Triple Click - Our Favorite Games of 2020

Episode Date: December 31, 2020

2020 is over!!! Thank goodness! It's time for Kirk, Jason, and Maddy to go over the best games of 2020. Each host shares their top-ten list, which includes some choices you might guess... and some that might surprise you! Plus: Jason and Kirk have finally finished the game they were obliged to play... Kirby Planet Robobot.One More Thing:Kirk: Spelunky 2Maddy: “The very real, totally bizarre bucatini shortage of 2020” by Rachel Handler (Grub Street)Jason: SekiroLinks:Support Triple Click: http://maximumfun.org/joinJoin the Triple Click Discord: http://discord.gg/tripleclickpodTriple Click Ethics Policy: https://maximumfun.org/triple-click-ethics-policy/GOTY Lists:JasonHadesFinal Fantasy VII RemakeCall of the SeaDemon’s SoulsAssassin’s Creed ValhallaFall Guys: Ultimate KnockoutPaper Mario: The Origami KingBugsnaxOri and the Will of the WispsJackbox Party Pack 7MaddyAnimal Crossing New HorizonsCarrionDestiny 2: Beyond LightFinal Fantasy 7 RemakeHadesIf FoundKentucky Route ZeroParadise KillerSpider-Man: Miles MoralesWide Ocean Big JacketKirkHadesCarrionSpiritfarerBlack MesaHalf-Life: AlyxDesperados IIIStar Wars: SquadronsFinal Fantasy VII RemakeOri and the Will of the WispsAnimal Crossing: New Horizons  Happy MaxFunDrive! Right now is the best time to start a membership to support your favorite shows. Learn more and join at https://maximumfun.org/jointripleclick 🚀  SUPPORT TRIPLE CLICK:Join Maximum Fun | Buy TC Merch💬 JOIN THE TRIPLE CLICK DISCORD🎮 Triple Click Ethics Policy📱 SOCIALS | @tripleclickpodInstagram | YouTube | TikTok | Twitch

Should all the acquaintance be forgot and never brought to mind? When it comes to 2020, unless we're talking about our favorite games of the year, probably. Welcome to Triple Click, where we bring the games to you. We're back from our break to talk about our favorite video games of the year with top 10 lists from each of us. You can probably guess what some of the games will be, but some others might be a surprise. What do we go with? Stick around and find out. I'm Kirk Hamilton.

I'm Maddie Myers. And I'm Jason Schreier. And hey. We are back. We sure are. after a long hiatus of one week. So long. It was so long.

I missed you both terribly. I counted the days until we could be back recording, talking about video games. I mean, it was kind of nice. I had extra time to play more video games, which I'm going to talk about today. Oh, yes. Yes, that is true. That is true. So it's the end of the year.

It hasn't been Triple Click's first entire year. We will be doing some kind of celebration. When that happens, that'll be in April. But it's the end of 2020, and we had a good year for Triple. click. This is the year that we launched it. It was not a good year in many other ways, but it was really fun making this show. And just up top here, thanks to everybody who became a maximum fun member and is supporting our show. There are a lot of you. And it's really cool. It means a lot and it helps us make the show. It makes this whole thing possible. So this is our last little shout out here

before the new year. But if you would like to support us making triple click in 2021, go to maximum fun.org slash join. And you can become a member. And you've heard this. spiel from us a million times and I will spare you because yeah well you'll get a you'll get a spoiler cast a bonus episode spoiler cast have gone home which we ran last week that's true that's true that was a lot of fun and so many others that was fun and many more and many more in the future so anyways yes thanks to all the members and man so we're going to talk about games of the year because it's the end of the year and it's that time before we do that though jason and i have a different game that we need to talk about.

Yeah, that you really got in under the wire, by the way. At the very beginning of this year, before we even started the show when we were back on split screen, Maddie Myers won our 2020 predictions bet. Or sorry, our 2019 predictions bet. We will be reviewing,

we will be going over our 2020 predictions next week on this show. And because of that, Maddie got to choose a game that Kirk and I both had to play. And she chose Kirby Planet RobaBot for the Nintendo 3DS, which Kirk

and I have both managed to finish right under the, so the deadline was, of course, the end of the year. We had until the end of the year to finish it. Kirk and I have both finished in the past couple of weeks. That's what you two were doing on the break. I was just enjoying playing games from other people's game of the year lists and just, you know, walking through paradise. But you two were just scrambling to finish the greatest Kirby game ever made. So it's actually great. It's pretty fun. It's pretty fun. My final verdict is it's pretty fun. Silly. A little easy for my taste. But silly. So what changed your mind?

Because the last time we talked about this game, Jason, you were pretty down on it. Do you like it now? Well, it was just super simple, like, in the first few areas. And then it got a little more complex as they added, like, more robot stuff, more of, like, the jetpack mode, which was super fun when you're doing, like, the side scrolling, shooting, shooting things. And then it actually got a little tougher in, like, areas five and six, which I appreciated. But still, the way that, like, it sets you up, one of the things I really don't like about this. game. I like a lot about this game. It's very colorful and fun and friendly and has a lot of clever design. One of the things I don't like is that they throw so many easy mode options at you.

Like before every single boss, they give you power-ups. But then when you actually fight the boss, there's always some way where he spits out stars that you can use to suck up and then shoot at him. Right. So if you lose your power up, yeah, you don't. There's always a way to win in current. But it feels like it's designed to be beaten. It makes me think of like old Mario bosses where they could only be defeated after they let you get something in the middle of one of their attacks that let you attack them. And that, I feel like, would have been a lot more challenging and interesting if they didn't give you the power up beforehand if you just had to shoot stars at them. But anyway, I digress. Fun game, super epic final boss. And yeah, those are my thoughts. Kirk, did you have any thoughts

you wanted to share? Yeah, I liked the game too. I had played a lot of it earlier in the year and then played the back half in these last couple of weeks or in the sort of last week. It's a great game. it's interesting that it's both very simple and very complex. I don't think of it as a simple game. It's not challenging to finish it, but it would be, it's very challenging if you want to get all of the cybercubes or whatever they're called and all the stars

and try to really do all those puzzles because the puzzles are very hard in a way that I don't always like. Sometimes there are these great little brain teasers. This game, I think, uses the 3D space phenomenally well. It just looks so cool, and you're doing a lot of platform. like 2D platforming in the front and then you go to the back and there's clever ways where you have to manipulate the front via the back

and the back via the front. There's kind of these 2.5D but it's much more clever about it. Which is a very 3DS thing because of the 3D and like a lot of 3DS games especially Nintendo main 3DS games did that exact sort of. Yeah I probably I can't think of a better looking 3DS game I've played except for maybe Super Mario 3D land. Just the 3D in this game is amazing. So I like that and the presentation.

But to the complexity thing, though, just to the earlier thing I was saying, it's really complicated. Like, there's a ton of stuff in this game. I mean, looking through the moves sets, I would discover moves. There's so many moves for every single ability that you get. I don't know, like I got the doctor ability and realize that if you hold down and the action key, he like opens up a whole chemistry kit and he makes different kinds of power-ups. And sometimes you, there's like a random element where sometimes you get a healing potion out of that. And there's so much stuff like that where I was like, oh, this is like a fighting game almost, which...

Well, it's very Smash Brothers. And in fact, a lot of the abilities that he gets, like the doctor is like Dr. Mario, a lot of the abilities he gets her like the equivalent of his smash moves set. Well, and there is a Smash Brothers ability that you get that then gives you this whole variety pack of moves. Like you get the fast punch and like it's like sort of whatever trail mix super pack of abilities. So anyways, that is really complicated. but then the game is not actually challenging in a way that forces you to use all of that stuff, which I didn't mind because I generally just found it delightful and really fun, and I don't think I needed it to be harder.

And then the one thing I really didn't like was I didn't like the boss fights. Like I liked the challenges. I like the puzzles. And the only puzzles I don't like are the ones where you can't solve it the first time because you wall it off to yourself and it's designed for you to realize like, ah, shit, I blew my one chance. that sort of bugs me sometimes because you've got to go back and I'm like I'm not going back. But then the boss fights I don't always love just because moving Kirby is kind of a drag.

There's a kind of floaty feeling to the game in general that I didn't ever quite get my head around the way the jump and then the float and then you've got to spit the air and drop. There are just so many times where a boss is moving quickly around in a circle and you're kind of just chasing them around and then you have to dodge stuff but there's no good way to dodge. It's very much not. Yeah, there's no parrying in Kirby. You're right, it's nothing like Segrow, but it's also, it's not Hollow Night. Like, there are a lot of things it is not that I know you too like. And so that, you know, I really liked being in the mech. I really liked the aerial combat.

There are a lot of things, sequences that I like, but I like the puzzle solving better, probably, than the combat, just because I never fully got my head around it. But it was a great introduction to Kirby for me, and I learned all about all of Kirby's different moves and his ultimate power, which is incredible. And, like, it makes these games very rich. And I could see, it feels like there's something there, like there could be something more to a character who can take on all these different moves. It's just that the game itself is so pretty sanded down in a lot of ways because it's kind of for kids. There's a little feeling that it's missing something, which I feel you're kind of saying as well, Jason.

So I do feel that. But I like to live for all. I know what you mean. And I do feel like it's the kind of game that you maybe give to a kid where you want them to play Hollow Night when they're a little bit older. but like this is the kind of game you give them and be like, do you like this kind of game? Do you like a kind of, it's Metroid-esque? I mean, you're collecting all these different power-ups, you're exploring, but it's super easy and nothing's ever going to feel that terrible to you.

So I like that part of it. Is that why you picked it for us? I picked it for you too because you were both. You're both very skeptical about Kirby games, and I think I was just trolling you two. I don't even, I don't, who remembers what happened a year ago? Like, I truly don't know. I, but I also really like this one. Jason is very skeptical.

I've, I've never really been a Kirby skeptic. Yeah, yeah. Well, I've played other Kirby games and never really loved them. But you hadn't Kirk. Like, you had never played a Kirby and you were just kind of like, I have no beef with Kirby, but I don't know him. So I just felt that you should know him on some level and now you do. And also, this is usually the Kirby game I recommend. If somebody's never played a Kirby game, I feel like this one has a lot going for it.

I don't know that it's the best Kirby game ever, but it's got enough. different fun things going on that I think it's worth recommending. So if a listener is hearing this and they've never played a Kirby game before, I think they should play this one. Break out the 3DS. Kirby Planet Robobot on the 3DS. Another thing that was kind of a drag was like having to play games on a 3DS. My 3DS like randomly shuts off and like controls don't do.

Now you can retire it for good now that you've beaten this video game. So Kirk, what are we doing today? Today we are talking about other video games. In fact, a whole bunch of other video games, video games from the year 2020. We're going to go through each of our respective top 10 lists and talk about the games on them, probably focusing a little bit more on the games that we haven't already talked about at length on the show. And that's it. We've got a lot of the ground to cover, so let's get to it.

Jason, why don't you take us through your top 10 video games of 2020? Sure, yeah. So some of these, like you said, we've talked about a lot on the show, including my first two, which are Hades and Final Fantasy 7 remake, which I believe. are the two that all three of us share on our list, but we'll get to your two. I think you're right in a bit. But yeah, those are two games. We did. We talked about Final Fantasy 7 remake a lot when the show first started, and that is just a fantastic reimagining of a classic game. And really, by the end, makes you question what it means to be a remake and what a remake should actually offer. And

just a fascinating, amazing experience that I enjoyed. I looked at my list and not to start getting all my list about it, but it is kind of the, the only huge AAA that style console game on my list. And I think a lot about, I mean, in particular, Last of Us 2 in Cyberpunk for different reasons, but we're sort of disappointments. And I look back and I'm like, man, remember when that big, glossy AAA game came out? And it was just wonderful. And I was just glad I was playing it.

Well, I have a couple more on my list, but we'll get to those in a sec. And Hades, obviously, I mean, I think that's pretty much consensus, like the best game of this year to a lot of people, myself included. Just a phenomenal experience that we talked about a lot over the past few months. All right. To get through a few more, my third on my list, this is in no particular order, random order. Third of my list is Call of the Sea, an indie game, a mystery, narrative exploration, puzzle game that I talked about on one more thing last episode.

So go listen to me, talk about that on two weeks, two weeks ago. Not last week's episode, but the episode two weeks ago. Can I say I've played more of this game? I do really like it. I've been playing it with Emily. It's great, right? Yeah, we've been playing on the couch where we kind of solve the puzzles together. Yeah, the writing isn't totally doing it for me.

Like, there's a lot of very obvious exposition and it's a little clumsy the script. So there are just kind of times where it's like, okay. Like, there's just so much of... Oh, interesting. I found it so charming. Maybe it's because the performances are so good from Sissy Jones and Yuri Lohenthal that, like, it helps make up for a lot of exposition. Yeah, I'm pretty early and I haven't gotten...

I have a feeling that as things get going, and especially as like, URA's only just turned up, I'm only a few puzzles farther in than I was. But then, yeah, Sissy Jones is doing a good job of delivering it. And overall, lovely game. So just wanted to add that I like it and have played it more. Fair enough.

But yes, it's one of my favorites of the year. Next up, number four on my list is Demon Souls, one of those big AAA games, the PS5 launch title, remake of the 2009 PS3 game. Man, I love this thing. I played it a lot and beat it. beat all the bosses, beat all the regions.

It's really, really good. It's really, really good. And I think probably the easiest of the Souls-ish, Soulsborn games that I've played. So it feels like actually a good starting point if you're new to the series. That's really interesting. I've never heard that about, I've never heard Demon Souls as easy. It's usually described to me as the harder one and that Dark Souls is harder. Bing! Kirk from the future here, I meant to say Dark Souls is easier there.

and instead I said Dark Souls is harder. And that's just one of those things that you do when you record a podcast, you're editing and you listen back to yourself, and you say harder when you meant to say easier. And such is life. Okay, back to the show. But it would make sense because they added, I think, some quality of life stuff to this remake that maybe it doesn't have those weird sharp edges. Including the ability.

So you have like inventory space and now you can automatically send things to your unlimited stash when you pick them up. So if you pick something up, it's not like you're out of space. you're screwed, you can just send it back to home base. So my question for you is, do you think that maybe one reason you thought it was easier is because you're just better at these games? Yeah, I do. Definitely. No, I definitely do. But

here's the thing. Usually in these kinds of games, the bosses are the big choke points for everybody. In Bloodbourne, for example, like a lot of people get to Father Gascon in the... What is it? Father, is that... Father Gascoin. No, yeah. Gascoigne, yeah.

In the cemetery and they're like, uh-oh, I'm screwed. Like, I'm done with this game or like vicaramina or whatever it is. Often, the bosses are the choke points, but in demon souls, because the bosses are actually, most of them are like gimmick bosses. There are a few that are tough cookies and ones you need some traditional soul skills to beat. But most of them, once you figure out what to do, you just do it. And then it's not so hard. So there aren't a lot of bosses that I was just like throwing my head against the wall the way I did with some of the bloodborn.

bosses. But yes, definitely. Or like Ginituro or Lady Butterfly, like those Sycamro bosses. I'll get to those a little bit later in the show, but yes. But yeah, and yeah, it just, I think part of it is that it runs at a like gorgeous 60 frames a second, looks amazing on PS5. And I think having that smooth frame rate really helps to the game like this as opposed to Bloodborn, where because it's so choppy, like sometimes you might lose and it's not even something you did. It's like the game hiccuping or something like that. And yeah, it has a lot going for it. I love it.

Anyway, really good game. Highly right now. You know what the hardest boss in Demon Souls is? What? Getting a PS5. Right, that's true. At least that's the hardest boss I've run into. You just have to dodge roll on Mario 64's Twitter and just keep target locking the Twitter.

You've got to make sure you have the warrior 64 equipped before you go into the fight. Exactly. Exactly. All right. Number five. Another AAA game. Assassin's Creed Valhalla. This game, we've talked about a lot on the show.

We did a triple play talking about it, and I think I was definitely the most high on it of the three of us. I was also super high on Odyssey. I just love these games in the way that the series has evolved to be more RPG-like, and I really loved Valhalla. I wish it hadn't been so buggy, but it is what it is. Unlike cyberpunk, this game kind of hooked me enough that I wanted to finish it,

despite the bugs, whereas cyberpunk are probably going to wait a few months to play some more. But yeah, we've talked about that a lot. So go back and listen to old episodes of the show if you want to hear a little bit more about it. Can I ask you one thing about Valhalla? Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is with speaking very broadly, the ending is good, right? Like it's got a good ending. Yeah, especially if you're a long-time Assassin's Street fan.

It's very much like one of those endings that is like, oh shit, like moment that like long-time fans. There are a lot of moments throughout the game that I think you did the stuff. Yeah, I've done a few things. I mainly just asked because I didn't finish it and this isn't on my list, but I have a feeling that maybe if I had just really powered through it and had the time, I maybe if the ending is really cool, I might have been like, this could wind up being a game that I really love, which is fine.

It doesn't need to be on my list or not. Well, but actually the problem is that it drags so much towards the end, as I mentioned on our triple play, it's so frigging long and unnecessarily batted that it actually might make you dislike it more if you kind of like barrel your way through. But yeah, I mean, just give a time. This is a game. Yeah, I plan to. This is a game that is going to get so much TLC over the next like year or two. I suspect not to drop any news bombs here, but if I had to make an educated prediction, I would guess that this is one of those games that

they like keep supporting over time rather than be like brand new giant Assassin's Creed next year. I think this is more of a long-term like Odyssey game where they want to keep adding to it. All right, number six for me. Fall Guys, Ultimate Knockout, a game that I think got a lot of attention over the summer and then kind of dropped in hype because Among Us took over. But I still like it. I love Fall Guys. I had so much fun.

It's such a fun, like, so Fall Guys, for people aren't familiar. It's like, a Fortnite meets Mario Party. It's a battle royale, except you're playing little party social mini games instead of fighting and shooting each other. And it's super fun. Some of the games are really chaotic and luck-driven. others are skill-driven and it's got that feeling. It gives you that like, oh, my God, I have to play one more session feeling that the best

competitive games give you, but it just feels a lot more accessible and a lot more fun and a lot more joyful than a lot of other, I don't know, Battle Royale games I played or multi-bler games I played. I just really enjoyed playing this thing. Yeah, and we haven't talked about it a ton on the show, but I'm still into it. Next up, number seven, Paper Mario, the Origami King. another game that we talked about on the show a little bit, but just to refresh your memories, this is the latest in the Paper Mario series. It has, it's like a turn-based RPG with a weird

combat system involving rings. It's like every combat is like a puzzle. It can get a little repetitive. But the reason I love this game is the writing and the story and the dialogue. And it just never failed to make me laugh. And there was some surprisingly emotional moments. Like, you wouldn't be, you wouldn't expect from a game like this. Like, it actually will make you really sad at certain points? So you're saying that the dialogue isn't flat. You're saying that the character development is more than paper thin. Oh my God. It's not two dimensional. All right. We need, I need a new podcast co-host. In Paper Mart of the Argammy King, you get a lot of companions that then leave your party. I'm ready for Kirk to leave my party and then be replaced with somebody else.

Want to be like a folded version of me who just speaks in Jewish? Yeah. And then we'd have to fight. you. Yeah, this game is super funny. Throughout the game, you're like finding toads everywhere, and they always just like made me crack up with all their dialogue. Speaking of funny, number eight on my list is bug snacks, another funny

game that is also surprisingly emotional, and I love this game so much. This game is it's, so, it's called bug snacks because you're on an island full of bug snacks, which are half bug, half snacks, are really both. They're both bug and snack. A hundred

percent bug and 100 percent snack. Like a spider made out of French fries or like a crap made out of a baked potato with like claws. And they're ridiculous. I mean, Bunger is of course Bunker. Bunger is a legendary a legendary member of the podcast.

Just for the record, Bunger, Bunger, Bunger Bunger. Bunger Bunger Bunger Bunger. And you go around trying to trap these bug snacks in increasingly elaborate ways. It can feel a little bit clunky and like repetitive and it lacks some things that I wish it had, like fast travel. But it's so good.

It's so much fun. I had such an enjoyable, delightful time playing this game on PS5. And the story, again, just like Paper Mario, the story and dialogue and characters are just like surprisingly heartfelt and deep has some really good, like, unexpected character development. I think a few weeks ago I compared it to Lost the TV show and still think that's dance, just like Lost has a, polarizing, ridiculous ending.

And yeah. Next on my list, ORI, I'm the Will of the Whips. This is the latest edition, the latest contender on my list, because I actually just started playing this like a week ago. So I haven't finished it, but already I love it,

just hits that, scratches that, Metroidvania, itch. This is a sequel to Ori and the Blind Forest, which a lot of people enjoyed. I'm enjoying this just as much, if not more. They give you the double jump

after like 30 minutes, which really just opens it up and makes it feel super freeing and then quickly you get the dash in the air, and so you get to a point where you're just like zipping around. It's super airy and light and a lot of fun to play. Plus they've improved the combat. The developers at Moon Studios have improved the combat on the last game.

So you get like weapons and you have a whole host of different abilities and power-ups and such. And yeah, I'm really, really enjoying it. A beautiful game. Are you playing this game on Switch? Yeah, I'm playing on Switch. I played it a little too on my baby Xbox. And it's very pretty and it looks really great.

I agree with you, Jason. I feel like it's designed for people who beat the first Ori and just want to play the second one immediately afterward without feeling as much friction because they just go ahead and hand you a bunch of stuff that I feel like it took longer to get in the first game and it just feels really good right away, which is nice. Metroidvania's do not always do that for you. Yep. Yep. Really, yeah, really gorgeous. One of the most beautiful, just like striking games. Yeah, it looks so good.

It's one of those games that is like, okay, video games don't. need like the highest graphical Red Dead Redemption 2 style fidelity to be like beautiful. They can just look like this and not be as hugely budgeted games. Also, fun fact, Moon Studios, the company behind this game is entirely remote and always has been. So COVID probably changed their workflows in some ways if parents were stuck home with their kids. But in terms of working from home, they're all doing that anyway. Last on my list is the Jackbox Party Pack number seven. and I don't necessarily think that this is a game that is on my list because it's like one of the best games of the year. And in fact, all I've been, it's a compilation of five games.

And the only one that I really enjoy and have been playing with my friends is Quiplash. But it is very much a game of this year because like without being able to get together with my friends, without being able to have dinner parties and cocktail nights and whatever, we have been a group of friends and I have been playing Jackbox pretty much like, every other week or so on Zoom and FaceTime and just doing it on a screen share. And that has kind of saved my sanity this year. So shout out to Quipush. And obviously Quipush, I mean, Quipush is an amazing game. It's a game where the game gives you prompts and you and whoever you're playing against. It's like you're up in pairs have to send in prompts and everyone votes in, you write your

own answers to the prompts and then everyone votes for the funniest or the ones they like most. And it's very fun with a good group of people and has saved my life this year in a lot of ways. So yes, props to the Jackbox Party Pack. And that is it. That is my full list. Nice. Well, Maddie, I'm looking at your list here. You've got 10 more games. Why don't we move right along? Maddie, what are your top 10 games of 2020? So here are my games. They're in alphabetical order because I didn't want to rank them. The first one is Animal Crossing New Horizons, which, I mean, we've talked about that a lot on this show. We have to go into detail.

The game of 20. I have really enjoyed this game, even though most of the time I'm watching Dina play it these days, but we are still playing it together and still seeing friends and still doing all the holiday events together in this game. So to me, Animal Crossing was a very 2020 game. Oh, yeah. There when it was needed. So the next one is Carian, which Kirk also has on his list. So feel free to jump. in if you want to talk about it here. So this is a game. It's also a Metroidvania game. A lot of

Metroidvania is this year. Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah. So, but you're playing as basically the thing from John Carpenter's The Thing or a very similar monster to that and you get to wreak havoc in a laboratory underground base and it's so satisfying. And I feel like this game came out like a little way into COVID-19 at a point where breaking out of a thing and just rattling the bars on the cage felt very good to at least me and really hit the spot at the time. And it's just, it's a cool looking game. It's a cool feeling game, like having the little tentacles stretching out. I never played a game that felt like that in terms of inhabiting a weird monster and a weird being. And it really stuck with me and impressed me a lot. So that's why it is on my list. Yeah, this game kind of made me think of

prototype because it is also a red bio-creature game and there is some cool mobility stuff in prototype. I didn't play a ton of prototype. Maybe I played the sequel more. But it kind of has that, but there isn't really another game that has mobility like this game's where it's like world of goo in a certain way because it's very, it's like these globules that are all connected. And then these tentacles move. And then the sound effects, it's so about that like, this like horrible sound that tentacles make. And like squelching noises and it's, really gross. And you're so fast. Like this huge thing can just like shoot through a tiny little tube like it's just you fly around the levels and it's yeah, I loved this game and loved

the feel of it. I think I said this when you brought this up the other day, Kirk, but it sounds like you're playing the the end monster from inside except the entire game. Yeah, yeah. It kind of, it's kind of like that. It has a lot in common with inside sort of tonally as well. It's like a very silent, weird game about a military, like, scientific compound that is doing bad things and you're not really into everybody. And there are even sequences where you, like, possess human beings that really even sort of look like inside, though it's got a kind of more pixelated look. But yeah, anybody who liked inside should definitely play Carrion. Like everybody, a Carian rules. I loved this game. It's on my list, too. So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Really fun.

I played that on the Switch. I don't know how it is anywhere else, but I enjoyed it a lot on the Switch. So the next thing is Destiny 2 Beyond Light. This feels like kind of a cheat answer. I thought Beyond Light was a fun expansion. I enjoyed it. Got me back into Destiny after I claimed I was going to stop playing Destiny. And arguably, I'm still not really playing Destiny. We don't need to talk about it.

I really just wanted to put Destiny 2 on my list this year because it seemed somehow wrong not to and inaccurate to what I actually did with my life in 2020. So moving on. Finally, Andy C-7 remake. Also a cool video game. We don't need to say more about it. The next thing is Hades.

Same deal. Great video games. People should play them. You've heard us say that before. So then the last few things on my list include some indie games that were on other people's game of the year list this year. And I just snuck them in in the past couple weeks because a lot of them are really short and I just liked them a lot. So the first one is called if found. And this is a game. I played it on Switch. I think it's on other platforms, but it's probably easier to play on Switch because you spend the entire time erasing somebody's diary. So there's not a lot of like actual tactile video game stuff to do in the game. You're just moving the cursor around and learning a story and learning about somebody. And it was just a really good story. Like it's a

queer coming of age story and I love that shit. But it's very well told. And the experience of erasing a diary and having this person also deal with their own identity and sense of self and struggle with that is a very evocative image and it works really well in this game and it's also beautifully drawn like there's a lot of drawings you have to erase and then put back together at the end and I don't know it was super satisfying super neat looking I took a ton of screenshots because I was loving the experience of playing it so much I just really really worked for me and there's also a fictional band in the game and like really good music, which I don't know, all that stuff is right at my alley. So I really enjoyed it. So the whole

game takes place inside of the diary? Yeah, basically. There is also a frame story where there is, the game is also about the end of the world and there's like a sci-fi framing device where there's like a intergalactic space explorer elsewhere. So those parts are not in the diary. And they just intersect with the part that's the diary that's like extremely grounded in reality and like our world. And I think it's more just a metaphor about how when you're coming out and your family doesn't accept you, it really does feel like the end of the world to you. So having this like super intense like goofy sci-fi framing device as it's almost tacked on, but by the end of it, I was into it. And I was like, this is a very weird combination of elements, but it super worked for me.

So is this is a sequel to Gone Home? Yeah, it is. It is. It's sequel to Gone Home. Loved it. Great game. So the next thing is Kentucky Root Zero, which I think I actually talked about on the very first episode of Triple Click. People can go back and listen to that. This is a very weird game that I also played on Switch. And I think I said it was more like a play or a poem than a video game. And I stand by that assessment. It's about... Yeah, it's like a big American novel that just takes a variety of approaches to telling its story. Yeah, and it's supernatural and moody and grim. And it was a very... weird game for me to play in 2020, but I did it anyway, and I loved it.

Well, this is when it came out in, like, the final action. Well, this is when it was completed. Yeah. And so you can actually play all the acts at once, but I think it's been coming out since 2013, I want to say. I need to finish it. Jesus. Yeah, I played a bunch of it also. I owe it to this game to finish it. I really loved what I've played. I just didn't play the final chapter. It's worth it. But it puts you in a weird mood, so I can't really blame you for not beating it. So this next game, I think you two would really like. It's called Paradise Killer. Good name. Here's my elevator pitch for this game. It's Dangan Rompah wearing a persona suit, like a persona five suit. I mean, go on. I'm very into it.

It was only made by two people, so it does not have the same level of scope as the games I just mentioned. Like, it feels very much like a game that was made by two people. That's fine if it's not a hundred hours long. Like, you know, there's the occasional typo in the dialogue and like you're walking around this island and you're like walking around the island feels kind of bad but like it's a ton of conversations where you're solving a mystery and the mystery is so weird and cool and good that I can't believe more people didn't talk about this game and I'm loving it so it's called paradise killer because this game is set in paradise and you are basically this immortal investigator who's been summoned back to life because somebody has killed paradise by like murdering all of the council members

who decide what paradise should be like, because much like the good place, they're continually reinventing new versions of paradise because it keeps getting infiltrated by like bad actors, demons in this case. And so they keep trying to perfect it. And they're like, the next one's going to be great. And they keep doing that all the time. Like that's the back story of this world. And this next paradise they're going to make, before you can even get to it, all of the people who designed it and voted on it get killed. And you have to solve this murder. But there's There's like all this stuff you learn about how Paradise actually works, which is like it operates on slave labor and like there are all these people with different motivations as to why they would want to destroy this place. And it's really weird and trippy and like the game is also hard to play at points because you have to spend a lot of time exploring an island and like collecting crystals and like that part kind of blows. But the story rules so much that I just want more people to play it because I it's rare that I play a super good mystery. And the other. cool thing about the game is that you can go to trial and make your accusations at any time and

you can kind of lose. Jason, are you hearing this? This is like a trial mystery game set on an island? You've got to play this game. I mean, I started it when it came out and then it's kind of bounced off of it. Did you not dig it? I don't know. It wasn't something about the dialogue and the, it felt very like.

It's very weird. You got to get on board with a lot of like mystical proper nouns, which like at first. It felt like it was trying very hard in a way that kind of turned me off. It almost felt like one of those like No More Heroes type of vibes that I never really got into. And that's why I bounced off of it. It does have a very strange tone that I feel like you would either love or hate. I happen to really dig it, but it, No More Heroes is not necessarily a bad comparison. I haven't played 13 Sentinels yet, but I feel like it has some similar, like there's a lot of characters with strange names.

Like you have to keep track of a lot of shit. But so you can go to trial at any time. You can make your accusations and people can get killed and you. You can be like, I don't know if I settled the trial in the correct way. And then you can like go back in to the island and do a previous save and like do everything again if you want. I don't know. It's a cool weird game. Maybe I'll play the trial a couple more times and talk about it next week.

I don't know. Oh, I'm totally going to check it out. Spider-Man Miles Morales. I beat this video game this week. This one might be a case of recency bias for me. I really enjoyed this game, but the ending was super weird. And I will not spoil it, but some of the. antagonist motivations didn't super make sense to me at the end. However, I liked so much of this

game that I still put it on this list. But I'm also like if I had beaten Assassin's Creed Valhalla, would it have beaten this game on the list? Maybe if I had finished Yakuzzi like a dragon, would it have beaten this game? Maybe, I don't know. But I did really like this game. I thought it fleshed out Miles as a character in a really cool way. Some of the other characters, maybe not so much, but Miles is so freaking charming in this game that I feel like he carries a lot of it. And there are so many great side quests and little moments that I just really enjoyed it. And I think it's worth playing. And then the last thing on my list is wide ocean big jacket. Another weird little indie game. This one is only an hour. So this is a game about four people

who go on a camping trip together and they just have conversations. And that sounds like the most boring shit in the world. And I was extremely skeptical about this game. And I was like, all my friends who play any games are telling me this game is brilliant. I can't imagine. imagine how it could possibly be good. I was laughing so much at the dialogue in this game, like laughing out loud alone in my home at how funny it is and how cute it is and how human everyone was in terms of how they talk to each other. And it's in an hour. Like it's so cute and good. And it just put me in a great mood for an hour of my life and made me forget about how terrible everything is. So I think people should play it. It's great. You sold me.

at under an hour. Yeah, it made me miss camping. I also like that the title sounds like a cake lyric. Yeah. Nice, that sounds cool. Well, all right, that just leaves me. Wide Ocean, short skirt, long jacket. A wide ocean and a big jacket.

Trumpet solo. Okay, so my list is in order of name length, which is, I think, the best way to organize your game lists. And you can look at it in the show notes. and see if you agree with me. So we've talked about a lot of these, so mine won't take as long, but I'm just going to go through them one at a time. First, Hades, good video game.

We talked about it a lot. Cool game. They added cross-save to this game, and I now have played some on PC. It's game rips on PC. I mean, it's great on Switch, but it's real great at a high frame rate and a high resolution. Really fun. And super cool that you can just hop back and forth now. Did you intentionally just say high frame rate and a high resolution,

just like the cake song? With a high frame rate and a high resolution. a high resolution. It doesn't quite have the same rhythm to it. Okay, so yeah, Hades is great. What more is there to say? Carry on is my next one. Not to be confused with the thing you bring with you onto the airplane.

It is, in fact, the carry on. I was going to say, not to be confused with Carry on my wayward. It's the Kansas song. This is a great game, too. I already talked about it. Someone, Maddie talked about it. But yeah, I loved this. People should play it.

I feel like you got a little overlooked maybe, but I know I talked about it earlier in the year. maybe we both did Maddie and hey it's on both of our lists it's a good one it's just a cool video game next up is one that I've talked about but I want to talk about a little bit more and that is spirit fairer which I did as my one more thing earlier this year but then came back to actually like when I was sort of drowning in Valhalla and watchdogs and sort of all these fall games these big games I was like you know what I want is a game that's very straightforward about what I need to do next instead of a big open game and Spirit Fair really just scratch that itch.

And then, of course, also is just wonderfully written and beautiful. And it just really blooms slowly into this amazing thing. So it's a game where you are a girl named Stella, who along with your cat, you take over for Karen. What's funny is when I first talked about this game, I think I didn't know how to pronounce Karen. And I said, like, is it Sharon? Sharon, Karen. because it was before we all played Hades and heard Zagiaria say it a thousand times. Now I'm like, oh, it's Karen. So you take over for Keron as the sort of shipmaster of the afterlife.

And then the whole game is you cart these animals around that are spirits of humans from the real world. And then you kind of help them, it's not as neat as like tidy up whatever loose ends they have before they move on to the Great Beyond. And you kind of take them to this door and then they move through it. It's a much more sophisticated game from a writing perspective than I was expecting, and I've played a lot of it now. I haven't finished, but I'm near the end. It's really sad. This game has made me cry many times. It's like a very, very emotional game because the writing is so good.

It's a really funny mix of like modern kind of almost like lefty, ironic anti-capitalist stuff. Like it turns out the afterlife is very capitalist. Everybody has jobs that they talk about a lot, which is very funny. And then also this just beautiful sort of slice of life stuff where it's people dealing with their weird baggage from life. And they're all very different. And it's just, it's not, like I said, it's not as tidy as you're expecting. It isn't like, oh, this person needs to go like get closure on that one person who cheated on them so they can feel okay moving on. A lot of times it's just sort of like you just learn about their challenges and their problems.

And they just articulate why they could never really deal with them or overcome them. And they're like, but anyways, I'm tired. and I need to go. And it has a much more kind of grounded quality to it. And it's really beautiful. It's like a really beautiful moving game. The gameplay is kind of platforming. Even Metroidi, you get abilities that you unlock.

And then you can like get to new areas. And it's like a side-scrolling platformer. But then it's also kind of animal crossing. You have a ship that you're constantly upgrading. And it's also kind of the Sims because each of your crew, each of the passengers you take on has their own little life and routine and favorite things. And you need to make food for them and keep them all happy so they don't leave or anything. It's it's very low key. Um, in terms,

like you don't, you can't lose really or die. Um, and, uh, it's just a, it's a really wonderful game. I, I like, I loved it. I love it. I guess I still haven't finished it. I will come back and finish it. And I just, I don't know, it's a game where I, a year where I've thought a lot about death and a lot about getting older and life. And I don't know. It's sort of, it felt truer on a lot of those levels than anything else that I played this year. And really, most video games that I've played. It's a remarkable game. So I won't go on any longer.

And also you can hug the animals. Oh, yes. There's a hug prompt and it's wonderful. The animation in this game is beautiful, beautiful music. Just really great. So I'll just keep going. Black Mesa is my next pick. This game, of course, a remake of Half Life, the original Half Life.

That was this like, well, it finished this year. So it's been out for a long time in various forms. And I did talk about this earlier. in the year, but it's a sort of fan-created remake of Half-Life that then, over time, got Valve's blessing and then got access to the original tools and then the sound effects. And really, like, they really kind of, it was like a Valve-assisted remake project of Half-Life One, one of the great first-person shooters of all time. And it's so good. And then they remade the whole Zen section at the end where you go to the alien planet. So it's just completely different than the original game,

which was kind of a low point in the original game. And it's so cool now. And everything in the game is amazing, and it just remains this incredible feat of, like, crowdsourced game development over such a long period of time. These people who worked so hard, all of them, a lot of them just in their spare time as hobbies, they did this amazing thing. They recreated one of the greatest games ever and made a version of it that I think can stand as the kind of half-life experience that anyone can go have if they want to play Half-Life, which they should. So I loved it and think it's great and really admire the people who made it. The next game just happens to be the next longest game title is Half-Life Alex, which I talked about at length earlier in the year and won't talk about too much more, but it just had to be on my list because it's the most incredible virtual reality experience I have ever had. I think anyone has ever had. It's incredibly cool.

It's also great as a Half-Life game. It opens the door to new Half-Life games. It has, well, we'll get into it with my predictions next week. But it has really sets up stuff related to Half-Life 2 in ways that I predicted. I wasn't totally expecting, even though I predicted it. And it's so good. I mean, like, it's just on another level. I've been replaying it on the Quest 2 with the higher resolution.

I can read all the text on the little objects that you walk around picking up. It's just so great. It's a fantastic game. And anyone who can play it should. And if you can't play it, well, hopefully one day you will be able to. I will play the next half-life that is not a VR, and I will be very excited to play it. Yeah, that'll happen. I think that that will happen.

Yeah, so 100% play it. it. Yeah. Well, and you've got to play Half-Life, too. Maybe I'll win. Maybe we'll play next year. Okay, so next one is Desperados 3, which I also talked about quite a bit. This is a real-time stealth strategy tactics game. Unbelievably great game. Love it to death. Played the hell out of it. It's fantastic. I've said as much on the show. It's so good. It's super unusual. Such an interesting concept that hasn't really, isn't really done other than those games like that and their other one. Oh, and like, Shadow War Tactics. Yeah, yeah. And like, it's in that, in the, in the, you know, it's not really. earlier Desperados, right, in that kind of lineage.

Yeah, so good. Next, Star Wars Squadrons, which I talked about a couple times on the show, so I won't go on at length. It was the VR that put this one over the top for me. It's a really cool Star Wars, you know, flight game, but it's incredible in VR.

And just kind of the thing that I think a lot of people with VR headsets wanted to play from the minute they've got a VR headset, like you want to be in a tie fighter and flying around a Star Destroyer, and this game does that, and it's very good at it. so I loved it a lot. And then the last three are Final Fantasy 7 remake.

Talked about it a lot. Loved it. Ori and the Will of the Whips, which I finished. And Jason, I hope that you finish. And Maddie, I hope that you play through incredibly good. I should finish it. Yeah, apparently the ending is really good. Great ending.

I mean, really great story. The only things I didn't love are there's some set pieces, like boss set pieces that were kind of whatever. But they're amazing looking. Like the game is amazing looking throughout. It's just the thick of it is the exploring and the platforming and the combat. And yeah, I like this a lot more than the first one, actually. I like the first one.

okay but I didn't finish it. It just, it didn't quite feel right to me. And I still never fully got around it, like got my head around the feel. I think that it's, it's pretty busy. Like, there's so much particle shit going on and it's really beautiful. Yeah, the readability is the real problem with the game. Yeah. It starts to tell what is an object you can interact with and what isn't. And there are times, it's not that challenging. It's nowhere close to like Holo Night or anything, but it gets tough on a few fights and there were just times where I was like, ah, like there are particles flying off these missiles I'm trying to dodge and ory glows kind of white. And I was just like, this is just kind of, I wish it were cleaner. And, you know,

it's my hollow night bias showing, I guess, because that game is so clean, like it's so stark and easy to follow. But I did long for that. But great, great game. It's on my list. Fantastic game. And then my last game is Animal Crossing New Horizons, which played the hell out of. This was one that Emily and I really bonded over during the early days of the pandemic, but then kept playing. It was also really fun to watch her kind of bloom into this obsessive gamer as she took over the island from me after a while when I moved on to other things and she kept going. And it's just a great game. I wish I was still playing it. Every time you talk about it, Maddie, it makes me want to go back and see where our island is at and do some of the new stuff.

But yeah, I mean, it was an undeniable game of 2020 and I loved it. And then, yeah, like there games like Yakuza and, like I said earlier, that I didn't finish Assassin's Creed. And also, Miles Morales where I'm still like, you know, trying to... At least that one's not that long, so you could turn it around. It's more than I'm waiting for... I think I might play it on PS5 because now I'm curious. I think it'd be fun to talk about on the show The Difference. But I have to get a PS5 first, which might take a while.

Okay, let's take a break and we'll be back with one more thing. Hi, it's me, Dave Hill, from before. Here to tell you about my brand new show on Maximum Fun, the Dave Hill Good Time Hour, which combines my old maximum fun show, Dave Hill's podcasting incident with my old radio show, the goddamn Dave Hill show into one new futuristic program from the future. If you like delightful conversation with incredible guests, technical difficulties, and actual phone calls from real life listeners, you've just hit a street called easy. I'm also joined by my incredible co-host, the boy

criminal Chris Gersbeck. Say hi, Chris. Hey, Dave, it's really great to... That's enough, Chris. And New Jersey Chicken Rancher, Des. Say hi, hi, Des. Hey, Dave. The Dave Hill Good Time Hour, Brand new episodes every Friday on Maximum Fun. Plus, the show's not even an hour. It's 90 minutes. Take that. Stupid rules. We nailed it.

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and TV shows and also the podcast, Baby Geniuses. For the past eight years, we've been trying to learn new things about the world and each other every episode. But let's be honest, this podcast is mostly about two friends hanging out, shooting the breeze, and making each other laugh. We're horny, we like gardening and horses, and we get real stupid on here. But like in a smart way. Yeah,

join us every other week on Maximum Fun. All right, and we're back for one more thing. Maddie, why don't you go first? Sure. So I just want to mention an article I read this week that I thought was extraordinarily funny and good and it is called the very real totally bizarre bucateini shortage of 2020 it's by rachel handler it is in grub street it is an article about food so this is an investigative piece about buchatini which is a form of pasta it's spaghetti it's really super thick spaghetti with a hole in the middle of it so you can put sauce inside of it and so it the sauce explodes in your mouth when you eat it. And Rachel Handler really likes it. And she has several friends who like it. And she's written this very comedic story about how there's actually been a

shortage on Bucatini during the pandemic. And that sounds really boring. And I know that. But this article is incredible. And I just, I want people to read it. And it's like a great example of how when a reporter gets a weird concept in their brain and they just let loose on chasing down every possible person they could call in order to find out why a thing happened. It can be so entertaining and wonderful to read. And it's a great example of that. It made me feel glad to work in the field I work in. So I think people should read it. It's fun and good. Yeah, it reminded me of a KD. Weaver article in the best story. Yeah. Yes. Yeah, or Ashley Feinberg when like Ashley would get obsessed with figuring something out. And especially like all three very funny writers too.

So if a writer is funny, a lot of things can be readable. Well, that's the thing. Yeah. I I read this article earlier today, and the thing that struck me about it is Rachel Handler has all these amazing asides. And it's just like such a good writer that it just, I could read her write about whatever, like some subject I don't care about, which I think is the best skill that a journalist can have. Yeah. So highly recommended that people enjoy this article. We'll put a link in show notes. All right. I'm going to go next and I will go pretty quick because, well, it's a big game with a lot to say about it.

But I, well, it will become clear why I don't have a ton to say. So I played some Spolunky 2 over the weekend. But the version of Spolunky 2 that I played was the multiplayer version. I played with our friend Russ Frustick. He's very good at Spalunky 2. Is that where this is going? Well, yes. And, yeah, I mean, yes.

So this is Russ, who is Maddie's co-worker, also co-host of the besties, who are recently independent. Good video game podcast. Check out the best. Congrats to them. He sent me a G-Chat message saying, may have made Kirk a convert. Played Splunkie with Kirk.

May have made him a comfort. Yeah, I've been playing it since then. So I played with Russ, and it was really cool because it was a great way to learn the game, which I think is a really nice thing that the Splunky 2 has, is this online multiplayer. The first one had same screen multiplayer. Sequel has online multiplayer. You can just play with somebody else. And there are a lot of assists.

Like, if you die, you become a ghost as long as the other person is still alive. They can revive you down the line, like Left for Dead. And which is good, because I died a lot, because you die a lot in this game. And it really kind of showed me what Spilunky is all about. And I already know, like I've, you know, I played some of the first game and I've read some, there's some phenomenal writing about the game just because there's so much to it. And the people who get really obsessed with it, it's so rewarding for them that they tell these amazing stories. So I got the gist from reading, but playing it, you really see it in action. And it's so cool because it isn't, there's no other game like it.

It's not like Hades, the closest, you know, rogue-like, rogue-inspired reference point. that I can come up with. They're nothing alike. It's such a game about weird world literacy and cause and effect and specific rules and things that you have to learn. It's a game about like exploring and learning to understand a world. And the world of Spilunky is so dense and complex, but also really like rigidly constructed in a way. Like rigid is the wrong word. Very intricately constructed. It's not rigid actually. It flows and all kinds of weird unexpected cascade effects happen. but it's very intricate and specific and everything follows these rules

that have been set out. And the joy of the game is in learning all of them and then watching them interact and seeing what combination you're going to get this time through. So following Russ through, he could be like, okay, you're going to watch out for that thing.

This thing is probably going to kill you. I'll get that guy. Watch out for that. He's really dangerous. He doesn't look like it, but I'm going to go over there. And we did this, we did a couple of runs.

And eventually we beat the game. Like he carried me through to an ending. There are a bunch of different endings and there are endings. He hasn't even gotten. that are ludicrous where you have to like, you go get the crown, and then the crown lets you get the sword out of the stone. And if you have the sword equipped, you have to drop it and then go and it's so like, you know, beyond even like Call of Duty zombies level of intricate

weirdness. But once you learn it all, and I think especially if you have a group of people you're doing this with, you can kind of really crack it open. And you just learn to understand and master everything in the game. And it's so cool. I was, that I played some by myself and just died a whole bunch. But even that, once you kind of have had someone just, show you, okay, here's all the basics. You know, if we had played for longer, he could have kind of trained me up in the first area, and we could have just gone through it a bunch of times, and he'd be like, okay, well, here's how you deal with this, watch me do it, and then I could see someone else do it.

And he's great at the game. I mean, it is like you have to be good at platformers. It's a skill-based game, but so much of the skill of this game is knowledge. And it was really, really cool. It made me, I'm going to play more on PC, and then it's coming to Switch later next year in 2021, and I'm definitely going to play it on Switch, too. I think it would be fun to play in co-op. It would be fun, actually, the three of us could all play together, which would be a disaster, but also may be fun.

So we should think about that as well. So I'm going to be playing more, but it was very fun. And thanks to Russ for shirpying me all the way to the finale, just because I never would have gotten to see it, probably, if it worked for him. Jason, what is your one more thing? Cool. So after I beat Demon Souls a few weeks ago, I was getting the urge. I was getting the itch. I was like, oh, man, I got to play more from games, because that's what happens to me. Sometimes when you play one of these games, you're just like, I have to play more. So I jump back into Sekiro, which is a game that I really enjoyed last year, but never really got past Genichi-Roe, which is kind of a choke point. Like I mentioned with Demon Souls, how all these games have choke points, other than Demon Souls.

Most of these games have choke points. Janitro in this game is like the toughest boss, one of the toughest boss in the game, very much like a skill test. Like if you don't really know how to play Sekiro, then you're not getting past him. Genizrio does not fuck around. That's a choke point to choke other choke points. And so I restarted the game a few weeks ago and started from scratch, jumped into it. It took me a while to get the hang of it because it's a very difficult game and it's a tough game to really wrap your head around. It takes a lot of time.

But then I kept fighting through beat the first couple of bosses, beat Lady Butterfly is another early boss that's pretty difficult. got to Janitiro was like, I'm doing it. I'm doing it. And slam my head against him a dozen times or so. And then I beat him. And I was like, hell yeah, I am a god. And then kept playing Sekiro and I'm still playing Sekiro because it's a great game. I'm at another choke point right now, Guardian ape, who is another infamous, infamous boss. Kirk, did you ever get past him? Oh, yeah. Have you beat him? Okay. Well, so I beat, so after Janitiro, you can go like a few different paths. And I've beaten all the other paths. So I took down the full. Holding screen monkeys. I took down the corrupted monk. Folding screen is a funny one. That's like one of those gimmick-y. That's a silly bus. Yeah. Gimic must. How is the guardian ape fight going for you? Well, I got to the second part, if that's what you're asking. Okay, that's what I'm asking. That part is like one of the funniest fuck yous in any Souls game, like that

that second phase. I think I knew it was coming. I think I read it somewhere at some point or someone had spoiled it for me. So I knew it was coming. But yes, that was a noise. I'm still suck on that bus, but I know that with enough power, enough world power, I will see my way through. And what's great about these games, like all Souls games are just like, like, with persistence, you can get yourself good enough at the game to beat it. And I think that's true of anybody. Like,

maybe not if it's your first video game ever, but if you, if you played a few games, like, if you know how to have a controller, you have like the muscle memory that's needed to use a controller, I think anyone can like get good at these games. Like, it just takes, especially with Sekiro, it just takes a lot of time and practice and persistence, most important. Yeah, I wonder. Sekiro is the one more than maybe any of the others that is very just hard. Yeah, well, the thing, it's very, it's a little more twitchy than other games, because you need to block more. Especially, I gather, like, owl and the final boss, like some of those,

they're, like, Janitra style fights where you just have to go and go and countering, like, you can't make a single mistake. But the thing about Janitro is, like, you're learning his moves. Every time you die, you're learning something new about the way he works. And like, sometimes you might screw up because you misread him or like you press the wrong button or something like that. But if you are, if you can identify every move he makes, then it's more, it's just a matter of execution. And I feel like anyone with enough time could pull it off. I don't know. I'm not that great at like these twitchy action games and I was able to do it. There's a point after Guardian ape where it gets extremely difficult and that was where I stopped. And I'll be curious.

If you get past that, it'll probably, it'll, like, motivate me to keep going, and that would be fun to play through it at the same time. Okay, I'll keep you updated. But it did get so hard, and just regular enemies were so hard that I was like, all right, I'm just like, I'm good. Like, I've seen enough. But if you keep going, it'll make me want to go finish it. No, it's possible that I'll feel that way at that point as well. And I'm already kind of, with Guardian Ape, I've lost too many times. And I'm running out of those spirit emblems, and I've used all my money getting new ones because I keep using the firecrackers to try to stun him in the first phase.

and it's getting a little grading and draining. But I do think that all it really takes is just persistence and time. And so these games are very much not meant for people who have kids like myself and don't have a lot of gaming time. So for that reason, I might not be able to play too much longer. I might have to move on to other things. But it is good. It's a good game to play when there aren't a ton of new other games coming out.

And you can be like, okay, I'm just going to dedicate the next couple of weeks to Sekiro because there's not a lot of other stuff that I need to play right away. But anyway, good-ass video game. Yeah, well, I hope you beat Guardian Ape. And that will do it for our last show of 2020. Cool. Happy New Year, everyone. If you're listening to this on New Year's Eve,

I hope you have a safe, fun celebration. And if you're listening to it in 2021, by yourself or with your immediate family. Yes. In Animal Crossing. No super spreader New Year's events, please. The vaccine is so close. We just got to hold out a little bit longer.

So close. All right. Well, I'll see the two of you in 2021 for more video games. Here's to a better year. Please. Bye. Triple Click is produced by Jason Schreier, Maddie Myers, and me, Kirk Hamilton. I edit and mix the show and also wrote our theme music.

Our show art is by Tom DJ. Some of the games and products we talked about on this episode may have been sent to us for free for review consideration. You can find a link to our ethics policy in the show notes. Triple Click is a project. proud member of the Maximum Fun Podcast Network, and if you like our show, we hope you'll consider supporting us by becoming a member at Maximumfund.org slash join. Find us on Twitter at triple click pod, send email the triple click at maximum fun.org and find a link to our Discord in the show notes. Thanks for listening. See you next time.

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