Video Gamers Podcast - [Bonus Round] The Best of the Worst - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: September 25, 2023

Video games hosts Paul, Josh and Ryan are back and bringing you a can’t miss Bonus Round. We’re diving into the worst rated video games we love. Video Games with poor reviews, low ratings or just all around hated, that we’re not ashamed to admit we love!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter and Gaius214 Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com//videogamerspod Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/videogamerspod Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Hello, fellow gamers. Welcome back to another episode of the Video Gamers Podcast. Today is a bonus round Monday. We are going to be talking about poorly rated games that we still love to play. I am your host, Paul, and with me, he's a poorly rated podcast host, but that's okay because we love him anyway. It's Josh. I am the most underrated host out there. You're at least top three.

Yeah. Also, don't forget that review bombing that you guys did that one time to me. Yeah. It worked perfectly. One star for Josh. All right. And then with Josh and me, he is the master of impersonations. He might not have the most accurate Arnold Schwarzenegger,

but you better believe that we all love it anyway. It's Ryan. You don't even know. I can't even tell the difference at this point. Is that Arnold or is that Ryan? They just sound so similar. It's me. All right. Goodness me. All right.

Goodness gracious. All right. We're going to start going through our list here in just a moment, but we do want to let everyone know to please come follow us on socials. You can find us everywhere at Video Gamers Pod. We also have support options through Patreon. Our show actually only continues to exist because of the support that we currently get. So if you want to go sign up for five bucks a month,

you'll get bonus episodes, shout out on the show, discord perks, all kinds of great stuff like that. You can go join the squad at multiplayer squad.com. Please also leave our show a five-star rating on both Apple and Spotify and leave a written review on Apple podcasts. We actually haven't had all that many reviews lately and we haven't really mentioned it in a while so please make sure to head over there and leave a review through apple all right guys we previously did an episode of critically loved games that we don't like that was where we broke down games that had metacritic scores what was our cutoff 90 yeah metacritic scores of 90 or higher that we don't like now we're kind of doing the inverse of this we're looking at games that are not terribly well beloved but they're games that still struck a chord with us that we enjoy

did you guys have any kind of method in making up your list for this episode oh i did for sure because you guys know i'm always prepared i'm a i'm a prepper you know i got my spreadsheets like paul does and i write things down like ryan does and you guys know how much work i put into this so i this was a tough like category man because it's easy to just say hey what are the top games on metacritic and then you just scroll down until you run out of the 90s there's not that many out there but if you go hey what are some really poorly rated games that you liked you know there's about a million yeah exactly so yeah i did what any person would do and i made a post on reddit and i said hey you sure did what are some poorly rated games that you guys love and it i took off like gangbusters.

Apparently it became a popular thread. I keep waiting for it to hit the front page of Reddit, but alas, it didn't quite make it there. But I will say I've not heard of 99% of these games that people mentioned, so it really wasn't that helpful. It hit 99% of my eyes because I was looking for the same thing. And then your post came up and I saw it and we talked before we recorded.

You're like, oh, did you see my Reddit post? And I'm like, no. And you're like, it was this. And I'm like, oh, that's the one I was looking at. So I definitely saw it. Yeah, it had quite a good response. There were over 600 comments. I did already tell you, Josh, that I did not appreciate your drive-by on Stardew Valley

in the question when you said that you find it terribly boring. I did. My beloved Stardew Valley. I had to set the stage, Paul, for people, you know? Sure, I get it. It's all right, even though it's one of the best games of all time. I know. It really, people love it. So what I ended up doing is I looked at my Steam library and my Epic Store library and just started thinking, okay, is that game high or low rated?

And then I would just check Metacritic. I tried sticking with games that are in the low 70s. So I think all the ones on my list are like 73 or lower on Metacritic that I still really enjoyed. I think we're just going to go around in a circle, Red Robin style. We'll just bring up games, talk about them for a bit, see how much time we have, and then maybe we'll throw out a couple honorable mentions if we have any that we don't get to. Ryan, I feel like you're the real wild card here on this one. So I think we should probably start with you, because I feel like Josh and I probably have a little bit of an inkling of some of the games we might bring up. I have no clue what to expect. I do, Paul.

Over, under on us knowing any of Ryan's games. I'm going to set the bar at one. I think we're going to know two to three of them. You think so? That's my guess. No way. I never even heard of them. I will be amazed if I know one of them.

Okay, you'll know this game, but you probably never played it. Okay. And Ryan was a bigger console player than PC over the years. So that's also, I feel like it's going to skew a little more toward PlayStation and maybe Xbox back in the day.

Back in the day is a good, uh, poignant comment there. So what I'm going to go with for my first game, which you guys, like I said, probably didn't play, but for whatever reason,

this one just sunk with me. It's my favorite superhero. It's someone that I love all the movies. I wish there was better video games for this character, but it's 1999's Nintendo 64 Superman. Boo! I have played it. Is this the worst game that's ever made?

This game is horrible. This game is at the top of the list. It ranks up there with E.T. from Atari. I know. Everyone argues about it. I spent so much time playing that stupid game as a kid because you didn't know any better. It was 1999.

You don't even know how to fly what an idiot i was i was uh i was 11 years old so i was 11 years old i was running around flying through the things i it there were so many bugs and there were so many issues where i just like was stuck in a room and I couldn't finish the mission. But I just thought I was just stupid. And I just didn't know what to do. But it's my favorite superhero. It's a game that I absolutely loved back then as a kid just because I loved Superman. And I wished it was just that prime of my youth being an 11-year-old kid. I wanted to be Superman.

I loved Supermanman i was playing this game as superman unfortunately the game was absolutely horrible but i i still freaking loved it and i still remember those missions you know you would go through and flying through the rings and things would error out and you'd have the bugs and stuff. So yeah, that's numero uno. Okay, so I have played it. And I think I told the story once, but it was a really long time ago. My parents loved taking us on road trips. And it was always like, no, you can't listen to a Walkman.

We want you to enjoy the scenery. My dad was always a big scenic route kind of guy. And I remember when, okay, so 99. want you to enjoy the scenery my dad was always a big scenic route kind of guy yeah and i remember when okay so 99 that must have been like right around eighth grade for me and i remember we bought a portable tv that we could plug in to the cigarette adapter in the car and i had just gotten my nintendo 64 that i bought it was my very first console and my mom told me that she would pay to rent two games for the trip so we had a little video game store called gamers you could rent games just by the day yes and i picked out two games i got super smash brothers and

superman 64 it was like the day superman came out and i remember trying to play it in the car and just hating every second i think i spent 99 of that trip playing smash brothers and i i did not like superman at all i what how do you love superman what what do you love about the character he's so boring it was it was just i think it was probably the conflict of so i was so excited granted granted i should say that right um it was it was horrible and it was a ton of errors ton of issues ton of bugs but i there was there's something about it that has always stayed with me it's one of those weird kind of memory games that just stuck in with me that i just absolutely loved that's so weird man i've not ever played superman but i know it's in the i think it's on everybody's like if you had

to say what are the the three worst games ever made you'd probably probably get E.T. and Superman mentioned almost every single time. I had to hit you guys hard out of the bat. Boom. Yeah. I'm shook. I watched the videos for that because I was like, how can this game be this bad? And it's really that bad. I remember watching a little documentary on it or something, and it was just like, who made this? terrible this explains a lot about ryan also so i really hope i'm not accidentally spoiling future games that ryan is going to bring up but like two weeks ago we were joking about the mission impossible game on 64 and in my head i

just remember superman and mission impossible being so bad and being so disappointed in those games. That's a good one. I didn't even think about that beginning level where you're walking through as the waiter trying to get this. Oh my gosh. Painful. Painful. That's the perfect game. What a pick, Ryan. Coming out the gate strong. That's

a hot take, buddy. Wow. I did not expect that one. I mean, I told you guys. I told you and now. My games are poorly rated, but they're fun. This is not like self-torture. I had fun, okay? I just didn't know any better. We're not game shaming.

You do you, Ryan. It's just not for me. Ryan was like, when I was really young, I didn't know any better. And I'm thinking, oh, he's probably like four or five, right? And then he's like, when I was 11. And I'm like, you didn't know any better when And I'm thinking, Oh, he's probably like four or five. Right. And then he's like, when I was 11 and I'm like, you didn't know any better when you were 11. Come on. Oh man.

Too funny. All right, Josh, hit us with your first game. Well, speaking of flying around in a game and loving that part of the game, dude, this is number one on my list.

I didn't really rank these necessarily but i think i liked this game for how poorly rated it is and that's anthem okay anthem has a 4.0 rating on metacritic and i i don't get it paul you played anthem with with me. Sure did. I thought Anthem, I remember me, you and our buddy Andy flying around as a little trio in our Ironman suits, crashing down waterfalls and then skimming the river. Cause that's how you could cool the jets on your suit. Remember? And coming across some big like ash Titan guy that we were like, what is this? And this big boss fight. And dude, Anthem was great. It was great for like eight hours. And then you realize, and then you realize, okay, like I see why this game is a flop and people are slamming it and stuff. But I'll tell you what, Anthem was just about, and I'm going to mention another game

later on that's similar to anthem so obviously i enjoy this style of game but co-op with friends fighting boss fights great traversal cool abilities i mean all the suits had different stuff that they could do remember we'd all combo because we all played different like the i don't even know what the different classes yeah and we played different classes but javelins they're called javelins that's right yeah and we all made sure we picked a different javelin and then you could combo like their ultimates to do just insane damage anthem to me was so much fun i actually i enjoyed it so much that i played it well past when you and andy bailed out on it because i just was that wrapped up in it, man.

I was doing like the raids, like the end game content and stuff like that, that they had, not that they had a lot of it, but I, I mean, Anthem being rated a 4.0, I get, I get that it was like, you had this glimpse. It's like watching, you know, like Lord of the Rings, but then only being able to watch like 30 minutes of it, seeing what's possible, and then them just being like, and that's the end of the show, people. And then you're like, you can't do that to me. And I think that's what Anthem did.

But I had such a, I would still play it to this day, to be honest. And I think you can. I think it's technically still available. I just, I really enjoyed that game a lot. The thing with Anthem is that the idea behind the gameplay was flawless, but the story was so bland and nobody cared. The characters were bland. There were no real choices to make. And this is coming out of BioWare. And this is when BioWare still had that level of prestige. So when you were used to their games coming out and you would get at minimum 40 hours of gameplay really epic storytelling there were always fascinating side characters all that stuff

anthem had none of it i remember you were stuck running around that stupid home base city and just not caring at all about the world they did not do a single thing to make you care about anyone or the plot but man i would love to see anthem like remade gameplay wise and just with the interesting story and the game would be fantastic it was a great idea they just executed it really poorly. The other thing that really, I think, hurt it was everything was so segmented. I don't know if you recall, but when you were in the city and you wanted to go to the zone where your javelin was, that was a loading screen and then it would load. And then you'd run up to the platform that your suit was on and then you'd click modify suit because this is how you did your loadout and your weapons and stuff like that and then that would load you into like a different thing and then it

just like it was just like segmented it reminded me a lot of destiny 2 in a way where it's like you're you're loading from like one planet to another planet to a home base and then you're loading into this thing and it's like dude just make it all together. And that segmenting just really ruins a lot of immersion and just like flow of games for me. And I remember that was my biggest complaint with Anthem was I'm so sick of having to load eight different screens just to go to my suit. Once you were in the suit and flying around the world,

it was a blast. Dude, if people complain about too many loading screens in starfield at least everyone has an ssd now yeah when anthem came out i still had an old school hard drive and i remember that sometimes you would spend four minutes flying to an objective point hit a door which was now a 35 second loading screen talk to the guy standing right there who would send you right back to your home city and there was no fast travel so literally you would get like locked

into loading screens for like 60 to 70 seconds at a time and it really killed the momentum as soon as you were playing and got hit with those loads good pick good pick I like it glad I didn't play that one it was so fun that's the point of pick. I like it, Josh. Glad I didn't play that one. It was so fun! That's the point of this, right?

I liked Anthem, man. Like, this game has a terrible rating. Somebody would look at it and go, this game's gotta be the worst ever. Man, it's like, no! This was fun! I've said so many times, it's the best four-hour game you can ever play. And then you just realize there's nothing else to it. That's all it is.

Alright, well, Ryan, I'm gonna be able to include you a little bit on this and then you just realize there's nothing else to it. That's all it is. All right. Well, Ryan, I'm going to be able to include you a little bit on this one, even though you never played Anthem, because I do believe you and I spent a fair amount of time in this game. This is a throwback to a game that came out in 2001, came out on Xbox. It's a little game called Fusion Frenzy. Oh, yeah.

I know the game. I never played Fusion Frenzy, but i know the game i never played fusion frenzy but i know of it i was rather shocked that the critic score is only a 70 and when i searched fusion frenzy believe it or not like the number two hit is a pretty big youtube channel i think their name is triple jump and it's worst games of all time, Fusion Frenzy. And they have this like 30 minute video about it. And all the comments are people saying, dude, this game rules.

Like I loved Fusion Frenzy as a kid. And so I think this is one of those games that critics didn't get, but it actually has a user score of 7.7, which is not bad for Metacritic. That's actually kind of high. But this game was like a Mario Party clone because Mario Party was doing gangbusters

and you were getting all the knockoffs. And I remember Ryan and I, we would play Fusion Frenzy, all the Mario Parties. There was even a Pac-Man game that had all the little mini games attached. I liked Fusion Frenzy more than Mario Party, at least in my memory. That's what I remember.

Dude, it was so fun. I remember that vaguely, but we played so much of that game until the wee hours of the night, and you would take my car home, and then it would get broken into. Are we opening that can of worms? Some things are never forgiven.

We'll save that for another episode episode i couldn't remember if we've told that story or not i don't think no i think we told it on the squad cast maybe is what maybe yeah i don't know we've talked about it on the show itself maybe we'll save it for when we cover some ninja turtles content or something when your shirt got stolen dude what's funny is i i actually know of fusion Frenzy because I think at one point I was trying to suggest it to my family, or we talked about maybe covering it on the podcast at one point

because I think there is a more modern version of it. What platform was this game on? The first Xbox. Okay, so there is definitely a, or it's just a port but i know like i know of this game because i remember thinking it looks exactly like mario party to me but actually a little bit more fun like i thought some of the mini games in it looked a little bit more like uh like faster paced and more action oriented and just challenging and things like that um i had no idea that that game was rated that poorly

because to me, I thought it looked great. You know what it was? It was kind of like if you took Mario Party meets futuristic technology meets Gladiator, like American Gladiators, the TV show. You put all that together. That's kind of what it was. There was like, I remember one of the mini games,

everyone was in like a rolling wire cage and you would roll into each other like bumper cars and try to knock people off the ledge there were many games like that i remember one of them was like ddr where your characters were like break dancing and you would have to hit the right buttons at the right time i mean it was just like silly little mini games like that but it was a lot of fun back in the day so yeah i don't know why it was rated so low by critics but a lot of people seem to have really fond memories you know why because those critics are probably playing it solo to like have to like review the game oh and it's like a party-based game man like yeah yeah you might be right this is definitely a game you can't play solo you're just playing against ai and it it wouldn't be fun yeah all right well we're gonna go ahead and take

a break and we'll be right back okay ryan we're coming back around to you i know i really don't know what to expect after superman 64 what's what's going on that et game on atari guys well there's this little alien one time you know no got a big head and a little neck this one's a little more well known um anyone who's listened knows i guess if they've paid attention I am a super sucker for post-apocalyptic worlds. So anything that I can get my hands into in that realm, I'm all for it. I'm going to go with, it's The Division. It's The Underground.

It was a meta score of 69. Okay. Really? The user score was 7.3 i it has its issues just like any of these games but um it's it's one of those things where you know the division was was touted to be this huge amazing beautiful game it had its awesome moments and its awesome points, but there was a lot of issues. So I still enjoyed it. I still had so much fun playing that game.

I played it with a lot of friends. We did a ton of little, you know, they have little raids throughout and stuff like that. But yeah, that's going to be the one for me. Now, if I remember right, because i i'm with you ryan i actually really enjoyed the division and the division too um i played both of them a lot um and underground if i remember i think was the first like major expansion yeah i can't it it was for the original division right it might i might be getting the two of them mixed up in my head but i believe so if i remember i think i think you're right but it's like i remember it is it is the the first division um i don't know if it was just that like you said

people's expectations for the division were really really high and when this paid content came out people kind of went well that's not what we wanted. And then they just, I think they literally just kind of scrapped it after that and said, well, we'll just make the division too, because apparently this isn't going over very well. We'll just make a new game, guys. Don't worry. But yeah, I'm with you, man. I loved the division. I think the division and division two are actually somewhat fairly rated. I think they're in the mid to upper 80s on metacritic scores but underground did not jive with people no i don't really understand why because it's not like it came out and it was a terrible buggy mess and it was broken it just didn't seem to land for what people wanted, I think.

And the fact that you had to pay for it and it didn't add a ton of stuff might be the issue there. I mean, we talked about the division. I think it's called Heartland, right? Which is like they're just putting it in suburban America. And Paul and I trolled that for a while, even though I think it's going to be free to play. We just kind of went, dude, this is nothing is yeah you know kind of an ubisoft thing but yeah i'm with you on that one man because i do remember that not like a whole lot but yeah that one was really not well received even though it's just more of the division yeah ign even has it as a uh they scored it as a 58. Yeah, that's underground mixes

underground mixes people of low and high gear level creating a poor experience for both, you know, is what they what they put on there. So yeah. Ooh, yeah, I I played a little bit of the first division. I definitely never played that expansion Josh and Andy

loved the division. I remember I love that. i remember i remember not having any money and i couldn't buy it at the time and josh and andy were always talking about how great it was and then at some point i think it went on steam sale and i finally bought it but you guys ended up dropping it like two weeks later i checked my steam and i only should have known better i know i should have well to be fair paul was very late to that party too i was very late very late to it i think i bought it for like ten dollars or something i i played it a grand total of seven hours and that was it for the

division i remember thinking it was fine like i liked it i don't remember it being great or bad it was just like i'm not gonna play it by myself and you guys were so high level what was it like zero to fifty yeah we were maxed out i think by the time you were like guys i got it and andy and i were already kind of like we knew we were on the should we play with paul for a little bit or well and then the best part is then we started the podcast and todd who used to be our third back in the day, we all bought the division too. And this is when you and I learned, Josh, that Todd hates cover based combat, which we didn't know. So we start playing the division

too. And he's like, wait, I can't jump. And we're like, no, you can mantle. And he's like, I'm out. And he refunded the game. and i'm like well i'm not gonna keep it either so then i refunded my version i need the i need to get the money back and so we did not play the division two very much did you stick with the second one by myself dude i played the division two a lot like a lot a lot um so i definitely got my money's worth out of it. Yeah, just big, big world, lots of missions, looter shooter, boss fights, PvP. I mean, that game had everything that I enjoy in a game. Those quarantine zones.

Is it called the Dark Zone? The Dark Zone. Where you can PvP? Yeah, Dark Zone. That's a cool name. It was fun, man. Dude, you'd be sweating, like sweating, until hackers started ruining it.

And then they didn't really got like. Yeah, of course until hackers started ruining it. And then it really got late. Of course. Shocker. Yeah. All right. That's a good pick, Ryan. I like it. Josh, coming back to you.

All right, Paul. This is my other big one here. This game is rated a 65% on Steam. So that's pretty low. That's mixed reviews at that point. And I'll be honest with you. This is one of my favorite games in probably the last five years. It's got to be up there.

And it's Outriders. So I had no idea that Outriders was ranked this low. I don't know what it is on Metacritic. But Paul's looking at me crazy. We know why it is on Metacritic, but like, I, and I, okay, Paul's looking at me crazy. We know why it's rated so low. You and I did not have that problem, but many other people did. Rose colored glasses, Paul.

Rose colored glasses. What were the problems? Just, you know, full inventory wipes for a looter shooter game. You know, that's, that, that might upset a few people where you've ground all this. Our buddy Jared had it happen twice. Dude, we have this buddy Jared that we met through gaming, actually, and super cool guy. He hopped in Outriders with us from day one.

He was so pumped to play with us, and we're like, let's go. We're grinding. We're getting gear. We're getting levels. We're moving through the game. And then Jared's like, I log in and all my inventory is gone. And we're like, no, just log out and log back in. And he's like, yeah, I've done that like 10 times.

They came out and said, oops, there was a bug that may have wiped everybody's inventory. Sorry about that. We think we have it fixed now. Jared hops back in Outriders, starts grinding for another four or five days to try to catch up to us, logs in, and his inventory is gone again. And Jared was like, I am out. Forget this game, man.

This is terrible. And I remember Paul and I feeling so bad. But dude, Outriders to me, when it worked, was one of the best co-op shooter games I have played in a long time. And I mean, Paul, myself, and again, our buddy Andy played it. Dude, the boss fights, the chaos, the graphics, the abilities, the builds, the weapons. I mean, this game had it all, except for being free of really, really bad bugs. Other than functionality. Yeah. Other than that. Yeah. I looked it up on Metacritic and the critic

score is 72 or 73, depending on the platform. I will be honest, Josh, I would have bet my life that it was in the 80s. I can't believe it's rated that low. I know. I was baffled, dude. I was going through my Steam list, kind of like you did, Paul, and prep and just kind of looking at games. And I clicked on Outriders. And when I saw that it had mixed reviews, I literally went, what? What? Yeah.

That was my response. And then I started reading some of the reviews. And then I was like, oh, that's right. Oh, yeah. Like there was some major issues with that game. But yeah, what a blast, man. That game, I remember being hyped for it to release. I remember playing it and thinking this is everything I wanted from this game. So just to let the people know how much you and i really loved outriders we have our leaderboards at video gamers pod.com we both have outriders rated 13 out of all the games we've done deep dives i have it above some of my all-time favorites including rimworld gta online god of war ragnarok

resident evil village hogwarts legacy elden ring it's you. You even have it above Valheim, which you talk about all the time. Hogwarts Legacy, Diablo 4. I mean, you and I loved Outriders. I am shocked that it was nowhere on my radar because I would have never thought to look it up. I just assumed it was rated higher. I mean, I instantly put it on this list because I was like, I cannot believe that this game is rated as low as it's rated for how much we enjoyed that game. You can still play Outriders, by the way. I think it's even on Xbox Game Pass. At least it was for a little while. If you have a buddy to play with, because they have fixed a lot of the bugs and stuff like that. They've even released

a big expansion. They fixed the gear system. I mean, they put a lot of work into it to make it good. The problem was, is it was a little too late. Most people had kind of made it to the end game and kind of figured out their way around the gear system and stuff like that at that point. But play it, especially if it's on Game Pass. This game is a blast, man. It really is. is very clever classes very clever mechanics now i know some of it was unintentional in the beginning like my devastator build was ironically completely built around reloading my gun so it was all about shooting one bullet and then reloading and my gun would do this massive aoe damage and but that made it for like a really fun experience you're not just pointing and clicking like it actually broke up

the gameplay and the combat in a way that i thought was really fun and it made it a little more complicated it almost felt like mixing the raiding mechanics of like an rpg but it was a shooter and i liked that i had like spell rotations for lack of a better word. It was a good shooter. Not only, you know. Yeah, great shooter. And I loved the, basically every class had two builds. You had a build that you could focus on for guns, right?

That would just make your guns do a ton of damage and you could go shotgun or assault rifle or SMG and you could kind of build into those. Or you could do a skill-based build where you pumped everything into the skills that your character would use and then they would just wreck house. And the fun part about it was

you'd run this skill-based build for five, six, seven hours worth of gameplay. And then you'd be like, okay, I'm kind of ready for a change of pace. And then you'd switch over to the weapon-based build and it felt like a whole new game again. And then you'd do that for seven hours and then you'd switch over to like the weapon base build and it felt like a whole new game again and then you do that for seven hours and then you switch back to a skill base build and i just it was such a fun loop it really was and it had like seamless movement which i loved so my devastator could like warp to characters and i was shooting in the air

and flying back down and it just felt like there was so much going on it was yeah so fun i i really love the fact that square enix even said at the time like we're going to make more ip for this game and i just can't wait to see it outriders sadly they made one expansion and it didn't do very well and that's the last and you and i didn't even i tried it i well i didn't try the expansion i i went back into outriders to try to catch back up to remember the game. And so much had changed since you and I played that I was like, I literally gave it a three-hour attempt

and then I just uninstalled it because I was like, I don't want to ruin my memories of this game and I don't want to take the time to learn what all is new and what they fixed and changed and all that stuff. You guys are part of the problem. Yeah. You guys just aren't continuing the game. You guys are the part of the problem. Yeah. You guys are starting.

We abandoned it. Yeah. You abandoned it. You left it in the game that we both love so much. We, we, we recorded a public podcast shouting from the rooftops, go play that game.

And we continue to bring it up. But yeah, I mean, I'm not an expansion guy. I've only ever bought in my life, like maybe two or three expansions and they're all for Mass Effect. But that's one that I didn't even consider

for a split second. Yeah. Although I do know that we're going to be picking up Phantom Liberty this week, Josh. So darn right we are. That'll be at least another expansion I'm finally picking up. All right.

Next game I want to bring up on the list here is a lesser known game. I doubt either of you ever played it or would even really want to. It has a 67 rating on Metacritic and it is called the council. Now I did do a quick take. I was going to say, I've heard of this game. Maybe it's your quick take. It was probably for me.

So the council came out, I think in 2018, and it's a little bit like the telltale games, but it's a little bit more gameplay forward. Ironically, the game that I would now compare it to is Disco Elysium. But at the time, I had not played Disco. So at the time, I kept thinking like, okay, it's kind of like The Walking Dead or Heavy Rain, but you're actually playing more, but it has RPG elements and skill checks in dialogue and things like that. It's actually pretty similar to Disco. But basically, the game takes place in the 1700s. You have learned that your mom has gone missing from this island. And so you go to investigate

or to find your mom or figure out whatever happened. And basically you start meeting all these famous historical people. So there's like George Washington, Napoleon. They're in this game and you start learning. What is this Bill

and Ted? It is thank you, Ryan. It is. Yeah. I mean, it basically is. And you start uncovering that there's all these like worldwide conspiracies. There's stuff with the occult and religion and all of these cover-ups politically that's been going on. And so I wouldn't want to get into like spoilers. But let's just say that even though critics don't

love it, it actually has a pretty high score from users. It's a 7.9 on Metacritic and the first episode is completely free. So there is no reason that people shouldn't check it out. The first episode is incredible. It seems to suck pretty much everybody in. The only bummer is that episodes one, two, and three are far better than four and five. So it doesn't totally land the plane, if that makes sense. But it's still a really fun ride in the beginning. It's not terribly unlike Anthem. It's like an eight-hour total story.

And the first six hours are great. And then the last two, it's a little bit of a sour note. But it's still really fun to play. I've heard of this game. I've never even seen a screenshot of it. And when you say Telltale game, you get my attention because it's like, I enjoy those games. There's such a good change of pace from what I usually play.

But what was the rating on it again? So critics gave it a 67. That's pretty bad. Yeah, but it's a 7.9 from users. Yeah. Well, users generally know better. That's why we usually talk about user scores versus critic scores too. For the users.

Yeah, the only other thing I'll say about it is that it does have some really fun puzzles that you have to solve and you are basically just a detective so similar to disco where you can either run around and kind of like bully people physically or talk to inanimate objects and they give you clues there's like different methods the the council is exactly the same. You can run around and have expertise in areas like the occult or science or logic, or they have something like, like agility. And so depending on what kind of build you do and where you put your points,

it unlocks new dialogue, new ways of resolving things in the world. And it also makes it really fun to replay multiple times because you can try completely different strategies the telltale games are kind of famous for where you make choices but they don't necessarily matter all that much it's kind of like clementine will remember that but then there's no real fallout in the council it absolutely does there are drastically different events based on your choices. And then when you finish and beat the game,

you get that thing during the end credits like you get with a good Dragon Age or Fallout game where it's, this happened to this person because you did this, and now here's where they are. And it goes through all the characters. And for me, when I see that, that's what I really love is when choices matter and you get to see the ramifications of everything you did.

And the council kind of gives that to you in spades. So it's a lot of choices and a lot of puzzles. And I, I found it to be an absolute blast. Thanks. All right. Well, it's time for that last break and then we'll come back and we'll finish up

this episode. All right, guys, we've gotten through two games each so probably got time for one each and maybe some honorable mentions Ryan what you gonna hit us with ooh I bet you wanna know don't you I bet you got no idea so with all the craziness

I've brought forward I'm gonna bring something new. And by new, I mean really new, as in it releases today as of recording. Good pick. Payday 3. Payday. Metacritic score 69. Nice.

User score 5.3. What the heck are these people smoking, man? This game was so much fun. We played as much as we could get in with all the issues we had, but I'm sure they're going to hash that out. I'm sure they're going to figure all those wrinkles within the game, but it was so much fun. What is more fun than robbing a bank, right?

You know what this is? This is like a really fun action movie that critics are going to rate low because they're going to be like, well, what's the motivation of the villain? And I don't know why this character is in America when they should be from Europe. And they start getting bogged in the details. This is just good, fun gameplay. I can't imagine complaining about playing Payday. There's this group of games that is just meant to have fun.

They don't take themselves very seriously. Like Killing Floor that we played is another game that's kind of similar to that, right? Yes, very similar. It's not going to win any critical awards. It's not going to win any game of the year but when you play it you just have fun and they're not usually very deep they're not super complex or anything like that and i think i actually read a few of the like the reviews on payday 3 and from the users the main complaint is that it's just like it doesn't feel like it has like

a soul to them. But like at the same time, you're coming from Payday 2, which had 200 expansions, you know? So it's like, so now you're looking at something that's been built up over a decade. And then you're kind of going, well, this new game doesn't have all that. And so they're saying it feels like it's little bare bones. And it's like, I can understand that, man. This game, you're not going to get 50 different heists to try to do. Not on day one. And so I think that's part of the issue that people are having is just there's only eight maps or eight heists and that's it. But this is one of those games that you can replay the same map over and over

because you're just getting into shenanigans and stuff at that point too. So yeah, we've tried. I mean, some games should just be looked at like, is this fun? And if it is, that's why you play them. Yeah, there's nothing wrong with that. This is not the kind of game that you buy on day one, you crack out on it for 25 hours and beat it and finish it. Like, that's not what this kind of game is. You got to give it time. I even had put in our chat earlier that this is the perfect game to just play one or two nights a week.

And you can do that for like the next four years because they'll just keep adding maps and they'll add new things. You're going to keep unlocking new weapons, adding new attachments to your weapons and things like that. It's a game that and it's $40 like it's not even like a $70 game for $40. You get a lot of bang for your buck, even with the limited maps right now, and you're only going to get more over time. Absolutely. You can sit there and, you know, like you said, Paul,

like just, you know, you shoot your buddy a text like, hey, you want to go make some money? And they know what you mean, you know? And then they hop on and you guys go and you go rob a bank, you know? And it's just, you just go and you just have fun, you know? You're there to just go and have fun. fun you know that's that you're there to just go and have fun you don't care about plot point you don't care about dialogue you're there to rob a bank and try to figure out if you can do it we haven't been successful as far as like uh

making things stealth or doing any of that stuff you know we're we're fighting you know we're fighting everybody we're shooting we're throwing bombs know we're we're fighting you know we're fighting everybody we're shooting we're throwing bombs and grenades and everything so it's just it's one of those games that it's just like you said you know you can just hit up your buddies one or two nights a week let's go let's go rob a bank and then you go do it and you play for two two hours and then you have a good time you're not falling behind if you're not playing a whole bunch you're not missing like you know new things or discovery or something like that if you only hop in one or once or twice a week so it's a great point paul this is one of those games that you're not really intended to just grind through but it is also i was chatting with uh one of our long-term

listeners shout out to phelps the other day about payday 3 because he had bought it and was able to play a little bit early and he was saying that he really wanted people to play with because hopping into random lobbies especially there's some stealth only missions like you cannot get caught and with randoms he was like dude i just wound up rage quitting you know at that point and then i was like don't worry we're gonna be picking up payday 3 at some point. Like we'd love to have you, you know, in with us kind of thing, but yeah, you just got to approach it the right way. Understand that what type of game it is. And then I think it's a lot of fun. Totally agree. And I feel like bank heists are still a little bit untapped in video games because GTA online and GTA fiveta 5 have some well and for gta 4 has got the best bank heist mission of all time so like gta seems to get it even red dead has like this really thrilling

bank robbery where people get shot and die and you're on the run afterward and you've got payday uh i feel like there's still space for these kinds of games. Maybe we just need to see more come out. I can never get enough bank robbing, so I'm all about Payday 3. We all knew it wasn't going to be highly rated, but that just seems inexcusable to be that low. I was blown away. I was looking through this stuff, and I had a bunch of other games listed, and I saw that, and I was like, oh my gosh, no way.

And I pulled it up, and I looked at the score and the rating. I was like, oh, well no way and i pulled it up and i looked at the score and the rating i was like oh well i got to bring this up so i put it in my list so yeah it's a good pick all right josh coming back to you this is gonna sound a little cliche but i mean i have to bring it up because i play this game almost nightly to be honest um with my daughter and some of her friends and stuff but this is the lowest rated game on steam was that the title that it got paul that we covered a few weeks ago uh yeah yeah yeah lowest rated game of all time and i love it i hate it don't get me wrong but i also love this game and it's overwatch. I wish I knew how to quit you.

I have to separate the game from the company and the practices of the company and what they did. Don't get me wrong. This is not forgiving Blizzard at all. But the game itself of Overwatch or Overwatch 2 now, I absolutely love. I love the shooting. I love the mechanics. I love the characters. I love the gameplay. I mean, honestly, I really like everything about it. The only things I don't like are when you get garbage teammates,

but I haven't really had to play like, because I'm playing with people I know at this point. I'm not saying it doesn't deserve the review bombing that it got for getting rid of Overwatch and replacing it with Overwatch 2. Like I said, we covered all that. Super shady practices. Not forgiving that at all. But we're talking about games that are rated really poorly that we love, and this is one of them because I play it all the time still.

So I wanted to like Overwatch 2 so much, and I played it daily for the longest time. I finally uninstalled Overwatch 2, I think that was about five weeks ago, and I have never once been tempted to go back. I am having just so much fun playing Hearthstone. See, I rage uninstalled Hearthstone the other day. I saw that, and we all have those daysalled Hearthstone the other day. I saw that. And we all have those days.

Hearthstone can be infuriating. It'll be back next week. Yeah. I love having Hearthstone as my fallback. For a long time, that was Overwatch. If I needed a break from our deep dive game, I would go play Overwatch. And now it's Hearthstone. I'm enjoying that so much more.

The player base of Overwatch 2... I mean now it's Hearthstone. I'm enjoying that so much more. The player base of Overwatch 2. I mean, it's bad. It's so bad. It's really terrible. And that's why I say I get the rating, but when I look at just the game itself, I have so much fun with the game, man. I'll

keep going back to it. It's like, it's my comfort food. I know I'm not supposed to be eating these chips at one o'clock in the morning. They're going to give me heartburn, you know, but it's like, but they also are really tasty sometimes. So now when you, when you guys say like the player base, are you talking about like, kind of like toxic players that are super aggressive and talk a lot of crap or they just throw or they drop out or, I it's a team-based game so you you have to rely on your team yeah but you'll get like people that queue up to play support

which is like you have to heal your team and they will not heal at all they'll only try to do damage so it's like they're intentionally like not playing the role that they got signed that they signed up for you know and so that can be infuriating. Don't get me wrong. I like I'm not saying this is not without faults at all, but I still love something about it, man. You know, Overwatch used to be a community that loved the game so much. And in the beginning, everyone was very friendly. And if you were a healer and you told your team, Hey, the Genji and tracer are constantly on me all game. Can you guys try to keep an eye, you know,

turn around every once in a while and they'd be happy to do it. Nowadays, if you type anything, cause I mostly played support. And if I ever said like, Hey, I'm getting flanked a lot in the back and the, you know,

back line, just FYI, that's all i would say and you would start getting hit with this is effing quick play who cares you know and you start getting that and i'm like i'm like no i don't care i'm just i would rather win i'm just letting you know yeah you can't even like ask for help um as soon as anyone picks a character they don't like people will say i won't even leave spawn unless you get off of doom fist or something like that really it is the weirdest weirdest community and and god help you if you're a female it's even worse like just search youtube

for overwatch female and you'll get nothing but harassment terrible things said said. It is an awful community. Yeah, it is. I mean, I'm generally a nice guy, but Paul can attest to in Overwatch specifically, I am the biggest troll, man, and I don't know what it is. I have seen Josh tell so many people, go uninstall right now.

I'm not kidding. I'm just joking, Paul. Kind of, sort of sort of those people were really bad and they deserved it go uninstall right now oh man this is like this is where i was the only one out here saying hey diablo immortal is actually pretty fun just squeeze a couple hours and quit don't don't give them all the extra money and i was kind of alone on that island i feel like overwatch the metacritic user score is 1.4 i mean everyone hates overwatch too but josh is still crushing it still love yeah i do i admit i wanted to like it so bad i'm not saying it's as good as overwatch one that's the like that's the other issue is like you know you've got the nice memories of everybody playing Overwatch 1 together, Paul. I'm stuck with Overwatch 2.

But I can't quit it, man. Yeah, I get it. All right. Let's see. Probably only time for one last game on my list. I am going to go with Splitgate. Wait, is that not rated well? It is not, Josh.

What? Splitgate is great. I totally agree. Oh my goodness, you're gonna blow my mind here. I had the hot take. I still think it's better than Halo Infinite. And yet Splitgate has a metacritic score

of 71 what not good oh and it's like it's a free to play game that has fantastic shooting mechanics and it has a portal gun like come on it's free and you're going to rate it that low. Like who's complaining? How can you complain about split gate? It is such a fun game. Ryan, I don't even know if you ever played it or if it was ever on your radar. Just some dude started making it as like a senior project for his college, got a whole bunch of funding. And now it's, you know, this really well-made game. The time to kill is a lot shorter than Halo.

Halo's time to kill is way too high it doesn't work for me yeah this is almost like halfway between call of duty and halo and that's kind of my sweet spot i am terrible at halo josh can attest we played so much halo infinite i was always at the

very bottom of that scoreboard you're fine i could pop off in split gate though that game worked for me Halo Infinite. I was always at the very bottom of that scoreboard. No, you're fine. I could pop off in Splitgate, though. That game worked for me. I loved using... It was like a burst fire rifle. And I could get headshots with it. I loved putting up sneaky portals where you could catch people.

And you kind of knew what were the popular corridors. and you could get these awesome portals set up. And even as a sniper, I remember sometimes I would just use portals to get away. So if anyone started shooting at me, I would just back into the portal or remember chucking grenades through them, Josh. You could like stick a portal way high in the air and like chuck a grenade and then you could like get it all the way across the map like just sticking a portal gun inside a first person shooter that should have happened 12 years prior i don't know why it took so long split gate is awesome and it should not be a 71 i when i was going through my steam list i saw split gate on there and i didn't even click it because I was like that game's great. That was me with Outriders. Exactly the same. When did this come out?

Like two years ago maybe? Three years ago? Yeah, not long ago. Really? Oh wow. That's crazy. The beauty of it is... I'm sorry. Go ahead, Ryan. No, I was just going to say that I was a Halo 3, Halo Reach fanatic. i played so much of that so something like that with portals sounds amazing to me but i never saw anything like this i just

totally off my radar yeah yeah it's the the like the beauty of it too was that it was it's like it was the return to the arena shooter which there had not been a new arena shooter in a really long time that that worked out at least you know and so this was like hey arena shooter type maps like halo type pacing like or feel a little bit but then portal guns man yeah it was just you know yeah i mean it was like it but then they even had like a little bit of the old like quake because there were weapons that would spawn on the map and so you would race to go like try to get the rocket launcher or the sniper rifle or something like that so it just yeah i had a lot of dna of like halo and some of this other stuff and

that's crazy bringing up quake hey man qu Quake. These kids don't know about Quake. What are you doing? Yeah. I mean, they don't know about... Oh, Quake was so good. Unreal Tournament. I like Unreal Shooters, man. I got a tattoo on my ribs all the way down, and it's in the Unreal...

Font? Text. Font. Font, yeah. Yeah. Oh, those games were so great. But Splitgate... All right.

Well, that's criminal, because Splitgate is a great game that's wild if someone asked me right now like what are the best free to play games right off the top of my head i'm probably gonna say apex legends hearthstone and split gate those are probably the first three i would think of but yeah 71 on metacritic i did look at our leaderboards I have split gate at 28 and you have it at 35 Josh so we both have it relatively high I mean it's not it's not an upper echelon all timer

but for a free to play shooter exactly it yeah it looks awesome if you got portals and grenades and bombs and all that stuff that sounds my biggest complaint with splitgate was the matchmaking because if you were it was very easy to get steamrolled and then it would just like snowball almost and then those matches were not fun where you're just

getting absolutely obliterated by the other team um and i don't know if they ever fixed that or not i haven't played splitgate in a long time but i think that if I had to say that would like, I had a complaint like now that would probably be my biggest one. Yeah. I don't know if they ever found a big enough player base to do more MMR type stuff. Cause that was the problem is that it just didn't have enough players, but yeah, I don't know if it ever, I don't know if they ever patched that or not. Cause you and I haven't played it in ages. All uh by way of honorable mentions i was going to mention mass effect andromeda it's really low rated but it's not terrible it's not great but i i enjoyed my playthrough a year and a half after release when things got patched and a little bit

fixed up and i also put on their evil west which is a 73 on metacritic but it's a 7.8 from users like evil west was short but i kind of liked that it was just this small contained action game i love cowboy shooters it was right up my alley it's not an all-timer either but it was a cheap game it was a fun eight hours i didn't think that deserved a 73 uh Did you guys have any honorable mentions you want to bring up? What you got, Ryan? Nothing for Ryan? All right, I got a bunch. You don't want what I got.

Oh, no. For me, a game called Bard's Tale 4. I have played that game probably three times, which is saying a lot for me. It's an old-school RPG, like, bobber-type game where it's a first person perspective like the old might and magics or like wizardry type games you guys are probably too young but you would it's a 3d view but you're walking you kind of walk one tile at a time so they call it a bobber because

like your your characters kind of like take that step into the next tile i'm just surprised that you said you played it three times i know right like know, right? You don't play a game one time. It's so right up my alley, but that is a 65% on Steam, which I was shocked with. Another old school game that was kind of remade was called Star Control Origins. This is kind of like what I want Starfield to be a little bit more like in a lot of ways. But you were exploring space, interacting with all these crazy alien species. When you would go into combat, it would be 2D arcade-style combat, but it was really fast-paced, and every ship had unique abilities and speed and size and all that, so it was really fun.

And then Quest 64. Did you guys ever play? I knew this. I remember Quest 64 because Did you guys ever play? I knew this. Dude, did you ever? I remember Quest 64 because my wife and I, I don't remember the year exactly that Quest 64 came out, but I do remember it was one of the first full Nintendo games that my wife and I played together,

and we both loved that game, and it's a 5.9 rating. It's pretty old now, so it's not on Metacritic, but IGN gave it a 5.9, and I just pretty old now so it's not like on metacritic but like ign gave it a 5.9 and i just remember thinking that game was great damn these pictures are taking me back i did not play it i remember watching footage when you brought it up once before and uh yeah it's tough to look at now i mean i'm sure it was great you know 25 years ago yeah but oh yeah so that broke my heart a little bit to see i had no idea that it was actually rated like that poorly and then i

looked and i was like old turn-based combat see i love turn-based combat so for me i was like oh this is great yep quest 64 one stardew valley zero right oh i love it too funny all right well i think that wraps everything up i'm glad that we had some because i'm always a little worried whenever we share like worst games i'm always trying to make sure i pick stuff that at least people have heard of so i'm glad we're not pulling out games that no one's ever heard of and yeah i could mention some really terrible old old atari games but then like nobody's gonna know those yeah oh boy all right well as a reminder to all our listeners please go check out our patreon at multiplayer squad.com and make sure to follow the pod we do have episodes releasing mondays, Thursdays, and Fridays. Also Saturdays for quick takes.

If you're a patron, you also get episodes on two Tuesdays every month. There's a lot going on. Yeah. Make sure to hit the follow button and then don't forget to leave us a rating and a review. And then until next time, happy gaming.

See ya. All right. See everybody.