Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Andy and Kevin's Game of the Year So Far - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 171

Episode Date: May 21, 2018

Jared sits down with Andy and Kevin to talk about their favorite games of 2018. (Released first to http://www.Patreon.com/KindaFunnyGames Supporters on 05.18.17) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the first ever episode 171 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. I'm your host Jared Petty today and I'm joined to my left. You're right by two spectacular human beings. First, I asked Andy what his nickname was before the show and he said, well, I don't really know. I haven't been on in a while. Andy, you want to pick a nickname? It used to be the Hispanic heartthrob, the Texas Treasure. Yeah, it's been a while, Kevin.

I don't know. I like the Texas Treasure. The Texas Treasure? Yeah. Maybe Cortez, the Conqueror. Wow, I don't know, there's some kind of unfortunate cultural overtones. Sure, yeah, for sure. He was kind of a jerk.

Hey, I'm my own person. Yeah, I'm my own person. Andy, his own person. And I realized I've already, I went straight to Andy here instead of going across to Kevin and then to Andy like that, we're shaking things up right now on the game's cast. That's right. Then on the other side, Kevin, your nickname, my friend? Oh, man.

What's this? What's my actual nickname, not the ones that Nick has given me? me. What is your actual nickname? Yeah. The Provingy McHawley? I'm the glue. The glue. The glue. That's right. The glue. Kevin Cuello. Holding this whole thing together. You are indeed

the duct tape that binds this whole operation together. We give you a lot of crap, but we wouldn't get 10 minutes here. I'm good at what I do. Yeah, you are. No, you would. It just wouldn't be as pretty as it is. I don't think we would, I literally don't think anything would be on the internet if it weren't for you. Thank you very much. Yeah, I don't think that would work.

Likewise, nothing would ever be edited if Andy weren't here. That's cool Greg's job. Oh, you do a lot to edit. Yeah, do party mode. Photoshoping and a lot of things. Though I would say kind of funny would look a lot of uglier. Ugly, uglier. Uglier.

Well, we're already pretty ugly. Kevin looks like the guy that the really, really hot high school girl breaks up with to end up going with the nerdy guy at the end of the movie. Like, that's how you look right now? I would have kept her. Yeah? If it was me, I would have gotten it. You know what I mean?

I would have that. Wait, you think you have that power over her? You're going to give us all fourlies right now. She can do what she wants. Yeah, but I would have treated her right the whole time. Well, that doesn't mean she's going to stay with you. You're the high school bully. But that's what I'm saying.

He never treats her right. And that's why the nerds always like treating her better. And she's like, oh, man, look at him, treat her. You're the villain, dude. I think I could be the villain, but I'm the villain who gets the girl at the end still. No, I think she chooses Ducky over you. Nah. Yeah, I think Ducky.

They're liars. Thank you. Oh, sorry. I got nothing. You have to Kevlack you with it. I got no tolerance for this. You got to fucking call me. Shout out to Patreon producer, Tombox.

Tom Bach, thank you. Thank you so much for helping make this show possible. Tombock, good guy. Also, shout out. Underneath right here, we're going to have some Patreon folks here. Folks that are helping us out. You see their names? Right there?

That's my favorite. Right there. Hey, Gary Busey's down there too. Really? No. No? Gary Buse is definitely not there. You don't think so?

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I saw him. I don't think I saw him. I don't think I saw him go under there. Gentlemen, I'd like to know what you've been playing. We're going to start with Mr. Andy. What have been playing this week? I mean, well, I've been playing something that I can't talk about.

I've played Detroit, become human. I beat it. Well, thanks a lot, Andy. And I can't see a goddamn word about it. Okay, so you're like, well, I sure did. That is such a tease. You're like, you know what? I've been playing this really cool thing that you, Jared, have totally not been able to play.

We didn't know about the whole embargo. We thought the embargo went up today. When really today, or, yeah, today's Thursday. When really today's the day that we can say, hey, we have the game and we may have been playing it. So that was the embargo embargo. Yes. But not the embargo. It fucking sucks.

Did you read the email? That's Greg's job. Oh, okay. Greg is the one. So Greg's responsible for this chicagic. Greg is the one who texted us over the weekend. I was like, hey, I fucked up. We can't talk about Detroit on Thursday.

Andy can't talk about it. He can only say he's been playing it. So you can tell us what you have been playing, but can't talk about. But it's a big, wide, wonderful work against. Breaking News. I'm just going to break embargo right now. No. No.

It is playable in 1080P. What about 4K? Let's not ask any more of these questions. Yeah, this is streaming live. You can use a dual shock for controller. We need to respect our relationships with the publisher here. For sure, fine. But there are a lot of games out there, and I'm going to bet you that's the only game you played this week.

I've been playing a lot of Fortnite. And it started off as something that I was doing just because it was popular. And I have legitimately fallen in love with this goddamn game. Yeah. I'm very, very addicted to the Fortnite. To the same amount where I felt like I was with PubG for those few weeks and even Overwatch over the last two or three years. I, because for a while it was Overwatch here and then Fortnite and then I'll switch back to Overwatch and lately it's just been nothing but Fortnite. Going through the different modes, squad, solos duos. The Thanos mode is really fun. Oh, you like Thanos mode?

I had a blast with that. You got to be Thanos that one time. I got, I got super lucky beat Thanos. Oh, what's it like? What's it like? No, I said B. Oh, I got to beat that. But I did beat him as well. Yes, yes. Okay, let's hear both stories.

Let's hear about being Thanos. I don't hear about beating Thanos. Well, I choked very badly, Jared. There was like eight people left, and I got Thanos, which is like where you want to get Thanos at. You want to have them when there's like less than 10 people on the map. And so it was like, all right, this is set up for nothing but success. But I knew deep down, this is going to be a classic Cortez.

choke job right here. Okay. Choke job. And I didn't really understand his mechanics at first. So a few of the people that I encountered brought down my shields and my health quite a good chunk. Because I was like, should I punch? Really, I realized I should just be using the purple beam to shoot. The power beam the whole time. Yeah, but the whole punching melee stuff controlled kind of wonky. And I missed a lot of my shots when I was trying to punch people. And I fucked up. So it was inexperienced. Should have just used the purple beam. Right. So eventually I got a down and it was like, all right, there's me and there's one guy left, but my power is like so low because everybody brought me down. The way the mechanic works is you kill somebody, your shields

regenerate. Yeah. So I had full shield and like out of the 800 health, I had like maybe 100-ish. And I'm walking around looking for the last dude. It's just me and one of the man on this fucking God-forsaken arena. And generally they hide in bushes, right? It's sort of a popular tactic in Fortnite. Because even when you're aware that you should be looking out for bushes, you still kind of forget, right? So I walk up to a bush, shoot it, bam, I get shot from the right hand side, 200 shields, or 200 shields, goes down to about 80 or 90 shields, just in one shot. Yeah, it was a good shot, though, and I know that he had a good sniper or something like that, brought me down, I was like, oh shit, turn to the right, and about six shots, and I'm dead.

Okay. So I lost a 1v1-as-thanos. Well, I was going to prep my jump to get the fuck out of there because I don't want anything to do with you do this. There's like a slow delay with the jump. Well, with the jump, there's a charge. So you hit the X button and you go into the squat mode and then you take off or whatever. So as I'm doing that, and I'm dead. And so I lost the 1V1S Thanos, classic choke job. And then I hopped back in a couple days later.

And it was me, one other dude and Thanos. Okay, I'm going to interrupt before you tell this story. Because the great thing about video games is that you have this story about the time you choked as Thanos. Out there somewhere in the world right now is this dude that has this awesome story about how he one-on-one took down Thanos at the end of the round.

And Thanos was literally like crouching down for the super jump and it'll be all over and his last shot landed. That's what makes games awesome. And what he did is ran over to my dead body, picked up the gauntlet and like started dancing and shit. Or no, no, I don't know if he picked it up, but he started dance. Of course, he did the show off thing.

But then the time that I finally beat him, it was me and two other dudes. One was Thanos. Yeah. And I was caught right in the center and I'm in a bush hiding. Thanos is behind me and there's a dude in front of me shooting at Thanos. They have no idea I'm in this bush. Thanos like runs by me several times, doesn't know I'm there. And I know, okay, this guy's taking down Thanos's life a lot.

I'm going to go intercept, take out Thanos, get the gauntlet, take on this one dude. As soon as I'm about to intervene, the man shooting at Thanos, jump past. had a way on top of a mountain to go take on Thanos himself. And I'm just like, oh, fuck. I screwed up. This is where I should have taken advantage of the situation. I totally screwed up. So I try to jump pad after him.

By the time I get there, the guy already killed Thanos. And he starts shooting at me, firing at me. And I build a wall. And I'm like, what do I do? This is a 1v1 situation. This guy's got me cornered. He has the high ground. And then we know from Anakin and Obi-Wan.

It's over. Exactly. But much to his dismayed, Jared. in Kevin Coelho, much to his dismay, he could have taken me on in a 1v1 just gunfight. Yeah. Because he was just leaving the gauntlet hanging out. But he decided, you know what?

I'm going to pick up the gauntlet. Picked up the gauntlet, and the walls getting tight. And he lands outside of the zone. And I'm in the zone just like, oh, dude, where's this guy? Where's Thanos at? Thanos jumps, like lands. And I start shooting.

I'm in panic mode. the wall both takes both of us on and I'm like oh the wall's gonna fucking kill me big chunks coming down since it's endgame and luckily the wall takes him out before it could take me out lucked the fuck out I got so lucky I won with zero kills

and I think I'm at least rank five in the world now in Fortnite so five probably top five I'm thinking top five maybe three I'll go maybe go three so like Icarus he flew too high Yes, exactly.

Exactly. I love Harry Potter, dude. Yeah, you got to love you. I love you so much. Oh, my gosh. So that's been what you've been playing. What about you? Mr. Kevin Cuello.

So this week I've been playing a game that until midnight I wasn't allowed to talk about. But now my embargo is up, so I can tell you, I've been playing State of Decay. Ooh. Which is a game that initially not excited in the least. And then Greg Miller grabbed me and he said, Kevin, you're going to have to play State of Decay. for two reasons. One, the embargo ends right when we do games cast. And two, I know you're going to like it.

And that son of a bitch was right. 100%. Expound. So here's the thing. Do you like games? There's no real reason to play it other than just to play it. Where it's like, yeah, there's no story. So it's just like, hey, here's a group of people, make sure they all survive.

Here's a bunch of little things you need to do to make them all happy. Just keep doing that. Yeah. Man, it's just addicting to play. Well, I think it, I think that is a perfect game for Kevin because it is sort of this inventory management, people management sort of thing. And I feel like that appeals to your taste quite a bit of like making sure all the fucking dots, the eyes are dotted and the T's across, you know. That being said, it's perma death. Yeah.

And when my favorite favorite character died, I immediately, like, he died, I immediately turned. off the Xbox, haven't turned it back on. Just angry. I'm angry. Yeah, I love that guy. And he was tricked. He was tricked. How was you tricked?

I was doing one of the side quests to pick up another person. And she was like, oh, go and help me with this. Try to get my stuff back. And I was like, okay. And then you go into like this other little house with two other people and you can talk to them. And like, do you want to be nice or mean? Do you want to threaten them or do you want to?

You damn coward. You fool. It was, I was trying to play it nice. I was trying to be like, hey, let's have a conversation about this. And they were like, oh yeah, here it is, take the bag. I grabbed the bag. They all start shooting at me.

These are NPCs. Yeah. And you're betrayed. I jump out the window, being like, get as much health as I can give myself. And then it's like, do I go back in or do I like run like the 15 minute walk back to my like house to switch characters? And I was like quite a bit of health. I'm going to go in there and start shooting at them. Oh.

Oh. And that was my mistake. That was the flaw right there. The fatal flaw. So if you blame yourself for the death of your favorite. I should have known from the beginning. I should have brought, I should have gone, I was just lazy. I didn't want to do the like 15 minute walk back home.

Yeah. Because if I had done that, I could have picked up a couple other people and been like, hey, let's go. We'll handle this together. Oh, that's siren you're hearing. By the way, that's outside our window that's not happening in your car right now. Unless there's actually a siren out there. But the one that's playing here is that.

Unless it's a siren in your vehicle. Please continue. It's just, it's a very fun game. I really enjoyed it. And I'm scared that if I turn it back on and come to, to terms with that guy being dead, that I'm going to become addicted to it and lose hours upon hours of my life. Because that is very much what it feels like. What else are you doing? Huh? What else are you doing? What do you mean?

Like, that you, do you have other games you'd rather play or you just don't want to get addicted to where you would... I just have a tendency to get addicted to games. If you remember the week and a half that I played Legend of Zelda, The Breath of Wild? Yeah. Where it was like, in a week and a half, I put in 110 hours or something, which is not a week and a half. I put in a hundred and ten hours or something, which is not, like an okay amount to play something. So I'm worried that if I start playing in the next two weeks I will just be like that will be my life.

What is for folks, obviously Greg's talked about this game a lot and you've mentioned it's resource management intense but it's obviously on a spreadsheet. It's an action-oriented game. Briefly, can you have a preface of what makes it perfect for you? There's just something about

like the, you're in this zombie wasteland with all these areas that you can walk around and explore and find what you need and like feel satisfaction that just gets me so like it gets me so in like a perfect spot where like someone will be like oh you'll go back to your house and it'll say like oh you're running low on food and it's like all right well I'm gonna go find food at one of these abandoned homes and like you you walk around the zombies aren't crazy or like too difficult to to beat in like the early stages that I'm at right now so it's fun to just

have like a weapon and just kind of walk somewhere take this like like 10 minute walk where like zombies will come up and you just start beating them up. Okay. And you get to this place and you're looking around trying to see if you and you find food, but you also find gas and you're like, oh, I can't carry both these bags. Yeah. So it's like, okay, okay, I'm going to get the food because I know that's what people need now, but I'm coming back for the gas.

And there's just, it's so satisfying. So there's a sense of tension and accomplishment constantly? Absolutely. Is that the driver? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, definitely. It is that tension that like makes me want to keep going. and keep like building out my little house.

And you have a squad of how many people with you? Well, I like to go by myself. Something about it makes me feel more like, oh no, but like you mentioned how one of your guys died so you could have switched another character. In your house, you keep expanding your houses in the like the areas that you're safe house,

safe houses. And as the game progresses, you can add more people. Like you have missions where like, do you want to be friendly or do you want to be a dick? If you're friendly, they could be added to your crew. If you're a dick, they might become enemies. Does that require you to bring back more stuff to feed everybody if more people come back to do? Okay.

So it requires more, it's more amounts to feed. Yeah, exactly. Okay, interesting. But also you're safer. And they're doing stuff and it gives you the ability to switch through more people. Are there different roles? Are there like, is one guy a medic maybe or one person's special? Like, because I'm thinking, the thing I'm thinking of is middle gear, solid, phantom pain, mother base.

Right, right. Like bringing back people and this guy's a, this guy specializes in, he's a cook. And this guy is a whatever. And I want to bolster my medical units. I'll bring back this dude. I think so. I'm not sure. I didn't put too much time into bringing in people in my group.

Yeah. But like, there's like skills that you can give people. And I think that's where it more specializes. I wondered if it was going to be like a stormhold mechanic or a Sweet and Two thing or a mother-based situation or not. So that's interesting to hear. But the game is fun. And just as a side note,

I recently bought a new TV and it's beautiful because I'm playing on the Xbox S. 1X or no I'm sorry 1S there it is which does HDR even like it doesn't do 4K

gaming but it does do HDR still and like when I started playing the little HDR thing blipped it's not like the game isn't the prettiest game I've ever played but certainly like because the HDR the colors are so vivid and I do enjoy playing playing it and seeing like the sun come up.

It's a lot of fun. So it's a very vivid color pop kind of game. Yeah. That's how many hours? I want to say like 12. I don't want you to stop playing this. I don't want to stop playing it either, but I'm scared. I'm legitimately scared.

No, I think if you can like, you know, portion control this game, I don't want to stop playing it. I am not a good, like, I'm not good at portion control, as you may have not. notice? I'm not good. I feel you. That self-control I've never been great at. Because like if we have the one TV but if I'm watching like playing a game on it, Paula will be like, oh, it's fine.

I'll use my laptop. And then it's like then I'm gone. Oh, sure. Then I'm gone forever. She gave you the green line. Yeah. And when Greg comes back, if he hits me up and says let's play the multiplayer mode, I don't know, man.

That's what you'll get back in because you with Monster Hunter. Oh man, there's a great game. We'll talk more about that later. Yeah. We're going to have a little discussion. around that here. Yes, today's topic, which we'll hop to in a second,

I think if Monster Hunter doesn't come up, I'm going to be very surprised, both because I'm good at guessing and because I have the running show in front of me. So both of that makes, anything else? Either you all been playing, you want to talk about?

I mean, I mentioned Overwatch. That's about it. I've been watching Overwatch League a lot. Overwatch League as a whole has brought me back in quite a bit to where I had kind of fallen off of Overwatch and then having this sort of league where it is based on cities that are representative.

Yeah. Representative instead of like phase clan and team blah blah blah and team like it's the it's the Houston outlaws. It's the Los Angeles Valley. You know like when there are cities attached to it that makes it feel much more real because I am such a sports fan. That makes sense. And so that got me back in really badly.

So I played that quite a bit. I haven't played about a week though. Who do you play for? What team? The Dallas Fuel are my favorite team and they're really bad. Okay. But that's who you're there for. Yeah.

Is it because they're the closest to Dallas Cowboys? Okay. Like people like, oh, why don't you rude for the Houston Outlaws? They're good. Well, I don't like the Houston Texans. I don't like the Houston Rockets. I, you know, I don't like a lot of Houston sports teams. Who is your favorite video or, pardon you, your favorite sports mascot?

In, in everywhere? In everywhere. Yeah. The Syracuse Orange. The Syracuse Orange. Just because they're a color. No, he's just a big orange guy. Oh, just like the big orange.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Andy, I have a sports question. Sure. There's a team who, they're the wizards, right? Washington Wizards. Do they have a wizard come out? Like a proper wizard? I don't think so.

Like a dude with a beard? I don't think so. That's a goddamn shame. There's no Merlin looking dude. I feel like they're ought to be. I feel like the Wizards ought to have like a Merlin. And I wouldn't want to be like a, a plushy guy. Oh, no.

I wanted to be like a real dude in like a cloak. like a big old, big old beard, big old beard, maybe a crystal in one hand and like a staff in the other. He doesn't look anything like an, like in anything. He's just a big blue man called G-wiz. Oh, so they do have a mascot. Is that it? You get some weird mascot.

My, uh, my favorite mascot, I used to live near Nagoya in Japan and, and the baseball team there's the Nagoya dragons. Awesome mascot, right? The dragons are, it's a koala bear. That happens a lot. Yeah. That's really upsetting. Their mascot is a koala.

And I would ask my friends about the koala. It was like, the dragons. They're like, yeah, we love the dragons. They're like, but he's a koala. And there's like, no, he's a doala. And I was like, what's a dole? It's a dog. He is a, he is a koala, but he is also a dragon.

That was how people would always put it in English. I was like, I don't understand this. So what's a dragon, but also a koala? I think also a doala. Yeah. So I'm not sure what that's all about. Yeah, I think that works both ways. Real quick, the Raptors.

Is there a team with Raptor? They come out with, yeah, the Toronto Raptors. They come out with the big fucking like the big inflatable suit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's actually a dinosaur. Yeah, that's the Dua. Yeah, that's a hundred percent just a blue koala. That's just a blue fucking upsetting.

Yeah, that's a marsupial. The Nagoya dragons mascot. What a fraud. Shout out to the Hickory Crodads, my hometown, home of Conrad the Codad. Which is absolutely a giant, giant Croddad. It's a good name. Yeah, Conrad the Crodotad is great. Jared.

What have you been playing this week? Good question there, my friend Kevin. Well, as always, Desert Golfing, because how would we ever stop? Either you guys playing Desert Golfing yet? No, no, but I, when you were talking to it with Tim about it, I really wanted to download it. And I would stop myself because, again, addictive personality. It is the best $2 you will ever spend. What did you say?

It was 20,000 like different. It's something between 13 and 21,000 holes. I can't get a solid answer on this. You ever have some plain and hot fries? It's pretty good $2. What's that? That's a good? flaming hot fries. He's right. That's like $1.65.

But imagine that you've got like 13 to 21,000 orders for $2.00 of flaming hot fries. That would be too many. That would be too many. I'm listening. A lot of best friends are playing desert golfing. I'm not going to go off on it again, but I am playing that. Red Dead of course, because I'm doing Red Dead radio. So going back playing through, that's been fun. Love playing through Red Dead again. Quick question about Red Dead. What's that? Is it being re-released on something?

Well, it has been re-released on Xbox 1X. Xbox 1X with backward compatibility and upgraded graphics. So if you're playing on 1X, it's prettier. You can play in 4K. But it is not a new version of the game. It is a 4K version. But as far as we know, there's no new version coming out.

Not that I'm aware of. But it's backward compatible and you can go play it right now. And honestly, I'm still a really good looking game. What does that mean if you never bought it on Xbox? Well, if you never bought on an Xbox or a PS3, then what is the only device you can play? Well, can I somehow buy it now and then play it on Xbox? Yeah.

Yeah, you can sell a lot of games. Oh, you can just go into the store? Yeah, you can sell buy games. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, totally. I just went out and I didn't have my disc anymore, so I went and bought a disc. But my understanding is you can just buy it in the store. Sorry, Andy. It's so weird.

I just don't, I don't, like, as much as I remember loving Red Dead, I don't remember much of it. Oh, man. Red Dead's such a little game. I, I don't know why. Like, Grand Theft Auto, I remember a lot of those key sort of plot moments. But in Red Dead, I remember Mexico. and I remember the end. The end of it.

Like as much fun as I had, as many hours as I poured in, I just only really remember the end and like thinking that John Marston was going to be like, you know, I thought he was going to be a little slut. I thought he's going to be having sex with a lot of women. But no, he's a good family man. Yeah, he's family man.

So like, you know, coming from Grand Theftado, the whole vibe there, you know, ladies man sort of like, oh, I'm a degenerate. John Marston, good dude. That's really all I remember. Well, that's actually, then you probably remember more than you think you do. The thing that I forgot, and it's becoming apparent to me right now, is that there's all this stuff about John in that game that I forgot I never knew. Like, when you meet John Marston, you know nothing about him.

You are playing this guy and you don't know who you are. Some dudes like push you on train. You get off, you ride up a hill, and a dude shoots you. And you're just like, who am I and what is going? And you learn all that background in the course of these missions. The cutscenes are so well done because they're only like three minutes long and they're often on horseback riding. And so you're just picking this up organically as you're doing things you would do anyway

to finish the game. It's really well designed. And likewise, you'll pick up little, when you're playing cards, people, you just hear stuff in the other room and it'll have to do with the game. Like, it's really clever. So I like that part. But when it comes to newer stuff, I've been busy. First off, because the best friend asked about it,

I've been playing Kitten Squad. Oh, dear. Is that any good? No, no, it's not. It's not egregious either. So Kitten Squad is on Switch. It's a free game by Pita. Oh, you're right?

Okay, Kevin's dying. Kevin may die. In the meantime, apparently Kitten Squad had a real effect on Kevin. Very word. Now, Kitten Squad's a game by Pita. It's about to, have you seen this? I have not.

I know nothing about it. You know why? I haven't turned on my switch in so long. Really? It's been that long. It's just weird thing because I... Because I started this whole streaming thing and I don't really know how to get audio correctly out of the switch. Because of my setup that I have, it's kind of odd, right? And it works perfectly with my PS4 and I don't want to really mess with it outside of that. So I haven't really picked up my switch in a long time. The next time I'll probably pick it up is when the Mario Tennis Aces

demo pops up. That's almost here. That baby is very, very close. I'm very excited about that as well. So, kitten squad brigade. Yeah, so kitten squad is a game that a best friend brought up on Games Daily, and they asked about, hey, why is this game on the store?

Because it's free. Oh, I remember what this game looks like now. It's PETA, I think people for the ethical treatment of animals. But it does open... No, it's really made by PETA. I'm just thinking about you coffee. Oh, I'm back. I beat it, guys.

It was close, though. I felt the end. Everything got dark for a second. It's like, oh, God. It's like in a video game where you're about to die. It just starts to fade in. I hiccuped water. The world gets desaturated.

And it went down the wrong tube, and it got real scary. I'm sincerely glad you didn't die. I'm good. I would have been fun. No, it's, so the cutscenes are about animals being treated in cruel or unkind or unthoughtful ways. And it's very much from the perspective of a group that's, that's very, protective of the rights of animals and concerned about their well-being and safety. So it starts with you rescuing an orca that's being held in a theme park against its will.

And it does show a very graphic cutscene depiction of another orca, this orca new, committing suicide by hitting its head against the wall of the cage and bleeding out. And then it suddenly becomes this. Is it 3D? Well, these cutscenes are painted kind of pastel style. The game itself is just a simple, fairly rudimentary twin stick shooter. It's fine, it's competent. It's a twin stick shooter.

Yeah, it's a twin stick shooter where you're going screen to screen this little cat shooting robots. I wasn't expecting that, okay. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense. It's free. Wait, why are you shooting the robots? So you can go rescue the, the orca that's being held?

Yeah, the robots are. Of course, yeah. Yeah, and I mean. A secret agenda, get robots out of here. Yeah, it's like some robots. And you have them in the weapon variety is fine. It's free, but the person asked, hey, what about the, what about the messaging here?

Is this something Nintendo, even looked at when they put it in their online store. You know, because it is bloody and it is kind of visceral. And if I was a kid and I got downloaded this free game with this cute little kitty cat on the cover, and I immediately see like a whale kill itself, I would be thrown. What do you thoughts on that? So you think maybe we're starting to see this Android app store sort of thing going on where things are leaking through the cracks, possibly?

I think that somebody looked at this. I don't think Nintendo's quality control just let this slip through. No, I think that they just decided that it meant their guidelines and stipulations, and they were okay with that. The question from that we got at Games Daily was, you know, hey, is this kind of the future of the store? I don't think that this was some kind of accident. I do think they played the game. It's not gratuitous. The violence.

And it is playable, right? It does work as a game. Oh, yeah. It works very well as a game. It's quite, quite well done. Doom is on the store. I don't see why. Yeah.

violence in games shouldn't like Nintendo hasn't had a very, maybe they're not going to promote it but like it's fine if like a game is violent and like the underlying like it has a message it's not just violence for violence sakes it's a game with a political agenda that presents that agenda straightforwardly

within I believe the parameters in Nintendo's community guidelines so in my opinion while it's not a game that I enjoyed and it's not even you know I think that some of the anthropomorphization of animals and animal rights advocacy

can be controversial in it of itself. And I think there are some points that are made there that there are counterpoints to that also need to be discussed. I do think cruelty to animals is terrible. What's the game rated? I did not look at the rating. That's my own fault. I mean, it must be rated like mature.

I mean, if we're underrated, that would be the ESRB, though, not Nintendo. Right, right, right, right. I don't have an answer for that. But yeah, it works. I don't recommend anyone play it because it's not fun. but it doesn't actually have an egregious agenda. I think I'd rather play space cats with lasers when it comes to twin stick cat shooters on my switch.

Kevin, not a big fan of the twin stick. Oh, no. No, not a twin stick guy? No, no, no, no. I can't wrap my head around the mechanics of aiming while also moving. I just something about it. It's like rubbing your belly and tapping your head at the same time. It doesn't make any sense to me.

We played a game recently where you can't see your character. Americaner, impossible for me to play it. At sundown. At sundown. Cool game. Yeah, I've heard of this. A great concept. I'm just real bad at.

I essentially wasn't moving the right stick at all. So if someone happened to be in the direction I was aiming, perfect. I've worked, I've fooled around a little bit with a game that I'm trying to make probably will never finish. It's called Shootman. And Shootman is a one-stick shooter. Jump and Shoot Man. And so the way Shoot Man works is he has a gun that has tremendous recoil and it fires

automatically. It never runs out of ammo. And so whichever way you shoot, he gets pushed the other way while you're shooting. If he aims it at the ground, he can fly by shooting at the ground. So you aim where you want to shoot and he always moves the opposite direction. Have you heard of that game? That reminds sort of that the physics element of being pushed away. Yeah. It reminds you of this game that came. I mean, I think it's sort of early in development, but it's a battle royale game in an office setting where you are sitting on desk change. with wheels and in order to maneuver you have to point in the direction where you like so the shot pushes you away okay no I've never seen this around yeah it's sort of it's this office it looks like

any you know middle of America office where everybody's in suits and ties and stuff working but it's a battle royale game I don't remember what it's called rolling around on desk chairs I'm gonna look it up but it's but yeah you're not moving like normally you are shooting to propel yourself and then turning and shooting that's that's what I was playing with in this except in a two platform or space. And I'm sure, I mean, we've had other games where you shoot to propel. Like, it's not a new idea. It's like the idea of that being the only way to move. I think that could be a fun. Last Man Sitting is the name of this. Yeah.

It's really clever. Battle Royale type game. It's, uh, so there's a little clip. I mean, you know. Oh, that's great. Yeah. I love that. Somebody tell us how that is. I'd love to know if anybody's played it. Then I actually played two good or one. That looks insane. You see in this? Yeah. Yeah. That's cool. Really clever. That's that's little fire extinguisher too. Yeah.

And then a couple of quick actually like good or interesting games I played this week. We were on Games Daily and the other day and Tim and I were making fun of something called Walden comma a game. We saw it on the release this day list. And we're like, wow, that's a hilarious name for a game. And I joked it might be a Henry David Thoreau simulator. Someone wrote in and it's like, no, seriously it is a Henry David Thoreau simulator. And then one of the folks that worked on the game contacted me. So I played it.

It's a game about being Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond. Have you ever read Walden? No, no. You familiar with it? I know the name Henry David Thoreau. I don't know anything about it. Kevin, have you ever read it? Are you familiar with him?

I don't believe in reading. All right. So Thoreau was this guy in the 19th century. He was one of the transcendentalists. He hung out with Rolfo Aldo Emerson and people like that. And he was a writer. and he was kind of the, like, I think he was Garrison Keeler, called him the original hippie.

He was like, hey, I want to experience life. I don't like this kid. So he, like, he moved out to the woods near the little town of Concord, at Massachusetts, and he just lived in a little house that he built himself, and he kept a bean garden. He's like, I'm just going to live out here by this little pond and write about everything

that happens to me. And he did that for a long time, like growing his own food and living this quiet life in nature, and he'd walk into town every now and then it's, and that's what the game's about. Huh. It's a, it's a kind of undirected walking simish game, but it's got this really clever hook that I like.

The game is a living version of the book taken out of order. This book is a very well-written, interesting piece of writing, because I'm not a long. Everything you look at, everything you interact with in this game that is nonlinear goes into your journal. And the thing that you learn from reading it or interacting with it is a, quote from Thoreau. It's part of the book. Every day you review your journal and you discover you are writing the book, Walden, as you play. But you're not doing it in order. You're doing it in order according to how you're playing. So it's all these snippets of Thoreau that have,

and they all happened to you, just like they happened to him. Wow. And so you're actually, because you have agency, you're experiencing them, you're making them happen. You feel like it happened to you. And it's more real. I've never seen that in a game. Is it a PC game? I'm saying? I'm playing on PS4. P-S4. Okay. Wow. That does not sound like a console game. Yeah.

Oh, I think it's available on PC. I'll be shocked if it's not. The first game I've ever played that has a national endowment for the humanities video before you started. Because it was part of that. Yeah, the University of Southern California was part of creating it. Oh, you think like the student program was? I think that this was sponsored. I don't think it was all the student program.

I think it came out of that. I don't know that. Now I'm being ignorant here. A lot of people worked on it. I watched the credits. Oh, you beat it. No, no, you can watch the credits from the beginning. I haven't decided if it's like a great game yet, but it's definitely really interesting and does some things I haven't seen before.

It's also very much a walking sim where, you know, they kind of remind you of it almost feels like you're playing like a CD game from 1991 where it's like, and then a voice talked and you're doing this. And at first you're like, this is going to be awful. But it's not. It goes the extra mile to make you feel like you're really a part of what's happening. Can you do wield weapons? Not that I haven't counted in. I'm out, man. I picked up an axe the other day.

I don't know if that counts. Do you throw it? Huh? No, I didn't throw it at anything. I met Henry David Thoreau, and I've been to Concord now, walking around town there. Great. Final little bit, a really good game that didn't get enough love the first time. Shin Magamitensei Strange Journey, Rie-Doo, is out.

Do you guys ever play Persona? Mega 10 games? Negative. Wow. Okay, so I'm just rambling here. Rambling away. I'm listening, Jared. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I am listening. Strange Journey, which was a DS game, is one of those, like, best games no one's ever played games. It is a monumentally well done, crunchy persona-style RPG by the same folks that did persona. Same universe, Mega-10. It is technically a spinoff title, but it's actually good enough that it should have been like a main line. Shin-McGamai Ten-Sake game.

It came out at just the wrong time. Is my phone playing? Yeah, something's playing. Is that one? That was very good. Yeah, fucking, oh, you're freaking me out, man. YouTube is on. No, okay, there we go.

I thought it was your, I was very confused. Sorry about that. So Atlas released that for the DS. It's an Atlas RPG and therefore good. But it's better even than most Atlas RPGs. Um, my,

my sale on this is that imagine you're playing persona, but instead of it being about high school students and in-school melodrama, it's about adults and they're on an expedition to Antarctica. It's all like adult characters and kind of more grown-up themes and a weird militaristic scientific expedition vibe to it, a little bit the thing, a little bit military, and then also that weird Chimagamitense persona demon-sumoning oddness to it.

When did it come out? The original one came out around 2009 or 10, I think, Strange Journey, and the remake came out just a couple of days ago. It's on 3DS, which is, again, but it's an Atlas game for DS and therefore worth buying. It's better than most of those, and most of those are really good. I love Strange Journey.

Redo, I've been playing it a lot. It's really cool. Obviously, I'd love to see it on Switch, but porting games to Switch isn't trivial, and I don't know if it'll ever happen. So my advice is don't sleep on this. If you like a good, long, hard, fun, RPG where you can experiment and try different things.

Do not. It's great. How, when you say remake, are we talking visual sort of? Visual overhaul and some rounding around the edges. I think they just kind of went, I haven't gotten deep enough in to see all the changes yet. I think it's more just a matter of most people never got to play this before. And so I haven't gotten deep enough to find out how much smoothing went on. There's certainly things you could have made better in the original.

there are some differences I've noticed already but I haven't seen a tremendous amount. It's kind of like when the Etri and Odyssey updates happened on DS to 3DS. Did you ever see any of those? Negative. Same deal. They found ways to like kind of smooth

some of the lumps out in the progress of the game and in these already near perfect games just polished to a perfect sheen. I hear a lot of people talking about these damn Atlas RPGs, Jared. Lots of people. I've never been a JRP fan.

I could never get into them. I think what broke me early on was some of the older Final Fantasy games. Okay. Where I just, I knew from the get-go, this style is not for me. And then I remember trying to play Vagrant Story on PS1. And that's another game that I just like, I just can't do it. These games are not for me, the style is not for me. I much prefer sort of more real-time stuff.

And I know a lot of people say, oh, we'll try this Final Fantasy game. It's not turn base. It's got kind of this battle like, okay, it's still not for me, guys. Still not for me. And I think the only one that I ever really cared for, the only RPG that I ever really cared for that was turn base was Pokemon.

Oh, okay. But Pokemon did it for you. For some reason. Don't know what it is. I'm in the same boat. Don't know what it was. But Pokemon, not a JRP or does it, I mean... Pokemon's J.R.P.G.

Oh, okay. Yeah, absolutely. See, just for me, like, I didn't... I never realized it was like an RPG at all. till way later where like Tim's like oh that's that's an RPG I mean I feel like a

RPG is such a loose term right right like in my mind yeah turn based yeah okay so you want to play a turn base yeah again turn base is the word that scares me well that's too

slow it makes it slow here's some reason Pokemon totally fun totally on board for that so where where Megatin and Pokemon share an ancestry that almost no other role playing game does

is that Megatin is all about collecting creatures allies and then merging them together to make better ones. Very much like, Mega 10 is Pokemon, and I'm not seeing this in a derisive way, but I've heard this said before. Megaton is Pokemon for grownups.

Sure, yeah. Pokemon is also for grownups. I've never seen to take away from that. But Mega 10 is very much that same kind of, I found something. Okay, now I found something else. Now I found somebody else. A new ally. Ooh, this one's more to mix them together. Optimize them more.

Build my party around the kind of allies I want. How are you spelling Megatine, by the way? Shin Magameteen Mega 10 is M-E-G-A-T-E-N That's abbreviation That crammed together Yeah, that's a whole persona universe

Right, right, right It's a lot of words there Yeah, Shin means new And Megami Tensee means Saga of Venus, Like, it has to do with an old Nintendo game for Wacky stuff Goes all the way back to the Famicom

Lots of wacky stuff The Famicom, of course What is the, I'm thinking of another sort of Japanese franchise That is super popular And it's very, you know, There's always a, it's hard even describing what the titles sound like, but it's blah, blah, blah, blah, new word.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, different word. Blah, like every, doesn't every title, I guess. There's a lot of that in JRPGs, yes. Yeah, but I can't think of it because it's the only one that's sort of, when I saw my friends playing it, and I realized, oh, this is not, yes, this is very encounter-based, but when you're in the encounter, you are in a real-time, you are dodging, you are slashing, you are slashing, you, are magic spelling. Didn't they do that with the...

I know you know it? You get a lot of... Fantasy? No, no. You get that with like Zeno Blading Chronicles... Or, pardon me, last story is like that. I think Zeno Plac Chronicles is like that.

Crisis Corps is like that. I know you can fucking rattle off these JRP's, Jared. I'm gonna need you to do that. I'm trying here. There's a lot of... The problem is just... Yeah, maybe, maybe for the sake of our listeners.

It's a very popular franchise. Pretty popular. Final Fantasy Crisis Corps? Is that what you do that? It's not a Final Fantasy franchise. Okay, is it a Dragon Quest game? Not a Dragon Quest game. Okay.

Okay, is it a Tales of... Yes. Okay, it's one of the tales games. It is a tales game, yes. It's one of the tales games. I was like, you know what? This could be it for me. Tales of Symphonia.

Yeah, like all of them. The Susperia. Yeah, that's not. I would totally play Tales of Susperia. The classic Daria Giardinto. That'd be amazing. What a great game that would be. No, I mean, Tales of Symphonia has like a fighting game style of combat to it.

And that, and that, to me, initially, when I see, When I see the cover art, I immediately judge the book by the cover. I'm like, this is a JRP that is turn-based and I'm not gonna like it. I saw my friends playing it, my friend Caesar and Matt, but you know what? This might be for me, Jared. Yeah, there's a lot of good action-based RPGs like that. Last Story, again, falls under that.

Zeno Blade to a point feels that way. There's some others. Really, even some of the turn-based dragon quests don't feel is turn-based. But now I'm doing the thing where we say it's not turn-based, but it is. Yeah, totally. Yeah, yeah. Got to be careful learn that. But there's plenty of good action RPG.

So we should maybe do an episode. You play Secret of Mana? No. That's like playing Zelda with a friend. That's like two-player Zelda. Really? Yeah, it's like playing Link to the Past with two people. It was, you know, back in the day,

again, I've said this on many a show where my gaming knowledge, my gaming history is not big because you could only afford the one game for several months, you know? So for me, like, it was Zelda or Secret of Manna or Zelda or a... And like I always just ended up going with Zelda.

Well, Zelda is, I think, superior in most cases. But Secretamana, if you have a second player, it's spectacular. That's the keys. You want to play it with a friend. And it's on the SNES mini. So you can go back and try it easily. Interesting. Two controllers.

So if you like Pokemon or persona or crunchy RPGs with deep systems, Shemagamata Matense, the game for you. Strange Journey. Game for you. I think that's enough of what I've been playing because I talked way too long there. Imagine that. That was a long what you've been playing segment.

It was long. We've played a lot of games. We've played a lot there. But the real headline of the day, what the people have come here for, my friends? Super stoked. Yeah. Kevin and Andy.

I was hoping I get a confused look there, but it didn't work. I looked at Andy and said Kevin. I left to Kevin and said Andy, but no. I was expecting my name to follow up. I was hoping for a comment. I'm a professional, Jared. I'm never rattled. You can never.

Rattle me. Kevin. Andy, Andy and Kevin, your games of the year, games of 2018 so far, I want to know, the people want to know what these games are.

What are the best games you've played this year? Let's start with, start with Andy. I mean, is it, there's no question. It's God of War.

Right away? No question. I mean. What are the contenders? Um, have you played Monster Hunter? I played Monster Hunter. Oh,

hey, there's a game. You know what I mean? It's, It's a fun game. I have no problem with Monster Hunter. It's just, it didn't grab me like it did everybody else. And that's saying something because it...

You didn't want it to grab you, bro. No, but here's the funny thing about saying like, you know, the game just didn't grab me as much as other people when I still put in fucking like 40 hours into Monster Hunter, you know? Yeah. It has that carrot on the end of the stick where you just, you want to get,

you want to fight the next thing to get that next. It's a very, there's a lot of gratification in games. getting that next piece to build up your next armor set, you know. But I think God of the War could possibly be like game of the generation type game. Wow. Where it just does everything flawlessly, in my opinion, on a storytelling level, on a level design level, art, narration, acting, it's just combat.

there's the thing that I felt about God of War was like it to me it was a naughty dog game where I absolutely loved the combat where in uncharted games and in The Last of Us never loved the combat I always enjoyed it but it was nothing that I ever craved for more with naughty dog games I always feel like I was going from cutscene to cutscene where I wanted to see the next story beat right so sure I'll take down these three guys and I'll shoot that person and I'll beat that clicker or whatever the hell you know but in God of war, it's like I am running around this world looking for conflict. I want to fight things. The fighting in that game definitely, like, I remember the first big battle you have against

the stranger. It was a hard battle and it took time, but when I finished, I was like, it really is that moment of I am the god of war. And then later, when you get certain weapons, you're like, oh my God, this feels so right. And it's just where fighting can be a lot of fun. But I feel like, God of War has some places where it's like, how is this game so damn difficult? Like when you're doing some of the side quests, like post-game stuff? Well, I mean, and it's just like, this is absurd.

Like, there's certain enemies that I was only able to beat because there was this little like two stones with one in the middle. You have to jump over and that's where you can start fighting the guy. But if you just engage him from the outside, you can still fight him. And it limits what his move set is. because there's a bar that he can't cross.

So, like, that was the only reason I was, it was a stone something, spirit, maybe, Stone Golem, you know, one of those big rock monsters? And it was one of those things, like, if he hit me once, my health bar went down to, like, 20% and that second time, dead. Well, because that, I mean, that's an armor thing. That's, that's, that's,

Oh, I got good armor. That's you not having upgraded everything possible. Yeah, I was going to say, are you sure you have the right gear for that? That's kind of a Metroidvania key, right? When you go in and you get your butt kick and you're like, I'm not supposed to be here yet. Totally wrong area for this.

I'm saying, I initially fought him in the like maybe 30% through the game. And then I came back after I beaten the game. It's significant better armor. Still beating the crap out of me. You just kind of get good. That's true. That's true.

But a fun game nonetheless. I mean, you know, it is hard. It has some really crazy difficulty spikes, but nothing to which like, I don't think it's anything as bad as like Wolfie. Einstein 2 last year, you know. Like, this game, I think... Whatever do you mean?

This game, I think, still has, is still beatable. I think looking on the internet and seeing a lot of people platinum it. Yeah. Now, the good... I'm not saying it's unbeatable. I'm just saying sometimes I walk in there and it's like, man, this is stealing the fun a little bit. Sure, yeah, yeah. Sure.

Yeah, I could see that. But, I mean, I still think the game is one of the most perfect games we'll see in a long time. So you brought up Monster Hunter. You brought up God of War. What would be the

the third 2018 release is there? 18 pillar on this trifecta? What would be the last one? Because the games that I play constantly are Fortnite and Overwatch and these are

games that are, you know, many a year old where, you know, Battle Royale started last year. So you're playing a lot of old games, but is there anything else

that jumps out for you? Um, this year. Be noteworthy. I, I'd say I got 80% of the way through Far Cry 5 and I enjoyed it. Not a game of the year to me though. I think it's the way, I think the way that game opens up is one of the best openings in any video game I've ever played.

The intro flight, the intro plane scene with getting Joseph Seed on the plane. Like that whole vibe is just something that I absolutely adore. Very, you know, when this game was coming out, I, it had these very weird sort of religious true detective vibes that I just love. that I just love. I love that sort of evil, that sort of evilness. And the thing that John Seed was, you know,

when he's looking at you in the camera and he's like looking into the fucking camera. And he's right here. And he's singing to you and he's like, you know, I told you God was going to, I told you God didn't want me to leave. And then he gets out of the play

and turns out it was all, like, it's just one of the best openings ever. The gameplay can, um, still is super fun. Yeah. Um,

it is rewarding. and it's a blast to just run through and just shoot shit and make things explode. And it's kind of just that open world, mindless, just cause sort of open world fun. I don't think the story is super strong. But, you know, I still had a blast with it. Did you play Celeste? I did, yeah. Where do you fall in Celeste?

Because that's a game that's been a lot of game of your discussion. A game that I never beat either. I got, I think I just need the final thing, the final challenge. the final chapter. I think I got five out of the, there's six, I believe, right? Six chapters, I think. Yeah, if I remember.

Yeah, yeah. I think there's five or six. I'm definitely, I need one more to beat it. I think it's genius level design. I think this is like a game that you could show up-and-coming game developers

and say, this is how you design levels, whether it be 2D or whatever, right? But teaching mechanics early on, it's sort of like textbook level design stuff. And I think it's beautifully made and I think it's got a really charming story to it. But I still don't, I was never blown away by it, I don't feel. And I may be alone in that. So that wasn't a game of the year contender for you?

I don't think so, no. I mean, I just, I swear to you, I think God of War ruined games for me this year. Okay. Like Red Dad's going to have to do something incredible for me to put it above God of War. How is that are you for Spider-Man in that same vein? Oh, fucking shit, yeah. Now, the thing that I feel that Spider-Man's going to have on its side is the fanboyism of Spider-Man. So, like, regardless of whether it's a good or a great game, if you're a fan of Spider-Man,

that's definitely going to bring the rankings up in a lot of people's opinions. I mean, I don't know. I'm sure the game's going to be incredible. I don't know if it could stack up on an emotional storytelling level with God of War. Yeah, I don't know. We'll see. All right. So it seems pretty clear

that God of War is your pick up to this point this year. No question. Looking forward, you mentioned Red Dead. Anything else on the horizon that you think might be a threat? I'm looking here.

Anything out there in the distance? There's a lot of stuff this year. I can't talk about Detroit. Yeah. But like if you could, do you think it'd be on this list? Definitely can't be. Hypothetically, hypothetically.

No, let's not do that. I have a feeling. I have a feeling that I'm going to get incredibly addicted to Mario tennis aces. I'm so looking forward to that game. What about Smash? Is that a game that like in years previous you've

loved? I don't know why that's a game Smash along with sports games aren't games that I can ever put into like a top for some reason, for some done reason which makes no sense because when Overwatch, when it was the year of

Overwatch, it's like that's the game of the year. That game like obviously did what Team Fortress did and made it even better and made it accessible and made it fun and created characters that we all care about and are now incredibly popular. But when it comes to games

like Smash or NBA 2K or whatever, like I could never see those as games of the year and that's probably not the right choice but I just, I don't know why. I feel like because it's so iterative. Maybe something pops out and just, yeah, I mean I lived through a world where Street Fighter 2

was a world changing video game. Sure. But it was still Street Fighter 2. It was a sequel. Like somebody had done that formula many times before. And we were all kind of shocked that it was as good. It was like, again, kind of like God of War. It was like there was before and after this moment.

There were fighting games before Street Fighter 2. And they weren't anything like what had to come after because it changed everything. And I think that's a lot of what we got. Kevin, your contenders for 2018. My contenders for 2018. I think I only have two, but I do want to give shout. to state of decay because I'm legitimately afraid I will lose my life to it. So what okay they're giving a shout out to it so was that not a contender?

It's not a contender. Why not? Because I'm scared. I don't think I'm gonna play anymore. No no Kevin Kevin. I'm scared. Are you saying that it's not a contender because maybe it lacks you know honest it I mean storytelling wise or maybe not great and that's the thing it doesn't have it doesn't have the storytelling in it or it like it has little stories in it and that like that's so good. I enjoy those so much maybe as much as I would enjoy that's all you need kind of yeah exactly turns out when you boil it down it's all I need like visually it's not the most stunning game

and you know like there are things that are much prettier I it does look like yeah fairly dated game yeah it does but some games are better without a story I mean some just are I love storytelling in games but sometimes storytelling minimalism serves the game so I want to give a shout-outs because I feel in my bones that if I played more it would be on this list okay but I'm afraid of it so we could become a contender perhaps Perhaps. A challenger appears. Are we going to say that?

I don't know if we're in the stage yet. He's definitely in the dressing room getting ready. You know what I mean? Okay. But yeah, my contenders for this year definitely God of War. I mean, that's an easy pick. But then Monster Hunter World. Oh, man.

Did not expect to like this game at all. Same deal. Greg Miller looked at me. He said, I want you to play this game with me. And I was like, I'm in, buddy. Now, I don't know your mom. Monster Hunter history, Kevin. None.

None. Zero. Nothing. World is my starting point. Okay. So you guys both played a lot of it. But before this, nothing. Why was there no interest before?

And what changed? Well, what was it on before? Oh, before this. 3DS and DS. 3DS, then we, PSP and PS2. Oh, no deal. Okay. Gotcha, gotcha.

So for me, like, when it was on PS2, I had no idea. Didn't hear it seem like one of those games that like I've looked at the cover and be like, that looks cool. I'm never going to get into that. Yeah, this is the first one that broke through in American. Like, this is the first one that really, really broke through to the Western crowd, I feel, where like you hear, you hear whispers around the industry of like a guy that I,

there's certain people that work in certain places. A guy on YouTube I watch a lot, Aaron from the Game Grumps. He's been a Monster Hunter fan forever. And I've heard him talk about it forever for years since I've been watching. content and it was just a game that I said that I thought oh this is some obscure Japanese game that I'll probably never play or never even see in a store here so so why did you go why was your response to that I don't think I'll ever play that because the vibe that it put out was that you and your friends on your 3DS is needed to hunt

monsters yeah and that seemed like the bridge that I was not willing to take it reminds me of a system linking on gameboys like oh that's cool in theory but i don't i can't i don't how am i going to where do i even go get the cable yeah exactly exactly but then the follow-up then for both of you what changed what did it what made it happen it was very much Greg miller being like play this game with me you're i think that given time you're going to like it and it then i was like all right i'll dedicate a couple hours to it and i did and initially i was like i don't know this for me and he was like let's hop online and And that's how you got me.

Yeah. Because when you have someone that, like, understands the mechanics where he, I was like, hey, I don't know what to do with this. And he's like, save it. You can sell it later. Or make sure you're eating this or before we go hunt, we'll have to eat. I never did that before him. Okay.

And then afterwards, I've picked up so much knowledge. And then we played with people that are even more experienced, best friends out there. Yeah. Steve. Good old Steve. Yeah. Steve, my God. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. super high level. Oh yeah. And like one of my favorite things was playing with these people and asking them questions as we're going.

Because I like to get knowledge, you know? I like to learn stuff. And it was very much like there's so much that I could learn in that game. And once I beat the story, that that is another point where I was like, that needs to be enough for you, Kevin. Draw the line there. You know, that has always been part of the kind of metatextual narrative of Monster Hunter. is it is a game about friends teaching friends.

I have a buddy Strawfoot who's a good old strawfoot. Yeah, good old Strawfoot. I've heard of Straffield. Yeah, Straffut's a, he's on Monster Hunter dude. And that's kind of what he does is a lot of good YouTube stuff. A lot of good lore videos about Monster Hunter. But it's largely about instruction. I mean, that's why it works so well in the modern world on YouTube, I think,

is that it's largely about showing people how to do things, demonstrating, passing knowledge on, helping somebody out, lifting the, and then you being like, I had so much fun doing this. I want to help another person do the same thing. A hundred percent. It's so satisfying where you're playing with someone who's like, oh, I'm new to this. And it's like, well, if you rearrange your inventory like this,

it makes it easier to do that. Yeah. And then like, oh, and like, do you know how to load out? Let me teach you about loadouts, you know? It is very satisfying. Where it loses points, I think, to God of War is the fact that, like, the way I was playing it, I think, affected how much I like it in the sense that I did not give a damn about the story.

Not even a little bit. I can't really even tell you what happened. Anything that was going on. You're chasing the big Zora Magderos. Right. And just because they said that name. So many times. Yeah.

For me, it was playing online with Greg. And it was he'd usually be a couple hours ahead of me. And he would help me on my quest, which meant I had to start, I don't know why they did this. I wish they had done this a little differently. When you do a quest with someone, if you haven't seen the cutscenes, they can't join your quest yet.

So you would kind of have to, as quickly as possible, try to skip through the cuts scenes so that that could open up and then you could come out, restart the quest, and then invite your friends. And that was always a hassle

and ensured that I didn't give a damn about the story. So I didn't watch any of the cutscenes. Some of them looked really cool when I was just mash and whatever button got me. I do say that, I do say that I think it's just that's the style of game where that's going to happen to you. The same thing happened to me with both destinies where you are sure there's a story there somewhere. And Destiny 2 obviously they worked on it a lot harder.

And I do think they did a much better job in Destiny 2. But with Destiny 1, it was, and the same with World of Warcraft, I'd say. I am in a party chat with my friends and we're all fucking around and saying dumb-ass jokes. And I don't, I'm not paying attention to what's happening on the screen. Like it's more about the friend experience than it is absorbing what's happening on your TV. I think that if I had played it on my, like the story mission on my own, which I kind of feel like it's intended to do that way. Yeah. And they make you do show a mission too.

And like I feel like that's how I like, had I initially cared instead of running through the things? Because like at no point was Greg, that's not true. He might have been behind me just for a tiny bit. But like it was always me having to cut like go through these cut scenes so that he could join me. Okay. Now, to be fair, this is the first time that they ever really did, did it on this sort of effort level, right? Like, there was never like massive cutscenes or anything in Monster. Okay, so Monster Hunter, this is an Americanization of the product to a degree.

It's a streamlining, I think. And they nailed it. Yeah, and they did. Monster Hunter's narrative has always been secondary to its mechanics, but Monster Hunter's narrative has also always been secondary to its lore. Monster Hunter like Dark Souls is more about knowing what's going on from a lore perspective than from a story perspective. Much like Dark Souls, there's absolutely a story, but very little of it relies on cut scenes and classical narrative to tell. It's much more about this world you live in, the interesting stories behind these monsters, these areas, these items, these weapons, these villages. It's about getting soaked up in this world around you that's kind of full of mystery and interesting things and then seeking your own.

out. But it's not like Monster Hunter is completely alien to the idea of directing game storytelling either. I think they just hit that kind of sweet spot where it appeared familiar to everyone. Yeah. Really good custom character creator. In Monster Hunter. In Monster Hunter. Yeah.

Playing that, because I think this is one of the first games that I've actually had to create a character coming from Destiny 2, I think. I'm sure there have been other games, but I guess I just always look back at Destiny 2 as like, it's the same fucking character. I heard somebody say the other day.

I don't remember where this was that Army Hammer looks like the default dude and every character creator ever. That's a good. Tim Getty's also often looks like. Does he? Yeah, with the hair. Oh, yeah, that's a good point. I never thought about that before.

I want to picture Tim now with that character creator screen. That'd be kind of amazing. I can see making that. What's your game of year, Jared? Oh, I didn't know it's going to get thrown back at me. Yeah, you did. No, and I'm not ready to answer. I have a lot of contenders.

I wasn't done with God of War. They continue. Oh, right. Sorry. No, it's okay. Fuck me, right? So, God of War. It's, I feel like right now it's my game of the year.

I think that there's a lot of potential stuff that's going to knock it off. I enjoy it. I don't really, like, what you were saying? What did you say? Game of a generation? I'm not sure if it's game of the generation. Just because it's a great game. I mean, we can't say that yet because.

No, I know. but I mean, I still think now, and when you say generation, do you mean, like, what does that entail? I mean, like, the PS4 era. But does that also include Switch games? Like, is Breath of Wild in that same conversation?

Because in my mind, I'd say so, yeah. As much as I, and, okay, that's what I thought. Yeah. As much as I love God of War and it, like, has a killer story, something about Breath of the Wild,

in my mind, like, kicks it off that, like, goes above it. And even though Breath of Wild didn't have the best story, you know? Well, Breath of the Wild is kind of, like, radio. At Breath of the Wild is a place where you have this amazing soundscape laid out in front of you, this world of fidelity that's full of empty space and you fill it in with your imagination. And there's something that's very hard to capture in any other game. They caught lightning in a

bottle with that game. I don't know how they do that. It's amazing. So to me, I think definitely God of War is my game of the year so far because it does so much right. But I think that there's a lot this year still coming. Sure. What are you looking at? What are you looking at coming up? I mean, I'm,

Smash will change this office for sure. Yeah. When it comes in, we are all going to be obsessed. Yeah, it's going to be what, like when Mario Card came out. I think it's going to be further than that.

I think that like, I will definitely push for like, every day we play it. Well, I mean, Mario Card is competitive, but you also know that half the time you're going to get screwed

at the 11th hour. Whereupon Smash really is about just beating other people and being better at them. Although I'm one of those fools that plays with items on. That's right. Oh, no. No. You forget about that right now.

No, items on. In this office, no items, final destination stage for all of it. Why would you want to play again? If you don't have, if you don't have a corneria. If you don't have items, you're going to miss it out on all the Nintendo love that's in that game. You defeat the point of Smash Brothers when you play with items on. Nonsense. You're taking a game about a fox

that fights a little too man. Let's throw in a hammer that just makes it clear the bottom. Now, No, no. I'd say we do play with Adams for a bit just to see the additions that they put in there. Yeah, it's, this is a game about Nintendo love. I mean, I'm down to play it for a bit, but like the purity of smash on its own with the final destination as all the stages. Oh man, there's something magical there. Because it takes all the like fuckery out. You know what I mean? Because sometimes you'll be on a stage and it's the ones where like it moves and shit falls down and you die because platforms and that's the whole point of the game. Get out of here. Oh, man. Get out of here. the point of the game is skill and sheer luck

because we're going to be playing a lot of eight-player smash and it's going to be phenomenal because the thing about I think that differentiates Mario Kart from Smash in this office is that there are people here that are excellent at Mario Kart and when you start playing you get in front like the bottom six are fucked

right it is really the first two that are competing in my mind but when it comes to smash and you're doing eight people there's a free-for-all. No matter how good you are, there is still the potential of, like, you go to hit someone

and someone else comes out and misses who they were going to hit, and they hit you. And you can kind of fortnight your way through a smash match sometimes. Absolutely. You can be the person that just kind of survive. I've been there many times,

because I'm not the best smash player, but I hide sometimes. And I'm just like, no, I'm alive, I'm going to break it. I've been so discouraged by smashing this office. I thought I was good, and this office told me that you're not very good, Andy. And I think it's just because I was good on the Wii U smash.

But when, no, I was good at Brawl Because Brawl, Pikachu was way overpowered. Yeah, you always say that. And now on Wii U smash, they brought them back down to Earth. And I'm not worth a damn. Well, again, I think that's the fun of playing between versions. But that's why I don't. This is a game about a lightning rat that fights a spaceman

that throws little red, yellow, and green monsters. I recently read somewhere that he was based off of a squirrel. Do you see this? What? Yeah. You mean squirtle is? No, no, no. Look it up.

Pikachu, you originally based on a squirrel. Yes, yes. I did hear about this. Yes, yes, yes, yeah. A little recent. No, I... Squirtle is like a squirting squirrel. Yes, Andy.

You got it. I love the smash talk, but I think that's a discussion for another day. So I am going to say to you gentlemen, one final time, boy. Boy. Boy. What is your game of the year so far? are? Kevin? God of war. Andy? God of war. There we go. Ladies and gentlemen, two for two. God of war,

God of war. Perhaps unsurprisingly, a lot of games headed out soon. E3 coming, lots of announcements there. Perhaps we will see more. Perhaps we will know more. And we're all certainly going to play more should the world endure. And we think it will. Therefore, gentlemen, I thank you for your opinions, your insight. Wait a minute. What's that? What's your game of the day? Dude, this is Andy and Kevin's Metal Gear survive I am today I'm playing the part of the host

I'm not here to talk about myself anymore No no no no he also said he didn't know Yeah I have no clue I thought you were holding off for something No I was It's Andy and Kevin's game of the year That's the topic today is not Andy Kevin and Jared's game of the year I don't like that one bit

This video's gonna do gangbusters I feel like I was lied to there No this isn't about me at all I talked about Megaton that got to do my thing I'm done So you hear that Megaton That's this game of the year So it could be. I don't know. I can bring a strange, I mean, I'll tell you what. I was sitting there last night playing it till my eyes bled. I was like, oh my gosh, I'm going to mix so many monsters in my demonica. I'm going to make me some amazing cocktails of Monster Awesomeness. That's how I've been with 50-50 squads in Fortnite. Yeah. They got this new 50-50 mode right now. I heard some people are being mean in that mode. People are being dicks, man. How are they being dicks? You know, you know, what they do is. The way the game is, you know, split up in half, two halves, right? So one basketball.

One bus is on one side, the other buses on the other side. Do you choose what half you're in? No. No, just randomize. You could choose where you drop, obviously. You can't do it in squads, right? You want to drop with your, where your squad is landing, right? So, no, you are squads, yes.

No, no, but I mean, like, do the four-man squad still possibility there? Yes, but you still go out and four. So you can still there be with your friends. You still go out and four with your friends, if you want, or with randoms or whatever. And what people are doing, Kevin, in order to get to the... Oh, you know what? The Thanos. you can't do in squats.

Correct. That's one day only. Yeah, correct. So what people are doing in order, because obviously the maps are very big, but at the very, very start, it shows you this is where the circle is going to be. This is where all the conflict is going to be. And it's very, very small.

It's pretty small. And so what you do is you land, you start gathering, you harvest, you get everything you can, you get all your materials, and then you head towards a spot. So what a lot of people do is to head towards a spot, maybe you landed pretty far away with it from the initial small circle. people create giant giant ramps, put a jump pad, jump towards the next giant ramp with the big jump pad,

and you get to the circle really, really fast. Like, you are transported there. It's just a really cool express sort of transportation system. What people are doing is teammates are team killing their own team just to fuck around and they're shooting the ramps while people are running up there. And they're just falling to their deaths. And it really pissed me off.

And I saw a guy doing it to people on my team, not in my format squad, But I saw a guy doing it to one of our teammates shooting a ramp just to see him fall. Then when he went, I fucking shot it down. And he died. He got knocked down. You got it. Justice was served and we were still down one guy and I think we probably lost a match.

You are the vigilante. Exactly. Wait, all right. So one question that I'd like to hear your answer if you won't talk about your game in the air. What games are you excited for? Oh, coming up? Goodness. Spider-Man, definitely.

I have a lot of affinity for that character. And I want to see him done justice in a contemporary game. You do think some of the old games did him good, right? Yeah, there's some good, there's some good Spider-Man games. But it's been a while. Been a while, so we had a Spider-Man game. I think it's maximum carnage. No, there's several good Spider-Man.

With green jelly. What was the last Spider-Man games that came out? The Amazing Spider-Man ones. The Splinter and Time or something like that. Oh, yeah, Fracture in Time. Fracture in Time. Fracture, which is the one that let you switch through different Spider-Man's, like noir and... Yeah.

I don't remember anymore. The only Spider-Man game anyone should care about up until the new one. is not even a Spider-Man game. It's the Shinobi game where you fight against bosses that include Batman, Godzilla, and Spider-Man. Edge of Time. What's that?

I like Shinobi a lot. Yeah, there's a Shinobi game where you fight Spider-Man and Batman and Godzilla. It's called Edge of Time. It's pretty great. It's pretty the first time. Red Dead.

Oh, you didn't do anything coming to. I'm sorry. That's fine. Yeah, it's right. Red Dead, obviously, is huge for me. I loved the original Red Dead, and this looks like another one of those games that was made for me. It's like a cinematic slash mechanical combination

that just seems tailor made to fulfill my every desire. I love open world gaming. I love cinematic oriented movie influence gaming. I love the Old West. I love story-driven gaming. It's all there. This is just like it's rock star, so it's going to be good.

That is really exciting for me. Those are two that come to mind right away. Watching Westworld, it's like, I just want to play Red Dead. So bad. Out of all the games that you're excited, which one do you think you're the most excited? Oh, definitely Red Dead. Yeah, not even close.

Out of Spider-Man Red Dead? Well, no, I mean, just any game that's coming out in the next, like. Smash that's so hard. I would say... Tennis, too. I would say Spider-Man. Because I think the... We're not super far.

I mean, granted, you know, it's like seven years ago from Red Dead 2, right? Oh, from Red Dead. Red Dead was 2009, I think. Late 2009, or early 2010? I thought it was like, I think it's 2010. I think it's 2010, I believe. Sorry, I should.

I run a show about this, I should remember that. Yeah, I think, like, you know, the last time we got a good Red Dead game was, you know, 2010, this decade. Still this decade, though, but the last time we got a good Spider-Man game, I think it's been a while.

Shattered Dimensions was actually the name of the game. That's the one you think of it. Not Edge of Time. Yeah. Was it Edge of Time not like the sequel? No. Shad Dimension was cool, though. And then,

wait, you said something. Spider-Man. When did, when did Undead Nightmare come out? Like, how soon was that after? I don't remember.

I was working at Best Buy in Georgetown, so that was probably 23rd, 2012, 2012, 2013. Okay. Because I remember when...

13, that seems awfully late. Yeah, that's very late. That's very late. I'll say 2012. Let me look for it. When that came out, I had played Red Dead for a while.

But when that came out, man, I went to eat like... 2010. Oh, okay, so right after. It was like a deer. Yeah, yeah. So that period, no, but I'm really looking forward to that. I wanted a sequel to this game forever or remake or something. Now I'm going to get it. It's going to be great. So yeah, what about you, Kevin? What's your, so you said smash. And that's a big one for me too. No, no, no. Wait. Was that what you're most excited for? Spider-Man. I'm sorry. I wasn't quite. I think I am most excited for Redden. Yeah. Like, man, I lost lots of time and many hours to that game and I will again. Yeah. Obviously, I am excited to see what Insomniac does, right? But, There is a huge level of excitement to see what Rockstar can do with their giant team that it's full of money and full of devs and full of resources, what they can do on a game this generation. Because, like, you know, it's been, you know, GTA5 was last gen.

Yeah, they have their, they have their resources and they take their time. Oh, sure. They just take their time to get it the way they're like, they really are interested in advancing the state of the art and they have the ability to do that. So I think that's, that makes this game tremendously exciting. I don't think it's overhyped in any stretch of the imagination. I know people are tired of hearing about a game that hasn't come out, but there's just every reason to believe this is going to be great. Yeah, that's it.

And it's crazy this year we're getting Spider-Man that looks that good and Red Dead. Yeah, they're great. It's an exciting time. And then smash. Yeah, exactly. Oh my gosh. Mario tennis-Hases. Yeah, sure, tennis Aces.

Tennessee is going to, and there's unannounced stuff. I mean, if this Star Fox thing is real, I love Star Fox. That'll be one of my. I do too. I feel like we've been burned a lot with that. Game of the year will be a hyperlight drifter on Switch. There we go. I feel like there's something else that ate a bunch of my time this year that I forgot and something portable, but it's eating.

Anyway, I think it's time to let this here party die out for the day. Let folks go back to do other things that they enjoy. We thank you for watching and listening. Thank you, Andy. Thank you, Kevin. This is the kind of funny games cast. We appreciate your time, your eyeballs, your ears. and dokey dokey your warm game love and hearts

that was beautiful I hated it I have to go pee