The Ringer-Verse - The Top 10 Video Games of the Year

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

Before we reach the final level of 2022, Ben Lindbergh is joined by Matt James and Justin Charity to discuss the best games of the year. They begin by discussing the significant gaming trends that made this year's landscape, and what they're looking forward to in the new year (03:19) before getting to their collective top 10 (20:45). Host: Ben Lindbergh Guests: Matt James and Justin Charity Senior Producer: Steve Ahlman Additional Production Support: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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The Ringerverse, the Ringers' Nexus podcast feed for all things fandom. I am Ben Lindberg, a senior editor for The Ringer. I don't know if we're still calling my Pirate Radio Ringerverse episodes, Lindbergh and Associates, but I am still Lindbergh, and I do have associates. In fact, two of them this time. Player 1 is a man whose actual favorite video games of 2022. If we were counting ports would probably be the PC versions of Persona 5 Royal and Death Stranding and the Switchport of Near Automata.

senior staff writer, Justin Charity. Charity, welcome to the pod, and please apologize in advance for whatever contrarian takes you're planning to inflict on our listeners today. I do apologize. You need to tell a single lie in my introduction, so I'll just move on. And now another challenger appears. Player 2 is a man whose visual wizardry as the ringer's deputy art lead is second only to his artistry with a power washer in Powerwashed simulator.

Mr. Matt James. Matt, welcome into the ringerverse for the first time, right? Thank you so much, you. This is my ringerverse debut. Happy to be here. Always good to break in a rookie. And we're here with producer Steve Allman, who's on board behind the boards

for some four-player split-screen action because we are the ringer's most avid video gamers. We're the league of extraordinary gamers at the ringer. And thus, the responsibility, nay, the privilege of pronouncing the year's best games falls to us. So as promised on our recent episode about the state of superhero games, we've got a goad for you this time. The game awards were last week, but Jeff Keely was just the warm-up act for the Ringer versus best games of 2022. This is what everyone was waiting for, even though we've never done it before.

Actually, guys, I realized today that you both join me and Jason Concepcion on the final episode of our dearly departed video game podcast, Achievement-oriented, when we discuss the games of the year 2017. So it's appropriate that you're with me once again as we revived that tradition five years later. So I guess the frame rates and the resolutions are higher than they were in 2017, except on Switch. Sorry, Switch. I still love you.

720P, baby. And amazingly, the three of us are also better looking than ever, which you can't tell on a podcast, but trust me, it is true. just as was true in 2017, when we were talking about Breath of the Wild, the games were good this year, too. I think it's fair to say that the games were good. If you guys had to situate this year on the spectrum of good gaming years, just kind of firing from the hip here, would you say this was a great gaming year, a good gaming year or a subpar gaming year? I thought it was great. I know we didn't get a wide number of AAA games, but I thought that, the indie games this year really kind of rescued everything, so to speak.

But I'm not a Pokemon fan, so I'm not mad at frame rates and pop in right now. Yeah, we will talk about that in just a second. What about you, Justin? You know, I guess it depends on how you look at it. I think Matt's point about indie, like, I think if you look at it from a banner big budget game perspective, it's actually like a pretty mediocre last year. I think Eldon Ring kind of ends up carrying. a lot of 2022.

You're spoiling our list, Charity. What I'm just saying? No one knew Eldon Ring was going to be on this thing. I think if you do take a more expansive view of like smaller low budget, mid-budget titles, like yeah, there's a lot of interesting stuff this year. That was more interesting to talk about, I think, than the big, you know, multi-billion dollar budget games. Yes, we will talk about that in just a moment.

Before we do, just some quick programming notes for the ringerverse feed. On Monday, House of Midnight will be talking about Avatar, The Way of Water, which I have seen and will not spoil other than to say that the high frame rate and the mid-movie scene-to-scene frame rate changes makes it look very video-gamy for better or worse. On Wednesday, the Midnight Boys will do their midnight mulligans, and then next Friday, House of R will present Ringerverse Recommends. but we've got some gaming recommendations to make today. So let's get to the games. But before we start our countdown of the top 10 games of the year and talk about some of the things we're looking forward to in 2023, just briefly discuss a few trends that stood out to us about 2022,

not just for the industry at large. I mean, every company acquired or tried to acquire every other company. And some studios unionized or took other actions to combat crunch. and toxic cultures, and mercifully, speaking of toxic subjects, we had to hear a little less about blockchain games this year than we did last year. But a larger industry overview is beyond the scope of this pod. So let's just keep it focused on the games. And I think the first trend that stood out to us that you guys were both just alluding to

is that really Indies sort of saved the day after every AAA game got delayed. It's only a slight exaggeration, whether it's Zelda, or Hogwarts Legacy or For Spoken or the Avatar game, not the movie. That is not delayed again. It was delayed many times. Or Redfall or Starfield or Suicide Squad, we could do a delayed games of the year pod and have a ton to talk about. So there are a lot of reasons for that, right? I mean, of course, there is the pandemic and the way that that slowed development.

There's the war in Ukraine. There's just the ever-escalating cost and complexity of developing big-budget games. There's the emphasis on live-service games as opposed to discrete releases. But at no point this year did I ever feel like there was a shortage of great and interesting games to play because the Indies just sort of saved the big publisher's bacon. And so I'm wondering, A, whether you felt that way. It sounds like you did. And B, whether you think this is the new normal, whether we should change.

just adjust our expectations when it comes to how many AAA games we're going to see each year or the normal holiday slate that we're used to where everything just builds up to October and November or whether we're going to see fewer of those releases but we'll still be satisfied because there's just so much else to play. And all of this might sound silly in two or three months when every game that got delayed this year comes out. So that is also a possible answer here. But Matt, what did you think about just the shape of the releases this year and whether that foreshadows how gaming is going to work going forward or whether it's more of a blip? I think that this year was actually great for me because coming out of last year, I was feeling

a little bit of fatigue with the AAA games with, you know, the open world third person action blockbuster, which is why I wasn't so quick to hop into Horizon Forbidden West. It was a game. The The first horizon, I loved the story. I was excited to get back into that world. But just the thought of all these markers on the map and, you know, just a giant open world, 60, 70 hours. It just, it all started to feel a little overwhelming to me. So the fact that we had a lot of AAA games pushed this year and that that made room for so many new indie experiences for me, I had a great time playing games this year. There wasn't any shortages of great games to play for me this year.

So I kind of welcomed it. And if we do have a year next year where it's packed with AAA games, I wonder how I'm going to react to that because I had such a good time this year. Yeah, you could say in some ways it was maybe not the most successful year for the industry or for investors in that the streak of revenue increases kind of came to an end and was snapped post-peak pandemic. as people started spending more time outside and less time staring at screens. I mean, not me. Other people, or so I've heard, but for gamers, yeah, it was good. There was just a constant stream. It wasn't necessarily a long list of games that I had been looking forward to for years

that had, like, huge reveals and trailer drops and that everyone was super excited about. It was more almost surprises and word of mouth and these games that kind of came out of nowhere from smaller studios or development teams. And in a way, that made it more rewarding and just gave me more variety. So are you sort of on the same page, Justin? Yeah, it also feels kind of like, at least now, there's less pressure to have,

I mean, again, maybe not on the companies and the investors and the dev teams, right? But there's less pressure to have the kind of big AAA, you know, the thing we used to recognize as like console sellers because there's just so much, I feel like online and multiplayer sort of games with these like 10-year life cycles have taken a lot of pressure off, right?

Because it's like if I look at my play count this year, like, yes, I spent 127 hours playing Eldon Ring. But then after that, what did I spend a ton of time playing? Spoilers. Yeah, I otherwise spent a ton of time playing Guilty Gear Strive, right? And like, that didn't come out this year. It came out last year. And there's a lot of games like that.

in the culture, I mean, not to spoil a sort of piece that I'm actually reporting right now, but, you know, sort of like the rise of multiplayer in recent years, but it's like there's more of that, there's more of that culture of like, hey, even when there's not a huge god of war game out right now,

you know, you're probably clocking a bunch of hours in a game we've been playing for the past five years, right? And that sort of takes, I think, a lot of the edge off of expectations for like big AAA title that's dropping X week. Right. And I kind of think that way about the culture at large that we're all just so

focused on the present and the latest thing. They could just stop making games for a few years, and it's not like I would catch up. It's not like I would run out. You know, like if they just stopped making media for a few years, that would not be good for this podcast. And for our download counts, because the new thing is the thing that people are paying attention to and that the most people are watching or playing at once and want to hear people talking about. But I feel like I'm perpetually playing catch-up and losing. So it's no shortage ever, even when things get delayed. When I was a kid, I would be just distraught when games would get delayed,

something I was super looking forward to now, whether it's just maturity and other obligations or perspective or just the glut of games that we always have at all times, when something gets delayed, in some sense, it's almost a relief for me. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, A, the game will hopefully be better and will be released in a less broken state. B, the people making the game won't have to crunch as much. And C, I won't have to feel guilty because I haven't played it yet or because I haven't played the 10 other things I have to play first. So. But enough about Saints Row. Another spoiler. That is not making our list. But I did write about it and you had a decent time with it. All right. Second trend, this is not necessarily a new trend, but some of the games. of the year didn't come out this year, as you were just saying, right?

And so in some cases, these are games as a service games that just never go away. So it could be Fortnite, which got a facelift and a zero build mode and had a huge year. It could be League of Legends, which had a big year. It could be Destiny 2, which had a great expansion and was back on everyone's radar. Or it could be games that launched in some state of disrepair and disappointment and then gradually fix themselves, sort of the no-man sky-style redemption arc. And I guess this year, you could name a few that fit into that category, whether it's Battlefield 5 or Fallout 76 or, most notably, Cyberpunk, 277.

So, Justin, I know you said you played a lot of Guilty Gear Strive, but speaking of cyberpunk specifically, you guys played that game before and after the fixes. So give me your thoughts on the Cyberson. I guess you can go first, Justin. Bro, I mean, here's the thing. I think that people, I mean, if you look at the subreddit, or the subredits, really, for cyberpunk, and sort of... That's your first mistake.

Yeah, I think people oversell the patches that the game got. Like, I definitely think they've improved, maybe technically, the game in a lot of ways. The patches didn't fundamentally change cyberpunk 2077, and I think on a fundamental level, I still have problems with, you know, how they integrated the story and the gameplay in that game. But I do think that...

with time, I don't know. That game just hooked me. And it hooked me in a really low-key way. And it was like, after I finished burning myself out on the game that I won't name for a third time to avoid spoilers that aren't really spoilers. You know, I just had this thought of like, I got to go back to Cyberpunk 2077. I got to do it. You know, it's like enough patches that have come out. Oh, that's what it was.

I'd built a PC. I got my graphics card, and I went back into that world and what can I tell you, man? Quick hacking is really fun. That's the long and short of cyberpunk 277. I think there's a lot learned

across the gaming landscape by the disaster that was the cyberpunk launch. You can see Hogwarts, the Hogwarts game is just coming out in February, along with all of the other games, they recently just announced that there is a delay that's going to happen.

Contrary to what Cyberpunk did, cyberpunk delayed the next-gen versions and released the very poorly running current-gen versions. So Hogwarts is doing the opposite. The next-gen versions are coming out on launch day, and then the lower-jan versions are now delayed a few months. So you can see that the impact that Cyberpunk had is casting,

is definitely impacting the gaming landscape. Every publisher learned its lesson. Every game was released in perfectly polished states. No bugs. Nothing. As I'm sure Starfield will be. Yeah, next year as well. And our third trend here before we get to our top 10.

So we are not console warriors here. We are ecumenical console gamers. We embrace all brains. We just, we love the brands. We rep them all here. That said, I just diss the Switch briefly. So I've got to give it up for this system and for Nintendo, which had, I would say, almost a surprisingly strong year, because if you had told me coming into this year that there would

be no new version of the system, right? The mythical Switch Pro would remain mythical, and that the old hardware would really show its age and that the Steam Deck would come along and provide an appealing and, you know, more powerful handheld alternative, and that there would be no mainline Metroid, Mario, or Zelda games this year, I would have said, that doesn't sound like it's going to be a banner year for the Switch. Instead, the system continued to outsell PlayStation and Xbox by a smaller margin than the last couple of years as the supply chain issues sort of started to get straightened out to some extent, but still outsold those systems, those newer, more powerful

systems by a significant margin, and maybe more importantly, the exclusives stood out because even with the Zelda delay and no new news about Mario or Metroid Prime you had the new Mario Plus Rabbids. You had Nintendo developed games like Splatoon 3 and Switch Sports and Mario Strikers. You had Nintendo published games like the new Kirby and Bayonetta and Xenoblade Chronicles and Fire Emblem Warriors and just so much Pokemon. Pokemon, Scarlet, Violet, and Archaeus. Just, I mean, so many Pokemon's,

Pokemon, whatever the plural is, just like really evolutionary landmark Pokemon games, too, even if not all of them were fully functional, to put it kindly. So say what you will about Nintendo alienating the community by shutting down smash tournaments and issuing takedown notices and still not allowing me to play Windwaker on Switch. Please, someday, one of these years. But even when most of its flagship first-party franchises sort of sat the year out, the releases and the sales were as strong as ever.

So am I drinking the Kool-Aid here, or are you with me on this system, kind of outperforming the fundamentals? Or how did you think the systems and respective platforms sort of stacked up this year? I guess you can take that first charity. I mean, they finally put out Biaena 3. Next question. That's it for you. That's all you needed. I didn't even care about the persona portal to the Switch,

be honest with them to buy it on PC and never have to, that'll be my third copy of Persema 5 Royal, right? But like, yeah, I don't know. They got paid out of three out. That's the extent of my opinion. Even my wife is like, where is Win Waker? But I definitely see your point, right? It's like I definitely feel like I appreciated my Switch

maybe marginally more this year than I did last year. Maybe I'd put it like that. Yeah. And, and Matt, I mean, Xbox, obviously, Microsoft lost some exclusive, some big games that were pushed to next year. So that sort of hurt the exclusive Xbox lineup relative to Sony's relative to Nintendo's. But how did you feel about the arc of Game Pass and its offerings over the course of this year? Right. I think this is the year where Game Pass really leveled up, especially in a year where indie games had a little bit more room

to shine. That was really great for Game Pass. They had you know, month after month they were putting out really great indie games, some of which I don't know if I would have tried and played if they weren't on Game Pass. I think people are realizing that when you have Game Pass, it sort of opens a door for you into kinds of games that you wouldn't necessarily purchase, but you can just turn it on and try it and say, oh, well, I normally wouldn't play this, but people say it's good, so I'll give it a shot. And going into next year, yeah, GamePass is looking like an incredible deal. And, you know, PlayStation sort of jumbled up its PlayStation Plus this year.

Now there's three tiers. Hopefully you have a friend that can explain it to you. Yes. The most confusing streaming service since HBO max slash now slash HBO, or since just the naming convention of the Xbox consoles. But it's like Sony has turned that. subscription tiers into, it feels like you're making espresso. I would say about it.

It's just so, it's tough, man. It's rough. It's not a fair fight. Looking at the offerings and going through the complicated PlayStation plus menu on your console, sort of thumbing through trying to figure out, okay, so what's available on Ultimate? What's available on extra?

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This episode is brought to by Viori. When it comes to close, that score high in both comfort and style, Viori is my MVP. Sunday performance joggers, oh yeah. They have the perfect. I could watch a game and then go out to dinner vibe. And the metapant, that's my number one. I need to look like I tried option. Get 20% off your first, purchase at vore.com slash Simmons and discover the versatility of Viori clothing. Exclusions apply, visit the website for full terms and conditions. So we've

synthesized our personal lists into kind of a collective top ten, which took surprisingly little yelling, actually. It might be better for the podcast if we vehemently disagreed with each other. Maybe we're all just too accommodating, but there was a lot of consensus here. So we're going to go

down the list and make our cases for including these games. And just standard disclaimer applies, even among the three of us, we've not come close to playing every good game released this year. So if we don't mention something that you loved, it doesn't necessarily mean that we didn't love it. It might mean that, but it also might mean that we just didn't play it or not enough of us played it or spent enough time with it to feel like we could elevate it to this position. Honestly, when I was making my personal list, the hardest part was just being forced to confront my pile of shame and just realize how many great games I have not yet got.

gotten to and we'll have to try to catch up on before every game that got the way this year comes out next spring and the cycle starts anew. So as I said, I have resigned myself and accepted that I will never catch up or keep pace. And I've actually kind of come to terms with that. I think it's healthier not to try. So let's just shout out some honorable mentions here. We've got to get like the guy who reads the terms and conditions at the end of the commercial to just read really fast so we can fit in as many games as possible here. But this is both because we want to recognize more games than the 10 and also because we want to defend ourselves against people being mad at us because we omitted some great games that maybe we actually played and really liked a lot. And maybe just not enough of us played it or we just didn't have enough love for it.

And Steve, if you want to jump in at the end of this and mention anything that we don't include here, please go ahead. but just a few that we debated being on this list and ultimately are not. Tunic, Lego Star Wars, the Skywalker saga, Splatoon 3, speaking of Nintendo games that I really love this year, Bayonetta, which we mention immortality, rogue legacy two, Mario Puss Rabbids. We mentioned Escape Academy, Power Wash Simulator, which certainly would have been on the Matt James list. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Shredder's Revenge. Norco, Return to Monkey Islands. Have I left out anything that we definitely want to mention here because we tossed around a lot of titles?

I wouldn't have put Soul Hackers 2 on the list, but it is a game that I love. I think the reviews of Soul Hackers 2 did that game dirty. I'm not saying it's great, not saying it's perfect, but it's a much better game than reviews gave it credit for, and it's definitely like toward the higher end of my Steam playtime of games that came out this year, for sure. And Steve, I've seen your personal 10, which mirrors ours fairly closely, I would say,

but maybe a few not represented. If you want to say something about them, I guess multiverses would be one choice. A tunic we mentioned, that would be on your top 10. I think everything else maybe you had, we have noted at least, but anything else you want to shout out while we have you. I think I was just more impressed with the splash that, I mean, as brief as it may seem, the splash that multiverses made, while it was. was out on the scene and like in that quick beta that it had.

We've been in a big like chasing that Smash Brothers high for many, many properties and many, many libraries of IP. And I think that Warner Brothers is kind of coming close because, you know, Jake, the dog can fight Aria Stark and I'm kind of down with that. But Tunic is actually a lot more than what you think of it being for a seemingly a Zelda ripoff. But it's, uh, it's quite an impression. and very, very adorably made game. Yeah.

Zelda's so great that there are many, many games that have been described as Zelda ripoffs or omages or however you want to put it, tributes that are themselves really incredible in their own right. Even if they do have some Zelda DNA, that is not a bad thing, especially if we have to wait five years or so between actual Zelda games, then I'm fine with having Zelda facsimiles in between. All right. So we're up to the 10. and I guess we'll start with pentamint, right?

So this was one that I think Matt you pushed for more than everyone else, probably. I have some thoughts on pentament, but give us the hard sell for pentament. Okay, no, it sells itself. Listen, do you like reading a lot? And are you just endlessly fascinated by the 16th century Holy Roman Empire? Because if you do, this, no, it sounds, it's a tough sell, man. It really is. But this is one of those games I'm talking about where I don't know if I would have purchased this game,

but it was on Game Pass, so I gave it a try, right? And I found this to be an incredible storytelling experience. I thought it was really innovative in the way that your decisions in the game sort of impacted what happens later in the game. So just a quick overview. you play an artist traveling to this small Bavarian town commission to create these illuminated manuscripts. This is at a time when the printing press is about to take over the world and allow information to sort of be flowing freely rather than be controlled by the people who hand-make

these books throughout the Holy Roman Empire. And you come to the town and there's a murder and you spend the whole time pretty much running around town, talking to people, trying to figure out what's going on. The story happens over three acts, and there's time jump between each of the acts. And I thought the art was absolutely incredible. Yes. I've never had less of a problem reading a ton of dialogue in a game in my life.

Yeah. It's really well written. I did have to increase the size multiple times in order to not get an headache. but yes. Yeah, and the work that they did with fonts to sort of make sure everything, you know, looked of the era that it was from. And I thought it was really interesting that, you know, if a noble that comes into town, his dialogue is displayed in, you know, a very regal font, very intricate font,

whereas if you find the heretic in the woods who's spouting off all this dangerous, you know, all these dangerous opinions about the church, his font is going to be a much more casual font than that nobles. All these subtle touches really kind of convey how much the people who made this game cared about what they were making and how polished it really is. And I just found the story by the end to be one of the most memorable stories I've played in the game in quite a while. I have a question, Matt.

Does anybody speak in papyrus? Pretty close. Okay. Pretty close. Yeah. Yeah, I'm playing Pentiment now. I'm on Act 2, and I feel like maybe I'm just getting to the good part, so it's maybe too soon for me to tell whether this will be a top 10 type game for me. So you're not getting my fully formed opinion.

I love the look. I do like stories that are set in a hyper-specific time and place. So 16th century Bavaria, yes, I'm in. Yeah, we should mention that one of the, it is, you know, you don't have to know anything about the history of it. one of the best things about it is if there's a term that you might not be familiar with. It'll be underlined in the text of the game. And you can hit a button to pop you out of the scene and take you to a glossary that has a very quick explanation to give you the background. So you don't have to be intimidated by the setting or the history of it.

Yeah, it's like a pop-up video style glossary. And you can also just ignore that if you don't need to know that much about Salzburg or whatever. So I will say that so far I'm not finding the gameplay. loop itself very riveting. And this is maybe a larger observation. And I don't know if you guys feel this way. But, you know, Justin, you got married this year. Congrats. Matt, you're getting married next year. Congrats in advance. I have a 14-month-old daughter at home who is constantly stealing my controllers. So as we reach these these checkpoints in life or unlock these achievements or progress in our personal skill trees, become real grownups theoretically, at least, I guess,

can get a little bit harder to find time to play games. And I find that when I do carve out time to play a game, as opposed to reading a book or watching a video or a TV show or a movie, I really crave a level of interactivity that I can't get from any other medium. I want to feel like I'm doing more than occasionally pressing A, you know, and I'm not denigrating walking sims or visual novels or point-and-click adventure games, many of which are great in which I have loved and I'm not gatekeeping gaminess or saying that any game is more gamey than any other game. And obviously, if the game is good enough, I'll play anything.

But more and more, I think all else being equal, I'm primarily looking for things that, A, I can play in short bursts if necessary, B, that aren't ridiculously long, and C, that give me a level of input and control that kind of differentiates that activity from the more scripted spectator experiences I have much of the time. And also, because the narrative quality of video games has improved so much on the whole, I don't feel like I have to choose between great gameplay and great story because a lot of games give me both. So for a while there, it was like if you wanted to play the artsy style game that told a really engrossing story, you might have to make some choices and some sacrifices, and there would be games that prioritize that over gameplay.

And it was almost in either or in many cases, whereas now it's not necessarily. So a game like Pentiment or like The Artful Escape, which is a game I know you really liked last year, Matt, that also was ported this year. And I played too. But there just wasn't enough, I guess, interactivity for me where I felt like I'm just kind of holding the joystick one way and occasionally pressing a button. And even if the story is engrossing, it's almost like, should this have been a video game? Like, is the video game the ideal form of this? Should this have been like a scripted miniseries or something? And I'm not saying pentiment necessarily fits into that because there are choices you can make, right?

And it's a game that seems like it would be fun to replay just doing different things and making different choices and seeing how the story plays out differently. And the story is pretty effective so far. I guess it's just it's not given me that kind of adrenaline, adrenaline-inducing flow state sort of feeling, which is fine. Like not every game has to do that, right? and it can be a nice change of pace. It's not for everyone. And I'm not going to lie, it is kind of like a well-written,

choose-your-own-adventure book where you have to walk to each new page. It's not for everyone, but if you could fathom the best-case scenario of a game that is pretty close to just be in a book, this is it, in my opinion. Yeah, and that's fine.

I mean, games are like that, and some TV shows are increasingly becoming interactive in that same sort of gamey way. So I appreciate it and I applaud it and I like it. I do not yet love it, but I'm holding out hope that I will. So now that we're past the top 10, Steve is going to throw in some Street Fighter 2 continue screen countdown sounds for the final nine here.

So starting with Colt of the Lamb, which is another game I'm going to throw to Matt to advocate for. Yeah, this is a pretty delightful game. The big thing to mention about Cult of the Lamb is it's structure. it's sort of two games in one, right? Half of it is this town building farm simulator where you are building a cult and you're building buildings

for them to sleep in and you're creating, you're harvesting things and keeping your cult town going. And then the other half is sort of a rogue like in which you go into dungeons and fight battles and get upgrades for your weapons and then you come back to the town and you take your resources that you earned and you fix your town up some more. And I definitely, I love this game.

I had a lot of fun with it. I thought it was the right length. The art style is fantastic. It's a really cutesy art style while all these very sinister things are happening. You know, cannibalism and all that. I think for me, the reason why it's not higher in Artelist is that, that whenever you have a game that is essentially two things, you're going to like one of them more.

Harkening back to our Midnight Sun's discussion, Steve, recently, where we love the combat. You didn't love everything else? Yeah, this is not like that necessarily, but yeah. Cool side with Blade, though, that was pretty great. Yes. Yeah, but the interesting thing for me about this game is that not everyone liked the same half of the game better than the other.

And I walked into it expecting to like the rogue-like stuff better. And I actually found myself liking the town building side of it better, which was pretty surprising. But I did like how the game let you as the cult leader choose to be either a bit more benevolent or absolutely cruel, just mean spirit and evil. Which were you? Oh, you know me, Ben. I was kind of. I was very, we didn't eat nobody. We didn't eat nobody.

You didn't throw anybody in the stocks. You didn't throw anybody into the fertilizer machine. If I had to unlock an achievement or something, yeah, maybe like one or two here. Passive-fist cult leader? Come on. That's not boring. If my character is a little mean, I'm going to play a mean. All right.

We should move on. To number eight, stray, which is a game I really loved. And I think a good example of the lines blurring between Indian. AAA to the point that that distinction is a lot less meaningful. I mean, again, here we're talking about indie sort of saving the day. So you have Cult of the Lamb, which is a devolver digital published game. And then you have Stray, which is Anapurna published. But this game has production values and polish that are really almost indistinguishable from a bigger budget or blockbuster or AAA game or whatever you want to call it. Any game with that kind of pedigree, I guess one distinction would be that this is a very

digestible length, right? So you can beat stray in six hours or so, which was welcome, honestly. I mean, I would have played more, but when it was over, I felt like that was a good self-contained experience, and I enjoyed myself and spent the time that I wanted to with that game, and that was great. But it's more interactive, it's more fully fleshed out, and it's got a great world, which is, I think, part of the appeal. That's something that I know that you really appreciated about it, Matt, was just like getting to get some hints and clues about this world and this alternate future and what is going on here. That was almost a bigger draw than the gameplay itself was just sort of the environmental storytelling and trying to piece together as a cat

combined with a robot, but a very intelligent cat, nonetheless, still just sort of snooping and sniffing around and trying to decipher for yourself how this world actually got to this point and where we are and where we're trying to go, that was what really stuck with me about Shrey. Like you said, the world that they created was absolutely fascinating and beautiful, too. Those environmental, the areas where you can just kind of explore slightly open world were definitely the highlights to me. I think a lot of people got kind of focused on, oh, it's a cat game, it's cat game. Look how much it's cat.

That is such a cat. But ultimately, I think the game is somehow simultaneously overrated and underrated at the same time. Like, I don't think it should have been in Game of the Year category for, you know, game awards. But at the same time, I think a lot of the hate that it gets, people are just kind of focusing on the cat elements of it. And I don't know, look around. It's a really beautiful world that they've created. Yes, I tried to talk Maori into playing stray because. of course she's a cat person, but she's very hesitant because she's worried about the cat getting hurt.

I tried to reassure her that there's something of a limit to that, but I think any kind of cat violence is basically a non-starter for her. So try to talk her into her. But in a way, like the gaminess of this game, like when it gets gamier, when it becomes, there's a sequence in Stray where it's not like a shooter exactly, but there are elements of it that maybe you look more like other. games, whereas people expect this to be just you're the cat and you explore and you skulk around, right? And there are certain mechanics there that kind of briefly get added in and just as quickly quickly get taken out and really didn't bother me at all. But in a way, it felt like that was when Stray was straying from its formula in a sense.

So I thought that it was just kind of the perfect blend of polish and innovation and experimentation and just world design that left me wanting more. Seven. Because Matt wasn't ready to take the plunge into Horizon Forbidden West, but Charity and I will. Eventually, yeah, you're telling me that you can't get into a big map in 60 or 70 hours. And then I imagine you dived right into Eldon Ring immediately after that. So again, terrible timing. In the case of Eldon Ring, you can't in 60 to 70 hours.

It's more like 200. No, that's like the tutorial, basically. So, yeah, I mean, Horizon, we're the Horizon heads on this pod charity. So give me your pitch for everyone. Everyone is bugging. That's what I will say about Horizon Corrid West. I thought this game was great. And I'll tell you, like, I really liked Zero Dawn.

I did think that Horizon Zero Dawn instead of from a, like, I thought the basic gameplay, right, of like, kill robot dinosaurs. Great. Let's do that. Let's do that all day. Let's dismantle them. Let's pop those canisters. Let's scavenge. Like, I loved that about the first game.

I thought that the drama, the sort of alt history, post-apocalyptic, sci-fi, tech critique drama of the first game kind of was under, it never reached boiling point. I think it was weird that the first game ended on a cliffhanger because it felt like the game's storytelling never really earned that. But then Forbidden West comes along. And that game was just nuts, right? Like people complain, I think, about Aloys too moody and Forbidden West. No, I think what they did with Forbidden West is they were like, this is already a game about killing dinosaurs.

Let's add some aliens to it. Let's add humans who are in space and then come back. Let's turn this into a USA network version of three body problem. That is what they did with Forbidden West. And I love it. They just went nuts. The game went nuts. There's like an Elon Musk caricature in it.

Like, I think they brought, they took. they turned it up, if not to 11, they at least got to 10 with Forbidden West with some of the weaker elements from the first game. And then I thought, yeah, I thought, but the combat felt as good as ever to me, you know, it's like, I mean, I think Horizon is a game. I have to turn it up to its highest difficulty to really feel that sense of engagement with its gameplay. But like, once you do that, I don't know. I know it's not the deepest experience. I know that it does have a lot of sort of big budget open world qualities that sort of, I think at this stage in open world Western video game development are starting to rub people the wrong way. But I think, yeah, I think some

of the anxiety or backlash to horizon seem to emerge in the middle of the year, it's, you know, I think we all know this doing criticism, but it's like sometimes they're playing musical chairs, right? And sometimes the thing that gets backlash, it's just because like that day everyone woke up in a bad mood and decided the hated open world video games. And like, if this game was Far Cry 6, I would get it. But this game is better than that. And I'm glad it's on this list where it is. I'm with you.

I've felt the open world fatigue, but I really didn't feel it too acutely with this game. And you're right. They really went for it. It's story wise, just big swings left it right. It's like, it's not quite Assassin's Creed level of bonkers narrative, but it's getting there. And I just, I was into it. And I know that every game is getting adapted into a TV show or movie now, but I'm actually looking forward to the Horizon adaptation because I want to know more about this world. Like, as good as the dinosaur battles are, they can get a bit drawn out at times and maybe a bit repetitive.

And I just, I want to know more about this world. I like the backstory. I like picking up the little tidbits, a little like stray, although there's much more to it, of course. And it's just bigger in every possible way. But I was completely into it. And really, like, the main note for Horizon is just when you release your next game, do not do it immediately before an era-defining game that is sort of in an adjacent genre. So when you put out Horizon Forbidden West and it comes out immediately before Eldon Ring

or you put out the first Horizon immediately before Breath of the Wild, that's a formula for people immediately comparing and finding you wanting in some way. also finding you formulaic in some way, whereas Breath of Wild and Eldon Ring, which often got grouped together, are seen as this sort of more emergent storytelling type of thing and less box checking and items on the map and insignia that you have to check off, right? So I think it's suffered from those comparisons, but if like you, Matt, you play it long after that when you don't necessarily have Eldon Ring in mind or any other specific game, I think you could have a great time with it. So, yeah, I mean, I legitimately didn't play Forbidden West when it came out because I think it

like a week or two before Eldon Ring, and I was like, that game's too big for me to finish before Elden Ring. And once that comes out, I'm not touching this. Terrible timing. Yeah. So there's DLC coming in April, which I'm excited for, so maybe you can get to it before then. All right. Number six, you guys and Steve all played and loved Sifu. Frankly, I'm scared of Sifu, so I have not yet taken the plunge. I'm too intimidated. So I'm just going to sit back and let you guys make the case. What are you nervous?

Yes. Yes. I'm a filthy casual. I'm too scared of this game. And that is partly because I read and edited Steve's piece about it for the ringer.com. What a great website. And it sounded hard. And hard can be good. But tell me why this is so good and worth the many, many deaths. Okay. So, Sifu, right, the aging mechanic and the, like, the structure, that game is just structurally sound, right? Like, I think for one, the idea of, You're not just sort of fighting bosses, right? But you are running through a hit list, basically, in this game. And it's not enough to sort of beat a level. You really need to go basically in one shot from the beginning of the game to the end of the game. And that's sort of what you're training to do, right? And this is a martial arts thing, a lot of kicking and hitting people with bottles and really flashy

animations, a lot of one versus 100 mob type situations. you know, a lot of kung fu movie type encounters, right? Just really tactile. I think every time I hit somebody with a staff or a bottle or just with my knuckles in seafood, that snap, it almost sounds like the Nintendo Switch snap in the commercials, right? But every time you hit somebody, man, it just feels really good.

Yeah, I don't know. That's a game that I know Eldon Ring is like this for a lot of people of like you just sort of go in and go nuts. But like for Sifu being a smaller scale game, right? And being actually, like sometimes people use linear as an insult to talk about games. But Sifu feels like it leverages its linearity, this sense of like you have a sense of direction. You are trying to get to the end of this thing. You almost are, you're supposed to go into it with the sort of tunnel vision.

And that makes it feel really engrossing and thrilling and urgent while you're cutting through these huge mobs. you're trying to optimize your path through the elevator bays and all that stuff. It's just like, I think great level design, great encounters, great sound design. I love running up in the club and just chopping people in the neck. Just like real life. Feels good in the hands, man. Yeah, I thought the gameplay for this game was one of the best, you know, it's up there for

best gameplay of the year for me. I, you know, this is a far swing from me running around. Bavaria and Pentiment click an A on some text. This game controlled like a dream. Like Charity was saying, you really felt a connection to what you were doing in a game. And the art direction, the way it would transition from what would be a realistic setting

into some kind of fantastical setting just seamlessly. It's absolutely gorgeous. And this game is hard, Ben. It really is. But I think it's hard in a way that's really fair. I think it's hard in a way that teaches you to adapt in a way that's really difficult to achieve in a video game. You can definitely feel yourself getting better at the game.

You definitely feel that your progress is being earned mostly by you getting better at it and not sort of the upgrades that you're unlocking. for the most part. I don't love the upgrade system. Yeah. It's a bit much. Some of them are really useful. Others aren't.

But by the end of the game, you really feel a sense of accomplishment because your improvement was earned. And as one of the two hardest games I played this year, and I typically don't play super hard games. But as one of the two hardest games I played this year, I just found it so, so rewarding.

And it really sort of, have shifted my expectations for what I want out of a game. Well, thank you for not spoiling the other hardest game because everyone's still in suspense. All right. Number five is Marvel Snap. So Steve and I talked about this at some length with Jomey on our superhero games pod last week. So in the interest of picking up the pace, we don't have to belabor it here. But just so much to like about this game, addictive, hopefully not literally addictive,

although it may be with some people. That's always a risk with this kind of game, but less so with this one, just a little less of the predatory aspects to this game than you often see with sort of gotcha style, mobile free-to-play-play-type micro-transaction-funded games. The Marvel Petina is just really a bonus. It's a perk on top of what is a very solid card game

built by the person who was the lead developer on Harstown. So there's just good pedigree there. And even for someone who's not really inclined to like this game, who sort of had to force himself to play it just because I'm not that big a mobile gamer and not that big a card game player. And this was just the confluence of those two. It's not really a Venn diagram I find myself in very often. I was still hooked.

Maybe not quite as powerfully as, say, one Steve Allman, but still pretty hooked. Wanted to spend a ton of time with this game. And Steve made a great case for it last week. so I will refer you to that pod. But Matt, if there's anything quick you want to add, please feel free. Not particularly. I've played Marvel Snap a good amount. I think one of the best things about it is how every level, you know,

there are different conditions for victory, and that really kind of keeps it fresh. I really like that. All right. Number four, vampire survivors, a game with no actual vampires, but many imitators. So this is a game

I want you to maybe make the case, Matt, but this is a game that was primarily programmed by one person. It's a small team in a fairly short time. It's obviously not fancy graphically.

So this is sort of what we were talking. Game looks like crap. Okay. Look, you're the deputy R-Leans. The thing looks like it's running on Windows 98, man. Yeah, okay. You put this next to escape.

I was trying to be nice. I was trying to be nice. Okay. The deputy art lead of the rigors says that this game looks like crap. Looks like crap. I love it. In this respect. But this is a game that just kind of came out of nowhere.

I guess it was in early access late last year and then just sort of burst onto the scene. And it's the virtue of an indie game is that it can look like crap, but it can be fairly quick to make and fairly not resource intensive. And then it comes out and you can't put it down. And now it's on almost every platform and it just came out on. mobile, so it's going to have long legs, presumably, and not only it and its various varieties and downloadable versions, but also just immediately after this game, just a wave of copycats, some of which were sort of shameless rip-offs, and some of which were actually also pretty good

and kind of put their own spin on the genre, which I don't know if we're calling it rogue-like or road light or whether there's really even a distinction between those things anymore. They're often used a little bit interchangeably, but But this is just one of those games that when I think of like what was the game of the year, it's like what was the game that really kind of defined the conversation that I was just constantly seeing stories about, that other games with really quick turnaround times emulated immediately because the appeal was so obvious. So you spent more time with this game than I did, Matt, and you have described in very frank terms

its aesthetic qualities. So what makes it so great despite the looking like crap? Ben, this game rips. This game Oh man Well here's another one I played Because it was on Game Pass Oh

So I booted up the game Because a lot of hype It's on Game Pass I'll try it out Whatever So I get into the game And I'm trying to figure out The controls and everything

And I'm like okay So which button Okay does what Hold on Well hold on There's no There's no button to attack There's no attack button in this game

all of your attacks are timed. They just pop off at a certain time for different weapons. And all you really need to do is run around. And that sounds real boring at first. But you can pick up so many different kinds of weapons and the enemies change and they scale up. It becomes very frantic. You're choosing between the kind of upgrades that you want

to kind of customize your character. throughout your individual play-through. The only thing that transfers over between play-thrus is gold, which you can use to permanently upgrade character stats. But there's so many unlocks in this game. It just keeps introducing new gameplay elements without using any buttons that are really interesting and entertaining and there are different kinds of levels.

There's just so much to this game in which all you really do is walk around. I would describe the gameplay sort of as like, if you had a game that was just playing as Bo Jackson in Tecmo Super Bowl, but also he could kill people, that's kind of what this plays like.

It is satisfying. Yeah. On a big level. As is number three on our list. Neon White. So again, another indie published game here, another Annapurna game,

which just took me by surprise and just I was I love this game just it's all the adrenaline that I was talking about earlier and wanting to feel that flow and that interactivity and that feeling of like almost not having a handle of what I'm doing but just being on kind of like the knife's edge of being in control and gradually getting better and feeling that empowerment and progression I got all of that from neon white which made me feel a fraction of what it must be like to be a speed runner right Speedrunner simulator. Yeah, right.

Even if it's like purely pretend and just like makes me marvel at what speed runners, real speed runners actually do even more than I already did. Like much as I don't need crafting in every game or any game, frankly, please stop making me craft, please. I don't necessarily need deck building and card mechanics in every game either. So, you know, when it's in Midnight Suns and it's in Marvel Snap and it's in neon white and there's kind of a card element in many, many games. That doesn't bother me as much as crafting, but it can get a little tedious at times.

But in this case, it was just used in such a creative way. And it was just a part of the overall package. And then you have the style of this game and the story, which, again, like, in terms of, you know, polygon counts or however we're accurately, you know, this is not a game that is going to impress you visually from like a, you know, tech specs perspective, right? both because it's on Switch initially and because it's just sort of a stripped down look, but it has the style, right? It has a look that makes it stand out that makes it distinctive,

even if it's not going to wow you in the way that some of the other games this year and on this list did. So I just, I loved this game. I never felt like I fully mastered it, but it was sort of this intoxicating feeling of just being on the verge of maybe mastering it if I kept playing.

And I'm not someone who typically like replays levels over and over and over again to try to beat my personal record or shave a second off here or there. But this game made me want to do that. And Matt, I know you web this game too. Oh yeah, the controls and the level design especially were just phenomenal in this game. And although the story, you know, some people you might just want to hit a lot of A through all that dialogue. I don't know. Maybe you want just the weird, horny anime stuff. And, you know, not everything has to be taken so seriously. Justin definitely wants that. Yes. You want that weird, any anime stuff?

Well, in general, yeah, as a rule of from, the answer is, yeah. But can I just say, like, I will say about, just to Ben's points about speed running, it's sort of neon, I think the super potent

double feature of neon white and seafood is, like, that's the power of video games, man, like that sense of just, you're just optimizing. You're just optimizing. And that's, that's being a gamer.

That's just what it means to be a gamer. That's the levitating Batman. forever meme. We need a new term for what we are. Like gamers, it makes it sound like this is like a Sega Genesis ad from the 90s or something. We need it more refined. That is what we are.

I literally own a dream. I have a Dreamcast sweater that I buy. Congrats. I got my Dreamcast out of storage this year and introduced my wife to Skies of Arcadia. It was one of the best gaming experiences of the year, one of my favorite games. So I will always ride for Dreamcast. But all right, we love those games.

We've got to get to our top two here. No great surprises, I would say. Number two, look, we got to go with God of War Ragnarok here. I reviewed this game for the site. And Matt, I know you loved it and Steve, you loved it. And Justin, I know you're not a big gott war guy, right? Is that correct? But Godabor, like, look, this game, I think you could say that the 2018 game was the watershed.

That was the one that completely reinvented this franchise and the character of Cretus and just completely revolutionized what we thought God of War would or could be. If you had showed me God of War Rackner Rock a decade or two ago, I just would not have believed that the series could have pivoted in this way, not just in terms of incorporating some open world elements and all of that, but just tonally. And in terms of having one of the best narratives of any game this year, which is the same as you could say, about its predecessor. And look, I applaud that they kind of compressed what was originally envisioned as a trilogy into two games,

and it didn't necessarily feel that way. I mean, this was a longer game, so you could tell that maybe they could have cut it off at some point and save something for another sequel. But I'm glad they just got it all out into one package that flowed really well. And despite the fact that you had to crawl through a narrow cave opening every few minutes, more so than almost any other game I can remember, especially at the beginning of the game. Just like a beautiful world. So much to do.

You know, it has that problem of like the world is ending and everything is in flames. But maybe we should go check out that side quest over there while we're at it. You know, let's not hurry to the end game. But just like so much story and dialogue packed into this game, you know, not even necessarily in quote unquote cutscenes, but while you're doing other things, while you're slaughtering stuff, there's just kind of a constant patter. And, you know, fewer boys in this game, I believe only one perhaps, but just like really an affecting emotional story, much in the same way that the God of War reboot was in 2018.

But this one, you have kind of the coming of age element and just challenging your fate and your destiny and defying that and this father-son relationship. I mean, I kind of identified more, I think, from the son's perspective when I played the previous game and then being a new father as I was playing this game, I was kind of feeling it more from a fatherhood perspective. There's just, there's something for everyone here. And obviously, like, the action and the combat and the combos and just like the variety of ways that you can kill stuff in this game without it really feeling overwhelming and the way

that they managed to integrate all the different weapons and all the different ways you can deal damage so that it felt kind of organic. And I was constantly rediscovering, oh, I forgot to use this attack. I should use this weapon. It never felt like too much. It felt like just the right amount where you could just kind of choreograph and orchestrate these great set pieces. And there was just really nothing not to like about this game. So the only knock I could come up with really is that its predecessor was such an innovative game in this franchise that this felt like building on that more so than another reinvention.

But no need to reinvent something that works so well. I think that's why it's number two on our list, actually. Yep. That means it was a pretty good game, and we liked it a lot. And that also means that number one is Disney Dreamlight Valley. We love this game. It was great. Let's go.

Yeah. We liked Eldon Ring, but, you know, it just didn't quite get there for us. No, look, Disney Dreamlight Valley was fun, too. But Eldon Ring, no surprise. Yeah, not just because. The charity spoiled it, but because it was spoiled by Eldon Ring just being the obvious game of the year choice, basically everywhere by everyone and a deserving one. And, you know, I guess the new Call of Duty ultimately outsold Eldon Ring because Call of Duty cannot be restrained. And it has the power to stop massive mergers in his tracks.

But beyond that, just going beyond sales, like this was obviously just a juggernaut for most of the year. But it's really the game that, like, if you had to boil down the gaming culture and the memes of 2022, it was just so much more Eldon Ring than anything else. Like, Eldon Ring was just like the linga franca of gaming this year. Even if you weren't personally invested in it, you knew about it, you know. And the way that we got the From Software formula ported to this open world in a way that made it more approachable and certainly still punishing and hard and intimacy. and difficult, but also just hard to put down and just the world being an open world, but not being the kind of open world that everyone was sick of, which was led to the Breath of the Wild comps, which are maybe a bit overblown.

But I get what people are saying. And, you know, there's this whole debate about, like, is there a narrative in Eldon Ring? And of course there is. It's not necessarily told in the same way that, say, horizons is or pentamance is. It's one that you almost have to discover for yourself and kind of crux. create your own story as cliched as that sounds. So I don't know which of us spent the most time in Eldon Ring. I imagine if you added up our total playtimes,

it would be some obscene total. But I'll let each of you guys, you know, Matt Chared, if you want to take your crack at what made this game great, go for it. This is a game when it came out. I can't remember a time since like Zelda Windwaker came out where I felt like my real life was on pause because this game is out. And now I got to get through this.

And I played this online with friends, which is something I don't do a lot. We had an amazing time playing it. And to speak about that open world fatigue that I mentioned when I was talking about how I was hesitant to getting into the new horizon, it was a big open world, but everything just felt like if you like games where you explore and discover things, this was such an incredible game for you. Even if you didn't love the combat and the hard difficulty, you could just kind of grind and level up and still have an incredible time just discovering the world and all of the different locations and the lore that you could dive into. It really was great at letting people play the game in lots of different ways.

And it felt like such a cohesive world to explore that it's just so memorable. And I had such a wonderful time with it. And it's a game I did beat, and it was really hard. And I enjoyed that, just like I did with Seifu. Yeah, I came into Eldon Ring as a FromSoft newbie. I think, like, a lot of people. I think I just never really sort of gravitated to the style, like maybe the visual, like, aesthetic style of the From Soft games.

And Eldon Ring, you know, Eldon Ring is an experience that, like, as a gamer, right, you sort of get to take for granted, certainly if you play games for a long time, the idea that like, oh, I'm going to pick up this game and I'm going to beat it. Right?

Like, you know, you take for granted the fact that you will see the end credit screen of a game, even if it's harder, you know, whether it's harder or easier, it doesn't really matter.

And then you pick up something like Eldon Ring and Eldon Ring really is this experience of by the time you get to market, right? It's this game throwing in your face this idea of like, oh, I might not make it. I might not.

This might be an eternal struggle for me. And I think you sort of relearn from scratch in a way playing this sort of game that's kind of the thrill of games, right? Is the joy of beating a game is sort of obliterating all the other timelines in which you didn't successfully beat this thing. And Eldon Ring is constantly throwing in your face the possibility of not beating it.

Right. And that's what feels so gratifying, you know, the first time you play it through. And then worse yet, if you actually do, like, beat millennia, which I did after a very long time. Right? Like that, that there's something about playing Eldon Ring that, yeah, man, feels exactly as profound as every other person sort of leaning into pretense tells you it is, man. It's just that it's that good. It's that gratifying. And it is that sort of primordially in touch with what makes games good and illuminating about ourselves and how we sort of engage with like adversity, even in adversity as synthetic as, you know, abusing the hurt boxes of a video game, you know, video game code, right? Yeah.

It's not easily replicable what they achieved here, but you just know that every developer is going to be trying to learn something to replicate some aspect of this, especially open world experiences, just because this kind of took other open world games to school and made them feel fresh again and got away from that wrote Ubisoft-style formula. And you just know that other developers are thinking, how does this work?

Why does this work dissecting it, analyzing it, trying to just port some aspect, some essence of Eldon Ring into other games. And I don't know that other games will completely capture it. But I look forward to finding out what its impact is. So that's our top 10. I won't say don't add us. You can add us if you want. You can't add charity because he's not on Twitter anymore.

He is smart. Can't add him. Direct your complaints to the rest of us. But hopefully you appreciate our approach to this. And sorry for anything that we could not name or did not have. time to play. Just before we wrap up briefly, we just want to wet your appetites for what we can look forward to in 2023. So if you guys have one or two or three things, whether it's a specific game or a certain trend, something you're expecting or hoping to see, what would you want more

of or want something that we didn't get this year next year? And I guess, Matt, if you've got something, you can go. Yeah, I'm going to be keeping an eye on the handheld gaming market and its evolution next year. I think there's a lot more focus on that with the success of Steam Deck this year, and I think there's a real ground swell going under portable emulation devices. I think that market is really picking up as these portable devices become more and more able to emulate more and more demanding games. and as someone who does have a portable emulation device,

I also use it a lot for cloud streaming through GamePass, and also I remote connect into my PS5 sometimes, and I'll play a PS5 game on the couch, freeing up the TV. And I just think this portable handheld, both emulation and streaming market, whether it's a portable PC or something less expensive, is something that I'm going to be watching that evolution a lot this next year. Justin, what's on your wish list?

I wish for world peace between I just, because I'm looking ahead to the release of Street Fighter 6 next year, and I'm thinking back on a lot of the sort of ecstasy and acrimony surrounding Guilty Gear Shrive this year. And it's like one day, you know, whether it's Project L, whether it's Street Fighter 6, whether it's something else, something is going to make possible the culture of a fighting game where the nobs who want accessible mechanics and the sweats who want high skill ceilings can coexist in harmony. I want that.

I want that for 2023. I need that. Give me that. Wow. The lions lie down with the lions. That sounds really peaceful and idyllic. I love it. I want that for us, too.

And I guess what I'm looking forward to, a few things. I mean, obviously, the games that we didn't get this year that we wanted to and that we will get next year with Tears of the Kingdom being at the top of that list. But just the deluge, the onslaught, that that wave is going to start to crest in February, March, and just, you know, Jedi Survivor, sequel and Bomb Rush Cyberpunk is a game I'm really looking forward to. speaking of Dreamcast and the jet set radio lineage of that game. I'm also looking forward to, I think, I hope, what will be the official end of the video game adaptation curse that the reputation will be lifted. How long have we been talking about this? And I think it's already eroded, right? Like, this was, progress has been made.

So whatever you thought of uncharted and Sonic the Hedgehog, too, not to say that those were of the same quality, but those movies, each. of them made $400 million worldwide. So the box office appeal is established. But I think the quality has become established too because, of course, you have Arcane, which won four Emmys this year, including Best Animated Program. You have been cyberpunk edge runners, right? And even the ones that don't stand out to that extent, I mean, you know, the shows that Netflix is pumping out and Cuphead and possibly Sonic Prime and then also Halo, right?

I mean, these games all achieve some level of watchability and respectability, right? And then there's also just a great lineup of shows about games and about gaming and about the industry, like Mythic Quest, which is great as always. And the e-sports mockumentary players on Paramount Plus was actually one of my favorite shows of this year. I don't know if anyone watched it. It was great. But I think in the next few months, when you have The Last of Us coming in January and just all signs are positive with. that as of now the newly announced God of War series or for the Fallout series. Both of those are coming to Amazon. Every streaming service wants to be in the video game adaptation business.

You have the Super Mario Brothers movie coming in April, right? Let's go. Yeah. Symbolically, like 30 years after the original movie, which was the first feature-length live action adaptation of a video game and sort of set the tone for the decades to come to have it be full circle, but to have this actually be good. And not just in a weird, how did this get made kind of way, but like, you know, an entertaining kind of conventional movie way. Chris Pratt's accent aside, I have highish hopes for it. So between that and just like the creative talent that's associated with The Last of Us with the Borderlands movie for that matter, I think we might be able to just put this discussion to rest and this why can't they make a good video adaptation. We're already there to some extent, but I hope that 2023 will seal that.

But Limburg won addendum to that. We watched Andor, we loved Andor, give Gilroy the Metal Gear Solid movie. He is our only hope at this point. Give Gilroy Metal Gear Solid. Let's go. Yeah, I mean, give Gilroy everything. But yes, that specifically. And lastly, like, I'm looking forward with weariness to PSVR 2.

Because I'm mostly a console gamer at this point. So PSVR is the only VR platform I've ever owned. And I've had a lot of fomo about the more advanced. rigs and look, $550 is just like super pricey. And without backward compatibility, I just, I don't know that I can justify that sort of expense day one or even year one. So we'll see how it goes. But like the specs are impressive. There's a Horizon game. I am sold on the potential of VR someday when it is easier and more affordable and more accessible. It's just immersive in a way that nothing else is.

So someday, I believe that VR will be ascended. I don't know if it's this year, and I don't know if it's PSVR too. But I might consider upgrading at some point if the software's there. So that's what's on my wish list. That's what we're dreaming about. We can end our award show before anyone crashes the stage and says something strange about Bill Clinton. So, Matt, and Justin, thanks for coming on. Thanks for doing this with me.

and I hope we won't have to wait five years to do it again. Thank you. Yeah, this is fine. And thanks also to Steve Allman for producing this episode. Thanks also to Senior Podcast Manager, Arjuna Ramqa Pal, for green lighting these gaming pods. And thanks to our listeners for supporting them. If you want more gaming coverage in the Ringiverse next year,

please let us know. Please tell your friends to download and listen. And check your feeds for more year-end content to come from the Midnight Boys and House of R in the next couple of weeks. And I will talk to you when it's time. for the Bad Batch and The Last of Us. So happy holidays. If you're celebrating Christmas,

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