Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Kinda Funny's Game of the Year 2025 (Fixed)

Episode Date: January 13, 2026

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What's up and welcome to a very special Kind of Funny Games cast for Monday, January 12th, 2026th. Of course, I'm your host Tim Getty's. I'm joined today by Blessing Eddie O'Yea Jr. Good day, Tim. Good day, Tim. Snowbike Mike. What up, Tim? Roger Percorney.

Good day, Kim. And he. He likes to think it's so easy being out. Here. It's a bike fuck for you. I was saying. It's not me fucking it up first. That feels good.

You messed it up. You messed up. Matching the set that he designed. It's Andy Cortez. Hello, Tim. Hello. Of course, we have Barrett Courtney running the boards as well. This is our game of the year, 2025 episode.

So, of course, we all had to show up and we're about to have a ton of fun today. If you're watching live, be a part of the show by super chatting on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. what your game of the year is. What's your top five? Fuck it. What's your top 10? I want to know. Remember, we couldn't do this

without our producers on Patreon.com slash kind of funny. So thank you to James Hastings, Carl Jacobs, and Omega Buster. So let's start with it. The topic of the show? That's. Kind of Funnies.

Game of the year 2025. This is our top 10. The last couple weeks we've been talking in various ways, whether it's the Smilies, kind of awarding all the video games of 2025. Amazing episode, guys. I'm very sad. I got to miss it. I watched the entire thing. Y'all crushed it. Good jobs.

If you didn't watch it or listen, you should do that after you watch or listen to this. Because this is it. This is the big one. This is where each one of us has submitted our final top 10 list of games from 2025 to Barrett. He is the only person that has that information. We do not know what's on anyone else's list. All of the numbers are aggregated into

one final top 10 list that we will reveal live for our first time, your first time from 10 all the way to number one, there might be ties. If that math, math, in a way that there's ties, number eight might have two games. It might have three games. Bless, it might have four. No,

I mean, we got to draw the line so. It might have 10 games. It might happen. So that is what's going to go down. You're excited for that, Greg. I am, and I'm glad you kicked to me. Mm-hmm. All right. Barrett playing. I'm kidding. There's no music to play. I want, no, I wanted to say something. Blessing stumped me a couple weeks ago. Maybe it was the beginning of this week. it was last week of work, I forget. But we were talking about how we do the top tens here,

right? And I was like, well, you know, like there's a million different ways to do your game of the year. And obviously every site, every publication podcast is different. And that's great. And I'm like, we could do a thing where we got into a room like IGN and we all argued for our game and then pick a game that way. And bless it's like, well, yeah, that'd be kind of cool if we did that or whatever. I was like, well, yeah. And I think he was even like, well, what makes our special? And I kind of fumbled my answer. What I love about the way we do our top 10 is that I think it's so indicative of what the mindset of the company is. We're always so clear to

call out that we're an 11 person small business, right? And like how much each one of us and our contributions make kind of funny kind of funny. And I feel that yeah, we could go into a room and we could have fight the good fight for game A versus game X and eventually try to get people on your side and do the whole thing and win the votes and then that's the, I like the idea of

we come in as 11 individuals and not obviously everybody votes, but we come in as the number of individuals that votes. We give our top 10 that are definitively us, that are the games that defined our year. We put it out there that then becomes what this list is and what the game of the year is for a company that represents that way. And it is today just about celebrating what we love in games for a year.

I love that. Yeah. And on top of that, too, I do love that we, because we have the Daily Gamescast, we can still do the other way. Like, I feel like the final games cast of the year, I think it was last year, was a couple of you guys kind of like having more debate-style conversation about the games,

which I think is great and valuable too. But yeah, I'm with you, Greg. I really think this is a super fun way to just celebrate. You know what I mean? It's just like this isn't about being mad to the game that you have as number one, isn't number one. It's more about celebrating like as a group, all of us love these games so much.

Barrett, I see you popping up there. You got something to say. Just thinking about the uniqueness of our game of the year as well, something that, you know, we've been doing it like this. Technically since 2020, I think 2020 was the last year where it was still only four people voting. But I love the idea of like a lot of our best content

is our live reactions. And that's something that really sticks out to me, rather than everybody, all the other outlets, is it's y'all reacting to the first time along with everybody else watching live. And we've been doing that since 2020, essentially. And so that's the thing that, like, I really appreciate about how we do game of the year

is kind of, like, sticking to something that, like, is very kind of funny to me. And what I love, too, is that this was such a good year for video games. And I know just talk. you guys for the last year. We all agree on some things and disagree on others. Like, there are so many games that I have no idea what this list is going to look like. I have a good idea maybe about the top, but like, I don't know about the bottom of this list.

Like, do you guys have any bold predictions you want to throw out? I think the question that I got yesterday in Twitch chat was who's going to have the least amount of games in the top 10? And it was so hard to answer. I think Mike is the obvious answer. It's clearly me. But I can promise you it's me. No, but there will, but this will be the year where like, if you have the least, the next person might have one less. And then the next person and then there might be a four-way tie for like that, you know, I think all of the taste this year is like there's three to four-ish games and the rest of them are just kind of crap shoots. Who knows?

Yeah. Very interesting. Who will have the most? Who will have the least? I'm more, I'm mostly curious about two through five. Yeah. Two through five is where I think things get a bit more competitive. Number one, I think is an easy prediction.

I'm not going to say, but I think that's a given. No one can predict what it would be. 2 through 5 is where I get like, all right, but like, you know, how much did y'all love X game versus the other game, you know? So I'm excited to get up there. And it gets tough. We have a while till we get there,

because we got to start with number 10. This is Kind of Funnies game of the year list for 2025. Number 10. And Roger. Yeah. Okay. Hell yeah. Love that.

Sneaking in there at that top spot of the bottom of the list. Me and Greg talked about this during the Smiley's. Tim, you weren't here for the Smiley's. I want to hear you talk about and Roger. Well, and Roger, not on my list. Oh. Not on my list, which I'm surprised to see it get in here. Having not, whose list was it on here?

My list. My list as well. Just the two of you. Damn. Even on two people's list got it on the top 10. Very interesting. I did love the game a lot. and I gave a review of it on Gamescast saying that like if

if you are into like artsy indie games definitely play this one and go in not knowing anything and I think it'll hit really hard and depending on your life experiences maybe hit too hard like it did for me but yeah really love it I think it is a perfect example of a story that was enhanced by being a video game like it's the gameplay and the story back each other up in such a unique way that you just can't get from any other form of storytelling but yeah really really love that Roger.

Yeah. I think there's like a certain category of video game for me where they take video games seriously enough as a medium to try and do something really special with it in terms of message and story. I look at a gone home, right? Like I look at an immortality, right? Like those games that are, we might describe as art games, but there's a level of creativity that is so beyond that.

Right. Like there's a level of creativity that I look at. I play and I'm like, oh, this not only is a quote unquote art game, this is a game that respects video games, right? and does such a good job of acknowledging, Andy, what's so funny? Just look at the wall, sorry. I noticed Ben Stars. Just a human being?

That's not going to Ben Star image. Behind the two. Well, his face was in Dead Tick. I was say shout out Dead Tick. He went to dead take. He's in four different spots on the wall. Ben Starr. But yeah, the fact that they're able to take subject matter

that that he's tackling as serious, right? And, like, translate it to mechanics that really, really enhance the story that they're telling I thought was really powerful and really well done. Yeah, as, you know, not to, you know, echo everything you said and add a little bit more, right, that we kind of touched on the smile. Again, I think Ann Rogers is a great example

of what video games are as a storytelling medium. Again, it's why I love the kind of games I love most of the time is that this gets to put you in someone else's shoes. This gets to let you experience something that is a nightmare. It's so many different ways, right, of waking up and who is this man in your house? and then having to figure out what's going on

and being confused and working through that and going on and then having the aha moments of what's going on. This is a game that I think is so powerful because it hopefully gives you an experience you will never have to experience in real life. Yeah. Definitely check out and Roger.

Shout out to it making the list. Very, very cool. Are we saying where it was on your list or no? I think we're saving that for the top of then. Okay, gotcha. So then we move on to number nine. Number nine. Ghost of Yote

Oh, nice. Okay. Okay. Okay. Ghost of Yote. Oh, okay. Bless, was this on your list? No.

Greg, was this on your list? I believe it was. Yeah, it was. It was not on yours. It was not on mine. Roger, was it on yours. Roger, kick us off. What did you think?

Ghost of Yote is a game that took me by surprise in a lot of ways because I liked Ghost of Sushima a lot. I don't think I loved it. as much as a lot of people, but it was a fun experience. But Yotei, for me, like, it had all those quality of life improvements that kind of ratcheted it up. And also, the story is just so incredible. The way that they weave Atsu's journey from her childhood all the way to adulthood and the

twist and the turns, it is such a compelling experience that, again, really took me by surprise. I adored it. I wanted to play it every single day. I wanted to platinum it. Of course, life got in the way. But, you know, when you have that itch against somebody who does not platinum, anything or have that desire to do that when you have that feeling it's like oh shit this is something

special for me yeah for sure so yeah I adored this experience and I'm very excited for legends which again did not expect to be excited for that at all so yeah I'm very is super high on my list I don't necessarily want to see the number yet but super high on my list and are we so are we agreeing Barrett is that the thing we're not going to give away

our numbers? Yeah if we want to I feel like we talked about placements last year I thought we did too so yeah I didn't want to okay well I'll just say this is number two on my Oh wow. So it's super high up. I give it a 9.5 and I stand by that. This is a really amazing experience and it's stayed with me the entire year.

Bless I know you were huge on legends. So sorry, Gose Yote did not make your list here. Are you excited for Yote Legends though? I'm so excited for Yote Legends. Yeah, this is one where this is where the bottom part of my list got kind of tough to figure out. Like this would have lived if me and Andy rallied for the top 15s. It would have lived in that 11 to 15 space for sure.

this is one that I'm happy to see make the list because I was worried that we wouldn't even see it on the list right I think there's you know we can go back and forth as far as games iterating AAA games open world games what things do differently what things do the same but I think at the very end of it ghost of Yote

I think puts together an experience that learn from what people liked about Ghost of Tsushima and refined it in ways that I think really work well for what it is I love being in that world as Atsu I think that as a main character she worked so well in the story there as far as a revenge plot in video games,

we've seen that countless times. I think this one was done particularly well. I think there's something about the characters that they introduce and how the stories interweave back into what ATS is going through that is really engaging and really good. And yeah, I think the game does a really good job but just like, you know, piggybacking off

of what goes to Tsushima brought to the table, which is fun combat, a beautiful world, and a fun world to explore. Yeah, this is on my list. I had it at number eight, a game I gave a nine when we were viewed and standby. I think it's a, amazing samurai film brought to a video game, right?

The way you play between these protagonists is you go after the Yote 6. The surprises in there where, you know, some of them I thought, all right, that's predictable. And then others are like, holy shit. That you're okay. You know what I mean? Like that was awesome that, you know, the tips of the hat for Tsushima, the sucker punch Easter eggs, the way the map worked, finding the little things and moving them in to put them on your map, rain on it, all this stuff.

Like, Ghostivity is a very special game. I just think that, you know, it may be. coming after Sushima takes some of its thunder away because it's iterating and improving on a game we already did love as well. But I absolutely adored this one. Yeah, I think the thing that blew me away was the way that the world came to you and the story came to you. And I had so many, they're not emergent gameplay moments because they're handcrafted, but I think that's what's so special about it because it felt emergent. It felt like I'm just running around.

Oh, my God, this character came to me and this random, oh, now I'm doing the sidequess or now I'm doing this main story thing. And I was just randomly going off into a completely different direction. So the way that they were able to make that feel kind of elevated comparatively to a lot of the open world PlayStation or just, you know, Ubisoft Fair, it feels different. It feels unique. And I think this is like the level of handcraftedness that I think you need to kind of stand out in this landscape of, hey, we've been there, done that, we've done this a million times.

This game is really special. I'm going to be championing it specifically the way that they built out the story and made it so different. And Erica Ishi just killed it. Hilled it. Oh my God. Fantastic performance from her. Anyone else have anything to say about Ghost of Yote? It's awesome game.

Everybody should play it. Yeah, 100%. Before we move on, let's go back a little bit because we are talking about our rankings then. For Ann Roger, where did you guys have that, Greg and Bless? I had Ann Roger at number four. Number four. Super high on my list. I mean, like, you know, when I sit there for that game of the year, it's like,

what defined my year? And I think what's interesting when we get in, you know, after this episode, the rest of the games cast this week are top 10 lists, right? and they are like we go through and talk about it. And I really think there's a breaking point in my list where you get into a bunch of games that I loved and adored and had a great experience with,

but didn't necessarily have that lasting power where when I think of 2026, that's what I think of. Ghost of Yote being one of them, right? I think we throw around the word frictionless a lot. And it is that great experience and I had so much fun, but it's almost summer blockbustery where you leave and that's not the film you think about the rest of the way.

And so, yeah, my top five are in a very interesting place in terms of what pushed me, pulled me, what I can't stop playing versus the back after like great experiences that I was able to put down and walk away and be complete with. Yeah. And Roger for me was my number seven on my list. And we'll talk about when we get into the top tens of like that tiering where it is like, all right, this for me is like the topest of tiers of this year and like how does that fit in?

And Roger at number seven is one for me where I think right below that most high tier, which is crazy to say that I have like six games in that high tier. But that's the kind of year that we're having right below it. And Roger was the game for me. that was the most emotionally impactful, right? The game that moved me the most, the game that made me feel things, which shot it up there.

But yeah, no, going back to Ghost Yote, right? Like, that's one where, again, in that, I guess, second tier, that third in those tiers, it's a battle. Like, that was a tough one to weigh in those ways. Yeah, and for Ian Roger,

it'll be fun to talk about that in the top 10. There, I think I'm going to spoil it. We're going to talk about what it's about. Because I've played a similar game in recent memory that I want to compare and contrast why this one, one is, I think, head and shoulders above the one before it. This was 11 for me.

Yeah. Fell just out. Yeah, it was, uh, it was in that 11 to 13 range. I didn't fully flush out my like post 10, but yeah, it, it was like on the short list. It just didn't quite make the top 10. Uh, but let's get into kind of funnies, number eight. Number eight, Eldon Ring Nightbring. Oh, oh.

And. Skate Early Access You fucking did it He fucking did it everybody Let's let's start Let's get Mike off the bench Let's start with some skate Tell you all about Mike you did it

I'm on skate and Eldon Ring Actually Tim so I get a little fun back to back But we'll focus on the skates The good and the bad The year that it's had But most importantly the return Of one of the most fun games That I have ever played in my life

In the game that I enjoy the most playing And that's skate I love the fluid nature of it all. I love the flow. I love the flicket stick is right. And just having skate come back in early access, having skate come back into my life is such a big deal because it feels so good to play. You can put on your own playlist. You can listen to their playlist. And you just kind of get lost in the world, right? That's what it's all about is finding your flow, your style, your stees, as I like to call it, and just getting lost in that headspace. And nothing is better

than a, after a long day of work, coming home with the homies and maybe having a spot battle. or just finding your own spot, finding that nice downrail and smashing that nose blunt on it, right? Or finding the mega ramp and just going all out with backflips, front flips, 900s, whatever. And so skate having that return,

like I said, the good and the bads, right? There's a lot of bad to this early access launch, but there is a lot of good. And the gameplay is what is good. The moment to moment, the feel on the sticks, the momentum that you feel into that trick when you land it and you go, yeah, hell yeah, that was awesome.

that is really something that I love about this franchise and I love about this game. Greg? Yeah, I play skate every day. I think we've talked throughout the years it's kind of funny whether it be Diablo or some other games as a service that comes around and I was talking about, man, I would love to have a game

that I could check in and blah blah. Inevitably our jobs and our career move you so far from the point that the idea of dropping into Diablo right now for a session, I'd be like, what the fuck am I doing? Skate is a game that I check in every night on and whether it's just I'm claiming the free currency or whatever for the Rolstice or I'm doing it for the stuff they're doing right now

the season tokens it'll be I'm gonna, oh, I'll do one while I'm here and then it'll often be no no I'm gonna spend an hour and a half doing this it is that thing of the amount of times I've been reviewing a game and I'm like oh it's 11, 15 these eyes are getting heavy but I didn't check in on skate and then before I know it it's 1215 I'm like fuck okay gotta go to bed now real bad you know what I mean like it is that game and I think

I know the chat is jovially upset, maybe really upset about it and stuff like that. Like, there's no character here. This is, and this isn't, uh, me looking past the faults as Mike is talking about.

Skate controls so fucking well. I think Skate's biggest flaw is that skate is not skate for. And that's what it's been destroyed about to this day on the skate subreddit. Everybody shows up. I cannot get over how good skate feels to play. And the story I would give you about it is that when, even before skate. arrived, Ben started getting into skate boarding.

And it was going to skate parks and stuff like that. And I kept telling Jan, I'm going to buy him a board and I'm going to buy myself one. And Jen said, you are not buying a board. You are 42 years old. You cannot skate. You're going to fall and then and break. I'm like, Jen, I just want to roll. I don't want to do a trick.

I don't want to do a trick. I just want to roll next. And she's like, no, no, no, no, no. And then it was like talking to one of my friends who grew up skating. I'm like, I'm going to get a board. He's like, you are not getting a board that you will die. And it's like, that is what skate is filling for me of I jump in. And yeah, fucking the stupid AI bod-Vee is,

I muted her hundreds of hours ago in this game, right? Like I drop in and I go skate. And I mean, like some days I do the challenges, sometimes I do the season pass. Lots of times I just go to the southwest corner and use that skate park and just roll in the skate park and just chill. The amount of times out there you'll see me playing at my desk.

It's not me fucking off. It's that, man, I need to come up with kind of futy questions. I want to clear my mind. Man, I am not having a good day. I want to go skate a little bit. Like skate is fucking awesome on a gameplay level. Let's get mad about whatever else you want to get mad about. The fortnightification, this, that, the other.

Fuck that, though. It plays well. And I do believe that in a year to 18 months, it probably won't exist. Like, I don't think, who the fuck? Games is service. That is not a 2026 thing. EA in general, EA about to be owned by Saudi Arabia. I don't think that they're going to be like, yeah, let's keep pouring money into this thing.

But for what it is, it is so much fun to play. It is the best controlling game I've played this year. That's why I put it at number two. Number two. No shade. No shade, no crazy. And again, this isn't a character. This is me telling you as somebody who's poured so many hours into this game, it just

is fun to play. Yeah, this didn't make my list, but like, I do legit think it's some of the most fun I've had this year of the three of us with a couple of other gibronies, just randomly, not even on-coms playing with each other and getting to sessions. It's a, like, playing that game, the actual act of playing that game is just a great reminder of how the foundation of the skate gameplay is so good. And I do think, you know, it reminds me of a lot of how well skate three controlled. But I imagine if we go back to skate three after playing this one,

there's a couple of differences probably where it's like, oh, they definitely have, like, updated some things to make it a bit more modern feeling. Everything around it, I absolutely hate, and it definitely made me bounce off of the game. But I can't deny that, like, in terms of gameplay, it was just, It was such a great time to hang out with y'all while playing it. Like, I totally get it. That first streamback was magical. Like, hanging out as we were all trying to get the game to work.

And, like, you know, try to connect and trying to actually, like, get past all the bugs that were there on day one. But getting to the point where me, like, I started in on a challenge that was basically like, oh, jumped down from here and then launch over the thing while you manual across the bridge or whatever. I started down that. And it brought me back to playing, like, the original skate games, right? It brought me back to what I like about these games, which is the trial and air and just the peer feel of it. There's something that inherently just works about that. And so, like, being, playing a version of this game that wants you to just exist in a space

with others, that is going after that kind of the life service thing. But I think working, at least for the time that I played the game, which I wish I played more, but the style of the substance of it didn't bring, didn't continually bring me in. I do think that, to your point, Greg, there is something about just that inherent feeling of skating around and hanging out that works. That is satisfying for you. And that's the, you know, the pushing floor. I'm never trying to yuck anybody's yums, or I guess in this case, yom anybody's yucks.

But so many people's big complaint was it doesn't feel like skate culture. And like, I get that if you're chasing the missions, which I really feel are the training wheels to get you to learn how the game works. Because skate culture, and I'm not a skater as much as I want to be. My wife won't let me. But like, we just went to the skate park this weekend with Ben, right? And he's out there and it's all these adults who are doing stuff. And Ben walked up to a guy who was like, can you do a kickflip? And the guy's like, yeah, I can.

It's been a few decades. And he went down there. He's like, I'm 49 years old. So 10 tries is one try. And the dude did it on a seventh try. And it was just a community of people hanging out and having fun. And like, that to me is what this game is when I turn it on and I go off and I do that. And I think granted, they gave us the founders pass.

But if they hadn't, I wouldn't have spent money in it yet. Like, it's like, I think there's a lot of bad terminology thrown on top of it. But I think there's a great game there. Greg, if that guy can do a kickflip, so can you. Yeah. But he had been doing it for years. He had been doing it when he was still jello. You know what he's like,

it's like, It's like, It's like, It's the line It's where he could have. Oh, my God. Okay, so it was number two on Greg's list. Mike, where was it for you?

Number seven for me. Number seven for Mike. Was it on anyone else's list, Roger? No. No. Did you make Roger's list there? Then let's talk about the second tie for number eight.

Eldon Ring, Night Rain. We got to start with Andy. This game is so good, and it's a game that I doubted, and I thought it was going to cheapen the Eldon Ring experience for me. And, I already saw, like, I saw the worst future possible of, you know,

we're, here's a, you know, a near automata. We're putting 2B in Eldon Ring and we're putting fucking Yoshi. And just like weird shit, you know, the guys from the boys, you know. Here's Homelander. And I, you know, Tim was really, it was mainly Tim who was selling me on like an awful future of what this game could be. If it starts to make money and like the battle pass is like, oh, man, that's going to like cheap. that's so special to me. And it just straight up didn't.

I think this game has been the most games as a service game as it possibly could be, but on from software's terms and on Bandai Namco's terms. And I'm sure they would love to really cheaping the experience with a lot of like, buy the in-game currency and buy these skins or whatever, but it's all just done kind of in-house in that video game. And Nightgrain is a game that I felt was really, really messy at the start. and there was this idea of, wow, it's like, it's like a battle royale ring kind of closing in.

It's really weird and chaotic and super fast. And then the more and more I played, I think this is my most played game this year. I probably have like 120 hours in it. Wow. Still haven't been in awful at it. It's just so good. It's so special.

The different variety with the classes, the way that the world shifts and changes around, and playing with friends, yelling at Snowmike Mike, playing with, you know, Melissa with the Y, who's our hard carry right now, and just having a freaking blast with it, Night Rain is a super special video game.

This is number five on my list. As the year went on, I just kept on playing it more and more. And I think dropping that DLC before the year ended, boosted it a lot higher into my list because of the stuff that they added, quality of life additions. Still no crossplay.

That will probably never happen, but I would, Really, really love to see that because I think the, you know, you still look on what the player base only on Steam is, and it's still like 30,000 concurrence. This isn't a PVP game. It's just the three player or solo or duo sort of like play against the world, play against the, you know, the crazy bosses in this video game. It's a blast. It's a lot of fun. Hell yeah. Blast, did it make your list? It did not make my list. This would have been my number 11. This is one that I had to weigh it against. certain other games. And I think there are enough things holding it back to where I critically couldn't put it in my top 10. But I do echo so much what Andy's talking about as far as how good of a job, Eldon Ring

Nighterain does at, I think being experimental with what it does with multiplayer and what it does with bringing people together in like the From Software world. You know, like, I remember the conversations about like, oh, they're going to monetize this thing. I remember the first time we saw them flying in with like the fucking birds or whatever and we're like, ah shit, Fortnite gliders. It's gonna be one of them ones. It's over. It's over.

And instead, what you have is a studio that I think diligently looked at what other studios are doing and took the things that work about those games and made somewhat of a messy but really fun multiplayer game out of it. And it's kind of crazy

how much of the heart and soul it still carries even though I think there are things where I'm like, ah, this feels hobbled together in like the most like, but it's fun at the end of the day kind of way. And I got to respect that. You know what I mean?

So yeah, shout out to it. Shout out to also like the bosses, which I think are probably the best part of the game, in my opinion when you get to those, when you get past those first couple of rounds and you get to that end of run boss. And each of them being unique, each of them being new for the most part.

I forget of all them are new. I assume all them are new. Yeah, all them are new. Yeah, just super well designed, especially for most player. Really, really fun game. Mike, where was it on your list? Yeah, I had it number four.

Yeah. This is one of my favorite games of the year. This is my, I've said it before, my favorite FromSoft experience out of all of them. This is the one that I want to play all the time. I've talked about it before. I love the co-op shared experience nature. And Bless said it so well, like, experimental, right?

I really love what FromSoft did with this idea, right? And for me, it's the movement, right? The movement tech in this game is different from all the rest. All of a sudden, you are sprinting, you are double jumping, you're climbing up the side of mountain ridges. And it's like, when you think of Dark Souls in that lineage, it's slow, methodical, being smart about your parries and your dodge rolls. It is not, hey, me and Andy are going to jump off a hundred foot cliff.

I'm going to double sprint, tax spent like call duty, a thousand yards opposite way. And yeah, it's just this perfect mesh of discoverability with this open world map that I really enjoy finding all the secrets, finding the different flows from getting more health flasks to getting magic wands to going out and getting smithing stones in the caves to then saying, okay, what is our game plan? What kind of prep am I doing with my character, your character, and the options that we have that really blend together. And yet for me, this has just been such a fun way to experience a Frumsoft experience with these diehard bosses with your friends in a unique play style of having the ring close,

day one completes. You go out there and do it again. I'm impressed that they didn't take the microtransaction money way, right? They did it the From Soft way. I would have been all over selling a battle. pass, having different ways to fly in with gliders, having different unique costumes. Like, it was set up to just absolutely knocked that out of the park if they wanted to, but they stood on business and they said, hey, that's not what FromSoft does, right?

And so they proceeded to follow their path. They made us wait. They added different play styles from duos to different bosses with different tech into a whole DLC. And for me, I sat there doing the Fortnite thing of like, give me more, right? Give me another map. Let's go. Give me this.

and they took their time. And you know what? I enjoyed every moment of it. I really, really, I kudos to them for doing what they did. They kept me on. And I cannot say enough positive things about this. I can't wait for the future of what they do with the multiplayer space. I think they learned a lot from this.

Of course, we know Dustbloods is around the corner. How will that attract players? But most importantly, what happens five years from now in their games, right? And so, yeah, kudos shout out. Great game. What happens this year? Duskblood. We'll see.

anyone else have Eldon Ring, Eldon Ring Night Raid on their list? Okay. Then let's move on to number seven. Number seven. Citizen Sleeper 2. Yeah.

Wow. Let's go. Bear, you're my guy. My guy. Andy Cortez, let's start with you. I mean, I wore the shirt. I just, you know, I had to just pray. It was, it was a Hail Mary

to get anybody else to play this. video came at, because it's a lot of reading. But God damn, what a special experience, Citizen Sleeper 2 is to follow up an amazing, an already like masterpiece I've been experienced with Citizen Sleeper 1, two phenomenal games that I would recommend anybody play if you are into just the most amazing writing-old experience in games. I think the narrative it's telling the choices you're making while, you know, rolling dice and trying to be successful on runs and, you know, you know, every run is not going to be okay. Every mission, I say run, like it's a roguelight,

but the missions you're doing, you won't be successful all the time. This isn't a game where you're supposed to feel, oh, hell yeah, massive W, dude, let's go on to the next, like, that's not what this game is about. Let's mid-max this shit. Yeah, this game is about, like,

just experiencing these characters and these side quests, and what are you going to prioritize, trying to, you know, liberate this one colony that is, like, under really, really bad oppression, or are you going to go after this one thing that's going to help some close friends of yours? And it's like, it's such an oppressive game and then manages to make you just feel like warmth in your heart after so many missions where the writing is just so amazing. And they let you know like, hey, man, sometimes life's going to fuck you

in some ways. And it's going to be tough. But we're going to get back up because together is humans, we can do this together. And it's like so hopeful and amazing. this game rocks, I could not recommend it more, and it plays awesome on Steam Deck. Barrett, let's get you talking for the first time. What do you think of Citizen Sleeper, too? Yeah, I adore this game. I do echo Andy's sentiment. I think it's the best written game of the year. This was my number four in terms of how strong the writing was. In terms of like world building and how the many layers of how this game feels like it's constantly oppressing you in terms of trying to be a worker under this like hyper-capitalist society while there's this uh galactic uh corporate space

war going on in the background and you're just trying to figure out how to survive in your little corner and i think the you know this is a lot of reading but you know the the main mechanic right of the doing these dice rolls to you know have a chance to do something well during a job or to to find a new crewmate i think that mechanic also backs up this kind of of feeling of everything coming apart at just one bad moment, one bad day, that I think really makes the core themes of this game sing. And yeah, in terms of, you know, you and your homie who are just like trying to escape from this little corner of the galaxy, like, space mob and just figure yourself out,

but then also slowly learning about this entire community of planets and how they're all going through their own things. It really, you know, it tugs at the heartstrings in a lot of ways and, you know, how they all come together to try to fight back against oppression under a hyper-capitalist society and going into trying to build something beyond you. And, you know, the way this game ends really destroyed me. It was like one of those few, like, 1 a.m. just rolled credits and I am bawling my goddamn eyes out. just because of how strong the writing is in terms of what it's doing in terms of a community,

what it's doing in terms of you as a single person trying to navigate all of this stuff. I think is really impressive. And yeah, I think the really impressive thing is how different, different playthrus can be. You know, like Blessing only played a little bit of it. But he got a character on his crew that I had never met in my entire campaign, right? you know, there's little things here and there. Like, I did something successful on one mission where Andy failed, but then the writing was strong enough that, like,

even if you fail something, it feels like it kind of happens for a story purpose still. And I just, I was really blown away by this title. And yeah, Andy, I'm sorry for ever doubting you for the years of saying, hey, play this game. And now I've got to go back to the first one. Yeah, the first, um, I've, the amount of people that have told me I played citizen Super 1, holy fuck. Like,

it makes me so happy because again, it's one of those things where whenever I watch a movie and I go, oh man, can you imagine if they made this and this movie with that writer and that director? And that's how I feel it's like, I want these writers to write for everything from now on just because

of how elite it is. This is number four on my list. Brunswick writes in saying, do you need to play the first game to get the second one? You don't need to, but there's a lot. lot of, there's some connections, you know, characters that will make you go, oh shit, from part one, you know, but you don't need to necessarily. Yeah, I still haven't played the first one and I've fell head over heels for this one. Yeah, you're a different character in this video game.

You are a different sleeper. And in this world, the sleepers are this person whose consciousness is, you essentially sell your consciousness and the rights of your mind to put your consciousness into the body of a robot to then just kind of work forever and work your debt away because you are in debt to whatever, you know, you decided to say like, hey man, I'll give you my body if you give me food to eat or whatever. And so you're a different sleeper in this video game completely. And I was going to bring up a point and I totally blanked on it. Number one. Good good. We have got through our number 10, 9, tie at 8 and number 7 picks for kind of Funnies game of the year 2025. We'll be right back with the rest of the list. Remember,

you can get the Kind of Funny membership on patreon.com slash kind of funny or YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny games to get the shows ad free. And speaking of ads, let us tell you about our sponsors. This episode is brought to you by Rocket Money. The amount of times Mike is signed up for something, forgotten about it after the trial period ends, and then been charged month after month, it's quite frankly terrifying. He didn't even realize he was paying for SoundCloud for 10 years until Rocket Money helped find and cancel his unwanted subscriptions. But he is not alone. So many people have at least one paid subscription going unused each month. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions, monitors your

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purchase. Make healthier eating easy with factor. Hey you, join us in person for our live in review of Howard the Duck. That's right. Howard the Duck joins MCU in review Wednesday, January 28th at 7.30 p.m. at Cobbs Comedy Club for SF Sketch Fest. You can come watch me do all the podcasts within a podcast you love. Andy will be going do do do do do do do do.

Nick will be shopping for pants during it. But everybody else will be there too for you to come hang out and see. All you have to do is go over to kind of funny.com slash sketch fest right now to get your tickets before they sell out. Because come and watching a bunch of people talk about a very old Howard the Duck movie is really selling tickets fast. And we're back with number six. Really quick, I remember what I wanted to say about Citizen Sleeper 2.

While the writing is very poetic, I think the other thing it does really accidentally in terms of character writing is making dialogue not feel like super like flowery and like almost like, I don't know, like not too like. Overindulgent. Yeah, overindulgent. Like it really feels like actual people just fucking talking and surviving, which really stood out to me as well. What I need you two to do is play disco Elysium, the director's cut. We can play on your phone now. Well, no, no, no, no, no. That's true.

That's right up my ass. Yeah, I download it. I was just play it on an actual thing. That's like Mike watching every Christopher Nolan film on his phone. That's fire. That's what he did. And on business. Also, we haven't said it.

Shout to Lucy James for doing VO this year. Yeah, Lucy. Lucy. Lucy. And shout out to her saying, Lou Mines. She had like six different takes of like, I don't know how to say this name. She just like went through a bunch of different pronunciations. I texted her immediately.

Let's get to number six. Number six. Death Stranding 2 on the beach. Donkey Kong Bonanza. Coded 6. Oh, I'm so worried about blueprints. I'm so worried about it. Donkey Kong Bonanza makes it my first game on the list.

Wow. But not your last. Let's start with Death Stranding 2 on the beach. Roger. Where did I have it? I had it on number three. Number three on my list. Who else had it?

Had it on my list. Where? Number four. Oh. Yeah. Three four, three four. Mikey?

Three four. Nope. Greg. I had it on my list. I had it at number ten, I do believe. My reasoning being is that I enjoyed it so much at launch and was having a great time with it. What's wrong?

Barrett. Am I wrong? I don't see that game on your list. Oh. Double check. You and me, three, four. Okay. At one point it was number 10.

No, I don't, then that's a problem, Barrett. Oh, D.K. Bananza's number 10 on my list, according to my thing. Oh, I see the problem. He misspelled it. He said, D.K. Banaza. Sorry, I thought you guys were talking about Death Stranding. We are. Oh, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. Okay.

Yeah. Debtzranos is. You made me really scared. Big panic. Big panic. Death Trannock was my number 11. This was my way that fell off the end. Wow.

I felt the fear in Barrett's hard. Yeah. I fucked up. All right. Let's start with Roger then. Yeah. No. Mike and I, we went on a journey. We played Death Stranding 1 and then a month later,

we ran it back for Death Stranding 2. Special experience of that, but by itself, the game is just so incredible. Such an elite sequel. We talk about PlayStation with Yote and now Death Stranding 2, bringing those quality of life improvements from a great base game with Tsushima and then now Death Training 1 going into 2. It made that experience, that simulation of being a delivery driver in this fucked up world so much more fun. I think that's the stuff that stands out to me, right? I have issues with this game when it comes to the story. I actually think this is a lesser game than Death Training 1 when it comes to the story

and like the way it goes where it goes. There's some reveals that are like, okay, Kojima, bro, calm now. Did you need to have this reveal five times in a row? It's like whatever. But when it comes to the actual gameplay, that's the thing that stands out to me. I was playing this game after playing it with Mike and being stuck in a room with him for a fucking week, you would think that would be sick of this video game. was going back to it. I was trying to do all the side missions. I was doing a new game,

not new game plus, but just a new game of it. I was obsessed with just the pure management sim of it, trying to go around and find my best course around the BTs. That is the stuff that stands out to me. Of course, there's some great set piece moments. There's some amazing twists and turns, and I will always think about the moment where you go into the other world, the BT world, and all the particles are going, and it's like, this is next gen. This is an insanely gorgeous video game, but the pure management of it all is just so fun. It's such a unique one-of-one experience that only an insane person like Kojima can one make and then two get greenlit. So I'm forever in debt for death training two existing and I hope amongst hope that we actually

get a death-straining three and that actually pushes it even further. I'm very excited. Bless. Yeah, this is the game that the moment to moment being in all of what I'm seeing on screen really hit for me with this game more so than any other game this year. I guess starting with presentation, right? I do think this game is a step up from Death Training 1 in so many ways. visually, I think this game is insane. I think this is the best looking game of the year. I think it's also the best sounding in so many ways, both in terms of audio design, but then also in terms of soundtrack, just thinking about the opening parts of that game, walking through the mountains, seeing like all the detail, like all the the fucking level of fidelity that I'm

seeing on screen. Can't believe what I'm looking at here. But then, yeah, walking across those mountains, feeling the emotion, feeling the music swell up. Like, I think there's something so special about how this game can build that feeling. And then I think you have ideas where I'm like, oh, snap, all right. So the way that you're making this game harder in some places is by allowing rain to change the water level of like certain like rivers or whatever. That's interesting. Oh, okay, fire is a bigger thing now, right?

Like the way that they're taking weather conditions into account into a game that is simply about walking from point A to point B. I think it's so inspired, so fun, and so creative. I think story-wise, I love what they do there as well, right? They dive more into the ideas, the themes of grief and losing somebody, right? And I think the ways in which they go about that, I thought were really touching and inspired. This is one that I really enjoyed from beginning to end, wowed me, you know, like had me like, what the fuck is going on in multiple moments in this game. I think this is just an incredible video game from, you know, start to finish.

Andy, I'm surprised it's not on your list. Is that because you didn't finish it? Never finished it. I just didn't really find a momentum with it. I forget kind of what else was out around that time. I played the intro of it, you know, enjoyed of, you know, whatever I experienced. But I never went back to it.

And I don't really have a good reason why. It's usually like something is in the way or there's some other game that I want to play. And yeah, I just, I also kind of, I also just imagine like, all right, I am enjoying this, but am I 70, 60 hours enjoying this right now? You know, that's kind of where I was, similar to the way to where I was with Metaphor ReFantazio last year, or even Octabat Traveler Zero this year going like, all right, I'm enjoying this, but I don't know if I'm enjoying it enough to, or if I'm going to enjoy it enough to take me away from other stuff

that I want to play in the next week or so. I considered this game a lot weirdly enough, even though the story stuff did not click with me a lot. A lot of the presentation stuff did, Roger, like you were talking about with going into like the other world and like that first sequence with all the like fireworks and stuff going on. It's like one of those insane tech like showcases. But really it's just the the moment to moment delivery stuff just like really grabs me and and building stuff from my own world knowing that that was going to be helpful for other people and then getting that paid back to you. I started to appreciate the vision that Death Stranding 1 had that I only played a few hours of and then fell off of. Like, I really just, some of my favorite moments were from this year were from Death Stranding 2 of just like going up that like mountain like just covered in snow and getting lost and hoping you can get like just over this ridge like in like a ridiculous tiny little car and all that stuff. Like a shout out to like the moment to moment gameplay which I really clicked with.

And like I think I forget if it was before. baby steps or not, but it was one of those like, oh, this is clicking in like a weird quop kind of way, but like AAA quop gameplay that I really fucked with. Yeah, this was the game because when we played Destrining 1, of course, notoriously I was freaking it, right? So I was just going up a mountain, didn't care about the mechanics, didn't care about building, and then I played about halfway through this game.

And then I was like, oh, I should be building. Like, oh, there's a whole community of things. Oh, they actually reward you and actually going deeper into that. And then I want to shout out the actual like, shooting and gameplay when it comes to that side of everything where you know you're actually incentivized to like shoot people in this game and like take them down almost like metal gear solid five like arlie's close as middle gear solid five is you know he's going to get to it that was super fun being able to throw you know an electric spear across an entire map and shock somebody like

being able to take down these camps the way that i wanted to in death training one and finally getting able to being able to in death training two was really rewarding so that that stands out to I also just love how weird this game is on the most AAA levels. Like this might be one of, if not the most AAA game to come out in this last year. And the fact that we get so weird and so crazy. The ending is fucking, so much of this game is bonkers. In many different ways, right, you have different character backstories where you get flashbacks and shit. And like, even those things are individually weird.

You talk about the moment with all the light spinning and how cool that is. I'm thinking about like some of those opening moments with the character tomorrow and how it's like, oh, shit, where did this come from? okay now we're getting crazy over here and I know a big part of it is that is the fact that it's Kojima and Kojima is being thrown in the bag and Kojima just wants to do weird shit but the fact that this game can exist on this level

like not necessarily a reason alone to be like oh I'm putting my top 10 game of the year but it's something that really resonates with me as somebody who just wants to see more weird shit in AAA. It scratches that same as or feels the same as like Allen Wake 2 of like you oh wow you're creative that had the budget had the ability

to make something really weird but authentic and even though I don't agree with a lot of the choices that they make towards the ending of this game, it's authentic to Kojima, right? He's not just doing it just to do it. Yeah, like, Kojima could, I think I said this after I played Deserating One, but like, instead of making this, you could have made a more traditional third-person action game, and it would be an easy conversation for top five game of the year, top three game of the year, or whatever, but you continually to choose to make things that for you have so much meaning,

and I think on the AAA level are just things that can't get made anywhere else, especially as we're talking more and more about budgets and shareholder and A, and shareholders and AI and all these things getting in the way of how we go about AAA development and how things are starting to feel same in all this shit. Death training two still stands in a place

where it is, oh shit, this is the weirdest thing that you could have possibly spent this much money on and it really works for me. And so I really like this game. Anyone else have any Death Training two thoughts?

Let's move on then to Donkey Kong Bananza. Who had it on their list? Would you have it, Bless? I had it at number five right below Death Training 2. Greg? Number 10. I had it at number four.

I had a number 10 as well. Broadhead number 10. So there we go. Is this the first game to be on four people's lists? Must be. Today? I think so. I think it is.

That's crazy. It's starting to solidify. He's starting to get tied to the top. Quagulating. I really, really love this game. And I have been a Donkey Kong country fan my entire life. And the difference between a Donkey Kong country game and a Super Mario Brothers game, I've always really appreciated

a bit more emphasis on the exploration and, I don't even won't call it combat, but kind of the way that Donkey Kong rolls and the momentum of it all. And translating that into 3D just works so well. And it is something that I never thought we would ever get. The amount of love specifically to the country games that you get in this is so evident, whether it's the music, whether it's the looks, whether it's characters, and just the game feel. We've talked so much about the tech of the game, how impressive it is that you literally

can break any. and the way that you're moving through all of the different kind of materials, like the feel of it feels so special and so good. And the control scheme of break up, break down, break left, right. Like, it just works so well. And I feel like the team that made it, the highest compliment I can give them is controlling characters in their games, it can't be any better, right? Like, whether it's Mario Odyssey or Donkey Kong Bonanza, like two very different characters with completely different. kind of movesets in terms of mobility, but it feels you always are in perfect control of what you're doing. You know, if you're going to make the jump, if you're not going to make the jump,

and you know how much more you need to roll to get the momentum to do it next time, right? I think this game is very well balanced in terms of platforming challenges versus exploration. I love the amount of challenge levels that they have. I love how integrated they are into the bigger exploration adventure that you're going on. And I love that there are multiple bananas to collect in each one of the challenges. Like this to me is just a super fun game that makes me want to 100%. It makes me want to do every single thing. And I think that they do a really good job of the different economies of having the maps to be able to find the bananas, to be able to keep going.

It's like I never feel like I'm wasting time breaking things. Like I feel like I'm always like kind of doing something that is rewarding in a fun way gameplay-wise. Bless. Yeah, I think one of the things that this game accomplishes that from the get-go makes it work is the fact that, like you mentioned, controlling the game is fun. But I think even more so, breaking things is fun. You know, like that is the ethos of this game. Get in there, break shit, find shit. And when you're breaking shit, like, even just through the different materials, how when you press, I think it's R to fucking grab a piece of ground and rip it out, that feels different if you're on dirt versus if you're on concrete.

And that extra level of like, ump when you're on concrete, like, there's something. about it that just like feels nice to you. And the vibrations are different too. The vibrations are different. And I think when you're designing a game, you want to get people in there through that first second, right? I think you go back to Mario 64 and the first thing you do in that game, I'm gonna climb a tree.

Even before that you stretch out Mario's face and shit, right? And even that's fun. I love stretching that for- You do that in Docong, but answer. Yeah, there's all the face paint stuff. Yes. Oh yeah, exactly. Yeah. And then like, yeah, you climb the trees and you jump around

and there's something inherently fun from controlling the game from the get-go. I think that's very valuable in this type of game. design. I think they nail that, but then even beyond that, I think they take what a lot of the framework they set up in Mario Odyssey. And again, I think a theme for 2025 with games for me is that games were inspired this last year. And so the fact that you took that and went, all right, what's the, what's the X factor here? Oh, it is the different materials. Oh, it is being able to like throw this material and it's going to explode. Or you throw this material and it does the thing. Or, you know, I break this material and it shows up somewhere else, right? I think that is

so fun and so inspired and allows for a really cool design around what you're doing from level to level in the game and so really really enjoyed this one. I love that we have a new 3D Donkey Kong as well, right? For me and Barrett, who are the DK64 boys, I never thought we'd be here again. We're up. Greg. Yeah, 10 on my list, it's in that back half like

I was talking about. I've experienced I had a great time with but just didn't have a lasting impact necessarily on me. I enjoyed this so much at launch and had so much fun with it, but it's similar to what Andy said about Death Stranding. It was a momentum thing. Put it down to move on to the next review. And over a break, I hop back in expecting to find that same love. And I didn't.

And it wasn't because it's bad or anything to that thing. It just speaks to what I have said about Nintendo games for so long. I think Nintendo is great at making toys. And that's not an insult. It's fun to smash. It's fun to do this thing. But jumping back in, it was like, cool, I can get more bananas, but why am I getting more bananas? What am I doing here?

And it's like, okay, I think I know what the fun is in this game and I enjoyed it quite a bit. And that's enough to get it on there, but not being able to be motivated to go finish it enroll credits or chase every banana or 100% or anything like that. That's why I left it here in the back 10. Watch. Yeah, I echo a lot of what you're saying, Greg, where I booted it up when it launched

and I had a good time with it, put it down for something, came back to it. And I was like, oh, I don't know if I love this as much. I think I started to, every time I would put it down and pick it back up, I liked it less and less. And it still ended up in a place

where it's on my list, right? It's still a great video game. I really enjoyed it. But when it came to like the actual level design and specifically the puzzle designs, I think the idea, of the ethos rather of Donkey Kong can break everything. And then that also means you can kind of break the puzzles a lot of the times. It just didn't work for me. I felt like I was able to go around

a lot of things. I felt like the boss battles were over in a flash, which I understand because he's big and strong and you can break everything. But I think I was looking for more of the traditional Mario Odyssey type deal with the breaking mechanics. And of course, completely different things. But it just didn't work for me in my brain. I didn't love it as much as I wanted to. But it's basically Hulk ultimate destruction again. So it gets a bunch of points for that and has to be number 10, just for that alone. Any other thoughts on D.K. Bonanza? I want to shout out the ending. Of course, we're not going to spoil anything. But I think that game does a great job of really uplifting just DK as a franchise

reminding you why you like these characters, why you like this world, why you like what goes on here. And the fact that they got pops for me where I'm like, oh shit, I didn't know I could be this hype about Donkey Kong. I forgot how much I love this shit, right? I got to shout that out as well. K-64 better. Oh, it's about to celebrate games, not tear him apart. Don't be like,

don't be evil on this one. Let's get to number five. I say, don't be evil. Number five, Blueprints. Wow. Kevin's here. Accepting the award for Blue Prince.

It's Kevin Coelho. It should have been you. Kevin's Game of the Forever. Blueprints is kind of funny. He's number five, Game of 20, I was scared this wouldn't make it on the list. Where was it for you?

This was my number one. Number one. Blessing out of yo, yeah, junior. Yeah. Was this on anybody else's list? This was my number two. Wow. Yeah, Blueprints for me is one that, I mean, again, we're talking about a year of games that were inspired, right?

Like games that did something weird, games that did something different, games that really locked in and tried to find something fresh and new to do. And Blueprints for me is the definition. of a game that does all those things. The fact that, and it's also like a recipe to appeal to me specifically this game, because you're talking about a first person, puzzle game, escape room with rogulight mechanics, with also like card drafting mechanics as well. Like these are all things that really just work for my brain.

And so already this game was teed up to me to be one that was going to love. But for me, it comes back to you when we got review codes. And I didn't really know much about blueprints, but I remember Greg. slacked me and was like, yo, this game Blueprints that we got a code for, this might be your jam. Like, this seems like some blessing puzzle poppy type shit. And I looked at it. I was like, yeah, it has the words,

but is it going to have the sauce? And I start playing it a little bit. And like, I was like, okay. Like, I see what you're doing in terms of premise. Played a little bit of it. I was like, all right, this is cool. And it was Jason Schre. I think I met Jason Shire at the Nintendo Switch event

in New York and talked about it with him. And I was like, fuck, dude. All right, I got to come back and play more of this Blueprints game. And the more I played it, the more it felt like I was attached to my steam deck at the hip. I could not put down this game. I took my steam deck to the,

I remember playing it at the car wash. In the car? Not in the car. It was one of those ones where I left my car for them. They're doing the interior clean as well. So I'm sitting in the place on my steam deck playing blueprints, but that's how much I could not let myself go from this game

because they found something here as far as being able to build out the blueprint for this house. If somehow you don't know what blueprints is, it's a game where essentially you're trying to earn this house by getting to room 46, I believe. And you are basically every single time you're going in, you're building out the blueprint of

this house by drafting rooms. And you only have a certain number of steps to get you there. Within all of that, the game goes deep. The game goes real deep as far as meta puzzles. As far as finding out things that you've been looking at this whole time is actually a puzzle, right? It is a historical narrative that I still don't know much about because that feels like 10 layers deep into what you're doing with this game.

But it did everything right, man. Like, it is a game that is so well designed and got me hooked so much. And I think the biggest compliment I could get to this game was that I was playing it while playing Expedition 33 because they came out very close to each other. And after coming out of a blueprints hole, like, I boot up Expedition 33 and I go into a new level in that game. And I started looking at like the lights because it's a level that has like different colored lights on the ceiling or whatever. And I tried to solve the puzzle of what's going on with that. And I was like, wait a second. This is not that game.

I am playing other games differently because Blueprints is making me look at every single thing in such a particular way. And I think that's just a strength of its game design. I think it's just a very extremely well-made thing. What an honor. Number one from Blessing this year of all years. Oh, yeah. Go check out Blueprints if you haven't already. Blueprints, Barrett?

Yeah, it was my number two. When we reviewed it initially, like I think Kevin was on that and Bless and Shrier, when we talked about it, I remember saying it would take. a lot for a game to overtake this as my game of the year and for so long this was my game of the year. I think it's just like one of the most interestingly designed games in the last few years that I played. I'm not like the biggest puzzle poppy. I'm not a guy who like dove deep into games like the witness or anything, but there's just something about the the loop that you get into once you get into like once you go through that first hour and start to understand the the language and the flow of what this game is asking of you. And, you know, it's still satisfying. you know, 20 days in and you get to the three little boxes and you have to figure out like,

okay, which one of them has like an item that's going to help me for the day and, you know, thinking about puzzles on that small level that feel very escape roomy and then thinking about the grander scale of this house and the randomization of this house that you're going to try to get through to get to the 46th room of this 45 room house, right? And then going even beyond that and getting into the late game and understanding like, oh, how deep this actually goes, not just in terms of story, but design and conspiracy as well that I found really, really fun to dive into and sink my teeth into. But shout out to Kevin, who I think is probably the biggest fan of Blueprints here at the company.

The Mr. Escape Room himself really found something that spoke to him. I would call Blueprints this year is my metaphor repontasio of last year, where it didn't make my top 10, but I have no issues with it being anybody's game of the year. Because I just know how amazing it is, and this is a game that I beat about 35 hours. I hit credits. And then I watched a bunch of videos

because I was talking to Alana at the time, Alana was like, oh my God, but I'm like 80 hours in or 90 hours in. It's like, I don't have time for that. And I know how deeper it gets and was blown away by a lot of what the lore videos are about the

the political struggle and history. It's wild where this place goes and it's really cool and impressive. And yeah, just one of those that like, I think if anything, it's the game. It's one of those games that I look at and go, AI could never do this. Like, because it has such a human touch to it. Like, everything is there deliberately because the creator

wanted those things to be there in that moment. And it's just so impressive. Yeah. Blueprints? Blue prints. Yeah. I just realized. No,

Roger. Sick. That's dope, bro. That's dope. One of the biggest criticisms I've seen in the last couple of months

and throughout the years like the RNG of it all of like trying to get the perfect run to get to the final room and all this stuff. I never really like yeah, there was maybe like a run or two where I'm like, damn I was like one step away from making this all line up.

But to me there are so many threads of not just getting to room 46 that were also satisfying as well of just solving a puzzle that might not help you get to the end of it, but still dissatisfying in and of itself to figure out, right? Where it's like, oh my God, there's a poster

in every room and that's supposed to signify a letter and like now I'm doing this huge puzzle where I have mapped out the layout of every room to try to spell out this code that's going to help unlock the thing under the amount of screen shots. The amount of screenshots I have in my steam deck

and the Google Doc I have for this game that is just filled with just, if you found this if the- Diary of a Madman, yeah, if the police found this Google Doc, oh, I'm fucked. Because they're looking at it, they're like, oh, he's crazy. Like, he's fucking plotting something. We can't, we don't know what, but he's plotting something. Yeah, no, it's like a game that

will have you having like brain blast moments of shit, this has been what this is the whole time. Like, I was looking at the paintings for 30 hours before I even thought about the paintings. And once I started thinking about the painting, I was like, oh, shit. Here's the thing I will say about the RNG is that I'm with you, Barrett.

Like, I don't, I wasn't, that big of a problem for me until there's a room you can find that lets you edit the frequency of other rooms. And so there was one room where I was like, oh, I hate finding this room. I'm going to turn this all the way down. Then I realized a different puzzle. And now all I need is that room. I need that room to show up and I can't get that room to pop up again.

And I'm like, fuck, dude. And that's kind of where I put down the game on it. But I will say that this game to both the Andy's thing, right, of playing through the main story rolling credits and then putting it down and the alon of thing of playing 90 hours 100 hours Jason strier as well this game is an everlasting gop stopper in the way that like you can kind of play this game until you're tired like put down the game whenever you want i played probably about 60 to 70 hours if i remember correctly and i just put it down when i was like all right cool i want to move on with my life or i got something else to do but i still value you don't have to 100% this

game yeah i mean i'm doing wrong way far from 100% i took that after or morning off and went to a coffee shop and had it in the notebook and I played must have been four hours sitting there and I had a great time with it but it was just that thing similar I'm talking about where the hooks weren't in it of oh I need to see what's happening that room I was like oh I enjoyed this and I know it's going to get crazy and yeah yeah I liked this but I'm going to move on

I mean chat says you can reset that now we're so back before we get to number four I want to get to some super chats you can super chat over on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games just like Gondor's condor did saying shout to my blueprint's Excel book of notes Gifted Pink says

This is my favorite content of the year right here Here's some love from Canada Thank you. Thanks so much Mayor of Sexy Town Says Blessing, don't let me down I'm counting on you for rematch My personal game of the year I've had so much fun

Better and better at the game Is Rematch on your list, Bless It is on my list. We'll hear about that This whole week we're going to be doing our personal top-den breakdowns on games cast So the episode Bless is on You'll hear him talk all about rematch

Maybe you'll be our number four or yeah, maybe, maybe. Brad says, listen, for a few months, this is my first time watching live. Keep up the positive, nerdy, fun. Ranking aside, what 2025 games do you think have real staying power? I think a lot of these do. I think this whole list. Yeah, I think that this was a year that we're going to talk about these games for forever.

I'm going to play Citizen Sleeper. One day. Zanfair has Expedition 33 at number one. A.K. Dot says this is a tip for Blessings Barber. Oh, thank you, AKIA. Wow. Yeah. We have the metal falcon with Ghost of Yote at number one.

The Brande Koot has Hades 2 at number one. Gigazjarne has Expedition at number one. Zeke Speaks says, quick shout out to Lucy James, who I would die for. She's great. She's a great one to die for. Mike on drums says, number one, Expedition 33. Mediocre Gamer has Expedition 33 at number one as well. but with Indiana Jones on PS5, sliding in at number five.

Then we got Minecraft Galaxy saying 2025 was an incredible year for games. I believe this year has been the best year for games in a while. And we got Kobe. It's always diverse for sure. Kobe saying, happy game of the year, podcast. All my top five are Expedition 33 at number one. Death Stranding 2 and number 2. Hades 2 at number 3.

Kingdom come deliverance at number 4 and dispatch at number 5. My honorable mentions would be Ark Raiders and Keeper. Listening to the Smiley's. I appreciate you throwing the love on a Keeper. I know I was the one that nominated as a hidden gem, but you held it down. You explained it very well. What a charming little game.

Super Charming. Keeper is. Let's see. I want to get to a couple more here. The Postman, Mike, this one's for you. I know, ready? Trails in the sky. First chapter made my favorite game of all time.

Hell yeah. And it's a true JRP masterpiece, my 2025 game of the year. And Mike, you did. actually just tap into something that I'd like from Jetpack Watchdog, who says, very late birthday tax, it lands literally right on Christmas. Hi, Joey. Thank you guys so much for years of entertainment. P.S., can I get the loudest, most intense hell yeah from Mike.

Yeah. Happy birthday, Big Dog. Hell yeah! You know, I bought Final Faints 10 last night on PlayStation. It's on sale, by the way. It was like 10 bucks. There's never been a better time. Unless it's always on sale.

I'll tell you what. Oh, yeah? I mean, totally 25% off. Favorite game of all time? Maybe I don't know. We'll see what I get into next. Let's see what I get into next. Oh my God.

I'm so excited. I'm also excited for our number four. Number four. Hades 2. Oh, back to back yours on the list. You love to see it at Hades 2. I had Hades 2 at number 3

on my list. Wow. Bless. I had it at number two on my list. Greg? No. Mike? Nope. Raj?

Nope. Andy. Yeah. He's scrolling. I had it at number six. And I had it at number 10. Number 10 on Barrett's list. Let's start with the person that had it highest blessing.

Number two. I mean, what more can I say about this game? Fucking immaculate video game right here. And it's so funny for this to be so high on my list because Hitties one was a game that I really enjoy. but even though everybody was like, Hades 1, this is the video game, it never really got that high up for like my personal list

slash my personal affinity to it. For some reason, Hades 2 just hit another level where I finally got it. I finally clicked. And I think... The cast, yeah. I think the...

The cast button. Oh, yeah. I finally learned triangle in that game. Or circle. So funny. Yeah. Man, let me tell you. The cast is the Hades 2?

Oh, man. I hate you, man. I hate you. your ass. But yeah, no, I absolutely love everything they do here. The amount of, one of the things Andy brings up often with this one is like the amount of dialogue in this game, and it's so true, the amount of words characters

have to say, and you come back after a run, and they always have new shit to say every time. Makes me fall in love with those characters, right? Like, I feel like I'm growing with these characters. The, the roguelight mechanics, the abilities, the booms that you're collecting, are always so satisfying. And I truly feel that I felt that every single

time I went in for a new run, I found a new play style, right? So much variability as far as the ways they allow you to play, the ways they allow you to strategize. And I think it's just an immaculately put together video game, let alone how it looks, how it's the soundtrack. Oh, the amount of content. Beautiful game. Yeah, I had Hades 2 and number three, which is shocking to me because, like, this is a game that many years could be number one. I love this so much. I will be playing it forever. It's immaculate. The gameplay is everything I could want from a video game in terms of engagement and action. It is so well designed. every single weapon feels worth playing.

Every single element that they add with the rogue light stuff is just as fun as the other. Even if you see something, you're like, I'm not going to want the slow weapon. Yeah, you're going to want it actually. When you have a killer run and you realize how all things kind of fit together. The amount of dialogue, the amount of art going up for the first time and being like, there's two games here. Like, I'm getting 80s 3 right now. This is kind of wild.

I am so impressed with how much fun I had for the amount of time and how much I still have to do, and I'm going to be playing this game forever. This game rocks, and I am so, so, so impressed with what they were able to pull off. I loved Hades 1. I love Hades 2 even more. The ending I really don't like story-wise, that doesn't really get in my

way, though, because the characters in this game are so good, and the dialogue and the story overall, not so much the plot, I am infatuated with, and they've done such a good job with it. It's just, yeah, the plot kind of lost me a bit at the end, but totally okay. Roger.

Not a minute. No. Bear. Roger put a napkin. Number 10. I did. Yeah, this was one where the gameplay of Hades 2, I think, clicked more for me than Hades 1. I think that's just because of the move set you get this time around that felt a bit more like AOE base that I really fucked with, especially with like the cast mixed with your axe and like finding builds that were just fascinating around that.

I really loved. I think having a down route and an up route, I think. think was really refreshing to keep me going in terms of, you know, once I cleared Hades one once, it was one of those, like, I don't know if I want to keep doing this to get like the real ending and like, I'm just kind of going through the same motions over and over again, but I think having the two different routes lets you shake things up in terms of like, okay, I've cleared down a couple of times. Let me, let me take a stab at up. And like, I think even just how they're presented in terms of how you have to navigate.

your build when you go up at first, I think is really cool. Yeah, in terms of like story and world building, I was less into this one. I think in terms of the motivation and kind of overall plot, I think, is way less interesting than the personal motivation for Hades One and what that story tells. But still a fantastic time, really fun characters to interact with. The music as well, just fucking hit every time. Like this was the game that I had fun editing the most in terms of the video wall stuff just because it was it was hard to choose which song to use is because the entire entire soundtrack.

It's just a fucking banger. Yeah. And also speaking to the soundtrack, and we talk a lot about the art, this is kind of a little outside of the game. But the launch trailer for this and like the last couple trailers that they did, they showed it all. I think it was at Game Awards or Summer Game for something. Some of the most stunning animation I've ever seen. Yeah.

Like, I can't believe the level of skill and talent that these people have. Like, there's, like, a five-minute animation of just Hades 2, and it's like, that is gameplay, like, come to life in this beautiful way. I recommend everybody watching because it is sick as hell. And it just shows millennia we in a way that I never expected to see this tiny little character, you know? I just love that Super Giants been killing it so much with sales that they can contract out and pay a shitload for an awesome animation to show off their game. Yeah, this game was.

I agree with you, Tim. I think that it didn't quite exactly stick the landing. And it's such an impossible task after many, many, many hours. I played this game more in 2024, actually, than I did in 2025. And I still had an awesome time with it. And I think every roguelite will always be judged next to Hades 2 and Hades and, unfortunately, because any other game that I play, I just feel like, man, I don't like, the abilities aren't cool.

that you're never going to get close to the boon system and how varied that all of those are. And Hades 2 and Hades 1 are the examples of starting off a run and thinking that this run is going to be a stinker, may as well just quit here. And then you find a cool move that you never really like experimented with before. And then you start to fall in love with it. And you go, oh, shit, I'm going to work this into my whole move set later on.

And I don't know. It's just it's the game that keeps on giving. Hades 2 is awesome. There's so much to do. There's so many characters to meet and talk with. And I think if the boss fights were a little bit more fun, and if the ending would have stuck, this would have been like a top three for me, probably.

Speaking of the top three, that's where we are. Before you go any further, I'm sorry. I do have breaking news from the Situation Desk. Katie Butler, 13, in the chat says, Mike made a pizza bet with Barrett about Hades 2 and Silk Song, which was Hollow Night Silk Song, will be kind of funny's number two game of the year, followed by Hades 2 at number 3.

Therefore, Mike owes Barrett a pizza due to being wrong with 82 coming in a number 5. Thank you. Pye Punks. Thank you. I will get on that. And I also would like to look at you, the YouTube comments out there because me, blessing and Barrett,

went back and forth on what will be kind of funny's top four. I just want you all to know, I nailed it. And you didn't believe it. Remember this way. You just got it wrong. Yeah, you just got it wrong. That's why you owe me a pizza.

I nailed the four that would be in there. Oh, okay. And the YouTube was not happy with me. Yeah. They were screaming a lot of ghosts of Yote. A lot of doubters. Settle down. Pselled down.

I feel like you all would have predicted this, though. Settle down. Prove them wrong, Mike. They didn't predict it. You proved them. That is so funny. Yeah, I mean, are we all aligned in what the top of? The order will see.

Yeah, the order will see. I'm shocked to see Hades through number four. I thought for sure we would have said, saw another game here. But I'm excited. Yeah. I'm excited to see where this lands at. Yeah, this is getting interesting. It is getting interesting.

Let's get into it. Number three. Number three. Hollow Knight Silk Song Oh, shit. Very interesting. Wow. That's nuts.

Whoa. Wow. Hollow Night Silk Song at number three. I had this at number two on my list, and it was the biggest struggle for me to really sit there and decide, is this above Expedition 33 in my mind? Because I beat Act 3 last week. This game is incredible.

I can't believe what such a small team can pull. off. The level of artistry in every single frame of this game blows my mind. Every time I play it, it feels so good. It is so many of my favorite genres in one. I can't believe how much of a success.

Hollow Night Silk Song is. It's $20. It lived up to the hype. There was way too much game in this game. I said this a second ago about Hades 2, but Act 3 really feels like an entire DLC pack that they were just like, no, we're putting this in the core addition of the game. I can't believe

how good this game is, the music, the feel, the look. Every single thing about it is, it's a masterpiece. Andy. Yeah, it's a masterpiece to be able to meet those expectations after so much hype, after so many years ago, and we're definitely going to see Silk Song here. It's 2021. We're seeing Silk Song. It's only 22.

There's no way we go another year without seeing it. And for it to finally come out and hit all those expectations and, like, exceed them, in my opinion. I think what it does storytelling is storytelling-wise is so fantastic the the themes that you deal with just dealing with like the whole church and all like fuck it's just so damn well told

but I think the boss fights in this game are the most fun and well-designed and difficult at times of course but it's just so amazing like I can't believe that I got Barrett to play Citizen Sleeper and I got tin to play Silk Song like I know you're going to try it out

but I'm like who knows how long this will go and the fact that it is that compelling and that good to make you stick with it is like so fucking awesome this game is amazing this is like a generational type video game

who else had Hollow Night's Silk Song on their list Hollow Night Silk Song was my game of the year yeah we go number one for Barra Courtney this was not one I was expecting to fall in love with as much as I did. I shouldn't be shocked that it was something I gravitated towards you, especially last

year falling in love with nine souls. And then like, honestly, just the journey I've had in the past few years of gravitating towards harder games, you know, getting onto the bandwagon with, with blessing and Andy in terms of falling in love with these harder games, souls games,

and then always just loving kind of like cartoon aesthetic, loving games like Cuphead, and then all of that coming into, you know, The meme that I really only knew it as was Hollow Night Silk Song, because I was not a Hollow night one guy. And, you know, feeling a little bit of the fomo. I remember launch day I was supposed to come in with Andy to help him with the marathon stream. And I tested for COVID that morning. And I was like, I texted Andy from my room. And I was like, hey, man,

call me when you get to the office because I'm going to have the video call you through how to turn on the studio. But then watching that stream from home, being in the chat with everybody and having this like, you know what, I'm going to buy this game and I'm going to check it out and just falling ahead over heels for it in terms of, yeah, not expecting it to be like this huge commentary on organized religions and institutions and the hollow promise that sometimes they give a lot of people and then also just being just one of the best feeling 2D Metroidvania action games that I've played in a very, very long time. Yeah, I adore this game.

I adore all the little creatures and friends that you make. You know, even when I'm... It's the game of little guys. It's the game of little guys everywhere. They're all amazing. Even a Hornet, man. And like when I'm dying as Hornet, I'm not, like, I'm frustrated because I'm like, God damn, and I know I can beat this fight.

But then Hornet does that little scream where it sounds like she's just like an annoyed teenager almost. It just makes me giggle, you know? It's like, I love this world. I love the gameplay and, you know, the, the, the story and the lore around it is just something that really hooked me. And it's one that I played again just recently over break. You know, I was kind of done playing 2025 games.

I was like, I just want to have something on my switch while we're watching, you know, one piece on TV. And I just, I did another casual play-through and beat the entirety of like Act 3 in like 35 hours. And that just reaffirmed like, damn, this game really fired on all cylinders for me. And, you know, I said it's going to take a lot for a game to take over blueprints, and this game did it. One of those rare games, well, like, every MPC you meet is your favorite MPC. Yeah. Like, the next one is always going to be your favorite one because everyone's just so awesome and well-ridden.

And, like, I think affable in a way. Everybody's so likable in this game. Even, you know, even some of the villains with their motivations. It's like, man, everybody here feels so well thought out. I'm so impressed with the amount of tech in the game. game like different ways to vary up your combat style and movesets like 60 70 hours in the game you're getting new abilities and I like the way that the abilities work in this game where it's not like a lot of other things where you I mean you do have loadouts in this but your your character move set is

essentially just jump in slash right it's like it's not like you have all these like different moves you can do it's just kind of you're adding angles to the slash or how much it goes out and like the little tiny differences in the beginning, I feel are so frustrating, but as you start playing the game more and more and unlocking so much more of the toolkit, it's like, holy crap. Like you can really have everyone's Hornet

is going to play just a little bit differently, but like it's such a dramatic difference in terms of how you're going to face off against a boss. And for such a simple move set, I can't believe how complex it can get over time when you have the different tools. And you can just not even, the tools at all and still beat the game.

Like that's crazy. But if you're having a lot of trouble with this type of platforming or this type of combat in boss fights, you have so many different tool sets you can use to change that and make it easier and then switch it out right afterwards. You have to go to the stupid bench. But you can do that. And what I love is anytime you're stuck in the game,

you can just go somewhere else and you'll find something that allows you to solve a problem that you have. And like that is Metrogvania in its truest essence. And I've experienced that in some other games. but Hollow Knight is the definite biggest example of it's not just oh I see that like cliff that I can't reach right now I'll be able to eventually because I'm going to get the cliff jumper ability and you can do that.

Yeah. You're just getting random abilities that might help you in a ton of different ways. It feels like nothing is made for one specific use. It's just you have these tools. How are you going to use the tools? And the fact that I don't have, I beat the game at 89%. and there's a bunch of tools I don't have. And those tools might dramatically change the way the game would play for me.

That's crazy. Like that's so nuts that I felt like I experienced so many different things. And even the end game, I'm like, oh, wow, people have this ability for the entire game. That's crazy. Barrett? Yeah, and just to talk about like story and lore stuff. I remember when the Game Awards nominations came out and Silk Song wasn't nominated for Best Narrative, I was like, damn, that's crazy.

You hate to see it. I remember so many people in chat being like, damn, another Barrett L. And that's crazy to me because I think what the story does in terms of what it's commenting on, but just the personal character stories as well. We talk so much about the cogwork dancers and like how great of a boss fight that is. And then how heartbreaking of a payoff it is once you go to a certain character's past and learn what the cogwork dancers are based off of, right? I just met the character loam for the first time, which I know a lot of people talk about

of like this poor creature who is essentially making the entire underworks, like, run, all that. Running on a treadmill. Running on a treadmill, making the entire, like, machine of the heart of the Citadel run. And then, you know, I know this, there's a bit more context about this outside of the game, but, like, Seth, right? Like, Seth is a mini boss that you fight right before one of the final bosses, and you learn that this was a character designed by a fan of the game, who knew they were going to pass before Silk Song came out.

And so they, like, got with the design team, designed this character, and then they, like, immortalized him in this game. And then when you beat him, he disappears. And then you realize in the act three kind of areas, you can run into him. And it's him rediscovering, like, life and the world that he is now living in for the rest of time. And, like, that shit fucking hits.

and hit me like a train wreck, like that, like all of the little character arcs I think are so sad. Like shout out to, uh, who's the little, uh, who's the little, uh, shirma, right? Like who starts off as just like, just this one kid who thinks all it is is about like just being faithful. And then where Sherma goes by the end of it, you're like, damn, that is a full ass character arc. Yep. And I've run into you, like you've only had character beats like six times in this entire like 80 hour natural playthrough, right? Um, I, I really. adore the character writing and the arcs throughout this game.

Yeah, can't wait for the DLC. It's going to be awesome. Hell yeah. All right. Let's get to our number two. Number two. Dispatch. For a second.

Hey, that's a win right there. For a second, you let yourself, like, it was like fucking Sammy versus Roman raids of like, could dispatch it? Could dispatch do this? Could it have overthrown expedition? Dispatch, I imagine, is on many of our lists. I had it at number six. Oh.

I had it at number three. I had it number seven. I had it at number three. I had it number five. 10. Eight. Wow. So this is definitely the one that it, I mean,

it's on all of our list, which got it all the way up to number two, even though none of us had it that high on the list. Who wants to kick off with dispatch? For the future game developers, make an eight-hour game. That's about superheroes. Greg?

Oh, man. What a love letter to, the tell tell games and then what a fucking generational leap for it. You know what I mean? To see ad hoc come out this be their debut game but obviously them be tell tell tell tell voice actors. Come out and do this. Have Aaron Paul in it and have this amazing cast

in it, have this amazing animation and have this great story in it. I think the way dispatch has hit has shocked me. I think we talk so much in the lead up to this does episodic work in 2026, blah blah blah blah blah blah. And the fact that it has found the fan base it has and resonated with cosplayers and TikTokers and any,

you know, it's on all of my feeds anywhere. I look far outside of our normal scope of friends who also love it. Like this game was a very, very, very special story and a very, very special game, I think, in the way it did it. You know, for me, uh, being in the back half of my list, it was more that fact there's the gameplay itself for me wasn't that great. I didn't love dispatching. And so like, I loved the choices and I loved the, the narrative they were doing. But when I stack it up against other things I wanted to play that I was drawn to go off and really get crazy with, it's a different ball of wax, but an amazing experience. Mike? Yeah, I mean, as Greg said, I'll echo that.

It's a love letter to telltale games in those games. Of course, we all kind of grew up on and really enjoyed. And we were looking for choices that matter, right? Connections that can grow and make for really fun storytelling moments. And for me, I actually really fell in love with the dispatching and the hacking. I didn't want to walk around in a room and open up. drawers similar to the Walking Dead back in the day. And I think this team at ad hoc

figured that out for me personally. It was like, hey, this is what I want in 2025. I want the story to be a bangor. I want to fall in love with these characters. But I really don't want to walk in circles and search rooms. I just kind of want to focus in on what's going on. And it felt like they did that for me. And I really, really

enjoyed that. There's characters that will stick with me to the end and, man, shout to young gravy. Right. Like, it was just felt like just these characters. And you're like, who voices dead? And you're like, oh my God, Alana, doing an amazing job, right? Jack Septica, you're doing a great job, right? Charlie Moore's Critical, you did a great job.

Like, all of these characters were awesome. And you fall in love with your own and you found, you found your own rhythm with the dispatching mini game and who you relied on the most. You loved at the end, just like all the telltale games of like, man, I'm in like the 98 percentile of everybody picking the same thing. Or, you know, Tim and G over there.

Like, we're on 5%. Like, nobody else is doing what we're doing. And you love that. Yeah, I played it all in one sitting, actually. I really enjoyed that. I'm not an episodic guy. I want you to give it all to me and I want to binge it.

And it was the perfect sit-back lax and just let this thing run. Never had a problem with it. Really enjoyed all of it. Roger. Yeah, I had a really special experience playing this game. I played it in New York with my brother. We played it the entire way. And we were just not passing the control around,

but every decision was 50-50. I actually had to remote into my work computer to play it because that was the only way I could play it because I didn't have my steam deck, whatever. So that's the dedication that I had for dispatch. Wow. playing and streaming it made the hacking impossible by the way impossible. Impossible. It's horrible.

But actually for me, the thing that pushes it forward is the dispatching. The dispatching was the thing that me and my brother were freaking out about. Every time we were, okay, what do we do? Is water boy go here? Where is Invisical? We're debating it. Like, we're debating it more than a lot of the actual choices in the game. So that, to me, was the surprise.

I expected to, you know, have the things where, you know, who are you going to choose? What love interest? What are you going to send out this here? you're not going to, but like the actual dispatching was super fun. It was engaging, especially having my brother right next to me. And yeah, it brought back that feeling of like, oh, man, we're so back. Like, maybe there is a future in the telltale formula. Maybe there is a future in this elevated format that, man, ad hoc, they killed it right out the gate and they have this and then they have the, what are the, who's the team that they're working with? Critical role. Yeah, critical. And they have the

critical role game coming out eventually. So, man, super exciting stuff. And just the sleeper hit for me. did not expect this one to one come out this year and then two be this freaking good and I love that it's also a shared experience between not only us here at the table but Greg as you said like people outside of every circle and every circle that I know everyone's playing dispatch everyone talks about it and it's becoming a new franchise

it's really exciting yeah I mean you know we've touched on this already but it's like this is one of the rare games I played with Gia and seeing her freak out during the hacking mini games like her understanding what's happening and seeing me do it like the controller was in my hand but she was like engaged with that level of gameplay. And it's like, damn, this game really pulled something off that every single aspect it's throwing at us, like she's paying attention to and caring about.

And I think that that's such a testament to what they really succeeded at doing here, which is making the story and characters great. Cool. That's the quote-unquote easy part here. But how do you make the gameplay stuff add up to make this a video game? And it's not just watching a TV show. And yes, we've seen Telltell before have the, you're making choices, and that affects the character.

We'll remember this and all that. But for the dispatching to have that level of, they're remembering what you're doing. Like your gameplay choices there are also going to affect the character relationships. And whether you make the hack or not, make the hack, all that stuff, like all of it adding to this very clear

and easy to follow kind of flowchart of every single thing you're doing in the game actually is going to affect the story is so impressive. And for over a decade now, we have talked about the early telltale game. and does episodic still work? Life is strange.

All of this of like, we've seen even the best in the craft utterly fail. Like, I don't know that I can think of a game that actually hit its episodic release plan. Like, am I wrong there? I don't think you're wrong. Like, real talk.

Let me know the comments. Has there ever been an episodic game that actually hit its plan besides dispatch? And they did it perfectly. And on top of that, this is a story that we have seen on paper too many times recently. All right, it's a superhero story that makes dick jokes.

And I feel like that could have went so wrong, so easily. But this stands up there with the boys and the invincibles in a different way. And I feel like they made it human. They really focused on the character relationships. And because of that, we now all care about these characters. This is a brand new superhero world. And so many just write calls down the line. Just check, check.

Amazing performances. Very clever gameplay. dispatch freaking rules and I can't wait for more. Yeah, this is one that I, if I'm going to use the word to describe it for me, be refreshing. Even though there's so many things coming off of what you just said that are kind of iterative, right? It's superheroes.

It's episodic. It's tail-tale choose-or-and-adventure. It's edgy. It's doing all these things, but somehow it brings it all together to still feel refreshing, especially in a year where I keep saying, everything is unique. Everything is finding its own flavor, right? The fact that I have it above other games that like death straining or like Ian Roger or other games that I would look at as like,

oh, these games have something to say. There's something about dispatch that I think really nails all the things that it's going for. And I think that alone just makes it worth it. That alone just makes it exciting to me. I think everything you guys talk about here as far as the choices that you're making and how invested you get in these characters. And even the joke that was made online that, like, I think we referenced in an earlier thing of like dispatch is Twilight for Men.

I think there's something to be said about like how much you get invested in that. Like I remember going back a decade ago talking about Team Jacob versus Team Edward. And he swearing by Team Jacob because, of course, I'm a dude. Come on. But, like, you know, getting into the thing of, like, I don't want to do this or do I want to do that? We're going to have to dive into that later. Such an obvious answer. Like, that's hilarious.

Oh, yeah. But, like, I had a pause, like, multiple times in this game where I'm like, oh, what choice we want to make here? And that's how you make a good one of these, right? Like, every year, there's always maybe a couple of these two-zero and adventure things I play. And some get it right in the case of a life-stranged, true colors. Some get it wrong. Like a life-istrange.

Double exposure. There is a very thin line of succeeding and not succeeding in this space and they just made every right decision. And I love that they're like, don't walk around. Like, we're not making you walk around to collect things or do whatever. Just play the dispatch game.

That's the gameplay part of this. Making the decisions is the gameplay part of this. But we have a art style that works so well for presentation. We have moments in this game that you're going to remember and love and fall in love with. We have humor here that's going to hit for you. We have like superhero moments that feel sick as hell.

Like, yeah, dude, this game for me does everything that I want this type of game to do. Anyone else with words on dispatch? I just going off of like the whole like, I like the fact that it is not just the boys, right? Like when I first saw this, I was like, oh, this is going to be like, oh, it's like anti-superhero. It's the superhero, it's like everyone's bad. It's like, no, it's like it still has those, not generic, but like what makes a superhero thing crowd-pleasing and exciting. And it's got heart. Heart.

And then also it has some of those swerves that you don't expect and that real, you know, office drama that it makes it really fun. So that to me, I think, is the core of what makes this work so well for the larger audience, but also for all of us. Yeah, I think it's really impressive of like how they kind of do a guardian story again of just like a team of jackasses coming together and trying to figure it out and still making it refreshing. And I think having it be an office comedy is like a great.

way to freshen up that formula. And at the end of it, you know, there's a bunch of different endings you can get. And being really satisfied with my ending and seeing this team be like, you know, coming together in a very, like, satisfying, awesome, friendly way that's kind of like a fucked up family. I thought I was, you know, surprised, you know, when we've reviewed the first three episodes. I was like, I'm enjoying this, but I'll be surprised if it really blows me away. And I was shocked at like how much they stuck the landing in that like last batch of episodes to really make me care. And yeah, I just want to shout out the dispatching itself. I had a great time with because I think similar to the dice rolling stuff and Citizen Sleeper 2, I think, and I would have liked to see this more in dispatch.

I think when they do use the dispatching as a way to sell a mood or tone in a point of store, I thought was really impressive, especially in those last few episodes. I still need a challenge mode for the game. the dispatching. Like I want them to connect all the dispatch moments of game played together just so you can do like an endless run. Try to try to do a per or like do like all of the batches together and try to do a perfect run with like no dying or something like that. Or dispatch 99. We all get in there. Oh shit. Oh shit.

You start causing our own crimes. That's a million dollar idea right there. That's one of those things like this game would not have been in my top 10 if it weren't for the sharp comedic writing. I think I that's the thing that holds it all together for me. And once they'd nail a couple of jokes and you go, oh shit, they're like actually, this is like good comedy. They're writing really well here, and I appreciate that the writing is so sharp. But if it didn't stay strong throughout all of it, I, the story wasn't like necessarily like the most amazing thing.

I think it was like really good still. But, uh, and the gameplay certainly wasn't like awesome or anything for me. But it was like that's the thing keeping me here for all of this journey. And I thought they killed it there. All right. Now it's time for Kind of Funnies game of the year 2025. Kirby, here writers. And Kine Fonnie's game of the year is Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

There you go. Expedition 33 is our game of the year 2025 with this amazing backdrop. But Andy Cortez. Beautiful. Thank you. A lot of wallpaper engine. Shout to Roger for showing me. It's a wallpaper engine.

Going down the list here, I had Expedition 33 at number one. Bless. At number six. Greg. N.R. And Mike. Number one. Number four.

Number one. Number three. And with that, on everyone's list, except Greg's, gives it the number one spot. Let's start with Andy Cortez. I mean, I've just talked about this game for so long, so many times this year. But yeah, man, it's, it's, you know, making turn base super fun for me in a way that I didn't expect it to with how reactive everything is and how skillful things feel. but also having awesome characters, awesome memorable characters with impactful writing and really cool twists and turns that, you know, didn't just feel like they were thrown in there for shock factor, like stuff that's really earned and really well plotted out. I just think this game is, this is like, like I mentioned with Silksong, this to me is like a generational type of game.

We will be talking about this game for the rest of gaming history, I think. I mean, honestly, like I totally agree with that. And my top three being Exposition 33, Silsong, and the 80s, too, I can say that about all of them in different ways. And I really had to sit there and try to decide how I'm ranking those on my list. And at the end of the day, I put this at number one, not because I think it's necessarily the best in every single way compared to those two. But I just think that it is the game of the year.

It is my game of the year, for sure. It's the one that I think about the most that I want to replay. And like, I want to know every single thing about it. Jake Baldino said this months ago, and I keep repeating it because, like, it is so true to me that it's rare that I play a game or any type of media consume it and want just it in every single form. Like, this is the first world in, I don't know, a decade maybe that I'm like,

I, like, since I first started watching Game at Thrones, that I'm like, I love this. I want more. I want, I want comic books. I want books. I want TV shows. I want anime. I want anything from this because the sheer fact,

that they had a vision that they set out for that is so clearly inspired by JRPGs from the 90s and 2000s that they love and they're like but how do we do it the way we want to do it it's just like across the board just such a impossible task to be this special and pull off the music the gameplay the story the performances the visuals everything backing each other up like this being an indie game it's like kind of just every single thing feels unbelievable and playing it experiencing it. The amount of conversations I've had with you guys with my friends, like there's so much to talk about with this video game. And I think that that to me makes a game of the year. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I forget exactly the quote. There was like some piece

of marketing before this game came out where it said it was going to like revolutionize JRPGs. And I remember hating that piece of marketing. I hated it more after playing the game because I don't think it revolutionizes the genre. I think it pays so much respect to the genre in ways where I'm like, wow, you guys love JRPs. I see so much of various JRPs, right? Like, I see Final Fantasy. I see persona, right? Like, I even see, like, Mario Luigi in terms of like the peri mechanics and shit.

There's so much inspiration that's brought into this game. But then I do think that the original flavor, the French flavoring, they add to this thing, takes it to a new level as far as like, oh, damn, okay, this is a world that I've not seen before. This is something that feels like he's doing something. brand new. And this is a story that I think resonates with people or at the very least, even if you're not experienced anything remotely close to what they're talking about in the game, you can still get it. You can still understand it, whether that be through the story,

whether that be through the music, whether that be through the presentation, whether that be through the twists, right? Like, I think there's so much thought put into every facet of what they did with Claire of Scare Expedition 33. And there's a reason why multiple people at this at desk have it at their number one, let alone the industry at large, having it at their number one this year. Incredible game. Mike, you're the most recent one to have beat this game. Yeah, what a year for me, right? Final Fantasy 10

into Expedition 33 being my number one game of the year. This ball and gun gamer opened his heart and tried new things and I was blown away. I had such a journey with this game and as you guys have really said, this one's going to stick with me, right? From the story

to the art design to the characters to the just gameplay it just all worked for me. It was head and shoulders above the rest when I look back on my ear and thought, man, what a fun time, right? It's like I had so much fun going from Final Fantasy 10 and thinking, you know what, I'm good. I played a lot of turn base this year.

There's no way that I could play anymore. Like, I'm tapped out. And the moment I turn this on all the way through act number one, I said, man, I can't stop thinking about this. And the voice actors carried this, right? Ben Starr and that whole team really did a phenomenal job. this team from France really did something special with the genre, right? It's like the pictos to the, of course, counter and pari mechanic,

the map and the open world design being mixed in with these beautifully designed levels that really made you say, oh, wow, this is crazy that I'm here to the boss fights, right? Each boss being so special and cool. I just had an absolute blast with this game. And I can't believe in 2025 I'm saying this. And, you know, looking forward to the next year of like, I can't wait to see what other games I'll give a try and what I might fall in love with.

You bringing up the boss fights reminds me like one thing I want to shout out with with the respect and love to old JRP games. Like the world map here is so beautiful and such a great, it's fun to play. It looks so different than the rest of the game. But like old school Final Fantasy Sickles want the world map back. And I remember

Final Fantasy 10 being my first Final Fantasy like the biggest criticism that game had from gamers at that point was where's the world map? Like what I feel like we're taking a step back here and to see it now added here in such a brilliant way is so impressive. And also just the sheer scale of some of the enemies in this game. Like I remember playing old,

when I went back to like Final Fantasy 6 or some of the other Final Fantasy's, like the sense of scale of fighting the bosses always felt wacky because you're little pixels. And it's just like the idea of what would this look like? And now we have Final Fantasy 7 remake to kind of have a better idea of like what the different weapons would look like

at that size or whatever. But Exposition 33 takes that to such a different scale where it's like you're these little dudes against these massive massive bosses, but it makes sense. It doesn't feel like you're hitting them with the sword. It's like because they designed the weapons and the magic and everything the way that they did, it's so believable. And the way that it's presented is so nuts. Like in early game, you're like walking around and you're fighting some enemies that are very big. And in the distance, you see something that is like 15 times as big as the thing that you're fighting. And you're like, there's no way I'm actually

going to fight that. And you do. And that's not like a big boss moment. It's just an enemy. so cool Roger yeah I this is number four on my list I had such a great time with it I think this has to be on the top of my list of a replay right like I need to replay this game and I again I enjoyed my time a lot I loved where the story was building towards

I didn't love the ending of the game but again I need to replay it because every time I see gameplay I'm like fuck man I had such a good time and I'm reminded of that experience and playing it for the first time especially my brother was in town and I'm playing it in front of him and he's like, what the fuck is this game? And then putting him on, he'd never played any type of turn-based video game ever. And he looks at me a week later, is like, I beat the entire game.

Oh, shit. Let's talk about it. And having that experience with not just him, multiple people in my life. Like, it is such a infectious experience playing Expedition 33 with other people talking about it. And yeah, I cannot wait to play it again because, holy shit. I feel like I'm going to be goaded at the parries. You know what I mean? I figured it out.

It's a little push and pull, you know, stop and start there. But now I'm going to be goaded. I'm going to be. Were you also streaming it across the country, like off of the computer? No. No. I said goaded at the Paris, but I heard goaded at the Paris. I'm going to be goaded at the Paris too, bro.

I'm going to go crazy. You'll do that to you. It's a weird one. Like, I don't generally replay a whole lot of video games. You know, Chris Anka and So Mike, Mike and Maddock and everybody have the joke that I've played Liza P seven times. And it's just I played it a second time to get ready for the TLC. But, like, this was one that I wanted to. record for YouTube and I recorded the

act one and then I play the rest of it not recording it and because I was playing it for review and the game hadn't come out yet and was just so enamored with it. I think like my number one love language is I love showing people shit that I love and I had just beaten it. We reviewed it and I was like I'm going to replay everything again because I want people to see how amazing and it's like

I don't do that shit and like I was there for another 40 hours playing the rest of from the start of Act 2 until the rest of the video game doing extra shit that I didn't do the first time, which is also super beneficial. And I think when I reviewed it, I was like, this is an 8.5 out of 10. Like, this is an amazing, like, really close to like an amazing video game. And when I beat it, I was like, when I beat it for the second time after seeing all the little subtle hints that they were dropping the whole time at you and recognizing those things while also doing extra stuff that helped out and really bolstered the story even more.

character arcs even more. This is a masterpiece. This is, yeah, this should have been a 10 out of 10 from me. My bad on that one. Barrett, any thoughts on Expedition 33? Yeah, something I don't think we give enough credit to is just how in depth each character's specific

move set is and how detailed that is and how much like in the weeds you can get with every, like, it's been a midst since I've played the game. So like the woman with the cards and like finding out her flow and then Lune's flow of trying to fill in all of the different corners of her weird little floating thing and, you know, finding builds for every single character, not just the team set, I thought

was really fun and satisfying to kind of break this game in really, really fun ways. And then also, like, it, I remember when we first started playing this game, when we got review code, or maybe even preview, I forget, but I remember being maybe almost halfway through and kind of having this click moment of realizing what the game is maybe going to be about on a grander scale and thinking to myself, man, this is a really weird game to come out six months after metaphor refentazio and kind of being right about that and like what they're talking about in terms of, you know, existential thoughts, but then also talking about art and the importance of art and all this stuff that I really, I love that they, there are similar

things that they're commenting on, but having a different perspective of that. Like, for me, like, the, an exciting part of why I love this game was having it so soon after a metaphor and having these different conversations and thinking to myself, like, we're these teams getting, like, coffee together and, like, talking about, like, game design and, you know, story design and all this stuff. I really fucked with it, but, yeah, and, you know, shout out to Act 3. Too much hate on Act 3. I think it really ties it all together.

I agree. Yeah, great dialogue, great writing, and phenomenal performances like Mike mentioned earlier. I thought, like, the whole cast just makes it so believable. And these characters feel so real and their experiences feel so genuine and experienced. Like, when they tell you their stories and then you get to the end of their arcs, it's like, oh, that is so earned. And I love you even more than I did before. Like, this is fantastic. So that is kind of funny's top 10 game of year, 2025. list. I'm sure everybody

agrees wholeheartedly with our list. So please let us know if that is correct. Before we leave for today, I do want to let everybody know, of course, the rest of this week we're going to be doing games cast with different combinations of us going over our personal top 10 list so we can talk about the games that didn't make the group's

top 10. I'm sure there are many, many, many of them. But before we leave today, we have a bunch of fun stats that we want to get to do. This is my favorite section. So Barrett, hit us. Welcome to Boss Baby's stat corner. We We've got point breakdowns for the top 10. We've got some fun facts and stats for you.

And we've got the official honorable mention for kind of funny. Kind of funny is game of the year list for 20, 25. The first thing we'll go through is our point breakdown for the top 10. See a lot of people in chat, you know, doing it live in real time and all that stuff. But let me give an official breakdown for you. Going into this year, this is a little precursor here, I was really worried about ties. I remember even coming to Andy a couple months ago of like, what are we going to do if there's a million ties on this list?

Granted, only had two, which is kind of the same. It's been the last couple of years. But you'll understand how, like, why I was so nervous and kind of being validated on how nervous I was about ties. When we start getting into the bottom half of this list and how tight everything was together. So number 10 and Roger coming in with 11 points,

which was the barrier to entry here. Ghost of Yote at number nine came in with, I should have known better. Joseph Yote coming in at number nine with 12 points. Eldon Ring, Night Rain and Skate Early Axis coming in at number eight. Say it with me, everybody. 13 points.

Citizen Sleeper 2, Starward Vector coming in at number 7. Say it with me, everybody. 14 points. And then Death Stranding 2 on the beach and Donkey Kong Bonanza at number 6. One last time, everybody. 15 points. So the bottom half of this list

all within a what, four point, five point margin of each other. And it's really just like, if one thing was different. Dude, if one of us wakes up on the left side of the bed instead of the right side of the bed, this whole list looks different. Exactly. And we might have a fun anecdote about that at the end.

Okay, yeah, I'll leave that there. So then we get to the top five where we start to see a bit more hand holding between each other. And we start to get a bit more breathing room with these point breakdown. So blueprints coming in at number five came in with 19 points. So we start to see a little bit of, distance there. Hades 2 coming in at number 4 with 23 points. Hollow Night's Silk Song came in at third place with 28 points, and Dispatch came in at number

two with a solid 35 points. That's another pizza bet I won. Blessing guess that Hollow Night's Silk Song will come in at number two, and I had a feeling it wouldn't because I knew. I had a feeling, I was like, it's only going to be me, Andy and Tim fighting for it. Yeah, pie punks. No, don't I get to decide or do they get to decide? I already want He gets... We're having pizza in a. Do it for everybody?

Yeah. Pizza bets work. That's my god. So... Yeah, for the person, though. I don't know. Every day's ever thought by for the whole office. Yeah.

Like, don't I get the pizza? Yeah. Anyways, not the most surprising. That Claire Obscure Expedition 331 game of the year for kind of funny. It's winning game of the year for almost every other goddamn outlet. Yeah, I started the graphic like a month ago. Yeah.

Did you accidentally put in assets? Uh, yeah. Did you? He put it in assets and I got the notification and immediately deleted. I'm like, I hope no one saw that. It was a shocker. Was there any shot?

It wasn't. What was the points there for expedition? So, and I know people are probably wondering how big of a sweep was it for, Claire, obscure. How much of the point difference was there between one and two? You know, was it a Ragnarok here? Were Ragnarok won by 30 points? Was it a Zelda year or Zelda won, I believe, by 20 points? It got close, but not quite.

Claire of Scare Expedition 33 came in at number one with a solid 50 points. So a 15 point difference. So not as wide of a margin between one and two as we've seen in the past. I think Ragnarok still undefeated in that category. This is the lowest scoring number one since Ratchen and Clank rift apart, I believe. Put Ragnarok in this year, though. I mean, come on. It's like number six, maybe.

It's not all right. Yeah, I believe last year, Astrobot won with 52 points. I forget what Zelda and Ragnarok did, but they were both pretty high. And then Ratchet and Clank still our lowest winning game of the year with 41 points. And that will still probably be the tightest voting between number one and two. Because I think Ratchet won by one point over Returnal. Definitely one of those. They were all within two points of each other.

It was Returnal was number two. Melissa with a Y in the chat, kind of funny's favorite game of all time. Astro. Never forget. So with that, then we get into some fun facts and fun stats. People were already pointing this out. Third year in a row, we've had 12 games make it on to our game of the year list. But seven of those 12 games were indie games.

And the entire top five, as you see here, come in all shapes, different shapes and sizes. We're all indie games, which is a first for a kind of funny game of the year list. Another first we have, Dispatch breaks a trend. typically, if there is a game that is on everybody's list that votes for game of the year, it does win game of the year, as we've seen with Ratchin and Clank, God of War Ragnarok, and Astrobat. This is the first year ever where Dispatch was on all of our list, but did not make the number one spot coming in at number two. And Roger is now also the lowest scoring number 10 game coming in with 11 points.

I think that might have beaten last year. Yeah, Black Op 6 and Tekken 8 were tied with 12 points last year. So, very low barrier of entry there. Another fun stat for you. Blueprint shares this stat actually with last

year's Eldon Ring Shadow of the Urtree. Those are the highest games on the list only being voted on twice. So last year Shadow the Urtree tied with Prince of Persia, but Shadow the Earth Tree was only voted on twice. Same with this year, Blueprints coming in at number five

with only Blessing and I voting for it. So then we get to the last, not even fun stat or fun fact or anything. Let's talk about a saga. The voting drama saga. As some of you know, voting for game of the year. Like, who's the problem here? You know what could be any of you three.

I know who's the problem. But it could be any of you three. I didn't do anything. Yeah, I would actually give Roger the benefit of the doubt here. You know, for those who don't know, game of the year for kind of funny voting opens on our last day in office in 2020 or of the year. So I think that was December 19th or 20th around there. And then voting ends the first day we come back in office. So this year, that was January 2nd.

That was the day we came in office to really prep for kind of funny day. and voting is due at 3 p.m. on the last day of voting. And I knew there was going to be a problem. On January 2nd, we all came together. We were kind of like doing a mini production meeting, figuring out KF Day what we still needed to do. And I said, hey, reminder for everybody who votes for game of the year. Your votes are due by 3 p.m. today. And I knew there was going to be a problem when one snow bike, Mike uttered under his breath, oh, shit.

Like he hasn't done this for the last five years. I was playing for Monday, Tim. I'm playing for Monday. That's never how it worked, Mike. So, you know, voting slowly comes through. It's not like there's a meeting every week where we go over this. Yeah, exactly.

Oh, shit, I haven't done that. Exactly. And so voting comes through. Voting's due by 3 p.m. And at one point, actually, to Mike's credit, I think it was around like 1230, all of the votes came through. And I was like, oh, shit, okay.

All right. An hour goes by. And I get a second. Slack message from Mike. It's like Shroponi, please, I'm begging. I know you say once we vote, we can't change our vote, but it's still before 3 p.m. Please, for the love of God, I forgot

about a game. I forgot about a game. I need to fix my list. Mikey, what game did you forget about that you'll talk about on your personal list later this week? Baby steps. This motherfucker forgot about baby steps. Yeah, that's a big one to forget. It's got to be on there. It's got to be on there.

Got to recognize it. So before Mike changed this vote, if I remember correctly. I think there was one tie on this list. Mike changed his vote. There was not one tie. There were not two ties. There were three ties.

And one of them was a three-way tie. And I was thinking to myself, fuck this sucks. You know, I fuck with ties. It's a fun way to celebrate more games. But I'm thinking about the chat who already cries about ties every year. And I'm like a three-way tie, which hasn't happened since 2020,

when only four people voted on game of the year, it's going to melt people's brains. And then also, like, Andy came up with a solution for ties on the front desk a couple of years ago. It looks great. Try to get three games into a slot. I was like, this is going to look like ass. It was a tough, it was a tough graphic you asked me to do. And I was worried about it months ago.

I was like, I have a feeling it might happen. Can you make a mock-up of what a three-way tie would look like? And it looked kind of stupid. And so I was like. Sorry, Andy. No, I mean, I did my best. agree. It looks stupid. The games look so tiny. Yeah, that's not a commentary on 80.

Why are you going to use a call? And so it was just like, all right, well, this is the list. And the one strict rule I have is that I'm not allowed to change my own list once I see someone else's because I'm the only one who sees the results here. Sure. Yeah. So it's like, all right, like I got to play it where it lies. And so I started, and mainly the reason why I have people not resubmit is mainly for assets sake. Once I start, you know, finalizing these assets, I don't want to have to go back

and redo a bunch of things once I start locking things in. But that three-way tie and having three ties on the top ten, I was like, fuck, man, this sucks. But then one night, a glowing star from the heavens came down in the form of a text message from one Andy Cortez. And he said, Debroni, and he didn't say Gibroni. He doesn't talk like Mike like that. He said, yo, I know you say no resubmission.

Jesus Christ. I said what if I said what if I messed up my list So the credit I will give to Andy Because Andy while we can assume What game of the year is going to be And we pre-make a lot of these assets Before like voting even comes through

You know he doesn't see the rest of the list He doesn't know the situation I'm in on the back end He's just like hey I was trying to keep a game off of my list Because I thought it was early access But then someone Someone pointed out to me that it's not actually early access. So I would like to fix my list.

And what game was that, Andy? The king is watching. Yeah. Number eight. Cave it on the list. I thought it was early access this whole time. And I was like, no, Andy, it's not. Like, I'm looking right now. I'm pretty sure it is. Then they just put DLC out?

Well, like, I just thought that I was like, an update. Every other early access has their roadmap or whatever. And I'm looking at it. And I was like, oh my God, you're right. Holy fuck it. So I texted it was like, look, if it fucks things up, don't worry about it. I'll leave it off the list. Don't worry about it.

Like, I know this is three days. late and then Barrett replied with I'll allow it because it helps out because I did some mental math and I did some mental math and I was like oh this would knock off one of the three way or one

of the three ties and then it would break up Ghost of Yote from being tied with night rain and skate early access and I thought about and I made that final decision so I wouldn't melt Shats brain with a three way tie and then to also think about assets and how annoying it would be to make a three way

It's okay when Andy does it, but not when Mike does it. That's crazy. Well, it'll help the situation. Well, Mike fucked it and then Andy unfucked it. And I will say, after Mike resubmitted his list, I did go to him and I looked him in the eye and I said, I'm just going to be straight with you. You've made my life a fucking headache and I'm actually really annoyed with him. And he looks at me with a smile on his face, glimmer in his eye and he says,

Barrett, I couldn't ask for anything more and then just walked away. And I was like, all right, man. I guess that's my life. But I made the executive decision on that, and maybe I'll talk a little bit more about that process on tomorrow's Gregway, which you can get on patreon.com. So that's kind of funny where I'll talk about game of the year process, you know, the executive decision I had to make this year

when it came to resubmitting votes and all that stuff, which is always a little daunting when it's only me who's kind of making the decision at the end of the day because I want to surprise the rest of you with the list. But that gets us to our honorable mention, which was a tie originally on our top 10 games.

And because I made assets for it, here you go. Octopath Traveler Zero. And? And who's it? Kirby Airwriters. Wow. You two, fuck me.

How? It's not a top 10 games. That's not a top 10. Kirby Air Riders is my game of the year. Shut up, Roger. No way. Octopath and Kirby fans unite. We've been quiet too long this episode.

I feel like I was invited to a party by one person and one person I knew left the party. That's what happened here. It's always like, oh, man, definitely this is going to be number 10. I'm sure Tim or maybe bless having a number 10 around there. I put it at number one. None of you guys put it there. What is going on here?

We're going to have a blood bath tomorrow. We're going to have a conversation between Tim, bless and myself, because it's going to be a reckoning. Because Kirby Air Riders is the game of the fucking gear. I don't think I have that. No bit nothing this game is fucking perfect holy shit I thought when you don't have a hamster on your list Yeah, Rick I thought when you put Rick on the list like yeah that's the recognition I'll give it No I was wondering to talk about today

That's so funny Let me tell you the amount of of when we were going through a 10 nine eight I was like oh man number seven I was made about number four About number three I gave up I was like I like about number three that's where you gave up I am so mad at Andy. Andy Cortez is the man who earns my hire because a few weeks ago, when we started thinking, he was like, hey, let me log into your steam.

I need to grab Octopath traveler assets. And I was like, oh, it's no way it's on the list. He's like, we're so spread out this year. You've been so vocal to your number one. 10 points might get it done. Yeah. So I had that twinkle in my eye. I'm like, maybe 10.

So Ann Roger popped up, but I was trying to figure out the math, but I couldn't do it quick enough. And when we got to, you know, I'm like, I'm fucked. It's ain't happening. Yeah, Roger, I have my top 20 written down. Kirby Air Rider is not even close. Wow.

We're going to have a conversation tomorrow. If skate wasn't a tie, Greg, it would have been the graphic of you with the skateboard that had the ghost buses on it. Nice. But since it's a that, you know, I appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you. Roger's a gamer, man. I'm a gamer, bro.

It changed my life. I really thought that Tim helped. No. Get into honorable mention. Dang. Yeah. Number one. I mean this with a part.

With a bullet. With a bullet, bro. Easy. Look at X-Mexman. in 33, I say, get away from me. I love that. Wow, that is number one. I meet it, bro.

Changed my life. That's awesome. Love that. So, change my life, bro. Also, you know, this was the first year that I'm like, all right, no early access. Last year I've had Hades 2 in a thing, but it's like, this is the year I want to, like, make that rule for myself after hearing other people make that rule for themselves. Like, I want to do the same thing, but not DLC because Liza P. Overture.

That's new content Real high up on my I think I was top 15 for me And that was another reason why I allowed it for you Because it didn't feel like a Oh I forgot about this Like you were trying to make a point And then you know it was like

Oh you made that point for no reason So I was like yeah That's also This was before I became Barrett parentheses evil I was like you know what I'm you know I'll allow it Just because you were trying really hard King was watching

Yeah you got so far He was watching I thought that uh the number 11 was going to be Shinobi I thought Shinob would have made more people's lists kind of in that back in because it was my number nine was on anyone else's in my 15. Wow. Yeah, you're the only one who voted for it, 10.

It was really close for me. It's crazy. Chris Hank in the chat. Surprise, surprise, Andy brings up Liza P. Later that time. Shout out to Shinobi. That was like some of the most fun I've had in terms of an action game this year, for sure.

And shout out Kirby Airwriters. Shout out of our writer. We're here. Shout out of Ninja Guy. Oh, man. Like I was saying, the rest of this week will be games cast of all of our personal top tens getting into every single game on the list, whether they're on this group list or not, kind of given more thoughts on everything. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. If you haven't seen the Smilies, go check it out.

Last week, we did an awesome show, kind of celebrating video games from a bunch of different perspectives, giving it out of a bunch of awards to games and to Mike. And you're going to want to see all of those because they're a lot of fun. Did you edit all those clips together? Yeah, I want to re-upload somewhere. Something happened. It was fucked. The whole video was fucked up. So sorry about that.

But it was the message got across. It got across for sure. Thank you all for hanging out with us. This has been another kind of funny game of the year. Greg Miller. More importantly, though, don't go anywhere. Yes. Up next is Kind of Feudy.

Episode two of the Greg Miller regime. And you're going to like the prize. I guarantee it. He guarantees it, everybody. Thank you for hanging out with us. Watch Kind of Feudy. Love you all. Goodbye.