portal 2?

It's like, on all time, right? I think, I think, honestly, I'm going to get Bioshock as like a bonus and like Half Life 2 is a bonus. There you can do that. That's not bonus. That's what you're allowed to have. Yeah.

But those are my games. And really, the truth is I only, really, on the whole list, I only want Galaxy and Last of Us. I don't need any of the other ones. I'm going to do something, I think I'm going to do something crazy. Wow. Three copies of Vampire Survivors. I'm going to go with Astrobot in the $5 tier.

Okay. Also in the $5 tier, I'm going with Baldersgate 3. Wow. Wow. $10. That's $10 right there. In the $4 tier, this one's hard, actually, because I love two games in here so, so much, but I'm making a choice.

I'm going to go with Hades in the $4 tier, and then with my final dollar, I'm going to go with Super Mario Galaxy. I mean, Super Mario Galaxy, the $1 tier is such an incredible value. I mean, you got Super Mario Galaxy, Bioshock and Half-Life to, you know, I know your price of these bad, but those games could all very easily. be three or four dollar games. Oh, yeah. And, you know, certainly, like, what remains of Edith Finch

was a lot of fun to play through, but hard to justify the $4 tier. So a lot of these things are just, like, based on spending your budget. But, yeah, that was a fun exercise. I always like doing it, and I like hearing what you guys pick, and I like making the little graphic. Yeah, it's fun to make the little graphic.

Honestly, I'd spend $15 on factions in the last of us and let the rest of the board go. How'd I miss that? fucking game. Hey, that was Bargan, Ben. That's this week's get played. Our producers of Shell Chen, Ranch Yard underscore underscore Sard. Ranch is streaming anything? Still on Silent Hill F.

Awesome. Nice. Check that out. Twitch.tv.tv.com. Benprunti. Benprunti music.com. Our artist by Duck Brigade. Design, Duck Brigade.com. Get played Merge at Kinshipgoods.com. And get animated. Our sister show is over on Patreon. Matt. What are we watching this week? We are watching our new series. Serial Experiments Lane.

And let me tell you something. It's an interesting show. Yeah, it's certainly not serial experience. Serial experiments? I was going to say it's certainly not serial experiments lame. No. It's not. It's not that. It's not even fucking worth it.

I wish I'd never spoken. I do some serial experiments. I use piss instead of milk. Patreon.com slash get played for get animated. And that'll do it. And I guess, you know what? Well, who knows what the game of the year will be, but... It got played.

It will have gotten played. It will have gotten played. And if we got it wrong, we got played. That was a Headgum podcast. What's going on? It's Lamarne Morris. And Hannah Simone. And we host The Mess Around, a New Girl rewatch podcast now on Headgum.

Now, here's the thing. Every single week, we chat about an episode of New Girl. And we really get into it. Like, we get up in there. We get up in there. You know, we reminisce. about our time is on set. We share behind the scenes team.

We react to re-watching episodes that we haven't seen in years. We talk about how Jake Johnson is dog. That's not true. We talk about so many memories we have of working with the biggest stars on the planet. I'm talking Prince,

Taylor Swift, Olivia Rodrigo. We're just two BFFs having a good old time, okay? Sometimes we even talk to other co-stars like Zoe Day Chanel, Jake Johnson, Max Greenfield, and Damon Wayne Jr. and your dad. We talk to your dad on this show as well.

Make sure you subscribe to the mess around wherever you get your podcasts. New episodes drop every single Tuesday.