NZXT PODCAST - #185 - Best PC Games to Play!

Episode Date: August 2, 2024

On this week's episode of the NZXT Podcast... Ivan and Mike review some of the best games they've played that they recommend to everyone! Join the Discord here: discord.gg/nzxt Catch the replay at twitch.tv/NZXT!

What's up, everyone? How's everyone doing today? Welcome to episode 185 of the NCC podcast, the official podcast of the NCC community. This podcast scored live every other Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time. On the official NCC Twitch is available to stream on demand on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and SoundCloud. My name is Mike.

It's me as Ah, as always is Ivan. How are you doing, Ivan? How we do, baby boo? Happy Friday. We haven't done this in a while. I guess everyone can tell because you stumbled. all over your words. Oh yeah.

It's been a while so we've done the podcast. It's been like almost a month. Yeah. I know. I guess should I tell people why I was AFC? Oh yeah, you can tell you can tell them the story. I just had a little bit of an accident. You get trying to tell on Cam, I have some burn marks here, but believe it or not, I'm at the stage of my old age where I have to watch my step.

I tripped and fell over a hot grill ended up burning myself. So that's why I'm wearing a sunshirt. And if you would have seen me the last couple of weeks, you would have seen like a bunch of scabs and whatnot on my face. But I'm back, ready to get back at it, man. I haven't sent me like his like burden chart or whatever. And it was like everywhere. It was like Oliver's face, all of his arms.

I was like, oh my gosh. It was gnarly. But I'm back, man. And I'm actually going to be going back to the office. next week, I think. Wow. So you've recovered well. Yeah, it's been a month.

It'll be a month this Sunday since my accident. So time to get back in the saddle, man. Yeah, anyway, our first podcast back, we decided to do something that we've actually never done before. We asked or we didn't ask. We're going to tell. We're going to tell people what are. favorite video games are to play for different types of specs so I know Mike here in

the in the channel or in the switch description says best PC games to play but I do think at least for me I'm gonna give away some recommendations oh yeah so you actually do have some non-pc games out here non-pc games but before we get into that I do want to make one quick announcement it's not about my burns it is about a giveaway we got going on. So if you are tuned in live to twitch.tv slash nzxte right now, you can type exclamation giveaway into the chat. You will get a link to enter a giveaway for a chance to win a purple NSD poochie plush. For those that don't know what a poochie is, poochie is our mascot. And we do give away a lot of poochies on our Discord server. So if you don't

one one today on the stream. You can go to discord.g.g slash nzxte. And you can win Apucci on Discord by showing us your setup or making a cool NZXT wallpaper. And we do those giveaways every month. So poochies for everyone. Yep. So stick around to the end.

We'll give a code that gives you 500 extra entries into the giveaway. And majority time, uh, whoever puts in that code, they tend to win. So stick around and then we'll go ahead and give you. This shouldn't be a super. super long podcast. You know, we're just going to go over some games that we think that people should play. It should be really, really quick and easy. So.

it's only about a 10 hour podcast. Don't worry. So before we start, I have a couple things I want to disclaim. It puts a couple disclaimers in. Just, these are just games in general. A lot of these games are actually, tend to be a little older. So, but, uh, note before we start, you can run most games, most games ever if you lower the graphic settings that suit your PC. You know, there are games where you probably should have a higher end PC, like big world, open world games, things that are very taxing or CP GPU. Uh, if you want to be on a high graphic settings, because it, you know, you want to encapsulate how beautiful the game is, then you probably need a higher NPC. but majority of time you can play almost any game,

but it's just depends on which one. I don't think you see my PC. And these ones, this is also, when I worked in customer service, people told me like, hey, do I need a $5,000 PC to play Fortnite or a $5,000 PC to play Roblox? These games, you do not need a high-end PC. You can actually run these on like Macs if you really, really need to. You do not need a IPC for Fortnite League, Valerance,

CS2, Roboxer Minecraft. You know what's interesting about these games, Mike? Well, I guess apart from Fortnite and Fortnite, or Fortnite and Valerant, they're all super old. Like, they've been around for like a decade or more, right? So that's number one. But number two is they're also, like, if you look at like the top 10 PC games people play,

like it never changes. It's usually like these and like Dota and GTA 5 and then whatever like plot games, like a couple of games are going on that month. So like these games are some of the most popular games like of all time and I think it's because for that reason right there where it's like they can basically run on just about any type of computer and most of of these games, they're more intensive on your CPU versus your GPU. So I think that's probably another reason is because most people, you know, like if you have

a laptop for example, like pretty much every, not every, but a lot of Windows laptops nowadays, they have like a nice seven right off the bat. But they don't have like a RTX 4090 or whatever unless you get like a gaming laptop. So, yeah, these games right here, I mean, they're super popular for a reason. You know, obviously they're fun, but they're also very easy to run. They're not like, you know, they're not going to fry your computer unless you're, unless you really have a potato PC. Yeah.

So if you, a lot of people call CS, be a lot of your idea of $4,000, you do not. You can run this really easily. But now let's go into the games that we personally recommend. So, Ivan, I believe you have played Terraria a lot, right? Well, I wouldn't say I've played a lot, but this is definitely a super fun game for me. The reason I love this game is because I'm a big platformer guy. Like, some of the first games I ever played were like the OG Mario games. So anytime there's like a platform game, like I have to try it out.

I remember when this game came out, I really liked it because it reminded me of Minecraft a lot. Except that it was just like a side-scrolling Minecraft with bosses and like fun weapons and stuff like that. So it was super fun to play. There's also a huge, like, modding community around it. But even though I'm not a modder myself, there is people of ways to like mod this game and things like that. It's also pretty cheap. I have a, um, so I played Terraria very tiny. Like, I only play with my friends.

But there is an option where you can play for, with four friends for 30 bucks. So if you want to play, it's, it's super fun with friends. But, uh, the, I've never played the modded community, the mods, but I know Calamity is like, that's like the number one, uh, mod. And, uh, a YouTuber that I watch played it. And I was like, what? So I got, I want to show you guys. how crazy this

boss fight is I'll swap over the desktop like look at this this is a mod this is from a commute this is someone for the community that was like you know what I really want to make Ferrari more fun

this is a mod this is not the official game look at this very psychedelic isn't that crazy yeah like that's a I know people clown that game a lot too

because they see it as a kid game but I mean you can say that about any game any game it's a fun game if you haven't played Terraria you're missing it's I feel like everyone should play it at least once 10 bucks man it's so easy is that boss fight vanilla no that's a mod

that's a calamity mod that's just if you want to go like all into Tararia that's what you do and it's free if I remember correctly the all mods are free. So this person just did it because he loved the game so much, which is crazy. It's like Skyro. All right.

This is one of my personal favorite games at all time. If you guys have not played Gary's mod yet, God, you got, you guys, you guys are missing out. As you can tell, I have 400 hours in this game because I played this crazy. It says it's $10 right now, but it's a Valve game. Valve repeatedly puts this game on sale. all the time. During the Steam Semestero, I think it was like four bucks

or something like that. This thing is, this thing, if this thing was like $40, I would pay for it because of how much I played this game. You got games like, Troublethristown,

if you guys remember those games, hidden where there's what invisible guy that was superpowers, I could jump around and like knife people, prop hunt. Everyone knows what prop hunt is. Dark RP,

which not many people are into dark RP. I know, or sorry, R. I know GTA RP is kind of getting big, but DarkRP was like the OG role-playing game where you can play as like cops, you can play as, uh, these thugs,

you can play as like a homeless person on the street and beg for money. That's fun. That one's fun. And then you have like a homo, uh, uprising and stuff like that. It's straight up,

the most fun game you can ever play. There, each one of these is like just one of the most popular games. You can monitor yourself too. You know what's interesting about this game. I, I played this game, but when I, when I, I've only played it like once or twice and I stopped playing it because it was like, when I played it, I was just, I realized, man, this game is literally like everything. It's like you can, you can do anything in this game. It can be whatever you want. And it's not that I don't like that, but it was just, I was overwhelmed.

Like the amount of, the amount of stuff going on with this game. I couldn't decide what to do with it. So I was like, well, just, just. I just let other people play it, but yeah, it looked pretty cool. This is awesome for like the late night, Friday night, the guys are on, everyone wants to play something, and we all load into like a Trouble Terror Sound server or like a like a Death Run server. This is the type of game that you want to run. It's so much fun, guys. And 10 bucks, most of the time it's on sale.

You can probably get it on CD keys for like five bucks. Totally worth it. 100% worth the money. even if you don't play it for more than like, you know, like 10 hours, that still makes, are, Ivan, do you do the, uh, a dollar per hour idea where if like you spend 10 bucks, you should get at least 10 hours on the game or something like that? I justify my, all my expenses that way, not just with video games, but, but everything I do, I'm like looking at the, uh, like what I get in return from exactly.

Five bucks, you're going to make your money's worth. easily. Yeah. I think you and I both love this game. Yes. So Star Doe Valley is one of my all-time favorite games. I have it on my PC, my laptop, my switch, my phone. It's kind of like going back to what I said about Gary's Mon.

It's a game where you could do everything. Star Do Valley is kind of like that where, yes, you can. There's a story aspect to it, you know, like you can do the story mode and just kind of, you know, build up your farm and, you know, things happen in the story throughout the game and you can finish the game and whatnot. But there's also like so much you can do like on your own that has nothing to do with the story mode. And that's the reason I love it because it's, to me, that's very relaxing. There's days where I'm just like, you know what? I'm just going to go fishing today. Yeah.

I'll just have like a like a screen up for my switch like on my desk and I'm just like fishing. You know, while I'm typing out on my laptop here doing something and like, oh, it's time to catch a fish. Sometimes, you know, you want to just smash rocks. So you get a pickax and you go in a cave and you start, you know, looking for gold and things like that. that. So there's just tons of things you can do in the game. It's also has a huge modding community.

There's even a board game, believe it or not. And I guess a concert, I didn't even know there was a concert. Yeah, there's a, uh, there's it actually came to Seattle and I tried to get tickets, but sold out within like an hour. It's, it's so, it was so cool, man. Like, I was like, dang.

I tried to buy a board game. That one also sold out, if I remember correctly, too. That one's like Katon. It's like Katta. Yeah, and it's also relatively cheap. You know, it goes on so often as well. And it runs on basically anything. You know, if it runs on your phone and your switch, you could probably run on your PC and laptop too.

So it's a fun game. You guys and Dom here in the chat saying I would play us in the office all the time. Yeah, like I love this game. It's really cool game. And what's cool, too, it's all made by one guy, you know, Concerned ape, that's his name. Dude is crazy. Yeah, working on another game called

the Haunted... Haunted Chocolate Tier. Dude's insane. I think out from MEPR, MEPR in chat, I think I buy at least 20 cheap games around less than $10 for every more expensive game. The big games are fun sometimes,

but the little games fit into my busy life. 100%. Hi, Vib. Uh, okay. Deep Rock Galactic, DRG. If you guys have not played this game, oh my God, it is an awesome dungeon crawler.

It's a co-op. Uh, there's destructible environments. The devs are awesome. Straight up, the devs are probably one of the most awesome devs. Their social media also is hilarious. Um, there's, uh, four different classes. There's like a driller. There's like a scout which can like repel and put lights everywhere.

there's lots of like bosses there's different types of missions leveling up weapons you can min-max you can do all this stuff so and so they're in this thing remember these are dwarves right so you dive into things you're picking up resources for a big company they do not care if you die or anything they just want the resources but one of the main things that they say is rock and stone or for carl or something like that but if you meet someone there's there's there i didn't a TikTok post about this and if someone recognizes Deep Rock Galactic in like a post or something like that you would see like hundreds of people just saying like Rock and Stone Rock and Stone. I'm not interested in playing this because you said they have a hilarious social media. I don't believe in making jokes on social media, man. Yeah. Yeah. Only add.

I'm trying to follow. I follow account on social media so they can. Tell me what to buy. Not to make me laugh. Here, I got to show you guys this. All right, I got to show you guys the comments on this. Rock and stone, rock and stone, rock and burp stone. Rock, deep rock galactic mentioned rock and stone to the bone.

Rock and stone did I hear a rock and stone? It's just hundreds of comments like this. Just I didn't even see this. This is my favorite, this is my favorite, like, uh, meme. It's just, like, look at all the people just keeps going. It's like, it's probably one of my favorite things. Uh, if you play it once, you'll understand the memes and it will be a part of you for the rest of your life.

100% worth. It does go on sale a lot. It is $30, but usually it's like $20 or $15. So keep an eye out whenever it goes on sale. All right. What's my game recommendation? Hollow night. Yes.

Uh, This is another fun game too. It's actually a really hard game. Like it's the game, the mechanics, the mechanics on it are pretty simple. Like it's, you know, it's a platformer. So you just jump, go right, basically. Super easy to learn, but very difficult to master. And I think that's like the, that's,

kind of like the secret sauce, I think, to a lot of games that last a long time, to be honest. Like, for example, like chess, right? Like chess is a game relatively easy to learn, very simple, you know, ponds go up, you know, rooks go this way, whatever. Very simple rules, very simple to play. But man, like once you're in there and you start getting deep into it, it becomes super complicated and hard. And you're just like pulling hair out of your head.

And that's how this game is. It reminds me a lot of that because as you progress in it, it just keeps getting harder and harder and harder and harder. Almost like, I don't even ever play cuphead. Yes, I have played cup head. It's kind of, it's like the same kind of vibe. Like, just when you think it's like, it's not possibly get any harder.

It gets harder. But it's fun. It's not like in a bad way. way. It's just you know, one of those games. And like I said, I love platformers. So if you're a platformer person, this is, this one's basically for YouTube. Have you played Oregon Abide Forest?

I haven't played that one. Oh, you need to. It's beautiful. I have not played Hollow Night. I know Hall of Night is good. I just never played it. I don't know why. I just feel I, I, I sometimes love platformers, but like Cuphead, I think legit, destroyed my love

of platformers. Because Cuphead was so annoying. It wasn't even like a fun annoying, like, Eldon Ring. It is hard and can be annoying at times, but it's still really fun. Cuphead was just straight up annoying. And I hated the game. And that, I think, killed my love of platformers. I think the difference between like Eldon Ring and, you know,

a Cuphead or a Hollow Night is that when you look at a game like Eldon Ring, you expect it to be hard. Yeah. Because of the way it looks. and like the, you know, the requirements that your PC needs, you know, like, in the graphics and all this. Like, you see that game and you're like, you go into that game knowing it's going to be hard and challenging. You see you look at the art for Hollow Night or Huphead and you're like, oh, this is a little, this is a little. This should be easy.

It can be easy. This looks fun, you know. This should be like a good time. And then you start playing it and you're like, why is this game? Cute game being hard is evil, true. Yeah, yeah. All right. All right.

Project Zamboyed. You all have not played this game. For some people, it may not be your cup of tea. This is like one of those games that takes into account for everything. So it's like you got to keep track of your water, your hunger, your exhaustion, your heat, you know, your fear level, anxiety. level. There's a bunch of things about this game. However. I don't even do that in my real life.

I know, right? However, God, it is probably one of the most, if you get into this game, it is probably one of the most fun, in-depth games of zombies of all time. It is a lot like a job. Don't get me wrong. It is really hard to,

it is also isometric, which is also something a lot of people do not like. But once you play it and you understand, the game. Oh my gosh. Playing this is the most fun, sometimes relaxing, sometimes the most nerve-wracking game of all time.

The mods in this game are also awesome. You can do like different type of gun mods. You can do different types of zombies where you know, you can make it super hard where they sprint at you. There's pretty much no way to win. You just keep trying to survive as long as you go. Like eventually,

the power runs out so you have to get generators and gas then your water runs out then you have to like do rain barrels and stuff like that um super fun with friends highly highly recommend playing with friends at your first time or watching a YouTuber play but gosh man this game there is uh there there will be times where it's like you hate the game but then there are times where it's like this is probably the most fun game i ever play out only one yeah the character customization is huge uh with mods too you you can do different types of stuff so like you can be a police officer so you have good with guns you can be a farmer so you're really good with farming immediately there's like a skill treat and it it kind of is representative of real life like if you start off know you know some things but you

don't know how to like fix up a car or you don't know how to farm or you don't know how to work a gun or you don't know how to do like plumbing or electricity or stuff like that you and it as you go on you can read books about it you can learn you disassemble stuff you learn the skill tree super fun straight up probably one of the most fun in-depth games i've ever played not everyone's cup of tea but so it's it's fun if you get into it and then i've in hotline miami yeah so the reason i love this game has nothing to do with the gameplay at all it's um soundtrack like it's the best soundtrack i've ever heard in any game as you're playing the game

and like the game gets a little harder and you're playing bosses and whatnot like the music kind of cherries the gameplay so it's I feel like for me the music is what makes this game it's not even like the you know the game itself

and it's also like a really cool game too because it's one of those games like we're talking earlier where it looks kind of cutesy like, you know, very, like, pixel art and cute little characters, like, oh, like, there's someone with a chicken mask. Then you're playing a game and you're doing, like, the most brutal things to people like, you know, getting the baseball bat and bashing in their kneecaps and things like that. It's violent. It's super violent, but it's pixel art. So it is, it, you don't expect it, you know. It's, it's one of those games, like, until you play, if you've never played it, like, you're, you're, you're,

you're in for a treat. It's the first time I played it, I was just like, wow, like I've never ever played a game like this. And it made me fall in love with Devolver Digital. Like after I played Halli at Miami, I just had to play like every Devolver digital game ever. And I think they make like some of us, some of the coolest games.

So yeah, I recommend this game. It's also really cheap and I believe I have it on my Switch too. I do have it on my Switch. So, like I said, if it runs on your switch, you can probably run on your PC. Oh, they made, uh, entered a gungeon and Colta de Land. Wow. Oh, shoot. Devolver Digital's.

Amazing. Oh, my God. I didn't realize they made both. And they made Human Fall Flat, too. Wow. And then, uh, my friend Pedro. I'm not playing my friend, Pedro. You know, have you seen that game?

No, I'm not. Uh, you should look it up. It's, uh, it's, uh, it's basically, just shoot bananas at people this game it has a amazing rating what the heck it's fun dude

23,000 reviews that had 10 out of 10 rating on Steam that's crazy okay I may check that again okay yeah devolved all like I've never played a bad devolver digital game they're all good

all right I don't know if anyone's ever played Plans versus Zombies or it hasn't played Plans or Zombies in Rowdy. But yeah, you guys got to play it. You guys got at least go through one run through of Plants versus Zombies. Probably one of the most unique games you've ever played. It's not scary anyway, but it is heart racing. Some of the final boss levels can actually be kind of stressful. Lots of strategies you can do.

Yeah, exactly. Like, look at the game of the year edition. You can get it for five. bucks or you can get the part of the pop cap bundle with boggle you get bejewled like zoom you can play all these games for 16 bucks so fun love the ps3 version with co-op yeah you know what the i have not played the newer versions of it but gosh i remember having the physical disc that you like put it to your to your like little laptop so fun the music's awesome everyone's got to play this at least once You play it once.

Jeff's Kiss. I don't... This is on mobile too, right? Yes, it is on mobile. It's on Switch. It's on PC. It's on console. It's on everything.

Literally everything you can think of, it's on. 100% worth playing. At least once. Sometimes you can even do a second run through and try something to do. Tetris. I mean... Oh, yeah. There's so much I put into this.

So this is not just Tetris. This is Tetris effect. So for the same reason that I love Devolver, oh, not Devolver, a Hotline Miami because of the music. I love this game because of the music. Yes, it's Tetris. Like everyone thinks Tetris is just like a simple, boring game because it's been around for like 40 years, right?

But I do challenge and not challenge, I do, well, I guess I do challenge. I challenge anyone to play this game and not fall in love with it. So this game, it's also on VR, which is cool. I tried it once on VR and it brings you inside the Tetris world. It's really, really cool. So this game, as the, you know, like you play Tetris out, the pieces get faster and faster as they fall, right? So as the pieces fall faster, the music speeds up and as you clear lines, you add beats to the

song itself. So it's like you become part of the game. And after a while, you really do feel the Tetris effect. So the Tetris effect, for those that don't know, it's this actual real life thing where when you play so much Tetris, that you start seeing your world as Tetris. You start kind of piecing like everything together. So you're walking down the street and And you're like connecting the tree to the building and the car to the, you know, pavement, like dog to the fire hydrant. Everything is just kind of starts blending it together. And that's how you feel playing this game because you're, you really do like become the video game.

It's really hard to explain, to be honest. It's just really, really cool. And if you haven't played Tetris Effect, highly recommend it. have it on PC and Switch and my laptop, even though it makes my laptop sound like a jet engine. I do play it on here. The other thing about this game, too, is, you know, I'm not a big VR guy because I've never really had like a game where I'm like, oh, I got to invest in a whole VR setup now and say this game until I played this game. Like this game actually made me want to get VR goggles. And it's because when I tried it, I was like, wow,

like now I'm even more deeper into this game. It's a really, really cool game. Yeah, and like Dead Games 2 says on the chat, it's the best stress relieving game. Or no, he says the best stress relieving game is Doom. That gives me anxiety, but actually, it definitely relieves my stress. You know, you know, it's actually scientifically proven

that the number one stress leaving game is Tetris. It is scientifically proven. And ever since then, I always had Tetris on my phone. I always have it on flights. I have it for long road trips. I have it on my phone at all times. Because it's that good. I like playing Tetrio.

It's a free to play game. Yeah, and that's why I said you don't have to buy it, but I do have this. Here I'll swap over. So you guys can see and hear how awesome this game is. I love the. back. This guy's crazy good, too.

Did you hear that? And did you hear the, like, the little drop? That was so cool. Yeah. I'll see if Mike gets more frustrated and Tetris from Eldon Ring. Oh, 100%, 100% Tetris. Yeah, honestly, I looked through some of the odds of me playing Elder Ring. I didn't rage that bad.

Like, I'd be like, oh, come on. But, like, I never, Tetris, I would rage at. I would physically be, like, mad. because I would miss like a line on my on purpose or like you know I was like oh let me flip it but then I flip it one extra time Tetris 100% Tetris is probably the hardest game ever made and also I think the most perfect game ever made. It's simple. It's super simple and kind of going back to what I was saying earlier where you know this game is simply to learn and difficult to master like Tetris is the blueprint for that philosophy basically like it's. Tetris has been around my entire life for the most part. This game is like 40 years old or whatever.

And like just a couple months ago, some 16-year-old kid, you know, did something in Tetris that has never been done before. So people are still, like, people are still mastering this game after 40 years. You know, think about that. Like, that does not happen with other games. Like, this game is a master. piece. So, yeah, if you've never played Tetris,

Tetris Effect is definitely a good one to check out. But any version of Tetris, to be honest, it's fun. Is it Balatro? Balatro. I don't know how to pronounce it. Balatro. Balatro. I have not played this game. However, I have seen so many videos about this game. It is one of the most unique games.

So for those that don't know what a rogue like is, it's basically you start from scratch and you keep going until you basically die. And as you go on, you basically get stronger, get bigger combo, stuff like that, more items. In this game,

it's about building a deck, which is very interesting. I've not seen this before, but it's very satisfying. I haven't have you played this game before. I've been wanting to play it because it was like one of the, like,

most played games recently. And I love car. I'm a huge car. card game guy so i got to check it out yeah i want to see if i can pull up like the thing but i just want to see the uh um the stats on it because the stats on this game is insane remember all these games by the way are like really highly rated like we want to make sure that every single one of these games is um like has some sort of yeah it's an overwhelmingly positive game overwhelming positive with 39,000 reviews all saying it is one of the best that's crazy

so here i have a video from r t game and this is what kind of made me go oh this game is pretty cool ready send it just multiplies and he just trying to get as big a multiplier as possible this is what we work so right now he he has like he has a thing that multiplies the kings and he has like like all these kings here. So it just keeps going and going and going and going and going and going. And it just, you see, like, look at this, look at this number. The number on the left side is just... But what's the point of this game?

I have no idea what's happening here. Basically, so there's like, you'll have like a combo of like, okay, so you have a king multiplier 1.5. And then you'll get like things where it's like, oh, you can take out your eight and nine. and get more kings. And basically your end goal is to just get to this crazy combo of just absolute chaos. It lasts for like minutes on end. It literally is just,

it's just to get like these crazy compals and so satisfying to like watch people play and like get like the perfect combo. It's a world like, you know, very interesting. I'm going to check it out. I think I may buy this game honestly. I have no idea what the heck I just watched.

I'll check it out. I've heard nothing. the positives out of that game from Lucky. Yeah, exactly. So if people are saying it's good, it probably is probably good. So, oh, Ivan, I know your favorite, what are your favorite games all the time?

Super Mario Odyssey right here. Oh, man. Yes. So when the Nintendo Switch first came out, I pre-ordered it with, um, I like to call it, uh,

Zelda walking simulator, which is, uh, Zelda game, what's it called? The Breath of the Wild. And I hated that game. To this day, I still don't like that game. To me, it was not a Zelda game. And I was like, I thought, like, I raced my money on the switch. I'm like, man, like, it was all pumped up to play the Zelda game, and I did not like the Zelda game at all. I know

I know that's a very highly rated game. I know people love it, but just was not for me. Then I got Super Mario Odyssey and I was like, man, like this Nintendo Switch was totally worth it. This was hands down my favorite Mario game ever. I've played every single Mario game. And Odyssey easily, like my favorite one ever, made me re-fall in love with Nintendo after not having a Nintendo system for a really long time. And the game is not a hard game.

You know, it's an easy game. But what's cool about Odyssey is it's open world. So you can just, it's not like as deep as like a Stardue Valley where I'm going to go fishing or whatever. But it's open world enough where you can just walk around and explore. And even though there are platform elements in the game, which I love and which is what Mario is known for, it's not entirely like that, you know. So there's a lot of you can do in this game, really fun. And the other reason I love this game too is because my oldest daughter, she's six now.

She's barely starting to really get into playing video games. And this is the game that she plays. This is like the game where she's learning, you know, like how to play a video game, basically. And she loves it. So we play this game together a lot. and she gets a kick out of it. You know, she's like jumping up and down, hitting blocks, catching, flowing, swimming,

all that stuff. Like she's really, like, immersed into this game. And I love watching her do that. So yeah, this game, if you haven't played Mario Odyssey, my opinion is the best Mario game. I know there's so many Mario games, and you can probably just pick any single one and make a reason for why that one's the best.

but for me personally this one kind of it has like the best elements of every Mario game I think so I mean I played this game when I first got my switch gosh man this

this game is so fun I mean 97 and it's actually one of I think when we did our top rated games this is like number four five or something like that of all time of all time which is crazy so yeah highly recommend

up there. Alrighty. Legally, I don't think we could say we endorse emulators, but... Technically, technically emulators are not illegal. Oh, okay. So they're not illegal. Okay, so... Immulators themselves are not illegal.

Gotcha. The ROMs, the ROMs for the emulators, that's where the gray area... and the law comes into play. Even though I'm not a lawyer, I just play one on social media. There's that. But, I mean, from my understanding, my very minimal understanding of the law

and how a lot of people justify emulation is, like, there's some games that you bought that you want to weigh on your PC. So, for example, like, let's say you did buy. Super Mario Odyssey and you want to play it on your PC, well, you can't because it's a Nintendo game. Well, there's actually a way you could do that for your PC. And that's like by, you know, installing a Nintendo Switch emulator on your PC and downloading the ROM for the game you bought and then playing on your PC. So that's how people usually justify it.

Another way they justify it too is like in the video game history sense. So there's a lot of games that were made a long time ago that you can't buy anymore, you can't play anymore because they don't make those systems anymore, they don't make those games anymore. So maybe you do want to play like the original Tetris on an NES, right? Well, you could, I guess, still buy those things, but it's not super easy to come across. but you can install a Nintendo emulator and get the ROM

and you can hook up your controller or even take it with your keyboard or whatever. So there's, I know there's definitely people who are very anti-emulator that say it's like, you know, like basically pirating. But then on the other flip side, there's people that say, well, it's not pirating because I already bought this game or I can't buy this game. How else am I going to play this game? Exactly. So I see it as, you know, there's arguments for both sides.

but like I said, I'm not a lawyer, so don't use what I said. The gospel here. It's not legal advice, yes. But yeah, it is a fun way to play video games. I've done it myself. I agree. Unless the FBI is watching the stream, I've never, ever, ever, ever, ever emulated a video game. Yeah, I agree.

I mean, like, for games now that you can buy, I'd say probably don't want to emulate it. However, games like old Pokemon games, old N64 games. Like, come on, man. Like, I'm not going to pay $500,000 just to buy a console and a thing. Yeah, I'm going to download a PC emulator of my computer. I've really played the games. The games they can't run with my spouse. Oh.

NZXT will put a bounty at NZC for speaking on this matter. Oh, yeah. That would be cool if you could install a PC emulator on your switch or your phone and then play like PC games on those things. You can do some sort of mirroring so you have it on your phone and then you can play it on like your TV or something like that. I don't know if you do PC to iPhone or PC to Samsung or Google Pixel. but probably away from it. You know the ironic thing about this? I see people talking about Nintendo here in the chat.

And I'm a huge Nintendo fan. I love Nintendo because, like, in my opinion, Nintendo is the only console that makes sense to buy if you are a PC gamer. And the reason for that is because Nintendo, in my opinion, actually provides you with, things you can't do on a PC, games you can't play on a PC, you know, for the most part. You know, obviously there's a few exceptions to that rule with the Xbox and PlayStation,

but for the most part, like 99% of the things you can do on a Nintendo Switch, you can't do on a computer, right? So that's why I think it makes sense, but anyway, going back to my point here, the ironic thing about Nintendo really cracking down on people who are emulating or infringing on their copyrights and things like that Nintendo themselves that has been caught like using ROMs for their games and I know this for I knew this before it was even like a known thing because I remember when um Nintendo Switch online first came out and like I was like oh cool I could finally play one of my favorite Mario games ever Mario Brothers three right up until then I had only been able to play

as a ROM through an emulator because I didn't have my Nintendo forever. And I knew what the ROM looked like because every Mario 3 ROM has this weird blue vertical line like on the left of the screen. So I was looking forward. And finally I can play this game without that stupid vertical line. And sure enough, when I fired up the game on my Nintendo Switch that I had purchased from the official Nintendo. I had that line.

I'm like, oh, well, I guess Nintendo is using the same exact ROM that you can download from whatever sketchy website. That's crazy. Yeah. It was crazy. I was shocked at that. But I mean, I don't know why they did that, but it is what it is. And the same lines also. So I bought the, remember the NES mini?

Yes. I bought that because I was like, okay, well, maybe they put the official ROM. or the official game on this one and not a ROM. And sure enough, that same blue vertical line was on, but any other like, man, these guys, like, they go hard after people who are, who are, you know, costing them money by doing things, like emulation and whatnot,

but they themselves are using those ROMs. So it's a little double standard. Even though I do love Nintendo, I don't, I don't think that's pretty cool of them, you know. Unless they're watching the stream, Yeah, I love it, yeah. All right, so now we have three games each on our personal recommendation. This does not mean that these games can be easily run, but these are just like, you guys, we both have played these games religiously.

Games we love. Games we love. Ivan, I know you love these games. Yeah, so I'm a huge baseball nut. I've been in love with baseball ever since I was like five years old, you know, when I think I fell in love with baseball. The day my dad just randomly came home one day with a pack of baseball cards from work. I had no idea what baseball was, no idea what baseball cards were. And then I opened up this pack of baseball cards and there was a little chewing stick of bubble gum in there.

And I was like, this is cool. And I started collecting baseball cards. So my dad would bring me a pack of cards every day when he'd go home from work. And then I was, I got to the point where I was like, I want to play baseball, right? So I started playing baseball and eventually got into video games and started playing baseball video games.

And when I played this game, the first time I played it, I was like, this is not baseball. This is a spreadsheet simulator. And I had a really hard time getting into it. And you can see right there, the screenshots, out of the park 25. They've been doing this since the year 2000. Wow. And this game has been around for a while.

And it really is a spreadsheet simulator. Like, it's not like, it's not a game where you're going to, like, test your timing by hitting a baseball or, like, you don't do anything that you were doing a baseball game. Like, you don't throw the ball, you don't catch the ball, you don't run, you don't do any of that. What it is, it's, it's a, like a sports manager game where there's different ways to play it, you know, but the general way is you're just basically the general manager of a baseball team

and you play through a season and things happen, you know, random things, sometimes good, sometimes bad, and the whole goal is to win the World Series. But if you're a baseball fan, this is probably the, the closest thing you can get to actually like running a real baseball team. And I know that because real baseball managers like endorse this game and they have actually said that. This is the game that like people that play baseball and like run baseball organizations. This is the game that they play when they're on the bus traveling with the teams or things like that or when they're in the clubhouse because it's it's almost like practice with the real thing.

It's super realistic, super fun. There is a, I'm not going to lie, a pretty steep learning curve, especially if you don't know the intricacies of baseball, you know, which is like baseball is a very stat-driven game. There's hundreds of stats, and that's what this game is all about. Like, you just have basically spreadsheets with numbers, and then it's up to you to decide what to do based on those numbers, and then, you know, you play baseball that way.

So I've played this game a lot, probably every year since 21, I believe. So it's been four or five years since I've been really, really going deep into this game. And yeah, I love it. I have not like, I was always, I was honestly, like, against baseball since I was young. Like, I hated baseball. and then ever since I met you and then Andy I started getting into it and then now actually this Sunday I'm going to a Mariners game with a friend

so I'm just like now now I'm getting into it so it is really honestly I do get it dude I don't want to make turns into a baseball podcast but I do think kind of like I feel about baseball how I feel about Tetris where it's like the perfect game now that's why I feel about baseball because if you think about it

There's so many things in baseball that shouldn't make sense. Like for example, every ground ball that goes into the infield, every ground ball for the most part, 99.9% of the ground balls, when the fielder fields the ball and throws to first base, the runner is like almost always safe. Like it's always a really close call, right? So I always think how the heck did

someone just decide the distance between the base path is going to be 90 feet. It's not going to be 89 feet. It's not going to be 91 feet. It's going to be exactly 90 feet. And that's going to make every single play as close as possible. That boggles my mind. It's also the only sport where you don't have the ball when you're on offense. You know, when you're on offense, you're trying to, you know, the other team has the ball, really weird, right, when you think about. But like I said, I don't want to turn into a baseball podcast, but I do love baseball. There's tons of things I love about it.

Oh, you'll be able to talk some more baseball after my recommendation. No worry. No worries. All right. So I see Dead Games in chat. So Hunt Showdown. As you can tell, I have almost 600 hours in this game. I literally played this last week, and I continue to play this game.

This game is one of the most unique shooters of all time to break it down. it's like an old cowboy shooter like you're in the 1800s all your weapons are old cowboy weapons so you know like in today's day you have unlimited ammo and you can just drop a mag and just do all the stuff right like this game is slow these the shot the way to reload is slow um you know if you drop a mag you drop it you lose out bullet or whatever like that it's slower however one of the most unique shooters i ever play and once you get into it, you are fully into it, and it's so much fun. We actually did a little, a little partnership with Hunt Showdown like a year or two ago, and devs are awesome.

Straight up, one of the most listening, like, they listen so much. Amazing, amazing, game, amazing recommendation. Some YouTubers I would watch is like Nino, N-E-N-O-H, or Racha. It's like R-A-T-C-H-A. Those guys are amazing at this game. And there's so much that you can learn about it.

It is straight up one of the most unique shooters you'll ever play. It is slower, but gosh, it's so fun. It is so fun when you get into it. It takes a long time. Highly, highly recommend getting into this game. Cry-Tech. Also, people that made a crisis. So heads up.

But yeah, I won't go too much into it because we're running alone in time, but gosh, love this game Ivan super mega baseball so i lied i am so super mega baseball i love for all the reasons that uh for all the things that out of the park baseball does not have which this game you're actually you know man managing or not managing you're controlling the players you're hitting you're pitching you're pitching you're you're sliding, you're throwing, you're doing all that.

There's also the aspect where you could be the manager of the team and have a franchise and, you know, control different, make things to control different outcomes throughout the season and things like that. Super fun to play. So what I love about this game, though, is it's, I don't want to say super cartoony, but it's cartooning, right? Like, it's not like a realistic looking game. It's actually more like an arcade-style game.

Like, I don't know if you remember the arcade game, NBA Jam. Yes. Yeah, where it's like, you know, you would like jump from the half court line and then slam dunk and it would say, he's on fire, you know, like, things like that. This game is not to that extreme, but it's similar. in that it's a fun baseball simulator. And the other reason I love it is because even though it is cartoony and there's like a lot of over the top things in the game, like for example, if you strike out,

the umpire will, you know, do like a little break dance move and yell, Steve, right? You know, like it's really cool. But it's also super, super realistic. It's, I think probably the most, realistic like baseball simulation even more so than MLB the show which is I know for baseball people like that's like the gold standard when it comes to a baseball sim to me this actually plays a lot better and it's been around for a while I mean it's been made by Metalhead studios

been around probably like 10 years or so. I play this game in the office with Andy when I'm there. We go into a podcast room and fired this bad boy up. So if you're a baseball fan, I do recommend it. It's definitely one of my favorite games ever. All righty, Warframe. As you can tell, another big game I played with 400 hours in this game. It is free to play.

When do you work, Mike? This was when I was in high school. This is when I literally didn't do anything in summer. Like, I'll go to my, I'll play lacrosse and then the days there, I just play games. I just play games till like the morning. Super fun game. It's a looter shooter kind of game. You grind for stuff.

Kind of think of like destiny, but with cooler movement. Awesome devs. Game has changed so much at my last play. I haven't played. years but uh gosh it the movement in this game is amazing like it's a little called ninjas play for free that's their that's their slogan because of like you could like wall run you can do like this like cool like ground pound you can uh do like a slide and then like you kind of twirl on the air to get some momentum uh there's tons of different classes so there's like ones where you can create

a bubble around you that freezes anyone that comes inside uh There is one that, like, saps life from people. There's one that burns people. There's one that, what's it called? Like, you can pull, like, anything magnetic. Super fun. Probably one of the most in-depth looters I ever played. Gosh, man.

I'm before to avoid an old area. Yeah, and that's the thing. There's different types of enemies. There's, like, infected. There's, like, these metal guys. There's void. straight up. There's so much you can go into the game.

The weapons, the grinding aspect, everything. Oh, gosh. I don't know why. I thought I would hate grinding looter shooters, but this game, for some reason, it just tickles that one part of my brain. It's like, yes, I need to do that.

But 100% worth it. I won't go too much into it, but you guys can look up Warframe. The devs are awesome, and they do, like, a dev talk, and they do, like, a ton of... Awesome. Straight up. Amazing game. I always wanted to play it.

It's free. So you can try it out for a little bit. You do need a slightly better PC to run some games. Like some of the long... I'm not going to play it. Yeah, then he may not be able to. You can play at work. You should bring your work home PC. I know.

I just have no space for it at home, man. True. Maybe when my kids finally go to college, I'll... That's not for like 15, 20 years, man. All right, so my last recommendation here is Magic the Gathering Arena. So I love magic. Even though I honestly, as much as I love magic, I don't play it like very often, like probably like once a year.

I think the last time I played it was with Andy at the office. But I fell in love with magic when I was a kid. It came out when I'll never forget. get this. It was the summer of me going from seventh to eighth grade, magic came out, and I had this friend who was like hardcore to Dungeons and Dragons that my mom told me to stay away from because she thought he was a devil worshiper. He was a cool kid, but I remember his name was David, and he was cool. And when this game came out, he's like, hey man, I got to show you this game. It's called Magic. And it's kind of like Dungeons and Dragons. But

with cards and I was like, that's cool. I mean, he should know how to play magic and I fell in love with it. And they bought some cards and started playing with them. And then when eighth grade started, I took my magic cards first day of school. And then sure enough, there was like a dozen kids that brought their magic cards.

So when I was like in junior high in high school, I played a ton of magic. That's like all, that's what I did when I was in school, like every lunch just playing magic. And as I got older, it got harder to play magic with people, Because obviously, you know, people have responsibilities like work and kids and, you know, things like that. So little by little started playing less and less until this game came out. Once Magic the Gathering Arena came out, it was just like, boom, I was back in it, man.

Like I could finally play magic against people again, which is really, really cool. So what makes this game really fun is that it's relatively easy to play. play, it's not like, there's not a lot of manual work involved with this. So, you know, if you ever played magic, you know, there's a lot involved when it comes to the cards abilities, the counters that go on the cards. There's a lot of tracking you got to do with like, you know, points and life and all this stuff. There's just tons going on.

Very time consuming. Like a magic game could last hours. These games don't. They last like, you know, five, ten minutes. And the reason is because. the computer does everything for you. The other thing I like about it is that it brings in all the new magic cards into the game, like really fast.

Like as soon as the set comes out, it's like on this and you can get the same cards digitally, which is really, really cool. I will say though, that even though it is a free-to-play game, that it is, I don't want to say it's pay to win, but I mean, you can buy like, you can buy all the best cards basically. And because of that, there are a lot of people that are magic fans that hate this game, because

I've even heard people say the best card in this game is your credit card, which I think is pretty sweet. I don't necessarily see it that way because sure, you could play that way. Like, you could just, you know, decide I'm going to I'm going to pay and get all the best cards I'm going to build the best decks I'm going to match up against people who have these same cards as me and whatnot and

then you can do get out or you can do what I do and like I haven't I haven't spent a single penny on this game and I just you know I go in there with the I just play this with like the pre-made starter decks they give you and I have a blast I can play this game all day if if I could. So I really recommend it. It's, in my opinion, the best way to play magic online. There is like an official magic. I think it's called like magic online. It's different than arena, but it's super old school. Like that's like been around for like 20 years and has every single magic card under the sun, which if you've not, if you're not a magic fan, like there's 100 i think there's i don't know how many total magic cards are there have you know like oh gosh

thousands so many there's 27 000 unique cards 27 000 oh my god think about that that's a lot of cards yeah ember uh my girlfriend has like a stack of cards that she's had since she was like young and then she's starting to get back into it and it's just like there's so many i'm like i have no idea Like I used to play Yu-Gia when I was young And even I didn't know what was doing Then I look at all her cards I'm like I have no idea what any of this is Yeah

It's not hard to play It's just there's just so much you can There's just so many cards So many different abilities In the cards that It There is a learning curve But once you're into it man

It's really fun game Tony says Pokemon top I've never played the Pokemon. I have, I have a, I have two Pokemon cards right here, but I have no idea how to play them. Legit, do not know how to play them. I never do how to play the game. So they're cool to have. That's it. Well, you bring a Pokemon. So I guess the claim to fame for magic is that it was the first collectible card game. Oh, yes. They invented this genre. So if there was no magic, there'd be no Pokemon. There'd be no Yu-Gi-O.

There'd be no, what's that new? Disney one. Andy plays that. Oh, Marvel. Marvel Snap. No, no, not that one. There's a... Is it at the card game? The Marvel card game? It's not that someone I'm thinking about. Lorkana, Larkana, however you pronounce it. It's like an actual card game, not like Marvel Snap. It's like a real physical... Oh, it was like, oh, yeah, Disney, Lourcan.

fan of trading card game yes yeah so yeah if it wasn't for magic none of these other games would exist i think so yeah if you if you haven't played magic i mean i think arena is definitely a good uh starting point because they make it simpler than actually like and cheaper than having to buy all the other cards and whatnot all righty and now for the final one see dead game solid click preview risk of rate two god dang man this game you can not tell me otherwise i have 148 hours in this game but i honestly uh i stopped playing it because i got i got went to college if i wasn't going to college i'd probably have like three to 400 hours in this game banger game play mods are fun uh pretty good game 25 bucks and

honestly it goes on sale a lot too the devs are awesome i just want you guys to listen to this music All right. This is, so when you play, you'll, when you play, you'll hear this, uh,

in the background. And Chris, I don't know how to pronounce your last name. But whoever you are, just listen to this guitar. Like, just imagine you're fighting tons of enemies and bosses with that going on in the background.

Oh my gosh. It'd feel you can't. It's just you feel so powerful. For those that don't know, it's a roguelike game. game, like the, it's basically you start off as like, there's many different types of playable characters. You start off and then, you know, you gain items, you kill more enemies, you gain more items,

then you enter a boss area, you go to the next eight and just keeps going and going and going and as you go on, the enemies get stronger, more enemies pop out, but as you do, the more items you get and the more powerful you get, and you get to a point where you literally just sitting there, You're not even touching your thing and you're just killing everything on stage. It is so fun. You can literally go on a run for like an hour, two hours, three hours, if you really want to. Gosh, this game is amazing. You can also, there's mods in this game where you can play as Goku.

So if that doesn't entice you with the mods, oh my gosh. The music in this game. I saw a Mario Kart mod the other day where you can race as Goku. That was pretty cool. Really? Yeah. Goku is just everything. I hate to say it.

I never got it to Dragon Ball Z because it was always on when I was going to bed so I could not watch it. So I never got it to it. But Risk of Rain 2, Goat game. Straight up. Amazing.

It takes a while to understand all items. Like you'll see like the item like a ukulele. You're like, what does that item do? But once you understand it, it's fantastic. And you'll get out to things called God Runs, you just get super lucky and you get like the best items ever oh my god you feel so good but

that's it on all the games i think we i mean that that was pretty that was pretty good we're pretty on time with everything uh do you have anything else ivan do you want to say before we go into the uh into the announcements no i just want to thank everyone for tuning in uh let us know if you'd like this podcast so we can do this again yeah um i mean we usually we honestly we rarely talk about the games we like to play yeah people ask us every so often and we'll say like oh yeah super mega baseball but it is kind of cool to explain what we like about these games so if you like it let us know if you don't like it let us know so then we can figure out what else to do on here yeah oh yeah and it's also cool about a risk rate too is also co-op so you can't play and you can play with multiple

more than with maz you plays like eight to ten people it's crazy sorry all righty so let me go into the announcements real quick and then i'll go ahead and give you you guys code word for the extra entries for sticking around for us um we just partnered with fly quest so uh shows to support the fly quest lcs and all their other esports teams uh awesome straight up they're awesome organization they're doing amazing into lcs right now let me see what what their record is into lcs uh they are wow they're third place they're four and uh four and one right now So they're doing really well. So watch FlyQuest when they come out.

I think their next game is on Sunday. Sunday. Their next game is Sunday. So watch that. Everyone in support FlyQuest. Time to fly, baby. We just launched our NXT Flex subscription. We didn't just launch it, but we have launched it a while ago.

You can get a gaming PC for just as little as like, what, $60 a month. It's awesome because of the warranty. you can upgrade every two years you can cancel anytime so it's awesome in my opinion it's also if you want to try a game if you have a PC that can't run a game that wants coming out

and you want to play it for a little bit 100% worth getting it you can return it at any time at Zexe dotco slash flex or exclamation point flex in chat highly recommended if you're traveling or you just want to try a new game for a little bit uh

oh like we talked about uh we're giving way a poochie but we're doing so much on our Discord. We're doing a Discord wallpaper and setups contest for some awesome prizes. So go to Discord.g.g slash NZXT. And if you do win a little poochie right here, you can show off your Poochie plush for a $25 steam gift card.

Again, Discord.org.com slash NXT. Check out the giveaway channels. It's every month. We're just pulling the winners from July right now. So just keep an eye out, everyone. And good luck. what else oh yeah and you know we're launching awesome products

we just launched a new power supply I have in the back right there we have RGB core single frame frames the new 87 flow case which I'm using right now so many more we're launching so much more stuff just you know keep an eye out at n6c.com

and I think that's it Ivan do you have anything before I give them to secret code word watch baseball there you go. Let's go Angels. I know. Ivan's a Dodgers fan, so I'm an Angels.

I'm a Dodgers fan, but I see the Angels as as little bro. I want them to do good, even though it suck. You know, it's because I'm a half Ducks fan, so I have to wrap the Angels, but, oh, both teams suck. All right, everyone. Thank you guys for joining us. I'll go ahead and give you guys a code word for 100.

or 500 extra entries into the uh poochie clean giveaway i'll go ahead and announce the winner into discord uh later today and i'll email the winner so keep an eye out for your email if you did win uh and the winner or is the code word is but can it run crisis that is the code word but can it run crisis let me check it wait let me just let me check if i did but can it or is it just can it run crisis? Yes, it is but can it run crisis.

But can it run crisis is the code word for 500 entries. So that's it. So thank you guys for joining us. And remember we're tuned in live every other Friday at 10 a.m. Pacific standard time on the official NCC Twitch. And don't get to listed the previous episodes on Apple podcast, Spotify and SoundCloud. You got any question for us? Send an email to podcast at ncc.com or tag at N6T on social media platforms.

Thank you guys for joining us. Have a safe, safe weekend. Enjoy yourself. Watch the baseball. I mean, anything? First person to email podcast at nzacc.com wins a prize. Oh, okay. Good luck.

Have a good day, everyone.