Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Kinda Funny's Game of the Year 2019 - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 1

Episode Date: January 9, 2020

Hurry to http://upstart.com/kindafunny to find out HOW LOW your Upstart rate is. Go to http://butcherbox.com/kinda or use promo code KINDA at checkout. Tim, Greg, Blessing, Fran, and Imran...the ENTIRE Kinda Funny Gamescast crew, give their top 5 games of the year 2019. Time Stamps - 00:11:00 - Honorable Mentions: 01:00:40 - Top 5 Games 01:28:55 - Top 4 Games 01:58:30 -Top 3 Games 02:21:25 -Top 2 Games 02:48:10 -Top 1 Games 03:00:00 - Post Show Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys? Welcome to the second ever episode one of the Kind of Funny Games cast. That's right. What? Wait, really? Here's the deal. No way. He's recount. New Year, New Oz, baby.

Nobody told me this. Kind of funny games getting a full-on reboot. We're like, look, we have PSI Love You Back. We're doing games cast. It's a totally different show. The show finally has an actual identity. We've done, what is it? 599 episodes of a show that, that's right.

There's a 252 episodes. Okay. Wait, he's fired up. Two hundred fifty two episodes. And Ron get close to me. I don't trust him. And I was saying for a while back, I think it was the four of us that we were talking about, I was talking about, I was talking about wanting to change. Because like, the number scares people off. You know what you mean?

And so many people are like, I'm not going to get the show a chance. I can understand the story if I haven't watched the first 598. Exactly. But I feel like a lot of people might not give the show a chance because they've given a chance before. And we're like, oh, this isn't for me. This is a different show. It's a new opportunity to get people in. We got a new cast going on.

We got this guy over here. We got some fun stuff happening. So I think this is a good jump off point. especially with the show changing formats. Sure. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you can go to Twitter.com slash kind of funny vids. There's a whole breakdown in the pin tweet

of the changes we're making this year, including this show. We're now every single week there's going to be the one big topic we're talking about whatever we should be talking about that week in video games. This week we're doing our game of the year for 2019. Next week we're going to be doing some fun predictions,

some iconic Xbox games, Nintendo games over the coming week, Metacritic predictions, cool stuff. But we want you guys to know all that stuff before we actually do it so you can be prepared, do the homework you need to for when we're doing spoiler cast or doing reviews or whatever. Sure.

That's what's new this year. A lot more sense as we start rolling out. Communicating with the audience is the new thing. They have homework every week. Sure. Even more homework for you. And also blessing, I know it's like day three at the company for you.

But yeah, this is how most decisions will be communicated to you. They will be live. We will all act like you should have known this, but this is how it happens. We're not out of the loop. Second episode, of the Kind of Funny Games cast. I'm Tim Getty's that's one of the coolest dudes in video games

Greg Miller. That's the way, that's me. We got the former and former Imran Khan. We got the best hair in the business, Fran Mirabella the third. Happy 2020, everybody. And for the first time on the Kind of Funny Games cast. Second time. Well, I guess this is the reboot. It's episode one. Don't mess it up. We don't talk about the old continuity.

The new face of video games. Oh, God. Is this going to be my nickname for now? That's what I'm calling you. I give out the nicknames. I give out the nicknames. That's my thing. I'm like Cisco on the flash. This is my show. Tim. I can drink two.

Hey man. It's all vodka. Going forward, keep counting how many times blessings on there. So, second time on the show. Jesus Christ. We'll see how all this stuff goes. Shout out to our Patreon producer, James Hastings, for helping make the show happen.

And shout out to all of you for supporting us on Patreon this month. January is our big push for kind of funny games in 2020. We have our new studio that we're trying to get going. We're doing a whole bunch of new stuff with streaming shows every week. PS I Love You is back. A ton of fun stuff. So thank you for support over there on patreon.com slash kind of funny games. We can watch this show live as we record it.

You get it ad-free. You get the exclusive post show. Very exciting stuff for everybody. If you don't want to do that, that's cool. You can watch it on Thursdays. YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. New dates for the show. Now are we always going to be on Thursday, Tim?

We're not. That's the thing. Going forward, it's like we want to hit the embargoes for the major game reviews. So if there's a big gamer reviewing, like a Final Fantasy 7 remake when it comes Sure. Whenever that embargo is, that's the day games cast is going to be, we're going to be right there with you guys. Offensive, you chose Final Fantasy in that, and not Padapon 2. Pat upon 2.

We don't know anything about Pat upon 2. All I know is that we talked about a Final Fantasy 7 demo and then the same day they had the information for Padabon 2. You know what I mean? So clearly one full games coming before the other show some fucking respect. Dragon Ball Z Kakarok comes out next week. Oh my god bless him. We're doing a stream for that. First impressions?

Yeah, first. Okay. I'm pretty sure you're, I'm gonna guess you're on it. I'm not on it. No, him. Oh, you're just fine. Yeah, I got to be. I got to be.

I mean, I'm still, I mean, I'm going to be honest. I'm not happy that we're not doing a full review on Kakarot. I feel like that's a game that, you know, you want to get, me and Imran. It's also 100 hours long. Exactly. All right. The content that people want. I was talking about hundreds of hours of Dragon Mald Zia.

I would do a drag-evolute interview. Do it eight hours. No, no, don't even do the, just instead of doing the first impression, let him play through the full play-through, Tim. Let's do it. That's one of the other shows we do streaming now, right? Take the next two years. He's waiting for fans over here. Watch the show on roosterteeth.com

or you can listen to it on podcast services. Just search for Kinda Funny Gamescast. If we get something wrong during the episode, you can go to kindoff funny.com slash gamescast, you're wrong, and we'll let you know what we screw up the next time we do is show. Today we're brought to you by Upstart and Butcher Box, but we'll get to that later

because today's topic of the show is Kind of Funnies, Game of the Year. World Premiere. 19. Now, Tim, you and I have been around for a lot of these game of the years. Many game of the years. Look at the panel who won't be here next year

because every year somebody dies. This time we're doing it differently, correct? This is not the same kind of game of the year where we just, we should just talk, talk, talk, and then we'd pick one, maybe we'd pick two. Before we go on with these rules, because I like this, I like where you're going with this, to jump off what you're saying about the maybe people

won't be here next year thing. So I... Rest and peace with you, when it comes to the game's cast, because a lot of people are asking, what's up with Fran, what's up with everyone, where they've been at? This week on Games Daily, the first week of us being,

back in 2020 has been a lot of blessing with us on Games Daily. And that is because we're trying to introduce Blessing into the mix with all this stuff. And going forward, there will be a lot of that combination because we are the core full-time host. But these guys, they're going to be in all the damn time. Right. And especially on Gamescast or First Impressions, our streaming show or other streaming products that we end up putting out. So the core cast of Gamescast will be me, Blessing Greg, and one of that.

Rotating Chair. Yes. But the rotating chair can also rotate any which way. Sure. If there's a review that doesn't make sense for one of us to be on, we won't be if it makes more sense for them to be on it. A perfect example coming up, we're going to do the most iconic Nintendo games,

similar to how we did the most iconic PlayStation games, and Greg won't be on that episode. I'm going to fuck right off for that one. I got nothing to say. If we don't have enough to say about it. It will be the four of us doing that. It's going to be a great time. Sure.

Hopefully that makes sense. It makes sense to me. We want to care. Okay, yes, please carry the torch for double dash. A lot of people had a wrong impression about that. What? Double dash. Frane was one of the wrong.

Right now, tell me, if you, we blink the new IGN scoring system, the 10-point scale, into your day. Would you've given it a 7 or would you've given an 8? So I was going to bring this up. What the fuck would you have done, Frank? Don't make it kill you on a lot of them. It might have been a 7. Honestly. Now, my head is very vague.

You want me to commit to that answer now? I don't know, man. So we can call? Actually, I can call pair? You know what? I knew this question was coming. I didn't really think about it. So, honestly, the answer is it probably would have gotten an 8.

Yeah. Should I call pair? Because I'll call pair and get them to. No, you can't change what it is, Greg. But they have a new scale. Yeah, but that was reviewed in the old scale. You can't change scores. I mean, you can.

That's not part of the new rules, that. Do they still use nib? I feel like I don't understand what a snap is. You know, why don't we just go in Google and type in erase Fran Mirabella and just one piece by piece. Get rid of this. Get rid of this. Devil dash score. You know, what's next, Greg? Exactly.

I thought you had other examples, Frank. I don't. That's literally the only thing that people try to erase this for us. We're off to a great start here in 2020. We are trying to take video games a lot more seriously. This is the biggest year of video games we've ever seen. We want to make sure that kind of funny is covering them as perfectly as possible, starting with our game of the year 2019.

Going back to you, Greg, what were you talking about? Franz, no. So the idea here is we're actually going to do a vote. This will be the first time we ever have a vote. It'll be a weighted vote, right? We asked everybody to do a blind vote where we sent our top five to one, Barrett Courtney. Boss Baby himself.

It's exactly how you do. expect it probably right we're gonna have points signed to one through five right obviously one would get five points your fifth choice would get one point and then we're add them up so we're start at five countdown but we will actually have for the first time ever not just a all right the game you really like that i didn't like that much as game of the year or whatever there's two game in the years there's a real game in the year there's a real voting process these decisions really matter this time around get you how many people at the studio here it's just all of us this is this table this table ah that see even i didn't know i thought maybe you guys had like

Andy and others involved in the score. There was a lot of talk of who was a baby. It was a maybe. But we decided that we're going to stick with the core kind of funny games cast, which will be. I think that's why, especially for the show, it's the games cast game of the year. It's not necessarily, you guys don't do an overall kind of funny game of the year. This is it, I know. But it's the games cast.

We've been to elected. It's us. The games cast is the kind of funny game of the year. I'm just, you know, I'll see it more clear. Old news, Nitro Rifle. He's just old news. I'm sorry. Camp out.

I know you love outer wives. I'll be damned if some fucking art guy is going to come in here and tell me how to play games. He's playing Axi and Verge on his stream. What fucking year is it, Andy? You know what I mean? I do love it. Wait, just to get ahead of this, are we talking spoilers in this game cast? I think so.

It's a good question. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Oh, boy. Oh, yeah. Are you going to hit your way to ruin someone's experience? I'm only in chapter five. Yeah, it's hard to play out of these games.

I think we should be mindful, at least. Right. What, yeah, what kind of, are you talking about, like, the end of a game being like... Like, if I'm going to talk about, let's say, Sekaro, there's a moment of Sekaro I want to talk about. Is it like... If it's going to be something that you think is a spoiler that might affect someone's experience in a major way, before you talk about it, let's like it clear. Yeah. And if you don't think the audience...

By the way, right now, if you're at home, be like, man, might play that Sekaro and you haven't played... Fuck you. You had your chance. It's been a year. All right? Yeah. Pretty much. Dang. I get it, man.

Hey, Fran? Disagree, but understand. It's your show. You know what I mean? I hate spoilers. Not talk about anything? Honestly, it's a good example. There's major stuff in Sekiro, and if you're like, dude, wow, what if it gets the game of the year?

And you just found out, you're like, you know what? I am going to play it. Well, too late because I just spoiled it something. You know what I mean? Up to you, though, Tim. Hey, man, I made my decision. This is my world. Now we're playing it.

That's what I'm saying. So here's what we're going to do. We're going to start this off going around the table just talking about our honorable mentions that didn't make our individual lists. This is a broad discussion. We can start there. We're then going to do, and you can think about this a little bit now. It's like appetizers. Yeah, the little appetizer is we'll go around the table and the one game.

Everyone gets one game that they think could have made their list, but they just didn't play enough of. Okay. If you didn't play it at all and you think maybe big. That's fine, too. It's more than an honorable mention. It's something where you're just like, I didn't give it the, I didn't give it what it deserved, but it could have made my list. This can be part of honorable mentions as well. It's going to be a separate thing.

but yeah. Oh. Yeah. And then we're going to go five, four, three, two, one around the table. Got. Now, here are the rules of this, though. If we start and one of our games is five and if someone else is one, then whoever has it higher on the list, don't say where you have it on your list.

Oh, okay. Just say it's also on my list. So we can talk about the game and we can talk about like where it falls on whoever put it in five. But don't reveal the point system yet. Okay? Does that make sense? Sure. Sure.

Okay. Let's start off with some honorable mentions. Greg Miller. Hi, how are you? How many honorable mentions are we doing? Whatever you want to do, man. It's free-balling. Is that what it is?

I guess, yeah. So, as you know, Tim Gettys, I'm one of an illustrious few that every year gets invited to Giant Bomb. I think they only have two or three people go and give their top 10 games. I've never checked. I've never checked.

500. I'm sorry, what? What? What? Did you get wrong rule for a giant bomb? What? did you need to do it too? I know.

She actually found out all of us in that video. That's what she does. So I went over there and did my top ten, but as I've always talked about, right, Tim, the top ten over there is my favorite games, right? I think Game of the Year is something different often, right? And if I'm voting for Game of the Year,

and we're actually taking it very seriously, I need to get into it. So when it came down to voting here, I have a different order than my Giant Bomb List I'll have you know. And number two, that let... Wait, what? And number two, I'm suddenly putting in...

I'm enumerating. It meant making hard choice. choices because I understand the system we exist in now, you know what I mean, with these points, right? Democracy. So I had a- System that we created. These fucking suits are kind of funny talking down to us making this happen. So I went in there and I had to like sacrifice some of my babies, you know what I mean?

So the first honorable mention I want to give is Concrete Genie, which made it, I think, in my top five on the giant bomb list. But I thought for a game of the year here, it didn't make sense because I'm not going to waste any points because I know Fran's going to come in with some bullshit and try. to push it to the top. I got to cut out. I got to stop it. You know what I mean? I got to stop it. I bet you will agree more than you think. I bet I will too because I love you. But no, Concrete Jeannie, I think is a game that was criminally underplayed. And I think it's one of the most complete games I played this year where I thought top to bottom, there

wasn't a second wasted, there wasn't a pixel wasted, there wasn't an environment. Nothing was like, oh, they just put that in there. They placed that tree. They did that thing, right? None of it wasted my time. It was one of the rare games that I platinumed, and And literally when I was done, I was like, God, I want to keep playing. I wish I could keep, I wish there was more to do in this world. Because there's this obviously, I guess, because so many people didn't play it. There's this, you know, really well done story with beautifully hand animated cutscenes that blew me away. Because I thought jumping into this, it was going to be more of a low budget Sony exclusive, right?

When in reality it wasn't. It felt like a lot of time, care, and love was put into this. And so that meant that the story was really good. The voice acting was really good. The animation was really good. they had distinct styles like you know we always talk about when we see movies and stuff like i don't pick up on color tones and like oh that's oh that was always flashbacks or this was always that they filmed in a specific way i just felt it this was a way that i thought the way they told the current day

stuff the way they told the flashbacks the way they told positive flashbacks or negative flashbacks the way that the first time i doubled back from like area two to area one where i'd already cleared everything coming back into area one and seeing how bright and lively it was versus how dark and, you know, full of despair area too was, that stuck with me. You know, this is a game where you are going through and using your magical paint brush to paint graffiti on the walls. What up, cool, Greg. And use your genes to animate.

It's a whimsical, beautiful tale that caught me off guard how good it was, caught me off guard how fun it was, caught me off guard how it kept evolving. And then, yeah, at the end of it, when it was, now I'm just running around, exploring, trying to find pages and, you know, the different genies I had missed or solve, like, little riddles and stuff. I was engaged the whole way through. And I think that even with some of my games that I think are bigger or better in whatever in different ways, you have those moments.

You have my God, this fucking map. You know what I mean? I never had any of that. Concrete Genie was pure joy. And I don't think he gets enough credit for that, let alone then the super relaxing cool VR mode it had. That's my first honor roll mention. So like Greg, I also did a giant bomb top 10 list. God damn it.

We had to basically submit those things by. early December. So I was not as far in a lot of games that I think I would have probably put a lot higher and probably the pen ultimate example of that is, or not put it, the ultimate example of that is Outer Wilds. Because I was, I was

a decent bit into that game, was like, okay, I really enjoy this. It freaks me out in a lot of ways because space travel freaks me out. But the way that game starts slowly coming together, because it's an aimless game at first. It is very aimless. Yeah, you do your tutorials and you're like, okay, so where am I going? The shiplog says I should check this stuff out.

So I go to the moon and the moon gives me a couple of ideas like, hey, we lost a signal a while ago. Do you want to see if you can find that signal? I'm like, okay, sure, sure. I'll take a look. And that basically sets me on a path of, holy shit, this game keeps escalating and escalating in ways that only video games can. To the point where some of my favorite games, period, in my life, are games that represent video games an interactive medium that a narrative movie could not replicate. So let's say shattered memories, or silent-holyshed memories is a good example of that.

Outer Wilde kind of scratches that same itch of I'm fascinated by this single concept. Like I've become enamored by the idea of finding this harmonica that I can barely hear on the very edge of my, like, the edge of my ear that it's somewhere in the universe. So I'm going to literally dedicate my life, which is 22 minutes because the sun's going to explode. And then figure that out where this thing is. oh wait, I didn't get it, I died, I crashed into an escalate, or something like that, yeah. So now I'm going to position myself somewhere else. I'm not going to make the same mistakes I made last time, and I'm going to find out why in this murky blackness somewhere,

there is this sound of an instrument that's going off, and I want to see what's at the other end of it. And sometimes that leads to me being eaten by an alien. Sometimes it leads to finding alien text that gives me a bit more idea of what's the, lore of this universe, why things are happening, and why, what I could theoretically do to save it. And this becomes a longer, more metaphysical kind of narrative over time as I start realizing, like, is there anything I can do to save this? Is there a point to saving it? Is there anything that, like, what is my individual life worth weighed against the universe? And it becomes, by the time that game ends, and honestly, it's one of the, like, most beautiful.

affecting end games I've ever seen in a video game, I was just completely in love. And I think I put it number 10 on my giant bomb list. Honestly, like, from where I was halfway in the game to the end of that game, it probably rocketed up like nine spaces. Wow. Damn. Outer Wilds is one of those games that I am kind of obsessed with because I've played that game, I played the beginning of that game, the beginning hours of the game,

probably like three or four times because throughout the year, I've heard people mention that like, oh yeah, this game is my game of the year or this game is one of the greatest games ever played in a way where I'm like, huh, like, every time I hear somebody saying, I'm like, really? Because I go back and I play that game and I either get frustrated because I keep dying in weird ways or like I can't get into the flying mechanics or like navigating the spaceship or navigating the jet packs or figuring out like, okay, how do I? Because the whole game is pretty much space travel, right? And like it's kind of meticulous in the way that it makes you, when you go into your ship, and you fly to another planet, if you exit the ship, if you forget to put on your spacesuit, you're going to die. Yes, right. Like, it's very much wants you to play

the way it wants you to play. And so, like, you know, you can fly into the sun if you're not careful. You can fall a great distance if you're not careful and die that way. There are so many different ways you can die in a way that I found it to be frustrating, also because it's pretty aimless, like you said.

Yeah, you don't understand it first. You learned by this, brutal death actually is frankly how the game works and it's one of those things where for all the things that I didn't like about it it sounds like those are the thing that makes those are the things that makes the game resonate with the people that absolutely love it it's so hard to find the fun in that game and that's probably like the biggest flaw of it is that it all exists it's just you're literally digging not literally you're digging through dirt with your hands until you find

the ruby underneath and it's that's like I understand they didn't want to make that game any other way besides that, but it's so hard to recommend based on that one thing. I feel about this game the way some people feel about death stranding of like there's a thing there that is so difficult to find, but if it resonates with you, it probably resonates harder than any other game in years. Yeah. What are your thoughts on Outer Wilds? Yeah, I was going to say Outer Wilds was one of the games that came very close to making my list,

and I didn't make it far enough into it. I feel like if I did, it might have bumped one of them off. Because definitely, as I got farther, like Imran's saying, it starts to, yeah, it starts to resonate more. But what I don't know is if I will continue to suffer some of the frustrations of being blind in a brutal world in outer space. And that is actually I was saying. It's like, well, 22 minutes. You can go wherever you want, actually. But the map kind of suggests I should go here.

I'll just go back there, you know. I because the problem is games for me now are very tied to I'm streaming them I almost never play a game off stream now so sorry where you streaming them Twitch TV slash FM3 underscore um but yeah like I'm doing it so often that it changes the way I play I ask you guys that all the time I think where I'm like wait what if you were playing this on the plane or why did you like it anyway because of that I think it's kept me from playing more as all I wanted to say it definitely needs to be like dedicate a couple of hours to figuring that game out and not everyone has that kind of time or even inclination.

But yeah. To jump in, not because I know I'll say it later, but like the, what could have been on your list but you didn't make time for it, right? Like I've had a very similar to blessing experience with Outer Wilds, right? Where it's like, I've started it a couple different times. And I'm always like, ah, I fucking land on a planet and melt in the ground. Like, God damn it or whatever. I'm like, I'm not in the mood for it. You know, I always say that there's got to be games that I'm in the mood for. And so like that is definitely one of them where I know how good that game is, everybody. loves and respects it, but every time I've turned it on, I'm not in that mental state to do that and fail and fail to find the fun, to find the thing I need to go do. Yeah, that's what I was getting. Almost like I want to play it in bed on a large iPad maybe, still with control somehow, but you get the idea. Don't you want your frames per second, though, and your hair textures and your radiance car? There it is.

There it is. Unlimited frames. But anyway, the short version of that was this game did surprise me in how beautiful it is and experiential it is. And I feel like that's a category of games, and I have a few others like that, where they're more experiential. And what I mean by that is,

I happen to be, I always say, I'm a gameplay guy. I know that sounds almost stupid because we're all playing games. Like, that is the gameplay. But what I mean is I'm super into mechanics and the detail of the engine work and all this stuff.

Not that it doesn't have it, but anyway, because it's so experiential, I think it just didn't quite hit as hard. But I think if I finish it, we'll see. I'll see if I changed my two. I can't imagine a game ever instilling to me the same fear

of being, outside my ship in a space suit and not being able to reach back to my ship because like momentum has gotten me so far away from it and like as like you're slowly burning out fuel and then it's like fuel is out you're now switching to oxygen and you watch your oxygen slowly take down as you're not able to get back to the ship it's like the headjaw with the underwater yeah it's thrilling that no other game is going to be able to instill that kind of fear in me again that it's it's so similar to the death stranding conversation because I remember I think it was this the games cast death stranding conversation where or maybe it was

Twitter. I forget, but I think you were the one who mentioned that, like, oh yeah, like, I'm, the same reasons that I hate that's draining are the same reason that other people might love the game. Like, you, like, I think you mentioned that you got to a part of the game, and you're like, I can't believe they did this, but you said that to somebody else and they were like, man, I can't believe they did this, right? And with excitement

where, like, you're talking about, like, getting back to your ship and the oxygen going down and all the stuff. I remember having those moments and being like, yo, fuck this. I hate this. I hate this game. Yeah. Really? I mean, you didn't have a moment of, like, pure, like, exhilarated beauty. Like, that was how the game hooked me.

Pure exhilarating game. No, like, literally I started, like you're saying, it's like, what the heck, man, there's a dude up on the fire and they want me to roast a marshmallow, and then I'm flying this, like, mini-ship drone. I'm like, I'm like, a lot of, you know, folks are getting out of there. I'm like, please tell me where to go. I want to get going. But they, they, it's

a slow burn at first, and then you take off. And I think it was the first time out, maybe. I landed on some random planet. I'm standing there. I'm like, this is pretty cool, man. I'm like, oh, my stuff's running a little low, maybe I should get, what's that right in the distance? Oh my God, it's growing, and then it was like this explosion.

The star explodes, you pass by, and it just, it obliterated me. Well, that's how the game works, actually, is what it is. But I didn't know that's what was happening, and I just stared at it like interstellar. You know, tears streaming. It was beautiful, and I feel like that's where the game lives. In those moments, they're not all the time. But when they hit unexpectedly, you're like, that was really thrilling. What's an honorable mention for you, Fran?

I have a lot of them, but probably a plague tale. We heard a lot about this year. I feel like a lot of people talk about it for the story, which is pretty cool. You know, no major spoilers, but you're in medieval France, actually, sort of in a line of royalty. You live in this beautiful, you know, place, but your brother's got this sickness, and you don't know quite what's going on, and suddenly, you know, you're under attack, and you have to escape.

And, you know, your mom's trying to get you and your brother out, and suddenly you're thrust out into the woods, and suddenly it gets very grim and dark, and, you know, basically you're running into, like, the forest infested with the plague, and you start to learn more about what's going on. Little by little. So part of it's the story, but actually it's the vibe. It is very picturesque and painterly, almost, I would say.

Like, there's these moments that you come out of the forest and there's this little, like, French, you know, I don't know what the right word is for miniature castle. Baget. Minisher castle. Yeah. Villa. Chateau. There it is.

It's like a little chateau. You see it was right there, baby. But you'll come out, you're like, this is gorgeous. So there's, again, experiential moments, but actually it does have some cool gameplay mechanics where you have your slingshot and a couple other items like your bag, you know, your pocket that you're upgrading and you're looting for some materials. You guys know I like loot. And that progresses, so I didn't beat it yet, but really cool actually. Question for you. I started this one over break because I knew it was on the radar.

or whatever. I didn't get super far, maybe just an hour in because then people came over and it was a story-based game, so I'm like, I'm not going to try to pay attention. But then I never got back. My question is, the game starts and gives off very much escort and stealth. Is that the game throughout? Because the mechanics early on so much are, here's your slingshot. It'll make noise

to be careful. Use it to distract. I'm like, got it. And then it's like, go there and call your brother, but if they see your brother, you're in trouble team. I'm like, I don't know if I feel like hours of this. Yeah, so you're right. A huge piece of it is that. But actually, seemingly the way it breaks down is pretty, it's like a hopscotch method of you're in the story, right? The opening. Then you did stealth for the first time. Throw rocks at this. That's the second piece. The third piece is when you get a little more into like puzzle solving

actually with your slingshot and sneaking around, but it's more puzzle focused. There's a few places like, yeah, you sneak into some camp and you literally just sneaking the whole time. I'm not for that. But the way it hopscotch is, I feel like you get breaks from it's not just stealth. But it comes off as that. And I feel like, yeah, the trailers, maybe I didn't see the right shows. I felt like the trailers were so focused on the story. And, yeah, mainly the story and the beauty. I didn't understand, like, the gameplay of it.

Once I got a piece of it. I saw it on the Steam trailer, I don't know what kind of game this is. That's what I mean, right? I feel like I'll categorize it as a stealth game. Like, I feel the game is majority stealth. I don't know. It is, but it's like a puzzle story game. Like just right now I'm in a major section

There's nothing to do with stuff You're literally, it's like old school You're running around like a castle area You're throwing levers and you're trying to get fire Into the pit to get the rats away from you Like it's cool And again, hopscotches I bet you after that is sneaking out of the castle

Those rats Oh the rats are so good Like they're terrifying I've never been so afraid of rats Yeah have you got to the rat hordes yet No, that's when it starts to click You're like that was again You get to some areas

where like, you know, I won't spoil it, but like some really gruesome things happen. Plague Tell, I'd say, is probably the game, the non-Noddy-dog game that takes the most inspiration from The Lastless, where... People say this a lot to me. You have the narrative elements, the way that they talk to each other, you and your companion talk to each other

as you're making your way through the levels. They talk as if they're Joel and Ellie, right? Like, they're doing the naughty dog, like, conversational things. You're on some mighty thin ice thing. Yeah, yeah. Like, that's kind of how it feels like along with sort of the... the style of the graphics, along with the stealth elements, along with the crafting.

The crafting is 100% Lasso's crafting when you get that stuff. Yeah. It's also like the lane mark in the distance that you're making your way towards to. Like all that stuff is like is 100% Lassoas. That's true, definitely inspiration from that. I mean, I wish it played like with gunplay and stuff like that.

I feel like there's more direct combat. She picks up a shotgun. You do raise a good point that people need to know about. Actually the emotional connection you start to get with Emissia, who is, you know, know, your main character, and then her little brother. She's awesome. I forget his name.

I just forgot his name. I hated the brother. Little like four or five-year-old, and that's it. He'll be like stupidly, but he's sick. There's something going on with him. He's got some power about it. You don't know what's up. And he runs off.

He's like, oh, little froggy. It's a froggy. And she's like, what are you doing? There's a play. It's one of those things where it's a kid in a game that acts like a kid. He does. And you get pissed at him. You get pissed at him.

But he's authentic to a child. But then he starts crying or something. And you're like, I'm sorry. connection. Pick up Rattie, we gotta go. But it evolves, and it's pretty cool. I had the same experience as Greg with the game of, like, I played for an hour or so, and then I was like, okay, I got something else to do. But every time I wanted to go back to him, like, I'm not in the mood for something

super depressing right now. Which is like, maybe that's just a reputation of the game, and maybe it was... I don't think it's depressing. It's just gruesome. It's... Well, you yourself described it as grim. Yeah, it is grim. It is grim. Yeah.

Yeah. I got to chapter six, I want to say, so I got maybe like... Pretty deep into it. Four or five hours. into it and I kind of fell off because I wanted to play other games but I liked what I played of it. Yeah. Yeah. Bless. So each of you guys did one honorable mention. No, we have a lot more. We're just choosing one right now. We're going to choose one or... Or I guess you could go rapid fire right now. Yeah, I'm just rapid fire right now. I'm just rapid fire right now. I really like that game. I think that game got kind of overlooked this year. I think that game is better than the original ukulele. Absolutely. It's like such a great sound. I'm going to just rapid fire real. Does he have a two hundred and the impossible layer. I really like that game. I think that game got kind of overlooked this year. I think that game is better than the original ukulele.

Absolutely. It's like such a great soundtrack too. Great soundtrack. I want to do that. I think really cool new ideas with the overall and how the overall kind of interacts with what the level is going to be. There are essentially two versions of each level in the game. Like I love that when you can flood a level and then then like it's just a water level from then on. It's completely different. And for people who don't know by the way, right? Yuculele was basically Banja Kuzzi. Yes. Direct more directly 3D Super Mario 6, Force Outwe. this is more what, Donkey Kong Country-esque?

But like even, I feel like it's more so its own thing. Like it has elements of Donkey Kong Country for sure. Like it's basically got a level to tighter from Donkey Kong Country Tropon Freeze onto this game. Interesting. But yeah, like, I feel like, see, ukulele the first one, I didn't really vibe with, I didn't play much of it, but from even like the trailers and everything. I didn't really vibe with the personality of it.

I was very much like, okay, this seems like just copy and paste Banjo Kizu Kizu, which isn't my jam. Like I love Banja Kizu Kizu, but I don't want to play a game that's just copy. But like 30 times larger or two. 64 more than Banjo Cazui? So the first time I played Banja Cizu was 2016. Okay. Yeah, where I grew up with Don Kong 64.

But going back to Banja Cizuji, or playing for the first time in 2016, I was like, oh, this game is awesome. And I had such high hopes for this guy. But I ended up seeing, playing it in 2016, I was like, I understand now why people hate Don Quang 64. Because this is just like a streamlined version of, or I guess it's the opposite way. It's incredibly complicated. Well, no, Beijing is streamlined. Oh, yes. Donkong is the complicated, like, they went all-in version of Bangerick's doing.

What if you just couldn't pick up bananas? Yeah, I like, see, I still appreciate it though. It's just so... It's the fighter things, Imran, you don't get it. It's just one of those things where it's like they went all the way in a way where there's just so much to do in DK64. You can play that game. I forget how long it actually takes for one, like a playthrough of that game, mainline, but you can play that game for what feels like forever. Yeah, it's a lot of value when you're like 10.

Yeah, exactly. And I was like, I was like eight years old when I played it. So I just played it forever and it felt great. It just sucks. Yeah. But Impossible Air is awesome. Double May Cry 5 is awesome. I think like, I feel like if you are, if there's like a technical award for like, I don't know, the way. The way people will want like, oh, video game review should be like objective or whatever, right?

If you, if we're all robots and we're grading games. Scientific. If you're scientific and we're grading games this year, Double Make Cry 5, I think would be in a really top five. Because I think that game, polish-wise, great mechanically, solid story, pretty cool. environments, beautiful. Like, that game does... Ticks a lot of boxes. Ticks a lot of boxes.

Tones vibe, the smell. The soundtrack's incredible. The one box it didn't tick, which I think is what held this game back, is environment. It's that you're always in like a building or a cave or something. And after a...

Streets. Yeah, after a certain point in that game, I feel like you're just in like the tree, like the evil trees. Yeah. Evil trees. It's like, I think if they had like varied that up a little bit,

because you think about Devil May Cry 3, like they managed to make that tower feel different in every single area. And for Devil cry five which like I've talked to it's no before he said like he built that game around one moment at the end and you can tell that like the moment's dope as fun they made that like it's very obvious that was what was in his mind was he built like everything else but it was kind of to the detriment of everything

else before that dreams creator early access I want to shout out Pokemon sword I want a shout out the outer worlds I want to shout out blood and truth hell yeah people should have played blood and truth that's a that's an honor roll mention from Greg too that game is awesome that game is super fun and I think it's some of the I mean it's the blood and truth again it's the PlayStation VR game from London Studio. You play as like, I guess, a British gangster. Is that based on that VR World's demo that they...

Yeah, it's like that was like their test bed for it. Yeah. Death Stranding is another honorable mention for me. Where the more I play it, the more it will probably inch into my top five, but I haven't played enough of it for me to put it above any of these other ones. And then, um, Ape Out, I want to give a shout out to. That was one of mine. It was super fun. I freaking loved Ape Out.

The music in that game is incredible. It's so good. It's so well done. The way it melds with the game play. Well, that's the thing. It's literally an AI over the, like an overlay over the game that basically creates jazz drums. Yeah, if you miss it, you're an ape. It's a top-down game. You're an ape that escapes and you start killing things and smashing things and fighting back. And as you do actions, they do jazz with it. We're talking on games daily about it today going over the GDC nominees for the awards.

And it's just crazy that ape out's not getting as much recognition for sound design. It's such a bummer because the sound design is so good. And like stylistically, the game is really cool. People talk about control and the way the titles pop in control. Ape Out, I feel like, I mean, isn't necessarily that crazy, like controls this, but Ape Out the way the titles pop into that game. Super stylistic, super cool. Very Wes Anderson.

Yeah, like, it's super fun. It's because Devolver Digital is a bunch of dirt bags. That's why they're going to be blackballed from society. And then my last item will be Astral Chain. I need to play more of that. The pacing was a little off. Yeah, the pacing's off. That's a good segue to My Arnold will mention as well,

which is just Nintendo this year. So pretty much like, it's crazy for me that I, after coming off with the last couple years of there being like countless bangers from Nintendo where I'm like, oh man, my game of the year personally is difficult because there's so many great choices. This year with Pokemon Sword and Shield, with Super Mario Maker 2, with Astral Chain, and Luigi's Mansion 3, all of those good to great games that I enjoyed very much.

All of them had something that held them back in a way that I was just like, I can't put these in my top 10. I can't put these in my top five, definitely. Mario Maker 2, it was so great. When we first saw the direct trailer for it, you were a game of everything, right? I was like, this is the game of my forever, like, potentially. And it ended up not being that with the main reason being,

I just wanted them to go a little bit further in terms of playlist, in terms of letting people make entire games worth of levels so that I can just download and then play through a ton of stuff. Also, like, it's how have they not supported that game that well over this past? Exactly. Like literally yesterday, They up the cap to 100 levels, which is what the Wii you ended at. So why did it take eight months to do that?

It's things like that that I feel like this game could have been huge and could have had such great support that would have kept me in and kept me playing constantly. And they missed that mark. And I feel like that was the bare minimum for like this being a great game, not just a really good game. They're doing some good stuff now, which is momentum's gone. Yeah.

Like that link thing is actually really cool, but no one's playing the game anymore. So there aren't many people making link levels. Yeah. And then Luigi's Mansion 3 is a great game, but I just feel at the end of the day, it lacked the Nintendo polish. Like, I feel like once I beat it, I was like, that was fun.

I'm not itching for another Luigi's Mansion. When I finished Luigi's Mansion 2, I was like, oh, man, that was so great. I don't think we're ever going to get another Luigi's Mansion game, but I wish that we did. And beating 3, I was kind of like, there's just something about it

where I was talking about in the review we did. Like, the graphics didn't impress me. I didn't like the looks of them. And like, a lot of people seem to disagree with me about that. Once I actually played it, I thought it was great. It looks really good. Yeah, I don't know, man. There's something about it.

It's not even the art style. It's just like the technical side of it. Like I watched or read the digital Foundry breakdown. It's like this is the best looking Twitch game. I'm talking about in terms of like animations and stuff. I'm not talking about in terms of like the frame rate and all of that. I'm talking about in terms of like how it looked on my TV, how it looked on the screen. It was one of those games when I played it on my TV that reminded me this is a switch.

The switch is not powerful enough to make this art style shine. And I feel like there are other examples of Switch games that that wasn't the case for. Mario Odyssey. I think it might have just been like a situation of it not jiving with you because to me it looked like, oh, this is, once you get to certain levels, like the Coliseum, for example, I'm like, oh, this looks like a Pixar movie brought to life in a lot of ways. Yeah, see, I... Maybe not a modern Pixar movie from 10 years ago, but in terms of, like, animation and like the way all that stuff is cohesive, it looked probably the best-looking Switch game to me this year. Did you play it on TV, though? Yeah, yeah, uh, yes.

Yeah, see, that blows my mind. I love Pixar, I love Disney, I love Nintendo. And to me, there's just something about the polish of the charm didn't quite hit the mark. And then what was the last Nintendo one there? Oh, Pokemon Sword and Shield. It was great, but it wasn't anything special. And I think that it was the most refined Pokemon we've seen,

and they made so many choices that I absolutely loved for core Pokemon titles. And it was just as fun as ever to go through the whole process. And I love the way that they handled the gyms and they made them feel more like the anime. and more like a sport. But then they kind of gave up towards the end. Like did you finish that game?

Yeah. Like those last two gyms were just like, we're not even going to try anymore. And that I feel like, you say the last two, I think that even like earlier on some of the mini games that they had going on, it felt like they just didn't know what to do.

So they're like, we're just going to add this weird gimmicky thing that you only do in this gym and like the little Pichinko machine type thing. Nobody enjoyed that. You know what I mean? I didn't really like it. Yeah, you're right.

But even like the maze one, I was like, I feel like I got a better maze in Pokemon Blue when I was doing like the Team Rocket stuff. Oh yeah, yeah, still pulling all that. But like, there are aspects of that game that would not have been acceptable in any other game. Like, have you ever been to the wild area online? It is the worst thing I have seen in a modern video game.

What happens? It drops to like 12 frames a second. Like literally you're just walking through and, because they keep popping people in and out so it's a theoretically a destiny style thing. Okay. But they don't have the chops for that network. Sure, sure.

So it's awful. Like to the point where every time I was about to go into the wild area, I would turn all mine off. Because it was just that badly. Yeah, only ever played off line. Yeah, me too. And I feel like at this point it's kind of weird that Pokemon doesn't have voice acting. Yeah.

It's very weird. There's an entire concert scene where someone is singing, and it's like literally panning over like people like rocking out to silence. Yeah. Like nothing happening. It's bizarre stuff and it's like, these are all good. I really wish they were great and I think they all could have been great. So that's why Nintendo's my honorable mention.

Do you mention a firearm? I did not. Did you play it? Fire Enblem is the one game I should have played more of because it had a shot. It actually making my list. It is literally one of the best games I played. I absolutely love Fire Emblem. I love the series.

And the last couple iterations have been really hit or miss for me in the first couple hours. I know whether I'm going to love the game or be like, this isn't going to be my favorite. My first couple hours with this, I was like, I don't absolutely love it. I feel like I wanted to get into kind of the more story-based elements quicker than it was giving them to me. But I just, I had family stuff going on in, what was it, May or whatever, that it came out. So, like, I just totally fucked up and never got, never was able to jump back in.

But I love Firemo. I guarantee if I totally finished it, it would be in my time. Yeah, when that game starts endearing you is when you start getting, like, you have your house and you start attaching yourself to them. And you start, like, uh, assembling, recruiting people from other houses and you start learning about them. And suddenly like this, oh, this rag tag group of, like, exile, because I was golden deer. Like, this rag tag group of exile suddenly, like, they feel. feel like family and once you actually get to the midpoint of that game where everything starts differentiating because the first half of the game is the same for every team but once you get to like oh well this is what this house did and this

set off this whole like big war essentially between everybody then you start realizing oh there's a there's a huge amount of differentiation between what everyone's doing and I I am with my group I'm sticking with them because this is the team that I'm most attached to and Fireland Three Houses I think bucks the trend of what I was talking about of Nintendo not hitting that polish mark, it does hit the polish mark. The fact that they went back on after the 3DS where they're like, we're going to try to Pokemon-Eyes, Fire Emblem, put out multiple versions and make you buy two and a half versions of the game to be able to get the full thing to go to the switch, be like, no, no, no,

three houses, you get all three stories. The amount of gameplay and the amount of content there of different scenarios where it is, different storylines and different missions you're doing, that's awesome. It's all fascinating because this game was like almost entirely made by Coatechmo. like Nintendo had surprisingly little involvement with it. So it's probably the best COA techno game they've made in like a decade. I didn't even know that at all. Like just going by the credits, it's very few intelligent systems or Nintendo people.

Interesting. Greg, what's your one game? I want more honorable mentions. I'll throw them. I mean, I'll do it. Yeah, I'll do like Blessing did where he just rattle them off, right? Telling lies, we've talked about a lot on this show or whatever. For me, it was such a special experience to sit down with that.

have the pen have the papers in like just write out diary of a madman style and I was trying to keep up with it all I want to give a shout out to Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3 that was the game I played the most on Switch I played a ton on it has such great time can't believe how much they've added to that outside of just characters right modes and different things and gauntlets to go play that's awesome those are the big ones in terms of things that I should have played more of or maybe I don't even know if it's a it would have made the list I just feel if I was in different headspace or maybe even a different gamer or if we were at

at IGN still trying to be more objective about everything. Like, I've heard so much about, like we said, Outer Wilds, but then also Disco Elysium. And those are two games that Outer Wilds I've tried, and it just doesn't, I just can't, it's just not happening. And then Disco Elysium was very much like, I watched Lucy play it for a while. I'm just like, this just does not seem like a Greg game.

And I totally realize the quality of it. I understand what you're saying. Sounds awesome. That just doesn't seem like, and I was talking to some, I think maybe even you at like the kind of funny stream, kind of funny day stream. and you were like, oh yeah, it's a couple hours. And I was like, I don't know if I got a couple hours to try to get into something, right?

Like, I want to be able to jump right in. Something I tasted and would have liked more of in Will. Well, I don't even know if I ever get back to it. Astral Chain, I did really dig. I played two and from on a trip to L.A. And I was like, holy shit, this is really fun. I like this a lot. Yeah, yeah.

But it was the same thing as always where I came home, put it down. And I think it was what, Death Stranding and Borderlands and all those other stuff was happening. And now I'm so, like, frosted over on where I was and what was happening. It's like, well. At a different world, that would have been a game. I bet I was really, really into, but it just didn't happen. I think it would have solved a lot of your issues with outer worlds. Like, the issues that you had with that game just not coming together towards the end.

Disco Elysium does that much better. Really? It just, convincing you to get to that part is going to be very different. Yeah. I mean, I'd love to do now, but I'm playing Beeswalker. I'm just too much. Imran, you want to close out your honorable mentions? Yeah, let me throw a couple out there.

Kingdom Hearts 3 is a trash fire, and I'm a disgusting pig who like it. Nice. Like, that game has so many fucking problems, but I'm so deep into it at this point that I can't look at it objectively anymore. Like, as much as I have... It's not even junk food. It's all right. It's not junk food.

It's just bad. It was my honorable mention as well. It's bad. And that is like such a problem. But there are moments at the end of the game that make it all worth it. It's like the last two hours, right? Maybe two and a half, three hours of that game. When I think about the game, I think about the end of the toy story world where you have this like

insanely good. Arena combat fight thing. When that cutscene where Sora and Woody are confronting young Zahenort who is like mind control buzz and like there is this like fucking amazing thing where like the entire

area is like shrouded in darkness and Woody is like telling him off. It's like you're you don't have any friends. You don't know what it's like he like steps down and like his his aura his anime aura like cleanses the area around him and he's like It's pure hype man

He's giving him this lecture and it's like oh my god This is so amazing I love this I feel like anytime organization 13 was involved in the story The game was at its strongest I feel like the Disney stuff actually got in the way of three Because they committed too hard to We're literally gonna have the entirety of let it go in this sequence Yes

The entirety instead of giving us a bit more backstory or boss fights Or incorporating that stuff into the story I imagine that's where like the Dealing with a corporation as large as Disney comes into play. John Drake. I talked to the Pixar people about this, and the Pixar liaison was a huge fan of Kingdom Hearts, so she was able to work with them and get them the original story they wanted. I imagine that's not true for Frozen.

Yeah. Of like, hey, Frozen's too big. You got to just make... If you want a story, it can't affect the movie in any way. So I think that's where that fell apart. But I'm looking forward to the DLC. Me too, because it looks like it's focusing more on the actual core. Poor story.

Yeah. And the gameplay is fun. The combat in three I actually really enjoyed. I don't think it ever hit the peaks of two of like how tight it all felt. Yeah, the gameplay, the battle designer for two was not working on three. He's working on F-O-7 instead. Yeah. But it's still like really fun.

And like some of the boss fights, I just needed more of them. I think they did a good job of having so much just pizzazz and like sparks and like flashy shit happening that you felt in control of. And there was so many different. systems within systems of, like, I don't even know what the terms are anymore, but like summons and links and overdrives and this and this, where it's just like meters, like different meters left and right, where you're constantly just like hack and slashing while also there's a million different things blasting colorful, like fireworks around you. I also. Oh, I'm not sorry, 10. 11, 11. Did I not say that?

Okay, that's my honorable mentions also. 2.8. Dang it. That game has a really fucking good story mode. Dude. It makes, I think the Mortal Kombat story is by and large, just complete garbage. How dare you? But I love it.

How dare you? It is garbage, but I love it. This is the time travel one, right? Where the old movie, okay. And so they use that time travel to repair a lot of what's garbage about that story. Gotcha. It'd be like, why, the whole thing in Mortal Kombat 9 where Luke King and Raiden, I guess, in the Mortal Kombat thing, is, they're both right. They confront each other, and Lou King's like, no, you're stupid.

Like, this is not going to work. and then like, Raiden ends up killing him. We all know it well. That, like, gets brought up. It's like, hey, that was dumb, but it's dumb for a reason now. So they retcon it, but they clearly realized it was bad. They're like, what if we just use that to make a bunch of very hype moments for the end of this game? Dude, the story mode in Mortal Kombat this year was fantastic.

And I want every single fighting game to have that type of... This might be too big of a proclamation, but I feel like it might deserve a nod for, like, best narrative. Like maybe like just like a nomination, you know, like I could see it It was so good Like the whole Jack's stuff Like the stuff he's going through And the narrative is really good

The whole idea of bringing back It's about his arms? Is he like super depressed? Yeah, he's super depressed I think he's about his arms? His wife died Oh maybe that's Was out of the arms or the wife?

It was very different Both are big losses Maybe she hates his arms It was actually one of those things where like He's going through it so much That he looks to the bad person of the story To kind of like heal him

Yeah. Yeah. But there's that, there's the whole, like, you know, since they're doing the whole melding of the timelines, and so older Johnny Cage has to confront younger Johnny Cage. And older Johnny Cage has just gone through loss and has just gone through growth and all this stuff, right? And younger Johnny Cage is the original Johnny Cage,

who's an asshole and who's like this, like, superstar, like, young kid. And it's one of those things where Johnny Cage looks at himself and he's like, oh no, I was a dick, I was an asshole. When he beats his own ass, it's awesome. It's so cool. All right. I didn't know where that was.

I was like, this sounds so ridiculous. I was like, wait, that's pretty good. Yeah, there's a really great part where, like, Scorpion and Sub-Zero are working together now because they're both good guys. Then the old Scorpion comes to it, like, what the fuck are you doing? Oh, my God.

How should I love that. He's working with Sub-Zero, what is wrong with you? I will say the one part of that game that, like, is a huge mistake was Rhonda Rousey. Yes. She does the whole thing's not great. Yeah, I take back the best story. Yeah.

But, yeah, dude, I look at, so, stick with me. I look at the moral combat narrative from, like, all the games. similar to how I look at Miller's Solid that narrative, except I think Meliger Solid is a great story. Mortal Kombat from front to back is not a great story. But I've been with the story since like,

like, Mortal Kombat Deception on PS2 or whatever. Like, yeah. Lou Kang is dead. Freaking Chu Jujico, Bo Raito, like all that stuff. And so I'm following it from there and seeing kind of how, like where the story has kind of gone and the ways in which they've kind of recond it and clever and crazy and dumb ways. To me, it's super entertaining.

It's the X-Men Days of Future Pass. Of Mortal Kombat, but even more just diving into like the, fuck, it's also parody. Like, we're just, we're going to make this as, we're going to make sure we're going to have any moment people are actually looking for for Mortal Kombat. There's like a 10 minute scene towards the end of that game that's like end game quality, like big giant battle. Oh, man. Shot to Sean Kittleson. I've spoke so highly of it throughout the year. If you, if you like Mortal Kombat or you're familiar at all with Mortal Kombat lore, I would say play.

Oh, I know I'd love it. It's like, that's what this is. I have, you know, on my list, too. There's, like, so many games where I'm like, well, I know I would love this one and this one. I haven't had time to get into him. There's just too much to play. Brian? My turn.

Awesome. I'm going to go through fast. Grease? Dang it. Man, I thought I was going to get it right for 2020. Grease. Absolutely gorgeous game. One of those experiential, but I really liked it.

Apex Legends. I feel like, you know, we're skirting around it because it's like, it kind of, you know, it came out of nowhere, and it was awesome, and then it fizzled out maybe for a while. It's got some releases. I'm not skirting. Okay, we'll see. It's on some people's list, maybe. But anyway, Apex Man, total shout out to that.

Rebel Galaxy Outlaw, I talked about a lot more of an indie game, but, you know, I bring it up a lot if you liked the delivery of cargo in Dest Stranding. Funnily enough, this game is literally you deliver cargo from, you know, Galaxy of the Galaxy, and in between you get into these space battles, and you have to upgrade your ship from, like, a piece of junk to have better things. It's funny how similar and sort of base concept it is. I love that like when you customize your ship, it literally just opens Photoshop. Yeah, oh, and you would actually, yeah, it has that in it.

Draw some dicks on your ship if you want to. Yeah, you can buy, you know, a space station and start upgrading it. And it's got a lot of time you can sing in it. Really cool. We talk about this every time. It was only PC last time. Is it still only PC? I believe it's still only PC, but it was...

I think they announced the PS4. I thought it was destined for consoles still. So actually, yeah, that'll be... We'll send it to gamescast here wrong. We've got too much... Well, I can look it up. What's the name? Rebel Galaxy Outlaw.

I swear it's coming to consoles still. I feel like I've heard a PS4 port, but maybe I'm... Really cool, though. And also it has like this killer, like, soundtrack. You can put the radio on while you're like just driving through space, getting into the battles. And it has all these different stations. Yeah, it's a trucking game to a point too.

The Wikipedia doesn't say anything about consoles. Check their website, actually. I thought I had it. But anyway, Rebel Galaxy out on. It's definitely on Switch for sure. I see Rebel Galaxy.com says first footage of Rebel Galaxy on Switch. I don't think it's out yet, though, right? So it's coming.

Keep going. I'll find... PS4 and Switch. Another one. Apple Arcade. I've been bringing this one up recently, but man, I just got into Card of Darkness,

Adventure Time, art style. Really cool. I, this game nearly made... Card of Darkness. Card of darkness. You played something? No, no. No.

It makes my top list because, man, it's just that game I can pick up for three minutes or, you know, ten minutes, and I can lay in bed for two minutes and play... It just is one of those fast mobile games that that's what I look for on mobile,

and it's just a card attack game and has a lot of RPG. It's got an honorable mention for Best Mobile Game at the GDC Awards. Awesome. Yeah, but see, that's the thing. Like, I guess, you know, I understand why for Best Mobile Game, but actually even overall, man, like, what a bunch of fun. That actually reminds me. Speaking of Apple Arcade is, I don't mean the hijack,

but Grindstone was one of the, I should have mentioned. It's funny, yeah, it has the similar thing to Grindstone where you're just trying to get to the top of the grid. Grindstone should have ended up in my top ten. It's just that that game, not too hard. It was like unrealistically hard at some point. Yeah, this game gets hard at certain points. Gears 5 didn't make it far enough in, but I had played several modes at E3, played the beginning. Man, that game is gorgeous. I just need to play more of it. I think because I know what to expect,

I didn't, you know, make sure I spent enough time with it. But curiosity, is Gears 5 on any of our lists? No. No. Okay. Oh. Oh, look at that. I was going to be like, you'll love to hear. I was going to ask, like, if we actually completely missed that game. I was kind of wondering why. So I wanted to make sure to at least put it here. Definitely wanted to play more of it. But then the obvious mentions, Borderlands 3, Destiny 2, and Division 2,

not just because I like those games, but they're genuinely high-polished games. I feel like they fall for people who like them in that 7-5 to 8-5, or whatever, we end now, 8-9 or 7-8 mark if we're doing IGS score. But they're good games, man. They don't always deliver to the absolute top getting over, you know, that 9 feeling.

But awesome games in Borderlands 3. I know we're on the show. Full disclosure. You're a piece of shit. I was expecting. I wanted your backup. I made my top five. Yeah, they did. But I wanted some help there, buddy.

The Borderlands 3. On my top 5, too. Awesome. Yeah, look at that, Imbron coming through, clutch. You know what I mean? This show's crazy. Conflict of interest.

Anything can happen. Borderlands 3, tons of fun. Thank you, Kevin. And obviously, I just getting into Borderlands this year, but still playing it. That's it. You already gave yours blast? Yeah. What about the games we haven't played as much of?

Yeah, you want to give yours there? Oh, yeah. I have two, if that's okay. Oh, yeah. All right. The first one is Bobby is you. I really love puzzle games. The Witness is probably one of my favorite games along with Portal.

Cube 2 I also really love. Bobby is you. I would have played more if it wasn't so hard towards the beginning. Yeah, that's the problem. Yeah, that's like the problem is that it starts off, just knocking you down. But if I had more time, I probably would have just stuck with it because I do love games like that. I love that sort of puzzle game. And so that's my first one.

And then the other game that I didn't play enough of, but if I played more, it would probably make my list is Sonic Team Racing. I You maniac I played probably only a couple hours of that game and I loved it I thought that game was fun I thought

I haven't played enough of it to really compare it to Mario Kart A deluxe But you played Crash Team Racing I'm not I'm not The fact that that and Sonic

came out so close together It was just like Sonic All-Stars Racing Transform was great Yeah Team Sonic Racing Not that great

Not as good no The one that came out this year? Yeah. I thought it was wonderful. It's fine. It's just not as good to transform. How'd that game get received?

Am I the only one on this? Really? Not great. Yeah. Oh, well. Because, like, it is a step down for transformed and, like, that's, that was their goal as they wanted to make it simpler for, like, the Mario Kart audience kind of thing. It just, I don't feel like it landed as well.

Well, I had fun. That's all say that. That's all I care about. Thank you, Kev. One, my last honorable mention I want to give is Killer Queen Black. And the reason it's an honorable. mention is I love this game. I talked about this game. We'll Killer Queen

years ago on the kind of funny games cast back when it was just arcades. Now it's on Switch. It's coming to Xbox as well. We don't have details on that. But that's why it's an honorable mention. There are not enough people playing online. The majority of the times that, I mean, we've only done it once on stream, right? Sure. But even that time.

We were playing. It was fantastic. We were so good. We were playing against the same teams over and over and over. And when me and my friends have tried to play now, probably four or five times, it hits that pretty quickly. Where there's just not enough different groups playing at the same time to like keep it as competitive as that game should be it's a perfect example of a game being hindered by being stuck to one platform right it should be is it went out for other stuff because it's Xbox one it's game passed yeah said that yeah that'll really fucking help it out and that that's a perfect example of what this game needs to to really kind of hit just right now it's TBA for Xbox but according to the wiki at least um yeah it's coming out a later date to Xbox one Xbox game passed. But I can't wait for that because I feel like that could have bumped it up my list for sure. Sure. Let me throw out, it's a game I'm sure nobody else here has played, but AI, Sommian

Files. I've heard a lot about it. It's the newest game from I think his name is Kotaro Uchikoshi, but he is the writer of 999 Virtues S Award, those kind of games. This is very much in line with those. It's a anime-ass detective story that takes you like, basically you're trying to figure out a series of murders and there's a sections between those where you're trying to like mentally explore your own mind with the use of like a cartoon character mascot that's like helping you do that and it's I don't want to like I want to play more of it

before I commit to like saying like oh that everyone should play this game but it's a utterly fantastically written game I don't know that it's going to stick the laying necessarily like 999 did but I really loved everything I've played of it so far and if you were at all interested in our visual novels, I think this is the kind of game you want to play. Life is Strange, too. I want to give a shout to. It's on your list, then I'll let you carry it when you get there. Any final mentions, guys.

Any final honorable mentions or the game that you wish you played more. Dragon Quest Builders, too. I wish I played more of that. It seems really fun and charming. It's just like, God, I wish I had the time. Great theme song, too. Yes. I heard good things about, what was it, Val Ferris. So, I don't know. I was talking to somebody about Val Ferris. Is that it? That's a heavy metal contrast style game. Yeah, yeah. It has a little like Dark Souls vibe.

But I heard very good things about that. That was one that maybe I just want to throw out there. And then for me, it was Fire Emblem, though, that I just didn't play, that I feel like could easily have ratcheted up the list that I just didn't get to it, I think, above all. While we were took the break. Oh, and Link's Awakening. I don't know if anybody mentioned that, actually.

Sorry, those were the two. Honorable mention to Kind Words. I finally played that. Oh, that gives great. Yeah, finally played that over break. And I was like, hell yeah. Weirdly affecting. Totally.

It's a game that I think, it's rare that I would say this, but desperately needs an iOS port or a phone, tablet port or whatever, because I think that would do so much more for it personally. It's on PC right now. Oh, got it. And so it's like, I don't think it works as a console game because it's so much typing,

but I think it would work really well on an iOS thing, and I think it would be, for me personally, as who's not a big PC gamer, like, I played it really, I played it extensively for one night when extensively you're writing, you're answering people's real messages, you're sending back your advice or whatever.

You put out your own thing, people talk to you. It's all anonymous. whatever. The, obviously, goal is that, you know, I think you turn it off and then you go do something else, and you come back and you open it, and there's new responses, there's new questions.

And so as I played it at one time, it got responses to my own thing. I sent off my own answers to people's questions, but I haven't gone back to really check what they thought of it and where we are. Bloodstained. Oh, yeah. I played it on Switch.

Or I played some of it on Switch. I was like, this is horrible. I'm not playing this version. So I've been waiting to, like, get on sale. But, like, from what I played, the actual game, Switch port aside is really good. It's exactly the Symphony of the Night, not sequel, but like spiritual sequel, people want. It's just, God, that port is really bad.

Just the music is good. The ideas are really good. There's so many systems upon systems that, like, you don't necessarily need to engage with, but you could. So many, like, nice little Castlevania references in it. Yeah. I think it's on GamePass now, so I probably just pick that version up. But it does seem like a really great game. I just didn't have the, I didn't choose the right thing for my Kickstarter back.

Yeah, that was the one that I keep saying. I have it on PC where it runs fine, but I know it has these switch problems, but the problem is that's the game I want to play on the airplane or in bed maybe, and like, I can't be good. Well, I just have not heard great things about it. I played that game on an airplane,

and at one point the boss music just dropped out, and I fought a boss entirely silently. No. No. Thank you. I want to give a shout out to Sinai Wild Hearts. Yeah, that's pretty fun. I had some complaints with it

because the way the default mode kind of is set up, it boots you out after every song, which that game is better played in the arcade mode, which arcade mode, which I think you unlock after you beat the game. But still shout out to that. I think the soundtrack's pretty good. I really enjoyed it. And I wish Travis strikes again, No More Heroes was better.

I wish it was better too. Because I love No More Heroes. Because it does seem like it connects directly to No More Heroes 3, so people are going to have to play it. And also it's like a weird, like, we've talked about this before on kind of funny games daily, but like it is a suit of 51 dealing with the fact that he hates EA so much because of what happened with Shadows of the Damned. And, like, as you go further, it just, like, it becomes less metaphor and more just obvious.

Like, the villain of that game is named Richard T.llo, based off the former president of EA who, like, made him change so much about Shines of the Dam. Oh, yeah, yeah. So, like, it is, the metaphor has just been completely dropped now. And it's an interesting thing, like, as a fascinating game's history document of, like, I wish that game was better, but it's crazy how much he hates them. Got to love it. All right. We're about to get into our top five games of the year leading into Kind of Funnies, Game of the Year. 2019.

Go, good, good. Game of the year. Game of the year. Exactly. Wow, that's some old school. The charter rap, baby. There we go. Let's get to some ads.

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Do you remember this? Do you know what they're talking? No idea. Every year IGN used to make a big, like, fun video for game of the year. Announcement, goofy, yeah. And in 2009, when it was Uncharted 2, they had Malik. Yeah, Malik Forte. I think who last I know was hosting for Nurtess.

Yeah, he's still right. He's like an e-sports. Yeah, I was going to say he's, he sports. I mean he does the one that people really like, Eastport. The Overwatch? That's the one? I don't know. That one is for really like.

This is before he even got like that big and into all that stuff. Anyway, he rapped in the chorus. It was to Ukrainian bell carol. He was like, game of the year, game of the year. I'm a kill him all. I'm a kill him. Yeah, it was really awesome. You can watch it up.

You can watch it on YouTube. So let's get right into it. Greg Miller. Hi, baby. Number five. So this means this gets one point. I'm making the noise as I go. I'm going to lead off with my number five.

I'm double. checking because I was very... I was... I was... I had my list in front of this. That's what I was opening, but I did the thing where I didn't commit to or I sent Barrett two.

I sent one this morning. I'm like, done. And I was like, wait, hold on, hold on. Do this. Reson Evil, too. At my number fifth slot. This is, honestly, the first draft I sent Barrett, I put Concrete Jeannie here,

but I felt like it would be wasting points because I know it had no shot of getting anywhere. Resident Evil, I want to give... Resent Evil falls into the same reasoning I love Concrete Jeannie in some ways, which is, it's a super complete game. I had a great time playing it.

We talked about it like, you know, Res Evil in general should have been Greg's Jam as a kid being obsessed with Ramiro zombie flicks, loving PlayStation. When I got my hands on that, the tank controls were such a turnoff. I just could never get into Resident Evil games. And so to get this one and come in that day

after we got it and you talk to you about it, I'm like, was the map always this good? You're like, no, they've done done. I'm like, this is making it literally a joy to play where I'm not running into those. Like, what the fuck am I supposed to do? Oh, I'm annoyed with this. God of it. I mean, it's beautiful. It kept me going.

It had me replayed again. You know what I mean? Granted, just do the second play-through, which I thought, usually I didn't think I was going to be into or whatever. Like, it's such a well-done video game.

And that's the point to it. Yeah, it's on my list as well. I absolutely love the game. And I think that a lot of people don't give it enough credit because it's a remake. It, on its own rights, is a fantastic,

I would go as far as saying, amazing game that the design is so well-crafted. And I'll never forget playing it for the first time at E3, expecting it to just be a prettier version of RE2. And it ended up being my favorite Resident Evil game I've ever played, someone being a fan of many Resident Evil games, being a fan of the idea of the original ones, but not loving how they actually played.

But two, I have so many fond memories of it. I feel like this really just kind of upped the ante on all of it. And coming out a month after Kingdom Hearts did, and playing Kingdom Hearts, being so let down that it felt like a PS2 game coming out on PlayStation 4 game and playing this game that was a remake of a PS1 game

but feels like it could have just came out now. It just as a modern game and it would have been freaking awesome. So impressive to me because the sound design is great. The visuals are on another level, man. The R.E. Engine is gorgeous.

I'll say it's probably the best looking game this year, like graphically. Absolutely. If you look at the way... I think there's a lot of good at the way The shadows and lights work is... The way that the zombies just, like, drip apart. Like, when you shotgun them in the stomach and they just fall apart,

like, that stuff looks super impressive in a way that... Drip tech. Yeah, the drip tech. It feels like something I've never seen before. I feel it solved so many of the issues that the original had in terms of just, like, the puzzles being frustrating. I feel like the puzzles in this one, like, worked a lot better for me. Yeah.

And it definitely was way more fun to control. And I loved the way the camera was so close to you and, like, how that worked. like your field of view of what you could be able to see combined with the lighting effects of turning around a corner and there's like puddles on the floor reflecting the lights coming in which scare you because you think that it's something coming at you

but it's just something moving. That to me is how survival horror should be. It's not constant jump scare, jump scare, jump scare. When this game has jump scares, it feels earned and the other ones are just, it's atmosphere that's scary. And then Administer X. on top of that.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the constant, the constant feeling of dread in that game is what it excels at, like, super well. Because when I played it, and I would go into a hallway or room

or whatever, right, before I even unlocked, I guess, unlocked Mr. X, right? And I'm just, like, alone in this police station. And you see, you see zombies or you see, what are the crawley thing's called? Liquors. Lickers. Yeah, and you see a liquor on the roof,

and they just drop down, they terrify you, right? Like, that stuff alone was enough to make me go, like, oh, yeah, this game is terrifying. Yeah. And then comes in. Mr. X and it... And that was the thing is, it did such a good job of making you feel powerful and then making

them feel more power. Like there was always this, like, you know, I was always going up. So even when it was like, all right, I'm running into the office desk room or whatever, right? And I know that there's always that zombie in the chief's office. There's always that zombie there. But I'm just going to do this move. I'm going to run past them and then there'd be something else on the other side of the door. I'm fuck, I wasn't expecting that. It's interesting that you mentioned the liquor

because like that was the, whenever I thought about this game and like they announced that remake three or four years ago, I was like, If you're making it 3D, how are you going to do the liquor moment? Because there was that moment early, early on in the game, where you're traveling through a room and the camera changes, and you see the liquor, like, go across the window. And, like, that is a moment that is very formative into how I play.

I like horror games, because that builds tension in a way that is utterly impossible when to have control of the camera. And so the way they did that is they didn't. They didn't bother with that moment. They built that tension other ways. And that's so, like, it is a game that does not collapse under the weight of a its own history because it doesn't try to recreate those things. It tries to make them in a different way or tries to do its own thing in a different way.

And that is incredible. And it's like so many remakes are so beholden to what that game used to be. And Resident Evil 2 is like, we're going to take the spirit. We're going to make it make it for a modern sensibility. And I think it succeeds way better than I can imagine. Honestly, it might be the best remake this decade for sure. I mean, I'm with that. Shout of the Colossus I think would be up there as well.

but I think that this does more to make it a different... Oh, whoa, got to love what that works. Resident Evil in the background. Was it? It was Shadow the Colosses. Yeah. Don't know V. I was looking at my phone.

I assumed it was. I feel like Shadow Clauses was like slightly enhanced by the remaster, whereas Resident Evil 2, I think, is greatly enhanced. The one thing that I wish that they went a little further with was the part one, part two kind of stories going on. Yeah, it's weird they didn't. I wish that they would have cleaned it up so that if you were to play, you know, Claire first and then going into Leon, I wish that you didn't have to backtrack as much or do the same things as much. I wish that they would have added it so that it felt more like, oh, you're retreading the same steps that I already did.

I feel like they did 60%, but they should have won 100. I kind of wonder if they like change plans at some point because when I talked to them at E3, they're like, okay, we're not having separate campaigns. It's one story. And I don't know if that's what they meant or like this was them trying to hold up. on to like, oh, there's some things that the faithful are going to be really upset if we change and I think that's one thing that they caved on that I wish they did. Yeah. So, wait,

just to recap, five for number, for Greg on Greg's list, for Greg's list. It's on my list somewhere. Anybody else? It's on my list also. On your list. Not on my name or not on immigrants. Number five for me as well. Right there with you, Greg. Yeah, like, I had a lot of the same feedback

on why it made five. What I would say about it for me above all is, man, it just reminds me that Resident Evil sets standards and it did it. I feel like Resident Evil 2 did it as much as we complained about it's just how weird it was back then. It still was amazing and then, you know, they pushed that farther on GameCube but Resident Evil 4 was the one for me that stood out. Like that was just like, holy God, like they just amped up the adrenaline in this game in a way that other people followed, I think, in action games and survival games. And then here they come back and they fix

all the things you guys talked about. And I feel like we're looking at a game again that it chapterizes or it makes it episodic, you know, almost and get you excited for this, like, we've talked about it. You're like, I could do with, like, ten of these, you know, just put, you know, stuff in this engine with this amount of beauty, certainly some small things to fix. But overall, man, I feel like everybody who's doing survival horror looks at Resident Evil II comes out this year and you're like, geez, well, we've got some catching up to do. And it reminded me just how freaking good they are when they've got.

everything firing. We got three coming out. I know, right? And here we are. Isn't that, that's exactly all we want. And I hope they make some small improvements, too, on top of it. Capcom was a company that was, like, lost, like, three or four years ago.

That I was like, they're not the same company they used to be. That's disappointing. It's a Capcom fan. And now they're putting out multiple game of the year candidates in here. Monster Hunter World. They're going to cry five, Resident Evil 2, Resident Evil 7. Capcom's on fire right now. Yeah.

Nuts. Nuts. Yeah. Marl was Capcom Infinite. Mm-hmm. Um, um, Amron. So my number five was Borderlands

3, which is a game I've complained a lot about, but it's still like... Yeah, surprising. So, how do I put this? The game, everyone who worked on the gameplay of that game deserves a race. Everyone who worked on the script of that game should not work on scripts for games anymore.

Oh, okay, there it is. There are some real problems with the story of that game. And to the point where I look at the dialogue slider, and I'm like, What if I turn this all the way to zero? So, just for clarity, is it the core storyline writing you're talking about or the sort of quips and all that stuff?

Both. Really? The core storyline's not good. The writing is good, but like, once you get to the... So I don't tend to play games like you guys do with like Destiny and Division 2 of the real game starts at endgame. Right, grinding for optimal loadouts. Once I get to the end of a story and like, usually I'm done.

With Borderlands, we finish the game and I was like, do you guys just want to keep playing? and every night we would still keep playing and still keep running bosses and still keep right. We, so it was co-op for you. Yes. And like, it's one of those things of, is it hard to parse out whether

is this the game being good or is this just I'm having fun with friends? But I think it deserves a lot of friends. Number five game we are. This is a real thing. That's what they say about destiny is the real end game is the friend game. The friends are made along the way, yes.

But it's this, it is a fun game to play, but the fact that you can jump into that world with your friends is kind of special. The way it's designed. It deserves a lot of credit for making a playground that makes co-op so much better. Like the instance loop thing is a thing that I expect everyone to copy soon because it is such a good idea. And it's shocking it took this long for it to happen. But like, God bless them, gearbox hit that thing out of the park that way.

Yeah. Like that made it so we're not fighting over everything that like you're not trying to be nice so you give up this good sniper rifle. It's like, oh, I don't need this. Like, go ahead, take it. Like, it's, legitimately, it's honestly being able for everybody to come in, because I have one friend that plays all the time, and she's, like, she is way ahead of us,

but it's good that we can still be behind and still play with her. And, like, she plays, is it Mara? Yeah, Mara. Yeah, as a siren. So she has some build where she's constantly just zooming around, like a Sonic the Hedgehog, killing everything. But it's great to be that we can still play and still have fun and still be challenged.

That's the biggest thing for me. Like, the loot instancing is awesome. The thing people need to adopt from this is the way they balance co-op. So it is that a level 50 can come and join a level two's game or invite them vice versa, right? And the game scales with it. And I guess it's actually going up more than going down because there's a story. Well, no, coming out over two. But the way that the game does that, because that has been the most eye-opening thing for me.

This is on my list. But you don't want me to reveal the numbers or where it is? No, no. Okay. It's on your list somewhere. But I'll talk about it here, right? of like that has been the godsend of this game and I think the way it's fixed

because I think you know we joke around about it with the division right when we were playing that this year and you know it was shocking for me to make both my giant bomb top 10 and then make this and not put Division 2 on it right like I was so into it if you would have asked me at the beginning of the year if I thought Division would have been like are you still playing it or are you still grinding it

I'd be like fuck yeah what about Borderlands I'm like I probably finished the story and was done when it's been the complete opposite of Borderlands has had the constant drip of ongoing content, whether it be bloody harvest, which you should have been able to turn off. Malawan take down, now the Moxie heist, right? The fact that

I beat all of that and finished off the moxies takedown, the heist, the DLC. And it was that thing where Jen joined me late on that, and it was that thing we beat it, and we kept playing, and we went through and cleaned up every side quest

I hadn't done yet, and then my quest log was just empty. Wow. And it was that thing of like, she's like, all right, well, what do we do? all right, go back to your game and I'll join you and we'll do it all again. Yeah, we did. And that's what we've been doing over break. And it's that thing where the game rewards you

both with loot, both with enemy scaling, both with like or triple with. It continues to make you want to play. And it was honestly a conversation I was having where similar to what you're talking about a little bit more, obviously, a little bit, a lot more, pro where I was just like, shit, is this my game?

Like, I can't believe that I'm still this end of this game. Like, there's this much to do that I'm still playing and I can't wait for more. Yeah, I was going to say, Borland's 3 is instantly playable, I feel like, and that's what I appreciate so much about it. Granted, you know, there's the first 20 minutes, but after that, it's just like just shooting stuff. Tons of guns. There's not a lot of games that are willing to throw you in that fast, but Borderlands is known for it, too. It's just this chaotic, shoot everything.

You kind of can't go too wrong, especially when, you know, you've got somebody that's got your back. The checkpoints are fairly forgiving. So it's a very arcade experience, but it's certainly, comes with the challenge if you want it. And it's, you know, when Fran and I talk about it on the borderline show or whatever, it is that conversation where Fran is the one who's like grinding for a specific weapon and still trying to get a build that really does this. And I am the opposite of I want to do complete all the, check the boxes or whatever.

But I'm like, I just look at my stuff and I'm like, I like this gun, I don't like this gun and blah, and I sell everything immediately and I put all my legendaries in the bank and I don't know why, but I just know that's what I'm supposed to do. But I'm having a great time with it. He's having a great time with it. Whereas compared to the Division II, right, Division II got killed when that, for me when the raid dropped. The raid dropped.

We went to do it and it was like, yep, the internet was right. This is really tough, whether it be where console, nobs or whatever, to the point that I was just like, well, I don't really want to, I don't want to go and have to grind out the perfect build to play this game. I don't want, and I was like, when the gear score goes up, I'll come in in power level. And like, the gear score, to my knowledge, still hasn't moved where it's like, they gave us an easier version of the raid, but it was just like, I'm not about this. I'm good, thanks.

Like, I still want it for your episodic stuff, I'll still come back and hopefully get back into it. It's really cool, though. But yeah, we got to that end game part and it felt, we felt cheated. I think that's what a lot of people felt. You're like, wait, I already played this for 80 hours. I play these games all the time. And you're telling me, I just didn't get the right build, which would take me a long, long time to go chase to get in there anyway. Everybody needs that build, too.

And there's no matchmaking. I can go on. But Division 2 is great, but definitely I got a little soured on that as well. Yeah, when we wipe in Borderlands 3, it's not like, this sucks, this game is unfair, like, we're not going to come back to it. It's like, we're just going to keep trying to do the same thing. And just, like, maybe I'll switch out for this gun that I think I liked a little bit better. Or maybe, like, they're robots, so why don't we try this element this time? Right. It's like, it's not high-level strategy.

It's a little, like, small tweaks, but it's still, like, the game still functions or it still fuels fun no matter what you do. Yeah, it's available, you know, it's not, you, by the way, try now on take down. mayhem four and you'll change your tune. But you don't have to. Yeah, Mayhem 3. I mean, the group I was with, the group I was with, we had done all, they were helping me grind out the trophies. And then it was like, all right, cool, now let's go do this. And after I got my

platinum, we went and it was that thing of like getting to the final boss, well, after getting smashed a few times, getting the final boss, and then it was, die, die, all right, let's actually think. And I was like, wow, that's the raid part. This is awesome. And what a cool breath of fresh air in a game that usually is. Like, Jen gets knocked down and I run to her

and I save her. And if I go down, while I'm saving her. My scat comes over and revives me and it's like, even if we fuck it up, whatever. We lose a few hundred thousand dollars and go back and come back. Cool. Awesome. So my number five, because I wasn't

being schemy, like Greg Miller. I know. That is a great word for it. Oh, guys, you got a word. You dirty dot. Learn how democracy works, everybody. Which you designed. I wasn't totally aware of the whole system. Here we go. Here come all these excuses. I have Catana Zero. It's my number five. I don't know if it's on any

anybody else's top five. I don't imagine. I was one of the honorable mentioned. Barrett will burst through the wall here and yell about it for you. So me and Barrett probably shared that one. But Katana Zero was a game for me that I kind of, for this conversation, I'll liken it to a similar way I feel about Devil Make Cry 5, where Double Make Cry 5 for me is that game that checks like all the checkboxes of like graphics, soundtrack, gameplay, all this

stuff, right? And for me, the reason why Double Make Cry 5 doesn't make it into my top 5 is just because at the end of the day, even though I love Double Make Cry 5, I don't. Love, love, Love, Devil May Cry. It's still, like, it's the best Devil May Cry, but, like, what does that really mean? Yeah. You think so? I may put it...

Do you think of D-Throne's 3? We'll see. There's some interesting things about the Switch version of 3 that I'm hearing that could be pretty cool. Like, not here, like, it's public rumors, but... Well, today, we talked about on Games Daily that there's three things they're adding. Yeah, oh, did they already announce it? They didn't say what they are. They gave dates.

But if they add those things to the Switch version of 3, then 3 will be the, like, best one. But at the moment, like, the actual bouses them of... I'm really interested in what he's talking about. Well, for me, the thing that Devil Make Cry 5 doesn't do for me is really, like, hit me in that way that I feel that... It just didn't hit me a certain way. You know, I feel like there are games that hit different. You know, like, I play Undertale.

And for some reason, I can't put my finger on it, but something about that game just really vibes with me, right? Same with, like, the witness, same with Hell Blades, same with Portal. Like, there are games that do something that kind of stick with you, and Delve Make Cry 5 just didn't... Like, I played in and I finished out. I was like, that was really good. But I never really thought about it after that, right?

It never really stuck with me. Katana Zero, I feel like, is a game specifically that's aimed for me with all its different elements. And so, like, the reason I liking it to DelVMecry Five, right, is I look at it and I'm like, okay, graphics. The pixel art, I think it's super beautiful. I think it has some of the best pixel art this year. The way the animations look, the way all the stuff looks on screen visually. The lighting in that game is like, oh my God. The lighting is beautiful.

The cutscenes are great. The way they kind of frame and animate those, I really like. But then you look at gameplay. Gameplay is also awesome, right? That does the hotline enemy thing of like one hit and you're out or one hit and you kill your enemies, right? And they mix that with slow motion mechanics. And so you are going into a room and you can get shot down with one bullet or you could dodge, jump, deflect the bullets. And you have your slow motion meter, right?

That you can hold, I forget what button, but you hold a button, you go into slow motion and you can like dodge bullets or deflect back bullets or hop over a bullet and then like land on the enemy and like just and they can cut them up. Right. Do all that great stuff. And it's super fun to play. super fluid. I love all the different levels. I love all the different setups. I love the escalation there as far as the gameplay and how it raises this difficulty as you go. All that stuff I think is super solid. Then you look at story. I think the story is really cool and really awesome. It goes places where you wouldn't expect to go. You go see a psychiatrist.

Yeah. Yeah. Like you see your therapist and your therapist is also the same person that gives you your mission, right? And like there's a whole there. Yeah, which just brings up another where you're like, wait, what's going to go out here? That's interesting, right? But then, like, the deeper and deeper you go in the game, like your therapist also prescribes drugs that you inject, and there's, it goes places. And I don't want to talk about it too much because that's the whole fun of the game

is discovering, like, oh, okay, so this is this. Okay, so this means this. Okay, my therapist is doing this, which then means this, right? All that stuff is super cool. I think the- That sounds like a weird reservoir dog's moment at some point during that story. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

It goes weird places in a way that, for me, as a Metal Gear Solid fan, I really like because it goes, I feel like it does the thing of getting really convoluting, but in a way that I enjoyed following, I enjoyed trying to like a knot and figuring out, like, okay, what is going on here? What's the real thing? Okay, this person is actually this person, okay. I'd like, trying to unravel all that stuff

and figure out what's going on. I thought it was super fun in the story, and the story does a pretty good job towards the end of being so convoluted that it kind of works against it, but works for it at the same time. It depends on kind of what you're into. And so for me, I'm into that. I like that gave you choices

that don't disrupt the narrative, but let you like the first mission where you get to walk in the hotel. Yeah. Convince the woman that you're a cosplayer. Yeah. And like that can have a gameplay effect where it becomes a lot of her to escape if you have not convinced this woman that you're totally benign. Yep, yep.

And all the things as far as like the dialogue options and you being able to interrupt dialogue at any point and that plays into the dialogue structure of if somebody else is talking and you interrupt them, right? The dialogue, like the literal text on screen breaks, and you just interrupt them and continue the conversation that way, right? They turned that, which would have been a mechanic in a game of skipping text, into an actual, like, story thing, an actual choice, right? I thought that stuff was super cool. The soundtrack is probably my soundtrack of the year.

I really love music in that game. I think it's super well done. It's the type of soundtrack that I listen to outside of the game, which is why I really appreciate it. And overall, like, that's a game that really vibe with me, right? Like, the disparate elements of it, I think, are all super great, and I think the way it comes together is super great. But it's not just a good game.

It's a game that after I finished it, I kept thinking about and I kept thinking about theories and I kept thinking about like, okay, what did this thing mean when I went and did that, right? And throughout the year, I've been going back and playing it because the game's still fun. The game's still fun to retread story moments and be like, okay, what happened here?

Like all that stuff I think came together super beautifully. And so it's my number five. Nice. My number five is Legend Zelda. It has all the same issues I was saying earlier that the Nintendo games this year did. There's technical flaws, the way that the graphics work

of things looking blurry, whether you're playing on the small screen or the big screen. It's all there. A lot of slowdown, a lot of weird stuff like that. Despite all of that, I feel like they made a great game better. And it's a similar thing like what we're talking about with Resident Evil 2 remake.

I feel like they made a lot of choices that kind of cut the bad parts out of the original design of the Game Boy game and modernized it, where if this game just came out today, for the most part, it would feel like it belongs as just a brand new game. There are exceptions to that.

Men use pop it pop up of just like every time you use a, you get one of the berries and it tells you exactly what the power nuts. It's like we get it. We know what this is. And I felt like there were decisions made to kind of draw out the experience a little bit more to make it feel like a modern game because I feel like an old portable game from the early 90s. Like the length of that doesn't correlate with a $60 retail price and they had to figure that out somehow. But despite all that, the gameplay, the puzzles, the world itself are so amazing that when you add on this amazing visual style and soundtrack that matches, I think that's what elevates this to be in my top five.

You can just look at this game and immediately want to play it, and immediately understand what it is and what makes it special. We've never seen a game look like this. And I feel like when we get a new art style in a game, that's always a very exciting moment. When we first saw cell shading, right, it was just like, oh my God, this is a same. special. When you first saw retro pixel art type stuff, it's like, oh, man, this is cool. I haven't had that feeling since Octopath Traveler, probably, where I'm like, this is a new style of game that we haven't seen, and it's brilliant.

Tilt shift, playmation looking. You add that to the top-down isometric Zelda games and many other type of games like that. That's something special. That's something new. And I hope that we see a lot more games utilize the style, because it's not just the looks. it's also the sound in the feel of it all. The sound effects that they added to the game and the way that they recreated old Game Boy sounds,

but modernized them, and also just the instrumentation that they chose to take these classic Zelda songs, but especially for a game that focuses so much on music in the story and like the different instruments of the narrative itself, to use those within the context of the Zelda theme that you hear over and over and over and over,

it never gets old, because it just feels like it always fits with what you're looking at. So with that, I definitely would put that as my number five, even though it is not perfect. I think that the thing that really... It's a great Zelda game, right? It's a great Zelda game that made even better.

The thing that gets into my top five, because I was debating between it and Mortal Kombat, specifically because of the story mode, is the world itself feels like an old friend that you go back to and you just immediately know everything about. It's a world that I haven't felt this way about since like Grand Theft Auto Vice City where it's like I can play that game right now and know exactly where if you're like oh go to this place I'm like I know how to get there it's

just muscle turn GPS off and it was about halfway through the game of Link's Awakening where I realized like I remembered where to go and it wasn't that I remembered from back in the day playing it's that this game just has such a fun cool world that playing it this time I remembered the tree I remember that house was. I remember whatever without having to bring up the map. And like, that's really good when a game is designed in a way that I'm liking learning where to go to the point that it is in my head, not just like, oh, pull up a menu, go there, pull up a menu, go there. It's really fascinating, like, and actually kind of a bold choice as a remake, because this is a slavish remake that is almost exactly the same in gameplay. And I had a friend asked me once,

like, hey, do you think I should get this for my kid? He really enjoyed Breath of the Wild. I was like, oh, there's a lot of people who think this is going to be the follow-up to Breath of the Wild because they've never played another Zelda game. And so, like, to make the following game from their biggest most revolutionary Zelda ever to be

in exactly the same remake. The smallest Zelda title ever. That is, in almost always, a very old game, except graphically. Is, like, what was there? What were they trying to get at there? What was their brand management idea there? But it works out. Like, I think it tells people

like, hey, Zelda is a multifaceted series. This is one example of the kind of, like, the kind of tapestry this series is. I don't know that necessarily those kinds of people are going to cotton to this kind of game, but it's, like, from that perspective, it's really fascinating. I think the art style is fascinating enough

that it pulls people in, people aren't mad that they spend money on it. Hopefully, like, hopefully somebody, they watch a trailer, see a screenshot before they press by and not thinking that his breath of a while. Yeah, yes. But, yeah, like, with what it is, like, I think, you know,

It's very engaging. It's very fun. I didn't get super far in it. Nick beat it. Nick beat it. Did you look up guys? I believe that. Yeah, Nick got to a point where I was just like, I,

I feel like an idiot playing this game. But I still really liked it. Like, I like the fact that it was a Zelda game that didn't take place in Hyrule. I thought that felt very fresh in a way that I didn't realize. Like when I play Breath of the Wilden and I go to Kakariko Village, I'm like, oh, cool, Kakarika Village again, right? Or I go to where the Zoras are, right? And I'm like, oh, yeah, this way is again.

And like, playing Zelda usually just feels like playing the same game over and over again, but a game that has been refreshed, right? Especially when you play Breath of the Wild, it feels like a completely new game. But you're still visiting the same locations, meeting the same characters, all this stuff. Whereas this game, Link's Awakening, you feel like you are exploring a new land, right? Like, there are, you don't, it's not even the same, like, what you're you call it? Like, it's not the same template, you know, like, you don't have the ranch you go to you. And you don't have the mountain you go to you.

I mean, you have a desert and you have a... All mountain, but it feels like a different mountain. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, right. You have a graveyard you go to where I... There's a graveyard in Arcina, but like... It's the same game blessing. Yeah, let's try, but it feels different enough. Can I tell you blessing?

This is hilarious to me, because I remember this exact same conversation on Usenet in like 1995. Really? I was like, finally we're out of Hyrule. We're doing things and not the same Hyrule. Like, people were tired of that then, so time is a flat circle as we're not like that. Isn't it interesting that two games on the top five are remakes of 90s games from old school Japanese companies. There you go.

Greg Miller. Number four. I think this is going to be one on a lot of list. Control. I'm not alone on this one. On my list. Yeah, there you go. Okay, so I mean, what do you need to know about control?

It's awesome. Why do you like it so much, Greg? I mean, I like it because it. Just the titles? Just the presentation. Just that, you know, that impact font, that those clean edges, that architecture, right? No, I like it because the oldest house was awesome to explore. I like being Jesse

I like not knowing what was around the next corner I like that it was fucking weird as hell that it was X-Files mashed up with like superpowers mashed up with alien all this different stuff

of like what is this paranormal world and how does it all interact and like you know I go back to if you remember when we did the games cast review for it it was literally I had beaten it at the night before and came in here to do the review and it was a thing of like

I don't know how I feel about it yeah the end of that game makes an impression that's not necessarily correct exactly and I remember if you remember I kept saying it felt like at times in like a PS3 game or a PS2 game, like an older game. And one of them was the fact that like, hey, you've enjoyed playing it. Now we're going to ram it on your throat here with this weird boss that you can cheese and do all this other stuff and get annoyed with. And like, so the last taste you have is annoyance.

And that's what you remember. But like I said, you know, I think on the games cast after that, it was that I went home that weekend and I wanted to play more control. And I did play more control. And it's still, I joked around about it. Like it was on my holiday. Let's platinum this game. Let's do it. So when I platinum fall in order, I booted up control and was right at a boss.

And I just went in there and got destroyed. I'm like, fuck, I don't remember how to play this game. Like I got bail out and bounce and do, but I still want to. I still plan to go do it. It's like it controls moment to moment so well, right? I remember it being like ballet when I was fighting and it had all my faculties about me of the dash, the hover, the shoot, you know, grab the, yeah, rock shield, blast it back in people, right? It's like you're dancing through traffic in a weird way. Yeah, 100%.

If you stop for a second, you're going to get hit. So always keep moving, always keep throwing rocks, just like whatever you need. Because that's the way they built the system is even the guns, like there's a recharge on the reload, which means you should be throwing rocks. We want you to just keep doing things constantly. Exactly, yeah, yeah. But not if you used all your power, right? That is that clever balance of, you're right, you have to keep moving. But if you overdo it, well, you're kind of screwed for a little bit.

Yeah. And on top of that, right, like, I thought it was just such a rich world where I did pick up collectibles. and it's the rare one where I pick up the collectible, stop, go in, read the file. Like, what did you find? What was this event? Like, I can't remember the plot to that game. It just, shit is bad, fix shit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is that game to me. And, like, that's so amazing that I love to just, I want to just walk around every department and control and, like, read all the letters. As I was playing, part of me was wishing that there could be a control that was, like, a walking sim version. Like the Assassin's Creed, like, yeah,

or like, just a separate game. Because, like, I, I, I, I, control's on my little. also. I love control. I think control, like, I don't want to give away where it's on my list, so I'm not going to say specifically, like... Those are the rules, man. Don't mess it on. I think control is incredible. There are some things that I wish it did better, being that I think, I think the way that it tackles action game, like being an action game and the way it tackles combat and all this stuff, I think is great. I think the story and the way it tackles world and the way it tackles collectibles and all that stuff, I think is expertly done.

I think the way that some of that stuff melts sometimes can be kind of, one element can be distracting from the other. Like it is there's so much littered in the world and so much of it is hey stop and read this, stop and read like this text or this document and go through all this stuff, right? I'll give you a really good example. There's an incinerator that like, you have

a mini game to just, or not mini game, but a side quest like burns and like burns and stuff. There's like a tape recorder that like basically tells a story of hey this incinerator may be alive and it may be talking to people. God, I love that you. You can't do the quest and listen to that at the same time. You have to stand next to it and like, why did you guys make it this way?

the thing that frustrates me so much, well, that's the thing that frustrated me so much while playing the game is that there was so much cool stuff scattered all around and so much of it you have to like stop and read. But like the thing that I love about the game, like that was one of the things I loved about the game was like all that cool scattered around stuff. But at the same time, stopping and reading it felt annoying when I just wanted to get into the action. I just wanted to fight things. And so I do, while I was playing out, I was like, man, if this could be a walking sim, this could be really dope. I just walked around and read all different stories about the facility

or if it was like a controlled side game that was just that I'd be super into it but even so like the levitation stuff the combat stuff I thought was really fun I thought they did such a great job with that and yeah overall like I think the game is creatively just incredible it had a great build to

it you know what I mean like you know when you get to chasing down the janitor right and then it starts to get really weird and then to go to the ash tray maze and like fucking really literally I that was one of the feet I think she put in the Walkman headphones I was going to say I think it's the only time in Tim and I's friendship, tenured friendship, where

as soon as it ended, I hit the share button and saved a clip and brought it to show him. I'm like, no, you're not going to play this game deep enough, but when she's like, all right, let's do it. It puts on the headphones and I was like, fuck. This is awesome. Like, there are parts of that game that are so well. I was talking on Twitter the other day, like,

it's so good that they don't make every altered item, like this world ending thing. Yeah, you were talking about this. Yeah. It's like, some of them, they do contain Eldridge gods inside them and some of them were just like, this lamp, or this balloon doesn't run out of helium. We don't know why. This duck is just following people around and quacking. Like, we can't stop it.

When you see a thing where you read a memo and it's like, you guys can't bring pencils in here anymore, like stuff like that is like so good. And then they pay off on that sort of thing later where you kind of figure out like, okay, this is why I can't bring this object into the building. A self-replicating clock caused a shutdown of an entire department. Yeah. Because we just can't do anything about it. Like, we're closing this area off. Like the fact that they brought in a whole, like the, I forget what it was, like the garbage stump kind of thing. Like, you know where you go and it's all the stars in the sky?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like the black rock repository. That's it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think they, if I remember correctly, the story is very kind of weird. But I think they brought that in from like a different location and they brought it into the facility so they could study it. Is that how that works?

I think so. Yeah. It sounds right, yeah. But like there's even like small things of like, when you're learning about Jesse's backstory, and they kind of subtly talk about how one of the friends just became like a melting dog. And like it's stuff like, yeah,

like they never made explicit, but it's really interesting to find out about this sort of stuff. And I'm really curious with like, I know the DLC is coming down the line soon and like there's that Alan Wake thing too. March 26. And I'm like, oh, I really want to know what they're going to do with all that.

Because like when I found the Alan Wake note, it's like, fuck, this is really interesting. What is this leading to? but didn't lead anything at the time. And I'll probably address everything in office culture, too. It's really good. Yeah. It's like it's bureaucratic,

which is like what actually makes it the most interesting thing in the world. Yeah. That it's so fucking boring. Exactly. It's this mundane office doing the extraordinary. Like one of the side quests, like the fridge duty side quest, where you're just like doing your thing and you come across the dude that's just stuck in a room. And you're like, uh,

what are you doing in there? He's like, oh, thank God you came by. I'm past with staring at this fridge and nobody's come through to relieve me. And he's like, can you please, like, talk to my supervisor. I need somebody to come to relieve me. And that side quest leaves me. a very crazy moment, which was like the first moment in that game that I had, where I was like, huh, this let's just led to like a whole just world altering kind of thing.

That was the first moment? Yeah, it felt late. It is late, but it's game is so crazy from the get-go, I thought. But that part is pretty wild. That was the part where, like, it showed his cards most of like, oh, I didn't, I didn't know this would happen from this thing. I love that one letter that was like, there seems to be something wrong with this plane. And so the guy's like, do you know how many parts are in a plane? Have you ever disassembled a plane?

Because I fucking do. Wow, that's really good. That sounds like so what I know. Enron, what's your number four? My number four is Sekiro. Shadows die twice. Also on my list. It's a fan fucking tastic game

that is a little weak around the edges, but the parts that they focused on, the battle system is probably one of the best battlesisms in an action game. In a 3D action game that I think I've ever seen. Unreal good. If you're trying to play that game like Dark Souls, you are probably going to have a very, very rough time trying to play it.

Like it's, you know, trying to get in there, take your swing back off. It's like, oh, wait, this guy, I took my swing, but this guy is healing it while I'm waiting. So you have to go in there incredibly aggressively. And the game doesn't do a great job initially of teaching you how to do that because the, like, taking it like Dark Souls thing does kind of work out occasionally. So as you start playing through more and more, it's like, okay, this is like a hard. It is like climbing a ladder and at some point, just a, the hatch slams down on you.

Get better. And that fight, it's the Gendero boss fight, which actually might be too fucking difficult. Like, in terms of balance, that game might just be too hard. Genitro? Yes. I don't think so, actually, but it's because of what you're talking about. Dark Souls player had,

players had hard time because they had trouble adapting. Yes. I actually didn't play all those. And, dude, it clicked. And actually, I just had a really, I was lucky. It took me like seven or eight tries. So Charles France. Benitro.

I don't know why. The game is very hard, by the way. Yes. What was it? Concharo? Is that his name? Genichiro. Genituro.

Yes. But, like, that boss fight particular, that is. That took me, like, honestly, I probably spent, like, four or five hours just doing that fight. Yeah. Because it was, like, learn this first phase. Okay. Learn this second phase. I'm doing fine.

By the way, there's a third phase. Then there's that third phase, which is the part that I think is excessive. Because it's, like, there is a mechanic to that they've only literally told you about in text right before that. And you cannot. Okay, fucking that. Fran, professional streamer, Fran Mirabella. Use the epic game code, Fran Mirabella. The joke here, the game is so tough, and I guarantee you, he slays certain enemies way better than I do.

It just happened to click with me on that one. I got lucky. But once you get past that, like, you start learning what the game wants from you. And it's like... Demands from you. Basically, yeah, it just fucking demands from you. And there is a part of that game where the story... Okay, so I am going to spoil a second row thing here.

I'm sorry. Can't you just reference it for those who know what it is? But they don't know what it is. And I want to tell them about it. Yeah, all right. There is a part in that game where you're fighting an ape. And it's like, okay, this is just a weird ape. He has a sword stuck in his...

Ape out crossover. He has, like, a sword stuck in it, but, like, this ape is guarding something, so you have to get past him. You kill him. You take the sword out of his neck and, like, slice off his head. The enemy defeated... It's lying on the ground in front of you. The enemy defeated thing comes up.

I hit the screen cab I'm like finally thank fucking God Die you dirty ape The controller is out of my hands With out of this game Where you're like you sit back You're like oh my God Yes

Because you're exhausted You are The ape stands up headless grabs the sword that was in his neck And starts slashing you with it And the another A second boss fight starts Happening

He's spewing blood out of his neck It's like holy shit This is the most amazing fucking movement But also a whole whole lot shit, I thought I was done. This is a hard boss fight. And it starts telling you a bit more about the world that way. It never says,

hey, things are, like, corpses are coming up. This is a problem. It kind of hints at that towards the, like, beginning of the game. But, like, then it starts telling you, there's a parasite in the world that is causing these issues. Like, you never even think about the name up until that.

They die a ton. That's fair. I didn't even think about that either. It felt like it's just most, it's an incredible moment that starts like shaping what because it's not it's not longer just this is a Japanese samurai story it's this is a Japanese folk tale now that is like essentially leads you up into the upper echelons of heaven where this game is going to end

and it's like that's what these that's what these things are about now and I that moment is probably like one of the best moment thought of only of the year but of the generation for me the way they get you yeah see I don't know why you spoiled up

the way the way now We're no more spoilers if you decided you're watching you, you were wondering. I know, they didn't know why. He gave in the frad wave. But another part about that moment is they teach you throughout the world that there's like potentially another hit, crit hit you got to get. So very often you'll stab someone and you're like, got you. It's the deathbow, sorry. You do the death blow, but guess sometimes they have extra deathbows and you do the same thing where you're like, you know, you're like, yeah.

And then all of a sudden there's another red dot. You're like, whoa. And you grab the controller and you're used to that. This one does, it's crazy, the amount of time they put between, you know, when you, you killed it. Of course you did. They do everything to mislead you because it's a game that's known for baiting you into these moments. So anyway, that's one of the many moments in this game, and I'll have more to say about it later. Like, spoiling that one moment, honestly, there's so many more.

And it's worth mention, there's so much more. But I will talk about it more later. What I'll say is the honed edge that this game has. of, when I think of a movie poster of just two samurai, connecting weapons, close up, and that feeling that you imagine that they have, that this game delivers on it when you say it's like one of the absolute best combat game,

you're right. It feels like a rhythm game, but it's, yeah. Almost no other game has this feel of like somebody's coming at you and you time it, and you swoop and you lock together with your weapons and that feeling, even before you're striking again and the repeat, like, that tension that you feel is, it's amazing. That's why I like, many of my most favorite games have that magic touch in the gameplay.

I always use Mario as one of the best examples is when Mario 64 came out, we probably underappreciated when he turns around just the way the friction is. And all the Mario's before did that, actually. The coding that goes into how you turn around and slide, and of course the jumps that are beyond it. But it's hard to do that. Sekiro has it, control. That's why I like that game so much. also on my list, but the way they feel and certainly the smell of the game.

Like, Mario is an interesting mention because the reason Super Mario Maker works is because whatever you see in Mario, you know exactly how that's going to act and how Mario will react around it, because you're so used to those kind of physics. Like, maybe it's not exactly the same, but, like, you know exactly what you're going to do with those controls. For every second of Sekiro, by the time you get to the end of that game, it's become such an intense part of your hands. that like, the game basically comes down to muscle memory in reaction.

And even someone is like, as I'm getting older, those things start getting worse. But like, as I'm seeing like the two frames of a blade, I know what's about to happen. And I'm able to react to it in time. It's incredible. It is a rush that like honestly, we talk about like Del May Cry 5 as like a combat game. I think Sekra was a actually better combat system. Oh, yeah. Like just again, different strokes, like meaning they're different styles.

The same. Yeah, very different. But the feeling, absolutely. Delo-Meges is like, how can you get, or how can, how fast and silo shit can you destroy this enemy? Securo is like, how can you basically fend off death long enough to kill them? And going from, that was the thing, I love Fall in Order, going back to it right after Sekiro.

Yeah. Of the, again, the feeling of connection, I was just like, oh, my God, it's a world apart. I thought they actually, I was like, well, you know, I see the inspiration. It's pretty good, Fallen Order. But then going back to back, I was like, Secira was another world, man. Yeah. Fran, what's your number four?

Death Stranding. That was a game I struggled with, actually, of how high do I want to place it, actually? I have very high regard for the game. It just confused me almost, actually, of playing and I'm being like, this is so weird, but I love the terrain. The terrain simulation, you know, I think I brought up before. The smell of that world is incredible.

just the feeling of the smell of the game. You haven't heard it before. It came up with Red Dead. It's the atmospheric effect. I've never defined it, by the way. It is the atmospheric effect you get by looking at a game

and feeling like you live in that world. You smell the moss. And you do. The weird Scandinavian America that they've got going. The what? The weird Scandinavian America. Yeah, it's something like that.

I feel like that even, I'm mad that I'm enabling this. But I feel like even when you... You'll be using it before you know. What do you move in the world? Right? Like there's a feel to it. Same with Red Dead. Same with other, I feel like similar games that you can kind of place yourself in. Yeah, I mean, it is, it depends.

But like when you look at Red Dead, you see just the atmosphere effect of light coming through trees and how real it is, despite the fact that it's not pure 4K, you know, beautiful graphics, but it just, man, they nail it. But anyway, so part of it was that. I love the idea of just like trying to get to this top of this mountain. It's such a simple concept. And you realize early on, I always love games like this. I just want to get to the top of that amount.

It looks so far away. And it's so hard, by the way, in the beginning. You're like, I didn't even try to do anything like that. Because I was like, I will die. I'm going to lose my cargo. I don't want to do it. The feeling of survival and the terror of like, I've just got to carry this stuff from point A to point B.

People talk about it and joke about it as a, you know, Amazon Prime Delivery game or a FedEx game. And it pisses me off, by the way. It's an AMC, the ride game. And by the way, if you said it, it's not a big deal. What? AMCC, the ride, the game. Yes. Exactly.

It's an advertisement for AMC, The Ride. I know. But actually, it pisses me off because it undercuts how... I think you're undercutting Amazon delivery. No, it's not a game about delivering stuff. It's not at all. I mean, it's not even referencing the story. Yeah, but...

Reconnect America. You do carry stuff from point A to point B, but if we broke games down... Not the bridges we made along the way. Yeah. But anyway... It's on my list, obviously, too. I adore this game. It's a game that is so...

I agree weird and polarizing and everything else, but for me, I always go back to it. It's so relaxing. It is so zen. Like, when I woke up super hungover on New Year's Day, I was with Jen, I'm like, I feel like some Death Stranding right now. Just chill out, me. It's not.

It's not. Not Zen for me. That's because you're not good at games. I'm so anxious playing the game. That's what I like about it. That's what I just liked about it, actually. I've never felt like it was Zen enough because it was like, okay, well, I'm walking into BT territory.

This suddenly becomes a different game for me now. Yeah, there's absolutely a bunch of things that I would talk about changing. I'm not going to get into. But, dude, the game delivered, even just balancing it. Exactly. The balancing of your cargo again seems like a simple thing. It's not in terms of how. Yeah, how precise they did that, but then ultimately it is the upgrade system,

and you learn where you can get certain upgrades. Get your metal legs. That's what gets interesting is you like, ooh, I want that upgrade. Where did I get that from? You actually have to traverse back. And that's a path that you decide to take. you can go through the whole game and not even use certain upgrades or get certain trucks. Not even start to talk to people.

Yeah. And then also, you know, the thing that maybe deserves mentioning above all that's still flying under the radar that I feel like they needed an end game for. I had talked about it before. And I joked with Greg. I'm like, there's going to be a patch. And he's like, you know, he almost spit his top. Yeah. It's like, it's not ever happening.

Like, come on. They're so close. But like, in the end game, like, I kind of wanted to deliver more stuff and have them, you know, add more things to the world. But the social stranding element. Yes. The multiplayer is probably the most interesting thing about this game. Believe it or not, as silly as the name sounded, and, you know, it was easy to harp on. Once I finally understood this like system, and I've talked about this on past show, of past shows where you put up a ladder and you're like, cool, you know.

Then I see someone else's ladder. Cool. Then somebody likes your ladder. And whoa, wait a second. That completely changed the way I think about how I put a ladder down. The fact that they were able to do something. So it's true. No, totally, totally.

You're right. The latter smell. Is Greg gonna like, am I gonna get likes for this? And then the commentary on like where we're at socially with what we do. And we take a moment out or day to be like, I wonder if the internet will like this. RIP, Kathy, don't. There's a lot going on that. Actually, I really thought about even moving it up higher.

But I'm really into a lot of this other gameplay that have my list. But man, distraining. It would probably be also on my list if I was scheming like Greg. You should have been scheming. You know what you're probably going to be my number five, but. What's your number four, bless? My number four is, that's a good question. I believe, let me unlock my phone, look at it real quick.

Resident Evil, too. Hey. Yeah, I love that game. We've already talked about it, so I don't have to get super into it, but I think, I'm with you that I think it kind of got overlooked a bit because it was a remake. But if this is like a brand new game, which I feel like it should very well be treated like a brand new game, I think we would see it win more awards, maybe.

But absolutely love the game. I think the graphics are amazing. I think the design of the world, of course, like, I've not played the original Resident Evil 2, so I don't know how much of it is similar as far as, like, the puzzle solving, all that stuff. I can't imagine it's... That's actually awesome. I think that's really interesting.

Have you played Resident Evil's before of this type? Like three or not really. I tried playing four, but I tried playing it, like, I guess too late, because it just didn't feel like it aged super well. I feel like it holds up, but, like, probably... It's a different type of game. It is different type. So, yeah, what did you think about the whole, like, you know,

how the items work and the math. I mean, for me, it was one of those things where I was like, oh, okay, I get it. I get why people look back at Resident Evil and are like, oh, yeah, Resonnie Evil 4 and the greatest games of all time. Resident Evil, too. I feel like, I understand why people

make those proclamations now. Because, like, playing through this game, I thought the design was incredible. I thought the fear was there. I really enjoyed the combat. I really enjoyed all, like, all the elements of this game, I thought it worked super well. How does it smell?

Pretty nasty. It's all for. Rotting flesh. Belabari, too, is fantastic. Oh, yeah. I feel like that is probably. it's great of speed. It nails that, the aesthetic in the world.

He's on board the smell for 2020. By the number four is Gears 5. I'm really happy to hear that. I cannot believe that a GamePass game that I look at as free is as high quality as this. And I know that it's not free. I know that you pay for GamePass, but it is, to me, the example of why Xbox

has such a leg up going into NextGen. They are investing in this platform, and they're investing in not just games like Cuffhead that I love so much, but in these giant AAA first-party titles that are building giant worlds and continuing these giant franchises in a way that doesn't feel second tier, doesn't feel like, well, we just got to put something out because we need to. This feels like a rival to an uncharted game. I don't think it goes quite as far as I personally would have liked it to,

and on the narrative side of making the campaign feel like something that I need to recommend to everyone to play. But from the beginning to end, I had a blast with the story. I thought that the story was fun and awesome, and the characters are great. I cared, and I don't care about Gears. I haven't played all of them. I don't think I've ever beat a Gears until this one. Which is super weird because, like, Gears 4 was the opposite of that. Gears 4 was, hey, we're just doing Gears again.

This is a new generation, but literally we're bringing Marcus back. We're mostly the same group, the characters who weren't. new are basically the same as the old group. This game feels a lot more unafraid of willing to go like, hey, we want to explore a case story, we want to explore what this war is doing to people and not just the people, like the combatants inside it.

And I think it did a great job of setting up the past of just like, hey, here's the world of gears, here are the characters you need to know, here's how they're related, go. You're playing as this character, we're going to introduce you to some new mechanics, and then we're going to switch you over immediately, and it never feels jarring. It always feels like, I get where

we're going in the story. Anytime we move to a new location. I understand why it's happening. It doesn't just kind of feel like, um, set piece for set piece sake. Every like big moment feels earned. And like there was the one moment, uh, in the theater that is awesome where I'm like, this is something unique that I've never seen in video games before where it's like it's an audio visual trip that feels like a hype moment similar to what you're talking about with control. Um, and that's why I play video games is these things that I'm not expecting. You're playing a shooting game. You're just like kind of going through, kind of going through the paces of like, all right, monster closet, move on, cut scene, move on.

on, whatever it is, maybe a little vehicle section. Getting to that, it's like, oh, this is special. This isn't just a copy and paste. Shooter actually. It's so tight, right? And it's so tight. It's beautiful. That's crazy.

And I love that there's moments where it just slows down and it does the thing that I know some people hate. I love, let's not let you move at full pace. You're just going to walk and you're going to be with characters and we're going to talk and we're going to build the world out, but it's not going to last too long. Yeah. And we're only going to do this every once in a while to like really. make the next moment that's coming up feel that much more impactful. We're gonna walk and talk inside the like the carcass of this giant snake thing. And like the way that the camera allows you to look up and see the world,

you take it in. And I really think that it didn't get enough love this year. Like I feel like it's kind of everyone's just moving forward. And that sucks especially for it being a GamePass game. And that's something that I kind of worry about. So maybe this will work in the opposite way where it feels disposable because every game feels like, Well, there's 10 different things I can watch it once. I don't blame Game Pass for that.

I blame the five for that. I feel like as you sequelize these games and you start sequelizing and not great, not, Gears 4, not a bad game, but I mean not a game that was like a standout, holy shit, Gears is back game. It reminds me so much of Killzone. Where by the time you got the Shadowfall, it's like, who the fuck cares? Like Shadowfall could be the greatest thing on earth. Nobody's going to pay attention to it.

But this reminds me of something that we talk about a lot, especially in the last couple months on the entertainment side of things, of the difference between Netflix binge-style releases or the, or The Mandalorian, where the Mandalorian, sure, the quality might not have been 10 out of 10 for everybody,

but it dominated conversation for two months. Whereas, Witcher. It's over. It's already over, right? It had its weekend. And I wonder...

Oh, that released all at once. Yeah. And I wonder what Game Pass is going to do for that, for big, giant games. Yeah. That would be interesting to see things gated a bit more...

Is that what you're getting at? for... No, I'm just saying that I wonder if... You know, I'm excited to see these giant AAA games being available on GamePass, but I wonder if at some point that's going to... Like, the conversation is coming and going pretty quickly. It does feel like more disposable because of that.

Yeah. But just like, I... Honestly, I don't think about Gears... I enjoyed the game, but I don't think about it that often. And I wonder if, like, had I spent 60 bucks on it? Had it been this big event, then, like, would it be different? And maybe it would have.

I feel like Outer Worlds lasted a little bit longer than gears, but I still feel like it did have that effect with Outer Worlds for me, where I played outer worlds on Game Pass, beat it, enjoyed it fine. I didn't love it as much as I think a lot of other people loved it, but I thought it was cool, bounced off, and I just didn't think about that game again, because I didn't pay money for it. You know, it's not even on my dashboard anymore. Like, you know, it's a game that I feel like we all kind of played together at the same time for the same week, and then we didn't really think about it until award season came through, and then we talked about it again. But I don't, I feel like at this point.

you know, it's kind of coming on. I think it's more the games. I mean, I get that there's some influence, but, you know, pick one of your, like if Control was, you know, a GamePass game, would you be saying that? I don't know, I try. We'll see.

I think that, like, let's look at it. That seems odd to me. I mean, two years from now, I think we'll really know. Like, going into NextGen and really, when seeing what GamePass is, when we have Halo Infinite on it, right?

Like, what will that have looked like in Europe? Culturally, we're still figuring that sort of thing out. Yeah. And it's still new, so I don't know how we're going to react to it. And I think counter to this point, Outer Wilds is on Game Pass. And I feel like the conversation around Outer Wilds has lasted the whole year. And that might be the opposite thing of it being a low-key game, people discovering it and it being easily accessible so that people can jump into it easily throughout the year.

Might have actually let that game last longer as opposed to a AAA game where people are, everybody knows what Gears is. Everybody knows what Outer Worlds is. Everybody plays it at the same time. Everybody was like, okay, cool, I liked it or I didn't like it. Or I thought it was amazing. Or I thought it was, all right. Like, people form their opinion after they play it and then kind of bounce off of it as opposed to Outer World. or Outer Wilds or like...

I don't say Outer Worlds too. Like, Game Pass is kind of making those two kinds of games meet in the middle. So it's like elevating games like Outer Wilds, but also like a little diminishing to games like Gears of War 5 or Gears 5. I don't know if that's the problem. It's so weird to hear to me, but...

I mean, we'll see how it'll get out. No, it's too easy to play. The opposite side of it. See what happens with Hale Infinite. It's on my list because it's on Game Pass and because it is, I think, such an important move for Microsoft to make. All I want to do,

wanted to say very shortly was I thought the exact same thing the gears five I think and the many years of marketing and like it needed that full on like frankly the first thing I thought of like man if it almost just launched this year you know as a full next gen title but was called gear something I think it would have gotten a lot more attention is that thing where I've a ton of money for it I've gotten I've gotten excited for gears before and then turned out about it's more gears you know what I mean so that's just where I am I'm not a gears guy so gears five I've heard great things I you know in X cloud it was I jumped in and did it. I was like, oh, man, first off, X-Cloud's working really well. And secondly, like, this seems cool. But it's just like, I totally forgot about it when I got home for the games I need to play. I was like, oh, yeah, Gears 5, I need to jump with it. Yeah, right? Right. Number three.

Well, now it starts moving, right? Mine's Death Stranding. It's everything we've just talked about. It's got a great smell to it, as France. I love it. I think it's relaxing. I think it's Zen. I can't wait to get back to more of it.

Like, it's a cool, weird game. Did you ever go back mini, like a month or two after you beat it? No. Okay. That was my plan for break, but then I got caught up in other things. Yeah. I logged in for some likes, actually. And then did a couple things. And yeah, it's got...

It was a little more zen, yeah, coming back that long. How do you guys feel about that game narratively? In terms of what the story was? Yeah. Like, did you... All the praise we've been giving Destraining so far has been about mechanics. I'm just curious, does anyone like unabashedly like the story? I enjoyed the...

Where is this fucking going? You know what I mean? I thought the performances were really good. I thought Mads' his character was really good. like the whole thing you know in the beach and all right I don't want any supposed

oh right sorry great point great point yeah yeah I enjoyed the ride but it's definitely now what months after beating it I'm like you know what I mean

like wait that was what was her name and she you know her name was probably bridge or beach related exactly it was Amelelie

she was great Bridget or he sounds like America oh man they bring this up Sam Porter Bridges. He's a porter for bridges. Listen, you will get there?

There is like literally people will say their names. Everything's on the nose. Here's the thing. So far, I like that kind of stuff. I like how stupid it is. One guy says, I'm Cliff. I'm an obstruction. You're a bridge.

You're a bridge. Like, it's literally those kinds of lines. We're not going to get into it because I don't want to be like super negative about Destraining. I enjoyed the ride as the answer. For the riding, I enjoyed the ride. And then looking back and thinking about it, I haven't really done.

that. I think it's like what you're talking about, right? Of like beating a game and then it's like done out of mind. Like outer worlds from you was definitely that right. I'm just like done boom coon. I didn't enjoy the ride of outer worlds overall. I enjoyed the ride of Death Stranding and when it finished it was great. But like yeah, now months later it is like, wait, what was this thing? But I remember the interactions, right? I remember Mads and Norman. Like I like them. I was worried it wasn't going to make any sense based on all the marketing and just Kojima's history beforehand, but I was surprised at actually how the core of the story is very straightforward.

It's very in your face. Yeah, but I liked that about it because I'm not, like, when you guys were talking about control, I was like, dang, man. Part of it's just the way I play, but part of it when I'm streaming, I'm not taking the time and hearing some of this. I was like, some of these stories are hilarious,

and I missed out on that. I do think that Destrain actually has some, it's got some, I don't know, there's some deep symbolic stuff in there. And actually, what I liked above all was cinematic. references that they put in there obviously Apocalypse Now with Cliff and stuff like that but there's some really cool

stuff. I really likes Hartman. His whole thing right. There's a couple of characters that I think are good. Yeah and the performances like you said actually are really good. I think it's because it's Kojima you kind of already you're like well of course these people are in it but actually holy crap look at this cast and the performances

but um Troy Baker Troy Baker fucking kills him I mean I'm only in chapter 5 and so far I'd say I'm very engaged with the story Like when it's all said and done, and even right now, I don't know if I would say, like, it's an amazing story by any means, but I find myself more into it than, like, most video game stories. Like, even if I compare it to control, right? Like, the thing that I love about control is all the stuff around the story, right? Like, picking up the collectibles, learning more about the facility.

But the actual, like, plot of Jesse Faden and her brother and, like, stuff that's going on with her, I didn't really care about that much. Yeah. In a way where, like, that's stranding so far with the main narrative, like, I'm into it. I'm curious to see, like, okay, who is Higgs? like, okay, cool, the stuff they did with Fragile, so far in Fragile's chapter, I thought it was pretty interesting. Remember, she's fragile, but not

fragile. That line read is different every single time. I don't know what they're... I think I've heard it twice. Eat your floating grubs, girl! So far, so far, I'm very engaged and interested in everything that's going on in a way that I'm not

really for a lot of game stories. I like that comparison because Control does so much with the world in the books and things. around and certainly there's conversation, but like a lot of it's in the paper, you know, whereas Death Stranding is super in your face with a ton of cutscene time, cutscene time, which to its credit, it's easy, again, to look at it.

Well, of course, Kajima, look at other games for the year. I don't know how many games have that many performances, cinematic story, so it's pretty cool if you can get into the wild presentation. I will say so far in Death Stranding, I've probably seen the worst video game cut scene I've ever seen in my life, and also like probably one of the things the coolest where like as far as the worst one the whole um marriage thing i don't know if you guys

got to this one where it's yeah yeah you carry the girl back to the dude and it looks like they're not even in the same room like it the way they act at each other it oh yeah the way they act yeah oh man the acting is so horrible that was just a side story some of the it was a it was a side it's a main thing you have to do yeah yeah it's part yeah it's part of the main question as much as it is a side thing but it was terrible um but that said it is a goes places too. You're not done with that. I just got a follow-up message about it.

I'm just like, all right. So that's one of those things about Death Training's writing is that all of those emails have the same voice. They all had the same writing voice. I'm like, I'm not a good writer or anything, but when I read that, I'm like, why is this all written by the same person? And they're all using like emojis.

Yeah, like, imagine if you watch... It's part of the social. It is part of the thing. If you watch little women, every single one of the daughters sounded the same. Like, that's what Destraining's email is kind of come off like. What's your number three? My number three, speaking of great narratives, is Life is Strange 2.

Yay. So I think Greg and I've talked about this. We sat down with Don't Not a couple of weeks ago about it. But like, everyone ignored that game because the first episode released in September 2018, the last episode released in December, this past December. So they had over a year of releasing episodes and long delays, so nobody really paid that much attention. But the actual game surpasses,

the original Life is Strange in almost every single way. Really? Yes. So I, the original Life Strange, and before the Storm, but I'm going to say the original Life is strange. Probably one of my favorite games this decade.

I didn't, I didn't really like the first episode of Life Strange, too. But I feel like if I play, judging from what people have said over the course of time, I feel like if I played the rest, I might get way more into it. I think that, yeah, it's a long character arc.

Like, with Life is Strange 1, you have Max who is a relative, like, she's a nerdy little girl, but she is like, a relatively good person like a not whiny you have Chloe for all that like empty rebellion bullshit

with Life is Strange 2 you're playing as Chloe basically huh like you are the teenager that has the is raging at the world and has a very good reason to it at some point but then like it starts giving you more of an arc of

you learning and how you're taking care of like you play as god refresh me on the name Greg uh it's Daniel Daniel and Sean. So you play as Sean and you're trying to like basically raise your little brother and how you raise him

reflects the reflects the way the story plays out in a little way. So it becomes this thing of do I want to be a good person or do I want to actually succumb to the rage that the world is justifiable, that is justified by the way the world is treating me and it like it sets it up and it gets a surprisingly

like subtle, not subtle but surprisingly well-formed a background of, hey, this is Trump's America right now. What are two Hispanic children like coming from Seattle to Mexico going to face along the way?

And a lot of it like is subtle of, okay, well they see white grandparents, so people get a little suspicious when they see that. They see like these white people with Hispanic kids with them. It's like are they taking advantage of them somehow? Are the kids

like more thuggy than like they would otherwise be. So it's that kind of thing, and I don't want to go into spoilers from this either, but the game goes really dramatic and fantastic places. And then because there's such a long gap between episodes, when you start the next episode, it's like, oh, a lot of things have happened in the meantime.

Oh, so each episode there's been time. There's been a real time gap of usually a couple of months. Interesting. Okay. They're growing as you play. Yeah. So like that game does take place over like a year and a half. And as you go through it, like, okay, I'm discovering what happened in the meantime, and people I really liked have disappeared from the story, and they're living their own lives, and I have to move on knowing what they did for me and to me.

And Life Estrange 2 managed to encapsulate that a lot better than Life Strange 1 did. And it also, after the first episode, it mostly avoids that thing that Life Strange 1 had the problem with of. they could not write teenagers very well in that first game and it was a really awkward writing for a lot of, like the tasty You don't think teenagers use the word Hela all the time?

They do guys, come on. They only do in certain parts of California are the 90s. I was going to say, and they got so much shit for that that they went and retconned it in before the storm. Like, here's where she learned Hela,

everybody, shut out. But like, they do a good job of actually writing these characters. Daniel sounds like a kid. Like, there's, you played the first episode, right? Yeah, yeah. There are parts where he's just constantly talking about Minecraft

to the point where it's annoying, but that's what a kid that age would do is he would see everything that Minecraft lands. And then Sean talks, is like, Sean's game reference is The Last of Us because that's what he plays. That's the kind of game he would do. So they managed to actually work it in a lot better

and make the writing a lot more natural. I like the Seth Rogen character in episode one. Not really Seth Rogen. Yeah, the writer at the end. Yeah. I thought he was, he was my favorite. part of that. Yeah, I adore Life Strange too. And I think it does such a great job of putting you in somebody else's shoes. Like to be at the end literally where I, you know, that I didn't have in Life

Strange one of you get the choice. And I'm like, well, I would do this. But I'm like, I literally was like, oh, dude, I'm like, oh, wait, that's what I would do. 37 year old white Greg Miller, I'd go talk to the cops right away. These guys who have had everything go wrong when they talk to police, maybe they shouldn't, you know what I mean? That's the power of it. Fran, number three. Number three was, I want to make sure I got it right. I know what it is, but prone to mistakes. It was control. I know that's already been talked about a lot.

But again, just to reinforce what I said, the feeling when you, what surprised me so much was the physics, the gameplay element of like, holy crap. It starts with like unlimited force powers almost. You get to see something in control that you always watch and you're like, why do they run out of their Jedi force meter? How does that work? I actually think it works.

Does the force thing better than force or Jedi fall order? Some people said that. I think of the unlimited power, you know. You feel like a god by the end of that game. But yeah, I'm always watching Star Wars. Why don't you just pick that up and throw it at him? You know, we were talking, Gary was talking on Twitter. Why don't you just turn the lightsaber off of your mind?

Why don't they force let out of the sandpit? But in, yeah, in control, you start with just learning some first abilities of picking stuff up and throwing it. But just the feeling of that is so well done. This rubber band feeling your hands moving. There's a distance between the object and there's all these graphical effects that play into it. it's just gorgeous and you throw it at the desk and papers explode everywhere.

Just it becomes that, you know, when you played a really cool tech demo for the first time, you know, where they show that at E3, you're like, oh, that's really cool.

Like, this game does that at a base. Then, did you play this game with ray tracing on? Yes, I did. Holy shit the difference that makes. Yeah,

you know what's funny? Like, on PC, I think it already looks good. I didn't notice huge differences at certain moments. So I went back and I tried a console version. And like, oh,

yeah, But the consoles just... Not even performance aside. Like, just certain things of... On the PC with race racing on, like you're looking at a framed picture of Jesse as a director, and you can see movement behind you in the reflection. Right. You see actual object.

Those kind of things. It makes it feel like a real-world thing. But surprisingly, even without race-tracing, they put a lot of that in on object maps and other things, I think. But, anyway, it's beautiful. But what I want to say is, yeah, I played on PC, and as your powers progress, and the fact they mix in the gunplay,

That was the part I didn't get to before, is not only do you have these really cool powers and time dilation and all this stuff, you're able to shoot in between, like you're saying, and I actually played the game on mouse and keyboard, and wow, what a ride. Loved being able to precisely aim, and on top of it, you know,

the game's got mods in it that you can grind for up to Tier 5, and, like, scratching all the right places when it comes to Fran. So it's such a beautiful game, but I went in and had these awesome powers, and you just appreciate it all, but then to be able to strategize how I play with my mod load out on top of it, you didn't have to.

I think that, I don't know if anybody at the table just was like, I don't know, I slotted in some stuff, I didn't worry about it too much. I definitely got into like, no, I'm dashing, that's how I play. I'm skipping out on my melee tree. Maylays are awesome.

I actually never powered it up all the way, but like you have to play up close if you do that and play with different guns. And the fact that has that on top of all the other stuff was really cool. And the ash tray made. Duh. Oh my God, yeah.

Number three? My number three is control also. Yeah. The thing I was going to say earlier in the episode about where it's at on my list is that control should probably be my number one. But I think there, along with what I was kind of saying about the action and the narrative elements kind of clashing for me, you know, there are some things about the game that I feel like kind of keep it from being my number one, such as how it runs.

I played on PS4 on a base PS4, and that game runs terribly. Like every time I unpause the game, it takes seconds to like get back to people talk about that. It does that up pro. And it still does. I thought that when we reviewed it and they were like, oh, there's patches coming for improvement. It was like, oh, great. And then it started up this past week and do it. And I was like, that's still there. Wow. Yeah. And when I was first playing, like, it was so bad when I was first playing that I would bring up the map and I just wouldn't be able to see anything. And for like probably like a good couple hours, my first couple hours in the game, I didn't realize there was a map because whenever I'll bring it up, it just wouldn't love. And I just wouldn't love. And I just wouldn't love. And for like, probably like a good couple hours. I was a couple hours. I didn't realize. I was a map. Because whenever I'll bring it up, it just wouldn't. It just wouldn't. in. It would take like maybe like a good 45 seconds to a minute to just like load everything in and they patched like they they patched the game to kind of fix that but still like when I bring up my map now it doesn't take like 45 seconds but it still takes like a couple seconds to kind of pop in and populate and for me to figure out like where I'm at and so for a good there's a good amount of the game I played and I just didn't know like how to navigate or where I was because like in those first hours I didn't realize like oh

the map actually works this way like the map isn't I thought I thought it was a different mechanic. Like, I thought I had to unlock the map as I go. As I go, really, the map was just black, and it was just loading everything in. So that was frustrating. The pause screen thing of unpauseing, that was frustrating.

And when a lot of things would happen at the same time during, like, combat. Yeah, it gets slowdown. But still number three, though. Yeah, still number three. Hey, man, great game. For me, you need to go through all that and still be, like, right there,

that meaty part of the top five. I think creatively, creatively control this game of the year. Like, I think, as far as, like, What is doing? Creative vision, you mean? Yeah, the creative vision, the, like, I think it has the art style of the year, right? Like, I think as far as, as far as all the visual elements, like, the body's floating in the air, the hiss sounds, the design of, like, the enemies. And, like, I don't know what they're called, like, the ball, the silver ball thing that you just have to, like, shoot.

And that would, I forget how that affects the enemies. Yeah, I think that warps around. Yeah, until you finally do. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Like, all of that stuff I thought was super cool, fridge duty. like there's so much in that game creatively that I think works so well and that I want to see more games to you because I think that's something I'm special about video games right is that you could tell a story through environment you can tell a story by just like walking around walking around this facility looking around and kind of seeing what's happening right reading what's happening looking and kind of figuring things out like that's the thing that only video games can do and I think control does that better than I've seen a lot of video games do that like control is super well uh put together as far as that. And as far as like the combat and action also I think it's super fun.

But yeah, it gets bogged down by how badly it ran for me on console on my base PS4, which also seems not to run well on PS4 Pro either. And like I think, you know, some of the story elements there as far as the main story didn't grab me. I didn't fall in love with that main story. And yeah, the way the action and narrative kind of interact don't necessarily do it for me. But even with all that being the case, still number three for me because I think what all the things they do right, I think are things that are innovative. Like I think there are things that like other developers should be looking at and figuring out like, okay, how do we tell, how do we convey a world this cool? Right. And so.

I love the way the board talks to you, like the like says one thing and then like the other kind of way. Like my favorite one was kill, like it was supposed to be kill all these enemies. It says like kill slash video game these enemies. Yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I also wanted to point out one reason it actually was higher on my list than all these other honorable mentions and some other games. It's also because of what has already come out, you know, there was a little bit of an endgame mode that you can play.

But the fact I know there's DLC coming, even though I know that I'm not judging it based on that, but meaning knowing it's a growing world still, the fact that it had some endgame was really important to me. Like I said, with Death Stranding, just as far as I know, there won't be anything else. There was Christmas hats. Was there really? Santa hats on everybody. You got to log in for your vote. I had no idea. Tim, what's your number three?

My number three is Devil May Cry 5. Oh. DMC 5, straight up rocks, man. I've always loved a Devil My Cry franchise, even in its lows, even with the two.

You know what I mean? Even less. But, you know, coming off of four, there were so many elements of the game that I loved, and specifically the character of Nero.

I really enjoyed him, and I didn't like the backtracking that that game had. Going into DMC, the reboot, whatever it was, elements of the gameplay were great. I didn't like the overall vibe of that game, though.

DMC5 to me is a game that I can't believe actually exists. I can't believe that this game is the sequel to the original Devil May Cry games, taking all of the elements that I love so much and putting them together in a game that feels well-paced. I never thought we'd get another DMC that felt well-paced again. When you play as narrow in the beginning, you feel how you're supposed to. Having the double bring her arm and all that stuff, it's just, it's so, so tight, where every single action you're making, you're responsible for,

and it feels cool. This game makes you feel cool. That is the goal of the game, and it totally succeeds. Introducing the character of V so wildly different than anybody we've seen in Dublin Cry before, but still having to be fun and making the gameplay different,

but it always just broke up what you were doing just enough and for just long enough to make you want to go back to what you were doing, but by the time you're doing the next thing, you want to go back to that. And like, that to me is the gameplay, loop that I love from these type of games. And it all builds up to you playing as Dante.

And when you get Dante back and are able to use all the different gameplay styles and switch on the fly, you feel like a fucking badass. And when you're a fucking badass that can switch between slash you with a sword, jump back, shoot you with the guns, slash onto a motorcycle, pull the motorcycle in half and use the motorcycle as like gauntlets. Dude. Hype. Fuck.

Yeah. And like that to me is like 60% through the game. after that 60% it just ramps up of like cool now that all these pieces are on the board let's just go fucking crazy let's go all anime

and when you build towards those final moments we were talking about earlier it's just pure devil make cry fan service it's like what do we want to see with characters

whatever spoilers you guys can figure it out and they totally fucking delivered to a point where the way this game ends I'm just like we can never get

another devil may cry and I'm gonna be happy just knowing where this one ended but if we get another one let's fuck and go, baby. We're going good places. It's super weird there was not a DLC for that game. Like it seems right for it.

There are, as we've alluded to, characters that seem like they have entire movesets that should be playable. It just aren't. I kind of love it, man. I kind of love it. I will say, like, one of the things I loved about V is that his entire moveset just really obscure Devil May Cry 1 references.

Yeah. Because, like, all those are like his all familiars are enemies in Devil May Cry 1. So, like, there's a move where, V stands on top of the pin needle thing that comes out of the panther, that is a very obscure thing

where if you jumped on top of that as Dante in one frame and then hit, like, use the sword, it is a one-hit kill. That's hilarious. So like that's like a just a move for V now. So it's one of, the entire game is just a huge love letter to Delame Cry the series. And that's it, man.

I feel like it has the gameplay stylings of three, but then it has kind of like V is the gothic kind of representation of Devilman Cry 1 that we haven't really seen since then. And I feel like they took all the good parts, even though there weren't too many of Devil and Cry 4, and expanded on it entirely. And like, they balanced the three characters so well, and I feel like that is the most impressive feat that that game could have done.

This game has no right to be as good as it was. And it sucks that it is as overlooked as it is because it is a stylish character action, but it's a goddamn good one. It's like, it's the kind of game that not everyone's going to spend time getting good at, and that's where it shines, is when you get really good at that game, like a lot of character action games suffer because everyone treats them as a one-and-done thing versus I kind of treat them like they're a thing you get good at, you play over and over.

Because, like, for a bayonetta, for example, the real run of Bayonetta is a second run for me. Once I've already gone through everything and I've gotten all the skills and all that stuff. And DMC-5 is kind of the same way where, oh, now that I have Nero's full set and all Dante's moves and all that stuff, now I can really play around with it. And that's where I think DMC5 kind of falls flat just a little bit is the pacing of your first playthrough is so good that the way it's set up of going back and replaying missions. Like the fact that characters are linked to certain missions, I feel kind of is to the detriment because there isn't enough for each character to do.

Yeah. And it kind of feels same year over and over. Yeah. Number two, Greg. We're almost there, huh? Real quick for standings, if you're a listener, you're driving your car for two and a half hours. Controls in the lead with eight points. Death Stranding with five and then Resident Evil 2 with four.

Right now, my number two, I'm putting Borderlands. Again, we've talked it to death on a million different games cast, let alone. Thank you very much, Kevin, let alone today. Amazing gumplay, a million things to come back for. Even though, you know, I think the writing we've talked about before, and I remember, I think when you were a blessing were on. Yeah, probably. When you were on for your up-and-comber week, you talked about like,

like it gets back down a lot, but I still laugh at it, right? And like this, that and the other night, it's totally, you know, humor and all that other different stuff. I still, I think for as many jokes that I don't care about, in that game, there are still ones, it seems every play session for new content that make me laugh out loud with the notable one from Moxie's heist.

When you kill one of the enemies, one of the new things he goes is, it's something to the effect of now that I die in this world, I become real. I'm coming for you, Jeremy! That is Greg Miller joke. That is if I wrote that dialogue. So yeah, Borderlands is my number two. And at times this break playing with Jen, I was like, is this my game in the air?

I can't get enough of this game and I'm having such a great time with it. Amron. Oh, Fran? Can I just say about Borland? I feel like it would be a big... Me and Fran don't talk about Borderlands.

Comment, though, on the fact... Obviously, I'm on the Borderlands show. I really love Borderlands. Like, why is it not on my list? And, man, like, I'm agreeing with everything you're saying, but I feel like for me, and I don't know how to say this, I feel it gets a lot of credit

because it came back and it delivered in so many ways of what we wanted. But it really is more Borderlands. And that's fine. But we were deprived of it for so long, you know, and, like, to be fair, actually I barely had ever played it, right? And I knew that I'd always like it, and I really do.

But I feel it gets a lot of credit for coming back and getting so much right. There's a lot to it, though. Being a modern borderlands. Yeah, I'm not discrediting. In fact, that's why I was an honorable mention. But to draw a comparison, like, I love destiny, man. Like, I've had so many great moments across the year in that game. I could go on and on about why the gameplay is so polished, and it's one of the best, you know,

shooters out there. And Borderlands is certainly in that category. but what I'm finishing off on is just that I super appreciate Borland's. I think if it were to have made my top five, it would have taken some bigger swings. The engine needed to be able to find more. It's not just that the inventory system didn't work how I wanted it. It was old, and a lot of the pieces are still owed. If there's a Bordlands 4 out there, I have a feeling that's the one that's going to hopefully

finally come in and be like, that will make my top five. Borderland Street is awesome, but that's why it's not on my list. Number two. My number two, we've talked a little bit about it, was Fire Emum, Three Houses. Oh, I fucking... It's a wasted point because no one else

going to do that, but it's... You shouldn't be scheming, Greg. Shame on you. Hey, welcome to democracy, everybody. You want to waste your vote that's on you. It's a two-party system, everybody. But I just love everything about that game. That soundtrack is one of the best

soundtracks of the year, period. Like, certainly of the series. The characters are so well written. so well established. No matter what path you take, you have a good argument from everyone of like, this is what we should have done. Like, I don't want to spoil it of like

where everyone goes, but like everyone makes a good point of this is why we've been oppressed and we want to fix this. This is the ideal kingdom. And like I was golden deer and like the people I went with were like wanted a just kingdom that was free of or ethnic, not ethnic cleansing, but like free of racism. essentially that no one's pre-judging each other.

So they want to reform the world in that kind of way. It's like, yeah, I'm down with that. I like that idea quite a bit. The actual, like, beat-to-beat moment of that game, it's a little too easy. But at the same time, I think... Really? They want to make a Final game

that appeals to everyone, and I understand that. I think if I had to do it again, I would have started it on hard versus normal, and I would have kept Permadeth... Like, I kept Permadeth on anyway, but, like, I think Hard Permade what is the right cycle for me and I didn't start that way and you can't change it

which is an issue but the most fun I think I had in that game was walking around the monastery and just talking to people and like everyone has their own story everyone has their own like personality the front gate guard is like surprisingly an NPC I want to protect because he's just so happy and like he's

he has a life that he wants to live and I want to I have a vested interest of protecting all of my students and protecting everyone in that monastery by the end of the game. The monastery stuff was kind of what got in my way of immediately hooking me where I was like, I'm off to the races. Like, I want to get into this. And I think a lot of that just comes down to me wanting Fire Move to be a specific thing. Yeah. And just being like, I love the supports.

I love the character conversations of in between missions, getting to know everybody, getting another backstory. I didn't really like the having a walk around to find people to talk to it. in my head of my, I miss just looking through a menu and going down next, down, next, down next. But I feel like I'm definitely not given a fair shake because it was better than it was in the 3DS one that the echoes that they put out. Because I did not like the 3D dungeons that they added in that at all. But the little bit I played of a couple hours, like four or five hours of three houses. Walking around the monastery is like, this seems like it's a step in the right direction. But I feel like it's a similar thing to what France is on like.

The next one on Switch, I think. could be something really special for me. So that problem gets worse as the game goes on because you just have less to do in the monastery. So by some point I'm just like, I'm just wasting time at this point. Just walking. Like I have 15 turns or whatever like to waste right now, so I'm just going to spend it cooking.

Like I guess that's, that is, they didn't really balance that idea well, but the parts of the monastery that feel like home were the parts I appreciated most. Because like I ended up really liking Flane as a character because there's a fishing contest and she really wants a fish, and that's hilarious to me. Of like, just get playing the fish.

That's your main mission. Like, cool. Like, now I want to explore the character more. Yeah. Like, it's those kind of things of, as I'm learning more about the characters, that makes the ending stick better, that with that game combined with permadeth, of I can't lose anyone because they matter to me?

They matter to me, yeah. Iron one, man. And I remember being so addicted to that game that I was moving when that game came out and I literally just stopped packing and to play it for several hours. And when I lost my job and I was depressed, that was the kind of game,

that game kind of took me out of it because I found those, I found expressing myself in those characters to be a cathartic experience for me. So as, like, we ended close to our journey, I was, like, projecting a little bit and it was a thing that I think wrapped up in such a good way to the point where I didn't really feel like I wanted to go back

through the other houses quite yet that I because the journey I had that was your journey yeah yeah that's always the sign of a good game like that where it's like that's what it is that's what defines it for you for animal number two uh Sakaro yeah so that was a game that you know you I already talked a lot about I'll have some more to add to a bit earlier in the year I started playing I definitely liked it you know again this is an example people come into my chat And they're like, dude, like, why didn't you finish this? And you should play this game. And I'm like, I want to do all that, but I'm in the middle of all this other stuff.

I'm busy. Like, I actually like a lot of different types of games. Like, that's why Fire Emblem was my biggest regret. I think I noted it before for honorable mentions. Like, if I played it, I know, I would love it. I heard it's very long if you really get in. Very. Yeah.

I think I finished it about, about 70 hours of my first play. And Sekaro's very long. But anyway, so it just rocketed up the number two once, you know, one of the best games of the year for me, because once I spent the time with it, what happened was, you know, you start and you get that intense, this game is hard. I've heard that about their games. It's super hard.

And I feel like that overshadows what it really is at the core, which is, yeah, the precision of the combat. And then when you get into the skill trees, the feeling of stuff, man, at one point you get, it's the monk style upgrades where it's hand and fist combat. And it hits, like, it does in the mind's eye when you watch the Matrix. you know, and they're doing like the way that it hits, it almost is like as cinematic and feeling as that, which actually the movies can't give you

because you're not playing that character. So it just, it feels so good as you unlock these different styles and start to strategize, that's where the game starts to get deep. You do get a lot better at it. Like everyone was saying also is that it does, yeah, it demands that you play it a lot, but you do get better. You shouldn't be afraid to do it. I think that's, you know, again,

I feel like it overshadows as you, it's easy to become. I'm frustrated, be like, this is crazy, I'm out. I think a lot of people would enjoy it, but it demands you practice like a fighter, actually, on a harder mode. You can't level your way out of situations. Like, you can't just become stronger than a boss by like grinding souls for a while. You have to actually get good. Buckle down, learn the patterns, but also stop being stubborn sometimes and don't only use one

strategy. Be like, wait, I do have other things. So the precision combat and the skill tree upgrades, man, it's deep. By the way, even by the time you're to the end, there's like stuff you have never gotten and things you need to do. For the platinum, that was difficult to fill out the west of that skill tree. That took forever. And then within that, yeah,

just the boss fights, man. They are grandiose. Saying that there's an ape boss doesn't even do justice what we're talking about here. Like I said, at one point, you know, its head got lopped off and it's spewing blood at moments that actually causes an effect on you called terror. Your terror meter's

going up because if you get too close to the blood spewing out of his neck and the roar by the way. The roar of his neck, his gaping neck hole. He's literally, he's like, literally, yes. Awesome. He's screaming with no,

yeah, it's his throat. He's, I guess, screaming with no head and spewing blood out, and you get terrorized if you get too close, there's an antidote for that, you know, a pacifying agent or what. It's crazy. There's so much detail in the strategy you can get into. And that's just that boss.

Yeah. There's also, like, a lot of Japanese folklore attached to it. So if you're into that kind of thing, like the Yokai and stuff like that. Like, you meet the weeping widow that, like, ask, you if she's pretty and whatever you answer, she's going to kill you. Yeah, and so there's something to, just the variety of the enemy design and how much you run

into, actually. You see stuff and Dark Souls is known for it. But again, I urge you to try this game out, actually, because I think just go in fresh. You don't have to play Dark Souls to do this. But there's enemies you run into, just even tiny ones, you're like, wait, wait, what? It's not a major spoiler, but you go through this sort of like zombie type town where there's on Dead. And I went through once and came back to look for something. And at one point, like these little whatever the frick they were hopped out of the dirt and start chasing me like psychos with two knives and I didn't know what to do because they're going crazy versus the way I've run into other enemies which is normally a little more tactical not only is it difficult to like block if they get to you they jump on top of you I think they knock you down and start stabbing you and it came out of nowhere and I was like dude there's so many different types of enemies there's a point in that game where you're like how do I deal with enemies that don't care if they get killed yeah yeah and it just delivers again on the the feeling, it's not like other games where an enemy comes at you and Hershey. The feeling that they nail is just amazing.

And then certainly just cinematically, they have these shots that are inspired from Japanese film and certainly just film in general. There's some boss shots and stuff that I'm just like, this is so beautiful. Yeah. Genitro, you get to the point. I'm not going to spoil it. Yeah, I won't spoil it, but there's a point where there's like a storm behind the boss and it's a perfectly centered shot.

And by the way, maybe this illustrates it too. It's a square boss arena. You go to multiple times, and all you do is fight an enemy in a square boss arena. There's nothing to the arena outside of it, and those are some of the best boss fights. That's how good it is at combat. Just a square arena with you could have put any number of enemies in there,

but the way they do it is incredible. So I can't say enough about it. I urge you to actually, you do have to spend, I'd say it's one of those games. You've got to spend a good seven to ten hours and really grinding teeth a bit. Yeah. But you can do it.

Okay. It becomes amazing. So that's Franz number two. We're about to get to blessings number two, which I think is about to. Yeah. We're in the end game now. We're in the end game. I'm surprised nobody has said this way.

I don't know what it is. I think it's pretty high then. My number two, Star Wars Jedi Fall in Order. I knew it. I know it. Of course. So Star Wars Jedi Fall in Order is probably the most I've gotten into a Star Wars story. Like I'm not...

Totally. I'm not a huge Star Wars fan. Like, I like Star Wars fine. I've never watched the prequels. I've watched the original trilogy. And I like it fine. I've watched the prequel trilogy. I actually really like the prequel trilogy.

So you've never seen sequels then. Or which I've seen, I mean the sequel trilogy. I've seen the sequel trilogy and I really like the sequel. So you've never seen one through three. P-T-O-T and S-T. Yeah, I've never seen one through three. The ones that people, everybody hates, I've never seen those ones. Which ones that everybody hates?

You're right. I'm really curious because that sounds like it would make follow order real confusing. I know what happens though. Like I know the big. thing that happens. I know Order 1886. Execute Order 1866. We're all vampires and we're all werewolves. The dead speak.

But yeah, I understand like kind of I know the Star Wars. Yeah, I understand the references. I understand Darth Vader and how he was Annigan and how apparently he killed children at the end of the third movie. Hell yeah. Somebody had it. Is that what happened? I've seen memes of it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. He kills Jedi. They're wiping out the Jedi. And he doesn't have the high ground.

He doesn't have the high ground. Get to the game. Jedi Fall in Order. I got really into the story. I like how they play around with the idea of Jedi and the good side and the bad side and how those things kind of interact. Because I've always, I've been a person that's kind of complained about Star Wars for a while because I...

Welcome to the internet. Yeah. But like, not even like... See, I'm not even mad about the movies or anything. I just don't understand what a Jedi is. Which probably so to the people. People who make that movie, they don't understand what a Jedi is either. I'm like, what is the Jedi?

What is the Jedi? What is the Jedi? No, everybody can use the force? All right, what is the Jedi? No, now you have to be related. Okay. And like, I learned very recently that that force isn't magic because there's magic in the game, and that's not force, apparently. That's true.

Force is like an energy that people tap in. It's will hold this world together. It might be force. It's not clear. It's okay. Star Wars, I feel like as far as, like, what things are. It's very mystical. I never really got into it because I could never really wrap my mind around it.

but Jedi Fallen Order, I feel like established it enough for me to understand it and kind of get interested in what's going on in the story. It does a better job of poking and prodding the mythology of Star Wars than like the actual main series does. Yes, and like they ask questions. Like, you know, there's a MacGuffin in Jedi Fallen Order. Like there's a Macuffin in every Star Wars movie, except for, I don't know, there's a Macuffin the prequels aside from having the high ground.

His name is Jar Jar Jar Jarre Binks. Oh, God. Wado. But, you know, there's a whole conversation around the Mcuffin. and like what the right thing to do with the McGuffin is all the stuff that I was like, huh, this is really interesting. And I'm lacking, like, the different sides here that are being presented. And, like, they are swaying me on what's going on in the story.

I got really interested in it. I think the gameplay is super fun. Like, it has the similar control thing of it doesn't run well. You know, performance. Yeah. I thought for me it performed better than, performing better than control performed for me. But I still did, like, get glitches.

I still had, like, the thing in this game was coming up to enemies and the enemy's not realizing I'm there. And they're just like... And I did crap out occasionally. Yeah, I found lots of T-posing Stormtroopers pretty much everywhere. Yeah. The game was at least too early.

It was like six months too early. It should have been a March game. Yeah. You were on what platform? Okay. It's all varying stuff. It was slow to load. And every time I like died, died from combat, it was very slow.

Yeah, the loads were slow. That was the thing that, like, annoyed me the most. It's like, one never asked me to respawn. Like, just respond. Do you want to respond? Yeah. Do you get that our name? We made it. We're respawn.

We made it. We're respawn. Resporn. Put the word there if you want to put the word there. But just like let me... Because like, I will do the thing of, oh, I die. I'm going to put the controller down for a second. Like, oh, wait, I didn't hit the A button, so I'm not going to wait another 30 seconds for the load. Yeah. Yeah. And I think the difference between this game and control for me is every time I unpause in control, I had those stutters. Anytime I had those issues. Whereas Jedi Fall in Order was unreliably glitchy.

And so, like, there wasn't like one thing where I'm like, oh, every time I do this, like the game freezes up or anything like that. No, it was like, every now and then I'll fall through the, it. the world and die. There's a specific tunnel for me that like would occasionally let it happen. Yeah. And it's one of those things where it's like, okay, like, you know, it's not happening all the time. So I, it was very, it was much more forgivable for me than control where it just

happened over and over and over again. But you like the game alive. Yeah. What was stuck out? So I, I, I'm not into souls. I'm not into Sekiro. I would like to be, which is why I want to play Bloodbore this year. But those aren't necessarily my type of games because of how punishing

they are. And that's why I really liked God of War is because it has that similar slow like, hey, we have methodical combat like you're thinking about what you're doing, you're countering and doing all this stuff, right? In Star Wars, Jedi Fall in Order also has that sort of slower like you're countering,

you're not dodge rolling, I don't think, but you are like, you do have a dodge roll. Which is like, I think one of the problems with that game is that as someone who came from Souls, I played it like a Souls game at first and I should not be. Like the game lets you play it wrong for way too long. Yeah, and that's the thing, like, when I was talking about...

Boss fights really are when they're like, no, no, this is how you play the game, like, oh, fuck, okay. For me, it was that one section with, like, three spiders. Okay, sure. What you should be doing is parrying and then, like, one hit, killing them all. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What I was doing is, dodged rolling, taking a couple stripes of the lightsaber, which is, that takes fucking forever.

It's a huge hassle. Yeah, I know you're talking about exactly. I know exactly around. Yeah, but, like, and the thing for me, where I talked about this game on the Okiebeast podcast, and Ian, who's on that podcast, uh, as like, hey, so I love Souls games. as a Souls game player

do you think out like Star Wars Star Wars Data Fall in Order and I was like probably not like you know this game is it doesn't do one thing super well like if it does do one thing super well I think it is the story it's Star Wars it does Star Wars super well

it's a Star Wars super well yeah that's the thing is like it's a Jack and Wall you said this Jack and Wall Trade message It's like a melding of like uncharted Dark Souls and some other like very Metroid-ish like stuff like but it doesn't it's not as good at any of those

things as those games are But it's better at Star Wars than Star Wars usually is. Yeah. It's a good melding of those things. Yeah. And my thing is, similar to control, if this game had probably two more Larry's of Polish, would probably be my number one. Yeah.

Right? Like, I feel like this game is a few layers of polish and some design decisions in like a bit of a better story away from being God at War. Yeah. Right? Like I should be like my game of the year. It just fell short in certain ways. Yeah.

It's my number two as well. And that, it's because of everything that you're saying, where it's, not just all the technical issues of which I had all of them. It is design choices that were made where it's like, it's not that it would have ran better on a PC. It's that like the sliding is never fun. Why are you sliding? I like the sliding.

I thought it was fun. I also like Docconc's C-Force. This fucking sawed video game. Yeah. I just think that it goes back to this is a phenomenal Star Wars game. And Star Wars is, I think, should be an easy thing to nail. Turns out it's not. But I think this goes above and beyond that.

and it is so, so good where it delivers all the right moments when you want them. You meet characters, you don't meet characters. It shows restraint in so many great ways that when you do see something familiar, it is exciting. Moments with lightsabers are so,

so next level and so exactly what I'm looking for from being part of this experience where it's like, this is Cal's story. I started off not loving Cal. By the end of it, I'm like, I'm in. Cal is fine. I think all the other characters are better. I was really,

really shocked but I discovered that Sear was the same character from Wolfenstein, or same actress. And I was like, those are massively different characters. I didn't realize that. Call of duty as well, right? Yeah. Mad TV, of course. Yes, less we forget. I'm kind of with you where, like, for the first half of the game, I didn't really like how I thought it was super bland and super boring, but I think his backstory does so much to fill in that character and actually make him interesting. And so, like, yeah, the whole, all the characters in the game, Seer I loved. There's a character you meet on Dathimir, I love. There's, BD1, yeah.

And there's a Greasy Money Baby who's also Greasy Money Baby. All the characters are super dope. And like great enough to where I am like looking forward to what the next Star Wars Jedi game is going to be. This is the game this year that I'm like, I want DLC. I hope there's DLC and I want it now. Like I don't care what it is.

I mean. There was a weird moment which I'm not sure was like them not finishing that part. No, specifically the, well the song was also weird. But it does like. I love the song. It does establish what they want. He said salt. He said salt. Or grease is salting his food for a whole cutscene.

And it's like, did they forget to like... For me, it played at home the tension of him being like, basically Jesse Pinkman. But so many people were like, you broke the cutscene. I was like, I don't think that's what they were going for. I thought it was just like he likes salt. But the thing was the... They wanted to do the same like blood-borne bag man thing. You get captured and you're just...

You're somewhere else. But they don't do it nearly as well. I was just like, what's happening? Are you kidding me? That was fucking awesome. That moment was so cool in that game. Because they're like, oh, ask Gris what happened. I'm like, okay.

And then Grease, like, hey, sorry about that. I was like, okay, cool. See, I didn't understand the Grease. Grease. I just know what was Greasy money. Greasy money. Yeah. But that confused me too, because when you get captured

and somebody references Grease and then on the announcement or whatever, and I never understood what the connection was. Yeah, it's supposed to be. He did some shady shit? Yeah. I miss that. That's all you need to know, man. I love that. Like, that to me is Star Wars lore shit where it's just like, oh, man, he has a past. He's being a good guy now. He clearly did some bad shit. What was the bad shit? We don't need to fucking know. Yeah, it's like, Po, man. Also, just say that explicitly. You know what? Yeah, I love that moment of getting captured. Though when I talked to another friend who had played, I forget what Dark Souls or Bloodborn was, where that moment happens. Was it Blood Born? He was like, oh, yeah, they did it better in Blubborn. I was like, okay, fair. Yeah, I think they were just trying to go for that

And I don't think it worked quite as well Man, dude I love that moment There are things that I want to say about that moment That I think will spoil it Exactly I thought I'm gonna put up our spolet Yeah, it was just like cool like

I always, it's funny because I kept telling people In the middle of the game something happens that I love And some people actually did get there They're like They're like I missed it You know and then for some people They didn't appreciate it the same way I think the people who do like love it

And I'm on that category For me it was just confusing I was like I didn't care of the why that much. It felt incomplete to me. Yeah. I just thought it was so stylish. The actual arena fights weren't that

all that fun and like... No, but I love that how stylish it was. Yeah, it's a fun story moment, but I mean, it feeling incomplete, I feel like the whole game kind of feels incomplete at a certain at a certain point. But like... But it does so much. It does. The way... It's your number two, man.

I mean, yeah. The way my Ian... You must like... The way my friend Ian described it when I was talking to him about it is he said this game feels like... like really good cookie dough, right? Where it's like, it's one of those things where, you know, they probably should have put it in the oven a little bit more. But for what it is, it is very tasty and very good and you just can't get enough of it.

On this, I mean, on this level, it's shocked and no one, I'm sure, because I'm on a million shows and I say it all time. Like, Star Wars is my game of the year. And it's surprising to me as somebody who had IGN for years would argue against games I love because they had flaws in them and stuff. I felt that we're talking about some of its parts kind of thing that Fallen Order goes above all of its, the shortcomings. that has in places.

And like to, I'm the same boat as blessing to, I mean, I've seen all the movies. I'm not some psychopath. But I would have never said I'm a Star Wars fan. And like this made me a Star Wars fan. Like giving me this control, giving me this window into being a Jedi, giving me this Star Wars story that I thought had a mass effect like cast where it's like, I would leave the ship and stop and talk to everybody. I wanted to know what little thing you had to say.

I think it's the another, it's similar to Concrete Genie, a game that I platinum. And I was like, man, I wish I had. more of this. The story finished and you were like, man, I wish I had more of this character and that character and the little moments you would get of sitting there and talking to Sear, right? Like having these windows into what their world were the flashbacks to your master, right? Having that all mean stuff. Like, you know, we talk about like when we went and made lightsabers at Disney, right, how cool that was. And you were like, man, I teared up multiple times. And I'm like, man, me not just starting to get on this train was touched by things.

in the game for me and no spoilers here you know you're crafting your lightsaber the entire time tweaking it changing you oh I find a new collectible I put this on I go do this stuff like there comes a definitive moment in that game where I left a cave and I was like

this is my lightsaber I am a Jedi and I felt it and I feel there are so few video games that can nail that moment where usually it's in a cutscene where you are now you are a hero right and this game

through hook or crook had it where you leave this cave and you are a hero and you start fucking things up and it was that turning point where the entire game I felt like I was becoming a Jedi and I know for like people we've talked to that was like hard for them they wanted to feel powerful from the get-go they wanted this thing and I thought the game

was great at making me even bend to its will of like no be a Jedi be smart about this don't just run in there and start slashing and like some of those boss fights that were fucking powerful and I would I'm like fuck I'm gonna lose this one already just run over and start fucking yeah start slashing and like It's going to lose, but like let that rage out to get to that point where I replay it,

and it is like, let them make the mistake. Dodge everything and Perry, like you're saying. I was actually kind of offended that they gave you the green lightsaber at the beginning. Like, you could use the green lightsaber at the beginning. I'm like, no, that is for Masters. You use the blue lightsaber until I feel like you're good enough. It's real shit, man. I'm with you.

Greg already broke the seal, so it might, I mean, it's my number one as well. Like, we made me. Oh, you didn't do your number two, did you? Yeah, it did Star Wars? Oh, yours is the same. Well, my was Star Wars. His number one, Star Wars. Gotcha.

So yours is also number one. But I feel like there's no reason. Yeah, we're already there then. I don't want to keep retreading unless it yours? Mine's control. Okay, so you've got to be spoilers. Literally the only one not here.

Maybe no point to retread it since we're in Jedi territory. I was kind of reserved for a while. I love this game. I remember when we first were talking about it on Gamescast and you guys were ahead of me, I think, and I finally beat it. Man, what? Just fun game. And so you're right.

Master a Nunn, maybe it tries to do so much, it's a hodgepodge. A few you could say all those things. But for me, the fun factor and the overall quality of the gameplay. Like, it wasn't like it was ridden with five or six quality out of ten moments, right? Everything was eight or above, I feel like, for the quality. Yeah, there's tons of stuff I would change and improve. And unlike Sekiro, I actually, some people love the combat, and I certainly do,

but I didn't play it because of that. It was, it's just so fun along the way you do so much, and I'm a Metroid Prime fan. I think this is the most Metroid Prime game I've played in a long time actually, and Zelda for that matter. Like, it just has this cool sense of adventure of discovering and getting your upgrades and very distinct looking areas, you know, that you get to go to and visit. And the bosses were really cool. And actually, that was one of the reasons. Most of them were. Yeah, well.

The bat, I had some problems. Sure. There's some bad ones. Sorry, the best ones are amazing. amazing because of, yes, the lightsaber combat. Like the knife sister was so fucking fun. Yeah, so I, exactly. Like, I wanted to play more of that, maybe it is secure style, but the blocking, pairing,

the, like, when your lightsabers connecting, that feeling so cool. When you fight most enemies, you get a little of that, but you really got to hit the parry. But when you do the boss fight, like, you're just close up in their faces. I would have loved to see more of it, but it was so thrilling. And when I got to the end, no spoilers. Dude, I don't know what it was. I'm not, yeah, I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan, but it's been with me in my whole life.

It was the same when I watched Riser Skywalker's sort of sentimental-feeling trailer. I'm saying goodbye to my friends. That was C-3PO if you didn't know. That was a bad one. Oh, my. Not Ringo Star. I don't know why I did. I'm saying goodbye to my friends, whatever.

When I got to the very end, though, and beat it and things happened, I was overcome with the biggest grin that I've had playing a game. in a long time, but it wasn't just that. So pissed EA ruined that moment. Yeah. It's funny. We won't ruin it for you. We won't ruin for you.

The way it ran and ramp, the way games ramp as well, and you learn and get your skills, it had just such a great pace to it. Yeah. When that game sings, it sings so fucking well. Yeah. And I feel like it is a very accessible game to all players. You know, anybody can play this game and enjoy it. You know, you can play it on easy.

You can play it on Grand Master. I played it on a combination of, you know, the top hard modes there. And, God, it's so good. Does that game ever bother to narratively explain why it has a soul structure of enemies come back. Video games are cool. Video games are cool. That's why.

I meditated and now these guys are all alive again. If they thought about it, I feel they could have gotten away with being almost like Katana Zero where he is seeing, he's using the force to see the heat. That's what I assumed it was, but then like... I have an answer for, like... It's not awesome. Guys, you die in the game and come back to life. Are you really going to try to explain the rest of this?

I don't have an answer for like the monsters that you fight, but in my head, when you're fighting stormtroopers. Redeployment? Yeah, the redeployment and stuff like that. But then I'm going to challenge you. Redobey me in the exact same position. When you rush to a bonfire in Dark Souls and activate the bonfire,

there's a narrative reason for the enemies to pop back to where they were. Why does a Stormtrooper just stop chasing you when he start meditating? But do they explain why you come back to life? I just feel like we're over. In Dark Souls, yes, you don't die. Who fucking cares, man? As I said a million times in a million places, this is why I play video game. Here's the thing, though, I think this really does matter because the rest of this game is so true to like,

no, you do got to get back to your ship because that's part of the experience. And it does feel like a weird A decade's old War That this game Avoids otherwise I will say my favorite Part of that game

Was an optional part Where you go explore The Crash Death Star Or not Death Star Star Story Yeah Very cool stuff That was awesome

Although that also broke My game early on But my number one Don't need to talk about it Too much more Is Resident Evil 2 remake That's why I'm skipping you Because I feel like

You're gonna have Some fun to talk about But I can go back and forth Between Jedi Fallen Order Resident Evil 2 Any day Of which one's my number one

which one's number two. They both have issues, but I think at the end of the day, Resident Evil 2 is so polished and just is a fantastic game start to finish, and it just doesn't... I don't have negative things to say about it with the exception of wishing

that the Part A and Part B storylines were a bit more together, whereas I have a lot of negative things to say about Jedi despite how much I loved it. Sure, that's fair. Again, I think Resident Evil 2 is a great, complete game. Yeah, that's all the same. Blessing. What is your number one?

My number one... Here we go. It's Apex Legends. It's not even close. It's not even close. So I think for me, Apex Legends is the most I've seen a genre leap forward this year. You know, I got really into Fortnite last year. I played PubG when I came out.

I played some of the Realm Royale, which is another battle a dog on PC. And, you know, I liked Battle Royale fine, but I never really fell in love. Like the closest I came to falling in love with Battle Royale was probably the summer I got really. into Fortnite when it came to Switch. Yeah, that was like the moment where I was like, okay, like I get, I understand Battlewale. I understand why people are really enjoying what this is, right? Eventually, fell off of Fortnite.

Until I got into, well, I fell off of Fortnite in February, I believe, yeah, February this year was Apex Legends. And I got super into Apex Legends. Shadow Dropped, as we all know. And playing it, I feel like it took probably like 30 minutes before I was like, holy crap, this game is like really good. Like with all of the different features and details they put into that game, every single thing they do or change as far as the Battle Royale formula adds so much to what a

battle royal game is, right? And it starts with the Ping System. Like the Pink System probably wins system of the year if we did that category. Where like if you're unfamiliar, right, it's essentially like what's called like waypointing or whatever, right, in real time. But the thing that makes it special. Go over get this ammo. It's over there.

But it goes deeper than that. Yeah, it goes deeper because everything is contextual, and they put so much work into making it so that you can play this game without voice chat. Yeah, exactly. The fact that you can open up your, on top of the ping system, and it goes hand in hand, it has like a talkback system of cues. So you can go in, hover over the type of ammo you have, which you may not even know the name of, and you hover over it,

and it's like in your character's voice, right? It's like, hey, I need energy, you know. And all your teammates, you're like, that is brilliant. It's such a nice touch. You can essentially aim at anything that's contextual in the game, and there will be a voice line for it. So if you aim at open doors, right, and you ping it, that'll be a voice line of whoever your character is, like,

oh, somebody has been here, or, like, these doors have been open. Or if you do that to a loot crate, right? Like, oh, there's a loop crate over here. You can essentially point at anything, and your voice lines for your character will point out exactly what that thing is. And that's really changed. It changes how you're able to play. It changes how you're able to play.

It makes everything super easy. easy. But that's just like one element of the game, right? There are the different heroes, different characters, which, right, like, if we did a best cast of characters category, I would put Apex Legends up there, right? It's like the top five cast of characters this year. Right. I really love all the characters in the game. I think the character set is super diverse, right? Like, not like, not even just racially diverse, but like there's a non-binary character in there. There's, like, a robot in there. Like, it kind of ran circles around Overwatch with Blizzard. Yeah, yeah. Like, they ran that conversation for so long. Yeah. And,

A box is like, I told my beer. Yeah, Apex, like, with only, starting off with only eight characters, right? They've added, I think, three characters since. And even with that, right, they've added a character who doesn't have legs, right? Who has, like, metal, like, constructed legs. Right?

Like, all that stuff, I think is really cool, let alone the personality of each character, I think shines through, right? Like, I love quoting each of the characters in the game. Like, I play a lot of lifeline. And, you know, I love all of her quotes. And I just, like, say them while playing, right? I think those characters do a really good job

of connecting with the game. the player. And so that stuff's awesome. Even just the little touches of being able to kick in doors, right? I think that, that alone adds in like another level of when you get into a scuffle in a town and somebody's on the opposite side of a door, right? You can crawl in front of a door in order to keep it closed and then the other person has to kick in the door like a couple times to then open the door. But then that also makes noise. And so if you're, you know, if you're alone in an area, you don't want to like alert other players, you're then like, okay, well, I can't kick in every door. You, if you go into a new area, the name

the area pops up, right, almost like it is an open world game, pops up with the name of the area and so it'll say like, I don't know, man, the waters. And then under it, it'll say like the tier of loot that is in that area, right, which goes a long way into creating a feeling of exploration and discovery in this battle real map, right? You know, it being, it being a multiplayer map didn't stop them from them also making it feel like an open world at first, right? It feels like a place you're exploring and discovering and getting to know. And then there are things like in this new map, right, you have the train that kind of that travels through the map that kind of changes the way you play, right? In the first map, Kings Canyon, they had the battleship they can

land on, right? Like, all these different new ideas for battle real, kind of, you know, every single thing they do makes that genre better. And I feel like that game doesn't get enough appreciation for how much it kind of leaps forward. Not only that, but I feel like for first person shooters in general. I feel like that game does so much for just that, right? Playing Borderlands, I was like, man, I wish there was a ping system in this game. Like, I know you can I know you can mark stuff and way point stuff, but

it's not contextual in a way where I could be like, oh, hey, like, there's this pickup over here, or I'm trying to like, you don't have like the voice lines to accompany it. You don't have the contextual stuff to accompany it, right? Like, that was the thing where I was like, oh, this feels missing. Along with me playing our worlds, which, you know, it's an RPG, so I

can't expect as much mechanically, but even still, right, not being able to mantle alone. It felt weird, you know, coming off of Apex where I can just, like, climb, you know, and get to anywhere I want. It's so fascinating because I remember, like, when Apex was revealed, like, there was that respawn event a couple of days before, like, official reveal. And, like, they invited out what, and I, like, the Game Informer person who went there came back is like, hey, it's a Titanfall Battle Royale. Let's get these stories up. And, like, I remember telling it was like, I'm pretty sure this sounds like shit. Like, this game. Everyone's going to hate this game.

And then, like, we came out and, like, we played it. I was like, oh, this is really good, actually. It's like, it's really good, really quality. It's free. It's coming from EA. Yeah, man, respawn. Devs of the year. Dude, respond.

Yeah, devs of the year. Like, for me, they put out two of the best games of the year. Oh, they did. And yeah, I think Apex is incredible. I think it deserves more credit. And I mean, for me, it's my game of the year. It was hard to not put on my list. I absolutely love it.

I just ended up not saying he's much time to do it. I think for me, it might be holding the bar too high, but there's a couple things, right? Like, Fortnite, the gameplay stuff you're talking about is very different. I much prefer Apex Legends, but Fortnite does really amazing things in a battle real, with live events, especially, and the map stuff.

They've really come a long way, and they just, they do a lot. And there's a lot of stuff in the game when it comes to vanity items and all that. Apex Legends, I just felt needed, hopefully, can go in that direction. I also felt like the map needed some work working on in the very beginning, it has, it's changed. They added a whole new map.

Yeah, it's totally changed now. But some of that has evolved that I need to spend more time on it. But I actually, it's weird, but because it comes from respawn and, you know, loving Titanfall, I'm like, man, if this could have both, I know that that's one's a paid-for experience

and one's free, and they've got to figure that out. But I feel like as a complete package, this would have been, like, incredible, you know, absolute potential for the number one for me. But I do love Apex, and it really has pushed forward. Yeah, maybe the thing we didn't, you said it, but the thing we said on day one was like, holy crap, this is like a triple A free

game. Nobody's done this before, and it was so unexpected, and they certainly deserved that credit. So the final rankings of kind of funny's game of the year. Yeah, what is it? 13 total games that we've nominated here. Coming in, tied to number nine, Zelda, links awakening and katana zero with one point each. Number eight, gears five with two points. Number seven, Devil May Cry Five and Life is Strange Two at three points. Number six, Fire emblem Three Houses with four points.

Tide in number five, we have Borderlands Three, Death Stranding, and Apex Lever. Legends at five points. Coming in at number four, Sekiro, that's six points. We've got the top three here, baby. Get ready for it. With nine points, number three, Resident Evil II Rematch. Wow. With 13 points.

Number two, control. Yeah. Leaving number one with 18 points, Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order. Can I give a little behind the scenes of fun of this where you guys were sending me the, the votes for this. Yeah. We're going to do that in the post show.

Oh. This is bad. Patreon.com slash kind of funny games cast for 2020 and also the second ever episode one. So take that to the bank. We are about to do the post show where we're going to go over a couple of your game of the year picks and the behind the scenes of a bear doing something. And I want to point out three hour game of the year podcast.

Yeah. Not one other site has done a longer game of the year. Until next time. Love you. Thanks, everybody.