Video Gamers Podcast - 2021 Gaming Year in Review - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: January 3, 2022

Gaming hosts Paul and Josh are BACK BABY! We’ve had a great couple weeks off, but new year means new episodes and we’re kicking this year off in the best way possible. We chat gaming in 2021, what went right, what went wrong, what some of our favorite games were and some of the biggest gaming flops. It was an up and down year for video games, and we pick some of the best and worst in each category. Don’t miss the best start to your new year and check out this amazing episode now!   Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad    Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey you. Yeah, you. Love the show and want more content? Well, now you have the opportunity to help support the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. You'll get a shout out on the show and you'll also have exclusive access to not one, but two extra Quick Take episodes every week. Just subscribe through Apple Podcasts or head over to MultiplayerSquad.com to see our Patreon page. We appreciate the love and support that you have all shown us. Now on to what is sure to be our greatest episode ever. Welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are a family-friendly podcast about gaming

hosted by two friends. We are fresh back from a two-week break over Christmas. We hope that you guys enjoyed a couple of those Rewind episodes that we provided in the meantime. We did want to spend a little bit more time with our family around Christmas and to get ready to hit the new year running. For this first episode of 2022, we are going to be taking a look back and offering some of our thoughts on this year in gaming. I am your host, Paul. And joining me, he is a far better podcast host than 2021 was for gaming. Josh, we're back. How are you doing, buddy? Dude, I'm rested. I'm feeling great. I've been on vacation all this week. Things could not be much better, to be honest with you.

That's good. I am just getting over being sick. I was actually quite sick on Christmas Day. You might be able to pick that up a little bit in my voice. I have a suspicion by the end of this episode, it's going to start to go. So I just want to give everyone a fair warning here. Way to gut it out for the people, Paul. Yeah, it's a huge sacrifice. All right. So before we jump into today's content, we do want to give a couple of shout outs. We do have a couple of new Patreon supporters. Yes, buddy.

We want to give a big thank you to scrump227, which is a new rare supporter on Patreon. And we also have Eric Black, who I'm going to call a half epic supporter because he chose a custom amount, which is more than rare, but it's half of Epic. So thank you, Eric. I guess you're half Epic. Would that be Hepic? Sure. Hepic? Hepic. Sure. Hepic supporter. One of a kind. Oh, man. But yes, thank you so much to Scrump and to Eric. Thank you to all the rest of you who are also Patreon supporters. We really appreciate that you guys help support the show and help keep it running. And then, Josh, I think you've got a couple of new reviews that have rolled in that you want to read. I do.

We've gotten a lot more reviews, especially over the two-week break. We are quickly approaching 300 reviews, which is insane to me. Every time I check them and I see a new one in there, I just get excited. And so I'm not going to be able to read all the new ones. So I'm just going to read a couple, but hopefully we'll be able to catch up because I know people love writing the review

and then hearing them on the show as well. So, all right. So I'll pick two for today. Start off the new year right. This first one comes in from JesusIsMyFriend, and it's titled, Perfect Score, 5 out of 5 Waffles. Ooh, I like where this is going. I've been listening to this show for the last year, and it has become one of my staples.

Though I'm mostly an Xboxer and do not own a PC, single tier, I still enjoy the back and forth between you two and the taste of sweet nostalgia when you guys recount the games of yesteryears. A ray of hope in these dark days. Keep up the good work. Signed, The Bev. Well, thank you, Jesus Is My Friend,

and I'd like to welcome you to Team Sanity. We are the ones who prefer waffles over pancakes, and we're happy to grow by one. You know, this war has got to come to an end at some point, Paul, but it is not this day. All right. And then this next one, five stars. This one's titled, or this one comes in from Someone Stole My Phone. Nice. And it's titled uh or this one comes in from someone stole my phone nice and it's titled goated podcast and it says i don't have an iphone so i stole one just to write this this is the best gaming podcast you can find the hosts make it very interesting and the discord server is super awesome there are lots of debates and game reviews and there is also a really cool

squad leader who has great taste in games join it signed lyric on we so lyrics been around for a while uh great guy definitely is a participates a lot so for people that don't know we do kind of reward uh the people that contribute a lot on Discord that maybe can't support the show on Patreon. Every month, we kind of reward the top three contributors on Discord with the special role, and that's the squad leader role. And Lyric got that. And so I think that's a little bit of rubbing that in, just a little. But kudos as well. Yeah, of course, man.

I'm down with that. Yeah, yeah. Well, you know, but kudos as well. It's a little bit of a brag. Yeah, of course, man. I'm down with that. Yeah, yeah. Well, thank you, Lyric. And yes, we are very happy to have you on Discord. We love the constant contribution. If any of you guys out there want to join, there's a link in the episode description. And I think the last thing we wanted to cover for housekeeping is that Spotify has released a new feature where you can now rate podcasts on a scale of one to five stars. Now, this is really important for me and Josh, because a majority of our listeners come from the world of Apple, and we've really been trying to grow our Spotify audience. So if you have already left a review and have rated us in Apple, we would love it if you don't mind also doing that in Spotify. You do need to listen to at least one podcast for 30 seconds, and then please rate us five stars over there.

That way our podcast can continue growing. Yeah, this is actually really huge because Apple's had most of the market when it comes to podcasting. Spotify has been making huge leaps and bounds into that. But one thing that Spotify always lacked was the rating system. Because as people rate podcasts, they move up in the search engine. And so whereas we are ranked very, very high in Apple, Spotify, it's a little bit harder to find the podcast. And the beauty of Spotify is everybody has access to Spotify. So Android and Apple users both. So it would mean the world to us if you would go to Spotify. You can just search Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. You'll see our logo. And then if you have not listened

on Spotify, because I'll be honest, I don't. I use Apple Podcasts. So I had to play one episode. 30 seconds in, you can just stop and then it'll let you rate the show. But if you guys could rate us five stars, it will immensely help other people find the show on Spotify, which is huge because they're making so many gains into the podcasting world. It's supes important for us. So if you guys don't mind to just take a few seconds to do that, it is a great help to the show. Yeah. And while in the past, while we have jokingly asked people to steal iPhones and leave reviews for the show, Spotify, you don't need to steal anything. Anyone can download and use it. You can do it on desktop. You can do it on mobile.

And please rate us five stars over there. We'd really appreciate it. All right. So Josh, 2021 as a whole for gaming, when I think of this year, I think of video game delays. I think of video game disappointments. Disappointments. It was a really underwhelming year. We've already said that in previous episodes. We did break down the Game Awards just a little bit. But I think you and I are of the same mind, right? 2021 was a down year for gaming. It was definitely a down year. Now, that's not I are of the same mind, right? 2021 was a down year for gaming. It was definitely a down year. Now, that's not to say that there weren't good games that existed. That's not what we're saying at all. But a while back, we did Best Year of Gaming Ever.

If you remember, we did an episode on that. Yes. And there were a few years where it was very difficult to actually pick a year and say, this is great because so many amazing games released during that year. And I feel like 2021 will never, ever be in consideration for just, oh man, this is one of those years where gaming just was great. So it really was a disappointment. I mean, I do love, I absolutely love some of the games that I'm sure we're about to talk about. But overall, it was just meh. Yeah, this year really missed the heavy hitters at the top.

I always love when you've got games like God of War and Red Dead 2, and we're all going to argue over which one deserves it as that half inch higher than the other game because they're both so good. And this year, I just feel like we didn't really have that. We also did have the disadvantage of a ton of games being pushed to next year. I have a little bit of a list here, Josh. A lot of these games we did preview on our podcast. And then we would always joke saying that we were cursed because anytime we talk about a game being released it gets delayed so here are not this is not an extensive

list it's just a few of the games that were supposed to come out in 2021 and we're still waiting rainbow six extraction oh dying light two elden ring oh horizon forbidden west ghost 2 Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, Ghostwire Tokyo, God of War at Ragnarok, Gotham Knights, Gran Turismo 7, Hogwarts Legacy, Resident Evil Reverse, the multiplayer that we did not ask for, but we are still waiting, The Lord of the Rings Gollum, and Final Fantasy 16. What a... We just can't talk about games. We're a gaming podcast, but we're not going to talk about games that we want to play anymore. Yeah. All of those got pushed.

And I feel like God of War Ragnarok is probably going to be making a push for best game. I think Elden Ring is probably going to do that too. It just feels like we just missed so much. It feels like half of a year that we experienced in 2021 just because of all the delays. It's true. I mean, it's understandable. I don't think there's a gamer out there that doesn't nod their head and just go, yeah, I get it. Yes, a lot of things were delayed. It was 2021. COVID is still going on. A lot of people aren't back into the offices and studios and stuff like

that. So I think we all just have that base understanding of why games are getting pushed back into 2022. I think at the same time, we're also learning that that's okay. I used to be the world's biggest complainer about games getting delayed and saying like, oh no, you know, oh, this sucks so bad. I remember getting so mad. Like literally I was angry when Cyberpunk kept getting pushed back, you know, and everybody was trolling me on stuff. And then it released and I just went, oh man, that's on me. That sucks. They should have taken more time. And so I think we're also seeing that it's okay to delay these games. But when they release, they better be right at this point. And I feel like that's a transition that kind of happened

in 2021. I think there were rumblings of it beforehand. There was a lot of the, hey, quit pre-ordering games and stuff like that. And then I'm sure we'll talk about a few disappointments that happened in 2021 because of that. But I feel like even though it was a down year in gaming, I feel like there was definitely some positives that came about from just the overall gaming mindset. Yeah. All right. So I think the way we want to break down this episode is that we have a total of 11 categories.

I don't know if we'll get through all of them or not, but we're going to talk about the good, the bad, and the ugly. So like you said, not just the highlights, but also some of the disappointments. And I think the major question we need to answer though from the outset, are we going to include Halo Infinite or not as a candidate for these categories because the Game Awards was on December 9th, and so they had their cutoff. They did not include Halo Infinite as a possible nominee or winner. Should we include it or not? What year did Halo Infinite release, Paul? It released in 2021. Then I say we include it. We include it? Okay. My thinking is we're talking about the year in gaming, 2021 year in review.

And if it released in 2021, then I think it bears at least consideration. Okay. So we're saying any game that released January 1st all the way through December 31st, 2021 is eligible for all these categories. I think so. All right. Well, let's just start off with the heavy. I think so. All right. Well, let's just start off with the heavy hitter, Josh. Best game.

What do you got for 2021? Battlefield 2042. No, you don't. Best game overall, Halo Infinite. Like, okay, I'm going to preface this. I know there's listeners out there that may not be huge first-person shooter fans. That's okay. Not everybody loves first-person shooters. Now, our friend group, we genuinely enjoy them. They're multiplayer, they're competitive, they're social, so they fit a lot of what we enjoy. There are a lot of games that we have

covered that are not first-person shooters. And so hopefully that comes out through the show. But when you talk about what's the best game overall that released in 2021, I mean, I can't think of something that's more deserving than Halo Infinite. This was a game that was delayed. They had a long gameplay demo over a year ago that was very critically just trashed for being bad. Including us. Right. I mean, that's what I'm saying. We trashed this hard, man, when that came out. They said, you know what? We're going to delay it. And instead of delaying it a month or two, they said, we're delaying it. It's going to be a whole year, guys. And everybody booed and hissed and all that stuff.

And then there wasn't a lot of hype. They showed the grapple hook. They showed some stuff. People kind of slammed it. We slammed it, all that. And then all of a sudden, there was this Halo beta test for the multiplayer. And everybody hopped in and went, whoa, this is a home run. This is pretty good, man. I get it's a beta. But if this is what the beta looks like, then we have a lot of hope for this game. And then they did something that was

just completely out of the blue that was a huge hit with gamers. We're not a hard bunch to please. And that was the surprise release of the Halo multiplayer fully. They said, look, boom, we didn't announce it. We're releasing it to the world. Here you go. We hope you enjoy. It's free to play. And it is absolutely top notch. If you're not a first person shooter gamer, trust us. This game is amazingly fun. It's very well polished. There are some matchmaking issues. Big Team Battle has its issues that we fight with every day when we hop on. But this was an amazing release to the world that was free.

And then they said, Hey, by the way, there's a campaign that's going to release in about a month after the multiplayer. And we all went, The multiplayer is good enough. Yeah. Right? I don't even know if I need a campaign.

Am I going to pay $60 for this campaign? Like when I can just play multiplayer for free and have a blast. And this campaign released, we both played it. What'd you think, Paul? Oh, it's absolutely fantastic. Absolutely incredible. It's one of the best first-person shooter campaigns I have played in a long time. So when you have phenomenal multiplayer that's free to the world,

and you tack on an absolutely incredibly well-done campaign, what else can you ask for? Yeah, I'm completely with you. I mean, taking Halo to an open- world setting, I was a little hesitant. I was curious to see how it would work. It's essentially like the Ubisoft model, right? It's like, go to this tower, unlock the objectives in this area, and then you move on and you do the main missions. You've got all the optional side stuff, but it works incredibly well. Giving the grapple hook and letting you upgrade it lets you transport

around maps very quickly. Having the ability to call in vehicles and to have your AI-controlled teammates jump into the vehicle with you and you can take them on missions is awesome. I have nothing really bad to say about the multiplayer or the campaign. I mean, are they perfect? No. We still deal with the bugs for Big Team Battle. Every time we're able to queue once, twice if we're lucky, and we have to disband, make a new group leader, make sure the group's open, cross your fingers, maybe it'll start. But for such a minor wart on the game, it's fantastic. It's well worth $60 for the campaign.

And even if you don't want to drop that, just pick up the multiplayer for free. And I still think it's probably the game of the year winner. Yeah. I, you know, I, I'm trying to be more conscious of us having recency bias in games that we play that happens to everybody. I don't think that that's a fault necessarily, but it's something that as we do this longer and longer, I want to try to keep in mind and say, hey, are we loving this game because we're currently playing it? Or is this a great game

overall? And that's the beauty of our leaderboard on our website is sometimes I look back and I go, what was I thinking? I murdered It Takes Two. And what's funny is when we were talking about it, I'm like, oh, no, that's a great game, man. That game's super fun to play with a buddy or something. And then somebody was like, well, you murdered it. And I went, did I? You were pretty low. Did I murder that game? Okay. So maybe it was the time that we were playing it. Maybe I felt like I was grinding through it, whatever. But that's the beauty of the leaderboard is it's, hey, these are our thoughts.

And with Halo Infinite, it's just a complete game from start to finish. It's got a good story. It's got amazing gameplay. It's got great graphics, sound design. The multiplayer is top-notch. You can play with up to 11 friends. So you and 11 of your buddies can actually hop in and play this game together. And that's unheard of in just about anything that's not an MMO in the last, I don't know, five to 10 years at this point. And so it just checks all of the boxes that it needs to check. The only reason I could think that anybody wouldn't like this game is simply that they don't like first-person shooters. And if you don't, hey, that's completely understandable. But at least

understand why we're saying that Halo Infinite is the best game of 2021. Yeah. For such a weak year, it was such a fresh breath of air to get this right at the end in order to squeeze it in. If we said that Halo Infinite was not eligible, the game I was going to pick is Valheim. Oh, that was my number two. Which actually came out all the way back in February. It was a very early 2021 pick. And when we were talking about what episodes to re-release over the Christmas break, I immediately thought of Valheim because I thought it would be fun to re-release that episode

because we loved the game. Todd came back for that episode, so he's on there with our third host at the time. And in re-listening to that episode, I really wanted to jump back into Valheim. I did too! I thought in my head, I said, I don't think I can talk my friends into it. I just want to start over fresh. I want a brand new world, start from scratch, and just go all the way through Valheim again. I looked forward every day to being able to finish work so I could jump into our dedicated server and just start collecting more mats and working on our base, getting more gear,

cooking more soups and sausages. I thought Valheim was so much fun. I can't wait for there to be true DLC to come out for it because I want to play it more. I am with you 100%. I don't want to spoil any of these future categories, but you can bet I'm going to be talking about Valheim later in this episode. But I'm with you 100% in that if it was not for Halo Infinite, it would be a very easy pick for me to say that Valheim was the best thing that happened in 2021. Yeah. And it's cheap.

I believe it's still $20. It's $20, man! And isn't it like a gigabyte for a download? I think it's something like 1.4 gigs. It's wild. It's possible this could just be the perfect game. Yeah. Our only complaint, if you will, is just that we ran out of content.

That's literally all that we could say bad about it. There is some work that has to be done to set up the dedicated server. It would be really, really nice if it was just an easy thing to do within the game. Because setting up a dedicated server does require a little bit of effort and some Google searching on how to do that. Now, it's not overly complicated. It's just not intuitive by any means. Yeah, when you have to reveal hidden files and then edit the text inside these files and resave it all, it's a little bit of a headache, but we did figure it out. All right, now let's go into our next category here so we talked about best game let's talk about most disappointing release and we've got a lot of nominees in this

category this is this is the part where it's just like man why is this a thing yeah right like why is this a category that i have to be disappointed with a game that i was looking forward to now this is not a category where i go that game looks stupid i'm not a game that I was looking forward to. Now, this is not a category where I go, that game looks stupid. I'm not playing it. That's not my kind of game. And then I'm going to slander the game because everybody's different. Like for me, Animal Crossing would be torture. Like if you told me, Josh, you have to sit down and play Animal Crossing for eight hours, I would just be like, no, you know, but so that's not this this is a game that at least you know i know i was very hyped for and then it released and i just went wait that's it it's or you know this sucks like wait what

happened you know what happened to the hype train um this was an easy one for me battlefield 2042 yeah it's kind of the obvious answer how How much did I hype that game, dude? I mean, I was talking about, dude, we're going to have multiple squads. Listeners can play because we can squad up. And I'd love to have the multiplayer gaming podcast just rocking 16 people in Battlefield 2042. I can't wait to pilot a chopper again and get my old skills back. All this stuff. And then it's terrible, Paul.

People haven't heard our episode on Battlefield 2042. You need to go check it out. But this missed the mark so much for us that we could not slander it any harder than we did in our episode. I saw a post on Reddit just a couple days ago. I just DM'd it to you. I don't know if you've already seen it, but it's the five stages of grief for Battlefield 2042. And this cracked me up so much because it says, i'm having a blast battlefield 4 was also bad at launch no single player means more multiplayer content then you move into anger i paid a hundred dollars for no scoreboard no classes and seven awful maps that's the best meme i've ever seen then it goes into bargaining maybe the player base will come

back during christmas then it goes into depression battlefield 5 has a higher player base which is not a good sign and the next battlefield is a hero shooter and then acceptance i accept that Battlefield is dead forever. It might be true. Oh, poor Battlefield. Oh, man. You know what? Not poor Battlefield. Poor gamers, dude. Fair enough. I don't feel bad for Battlefield at all. I mean, my love of the franchise, maybe, but this is... I really hope that this is a learning experience for us as gamers to just say, look, we can't let this keep happening. I have seen a couple people that play Battlefield 2042 and go, I like it. And dude, I am so happy for those people. We want nothing more than people to enjoy the video games that they play.

I don't wish anger or any of that stuff on anybody. So if you're having fun with it, that's awesome. But as a whole, this game, to me, was the biggest disappointment of the entire year. Because I thought it was going to be something great. They knew exactly which trailers to show and buttons to push to get fans of the battlefield series hyped for this and then just completely failed in every way possible yeah my short list included battlefield it also included new world which new world was second on my list yes yep that was my number two yeah i also had dungeons and dragons dark alliance yes that was my number three

and the actual the actual game that I picked is one that you probably have not thought about in months, because it's Destruction All-Stars. Destruction All-Stars. Oh, that was the racing! That was the one that was going to be like Twisted Metal. Yes, it was the resurrection of the vehicular combat genre. It was a PS5 exclusive.

So issue number one, very limited number of PS5s. Not a whole lot of people were going to be able to buy it. Initially, they said the game was going to be $70. Everyone kind of revolted against that. And then Sony ended up saying that it was going to be released for free with PS Plus, and nobody played it. It was immediately filled with bots. The game was basically dead on arrival from day one. It was just incredible how quickly that game died. The idea of being able to fight in vehicles is still great. I have my computer that's got a bunch of emulators and stuff that I have hooked up to my TV. I'll play old games like Cell Damage on Xbox, and it still holds up. My kids love playing it. So I think that this kind of game

could do well. I think just being a PS5 exclusive with no player base, it was just such a disappointment because I think the game itself is actually fine. Just nobody played it. Yeah, it's sad when that happens you know and i don't know why that happens titan the titanfall series is famous for that very well done games from titanfall to titanfall 2 and they just never caught on with the with at least with the pc gaming crowd they did slightly better on console but there's just there's a lot of games out like the cycle we've mentioned how many times have we mentioned that where there's games lot of games out like The Cycle. How many times have we mentioned that? Where there's games that are legitimately very good all around that just don't catch on for whatever reason.

Then there's games that have a really great premise to them, but then are ruined by certain mechanics. Do you remember, what was it, Killing Edge? What was the one with the hero brawler where we were getting stunlocked? Bleeding Edge. Oh, Bleeding Edge. Do you remember Bleeding Edge, where you were just stunlocked the entire time? And they were like, dude, that's terrible.

Who wants to play this? Hood, Outlaws and Legends, right? I mean, that's not a terrible game, with the exception of the assassination mechanic. And there's a couple other things there, too, that can snowball. But I mean, the bones of the game were solid. But it's just certain things that can just completely ruin a game for people. But you get a low population to where matchmaking isn't good. There's not enough people to play and people try it and then they go, this just doesn't click with me. Yeah. Yeah, plenty of disappointing releases for this year.

Let's bounce back to... Well, I guess technically, this could be good or bad. But let's talk about most memorable moment. Now, I went with a most positive memorable moment. I don't know about you. But why don't you go first? What was your most memorable gaming moment in 2021? This is such a tough category, because that's the beauty of gaming, right? It's made of memorable moments. Just a week ago, we're playing Halo, and I grapple hook. This guy was... Me and this guy in a firefight. I dropped off a cliff. I grapple hooked behind him. He thought I fell off the cliff. So he's looking down for me. And I just melee him in the back and kill him instantly.

And I was like, Oh, it's so great. So it's like you start thinking of these things and it's like man what stands out to me what do i remember and for me the it's resident evil 8 so when we were playing the village it's the part in house benevin beneviento uh-huh where it's it creepy. And then all of a sudden, you hear this baby just making these googly goo-goo sounds. And then I'm already freaked out. And then I'm just like, what is that? And then the freaking baby monster comes out. The giant baby fetus. Giant crawling baby fetus that is goo-goo-ga-ga-ing itself at you. And I just remember getting completely freaked out. I was playing late at night in my office with all the

lights out. And I just straight up like, nope. I was like, nope, this is not happening. No. And of course, the baby killed me because I didn't know what to do. But that moment, it just will stick with me for a long, long time. And what's funny is it's the moment that jumped into my mind instantly for this. I actually went and Googled because I wanted... And the second I heard the baby noises, I got that same reaction to where I was just like, nope, nope, nope. I don't want to watch this. I don't want to be a part of this again. I already went through that. Don't want to go through it again gave you ptsd yeah uh yeah i i dialed up that scene in youtube just to re-watch it and yeah basically if you

haven't seen the scene you it this monster just kind of looks almost like brain matter it's like very soft brown looking but it's got this like giant detachable mouth and it's trying to swallow you but it's just making mama and dada sounds it sounds like a two-year-old toddler giggling and cooing and yeah and it's like you can see like these vocal cords like shaking and moving as it makes noise and i remember saying in the episode when we did the deep dive, when you get in the elevator, I was mashing the button to hit the elevator button to escape this monster. I'm surprised I didn't break my mouse. Yeah. Oh, man.

What a memorable moment. It was truly horrifying. That's Resident Evil at its best. Yes. Yep. A hundred percent. So that's the one that really stands out to me. There were some in Valheim that stood out to me, but that's the nature of Valheim is not everybody's going to

experience the same stuff either. And so there were some of those moments as well. But I think the overall that I know people shared was that one for me. What about you? Was it the same one or do you have something different? Okay, I've got something different. I've got Cutie the Elephant, the death scene, and It Takes Two. That's such a great pick, man. Both of these are truly horrifying and they could not be

in more different settings. Like Resident Evil Village, you expect the horror and the terror. And then It Takes Two just hits you out of nowhere with quite possibly the most disturbing death scene ever in a video game. I think you're right. There are YouTube videos of reaction videos to the death scene because that's how horrifying it is. And I think this hit extra hard, first of all, because you're not really expecting to drag an elephant as it

gets dismembered, and it's just crying and yelling that it doesn't want you to kill it. But it comes right in the middle of this family-friendly, brightly animated story about reconciling a marriage. And you don't expect this scene. And it kind of just comes out of nowhere. The thing is, too, is that they keep hinting at what's going to happen. And your brain refuses. That's the thing, right? It's like the game kind of hints like, oh, if we do this, there's a reason you do it. We'll make the girl cry. Right. We're going to make the girl cry. And that's going to fix everything and blah, blah, blah. And your brain's just going like, yeah, that's not going's a reason you do it. We'll make the girl cry. You're right. We're going to make the girl cry, and that's going to fix everything, and blah, blah, blah. And your brain's just going like, yeah, that's not going to happen.

Like, I get it. That's the plan. But it's not going to happen. And then when it starts happening, your brain is just yelling at you going, this isn't going to happen. It's not going to happen, guys. And then it just keeps happening. And the whole time, you're just going like, this isn't happening.

This isn't happening! This isn't happening! Well, and you think that even if they are going to, you know, kill this stuffed animal elephant, that it's going to, like, take place off screen or something. Maybe we'll, like, push it out a window. But they actually make you actively keep pressing buttons to drag this elephant. It really is truly horrifying. I think it might also qualify as saddest video game moment of the year. But I think that these two, for me, were the two tops. The giant baby fetus monster and Cutie the elephant. It's, man, yes, such good choices right there. I mean, that part's crazy. I could not believe that the game went through with it. I

think that's the thing that drives it home and makes it so incredible at the same time. When it's all said and done, I remember you and I just kind of laughing and then being like, did that just happen? And then we're just like, what is this? But there were people who legit stopped playing It Takes Two because of that scene. They're like, no, I'm not playing this game anymore. I didn't know what I was signing up for. And the rest of the game is not like that at all. I think that's why it hits so hard.

It's just, you know, earlier you see the vacuum cleaner and you suck out its eyes with the vacuum and stuff like that is kind of weird. But yeah, this was just so much worse with the elephant and stuff like stuff like that is is kind of like weird but yeah this was just so much worse with the elephant uh all right let's talk about most overrated game of the year so we're not saying it's the worst game of the year it's just what's what's a game that critics and people seem to love that you and i maybe just don't quite care as much about. Okay. This one, I'm going to catch flack for this, because I have two nominees on this one, but one of them I did not play. So I'm going to talk about this one nominee, but it's not my actual choice, and I'll make it quick, but Far Cry 6. Okay. Now, I can't say that it's overrated necessarily, because I never played Far Cry 6, but Far Cry 6 felt like

it was a reskin of Far Cry 5, of Far Cry 4, of Far Cry 3. Anybody that played Far Cry 6 had exactly the same thing to say about it. It's fine. That's all I've heard is it's fine. Giancarlo Esposito as the villain, that sounded amazing, but it's just more of the same. Like, I don't think there was anything unique about Far Cry 6 at all. I had zero interest in playing it. And I didn't really hear much acclaim or hoopla or anything about it. Everybody that I know that played it just went, yeah, it's fine. And that's like, ugh, that's sad that the Far Cry series has gotten to that. Yeah, I was going to say, I don't know if I would call it most overrated as much as I would call it unasked for, kind of, in a way.

Yeah, that's a good point. Yeah, because I brought it up on Metacritic out of curiosity, and it's rated a 74. So it's kind of like, eh, it's a pedestrian release. Right. Yeah, it's okay. You know, that's the general thing. But it's like, the Far Cry series was a great series at one point, and maybe not so much now. Okay, so I'm ready to get slaughtered. I'm ready for the anger and the, you know, the what?

But I played this game a lot. I mean, I probably have five hours or so in it. Forza 5. Oh, okay. I did not see this coming. Forza 5 came out, and the world loved it. this coming. Forza 5 came out and the world loved it. I mean, just absolutely loved it. It was getting tens.

It was getting just reviewed like this was the golden child of 2021. If you're a racing fan, this was just the most amazing racing game to release in the last few years. I was like, I haven't played a racing game in a long time. I historically like racing games. So let me check this out. And I played it for four or five hours, and I got thoroughly bored. And I just went, I don't understand why people like this game so much. The graphics are incredible, but all I'm doing is just driving around. And one road looks just like the other road. Yeah.

Some of them were off-road, some of them were on-road. And I get that there's a thousand cars, I get that there's different weather, I get that there's different missions you can do, but it's all just driving. And it's like, I don't understand the love of this game. And so for me, that was the most overrated because this game got phenomenally reviewed. And I just went, I don't get it. Yeah, I think for you and me in particular, we don't really care for driving games all that much. So no matter how good a driving game is received, no matter how well they do it, you and I are just going to ultimately get bored. We need to be able, like Mario Kart, to shoot other people. We need some other element along with it. Yeah, I need that death and dismemberment to go along with it.

Yeah, you know, I'm with you. My son played a lot of it on Xbox Game Pass. I believe it was on there. I just have zero desire to play driving games. The one time that I will make an exception, I do like playing them in arcades. So if I'm at Dave and Buster's with the family, we'll all jump in. That's my favorite game to play. Yeah. Yeah. I think because it's a little more immersive, you're racing next to someone. I just think that's innately more fun. I think if you did like split screen multiplayer, maybe I'd be more interested. But if I'm just going to play online against people that I'm not talking to

and I can't see, I just get bored. Yeah. So I know that's not a popular opinion by any means, but it's the game that I really wanted to like. And as I played it, and I gave it a fair shot like and as i played it and i gave it a fair shot but as i played it i just went i just this is overrated man yeah what about you all right so by nature overrated means most people like it it means the game's getting recognition all right what better game to say is overrated than the one that wins the big award at the game

awards yeah it's it takes two i i like it takes two i enjoyed it more than you did but how is this game winning game of the year is beyond me it's not even the best game that this developer has made in the last five years uh you and i both liked a way out a lot more than it takes to i thought it takes two was perfectly fine i i i don't see game of the year award win worthy i think this game is a solid b yes maybe you could talk me into a b plus at the most but this game does not deserve to show up on the Wikipedia page of historical game of the year winners. I think it's not even simplistic. It's simplistic.

And everyone kept talking about it being revolutionary. There's nothing in this game that's revolutionary. It is. It did help to revive couch co-op a little bit. Yeah. And so the multiplayer aspect is fun. Even with us, we did not play it in the same room, but the screen is always split screen. Right.

Even then. And so it's geared that way. I think it did help to revive that couch co-op feeling and that genre a little bit. But while I think it's a fine game, and in hindsight, I probably would not have murdered it at this point. I don't think there's anything about it other than the cutie the elephant part and the fact that the co-op is fun. But even with the co-op, a lot of the stuff is so simple. A lot of the experiences that you go through and the game progresses. And so there's different elements.

There's flying elements and shooting elements and stuff like that. None of those elements are phenomenal in any way. And so when you take something that is good, but not great as a whole, it's just good. It's not great. Yes. Good, but not great. And I feel the same way, man. i said i understand why at one game of the year i i get that but i think that's also very reflective on 2021 as a whole yeah i think the irony is that you know this is made by the same guy who did brothers uh what's the subtitle a tale of two sons and a way out great game and Takes Two. I think It Takes Two is the worst out of those three games. Yeah.

I mean, it's a pretty game. It has stuff going for it. Like I said, I understand why it was voted the way that it is, but I'm with you that I feel like that is drastically overrated to especially win Game of the Year at the same time. Did you have a runner-up on this one? Because I have an easy runner-up. I do. It death loop for it's death loop yeah it's death loop yeah again it's a game that was fine it was fun it's got good stuff in it in an average year though you're not giving

that game the most nominations i don't know no it's I love the developer. Dishonored is great. Nothing against Arcane Studios there. It's just it was fine. It did not grab me in any way to make me go. This is phenomenal, you know, in a game of the year nominee or winner either. So I was just curious because that one was up. That would have been the easy choice for me. but I wanted to throw myself under the bus a little bit with the fours of five pick because I know people are going to get upset about that. Yeah. Yeah. And like we said before, these are all good games. We just think they are overrated. Right. Exactly. All right. Next category on our list, best value game. So what's going to give you the most bang for your buck valheim oh yeah valheim 20 for the amount of fun that we had in valheim i told you i was gonna bring valheim up later on um there is not a game in the world that i can think of i mean we probably had

what 80 hours 100 hours in valheim probably maybe more I think probably 100 hours. Maybe more. Yeah. Somewhere around there. For $20. And I'll be honest, man, there is a little bit of grind to Valheim. I know you spent many an hour cooking for the team, and I spent many an hour pickaxing copper to try to get bronze and stuff like that. There is some grind, but I genuinely loved almost every minute that I played Valheim. And not only the good things that happened, I really treasure the memory of Jared not being able to build our teleporter, not having the eye, and losing everything until it all got recovered the next day. Like, even the stuff that went bad in that game, I look back on very fondly. I never felt like rage quitting. I maybe hit moments where it's like, I look back on very fondly. I never felt like rage quitting.

I maybe hit moments where it's like, I'm done for today. But then as soon as I woke up the next day, I just kept thinking, I can't wait to get back into Valheim. Yeah. We're talking about best value game. That implies either this game is giving you 1,000 hours of content for your 60 bucks or whatever. But Valheim was never priced as a AAA title. I mean, it was priced perfectly, in my opinion. And a $20 game that you can get that kind of enjoyment out of is second to none, in my opinion. And they're still developing it. Valheim is technically still early access. I mean, they just did their Hearth and Home update. I'll be honest, I could care less about cooking and the decorations in your house.

I know some people love it, and that's great. I know that they're starting to expand on the... I think they call them the Mistlands and some of the other zones that are the new zones. I know after that, the game plan is that they're going to add more monsters and focus on combat and polishing that up and everything else. I'm super excited. I will go back to Valheim in a heartbeat, dude. Yeah. I really would. And I would love every minute of it, I think, all over again.

Yeah. I mean, the first playthrough is always going to be the best because you have the discovery of everything. And on our episode, we did, I guess, spoil certain things that happened. Like the first time you start chopping down trees and one falls on you, you die. And that's very unexpected. So the first time you experience all those things, it's the best. The first time we fought the Elder Tree. Yeah. With those giant tendrils. And you lost your corpse. Do you remember your corpse? Oh, I lost... You lost your... Everything. Yes.

And it was a bug in the game. It was just, your corpse is gone. It's not like we can't find it. My tombstone was underground. Yeah. And so I remember that was one of those moments where you were pretty rightfully so frustrated. But then it's like you said, you look back on it and you're like, man, you remember that fight with the elder and the

guy's tendrils come out and it wrecked us? But then what's funny is it knocked down these ancient trees that we had no ability to farm. And because we could then collect the ancient wood, it kind of catapulted us a little bit in progression. And it's awesome when that can happen in a game just kind of naturally like that. So, yeah, for me, I will say this. I don't want to name any names, but there's a Discord user that has tried Valheim and has said, I can't believe you guys like this game. I tried it and I don't think it's fun at

all. And my... Number one, everybody's different. Number two, I remember saying, well, did you play it with friends? And they went, no. And I was like, I'm pretty sure we said in the episode, this is not a single player game. You can play it solo, but I think you're missing a massive opportunity to enjoy this game at that point. I would not like Valheim if I was playing it solo. I'm with you. I think you certainly could play it solo, but you're going to have to sink a heck of a lot of time in order to beat the game. I think you're probably going to have to sink 500 hours or something, because we had the benefit of eight of us running around,

collecting copper and marking things on the map for one another. It was a lot easier for us. But I don't know if any game has ever quite combined exploration with combat and boss fights better than valheim did it's it's the perfect mix of all that yeah all right uh best value game is halo infinite multiplayer yeah i was kind of thinking like is that a value though because i thought about going that route and then i was like i don't know now my my backup answer in case you said Halo was not valid, I think this answer is going to make you mad. But Knockout City.

I mean, we had a lot of fun with that game when it first came out. And that's another free-to-play game, though. Yeah, free-to-play. And if you like it, it's kind of like like rocket league where if it is your jam you're gonna put hundreds and hundreds of hours crazy simple controls and the fact that it's pvp is just unlimited content you're not gonna run out of stuff to do you're just gonna play it till you get bored so i thought that would also qualify as a best value game yeah i mean anytime a game is free it's a good value especially if you can get a lot of hours out of it at that point. And I look back at Knockout City and I kind of go like, eh.

But when we were playing it, we were having a lot of fun with that game. I felt like our enjoyment was... It burned bright, but then it burned out real fast. And it's like, I don't think I'll ever play Knockout City again, but I do remember the times that we were playing and we had a full team, it being a lot of fun. What it does, it does very well. It just doesn't do a lot. Yeah, especially once we...

When you can communicate and you understand all the power-ups and all the putting spin on the ball, it can become pretty fun, especially if you play as a team. Yeah. All right. So that's a couple of good value picks. Valheim, Knockout City, Halo Infinite Multiplayer. Next one on the list, best indie or under-the-radar game? This one I had to think about for a little while because I'm getting to where I really enjoy indie games. And I start actually looking for indie games because maybe it's just 2021 that did that to me because a lot of the AAA titles were vastly underwhelming or just straight out disappointing,

you know, or got pushed to 2022. So we can't talk about it. I think for me, this one, this one caught me off guard. And I think it's a very good game that is probably under the radar for a lot of people, and that's The Forgotten City. Oh, okay. I forget how we found out about The Forgotten City. I don't remember. Somebody brought it up.

I forget how we actually found out about it, but it was a very, very pleasant surprise when we started playing it. It was very well done. We said in our episode on it that it feels like a AAA title with how well it's polished and the voice acting and all that stuff. So I'm going to say that I think it's the best under-the-radar game because this game is thoroughly enjoyable in a lot of aspects, but not many people have played it. And if you said, hey, have you heard of The Forgotten City? I think a lot of people are going to go, the what? Yeah, I think that's a very good pick. Great game, super fun,

even just to fool around. I mean, I know every once in a while I would just start shooting my bow at everyone in the city just to yeah yeah sometimes you gotta just not play by the rules exactly uh this one i struggled with a little bit to know what to give it to because you know some of the best indie games i think were things like loop hero valheim is an indie game but i wanted to to come up with a different answer. So the one that I have is a game that did get recognized as the best action game in the Game Awards, but the game has only sold 500,000 copies. And I feel like it's under the radar only because most people don't have access to PS5s, but I'm going to give it to Returnal. I have not played Returnal,

but I have heard very good things about it. You even messaged me and were like, you've got to play this game. I think this game is right up your alley. And I have heard a lot of positive things about it. But I think because it is a PS5 exclusive that, like you said, just maybe it is under the radar. So that might be a great pick, but I've just never played it. So what makes it so great? Yeah. I think what I had told you is I feel like this game was tailor-made to everything that you love because it is a roguelike game. So basically, you play... I think her name is Selene. You crash land on a planet. The planet is procedurally generated. You start running

around. you get to find some weapons you get some power-ups you fight some monsters inevitably you die and all of a sudden your plane crashes back on the planet but now the planet's different and you start to find artifacts and things so you see that you've been here before and you start to put pieces of the story together but But I think what you would like really about it is the fact that it's incredibly difficult. The difficulty curve on this game is high. The only thing that you'll really see people complain about are people who don't understand what roguelike means and they get frustrated that they die and they lose items.

But the game is very difficult. it requires a lot of dashing a lot of hiding behind objects you have to have really good aim because you die very fast in returnal but i think that the story is very engaging the gunplay is out of this world and you do find different weapons and they all have different alternate fires oh that's always when you start to throw all this stuff together it's just a fantastic game i have nothing bad to say about it um i'm just a little frustrated because i haven't been able to play it a whole lot because my kids really love it so i started playing it and then my kids are like oh i'm gonna start playing that and now i need to fight with them over time on the PS5. So I'm still relatively

early on in Returnal. But for me, I'm really enjoying it. I just wish more people had the chance to play it because it's a PS5 exclusive. Well, hopefully with this PS5 stuff and Sony, they're talking about not having as many exclusives. So this is one that maybe will come to PC next year after it's been exclusive for a while or something like that. Yeah, I'm very curious on that game. I know the one complaint that I've heard about it is that it's too hard. I've seen people brag that said, Hey, what's one of your best accomplishments in 2021? And somebody was like, I beat Returnal. Yeah. I was like, whoa, that sounds crazy.

It's one of those games where the trophy for beating the game is like 2% of the people who own it have beaten it. It's a tough game, for sure. All right. I love this next category. Favorite new character. Oh, this is easy for me. This is a great one. I love it.

What do you got? I fell in love with this character almost right away i think this character deserves a place in every single video game that is ever made really honestly yeah i have no clue who this is this character is number one my boy he's my buddy we would be friends in real life he is the most helpful video game character I have ever seen in a video game ever. And his name is Galerius. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. I'm with you now. I'm with you. Since this game is under the radar, I have to explain this pick. So in The Forgotten City,

if you haven't heard that episode, there's a character. Forgotten City is a time loop game, right? It runs off a time loop mechanic. And one of the big complaints there is that if I feel like I have to do the same stuff over and over and over again, that gets stale very quickly. Well, the way that they solve this problem in the Forgotten City, and should be done in every game that exists, is Galerius greets you as soon as you come back to the world. Ultimate gopher. Right.

And you can tell him, hey, Galerius, I've figured this out. I need you to run and go tell so-and-so not to jump off this cliff. Or I need you to go give this antidote to this person because they've been poisoned. And so Galerius just happily, with a smile on his face, just says, sure, I'll go do that right now. And he runs off and you can see him running through the city, doing these errands that you've sent him on, saving you countless hours of mundane gameplay because you've already done all this. And I love that man so much, dude. He is easily my favorite character that I have seen in a video game in all of 2021. It's so funny because Galerius is just so quick to just trust and do whatever you say,

because he doesn't know who you are. He does not know that you're in a time loop and you've met him 100 times. And you just go, hey, Galerius,ius i'm from the future just take my word for it go do all of these annoying errands and he just does it with a smile on his face and you can even hear the conversations where they're like well well who told you this galerius and he's like just a guy came and told me just go ahead and do it i've got other stuff to go to and then he'll just run and do the next errand. But yeah, what a funny mechanic in the Forgotten City. You're my boy, Galerius. If you're out there listening, I love you, man. Good, good pick. For me, my favorite new character, Lady Dimitrescu from Resident Evil Village. Oh, that's a good one. It is. She added so much to the game. We have talked about this in that when you play Resident Evil Village, they make such a big deal about Lady Demitrescu. And it's a small part of the game overall. That's the part that you don't realize. But it's such a memorable part. And she's such a memorable character. And when you're interacting with her in the game, those interactions are memorable.

And it's one of those characters that just came out of nowhere. They did it so well. They made her memorable in a lot of different ways. She's a great character, honestly. I could see her having her own video game offshoot or something like that. That's a good pick. Yeah, I really enjoyed her. I thought it would be funny, and I didn't prep you for this, so if you don't have an answer, that's perfectly fine.

But I also have a very clear least favorite new character, and it's Echo216 from Halo Infinite. Dude, that guy whines and complains the entire campaign i he thinks he's gonna die he's constantly freaking out at what point does your fear mechanism wear off like if you're if you're in war at some point you're just gonna go i don't care if i die like screw these guys man like you you want to come take me out? Come take me out. But this guy is just constantly whining the entire time. I'm with you on that one. Dude, it's so funny because it's like he acts surprised every single time Master Chief says, no, we're not flying away.

We need to go do this next part of the mission. And all over, he's like, what? We're all gonna die. I'm not flying there. And then he goes and does it. Master Chief kills everybody, blows everything up. At some point, you think he would get used to the cycle. But yeah, Echo 216, I found to be a little bit of a wet blanket in Halo Infinite. If I had any actual complaints about the campaign, I would say echo 216 he just was not my jam mine's a very easy choice on this one paul and it's dr hakeem the doctor yeah collaboration yeah he was the worst oh man all right a couple last categories here obviously we're running out of time

uh i i liked this category i came up with this one here what is the best game that you played in 2021 regardless of the release year what's the best thing you played here over the last 12 months oh man i mean i i would just default back to like rocket league Dude, I love that game so much. I play it every single day. It's the most competitive video game that I've ever been a part of. I love it. I hate it because I'm bad sometimes. But I know people get tired of hearing me talk about Rocket League.

So what I did on this one is I actually went, what's a game that really, really I enjoyed playing that did release in 2021? So I know you said, hey, it doesn't have to, but I wanted to kind of go back to a game because we haven't mentioned this game yet. And I absolutely loved playing this game. And that's Outriders. Outriders came out, and I think April of 2021. So it was fairly early in the year.

And to me, Outriders was a phenomenal time. We played it with our buddy, Andy, who we don't get to game with a whole lot. That game, there was so much to enjoy about Outriders. It was an incredible ride from start to finish. It was not without its flaws. I'm not saying that this is a perfect game by any stretch of the imagination. The class that I played was probably one of the most bugged classes that exists to where the game was unplayable for me in a lot of different ways. But man, was Outriders, when it clicked, it clicked beyond belief. And so when I think about what's a game that I look back and I go,

man, I absolutely loved playing this game with my friends. There's a few. Valheim ranks up there, but I don't want to mention Valheim for every category. I started thinking about it and I was like, dude, Outriders. Now, they just released some DLC and they have an expansion coming up. So there was free DLC, but then they actually have a paid expansion that's coming up too. And I want to play it. I want to get back into it because that IP is phenomenal.

If they would fix the bugs, they already fixed a lot of... They took the timer off of expeditions and stuff. So they're listening to the players and they're genuinely trying to make it even better. But yeah, I love that game, man. Did you say you thought it came out in April? Do you forget the exact date that this released, Josh? Oh, wait, was this April Fool's Day? It came out on April Fool's Day. Okay, I did forget about that. Because I was like, this is gonna be a joke, isn't it?

Oh, goodness. I'll hold my comments for Outriders for about 30 seconds here. Oh, okay. My favorite game. So my thought was, what's something new that I played in 2021 that I thought was the best? And it's gotta be The Witcher 3. Oh, welcome to the world, Paul. I know.

And I know I'm years behind. It's fine. I always said I was gonna wait until my deathbed, because it was the last great game that I had not played. And as soon as i got that like stage four cancer diagnosis i was just gonna lay it back and start to play the witcher i was gonna just wait and let that be one of my last experiences but i finally picked it up i mean there's nothing to say it's it's an all-time great one might say it's the all-time

greatest rpg i mean um i I might not say that, but... Amongst professionals. What a great game. Witcher 3 is fantastic. Yeah. I wish I could go back and experience that again. I'm a little jealous, but I'm so glad that you got to experience it without being on your deathbed. That makes me happy.

Yeah. All right. Next category here. Favorite new IP. All right. Now, if any Favorite new IP. All right. Now, if any of you out there don't know what IP means, it's intellectual property. And famously, games, movies, books, it's a lot of sequels, right? It's spinoffs and sequels.

And it's hard to get something that's brand new that's going to set things up for the future. My favorite new IP is Outriders yes as much as i loved valheim when valheim 2 comes out it's gonna be great right but when i think about setting things up for the future outriders is going to be a long-running franchise i can tell you that right now outriders was so incredibly good. It had all the perfect mechanics to make an all-time great game. It just got killed with bugs. It got killed with technical issues, people losing all their inventory. These are all real problems that happen with Outriders. But they have already said that they see this as

being a tentpole moving forward in the future future dlc future installments i could not be more excited for anything more than future outriders content i i think in a couple years we might look back on outriders like the early days of mass effect or the early days of where you see this becoming a new major hitting franchise. I really hope we get to see a lot more from Outriders. I'm with you completely, dude, because there's so much fun to be had in that game. It's so incredibly well done when it works. The combat in that game is second to none. It really is.

It's almost like... I get that they're different games, but Outriders, I feel, is the success that everybody wanted Anthem to be. Yeah. And I'm not saying that Outriders is without its flaws, because believe me, there's some massive ones there. And hopefully, they fix those. But when it comes to incredible effects, abilities, like when I popped an ability in Outriders, I got excited every single time that I pushed that button. Honestly, because I knew something amazing was about to happen. The expeditions that you go on with your buddies had

the perfect challenge level to where if you messed up, you'd die. How many times did we wipe on certain expeditions? And then try it again and try it again and finally beat it and just jump out of your chair and be like, yeah, we did it. Like, yes, you know, virtual high fives. And, you know, they set up a world that is super cool at the same time. And so they can just move on with that. The bones are there, the basics are there, and they're incredible. I'm with you completely in that I cannot wait to have more Outriders content or Outriders 2 with new classes or just double up the abilities and give us new ways to play and stuff like that. And they've already started that process. I don't know how much you've looked into the DLC and the free content that they've released, but they're making it to where you are not locked in to one optimal path for your skill tree.

Because when they took away the timers, you don't have to rush through everything. So DPS is no longer king. So some of these skill trees where you can be super tanky and you can maybe help your teammates out a little bit more instead of it just being a mad DPS race. So those are starting to go away. So to me, that's opening up a very bright future for some really amazing potential. Yeah. This might sound kind of funny, but whenever you make a looter shooter, I feel like the focus is always on the weapons. And Outriders did focus a lot on the weapons, but they focused a lot on the abilities. And when you mix those two together and you start getting some wild attachments, I think that's one of the best things with Outriders. I don't mind

grinding a little bit to learn new weapons, break them down, put those components in other gear, and even having such wide range to where it's like, every time you reload this weapon, you do damage. Where I was running around doing melee abilities and pounding guys with my fists, and then being able to teleport forward and then reload my guns. It felt so different, and it felt so new and fresh i i just can't wait to get more outriders on my hands so do you have a different answer for best new ip or is that yours no that was mine as well so all right and then uh last category that we'll cover here most surprising game could be you were surprised at how good it was, surprised at how bad it was. This is almost kind of like a wildcard category. But what would you have for this one?

I have two because both of these are... Number one, both of these are DLC. And they're kind of tied for me. And when it comes to DLC for games that really stand out to you, when the originals are absolutely incredibly memorable games, and then you try to tack some DLC onto it, there's always that, is this really going to hold up to the original? And I'm not saying that these are as good as the originals, but they're darn close. And when you come darn close to how great these original games are, that's good enough for me. And so I was very surprised by how much I enjoyed these. So I've got a tie on this one. The first one is the Outer Wilds. They had their DLC called

Echoes of the Eye, which I played a lot of. That's one of those ones that completely engrossed me. I played it for hours and hours and hours over the course of a week or so and just beat it. I couldn't wait to play it. I couldn't wait to progress. I couldn't wait to unlock the mysteries. I know you're not a fan of Outer Wilds, but to me, it's one of those extremely memorable games. And I was expecting the DLC to not be all that great. And I was very pleasantly surprised when it was quite awesome, actually. And it was very, very reminiscent and in line with the original game. And then the other one is Subnautica Below Zero

because Subnautica is an absolutely phenomenal game. I think everybody in the world should play it. And Below Zero was DLC that they had been working on for a long time. It was an early access for, I feel like, two years almost. And I managed to stay away. I just said, I'm going to play this when it's fully released. I don't want to have anything spoiled, or I don't want to play three quarters of the

way through and then have to wait. And that was another DLC that was really, really good. It's not as great as the original. I don't know that anything can be. But man, was I pleasantly surprised with that one as well, because I feel like it was like $15. And I got like, I don't know, 20 hours worth of Subnautica gameplay out of that as well. So those two, I was just so happily surprised with how good they were and how they really paid tribute to the original games that were absolute masterpieces.

Yeah, it's so rare to get that good DLC that still holds up. Yeah. All right. yeah it's so rare to get that good dlc that that still holds up yeah all right mine is on the positive side something that i found to be a a delight it was very surprising because it was not even the title of the game it was a throw-in and it's bowser's fury which was thrown in with super mario 3d world i know i didn't that, but my wife played it, and she thought the exact same thing. She was just like, why don't they make

a full game out of this? Yep. I think that's kind of what everyone thought. Because Bowser's Fury, I believe you could play its entirety in 60 to 90 minutes. It was very short, but why did it take this long to do an open world Mario game?

It's almost like, let's take the best parts of Mario and the best parts of Zelda, marry them together, and guess what? It works great. You run around, you activate these cat shrines, you get a 7,000 foot Bowser coming out of the ocean with heavy metal music and fire raining down all around you. It was such a neat game. I thought that one of the other cool things that they did was where you didn't have a certain number of lives like you always have in Mario. You just lost 50 coins every time you died. But every time you got 100 coins,

the game would give you a special ability that was in your bank that you could then use later. So I would not be shocked at all because of the success of Bowser's Fury to maybe see that beefed out into a full game. But the fact that that was literally like a toss-in, just as an extra carrot to go buy Super Mario 3D World. And I think almost everybody who bought it actually did it just for Bowser's Fury. I'm sure they, I know that's why we bought it. Like, you know how I feel about remakes. Now my wife was excited to play, you know,

the Mario on the Switch. And I'm like, it's going to be the same, you know? But it was just like, but the Bowser's Fury really was a huge selling point on that. And I mean, that was what? Like three hours worth of content, maybe? Yeah. I feel like it wasn't a whole lot.

But yeah, but it really made an impression on a lot of people. And I remember actually watching her when Bowser was coming out. And like you said, it was such a cool moment. It was so atmospheric with the metal and the sky would change colors and the meteors would start falling down. And it was just a very well done thing. I really hope that Nintendo runs with that mindset, to be honest. Yeah, it's hard to go wrong with any Mario game. I mean, they're all great, but I do hope that they lean more into some kind of open world idea.

All right. Well, Josh, I think that's all we got here for this episode. We are going to have another bonus round episode next week because we did this last year. We're going to continue it moving forward. We're going to start out each year by recapping the previous year and then doing a preview. So next week, we are going to talk about all the upcoming games for 2022 that we cannot wait to play. And I'll be curious to see how many of them get pushed to 2023. Hopefully none of them. But we will talk about that next week. And then also, just as a reminder for everybody listening,

please make sure to jump into Spotify. Rate us five stars in there. And I think that's it for today. Any closing thoughts or anything else for 2021 gaming? It's good to be back, man. I'll be honest. It was nice having a little bit of a break, but it's just so nice to be able to chat video games again. I love being able to record this show. 2021 was an interesting year, that's for sure.

I'll be very curious since we're going to do the 2022 preview. What we need to do is remember at the end of 2022 to come back to that preview and say what worked like what didn't you know where were we right where were we wrong yeah exactly yeah should we release the next deep dive game because it is the next deep dive i think we should probably tell the people you want to tell them yeah we're... So this was legendary. We had a new legendary supporter, Wainerman. Support, supporter, supporter, whatever. But Wainerman joined. He's been super active.

We love having you in the Discord, Wainerman. Thank you for the support. But if you're a legendary supporter, you do get to pick a game for Paul and I to play. And he picked Little Nightmares 2. And I've actually been playing it a decent bit. I think I'm probably maybe halfway through it at this point. I know that it's not a super long game, but it's a very memorable game for sure. And so that's going to be our next deep dive is Little Nightmares 2.

Yeah. So if you guys want to play that one in the meantime, we are going to be releasing an episode on that in two weeks. So that gives you a little bit of time and uh i think that's it so if you want to help support the show please rate us five stars leave a review make sure to check out our patreon page at multiplayer squad.com if you would like to help support us there and then we'll see you guys for a twig episode on thursday where we'll cover this week in gaming thanks so much to everyone for listening happy gaming to everyone we'll see you on thursday we're back and goodbye i'll see everybody