Video Gamers Podcast - End of Year Game Awards - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: December 19, 2022

Gaming hosts Paul, Michael and Josh are celebrating the end of 2022 with our annual End of Year Gaming Awards episode. We review the entire year of video games, award the best, trash talk the worst, and give out some of our own special gaming awards in a fan favorite episode! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Dave G, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming 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

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Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P dot com. Hello, fellow gamers, and welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We have reached the end of another year and we are going to be celebrating by looking back over and talking about 2022 in gaming as a whole. And also, we're going to be giving out a whole bunch of awards that we have planned. This is going to be an absolute blast. However, before we get started, please take a second to rate our show five stars, especially on Apple Podcasts and Spotify. And if you leave us a written review, we just might read it on the show. You can also help support our show through Patreon.

You can fund what we do starting at five bucks a month, and you'll get two bonus Squadcast episodes every month. If you want to sign up or to check that out, you can head over to MultiplayerSquad.com. I am your host, Paul, and joining me, he wins the award for Best Long-Term Host since he's been here since the beginning. We've already done this a couple of times together. It's Josh. Yeah, and the whole time I'm just pointing myself, rubbing it into Michael that it's me. Another year's gone by josh these years are just starting to fly by huh we've been doing this now is that because we're old or is it just because time goes by faster we're coming up on three years josh we started march you know what they say through the third year is the glory year for for podcasts this this coming year is going to be the best year yet oh i sure hope so

all right and joining me and josh he wins the award for best new podcast host because he joined us in February, which means this is going to be his very first end of year review episode. It's Michael. Yes, that's right. All of you other new hosts just cower down in my greatness. Look at how awesome I am. Oh, it's funny you mentioned that, how fast the year went by. I remember when I was like 20, people are like, you know, you hear people say all the time, like, oh, time goes by fast.

I'm like, I'm 20 years old. These 20 years have been like a long time. And now I'm like 40 looking back and going, oh, man, they go fast. I just love that the second I could throw shade at Michael, I did. And then he was just so polite and gracious in his best new host award. Yeah, the bullets just ricocheted right off him. I just did not hold. I've been a Josh punching bag since the moment I came on this show, man.

I'm just used to it. I just glance off me and just like... Only since we played Elite Dangerous. If I don't pick on you, it means i don't like you so that's it right yeah oh man all right so to tell the people out there what we're going to be doing here today we're going to talk about the year in gaming in general terms first we're going to break down a little bit of the game awards 2022 which just happened a little over a week ago and then we have a total of 11 awards that we are going to give out so it's going

to take a little while to get through all this but it's going to be an absolute blast we've come up with a list of awards some are serious some a little bit less so uh you can look forward to the dog turd award which might be my favorite which is going to go out to the worst the worst game of 2022 um but let me just give you guys a little bit of background of this year because so much has happened here's a couple of highlights just to remind you guys of some of the major storylines of 2022 in gaming early on in the year microsoft announced its intent to acquire activision blizzard for 69 billion dollars two weeks later sony announced that they would acquireungie for 3.6 billion.

There were about 47 other acquisitions. We're not going to list the valve steam deck released. E3 was canceled both in person and online. EA withdrew their license from FIFA. GTA six videos were leaked online and Google stadia was permanently shut down. We also saw a ton of games pushed to 2023. So some of the games we were supposed to have this year that we have to still wait for

include Forspoken, Starfield, Redfall, Hogwarts Legacy, Star Trek Resurgence, Skull and Bones, The Lord of the Rings Gollum, The Legend of Zelda, Tears of the Kingdom. And by the way, Hogwarts Legacy and Gollum are now listed at the end of year review for being pushed back another year, two years in a row. So we've really been waiting for those a long time. including lost ark elden ring tiny tina's wonderlands overwatch 2 v rising the quarry saints row gotham knights god of war ragnarok and evil west so as you guys look back on 2022 what stands out i think the biggest thing that stands out is we we saw a new trend in gaming that we hadn't seen to this magnitude in a long time um and i i mean some might say it's a bad trend others who are not very smart might say it's a good trend but really the trend is let's delay every single announcement that we have and just delay every single big game for the next year was the trend

for 2022 yeah lots of delays i that you know there's a new trend for me in 2022 and that is i am a okay with delays like i used to get i'm like honestly i used to get so peeved right i'd be like oh come on another delay like get your stupid game ready man you told us it was gonna be out in october and now i'm just like after seeing all the garbage that got released i'm like you guys want to delay your game that's probably a really good decision guys i'm really proud of you for making that difficult choice like josh is this recency biased because of cholesterol protocol i i i'm just saying man i i have come to learn that when somebody says hey we need more time on this it's better to give them the time that they say they need than to scream and yell and then have them go like okay fine you want

it here it is and then you go this sucks it's broken and they say yeah we told you and ubisoft if you want to delay skull and bones indefinitely we're cool with that too because we are not going to be playing it oh my goodness yeah and and so many acquisitions i felt like every week when we were preparing our articles for this week in gaming it was like every single week there were two more mergers or acquisitions and if you guys remember even ubisoft was throwing their name out there like hey if anyone wants to buy us uh we'll come to the table we'll listen to your offers they threw up a giant white flag and said, we surrender. Yeah.

Pretty much. I'll say for me, I was thinking about this. What stood out to me in 2022? And Michael had the, everything got delayed. I feel like for me, 2022 was a year that lacked consistently good games. Don't get me wrong. There's a couple of juggernauts, and we'll definitely talk about those. And honestly, I feel like a lack of like innovation i feel like there were so many games that released in 2022 that were just retreads and reskins of previous games i mean we you know just a couple tiny teen is wonderlands was really no different than any of the other borderlands in

fact they reused a lot of the same assets the stanley parable deluxe edition is just a you know like an add-on to the original game we've got warzone 2.0 which is warzone yeah yeah right with a new mode um you know the witcher 3 update just released like i think two days ago as of this recording um and they've been touting that for a year and a half you know things like lego skywalker saga you know there's like there's all these things where it's like dude these games already came out so it's like but we have to release something this year so they just went we'll just re-release whatever we've had you know and so not a trend i'm a crazy big fan of, to be honest. No, really a lot of this year just makes you look forward to 2023 more because I feel like not a lot came out. Not a lot happened. Like we played games. We played a lot of new games.

We played some good ones, but there wasn't like a lot of like strong entries this year, I feel. And the ones that we were looking forward to most, like something like Gotham Knights that I was really excited about ended up being like, yeah, okay it seemed kind of half a little flat yeah yeah i i mean i don't want to say this was the year of disappointment but i honestly for but it was i mean a lot of games that i was really looking forward to came out and then i kind of went like this is fine like it's not blowing me away like it's not great so mediocrity with the exception of a couple really thankfully good games. I think really top heavy. Like we got Elden Ring and God of War Ragnarok, which were absolutely fantastic.

We got a lot of mediocre entries. The only thing that I will say about innovation is that the AAA titles absolutely were pretty run of the mill, nothing to write home about. But indie games kind of crushed it this year, man. Thank goodness for indie developers, man. I'll be honest, man. As a lifelong gamer, indie developers are what absolutely salvaged this year. If it could be salvaged, it's thanks to them and thanks to two games, which is Elden Ring and God of War. Yeah. And I think on your point paul about the biggest thing about indie games is it makes it hard for like us to predict what to

review sometimes because i look back now and i'm like did we miss the mark on not doing stray and cult of the lamb but we wouldn't have known because they came out of nowhere yeah well even things like sifu like at least these are all games that were on our radar we talked about all of them even prior to release uh neon white kind of snuck up on us for sure and you know josh was pretty quick to start playing that one but yeah i kind of feel like indie games are really gaining a lot of steam and momentum to where i'm more excited about a lot of indie releases than i am the triple a titles because because the AAA titles are just kind of not meeting our expectations over and over. But in any case, we can go ahead and move on here.

Now, we'll spend just a couple minutes talking about the Game Awards. Now, I know that all three of us tuned in for it. Did either of you win a Steam Deck? No. I kept checking my email like every day and I maybe it went to my spam folder I don't know I I'm gonna email steam to to ask them where my my steam deck is right you guys gave out so many because the game awards were long I surely I got one

you just forgot also shout out to Christopher judge I I mean I'm pretty sure like 60 extra people got steam decks because of his award speech. Some say he's still talking. Oh, yeah. All right. So as you guys take a look at all of the different winners and the different nominations, the two heavy hitters were obviously Elden Ring and Ragnarok. Elden Ring took home awards for Game of the Year,

Direction, Art Direction, and Best Role-Playing Game. God Award took home Best Narrative, Score and Music, Audio Design. Christopher Judge won Best Performance. They also won Innovation and Accessibility and Best Action Slash Adventure Game. I think both of those games are deserving winners of those awards i don't really have much to quibble about but as you take a look at all the winners is there anything in particular you think they got right or wrong i my only complaint with the game awards was that i feel like they went with the safe choice on a couple categories and not the right choice. And this might just be inherent to award shows and stuff like that.

But one that stood out to me, and I will say this caveat, I didn't play this game. And I didn't play some of the other, I didn't play a lot of games in this category, honestly. But the indie game Stray, Stray won a ton of awards. I know that Stray took the world by storm.

You play as a cat. It seemed to be very endearing. The internet loves cats. I just, I didn't want to play as a cat. I have two cats. They live a boring life. You know,

I mean, they sleep for 18 hours and then, and then they bolt around the house, like crazy things for an hour, you know, and you had games like Colt of the Lamb, Sifu, and some of these other neon white like all

these games that were just vastly different and original and incredible and then it's like well here's a game where you get to wander around as a cat and it's like everybody knew that Stray was like the safe bet because that got all the publicity and guess which indie game won they're like oh we're giving it to Stray you know know and stray might be great again i never played it but to me it just seemed like i was like come on i like that's the safe choice guys um and then the only other two kind of on the same vein fighting game i used to love fighting games but multiverses as as best fighting game you know what i mean like Really? Multiverses? Come on, man.

And then finally, most anticipated. Dude, 2023 is chock full of freaking incredible looking games. And out of all those games, if you had to say, what's the safe bet, guys?

What's the safe? What are we going to say as publications and make sure that nobody's going to get their feathers ruffled? Oh, as publications and and make sure that nobody's going to get their feathers ruffled oh well let's just say that it's you know legend of zelda tears of the kingdom nintendo didn't get a lot of awards so we got to give them one of them right and again like completely blame like i hope that game's great i'm not trying to knock breath of the wild

you know as far as that goes or the sequel to breath of the wild but it's kind of like there's just so many options and i I felt like, again, that was the safe choice. Yeah, I've got a couple of general thoughts on this. One, totally missed out on the Best Hair Award because Bear McCurry would have easily won that. That's not really an award. But I feel like she shouldn't have won probably. But I think that for overall the best performance, I think they got Ashley Birch wrong. I think I mentioned this on a previous episode that I really think she should have been nominated for Tiny Tina. Because she was one of the few good things that came out of that game is the voice performance was really incredible. As Aloy, she's awesome.

But, you know, that's just kind of my thought there. I also feel like overall Horizon Forbidden West, just if God of War didn't exist, it would have split a lot of these awards with Elden Ring. Because it's a fantastic game that I think was just barely overshadowed by God of War Ragnarok. Now, granted that God of War 2018 kind of blew it away. God of War Ragnarok was close to God of War 2018, but I think that it was just kind of overshadowed by this juggernaut being there that ultimately they're very similar in a lot of ways as far as a lot of the style, the way you move, the way you fight, all those things. But I think that seeing Forbidden West not walk away with even one award, it's like that game was really good and it just got beat out by this juggernaut. don't know that's just my thoughts on that piece

if horizon had come out last year i feel like they kind of would have run the table because like it takes two you take a look at past winners where it's like dragon age four and the witcher three and then you kind of see it takes two and it's kind of the one game that really stands out as just being a really weak year yeah horizon just kind of ran up against those those two juggernauts i i didn't really take issue with any of the categories a lot of it kind of made sense to me uh in regards to ashley birch it might be one of those like split vote things like they're not going to nominate her twice in the same category so get her for the bigger game yeah the bigger game is more recognizable i i still think man engaged was

the best performance but i'm not going to fault them for giving it to Christopher Judge. It's an incredibly iconic role. Nobody thought Man Engaged was going to win, although I do think she had the best performance. Oh, you know what? There was one more thing that I did want to mention is best game direction. I completely disagree with Elden Ring. I get it was awesome.

I get it was great. I just think when you think of directing a video game, and granted, I don't make video games. I'm not a director. God of War 2018 had so many more layers involved. When it comes to the motion capture, the stunts, the music that had to make you cry at certain moments, the story, all those things coming together is what a director does. I don't think Elden Ring... You don't have a story. You don't have things coming together. You've got fights. It's great. Don't get me wrong. You don't have things coming together. You've got fights.

It's great. Don't get me wrong. There's nothing against Elden Ring. I just think when it comes to it, if you're given a job to direct Elden Ring or to direct basically a movie in a video game and make it realistic and fun and all those things, there's so much more that has to come together perfectly

to make God of War successful than Elden Ring. I really feel like God of War 2018 really deserved best game successful than Elden Ring. I really feel like God of War 2018 really deserved Best Game Direction over Elden Ring. Yeah, I totally hear you. Maybe the thought process that some people had was that Ragnarok just uses so much that already existed from 2018 that maybe that kind of discounts the work. But I hear everything you're saying. I thought Ragnarok was going to win Best Direction as well. But yeah, let's go ahead and move move on let's go ahead and start giving out some of our own awards and i think this is a really fun way to tell the people what we thought it's a fun way to go back and talk

about some of the old games that we covered here this year some of these games i feel like we played a year and a half ago and i was kind of surprised they came out this year and i think it's a lot of fun to kind of recap a lot of these things and how our thoughts may have changed over time. So let's just start off with the big one here. Game of the Year. Now, coming up later, we are going to give out an award for our personal favorite game of the year.

So we're not talking about the game we necessarily liked the most, but we want to recognize the game that did it best they uh put out the best big innovative new product to the masses so if you guys were running the game awards what would you have given game of the year uh for me elden ring you guys know i love god of war i mean i'm you know that but elden ring deserved to get Game of the Year in my opinion that is it was it just it did a lot of things right number one

Elden Ring rumors of Elden Ring came out years ago and I don't know if you guys remember but there was some leaked footage of like a cinematic trailer at one point and then there was leaked footage again of like another trailer at one point and we didn't hear anything about Elden Ring there was a little you know oh George RR Martin's gonna be involved in the writing and we get these little snippets but they weren't

there was not a massive hype train for Elden Ring and then if you guys remember all of a sudden they came out and they said hey Elden Ring's gonna release in like two months you know I don't don't quote me on the exact time frame there but it was like, it wasn't a very long lead up, right? It wasn't this cyberpunk 2077 ish hype train that happened. It was just like, everybody knows we've been working on this game. Hey, it's going to be open world. They showed off a little bit of footage and everybody kind of went, yeah, it's hard to kind of get a grasp. How's the open world going to work? And the guy's riding a horse and yeah, yeah, yeah. And then all of a sudden they went, Hey, by the way, the game's coming out in like two months and everybody went well oh oh okay cool yeah like

i can't wait to play elden ring and then it came out and it just exploded man i mean everything on the internet was elden ring it was innovative it was truly open world it was dark souls it was beautiful dark souls has always been ugly. And so it was like they took everything that Dark Souls wasn't or people didn't like, and they fixed it. Other than the core mechanic of the game, which yes, is hard combat. And if you don't like hard combat, that's just simply not your game at that point, but everything else they did almost perfectly in my opinion. And that game is freaking massive, dude. Like I don't, what is it like an 80 hour game? You know what I mean? And that's, if you're not exploring every little corner of the world and

looking for the different weapon builds and stuff like that, like what an insane value at the same time to just turn people loose. I think it deserved to win. I'm glad it did. Yeah. I also have Elden Ring, much to probably some people's surprise. Now, granted, what I just said about the direction of the game does not mean it's the best game. That's why even at the Oscars, you have best picture and best director.

It's a difference. I love God of War 20. I love God of War Ragnarok. I think that overall, Elden Ring was fresh, original, a new idea. It kind of broke open a genre and made it into a new genre. The Souls-like games now have so much more to go off of because Elden Ring exists. I loved the combat, even though I hated it because it was hard. And I'm not very good at certain video games, but I was good at this one. It was fun. But the whole thing is like the idea that I could feel.

I still remember how it felt the first time that like I fought someone with a shield and I felt my sword hit off the shield. And I'm like, I felt that in real life. The combat was so realistic feeling. And the idea of you're not button mas not button mashing you've got to be smarter strategic but it all worked it's like this perfect dance between realism fun and still a little bit overpowered because like if it was realistic and i was actually holding a sword i'd be dead quick in real life um but in this game i'm able to play this character who who walks around this shroud of mystery and this, let's go and see what's out there. Everything here is going to try and kill me. And you don't know necessarily when There was a lot going on there. And that's why I think that it really... I think it stands out this year

as a shining star. Don't get me wrong. God of War Ragnarok was incredible. It was really God of War Ragnarok. God of War 2018, like 1.75, kind of as a continuation of the story. I don't think it was anything mind-blowingly different. It was really good, but I loved Elden Ring for what I just said. Yeah, Elden Ring is what I chose as the winner here as well. You really just have to give them credit for the innovation. And honestly, when you're making

your first open-world game, that is a really hard undertaking. And this is a full open-world game, and it runs really, really well. There were a couple very minor issues like the day of release. And after that, everything was perfectly fine. You could quibble with a couple of things.

I think my biggest complaint about Elden Ring is that it's very easy to miss certain side quests. If you like, don't talk to the same person nine times in a row, then they don't give you a mission. Like that kind of stuff kind of bothers me. But if that's the worst thing I have against a game, it really is just beautiful.

The music's fantastic. Very memorable boss fights. And also just quality of life. I mean, being able to do the fast travel to the campsites is easy. Being able to summon your horse at any time is very nice. I mean, Elden Ring

has done nothing but stay in very high regard in my mind even though we played it now 10 months ago yeah and the the word of mouth of elden ring was immaculate and you had these like gaming cultural moments like let me solo her yeah where you had people dressing up as this guy and even just the fact that you could bring in a friend and fight some of these bosses i thought was really neat as well yeah you got to give out and ring all the credit in the world all right well let's move on to our next award here let's give out the award for favorite new character now josh this is the one that you kind of mentioned having a little bit of trouble with

i think you even threw out i hate whoever came up with this yeah i did because i mean donkey bro there's a ton of insanely good video game characters but to say hey you have to pick a game that released in 2022 yes as your favorite game character and then i started going like well wait a minute like okay so now i gotta think of all the games that released well none of those characters really jumped out at me necessarily i I can't pick Kratos for everything. And he's not a new character. Yeah. You know what I mean? So then I was like, well, dude, and this one was hard. I don't like homework.

There's no Dr. Hakeem to pick this year. Exactly. And so I really struggled with this one, man. I'm not going to lie. I did finally narrow it down to two. And then I said, which is the one that really stood out to me as far as like every time this character was in the game, I got excited and I thought it enhanced the game. And that's Odin from God of War Ragnarok. Honestly. I like it.

That's a great. It was just the performance was top notch. The way that they portrayed Odin in Ragnarok, I thought was phenomenal. I did not know if they were going to have him come in and just be this all powerful, like Zeus, like character.

And it was completely different. And I love the way that they portrayed them. I loved the acting in it. I love the way that I started to trust Odin. You know what I mean? Just like, like he, he worked trust odin you know what i mean just like like he he sucked me in you know what i mean and it's like and i know you don't trust odin come on man what have they been saying all of god of war like don't trust odin he's he lies you know and all that stuff and i'm like nah man odin's my boy he's cool man he's he's cool with me yeah and so for me it was definitely odin he's a kind old man with

lots of birds he's a crazy bird man trust him he's trustworthy he uh he just the sheer presence and the command of just using his voice of everyone around him is what made him such a cool villain yeah i even said i don't remember what i said at the time but when we did the deep dive i said this is like my favorite gaming villain of the last five years i i loved every second with odin i would give nothing more but to spend more time with odin be able to hear his voice see his schemes and shenanigans uh yeah what a great new character i i love that pick maybe he'll be in the next one what would you have for favorite new character, Michael? Well, I didn't think of Odin, so now I guess I can't change it.

Dang it! I would say, now I had to dig pretty deep in the well on this one, and I came up with a character that you do play as. And I don't know if it's... It's not going to be an ongoing, long-time character, because it's definitely a one and done. But really, I was just enamored by Clens Quigg, which is the name of the pig man from Evil West. I loved the pig man story.

I think the way that in such a short time, without spoiling too much about the character, because it's a pretty good two or three hour story maybe ish is what you get to play with this character is one of the five playable characters in weird west i'm sorry weird west not evil west man these games put on a stetson partner it's the year of the west um i don't know where that came from i apologize to everyone who had to deal with that anyways he's basically been turned to a pig because he was a nasty human being you don't know that when you first start playing as him but as you learn learn his character, you start to like, you think he's abhorrent for a little bit. You think he's terrible. And then you find out he really was terrible.

And then you learn a lot about this person that became the pig man who has amnesia. And he doesn't know what he is or who he is. You have a lot of choices that are very pivotal as this character. Do you kill this person? Do you not? Do you want to go with revenge or go with forgiveness? And I think it just had a lot of layers to a character that really wasn't around for very long and didn't exist in a heavy part of a huge game. Now, granted, we won't see the pig man anymore, probably, because if Weird West does get a sequel,

I don't know if they're going to go that route by playing a character that you already know everything about. But he had a lot of layers and a lot of emotion in such a small thing and it really struck me as a great character and the funniest thing is when I started playing as this character I thought he'd be my least favorite I was like I don't want to go melee-ish I don't want to do this

I don't he's ugly yeah he's ugly I just got off of what's her name Jane Jane and I'm likeane bell was awesome and i'm this pig man and then by the end i was like i just want to be the pig man and he was a great character he's really good with a cleaver yeah his story was very tragic like his story definitely stuck with me i really loved that one uh i i struggled with this one i thought about giving it to odin and then i thought that one or both of you would probably do that,

so I just went with my other choice because they were both tied in my mind. I got to give it to my girl, Marissa Marcel from Immortality. I won't talk about it much, but such a hard job for an actor to come in and play so many different parts of different movies and to record them all and to do such a great job. I thought her acting was unbelievable. I would have given her best performance. I liked her character a lot. There's a lot of mystery behind what happened to this woman. Why is she missing? What did she go through? Why does she not seem to age? And then it takes a little bit

of a fantastical shift in the game. And as you find out more about her character, I just found myself getting more and more interested in what she was doing. And so I'll give it to Marissa Marcel from Immortality for my favorite character of 2022. It's also still the first game I ever put, I believe, on my wishlist on Steam. I can't wait to play that one. Nice. All right. Well, we're going to take just a short break, and we'll be right back with some more Multiplayer Gaming Podcast.

Okay, we are back, and it is time for maybe my favorite award of the year. Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce to you the Dog Turd Award. What game came in and and left a big steaming pile of dog poop on the rug that's what we're gonna give out here let's throw it to josh because i think we we might all have the same pick anyway you guys know it's calisto do protocol oh i'm so sad oh my goodness man i go back go back and listen to our episodes we covered calisto protocol the lead up to that game a lot we all said hey what's the game that you think is going to be the best game like what has the highest chance of being great and we all said calisto protocol oh yeah i mean and it's funny because i actually went through all of our news stories for the entire

year um as a little bit of prep for the show. And we were so hyped. I mean, honestly, and there were so many stories, 60 frames a second confirmed for Callisto Protocol. Sure, it runs at 60 frames a second sometimes. The other time it runs at four frames a second. So are we averaging that out? Are we talking top frames a second here, people? Right. You know, I mean, if there's here's the thing. When we look at bad games, right? What's the game that's at the very bottom of our leaderboard? Battlefield 2042.

You know what? You know what they did? At least they did right. You could play it. Yeah. You could play Battlefield 2042, guys. You couldn't shoot anyone. No, but you could play the game.

Callisto Protocol. I couldn't even freaking play it, man! Yeah. Oh my goodness. So for me, Callisto Protocol was honestly, and this is not a good thing, this was the first truly unplayable game that I think

I've ever paid money for. Cyberpunk 2077 was a buggy mess, but you know what i could play the game sure people walked around in a t-pose and cars ran over people and you know but you could at least play the game yeah could not physically play calisto protocol without going into a seizure or rage um and so for me that gets easily the the the dog turd the first inaugural dog turd award because of that now i know that they've fixed a lot of that with with with patches and stuff like that it doesn't matter to me at this point it's too late so for me it's callisto protocol uh and also yeah the quarry so fair oh

man no no part of the problem with callisto is like, is it the worst game of the year? No, but it is the biggest difference between hype and expectation and actual product. We had so many articles this year for Callisto. Sometimes I would put them in there and I would put in parentheses, we're not talking about Callisto again. I just want to share this news because we were all so excited and we were bringing it up my goodness what three out of every five twig episodes we were sharing news about it it was so yeah for it to come out and just be so unplayable and so

poorly run it was just like just a bucket of ice water first thing in the morning waking up it was just it was so bad so disappointing i still am so close to pulling the trigger on just getting it on the playstation 5 because i still want to play it so bad and it could be a good game it's just unplayable i almost i'll be honest i almost want you to michael because over the technical issues at release that i have read a lot of complaints from people that said, dude, this game's just not good. Like technical issues aside, it's a straight corridor.

Combat is terrible. It's not scary. It's just jump scares, you know, and it's gory. So if you like gore, then maybe the game is for you. But from a completely just putting all the technical issues to the side, just as a game alone, people kind of went, it's really meh. And everybody was expecting a lot more. It was supposed to be scary. It was supposed to be... The graphics are beautiful. Nobody's faulting that. But I just feel like it was a letdown in a lot of different ways. But more so just you released

a completely broken game yeah broken to the point where you can't play it so michael was that your winner for the dog turd award as well not okay it was it was mine so that's what i picked what would you pick michael i did not want to give it to callisto protocol because i wanted to give it to a game that i actually played right and was looking forward to. And to really understand my dog turd award, we have to look at the life of a dog turd. Right? A dog turd starts

out as something else. It starts out as a delicious, tasty treat. It's a dog treat. Maybe it's a Snossages, or it tastes like bacon. The dog's all excited. And you get the bacon strip inside your mouth, and you're like, this is so tasty. I'm loving this dog treat. This dog treat is great. And then, you know, it turns into a bunch of mush and stuff as it goes throughout your

body, but you're still enjoying it. You're full. You're satisfied. You're happy. You poop it out, and you're like, you know, I still want more dog treat. But then at one point, one day, you step in that dog turd, and the glass breaks, and you understand that something has changed about this dog treat. It is no longer a dog

treat. It is the dog turd that became of Lost Ark when you got to the end of the game. And that is what pissed me off so much. It started out, it was so satisfying. We talked about it leading up to it in the Twig episodes. Is this going to be the death of MMOs or

is it going to keep the genre going? Well, we appreciate this, and the game was incredible. It was a lot of fun. It was great. I really enjoyed Lost Ark for a long time. But then you get to the end, and it's not like World of Warcraft, where you get together with a bunch of buddies, and you raid, and you get a gear drop, and that gear drop is awesome. No, you've got to shell out 16,000 gajillion billion million.

Picture as many exaggeration words here for money as you possibly can in every language and denomination around the world. Money, dollars, that's what you had to do to become successful at endgame. And it was like stepping in a dog turd. It was like this started out as a tasty treat. And it became, I got to clean this up, get it off me, and I got to make sure I never step in that again. It's one of the strangest games to start out so good and then you get like halfway through the game and it just dips a little and you're like but I got all this end game content to get to and then you get there and you realize it's pay to win or wait and then there's just nothing to do

and it was like this game went so viral so fast. I don't know if you guys remember when the pre-orders first opened up for beta, we all got the pre-orders to jump in right away. And they started, it was kind of like Valheim, where they were releasing articles every day where it was 1 million people had pre-ordered. Oh, yeah. And then the next day it was 3 million. And the next day it was 8 million or whatever.

Everybody we knew was playing Lost Ark. All of us maxed out at least one character. And then all of us just kind of dropped it as soon as we got to the end game because there was just nothing left to do. Such a disappointment. Yeah, that's a good pick, Michael. Thank you. Yeah. All right, let's move on to the next award here.

This one is the most fun weapon category michael how about we go to you first for this one what'd you have here i think i i don't know if paul's gonna think of this one or not but i i just think of like what was the most fun i had with a weapon like that was unique and new and i i ironically and oh here comes a cringe from josh here comes a huge cringe because i think it was the rentier gauntlet from evil west i had a lot of fun with that thing that's not a cringe i thought the gauntlet was a blast honestly i just had so much fun with it it was new yeah it was new you could you could use it as crowd control pulling things pushing away slamming people in the ground all kinds of fun stuff it was just new and exciting and throughout the whole

entire bit of the game it evolved just enough to keep it fresh and interesting with the different abilities you got with it i had a lot of fun with that thing and i think it was the best weapon that i used this year for new weapons that's a good pick i actually did consider that one i mean as much as i said that i thought the game was you know just kind of average the gauntlet was great the ability to like electrically grab enemies and yoink them to you or teleport to them was so much fun man more games need that quick like movement around the battlefield it just adds a lot so what about you paul yeah for me for most fun weapon uh does the trombone from trombone champ count no because it's not a i mean i've heard some people play it it's deadly

i love trombone champ so much i i just played it again like three days ago such a fun game i i just need an excuse to mention it at some point because it's not going to win any other award here but i did love it uh are are we allowed to count the Gatlians from High on Life? Yes, yes, you can, because that's my pick too. I'm going to give it to Knifey. Oh man, I freaking love Knifey. So we should say here at the front that we are going to deep dive High on Life.

We have already started playing it, or at least me and Josh have. So we probably shouldn't say too, too much. But when you have, what's the word? When you're like, you have consciousness. When your weapon is actually alive and talking to you. Sentient, thank you. When your weapons are sentient and talking to you

and giving you commentary on what you're doing, it's a great recipe. And even though High on Life is only going to be so fun for so long, when you pick up Knifey for the first time and he just wants to murder anyone and everyone. He even tries to convince you to stab yourself. He's like, come on, just stick me right in your belly. You know you want to do it. And he he is wild and i love knifey i cracked up at knifey so much uh i wish

there was more knifey uh honestly that's the only caveat i'll say it's funny that you picked knifey i actually went with kenny which is your main pistol that you start the game with um you know i just for me ken Kenny is like the narrator of this game and there are other weapons and I have acquired, you know, some of them, but I, I find myself always going back to Kenny because I just appreciate like the humor and the quips that he throws out. I don't know if it's just that I got comfortable with him, like from the beginning of the game, you know of the game. I love it. So for me, I mean, I don't have all the weapons,

so maybe there's some even better ones. But Knifey takes the cake, but Knifey takes a backseat fairly quick. And that's the only shame. It's short-lived. I wish I could use Knifey all the time. And if I could, he would be my pick. But Kenny is always there for me, so I'm going with Kenny. I forgot this game was out

already playing it yeah i've been so lost in a plague tale right now oh nice how many times josh have you heard kenny say no we're not going to shoot this guy oh i try to shoot everybody i mean literally everybody i just want to hear him and then what's funny is occasionally you can shoot somebody yeah and then and then i'm like oh i got to hear them. And then what's funny is occasionally you can shoot somebody and then I'm like, oh, I got to kill that guy. And then Kenny has some funny comment about like, yeah, yeah, okay, that guy was a jerk. I let you kill him. Yeah. Just all the funny comments

about, yeah, wiping out all the ants in the beginning or whatever. It's always great. Yeah. We'll talk plenty more about that in 2023. All right. On to our next category here. Worst money On to our next category here. Worst money grab. I know my answer.

I think there's one answer that's kind of obvious, at least in my opinion. I chose Diablo Immortal. I chose it as well. I never played it, so I didn't pick that one, to be honest.

I do think it's an insane money grab, especially with the release of Diablo 4 coming up. I picked Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. That was my second choice. That's not to say that I don't think that it has redeeming qualities. I'm not saying that Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is a terrible game. My biggest issue, and we did a deep dive on this, my biggest issue with Tiny Tina's Wonderlands is that I felt like it was extremely lazy in the development of the game. I thought, I love the humor,

but all Borderlands have humor. I did appreciate the overworld nature, but that doesn't really add a ton to the game. And when I started seeing that they're re, you know, all they did was change the name of some weapons and they reused the exact same assets. was change the name of some weapons and they reuse this exact same assets. So we've got these safes and loot boxes and stuff from borderlands to in a

fantasy setting game that tiny Tina's is supposed to be. I got, I got kind of just, it irked me a little bit. And I did say this in the deep dive that this is just a straight money grab game. And that's the biggest problem I have with it. It doesn't mean that it's not fun.

It doesn't mean that you can't have a good time with it. But it is the most obvious money grab to me. Yeah, I was really close to picking Tiny Tina's. But I didn't want to give it too many awards here because I give it another award later on. Before we move off of Tiny Tina's, did we pay $60 for that game? Was it $50 or $40? It might have been $40. I can't remember what the release price was, but we paid release price premium for it.

Yeah, we paid for it for sure. If we dropped a collective $180 on Tiny Tina's, oh my goodness, that's a lot of money. We dropped a collective $180 on the quarry, so that's probably even worse. We sure did. Because it didn't make us laugh much. No, see, Diablo Immortal, is it best money grab or worst money grab? Because I think it fits both. Realistically, Diablo Immortal just paid for all the Blizzard production for all their games in the future

because they've made billions off of it. I think it has literally made a billion dollars. It's made so much money. Tiny Teen is at 60 bucks, by the way. Sorry to interrupt you, Michael, but it was $60 much money yeah tiny teen is 60 bucks by the way sorry to interrupt you michael but it was 60 dollars yeah sheesh not worth it no yeah yeah diablo immortal i just think it is a good game and i enjoyed playing it and i love the diablo series but when you're reading stories about them making a billion dollars and people dropping $100,000 on loot and now they can't match with anybody because their gear is too good, that's where you start getting into, oh, you've literally broken this game because you're so focused on the money grab aspect of it. I wanted to give it to Diablo, even though Diablo 4 were all incredibly hyped.

By the way, I was shocked that Diablo 4 is not one of the nominees for the Game Awards for most anticipated game for next year. Yeah, and then they had Resident Evil 4, which is a remake on the list. Yeah, I noticed that too. There was some wonky choices for that. Maybe some Blizzard bias as a company.

Maybe that came into play too, who knows? All right, moving on to our next award here. I love this award. This is the only one that does not have to come out in 2022. What is the best game that you played in 2022, regardless of release year? And keep in mind, we did a lot of really good deep dive games. I looked at our leaderboard. Five out of the top six on our

leaderboard are games we covered this year so we covered stuff like god of war 2018 the pc port ragnarok cyberpunk disco elysium like we did some bangers this year what do you guys have this sucks like i i have a choice here but it sucks and i hate i hate this award because like it's hard. We played, like you just said, we played some really great games. Perhaps the best RPG I've ever played in my life came out this year. We played this year with Disco Elysium. And it's funny because I'm actually going back, I think a week ago, I said that God of War 2018 might be the best game I've ever played.

I think there was a little bit of recency biased in there because I'm actually changing my answer. I think it was Cyberpunk 2077. I think it's my favorite game I've ever played. And I think, well, I know I played it this year. It was so ambitious. It was so insanely just deep. There was so much to it. I love open world. I love games with great graphics, games with great story, games with great combat. It had all those. It had some sneaky sneak. I didn't have to sneak too much, but I am enamored

by that game. I cannot wait to play Phantom Liberty. I can't flipping wait to play Phantom Liberty because I want more cyberpunk. I want to go back and play the game through all over again because there's a character that I didn't even get to meet. I don't even know how it happened.

You guys told me that. Oh, River. River Ward. No, I played with River Ward. It was the other guy. I went through all of River's story. Okay. Who was it?

Kenny? Walter? Are those people? I don't think so. I'm going to have to come back to this one, but there's somebody that is a slap in the face who should have played against him or played with him, and I didn't. But anyways, loved that game. That's my choice. I like it. Good pick. What about you, Josh?

I struggled with this category because there were two games that it was like trying to pick between my children on and I kept waffling and I kept waffling. And since Michael picked one of them, just for that sake and that sake alone, I'm going with the other one. Because Cyberpunk 2077 is absolutely incredible. Yes, it released and it was buggy. That game, let go of the past. That's not easy for me to say, especially, but let go of the past. Don't hate Cyberpunk 2077 anymore because, like Michael said, it might be one of the best games that he and I have ever played. But since he picked that one, I'm going with a game that I was very convinced I was not going to like. This game was not my style of game. I had heard everybody

raving about this game. I thought, this game's just not for me. I'm going to be one of the few people that says that they hate this game. And that game's Disco Elysium. Oh, I thought you were going to say this. I 100% thought that I was not going to enjoy Disco Elysium. Going into it, I kind of went, I'm going to be that guy. I hate it. And it's so stinking good that it caught me by surprise. And when I think about it, that was the first game that came to mind.

And I did struggle with Cyberpunk because that was like the second one. I went, oh, what about that? And I kind of went, no, like it's gotta be Disco Elysium. And I know it came out a few years ago, but we played it this year and that game just sticks with you. It is, I've said it before,

it is a masterpiece of a game. And if you are like me and you tend to get bored with like calm games and things like that, or you think there's no combat, any of that stuff, I'm telling you, I thought the exact same thing,

man, but give this game a try because it absolutely blew me away. Yeah. What a fantastic game. And I'm just so sad with all the drama with zom and all the people who were let go and all the lawsuits being filed we never covered it in our twig episodes but it really casts a big shadow over the future of like the disco franchise but are there two characters that are more funny to put together than kim kitsuragi and oh my goodness harry dubois harry dubois thank you yeah it's like it's like a buddy

cop comedy but even more on steroids i don't even know what to say it's it's fantastic yeah i think it's crazy too how you get to know so much about the world without being an open world game where you see such a small bit of the world but you understand so much about the culture the people the geography, just from just reading a bunch of like 12 areas in the entire game. Right. You know what I mean? Like if that,

but you're right. I, I can, I can close my eyes and picture Revachal, you know, instantly. It's just, yeah.

What about you, Paul? What's, uh, what's yours? This was an easy one for me. It's my number one game of all time. It's Red Dead Redemption 2.

We did a deep dive early this year. That had to be the winner for me. It's still my favorite. Arthur Morgan is probably my all-time favorite protagonist. The story that Arthur goes through, I find to be absolutely enthralling. The fact that he gets

tuberculosis, and you get to see how that affects him and his morality and his choices in life. And having played Red Dead Redemption before, it is just the best prequel I've ever experienced, whether it's movies, games, or whatever. Having this brand new character and seeing how they so fully shaped John Marston, the protagonist of the first one. It's loaded with great villains. Both Dutch and Micah are incredible villains. And of course, you don't even realize Dutch is a villain in the beginning. I had to give it to Red Dead.

It's just so perfectly made. The tiniest details are all accounted for in Red Dead. You look at the issues with detail in things like Callisto Protocol, where you don't get reflections and mirrors. Can you imagine something like that in Red Dead? I mean, Red Dead has the size of horse anatomy changing depending on the temperature outside. That's the level of detail in the game. I love it. There are very, very few games that are like Red Dead Redemption 2. From a quality level, from a story level, from just an overall level. The whole package.

It's number one on our leaderboard for a reason. I have a game or two that I rank higher than that, but that's not taking anything from Red Dead because I can easily look at that and say, it's an absolute perfect game. You know what I mean? Maybe there's certain flavors that aren't for everybody, but that's not the game's fault at that point. It is a perfect video game. Yeah. And Disco is a perfect video game. God of War. It's a very short list. Yeah. Cyberpunk, I absolutely love, and it's probably in my top three of all time. I don't think you could call that a perfect game, but I think you could call it an absolutely thrilling story. And it has so much momentum, especially as you get toward the end. All right, let's go

on to our next award here most promising game reveal so over the course of this year we've had a lot of announcements we've had a lot of trailers a lot of games to look forward for what do you think is the most promising promising to us or promising to like the rest of the world however you want to struggle with this one a little bit because my opinion kept changing yeah well i can go quick if you guys aren't sure go ahead you throw it out there i got two and i'll just say which one i want to say later we spent a lot of time already talking about it but diablo 4 the cinematic trailer my goodness it's one of the best cinematic trailers i've ever seen go watch it if you haven't

it's three minutes it's so good at setting the mood and the atmosphere and the themes of Diablo. That's the one that I think got me most hyped for a game coming out next year. It's getting stupid good preview like from people, especially lately. Stupid good. Like you can feel the excitement in these reviewers and these people that got to play it. I can't wait. And you don't see that a whole lot. They usually try to temper that, and they kind of go like,

hey, I'm excited, but let's wait and see kind of thing. Like, these people are like, need more Diablo 4. Yeah, I think that Diablo 4 is probably, like, the most promising game overall. For me, it's Dune Awakening, just because I really want it to be so good. And I want to play it so bad. Open world Dune.

Give it to me. Give me all the spice. Oh, Michael, I freaking love you, man. I couldn't pick it. I couldn't pick Dune Awakening because I literally, if you go into my internet history, I rewatched both trailers about an hour and a half ago on Dune Awakenings. I just want to see gameplay. But that game has me so hyped. An open world survival MMO.

Like, oh my goodness, man. This is tough for me because it's like most promising reveal. Does Starfield count? Sure. Because it's like, I don't know when they very first revealed Starfield. I still have extremely high hopes for that game other than fallout 76 bethesda has not made a game that i have not really enjoyed you know what i mean like do i think starfield is going to be the next red

dead redemption 2 or god of war no i don't have that expectation i mean don't get me wrong i would love it if it was i don't have that expectation for it but, don't get me wrong. I would love it if it was, but I don't have that expectation for it. But what I do have is the expectation that I'm going to have a massive amount of fun and enjoyment out of a game that I can probably play for 80 to 100 hours and just really just enjoy playing over and over again. Is it going to be groundbreaking? Of course not. It's Bethesda. It's going to be the same for me. But I love outer space and I love spaceships. You know what I mean? So for me, I'm going with Starfield. There are a lot of other games I could mention in this, but I have to pick one.

So yeah, I was really excited about Starfield. I've tempered a little bit, but not enough. By the way, while you were talking about that, I did just sign up for the beta for Dune Awakening because I love Dune. Oh, nice. Nice. We can continue now. I just wanted to for the beta for Dune Awakening. Oh, nice. Nice. We can continue now. I just wanted to mention that.

Efficient use of time. Right. All right. So on to the next award here. Michael, I'm going to let you explain this one. This is the Smoke Show Award. And you were always a big fan of this one here. You want to tell the people why?

How do I explain this? Just know this is a family friendly here podcast that we have a smoke show is a person that would be considered physically appealing to other people so a smoke show award basically is i'll just give you my winner and you'll understand what we're talking about my winner for the smoke show award is every single character from Lost Ark. That was the origin of where I said every character in this game is an absolute smoke show. Because everyone's running around. All the women are running around in high heels and mini skirts.

All the guys are freaking jacked. They all look like Hugh Jackman at the peak of physical prowess. They're like Greek statues running around. Chisreek statues running around yeah oh that's so funny i did write down as the winner every character in lost ark just to harken back to the original joke but yeah what what'd you have for this one josh oh that's funny we actually i think we did this in our mid-year awards isn't that isn't that where this like the birth of the smoke show award was so might have been yeah i mean it's been a long time since then a lot of games have come out since then i think we played didn't we play um uh oh my goodness total brain fart who's the what's the near oh my goodness man my brain just shut down there. I don't know why. Maybe it was concentrating

on something else. The self-destruct, Josh, is what you're thinking of. So I kind of went, well, maybe is it 2B? And then I went, no, hang on. And then I went back to Google Images. I checked and I said, Beatrice was who I said before. Yeah, it's still Beatrice from Lost Ark. Ah, nice. There you go. That's a change at all.

I also want to give a shout out to Caitlin from The Quarry, who was portrayed by Brenda Song. Yes. And I think that was my winner for the mid-year award. So, yeah. Just a silly little award that we thought was funny to throw in here in the middle all right on to the next award oh i love this one too man we saved some of my favorite ones for the last so we have covered so many news stories this year and there's a lot that we don't even cover on the show and we still have our giant document that has

all of them in there i thought it was so fun to browse back through all of these, because right now we are going to give out our favorite gaming news story of the year. Maybe it's serious. Maybe it's what you found funniest. In 2022, what was your favorite gaming news story? Can we count when we announced that we were getting a new host named Michael on this show? I don't think that got picked up by the news outlets. Ah, boo.

All right, I'll just go first real fast because this actually was the news story like a week or two before I came on the show. And it was Bowser, the Nintendo hacker. I was... When I was driving my car, I almost had to pull over. I was laughing so hard that...

What was his name? It was like gary bowser gary bowser gary bowser and i'm like that can't be any more perfect and i just it stuck with me to this day that gary bowser was arrested he was hacking nintendo servers or something like that right the nintendo switch he was hacking the switch is what that's right and he sold them selling like chips that would like crack the switches and he could run other stuff on them. Wow. Yeah, that guy.

Great starter. What about you, Josh? So that one was the first one that came to mind. But I was like, as much as I love that one, I don't know that it was my favorite. And so this is the reason that I was scrolling through all our news stories. And then I came across one that literally made me laugh out loud. Because we did talk about this one. And it's the story where EA has a town hall meeting and says that

battlefield 2042 bugs were on par with previous titles. And it's only underperforming because of COVID and halo infinites release. Oh, that's right. And I literally looked at this thing in hindsight and I just went, oh my goodness. Like they are so blind to the issues in this game no awareness this isn't a pr release this is ea's town hall this is like them talking amongst themselves yeah you know what i mean and saying guys it's because of covet and halo infinite otherwise battlefield 2042 would be a blockbuster

success and you know there's a room full of people just nodding their heads and going, yeah. And then there's the one dude in the corner that's actually a gamer that's just going, this is garbage, but I can't say anything because I'll get fired. He's raising his hand going, the specialists, the AI bots,

the hit registry. The lack of scoreboard, no in-game voice over IP. Yeah, exactly. How about the fact that when you shoot people, you're not actually shooting them? Yeah. What a disastrous release. Oh, man. So that one made me laugh so much that I had to pick it as my favorite gaming news story.

Oh, very nice. I chose one funny, one serious. For the funny side, the two police officers who got fired for playing pokemon go oh that's right when they were supposed to report to the scene of a robbery and instead they went to go chase a snorlax to go catch and are recorded this entire time and so of course they got fired because they got caught so uh yeah cams or whatever yeah it's insane yeah that one's wild and then the other one for me was just the series of unreal engine 5 tech demos so the train yard when that train yard vr demo came out now i know that one's kind of cheating because they rendered it as a video and it's not controlled in real time but when you launch that train yard and it just looks like real life and you're

thinking oh are they gonna walk into an upstairs office and then start the tech demo? And then you realize, oh, this is actually video game. It's indistinguishable from life. Now, it's going to be a few years before we can use it that way. I get it. But even the Matrix tech demo showing Unreal Engine 5, it really has me excited for the future of gaming. So those were my two favorites. I did have a runner-up that I'll mention super fast.

And it's funny because there was a board or something like that with the maker of Gotham Knights. And he came out and he said, no, no, there's no Joker in this game. And Batman really is dead. That's confirmed. To be fair, he was dead. He was like, come on, man.

Well, the whole game's filled with resurrection pits. Like, they're literally talking about it left and right. Like, he just straight up lied. He's a Lazarus pit. He's straight up lying. Why aren't you using a Lazarus pit? Yeah, he is dead, dead, comma. And this game is chock full of lazarus pits that bring people back from the

dead so it's not exactly a surprise uh what a funny story all right we got two last awards here uh this one i i thought was kind of funny the thoroughly mediocre game of the year award so this game called the man yeah the award. It left no real impression. It's not great. It's not bad. It's not even necessarily good. It's just kind of there.

This was the easiest choice out of all of them for me. I'm so worried you're going to say Evil West. I am 100 percent saying Evil West. That is such a crime. It's not bad.

I'm not saying it's a bad game. I'm not saying it's a great game. You know, it's it bad i'm not saying it's a bad game i'm cutting and i'm not saying it's a great game you know it's it is 100 50 oh no i just disagree yeah that's cool all right what'd you have for this one michael i my runner up is the quarry just because it was so okay uh but really it's tiny teen is wonderland it was it was meh it was it was fun it was funny it wasn't bad but like overall it just kind of was it was a video game really mediocre it was a video game guys i didn't hate it but it was a game yeah it was a game and i played it yeah my my winner for this, I kind of struggled between Rainbow Six Extraction and Multiverses.

I'm going to give it to Multiverses, and that one might land me in some hot water. I know some people really love it. I have played it. It's not as good as Smash Brothers, and some of the characters are just really weird. I don't want to run around fighting a shaggy. You know what I mean? The character choices

are kind of odd. I didn't find it to be anything to write home about. To me, it was just perfectly meh. It's there. I wasn't mad about it. It's free, but I've never played it since the first time I tried it out. So for me, it's just kind of there fully mediocre. Do you mean

multiverses as in the best fighting game of the year multiverses yeah i know right how dare you interesting pick yeah instead of rewarding something that's clever and innovative like sifu you know we're going to give it some multiverses but which is what do you do it which is just a reskin of smash bros but with warner brothers characters yeah i got. Yeah, very innovative. All right. And it's time for the highlight of this red carpet event. We've got what I think is the most important award here. Personal favorite game of the year.

Maybe it's like one of those flawed gems that you just really love and you know you're kind of crazy and you're out there, but it was your favorite game. Whatever it might be. What do you guys have for this one? and you're out there, but it was your favorite game, whatever it might be, what do you guys have for this one? Let's start with you, Michael. I just felt like I needed some music to just go with the obvious choice,

which is just God of War Ragnarok. It was fantastic. I loved it. Don't get me wrong. I said that the best game of the year was... I can't think of the name of the game that we've been talking about the whole time. Elden Ring. There it is.

Wow. I didn't get the words. Words were hard. Dang it. Oh, man. I just did it trying to say words are hard. There might be a couple of those in this episode. Oh, man.

Anyways, Skyward Ragnarok, my personal favorite game of the year. And it was really hard. It was hard. I played a lot of good games that came out this year. Again, these are games that only came out in 2022. Otherwise, this game would not have won for the games that we played this year. But I absolutely loved it. It had a whole bunch of time.

I still almost 100% of it. I feel like 98.9%. I've got a couple things left to do. I just kind of wore myself out playing that and God of War 2018 within three weeks. The whole both of them. But I just thought it was fantastic. It's my favorite game of the year that we played

and from this year. And that's what I got. Same pick for you josh or no no i i want to see if i have permission to pick this one because technically it released in 2022 but that's the god of war 2018 pc release does that qualify or is that just kind of being a little cheesy kind of cheating let's how about you how about you pick that and another one okay there you go everybody wins scenario oh yeah there we go um so i will say god of war 2018 for the pc because it was the best pc port that i've ever seen in my life and i got to take my time with it this time around i got to do everything that i wanted to do in that game so that's why i picked that one as

far as my favorite game my personal favorite game and then my other one is it's going to be Elden Ring. I mean, honestly, I loaded up Elden Ring the other day. I'm a big fan of the Dark Souls games. You guys know I was super hyped for it. As much as I loved Ragnarok, if I had to look back and say, what game did I super duper look forward to getting home from work and sitting down and just playing and exploring. We touched on it earlier. Michael said, he kind of hinted at it. When you see a new monster and you run up to that monster, that's discovery. That thing's going to wreck you.

And how is it going to wreck you? You know what I mean? The golden knight on the horse. When you first walk out of that first area and you go running up to that guy. That sense of wonder and discovery, even though it means your own death, there's nobody else that does it like that. And I love that. So for me, my actual personal favorite game of the year is Elden Ring as well. Let me go ride this horse over this swamp. And then all of a sudden, a dragon pops out and then you get that oh crap moment crawfish you know what i mean like what the heck the first time i'm like oh i can

take down a bear look at that bear thing over there and the bear's like the hardest monster in the game yes no you cannot take down that bear exactly right now oh nice pick uh for me if the god of war 2018 pc port would count, I would pick that as well. For me, I know Josh is going to call me crazy, but for me, it was Weird West. I kind of figured you would actually take Weird West. It's not for everyone. It's not for everyone, but I understand your pick. Even though I call you crazy, I'm not going to call you crazy. I don't think you're crazy. Let's say that. I'll call you crazy, but I don't think you're crazy because I get it.

Weird West was close for me too. I thought about it because I really did. If I were to go back and think right now, what game do I want to pick up that came out this year again and replay? It's probably Weird West. But I also just played Ragnarok, so I don't want to go back and play it again right now. But Weird West was great. Yeah. There's no doubt Ragnarok is a better game. I'm not trying to say Weird West is better, but for my personal taste, Weird West was almost tailor-made for what I'm looking for. It was an emotionally gripping story. You play over the course of these five characters where there's a running theme throughout all of them. I loved how each character kind of went through their own moral test of what they were going to do over the course of their stories.

And I found the combat to be an absolute blast. I thought the stealth worked. I thought the action worked. I loved how each character had a different weapon set. So whether you were like the gunslinger as jane or using the cleaver as the pig man or if you used your bow for silent uh combat or you know whatever whichever character you were playing as weird west for me was uh for me a plus storytelling a plus gameplay and highly replayable because you can make different choices and that's one of my absolute must-haves i need to be able to make choices and see how it affects the game.

And that's something that you don't really get from Elden Ring or Ragnarok, but Weird West had it in spades. So for me personally, Weird West is the winner. Man, we had a lot of diversity in this episode. I kind of figured that a lot of our winners would be very similar. And we all three picked different games for some of the biggest categories which is pretty cool and also oh man gran turismo 7 didn't win any awards what a shame what a shame i i made a master list of like every game we played this year we just

played so many games yeah so it was a very wide pool to select so yeah it's nice to see a little bit of you know different choices here amongst all the awards i knew what i was getting myself into when or i thought i knew what i was getting myself into when i started working on this show and man i can't wait for next year yeah next year i really i'm i've got a lot of hopes on 2023 gollum game of the year. No. Anyone want to call it now? No, no, no. I will. I will say Baldur's gate three is like very quickly climbing my list.

I watched a 25 minute video of that. And if you ever wanted dungeons and dragons to be a video game, like the highest quality video game, you could be, that is going to be Baldur's gate three. Um, and I'm getting really hyped on atomic heart by the way i'm trying not to oh yeah that comes out in february and i know that

there was some hesitation but a lot of the people that are getting more play time with that game are saying that the hesitation's going away like that this game seems really legit at the same time so we'll see there's so many games man please don't let these all suck. Please don't let them be disappointing. I don't know that I can take it, man. We only need one Clash of Clans protocol. We didn't even actually need that. Final note that I have real fast. You guys will be very happy to hear.

I talk about it on the show sometimes. My Steam Deck buddy, Steven, who sometimes comes over and just plays Steam Deck games with me. Castle Crashers. Castle Crashers. We landed on our next game and it is divinity original sin 2 oh oh nice i'm so diving in yeah i haven't been baby you got plenty

of content you guys are gonna be playing that one for a while yeah so so for those of you out there who aren't aware we always cap each year with a review and then we are gonna be having a brand new episode on thursday where we cover this week in gaming our twig episode and then we are going to be having a brand new episode on Thursday where we cover This Week in Gaming, our Twig episode. And then we're going to have two weeks where we're going to re-release some of our favorite episodes from this year, but we will record some new intros. So make sure to check those out. And then when we have our very first episode back in January, we will be covering our most anticipated games for 2023. That's going to be so fun.

Yeah. We're going to be able to talk about all those things like atomic heart, star field, Hogwarts, legacy, Diablo four, whatever we want to talk about the dead space remake, plenty to cover.

That's an always a fun episode. And it's always fun to go back and listen to that. And then two thirds of those games came out to be dog turds. And it's always interesting to go back and listen to them don't you jinx me paul yeah i know right all right well that wraps up this episode here as a reminder please come check out our patreon page at multiplayer squad.com if you want to support the show and get bonus episodes you can follow us on socials everywhere at multiplayer pod we'd love for you to come toss us a follow and share

some of our posts there and we have a free discord check out the link in the episode description we'd love to have you in there super awesome community and i think that wraps up our last hour-long show of the year so make sure to come back on thursday for this week in gaming and i think that's all we have here for today so thanks again to everyone out there for listening hope you all had a great 2022 and we'll see you on thursday happy gaming yes everyone i know that the holidays are a crazy time of year be safe wherever you are and as always cheers bte individuals cheers to you bye everybody bye Bye, everybody. Bye.