The Ringer-Verse - ‘Death Stranding 2' and the First Half of 2025 in Games | Button Mash

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Ben and Justin Charity have a spoiler-free discussion about Hideo Kojima's acclaimed PlayStation 5 sequel to 2019's 'Death Stranding,' 'Death Standing 2: On the Beach.' Then, after their brief reaction to casting news about the upcoming 'Street Fighter' film, Matt James joins to reflect on the year in gaming. The two construct joint top-10 lists of his and Ben's favorite games of the year so far, as well as their most anticipated games for the rest of 2025. Intro (0:00)‘Death Stranding 2: On the Beach’ Spoiler-Free Impressions (3:53)Reactions to ‘Street Fighter’ Casting News (46:22)Game of the Year So Far + 2025 Hype List (56:05)Outro (1:43:22) Host: Ben LindberghGuests: Justin Charity and Matt JamesProducer: Devon RenaldoAdditional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopowell Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Oh, hey there. It's your girlfriend, Whitfield. You might know me from a little show called The Real Housewives of New York City on Bravo. You are about to see a whole different side of me on edited, by the way. On my new podcast, please see below. Spoiler alert, it's not about passive-aggressive, company emails. It's actually way juicier than that. Join me every week as we get down and dirty with my friends, celebrities, experts, even some of our exes, from dating, the highs and lows of reality TV, career sex, you name it. And honey, we're not just going to spill the tea. I am here to smash the entire pot. Believe me, you're going to want to see and hear what's below. Please see below with me, Bryn Whitfield, is premiering soon. Available everywhere you love to listen to podcasts. For adults with Crohn's disease or ulcerative colitis symptoms, every choice matters. Trimphia offers self-injection or intravenous infuse.

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then you'd want a cargo liner. Or road trip goes sideways, ketchup goes rogue, ice cream drips. Yeah, you'd be pretty happy about those weather tech seat protectors. So just to be clear as the mud, you're inevitably going to step into the summer. You don't need weather tech unless you plan on doing summer. Visit weathertech.com today. And welcome into the ringerverse, your nexus feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Beach Thing Windbird.

senior editor for the ringer and button mash hosts. And I'm joined today by the ringer's resident Hideo head, a car carrying member of the Kojima clan, senior staff writer, Justin Charity. Hello, Justin. Welcome back. Hello. Hello. You've been absent from Buttmash for too long because you went and had yourself a bridge baby. Yeah, so you've been on leave. Congrats.

Yeah. Thank you. It is nothing like death strength. That's the thing. I thought like death's draining would be the ultimate sort of fatherhood vibe game. But now I just have this kind of this tedious fact checking in my head. It's like there's no poop in this game. Like what?

No. Not enough poop. You took the original Death Stranding as a documentary, just a hyper realistic. Hiking with your kid, your first kid. newborn. Well, it's good to have a kid. Now you can see BTs as you walk around the world if you have dooms or even if you don't. So that's always an advantage.

And I assume that you have a baby carrier of some sort around your chest. I don't know if there's like a fluid suspension situation. I'm actually a hard port. So my wife uses the carrier, right? I'll have moments where I'm like in a grocery store with Vivian. Her name is Vivian. The car. And she'll be fussing and she'll want to get out.

And I'll just carry around this door. Just throw over my shoulder. We don't need the straps. Press circle to soothe or whatever the button is. Yeah, you throw her in the air. Well, perhaps due to your new dadhead, your gaming time has been a little limited so far this year, though we look forward to you catching up on the best of the first half of the year and being back with us in the second half of the year.

but for that reason, I will be bringing in some support for the second segment on this episode. Matt James will be joining for the But-Mash tradition of the games of the first half of the year. You can get your games of the year lists and podcast everywhere, including right here at the Ring ofverse. But where else can you get games of the first half of the year? So Matt and I will be running down our respective personal top 10 lists and going over our most anticipated games of the second half of the year. Will Death Stranding 2 on the beach make my list? We will find out.

But let's get into this game, one of the biggest games of the year. We have both been playing Death Stranding 2 on the beach, developed by Kojima Productions, published by Sony Interactive Entertainment sequel to 2019's Death Stranding. We will be avoiding specific story spoilers here because the game is fairly fresh and new, and we haven't quite finished it.

It's long. It's long. It's long. Yeah. But we will talk a little bit about the premise and the setting and the world. And for anyone who did not play Death Stranding, not that I would know anything about that. We'll get to that in just a second. But if you know nothing about the universe of Death Stranding, which is a singular universe, would you care to provide any grounding, any synopsis, any summary of what we're dealing with here, just the highest level, most CliffsNotes version of what this world is about. Because people listening to this, most of you, right,

will know how Kojima lore works, where it's kind of hopeless to try to tell you the story of the death-strained. Like, just think of it like this, right? It's post-apocalyptic. Just think post-apocalyptic, the first game, right, you're traveling across the United States, as an underpaid Amazon deliveryman, delivering packages,

but also reconnecting humanity through the chiral network, right? You're going to these regions of the country where people have borrowed under Brown, have withdrawn, right, have become provincial. And you're saying, knock, knock, who's there?

I'm Sam. Sounds utopian to me, right, virtually. It's just, you're recording from a basement den right now, and we're just communicating, via video. That's just how it works in the world at this, or ending. Yeah. And you're

sort of reconnecting the United States, but there's also a lot of surreal science fiction, basically like babies and ghosts. And it's like this whole lore. Mads Mikkelson is a soldier in both World War I, World War II, and also Vietnam. And, you know, beyond that,

just think post-apocalyptic, surreal science fiction starring Norman Reyes featuring Les Addo. Like, yeah. That's the vital. Shouldn't be too hard to picture a post-apocalyptic story featuring Norman Redis where the dead have kind of come back to life. We've seen that. I have certainly seen that. I'm still seeing that as someone who can't quit the Walking Dead. But yeah, the dead have crossed over into our world. When they encounter the living, there is a void out.

There's kind of a matter, anti-matter reaction. Everything explodes. And so everyone has taken to their respective holes in the ground. They don't want smoke. Bunkers. People do not want to smoke. They said the dead can have the above ground. We will be down here with our PlayStation 5s. Exactly. Yeah.

And so not to give away everything about the first game, but generally, Norman Redis, he plays Sam Porter Bridges. He is a porter. And as you said, he's tasked with linking up this chiral network to reconnect the country and bringing everyone back into contact. And in this second game, close to a year has passed, and he's leading a domestic happy life. In fact, you must have identified with where Sam is at the start of this story.

He's just, he's on paternity leave, basically. It's just an idyllic and domestic, and he and baby Lou are spending some quality time together, but that probably would not make much of a game. I don't know, maybe it would, but that's not what Kojiba's very. vision is here. And so Sam is pressed back into service. And this time he's got to extend the Kairal links to Mexico and then Australia. So we have some new open worlds to explore here. He's back in business. And the game is back and arguably better than ever. Certainly the review scores have been rosier than they were the last time around. So only Jeff Keeley loves Kojima more than you.

And so. Does he even? That's the thing. Like I put me and Keely in a room together. Fight it out for the man's affection. But that makes you a good guest for this episode because you have a high tolerance for bonkers Kojima shit. Yeah. Yeah.

And here's the thing. Full disclosure, I didn't play the original Death Stranding. I think a lot of people bounced off of that game after trying it. And I pre-bounced off of it. I bounced off of it before I started because I just forecasted that I thought I would bounce off of it. Because everything that I read about it and watched, it just seemed tedious and laborious and confusing. And everything about it just repelled me actively. And I wasn't hosting a video game podcast at the time and just didn't feel obligated to play the game.

And so on one level, I was sort of dreading the release of Destranding 2 because I thought, well, I have to actually cover this this time, which means that I have to play this game. And that means that I have to just dive into Destranding 2, which is not an easy assignment. Just, yeah, I'll catch up on a lot of the lore. But corpus. Yeah, to understand that first game, even if you played it, was not simple. And so to understand it if you didn't play it, seems like it should have been even harder. But I am so pleasantly surprised to like this game as much as I do. I really, really like this game.

And I don't know whether I should now regret not having played Destranding and whether I should go back and play and experience the director's cut, or whether I was right to say, you know what, maybe that one wouldn't be for me. But a lot of the changes and improvements in this game actually made it much more for me. and it's just, it's a little less frictional, a little less, you know, oppositional, friendlier, maybe, in some ways, though still strange, still Kojima. So I'm curious how you feel about it as a veteran of the franchise and Kojima in general. Yeah, if I can go back and talk about my experience with the first game, right? Like, I did kind of worry the more we learned about it before it came out, that it would be one of those kind of, oh, I respect it more than I love.

like it games. But I actually, I loved Death Stranding. I think that that game, I mean, think about the timing of it. That's still like in the thick of, that's in the thick of COVID, right? Yeah, it came out right before. Right. So yeah, probably a lot of people were playing it mid-pandemic. Yeah. And I always think of Death Stranding kind of in conjunction with Breath of the Wild, frankly, in terms of how good, like, think about it. On paper, what is Death stranding. It is a, if you really oversimplified it, right, it's a open world exploration game with third person shooter mechanics. Right. That's what it is on paper. And, but describing it that way really does not, it undersells and it really doesn't account for the fact that death stranding,

the exploration in it feels very distinct and feels like, yeah, the mechanics of it, the fact that you're doing this, this weight management all of the time. Like, you're hiking and you're delivering packages. To me, it feels like just this really gratifying hiking simulator is just one aspect of it. And the exploration of it, it feels like there's just not any other game that feels like it. Even if it feels like open world exploration game is a huge genre at this point. I just think the movement, I think the philosophy of how like combat is designed in the game is really distinct. and I actually have some problems with it

when it comes maybe to sort of humanoid, you know, gun fights in the game, but the BT fights feel just so distinct. They feel like a kind of boss fight that just isn't in other video games. It's just the movement. Everything about the game feels kind of, like even the stuff that feels awkward and even a little funky, I both respect it and like it is what ended up being the case

instead of what I was worried about, which is like, I respect it more than I enjoy it. I think the way that you end up building, like, devices to end up terraforming the environment, right? Like, one of my favorite things in the post game of Death Stranding is how, like, you can build these zip lines, right? And you're just, you really are like, there's so much like mountainous space and snowy terrain and basically terrain that you will be tripping over and dropping all of your packages. So it's like the most gratifying.

thing in the world where you can build these elaborate zip line networks where you can just zoom across the continent just, you know, on a zip line. It's great. And it's stuff like that. It's just the peculiarity of the weapons, the peculiarity of the navigation tools. I just kind of got really engrossed in death stranding because of how distinct and specific it feels compared to a genre of game that I think otherwise by that point had started to feel, like I said, a breath of the wild notwithstanding, right, had started to feel a little stale, a little old, a little predictable, a little too like far cry kind of ruined everything. Yeah. I do regret not getting in earlier now because in retrospect, I was missing out, although maybe the lack of handholding in the first

game actually would have turned me off. And maybe this is a better introduction. For me, you have to know yourself as a player and what you will respond to and what will frustrate you. But one thing that has pleasantly surprised me is that I have not really felt lost story-wise. And I'm sure there's context I'm missing and there's depth and there's character relationships and everything because very few games do a decent job of really bringing you up to speed.

like previously on segments for video games. They're just, they're never adequate because you're talking about dozens of hours that you spent with something. And they could never sum it up. And most of them don't even really try. And maybe they just assume that you're going to go to YouTube and you're going to watch a recap video, which I assumed that I would do and should do. But this game actually gave me a pretty good grounding. I felt like at least in what happened the first time around, just the basics of the story and who people were. And then you referenced this in-game encyclopedia, which is called the corpus.

And it's very much in the vein of the active time lore system from Final Fantasy 16, which I loved. And I thought that was so innovative. And I wanted more games to do something like that. And I'm glad that they have learned from that because it's just a great system where even during cutscenes, you can pause and go to this menu and it'll be an on-screen prompt. and you can just, because it's a stream of proper nouns in this game. It's just so much lore and so many terms and so many names, but you can always just stop and go to the glossary and familiarize yourself with what this weird thing is.

And that has helped me to no end. So from what I understand, this story in the sequel is a little more grounded and a little more on an individual level and kind of character. based or they do a better job of sort of parceling out the characters and making them more present in the story. So I'm pretty deep in and I haven't had that hard a time following what's going on, aside from the times when it's supposed to be ambiguous and kind of confusing, which is part of the appeal. Yeah, of Kojima games in general.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You have to kind of balance like there are these deep, profound. philosophical musings about life and death. And then there's also just like a guy named Die Hardman and, you know, like doll man and tar man and just various men.

Well, more women in this game. I would say that's rating two. More women. More women. That's true. Yeah. It's just, it's not subtle the naming conventions of Kojiba. And that's not new.

And so there's just a distinctive tone to him and some of the longtime writers who accompany him. And it's, I guess, an acquired taste maybe that you have certainly acquired years ago with Metal Gear. But it's just there's like an absurdity and a silliness to it. And it's just bonkers. And yet sometimes it's also serious and somber and profound. And a lot of this game is about loneliness and sadness and mourning. and it can be kind of affecting on that level while also still being

sort of incomprehensible sometimes and just so strange, but singular. It just feels like it is an individual's vision. And I don't want to reduce it to Kojima. Obviously, many, many people work on this game and contribute to bringing that vision to life. But it just does not feel focus tested.

Yeah, you know what I was thinking a lot about when playing so far playing Death Stranding 2. The game I played immediately before it was Doom the Dark Ages. And I, you know, with the new Doom games, I really like them, but I'm not a huge fan

of the, I would call it, the loreification of Doom. Right? Doom used to be these boomer shooters where you just shoot demons and it's so threadbare, the lore of it. And yeah, the newer games there's way more talking. in them. Let's put it like that. And I was like just participating in a discussion online about this.

And you know, I just, I got the sense from like people younger than me. They actually like that. They and, and I think this is a thing you see in games and even in like TV and movies. It's like, actually lots of people are just into super glorified content. Right. And with that stranding, I bring this up because like everything you're saying about how saturated, how proper namey, The Lori is, like, that's actually the stuff that I like less. I feel a little less engaged by, you know what it is? I like moments. I think there are really effective emotional moments in the first and the second game.

I think there's really effective, like, moments of characterization, either individually or in terms of building character relationships. But in terms of the overarching storytelling of death stranding, I'm definitely. Tommy Lee Jones with his hands up going, I don't care. It's like, that's the thing. I love death stranding in spite of that stuff. And I think there's something for people like me and people who like the loreification of doom, right?

Like if like I think there are people who do thoroughly, you know, engage with the lore of death stranding. But there are also people like me who I think can really retreat actually into the more meditative, quiet aspects of the game where you're hiking with a baby. And really the only sounds are the creepy sounds of the odoric when BTs are around or like the sounds of Lou, whether Lou is happy or sad, you know, in a bad mood at that time. Yeah, I think the plaintive meditative aspects are really well balanced with the very talkative exposition of aspects of these games, as I'd put it.

Yeah, I agree. I don't think that many games have done a better job of capturing that post-apocalyptic feeling. Just like, this is a different world and you're on your own and there are threats everywhere, but also sometimes it's just beautiful. Yeah, it's just, it's meditative. And if you wanted to be reductive and dismissive, and some people do, they will just kind of call this a walking simulator or, and it is, like, there's a lot of walking in this game.

but it also like realistically simulates the walking. You know, most walking simulators, the walking is not mechanically complex. It's hold forward. Yeah. Exactly. There's like minimal interactivity. Whereas in this, the walking is a complex mechanic. It is maintaining your balance.

It is organizing your cargo. And I thought that that was going to be something that I wouldn't like, that I would just find that, as I said, to be tedious. Just, I want to go from point A to point B. I don't want to have to like organize what I'm holding in my hands and what I'm putting in my backpack and what I'm, you know, strapped to my side or whatever. But that stuff actually becomes quite compelling. And it's streamlined from what I understand in this game. I mean, you can just auto balance your cargo if you don't want to get into the nitty gritty of it.

And there are also a lot of ways to avoid walking, which we can get into. But there is something really satisfying about just the traversal. in this game. Just I am a lone person here and I'm the last hope of humanity to kind of connect these outgross these outliers. And there's kind of a constant questioning of like, is this a good thing? What I'm doing here? Should I actually be linking up these people? Am I hurting the world? Is it better to be off the grid? Is it better to just stay on paternity leave indefinitely? But there's just something so satisfying about, you know, you plan out your route. It's almost like a like Rainbow Six mission planning sort of.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know? The menu sequence before you, yeah. It does feel very. Yeah. It's like here's the path I'm going to take from A to B and here's my checkpoint. And it sounds like it just, it would be kind of annoying. But it's not.

I found it to be very satisfying when I got where I was going. I was like, yeah, I did it. Yeah, it's like it's a game where I actually do feel like an adventure. It's also, to your point about the traversal, right, of how, sure, there's people who probably do find it annoying that Sam, you know, if you try to treat it as a game where you just hold forward and walk, you're just going to trip over yourself and drop all your packages, right? Yeah. It's the meme of dropping a plate of spaghetti, right? Yeah. But it's also, you know, to go back to the Breath of the Wild comparison,

I think the thing I appreciate about both those games is how, do you remember in older school games, like let's say from the 2000s, right? You probably like Far Cry 2 or something like that where you'll be in an open outdoor environment with ridges and stuff like that. And you'll think, oh, wow, this is like, this is very impressive, but you'll walk up toward the edge of the environment and there will just be an invisible wall, right? It's just games had invisible walls.

You can't actually interact with this sort of like boundary that's imposed. Yeah. That makes sense of, yeah, it's like the background, it looks fast, but realistically, there's an invisible wall here. You can't go here. This, you know, nothing renders beyond this point.

Right. And places in Breath of the Wild or Death Stranding where there would be an invisible wall, it's like, no, if you can find a way to get up, this 80 degree rig. If you want to spam, if you want to push your stamina to its limit, if you want to just try, you can do it.

You can brute force the environment. If you really want to go somewhere, even if it feels like the game design is saying, I don't know, Chief, this hill is too steep, it's too rocky, you're not going to be able to install a zip line here unless you get it exactly,

you get the angle exactly. Like, you get rewarded for really kind of pushing Sam as an adventurer in death straining. And I really appreciate that, right? I like fidgeting with the environment. I like risking falling off of, you know, a peak because I'm thinking, oh, man, if I can just like spam the climb button and get up to this ledge, I can build a zip line and I can skip like this entire portion of the map that is supposed to be.

You know what I mean? I love that. I love it so much. Yeah. And you could also dismiss it as just a series of fetch quests, which it is kind of, but the traveling is just so strategic and so satisfying that that's kind of okay that it's a game more or less that is built on fetch quests because the fetching is fun. And the logistics and inventory management, that's not something that I normally like in games. But here it just works for me. sort of a self-reliance, although there's also this asynchronous multiplayer aspect to it, where the world feels a little bit more inhabited because of the online connection and there are other people playing this. And there's sort of a from software aspect to that, where people are

just leaving signals around the world and messages and building things and you're building things and you can get likes from those people. So it's not direct interaction, but you're getting messages about other porters delivering things and you can get little rewards for that. And it's just, it's a neat little multiplayer integration that doesn't really detract from the sense that you're on your own in this, in this big, empty world. And it does. It gives me that feeling of something like the postman, more the book than the movie or Earth abides.

Just, you know, you're on your own. And it's this harsh, but also really beautiful environment. And the music is just fits the theme of the game and the tone of the game really well. It's done by Woodkid, mostly, who did the music for the first game too. And there are times when you're traveling and suddenly the camera will pull back and it'll become super cinematic and then this song will play. And those are just special moments that will stick with me, especially because this game is glorious looking. It is one of the best looking video games, I think I've ever played. Norman Redis looks so realistically scraggly now.

It's just like in The Walking Dead, even when you shower and wash his face, he still looks kind of dirty. Even when he just woke up from a nap, he's got the big bags under his eyes. And the landscape, you know, we probably overused the term photorealistic when it comes to game graphics. but it kind of is at least the backgrounds and the landscapes. And I was playing on quality mode. I never really even felt the need to switch over to performance mode on a base PS5 because it ran fairly well for me. And it's just a visual spectacle, which helps because you're spending a lot of time just traveling.

And so it's nice that the scenery makes the trip more enjoyable. Yeah. I'm curious what you think about because we've talked about the exploration. I'm curious what you think about the combat, whether you're talking about the mule, sort of humanoid combat or the BT fights, because that, that to me, is such a novel aspect of death straining, just how combat feels, which you're impression. Well, from what I understand, it's better than it was the first time around, that, if anything, the first game sort of steered you more towards stealth and avoidance because the combat was kind of clunky.

And it's not clunky now, but I think it's much more feels like a full-fledged action combat shooting game. There are definitely a lot more weapons, a lot more ways to neutralize enemies. And it does feel distinct if you're going up against the brigands, just the desperadoes or the BTs. Those are very different kinds of combat with the BTs. Usually you're sort of sneaking around. You can avoid combat almost entirely if you really want to, but the combat doesn't steer me to the stealth quite as much because I don't mind the shooting so much. When it comes to the BTs, I'm sort of sneaking around and just chucking blood grenades at them, typically just keeping my distance because I'm kind of creeped out by them, frankly. But then you can transition to the PVP combat, the human-unhuman combat.

and it feels, you know, not bad, I guess. I didn't feel like when I had a combat encounter that I instantly found it arduous and wanted to go back to being by myself because it felt sort of satisfying. I wouldn't want to build the whole game out of the combat of Death Stranding, but as one component of it, I felt it was fine.

Yeah, I remember in the first game, I love the Mads-Micholson character in the first game, but I think his boss fights talk about clunky. Like I thought, especially the way the over-the-shoulder camera works, and I never really felt like human combat clicked in the first game, but then there's that in Deaths Trending 2, that first, that boss fight, the Diadelo Merto's boss fight, is so good.

It's so, and that's the thing. It's like, I'm kind of surprised this game. there's stuff that's definitely an improvement of quality of life. I was kind of surprised early on in playing it of like, oh, wow, I thought there would be more things just totally overhauled. And there wasn't. It felt kind of pretty continuous with playing the first game. But you're right, it's the small tweaks to combat or the fact that they introduce a few

more weapons, they give you a few more options. And also just the lay, I think they have better layouts for combat in this. game. Like, I remember in the first game, there's like a World War I trench warfare fight that I thought just didn't work because of how the camera interacts with the trenches and stuff like that. But this sort of Diadal Amortos fight in Destiating 2, it just felt like the layout was perfect, the enemy placement was perfect, the AI behavior is really good, like, I don't know. They just, they, it's like a bunch of small things that actually did significantly. improve stuff that is

like otherwise clunky yeah about this game where admittedly right like I don't like I don't think that Koduma Productions wanted to emphasize or have be the star of the game these kind of you know humanoid ambush type encounters right

like I think the exploration is definitely the star of the game and I think so far as combat is important it's really the big BT fights that I think Yeah. Where the game sings. But there's like, there's good stuff in this.

And I think like, it's also the kind of game that rewards kind of of just picking a couple of your favorite ways to take engagements. Like in this game, in the previous game, I used the bolla gun a lot.

The bolla gun is the gun that you charge it up and it just shoots a rope around the enemies. It's like, you know, if you're playing pacifist, basically, right? And you don't want to deal with void outs. You just string the enemies up. In this game, in Destringing 2,

you get a trank rifle. I love just like finding a really high spot far away and just like tranking everyone. Yeah. And then the other thing with the Briggins of like I've become a fan of hitting people with my car. Hitting them with the off-road or just running into people is great. Yeah, there are a lot of ways you can tackle it. You can stealth around and just tie people up and take them down silently. Or you can be a sniper and stay away.

or you can just really run and gun. And at the very least, it's not a problem. It's not an impediment to my enjoyment of the rest of the game. And it is an interesting transition because so much of the game is about how it's hard to navigate the terrain. And that doesn't seem like it should be a selling point for combat because in combat, you want to be more mobile and agile. And that's not really what Sam is. I mean, you want to ditch some of your cargo, ideally, before you just wait into a firefight.

But even so, he's not really. running and leaping around necessarily, but he gets the job done. And there are just a lot of tools to get the job done. And that seems like it's a difference from the first game. Again, not speaking from experience here, but there are a lot of weapons and implements that you get early on in this game. And it made you work for it more, I think, in the first game. And that takes a lot of the unpleasantness out of the early stages of this, if it still sounds like, oh, this is terrible. I don't want to be just stumbling around and dropping boxes and then they just go into the river and I lose them, you know, looking at damage counters.

But it's not that hard not to fall for one thing, because you can just kind of hold down the shoulder buttons and go more slowly, but much more stably. And also, you don't even have to do that much walking if you don't want to because you you get vehicles pretty early and they're kind of finicky, but still, like, you can store a lot of cargo in them and it does make the traversal easier. And then there are various other ways that you can kind of, you know, travel around more quickly and then you can get the ziplines and the roads and all these things that make it more seamless. So I almost wonder if it makes it too easy or if there's not enough friction. And I'd be curious about your perspective on that because, you know, It kind of goes along with Kojima that it's supposed to be a little bit holding you at arm's length and maybe, you know, kind of an acquired taste, as I said.

And actually, that was something that Kojima said, according to Woodkid, I'll quote Kojima here per Woodkid, when people were playing this game and it was apparently testing really well with early players. Kojima said, we have a problem. I'm going to be very honest. We've been testing the game with players and the results are too good. They like it too much. That means something is wrong. We have to change something. If everyone likes it, it means it's mainstream.

It means it's conventional. It means it's already predigested for people to like it. And I don't want that. I want people to end up liking things they didn't like when they first encountered it because that's where you really end up loving something. So he's kind of going for that from something. software aspect of, I have no idea what I'm doing, but then when the game forces me to figure it out for myself and I get that empowered feeling, then that is ultimately more satisfying.

And so is it not polarizing enough? Is the fact that I'm liking this game as much as I am that the reviews are almost universally positive? Does that mean Kojiba has failed in conveying his vision of this should be hard? to love than it is. I'll be honest. Because that quote has gone around and I feel like

Jojib is bullshitting. I just think it's bullshiting. You know what I mean? I think he's kind of trouble. It's like I get the sentiment but also the game. I do think a lot of death-stranding too, especially if you look at it

from a storytelling perspective, a lot of things that we're off-putting about the first game are still off-putting about Death Stranding, right? It's super lorry. I almost think it's like a Neil Stevenson novel. It's like Cryptonomicon or something like that where it's sort of like if you're into

if you're into Neil Stevenson like I am you will read in your lifetime 6,000 pages of Neil Stevenson but there are plenty of people who are just like ain't about a guy I'm happy for you sorry to hear that you know what I mean that stuff is still in

the second I do think that there's a bit more streamlining it's a bit more bearable but that might also be because I play the first game a lot and I'm just acclimated to the plot and the storytelling and the characterizations in Death Strand. Yeah. It also makes sense that Sam would be more at home in this world or that civilization has been rebuilt a bit and advanced somewhat.

And so it makes sense thematically lore-wise for there to be more tools at his disposal and for people to kind of have a hang of this world a little bit more than they did the first time around. Yeah. But I do agree with the other thing. saying, right, which is like, I do think that this game definitely does give you a ton of tools, right? Like, it definitely does, it definitely feels like a game that was made so that people who play video games really mostly for the story or people who might play this particular series and they're just like, I mostly want to experience the story. I do feel like this game is designed so that those people can hang, right, so that those people don't just get put off by, put off of it because

oh, this particular stretch is too difficult, or they feel like they don't have good tools to get through a section without falling down constantly. Like, yeah, I do feel like this game is designed to make it to that the most people can play it and get through it and experience the story of it. Yeah. And the story, even though sometimes it's off-putting and mystifying,

and they're kind of uncanny character motivations sometimes. where, you know, sometimes when Sam is convinced to take up his cargo again, the conversation that ensues there, I don't know. I don't want to get into too many of the specifics here, but Sam's not particularly talkative. He is played by Norman Redis after on. So you kind of have to infer a lot from his grunting. And sometimes it's not totally clear why he wants to do this or why he's doing it if he doesn't actually want to do it. but I really do find some of the characters memorable. Obviously, it's Kojima, so there's going to be a lot of cameos and a lot of movie stars in strange contexts. But doll man in particular, who's a new character, who, you know, in the very literal naming convention,

just a doll-sized and shaped person whose ka, his spirit, has been grafted onto the ha, the physical being of this doll. and this dollman accompanies you on your journey kind of like strapped to you like mimier in God of War the head that is hanging from your belt basically and Dalman is also animated differently from everyone else so it's not motion style his frame rate is just totally different from everything else in the game yeah it's funny yeah I love that and I also love

it has that that great video game go-to of the traveling base that accompanies you. So there's this ship. It's essentially a Metal Gear that is called the DHV Magellan. And you'd think that eventually they'd just start calling it the Magellan. But no, they never do it.

It's always the DHV Magellan. Like, why? It's also San Anthropis from Metal Gear Solid 3 specifically. Like, every time I look at it, it's a halanthor. I mean, no, not saying Helentherpies, the Shagohan. The Shagohan. That's what it looks like. Right.

But the ship follows you around as you open up more of the world and you can go on to it. And it's kind of like a found family thing where you can actually talk to these characters who are accompanying you and go to your private room and talk to doll man who just like stares at you creepily while you sleep and shower. And it's nice.

It's like the characters are more. Yeah, the characters are more present. They're with you on this journey. Not during the actual gameplay, I guess, but they're at least like following you around and they're in the cinematics and the cutscenes. And there are actually fewer cutscenes than I would have expected with a Kojima game. There's still a lot, but not really more than in Doom the Dark Ages.

So, you know, it's in moderation somewhat. And I just, I find the cast of characters pretty compelling because even if I don't totally understand the motivations at all times, there's just always something visually interesting about what is happening here. Because it's just, it's very distinctive. It's, it's singular. As you said, it's kind of like, how do you even define it? What do you call it?

I guess Kojima tried to brand it as its own genre, like a strand genre strand type game. But there aren't any other strand type games, really, except for the two death stranding games. Yeah, I definitely agree. It's just, it's such a, like your point about, like there's always something visually. That's what I feel like, right?

It's like you can take death stranding literally in terms of this story of death stranding the characterizations in it. But to me, I just, I think it's a game that on the one hand is about these moments, is about its presentation. And it's also just a game that I like being in, if that makes sense. And that is kind of like similar to again, Breath of the Wild or something like a Dark Souls game where it's like, you know, a Dark Souls game, you know, a Fromsoft game wouldn't really have a lot of the cutscene.

Like, you know, Kojima's pension for cutscenes. grafted onto it, but I feel like it's a game that even if you went into the files and deleted every video file out of it, right? You still have this game that has a distinct aura, that has a distinct feel, that has exploration, that has so many things that stand really on its own. And I do think it's really important, right? That it's, I don't really know what other game, like, there isn't a strand light, right? And there probably won't be, right? Right. Yeah, it's just the game that feels very distinct to play. I think in both good and bad ways, right?

It feels distinct because of how awkward the combat can be. But it just becomes uniquely gratifying and it becomes the kind of big budget, big hype video game that like, yeah, I will take it over something more formulaic, more dependable, less awkward. I'll take this over that every time. feel like. Yeah. Yeah. I will sacrifice some polish for originality and experimentation. And it's just got

that, got loads of that. And it feels like it could only have been made by Kojima Productions and probably could only have gotten green lit by Kojima productions. It's just tough self. Konami would have had a lot of notes. Yeah. I think safe to say. Yeah. Also, just wanted to shout out. I appreciated the skill tree approach. sort of this modular, swappable system where none of it is set in stone. And it's not even like re-specking at a certain point in the game.

It's just like mission to mission, you unlock new abilities and you get better at being a porter. But you can kind of customize your skill set and your attributes to the parameters of that mission. And you can just unequip and equip various abilities based on what you think would serve you well for that specific. assignment. And I thought that was pretty fresh. Yeah. And that also felt like a good implementation because I feel like a lot of games when they introduce a skill tree, it's like, oh God, here we go after management skill tree. But because it's modular, like you're saying, it doesn't feel like it's adding this huge mental stuff. Yeah, you're not committing to anything. Yeah. Or like, yeah, overcommitment. It feels actually like very good to do on the fly without having

to think that hard about it. Yeah. Any final thoughts, further takeaways, other aspects of the game that you want to shout out before we move on? I just, man, I need to build some zipline networks, man. I need to, like, I'm, yeah, Mexico and Australia. What do you think about the setting choices here? Mexico and Australia. I was like, okay, that's a natural. And then we went to Australia and I was like, wow, okay, what other continents?

How many places I got to unlock here? Yeah, next the world. We'll see. And one thing that kind of requires some suspension of disbelief is that, yeah, your initial mission is to go to this research lab in Mexico and, you know, you extend the chiral network with your cupid maybe three or four or five times. And then they're like, well, you have linked up all of Mexico. And then the menu's like, I've, I've traveled 12 kilometers or something. So it's a little bit of not to scale to this game's open world. And yet it still

feels substantial and sizable. You should be grateful because if they did do Australia to scale, I would be mad as hell and I would give this one out of ten. Yeah, the outback is big. So one game that you have been playing while you were away is Street Fighter 6. Yeah. You can't quit that game. And so never.

I'm playing jury now, by the way. Sorry, DJ. Okay. I needed to get your quick reaction to some of the Street Fighter casting news that has been making the rounds. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Street Fighter movie that's coming maybe next year, unspecified, but we've gotten a

lot of announcements about who will be in it, who they will be playing. It is an eclectic cast to say the last. So we've got 50 cents is starring in this game. Curtis Momoa is in this game. Noah Centeno is in this game. Orville Peck is in this game. Roman Rains. Like, there's no.

no through line here. No, brilliant is the through line. What are you talking about? Inspired casting or just completely batch hit. Like, is this a good is this a good sign for you that? Are you serious? Yes. That's not even a question. Look,

you said Orville Peck is in there. No, Orville Peck is playing Vega. Yes. Do you understand having a gay country singer play Vega? That is the sign that these people know what they're doing. Let them cook, bro.

The only thing I worry about is like 50. I guess when I think of Barrag, I always think of someone younger than 50 cent, surely. I just wonder if he's a little old to be playing Barrague. That's my only thing. You could have had Michael B. Jordan play Balrog.

But that's my and I, and I usually am talking shit about Michael B. Jordan. But like, well, again, let them cook. Like, I feel that would be too predictable to just cast an A-list star in this. This is like, let's round up people from every realm of entertainment. Yeah.

Yeah. Like, Mamoa is Blanca, right? Rapper, wrestler, Netflix, rom-com, heartthrob, country star. Yep. Like, inspired, certainly, or surreal casting that is happening here. Yeah, every good sign that you could get from the initial sort of production for a video game adaptation is in the taskless for this damn street fighter movie. Like, yes, yes.

Approved. Approved. Approved. Exproved. Approved. It could completely run off the rails in a 90s streetfighter-esque way. But maybe that's what people want. You just get Van Daman here and Kylie Minogue and just.

But let's talk about this. Make it happen. I'm going to belabor street fighter person. Because I, okay, here's the thing. We're obviously, you and I have written about this, right? That like video game adaptations are finally kind of in a good. plays. Now, I do think that fighting games are still

fighting games are weird, right? Because it's like, you could take something like the last, you can even take like a Pikachu, Detective Pikachu, something like the Hitchhog, and you make them as a kid's movie and the fact that they're kind of ridiculous premises and they're these weird creatures, like it doesn't matter, right? But fighting games are kind of odd because usually, even with something more grounded, like, Street Fighter or something, certainly something more anime-ish,

like Guilty Gear, what are people doing in Street Fighter? They're these people that, like, they fight. Like, you know what I mean? It's not like, at least of Mortal Kombat, you have a tournament as like a centralizing concept. You can usually pretty easily build. Which wasn't even in the reboot movie. But you can build. And you see how you build a concept around, I guess, a tournament.

But with Street Fighter, it's like Shadaloo. You have this shady organization. You have people fighting. But it's not like in a, if you did a movie about wrestlers where everyone's a wrestler, you have people fighting, but they're all. from different martial arts disciplines, but this isn't an MMA thing. Why are these people even fighting?

What is the context for them sort of fighting each other? I think fighting games have this thing where like the premise of fighting games, the structure of fighting games and the sort of basis for individual characters in fighting games still make it hard for me to understand how you make a good, or what the blueprint is for making like a true. truly respectably great fighting game adaptation instead of something that ultimately just becomes super kind of campy and costuming and weird, right? I want to see them pull it off.

I feel like they are going to have the cast to maybe pull it off, but I feel like there's still some fundamental challenges to fighting game adaptation specifically. Yeah. In terms of like, how grounded do you make it? how ridiculous do you make it? Again, how costumy do you make it? But if you don't make it costuming enough,

like, what is Chun Li without all of the sort of costuming signatures of Chun Li? You know what I mean? Yeah. Interesting questions to me. And without the interactivity of fighting in a fighting game, then a lot of it comes down to the fight choreography and just how good the combat looks. It better be good if we can't actually play it.

But regardless of how this turns out, I want the oral history of the making of this movie. Because imagine just be, I want to be a fly on the wall of that set. Just like orientation for the first cast read of the scripts when all these people are introducing themselves to each other. Hi. I'm 50. I'm Curtis. Nice to meet you, Noah.

You know, it's just like. Hey, man. What's up? This boy, 56. Yeah. Okay. Lastly, since you're about to leave us for the Games of the First. of the year segment.

Just wanted to give you the floor for a second here to shout out maybe your game of the first half of the year, which, spoiler will not be making my list because I haven't played it. But give me the pitch for Beyond Citadel. Bro, I usually, okay, first of all, Beyond Citadel is a very weird off-putting pervy, strange, aesthetic game that like I love, I nevertheless love. I usually feel like boomer shooter type, and I wouldn't even flip. classified beyond Citadel, which is the sequel to a game called Citadel

as like a boomer shooter. But because it has like complex, like relatively complex gun play and like gun mechanics in it. But it's just like this 2D boomer shooter is like clearly

very heavily inspired by Evangelion and just has kind of like a lot of it's, I think I got like halfway through that game and I was just like, I love the level design of this. There's a few levels where

it's almost like what I was describing to about death stranding of feeling like plaintive and feeling like I'm in this really intense meditative space. Except in Beyond Sededal, you're like underground

looking at like very strange like enemies. with you're just looking at like blood and guts and gore and anime titties and it's very very straight again i want to grant that it's like the the aesthetic of bioncidale is like incredibly it can be incredibly off-putting depending on your sensibility but mechanically it's like one of those games where i'm just like mechanically i'm sorry i'm not putting this down this is like really it feels so good to play every gun feels so good to use

I feel really smart when I clear a level that feels like it's really grind house and kicking my ass initially. Yeah, clearly a dark horse for any kind of like game of the year conversation. But I was racking my brain being like, what is my favorite thing that I've played this year up to the point where I started playing like that's training two? And I was just like, one, I haven't played that many things this year relative to other years. But two, I was just like, it's obviously Beyond Sederda. I think about that game weekly. I haven't replayed it. I don't think I'm going to replay it.

But other people should play it and get back to me. All right. Deep cut, but I'm sold. It's been too long. It is great to have you back. Much like Sam Bridges, you delivered. Good luck with the parenthood. And we will have you back soon.

Thanks, man. All right, quick programming teases before we roll Matt in here. here next week, Ringervor Recommends. It's the end of a month. So, of course, there's another edition of RVR. You can still send some buzzer beaning nominations for media released in June to RingervorS recommends at gmail.com. After that, the Mint Edition boys will have a summer franchise draft. The Midnight Boys, Pugh, Pugh, on Wednesday, will cover the Iron Heart finale and also give their reactions to Jurassic World Rebirth.

And on Friday, the Midnight Boys will reconvene for Midnight Court, Superman versus Fantastic Four. Over on House of R, Mal and Joe will be diving deep into Squid Game, season three. And Buttmash will be back in July. We'll talk some sports games, college football 26, Tony Hawks Pro Skater 3 and 4. We have Donkey Kong Bonanza on the horizon. Much more to come. You can contact us, as always, at ringerverse gaming at gmail.com. This episode is brought to you by Spectrum Business. Fast, reliable internet means everything for your business.

And even this podcast, that's why I trust Spectrum Business. They keep companies of all sizes connected with internet, advanced Wi-Fi, phone, TV, mobile services, plus 24-7 U.S.-based support. Millions of business owners already trust Spectrum Business. So visit Spectrum.com slash business to learn more. Restrictions apply. Services not available in all areas. This episode is brought to by Nass Energy, introducing new Nass Energy Grand Prix Guava. For those that want to be fueled up and fired up with a hundred-bound hour tropical tasting power, ignite your taste, start your engine, shift your flavor to high gear with new Nass Energy Grand Prix Guava. Hit the street, grab a can and get after it.

This episode is brought to by Whole Foods Market. Spring is here, so celebrate it with fresh, juicy, seasonal produce, and some very tasty. limited time flavors. New Whole Foods, Market Peach, Apricot, Rose, Italian soda. Perfect for a picnic or brunch, as is their trending mango, Yuzu chantilly cake. But if you're on the go, new 365 strawberry pretzels make a great sweet snack. That sounds delicious. Get savings with yellow sale signs storewide and everyday low prices on 365 brand items. Enjoy the fresh flavors of spring. Save at Whole Foods Market. All right, we're back, and I am joined now by Ringer Deputy Art Lead, Matt James, a man who has played all of the games released in the first half of this year.

More or less, slight asterisk there. I'm sure you've missed a few, but probably the important ones you've played. I've not played Dest Ranting, too. That's true. You have not played Deserating, too. So that will be perhaps on my list. It will not be on yours, though that is not a slight, though. Not sure if it would make your list based on your reaction to the original Death Stranding. Yeah, we'll see. Get on board. I'm here to tell you that even if you think it might not be for you, it might be for you. But we want to have a conversation about what we have played so far this year, what we have liked so far this year and what we hope that we will like in the rest of the year to come. Hard for me to believe that half of the year has expired already,

but we have been busy playing lots of good games. Do you have any takeaways from the year as a whole, just the 30,000-foot view of gaming in the first half of 2025? Feels pretty healthy aside from, you know, the $80 game price, new reality that we live in that will only get worse. Yeah, the Xbox seems to be slowly retreating into a PC-based future. and games are going to be expensive. And yeah, that's kind of my takeaway, I guess.

Yeah, hope you have deep pockets. But also, sometimes there are games that are not super expensive that we really liked. And that's the constellation, that it really runs the gamut pricing-wise. And that might be, yeah, the takeaway, maybe mine, is that AAA games are not the only show in town and are maybe not even the main show in town. It's not necessarily new in 2025, but it's been emblematic of the fact that the premium $70 or $80 game that took several years to make by hundreds of people,

that is not the sole destination here, that there are some cheaper games, that there are some budget games, games made by smaller teams, in some cases, much smaller teams, indie games, that are among the highlights so far. And that is heart. Absolutely.

my top two games of the year so far are not games that cost $70. Yeah. It should also be noted that it's been a banger year for not only Game Pass, but also PlayStation Plus's free game offerings, which is interesting because I think coming into this year, we kind of felt like,

uh, game pass is maybe not working out, and PlayStation's not likely to copy that formula that's not working. And here we are halfway through the year, and it seems to be a complete one, 80 where both of those services are, I think, better than they have been ever this year, which is fascinating. And there have been some surprises and some games that probably if we went back and listened to our first pot of the year where we talked about the games that we thought would be our favorite that they might not have showed up there. We might not have talked about them at length, but we have actually enjoyed them.

So you always want that random out of nowhere sensation. but I would say that there have been fewer bombs or great disappointments to me than there were probably at this point last year or certainly by the end of the year. The games that I thought would be good mostly have been, I think. I haven't felt really let down by a lot of big ticket titles this year. There have been some that I wasn't anticipating that in retrospect, I should have been. but it doesn't feel like, oh man, this was an enormous letdown. I haven't had that feeling that often this year. Yeah, well, I don't recall you being on the hype train for Mind's Eye that hard. Yeah, I feel like, you know, just thinking about all of the kind of hyped games to come out.

Like, I can't really find one that super disappointed me. There were a few that were maybe a few ticks under what I thought they could have been, you know, Doom the Dark Ages, Monster Hunter Wilds, even. The things that I didn't think necessarily would be that good, like Eldon Ring Night Rain, definitely surprised. And yeah, some surprises out of nowhere, as always. And we got a new console, though that will not have a heavy presence on my list. But nonetheless, nice to add a new platform to the firmament. And I would hope and expect that it'll be better represented on our year-end list than maybe our first half.

But hey, it was barely around for the first half of the year. So happy to have Switch 2 on board. So I guess what we can do here, we've each come with a personal top 10. I suspect there will be quite a bit of agreement on our list, but also some points of departure. So maybe we could just kind of count down on our individual lists and we will trade nominations. And probably there will be a lot of overlap. but when there are cases where we diverge, then we can make the case for a game that is not on someone else's list.

So if we just start the countdown, start at 10, and we can get to some honorable mentions and just missed later on. We don't want to duplicate what we will do at the end of the year when we do a draft and we have more people on. So this will be a different format and different material and different conversation. But do you want to just throw your number 10 out there and I'll tell you whether it's on my list and where? Yeah, sure. My number 10 is a game called The Root Trees Are Dead. And this is maybe under the radar for some people.

This is a really fun game where there's this wealthy family called The Root Trees that have a long-story to history. And one of their biggest family members and their family have just died. And you're being hired to sort of figure out the entire family tree of this family, this very prestigious family for some reason that you're not quite clear of yet. And the gameplay of it is set in 1998. And the gameplay of it is you using the internet to research and discover and unravel the family tree and the secrets that are hidden within. And it is a really fun, different kind of game that I had a blast with. I don't think you've played this.

Yeah, sort of, I have not. No, so it is not on my list. It's kind of like a return of the Oberdin type unraveling a situation trying to. Yeah. So this is definitely a game that my wife would love. I don't know how I would feel about it, but I have heard good things. I do also have a little list of games that I wish I had played in the first half of this year. Yours, yeah, yours will probably be shorter because, again, you play everything.

Should we go over what we haven't played so people aren't disappointed as we're rolling these times? Yeah, I guess, well, Yeah, let's highlight that as we go through our top 10. So I'm not snubbing the root trees are dead. I just haven't played it. I guess I've snubbed it by not playing it. But it's not that I didn't like it. So that was on my list of games that I want to get to at some point.

But my number 10 is south of midnight. Just missed my list. But I just missed your list. Okay. Yeah. I really loved it to less for the gameplay than. just for the vibes, just for the characters, for the story, for the setting. That was kind of what we dwelled on when Van and Jess were on here and we talked about the game.

I found the combat fairly formulaic and sort of simplistic and less inspired than just the general design of the game, artistically speaking. But that latter aspect of it was so strong and so distinctive that that got it onto the list, just single-handedly. I think a lot of people were lower on this game than you and I were, but I just thought it was such a beautiful piece of video game storytelling. And I also didn't mind the combat at all. I didn't feel like it was a chore to play the combat segments of this game. I think if it were 10 or 20 hours longer, if it were a bloated game, I would have some issues.

But I thought given the length of the game, I thought the scope of all of the systems were kind of in line. line with that. And I just loved the storytelling in that and the characters and the art design. I thought it was such a cohesive, beautiful vision of a video game. Yeah, me too. All right. General agreement there. What's your number nine? Well, Ben, my number nine is like a dragon, pirate yakuza and Hawaii. Me too. Is it? Also my number nine. Okay. That's great. I want to hear you talk about it because, you know, I've been a guy who's a guy for a little while but now. But this was your first kind of real foray into it, right?

Exactly. So what did you think? Yeah. I think that's probably why I liked it so much, is that I finally broke the seal on the series, which I had felt bad about not doing for so long. And as we talked about when we did our pod on it, it was in some ways the weirdest possible introduction to this franchise, but in other ways, a really good one. Yeah, really good one. Because I didn't have to have a whole lot of context to get up to speed and find my footing here. And it just fully leaned into the aspect of the series that so attracted me was just like the silliness and the odd jobs.

And while still just like having a heartfelt story and satisfying mechanics. And yeah, like if you are a veteran of this franchise, it's, you know, it's probably not like up there with infinite wealth or some of the other highlights, I guess. It's more of a, you know, smaller scale, less ambitious in scope and less serious, not that it's ever super serious. But it felt like a good way to kind of dip my toe into like a dragon and this whole saga and get my grounding in this world, this very non-grounded world. And it just, it was refreshing. It was just my first taste of something that I deprived myself of for too long. Yeah.

And now you can see why the TV series. series kind of missed the tone, that great balance that Yakuza has of mostly being very silly and ridiculous, but coming around that corner with some real heart and drama to it, that, yeah, it's very different. All right. Not enough pirates in the TV adaptation. I'm very happy that you ended up enjoying that so much. Yep.

Number eight for you? Number eight for me is split fiction. Okay. Yeah. Split fiction. is also on my list. I think I'm going to go as high as six for this game. So it's eight for me.

I loved it. I did hate a lot of the character dialogue. And that really kind of sour things for me. But it's still on this list and it's still pretty high because the gameplay of this is really fascinating. and especially towards the end of this game, as we've talked about, they do some really groundbreaking things in this game that shouldn't be spoiled for anybody. And I love a co-op game, and, you know,

you and I spent a lot of time playing this together. And, man, it was just a really fantastic co-op experience. Yeah. Yeah, we had reservations about the story and the characters and the writing, as did Steve when we discussed it on the show. I don't know if those reservations were why. widely shared. I know some other people had that objection. A lot of people seem to respond to that. And it's already been slated for an adaptation with stars playing these characters. So, you know, if you enjoyed that aspect of it, great. And if you didn't, then there's just plenty in the gameplay alone. And that's when I think back on it, it is like certain set pieces and just specific super inventive sequences, just unlike any co-op game. I played before, even previous Joseph Farris games, just that stays with me.

Like, some of the most memorable moments of gaming in 2025 will certainly be from split fiction. So that gets it onto this list. Right. How about you? Okay. So I'm putting blueprints at number eight. Okay. And I'm guessing it's going to be significantly higher on your list than a lot of people's

list. I've just had a different experience with this game. where I've been more of a spectator. So I knew that this was going to be up the alley of my wife, Jesse. This is like it has her hallmarks all over it. And true to form, she loved it. And she stole my Xbox, which is in my office normally, and moved it to our bedroom. And so she just like wanted to have exclusive, you know, full-time access to it

without having to wait for me to not be working or whatever. So she really loved it. And so I ended up watching a lot of it as she was playing it more so than I played it myself. And so I developed an appreciation of it, but more of a secondhand experience. And that's why I don't have it higher. But obviously, it was almost universally beloved and acclaimed. And it's a pretty monumental achievement for a small team, really inventive. format and puzzles.

And so I appreciate it, even if I personally love it less. I think it should be on any list of this sort. Yes. Well, we all know that you're a storied puzzle hater. So this makes a lot of sense. Just to be recognized on Ben's top 10 lists, it's a puzzle game. Yeah. I mean, someday we'll get you there on card games as well.

But, you know, that day is. Card games never. But puzzle games, yes, sometimes. Yeah. I'm not Jessica Clemens. I'm pro-puzzle games sometimes, but it depends. It depends. Yeah.

Well, is this, how high is this on your list is the question? I don't want to spoil it. We'll get to it. We'll get to it. And I'll talk about it. It's on my list, not for sure. Okay. All right.

What is your number seven? Is that what we're up to here? My number seven is the altars. This came out recently. Ah, yeah. This is on Game Pass. This is a sci-fi game where you crash on a planet. and all of your crew members are dead.

And in order to survive, you need to clone different altered versions of yourself where perhaps in your clones' memories, they took a different path in their life at a critical point, and that led them to end up with different specializations. So you fill out your base with all of these different versions of yourself. And it is mostly a base management game similar to like Sim Tower or that fallout tower game.

But then you at times will leave your base to go explore the planet and gather resources and create refineries and connect things. And I thought this had a really interesting gameplay loop that I haven't seen before. And all of the sci-fi underpinnings and philosophy behind it are quite captivating. Yeah. Yeah, I haven't had a chance to play this one yet. also on my list of to-do at some point my pile of shame. And I'm intrigued by the premise and the concept.

I told you it reminded me of the swapper, which is a game I like. But that was more puzzly. And this is a different dynamic, even though it also includes cloning and duplicating oneself. But the idea of the base management and the SIM aspect of it, that's sort of a tough sell for me. But I like Death Stranding too now. So I'm that guy. you never know. Yeah, hey, listen, you get to walk around a barren landscape in this.

You might love it. Exactly. Yeah, this is what I like, I guess. Okay. My number seven, also somewhat to my surprise, is Assassin's Creed Shadows. And I would not be surprised if this is bumped off the year-end list by a forthcoming open world game set in Japan, perhaps. But for now, at least, it cracked the top 10.

I quite enjoyed this game. I found the setting really appealing. And we had our quibbles when I talked about this with Jess and Arjuna and the different styles of gameplay. This is a stealth game that sometimes masquerades as more of a tanky combat game, and that doesn't work so well. But when you are doing the bread and butter of Assassin's Creed, I found this depiction of the open world just very inviting and rich and satisfying. just a nice time-waster in that kind of classic Assassin's Creed mold. So sort of a return to form for me. There's one I haven't played, and I am unlikely to because I have a new rule for myself

that I will not start playing any game that is like over 60 hours long unless it is kind of an absolute banger, guaranteed. Because I will be compelled to finish a game that is way too long. Oh, I see. So it's not that you're worried that you won't finish it. It's that you're worried that you will. Exactly. Okay.

Okay. Okay. All right. Well, then definitely do be careful. I don't know if it clears the must-play threshold given that constraint. But yeah, it's a good entry into the series after a long interlude in mainline full-fledged Assassin's Creed games. Okay.

So my number six, was split fiction. What's your number six? My number six is fantasy life. I, the girl who steals time, which was not on my radar at all. Yeah. And maybe isn't on yours. Nope. So I got my switch to. And man, I wanted to use that.

So apparently this game's good from what people were saying online. So I gave it a try. And man, it sounds like the title of it makes it sound like some. really just forgettable mobile game, doesn't it? Really terrible. Anyway, I love this game. I've put like an Assassin's Creed amount of time into this game, which you don't have to. What is it? It is basically, I think the comparison I would give would be like it's if you're playing Animal Crossing and Zelda at the same time. The premise is kind of like the whole fantasy life thing. they have all these lives in the game,

which you really would describe as classes, perhaps. You have like four fighting classes that you can choose from, and you have all of these other classes like minor, you know, woodcutter, carpenter, all these kind of things, fishing, obviously, got to have fishing. And you can kind of jump between all of these classes and level things up, and eventually you get to build your own little town out.

And the combat is fairly simple. It's a very relaxing game. And I just poured time into this. It kept calling me back. I just found it super enjoyable. Okay. All right. My number five is Kingdom Come Deliverance II.

Which is also on your list, I assume. That's right. This is another game that I once would have thought that I would bounce off of, but this is the new bent, new year, new me, just exploring new frontiers, new genres that

once would have scared me away. And now get granular. Manage inventories. You know, feed myself. Just like grind up pasts to make potions. This is, this is who I am now. It sounds hard. Every time I describe this game to someone,

It sounds terrible. It sounds like the worst, and yet it works, and you just kind of have to respect the commitment to the simulation of medieval life, essentially. And it's so well done that it doesn't feel as painful. And it gets easier, too. It gets easier as you go along. It doesn't, it's not like that brutal. Once you're like 15 hours in, you kind of.

start feeling like you're not on the verge of dying hungry in a ditch. Right, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes you just have to take the plunge. You just have to immerse yourself in a game. And yes, you might decide that it's not for you, but it might actually be.

You might surprise yourself. It's got great characters. It's really, you have freedom to really make decisions in this game. And yeah, there's just a lot to love. surprising amount of freedom, just things that you don't expect that you would be able to do. And you can. And they have planned for those contingencies and that kind of emergent gameplay that we always love is really well done here. My fifth is Mario Kart World.

Ah, okay. All right. That is even higher on my list. That's my number three. Wow. Spoiler. I don't know. Like, you know, I think a lot of people, including myself, felt that the free realm kind of

was not as fully fleshed out as we had hoped it would be. However, it's a fun game. And every time you play it, it's really fun. And you just keep playing it because it's really fun. And that's kind of what Mario Kart should be. And it succeeds in doing that. Yep, it does what it says on the tin, basically. And it's fun for the whole family.

And that is probably why it's as high on my list as it is, because I can play this with my not quite four-year-old daughter, and she can have just as much fun as I'm having, and my wife is having, and we can have someone come over who's never played Mario Kart before, and they can instantly have fun with this, and so can someone who has played Mario Kart their entire life? Like, it's just, it's a really good leveler.

It doesn't matter what your experience is with Mario Kart specifically or gaming in general. It can reward expertise, but it can also have a, very shallow learning curve just when you first play it. And there are just so many modes and so many ways to play this game. And they've made it harder to just play the standard Mario Kart three-lap race. They've kind of taken away the just selecting random if you want to do that.

They've kind of patched that out or made it less predictable. But there's just a great diversity. They've broken the mold just enough that it feels like a new thing and like an ever. evolutionary leap while still being the franchise that we've known and loved our entire lives. So this has been just almost all of my Switch 2 playtime thus far. And so like I want to play some other Switch games. You just named one that I had not considered playing and now have to. But yeah, it's been a little, you know, slim pickens if you have a switch and other systems already.

Let me know if you play Fantasy Life Eye because there's multiplayer. I can hop in there and help you out. So my over-level characters. What's your number four? So my number four is also a driving game. It's an indie game called Keep Driving. And I fell in love with this game. The premise of it is that you are on a road trip to a music festival as a youth in the early 2000s.

And it's just kind of a road trip game. You're managing your gas and your money. and you're driving from town to town, city to city, and you encounter hitchhikers that you pick up, and they change the way that your game plays, and you hit obstacles on the road, and the soundtrack of this game is amazing, and it really taps into a nostalgia for anyone who's hit the road

as someone who's only recently been allowed to drive and is, you know, heading right towards adulthood at a speed that might be uncomfortable. I love this game. That is not an experience that I have. No. Keep riding the subway. Native New York. Right?

That was your game of the year, right? Yeah, exactly. I still have not had this experience. Maybe I did get a learner's permit at one point and briefly pretended to learn how to drive and then stopped. Yeah. But maybe someday I will have the experience of learning to drive and then I will play. Yeah, you should. I mean, the one criticism.

It appealed to me just for the music and the aesthetic of it. The music is so good. All of these Swedish indie bands have never heard of that are so good. I wish that they had a, you know, they have a few vehicles you can choose from, from like a beat-up station wagon to like a pickup truck. And it would have really hit home for me if they had like your mom's minivan as an option. But so missed the nostalgia by just an inch on that. But yeah, really fantastic.

Okay. My number four is actually Doom the Dark. That's high. You know what? That's high. But I did really like Doom. I just, I like all the new Dooms. And I am not here for the lore so much as we discussed when we did an episode on that. But the gameplay is good. And I will just always sign up for another Toro duty in Doom. And I like that they just keep mixing up the formula and keep finding ways to give us new doom. And this was a particularly compelling way. So I enjoyed it. Yeah. I had that somewhere around 16 or 17, but I definitely enjoyed that game. I thought it was the right length.

You know, I hated those interstitials. We talked about this on an earlier pod. Yes. The dragon riding and the, ah, man. But, you know, when you're shooting stuff, real good. My number three was kingdom come deliverance too. All right. And then, well, my number two is just,

It shocks me, but it's the stranding too. Wow. So, yeah, this will not be on your list yet, obviously. Maybe you're year endless. There's still time if you give it a chance. But, yeah, I cannot believe that I am putting, this is my second favorite game of the year so far. But it is for all the reasons that charity and I just outland. So give it a chance.

I'll get to it. Maybe you'll phone. I'll get to it. What's your number two? I've been walking a lot lately, so it should be right up my alley. You're in training. Yeah. What's your number two?

Blue prints. Okay. Yeah, I figured. That's a hell of a puzzle game, Ben. By process of elimination, I guess I know what our number one is. Do you want to say anything else about Blueprints before we get there? I think the last time we talked about it, I hadn't fully kind of finished with it. I will say, like my one knock on it is that when you really get deep into the end game, like real deep into the end game, it does become a little bit.

less enjoyable just because you have fewer kind of mysteries to solve and you need certain circumstances. You can't stop playing at that point. That is an option. No. That's not an option. Okay. But in case anyone, you know, hasn't listened to our earlier pods, it's really worth your time

checking blueprints out. I'm sure it's going to be on a lot of people's top 10 games in the year list, even after the next half of the year. It will remain. Yes. The dream of the indie game of the year is alive and well. Thanks to Blueprints and thanks to our mutual number one. I'm going to venture to guess, which is Claire Obscure Expedition 33, which is just a masterpiece.

And we talked about it at some length previously. I hope that we can return to it. Maybe on our game of the year pod, maybe we could get into full spoiler territory at that point once people. have had more of a chance to play it, but my early review, it has not been diminished by spending more time with it. It's just, it's an incredible game. And also just a great story, just the making of this game. The fact that it exists at all, the fact that it is as popular as it has been, just makes me feel good about gaming. Yeah, absolutely sticks to landing. That game operated at a 10 of 10 for every phase of it. Like, last.

I absolutely love metaphor re Fantasio, but definitely felt like it fell off at the end. It was overlong and stuffed at the very end. Clare Obscure is just the foot on the gas pedal the whole time. The narrative stays engaging the whole time. The combat system, as it evolves into kind of like a new thing throughout the game, it continues to be fascinating. And the characters and the art style, it is just a complete masterpiece of a game that will be, talking about for years. And my main motivation for playing Desterending 2 is so that I have fully experienced that game and can step into any arguments that might claim that something

is better than Clarebskir this year. Yeah. You're just going to play Dester ending out of Spike, basically, just to be able to counter any arguments for that game over Claire Obscure. Yeah, that's my main motivation. Okay. I respect spite in all cases. Okay. So that's going to be tough to disliked. lodge from our number one slot in the second half of the year. It's not over. I'm keeping an open mind, but if there's no greater game than Clear Obscure in 2025, then that will be a perfectly fitting game of the year for me. So we'll see. Plenty of time left. So our list we have keep driving at 10. We have south of midnight at 9. We have Doom the Dark Ages at 8. We have Like a Dragon, Pirate Yakuza, Hawaii, seven, split fiction, six, kingdom come deliverance five, Death Stranding, Two, Four, Mario Cartworld, three, Blueprints, two, clear obscure.

That's good. And if you want to swap Mario and Death Stranding, I'm fine with that, too. Okay. Real-time top-tending, people, we did it. Is it? All right. So, just a few also rands and honorable mentions and late cuts. So Monster Hunter Wilds was in consideration, I guess, for both of us. We both had a hard time getting into the game.

But once we got over that initial hurdle, we understood. It'll be on a lot of people's top 10 lists, even end of year. It was obviously immensely popular. And a lot of people love this franchise. And it was said to be easier to get into for a noob. But we both found it difficult to get into none of the other. the less. And yeah, that's what kept it off.

It does a lot of things well, but also... I enjoyed it, and I'll play the next one. It's pretty impenetrable at times. Okay, all right. Yeah. Night rain, similarly, I guess, you know, hard to love in some respects, but also easy to respect and does its own thing, you know, forge it's his own path. I'm still playing it, actually.

Okay, if you're still playing it, that's a good endorsement. I didn't expect to like it. And I very much like it. Barely missed my list, actually. Okay. I had to switch over to Death Stranding, but I may go back to it. I also, I had Dynasty Warriors origins just like somewhere. Just wanted to mention it.

I really liked that game. It was fun. It was a Dynasty Warriors game. But it was an extremely Dynasty Warriors game, which is kind of what you want out of that franchise. Anything else you wanted to quickly shout out? Yeah, just like three things. There is a Metroidvania called Ender Magnolia, Bloom in the Mist, which I really thoroughly enjoyed excellent Metroidvania.

I really liked Adam Fall, which... Oh, yeah. I have not played that, but I want to. Yeah. It hasn't gotten the best reviews, but I really enjoyed it. As someone who, you know, loved playing Fallout 3 in New Vegas, and, you know, everyone's like, oh, it is different than that. And yeah, it is different.

But there's definitely some DNA in there where, like, if you liked those kind of games, I really think there's something for you here. And I had a great time with that. Two-point Museum has been really fantastic. I think I talked about that a little bit before. I don't usually play Ringaverse Recommends Pick. These kind of simulation of a thing, kind of games with the overhead view. But this one was getting some buzz, and I tried it out and poured hours into this thing.

It's so much fun. The last one I want to shout out is Despelote, which I mentioned on Ringiverse recommends, which is a really interesting, it's barely a game. It's more of like an experience. I talked about it. You can look it up. It's fascinating if you're into that kind of games is art thing. Okay.

Well, a few that I haven't gotten to that I wanted to. We've mentioned some of them, The Altars. I have not yet played Adam Fault. Keep Driving. Routreys are dead. I want to get to rematch, which Steve has been enjoying. I have not tapped into that yet. I'm really looking forward to it.

I want to play Dade. everything, which just came out recently. I haven't gotten to it. I want to try the altars. Lost records, bloom and rage. Haven't had a chance yet. The most recent chapters of Delta Rune. I didn't play the first Citizen Sleeper.

I did. I don't know whether... I haven't played the second one yet, but I hear that it's great. Citizens well-received sequel. Never got around to avowed. Maybe I will at some point. Was that this year? But not sure if it would... It was.

Oh, man. I'm messed up. I love a vass. I love about way more than most people. I had a fantastic time of that. I wouldn't have forced it onto our top 10 list, but it would have been towards the back of mine. That game's fun.

It's fun. Stop hating on that game. June Awakening, we both haven't played, I'm sure. Yes. The Liza P, D.LC, I haven't even played Liza P. And 100-Line Last Defense Academy has some hype. Oh, yeah. And I don't know if I'll get to it, but I hope so.

All right. That's a solid year in half a year. If this were a game of the year list, it would not be the worst ever. So strong start. And that's the list to beat. Those are the leaders in the clubhouse. So now maybe a little more quickly we can just go over our most anticipated top 10 the rest of the way. No GTA 6, but who needs GTA 6 when you have games this great slated for the year to come?

So I guess we could just do a similar top 10 countdown here. And maybe we'll just each shout out one. And then we can say if we have it on our list and where we have it on our lists. Okay. All right. I guess my 10 might be Mafia, the old country. I have that. Which, yeah, was that also low on your list?

Actually, it was just outside my list, just outside my 10. I had about 13, 14, that I'm. super hype for and then a big fall off. But yeah, it's tough to make a 10. It's going to be quite the rest of the year in games. I know. I was actually pleasantly surprised when I started scrutinizing my list because I was thinking that we had kind of fired a lot of our bullets for 2025.

Not so. Nope. It's a lot of potential bangers coming down the pike here. So we're not getting GTA6, but we're getting a 2K published action adventure game that'll have to do for now. Mafia, the old country. All right. My number nine, I guess, might be lower than you have it, I'm guessing, Borderlands 4. I'm just, I'm a little less of a borderlands guy. Is on my list. Looking forward to it. Right. I guess that's actually 11 for me. So it's just off of the list. Okay. Okay. So I actually had it higher than you. That's an upset.

I don't see that. No, I have it as 10. I'm sorry. Okay. Number eight, I have the Outer Worlds two. which is another case of a game that I did not play the original, but I might just jump in like I did with Death Stranding. And this seems like another case of like, you know, the initial was proof of concept, and then maybe the sequel refines things. And it's more of the, okay, this is the full fruition of what this original could have been potentially. Yeah, I didn't play the original,

but my hype for this is pretty high based on everything that I've seen. in the previews. I think that it feels like they have confidence in this game and it feels like one of those sequels where they've taken a lot of feedback

from the first one and they've had a lot of time to kind of rejigger things and I wouldn't be surprised if this game was an absolute banger when it came out. So definitely have eyes on that.

Okay. My number seven, this might be a reach, but I'm going with Cairn, which is coming out in November. It's not on my list. But I know you love. I'm a climbing game guy.

What can I say? Yeah, I want to be at least virtual climbing. Climbing like puzzle games, more of a my wife thing, IRL, though I have accompanied her from time to time. I'm a little afraid of heights in real life, which can be an obstacle when it comes to climbing. A little bit. Yeah. A little bit. But digital climbing, I'm there.

So give me a nice mountain and some nice scenery and soothing music. and I'm all over it, and the climbing, climbing mechanics look pretty riveting here. So that's my number seven. My number six is going to be Donkey Kong Bonanza, which the next great hope for a first-party switch game. And my brief playtime with it at a pre-released Nintendo event, I wasn't bould over by it. But that dedicated direct, I think, kind of convinced a lot of people that there might be something to this. It certainly seems like a full-fledged, like pulling out all the stops using the greater power of the switch to open world, fully destructible environments. I'm excited.

I'm cautiously optimistic now. So hopefully they have hammered out my minor reservations. We are a first party banner on the system. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Other than Mario Kart, my switch is gathering dust right now. So I'm hopeful that a few weeks from now,

Donkey Kong can change that. Okay. Number five for me, what is my fifth? I don't know. I may have gone out of, oh, number five for me, Keeper from Double Fine, which we talked about in our looking forward

when we talked about the summer showcase. You know, it's kind of a black box. We don't know exactly what it is. And so I'm just, I'm going based on the pedigree and the character of double-fine makers of psychonauts and just hoping that this will be similarly original and memorable. And we will see. So, you know, just risking it all with Keeper, which is coming fairly soon.

Yeah. And then number four, I have Hades 2, which theoretically is actually coming out, 1.0 release before the end of the year. I wouldn't be surprised if it slips. That would be great. Of course, yeah, you never know, but just got a big update with voluminous patch notes. And it seems like there may be one update away from really finalizing this thing and having it come out for Switch to. I put about 25 hours into the early access version of it right when it came out. And I got pretty far into it and said, do you know what?

I'm going to stop here and wait for the 1.0. That's smart, I think. Yeah, I have held out in. entirely. I have deprived myself of Hades 2. And so the anticipation has been building. And on the one hand, you know, it's the first sequel for this fine developer. And I've, I've loved all of their games. And so I kind of wanted them to keep breaking new grounds and an entirely new IP from Super Giant. But I'm confident that I will like this at least. You will. You're going to like it a lot. Yeah, I will. It's still fun to replay the original Hades. So, you know, you know, new twist on that, I'm there. And number three, for me, is Metroid Prime 4. It's been a long wait. We don't have a firm release date yet, but it's coming.

We think we're pretty confident that it's coming, and that'll give us something else to play on our Switch 2. So super excited for Metroid Prime 4. Number two, I don't want to jinx anything. I know, but Hollow Night Silk Song, it's coming. They said it's coming. They said this month. They said it's coming before the holidays before Christmas. And they've never been known to be wrong about that before.

The holidays. They said the holidays. So, you know, hopefully that doesn't mean Arbor Day, you know. Yeah. They won't let us out again. I hope that's going to be quite a day if and when that comes out. Obviously, some of this is provisional and hypothetical and hopeful. And then number one for me.

And I'm guessing for you, too, do we have mutual agreement on both of our number ones, Ghost of Yote, sort of sequel to Ghost of Sushima? Yeah, it's going to be great. I hope. At worst, it's going to be great. At worst. It's the only one that I think has it shot at taking over the number one spot from Claire Obscure for me. And even then, I think it's going to be a tall task. And Ghost of Tsushima is one of my favorite games of the past decade. So it's going to be a battle for me. All right. So my top 10 is very similar to yours in its contents, at least, if not the order. So at 10, I have Borderlands 4. That movie made me really not want to care about Borderlands. But, man, that game plays fun and the game looks good. So I'll just forget about that movie for the rest of my life.

And it's not 80 bucks. It's 70. Wow, what a win. Yeah. Nine is. Now they've anchored. us on 80 to the point where we're celebrating 70. We've fallen for it.

My number nine is the Final Fantasy Tactics remaster. Ah, yeah. Yeah, I was sort of excluding remasters, yeah. Remasters, yeah. I was too, but this one. Yeah, from both of these lists, really. This one I can. Yeah, that's fair.

Yeah. Mafia, the old country at number eight, number seven, Outer Worlds Two. Number six, Silent Hill F. This is the new Silent Hill set in Japan that I think looks really fantastic. Agreed. This looks good, obviously, not a horror guy, but I'm trying new things, so you never know.

And I anticipate that we will cover this on the podcast. I think that's so good. Number five, Donkey Kong Bonanza. Never been huge Donkey Kong person, but I am a huge Nintendo person. So I will take what I can get. And I'm sure that I will at least enjoy this. Number four is not something that was on your list. It is Shinobi Art of Vengeance.

This is the new 2D Shinobi that's coming out at the end of August, and it looks incredible. And everyone who has gotten hands-on with this game has been very impressed by it. So I am really looking forward to that. Number three, Holo Night Silk Song, number two, Metroid Prime 4, number one, goes to Yote. I have a few honorable mentions, too. Do you have any honorable mentions? Yeah, a few. I mean, I'm not a Pokemon Legends guy, but Pokemon Legends Z to A is coming.

out that would be on a lot of people's list probably there are two ninja guidance games coming out ninja guidance four and rage bound so hopefully at least one of them will be good and grounded two comes out quite soon and then dying light the beast that's you know i mentioned it you sure did good job what else is on your radar i got wheel world coming out oh okay july 23rd i think this had a different title before. But you're just kind of on a bike in a kind of an open world setting with a unique art style. I played the demo. It's really fun. I was looking forward to that. Hell is Us is coming out September 3rd. This was very intriguing. It is creepy, sci-fi stuff. I don't know. It looks

fascinating. Pro Skater 3 and 4. Who's not looking forward to that? Oh, of course. Yes. Yes. Yes. Mina the Hollower on Halloween. That is by the shovel night people. I played the demo. The demo this is out on Steam. And I love what I played of this. Mina the Hollower.

Skate Story, the other skating game that we've been looking forward to. Really strange art style. Skateboards are back. Skateboards are back. And finally, very hype for Professor Layton in the new world of Steam. That's a puzzle guy. All right. Yeah, speaking of walking simulators, sort of intrigued by baby steps as well.

Intrigued is the right word. Okay. Yeah, yeah. And there's some rematchers, the Metal Gear and the Gears Award remaster. Yes, of course. No. Yes. Good year.

Packed fall and winter. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, let us know what you are looking forward to and what you have enjoyed this year so far. Email us at ring of burst gaming at gmail. Stay tuned for our upcoming coverage here at ButtonMash and elsewhere at the Ringiverse and House of R.

Thank you to Devin Milano for producing this podcast and to our Juno Ringo pal, as always, for giving us the green light. Matt, thanks as always for your dedication to the craft. Always fun to talk games with you. Thanks for having me. Yeah, the only reason I play all these games is for this podcast. So, you know, just for the content. Yeah, you don't actually like playing games. It's just pure misery for you.

Yeah. Yeah. Fun. Thanks for listening, everyone. Games are good.