Video Gamers Podcast - [Force a Friend] Anyone Got a Light? - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: November 6, 2023

Video games hosts Ryan, Paul and Josh have been HIJACKED and it’s time for a legendary gaming pick from one of our listeners! Which video game will it be and which video game host will be chosen as the victim? It’s a fantastic gaming episode you don’t want to miss! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate and Kiitaclyzm 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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And if you're like me and think a TFSA stands for Total Fund Savings Adventure, maybe reach out to TD Direct Investing. Hello, gaming fans worldwide. Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. We cover all kinds of stuff related to gaming, like deep dives on our favorite titles, recent gaming news, even bonus round shenanigans where we determine things like what gaming character

would be best to have as a roommate. Today is a very special episode. It is our first Hijack a Host episode. We are so excited to talk about what that means. But before we get started, we need some introductions. I am your host, Paul. And joining me are my two fellow gamers in crime. First up, he got to pick our last deep dive game, which was The Witness.

Josh, how are you doing? How are you feeling today? I am excellent, man. How are you doing, Paul? I'm doing? I am excellent, man. How are you doing, Paul? I'm doing good. Thank you for asking. I'm excited. That's the number one word I would say. Hi, Jackahost. We haven't done one of these yet. This is going to be so much fun, man. I mean, we've been talking about this for a little while. We've been picking games for each other and stuff like that. But one of the awesome perks, if you support

the show over at MultiplayerSquad.com, you can sign up for the legendary tier. If you do that, you get to hijack one of us. Somebody has done that. I'm excited, man. This is going to be a phenomenal episode and I hope people really enjoy it. And then I kind of hope that people see how much fun this can be and then say, Hey, I want to do that too. Money, please. Is this what you're trying to get out there? I was trying to be more tactful than that, Paul, but you know, all right. And then joining Josh and me, I think he's going to have more fun with this episode than our, our last Monday episode, since Ryan didn't play the witness, I think he's going to have more fun with this episode than our last Monday episode. Since Ryan didn't play The Witness, I think he kind of felt like he was on the bench a little bit. Ryan, are you feeling a little more excited about this one? Put me in, coach. I'm ready to play.

I can be part of the show. I just felt so bad. I was like, I don't know how Ryan's going to talk about The Witness when he never played it. But you handled it fantastically, Ryan. What a pro. All right. So, guys, a little bit of housekeeping here. Josh was just talking a little bit about Legendary support on Patreon. Whenever anyone signs up on any tier, we always owe them a shout out. We have a very special one because they signed up under legendary under our new hijack a host perk.

And we owe a very huge thank you to Nate, also known as underscore apostles. Thank you so much, Nate, for the legendary support. Yeah, Nate. Nate. Nate the great. Insert applause here. All right. support yeah nate nate the great uh insert applause here all right uh not only that nate also sent us a little bit of a care not not a little bit a lot of bit of a care package a mega care package yes a 27 pound package loot box baby it was the mother of all loot boxes um

i mean dude we were all just very taken aback. Thank you, Nate, for that. I mean, we've had some people in the past send us some stuff. I don't know about you guys, but I love getting free stuff. But honestly, more than that, it's really cool to us to see people just love the show, love the podcast, click with us. You know what I mean? Like we've always approached this as we are friends talking games with you, who is also our friend. Um, and so it really just resonates with all of us when we see that happen. And we know that somebody loves the show and they love talking video games. And it like hey i think you guys would like this i want

to send you something like it really just blows our minds so thank you uh to nate and to everybody else that's done that as well now normally when we do our force a friend episodes there's always a little bit of unknown because we don't know what game is going to get picked and who's going to be selected in this case we do already all know all know Nate had messaged you, Josh, and you went back and forth with him a little bit. Why don't you tell us today, what game are we playing? Who's playing it? How did this all go down? I was just chatting with Nate. Nate came in legendary, came in hot, was just chatting with us, which is awesome. We were just having a conversation back and forth. Um, it was really cool because like he was saying that he's actually developing a Roblox game,

which I thought was cool. My kids play Roblox. So I'm like somewhat familiar with it. Um, you know, and he was saying that something that he's been working on, um, it's a game called apostles, I guess, which would also relate to the, his handle on discord, which is underscore apostles on there. Um, and I, I jumped in just to like, he was like, do you want to check it out? And I was like, absolutely, man. It's really neat. It's kind of based on this premise of like time traveling back to like biblical times. Um, and there's like these portals that you can go to, to kind of see like the garden of Eden and Moses splitting the red sea and stuff like that. So you can tell he's been putting a ton of effort into this. He's come out and said, hey, I've got a long way to go. It's not ready, but I got a kind of a sneak peek at like a Roblox development process, which I thought was like super cool. So good job on that, Nate. Love the subject matter

personally as well. So, you know, I can't wait to see what this is when it's all said and done. But during that conversation, Nate kind of went, I picked Torchlight 2 for you. And I went, what? Oh, yeah. All right, man. And then so kind of spilled the beans a little bit. So this is not a shocker as far as like a reveal or a surprise

that I got picked to play this game. So yes, I do know what game has been picked and I do know that it has been me. Yes. So this puts things on pause a little bit for me because Josh, you forced me to play the witness. So at some point I'll be picking a game and forcing one of you guys to play. But since Nate went legendary, that obviously takes priority. So this will be, you know, that round right here here so josh you get to play torchlight too i was kind of curious to know from you guys have you ever played a torchlight game what do you know about this series have you played have you heard of it where where are you at

ryan you're the you're the diablo lover is this a is this a series that you're familiar with or you know about key key word is diablo diablo okay not torchlight but no i i understand yeah it's it's uh kind of uh diablo light i guess you would say um but i i have not uh been too familiar with it i've looked into it um and seen kind of what it's about so i'm excited to kind of dive into this and, and, uh, get into it with you guys. Are you in the same boat, Josh? Have you ever played torchlight? Cause I have not. So funny enough, I, I went, man, I feel like I've played torchlight. I, I talked about this on our Diablo episode where I went through a phase where I wanted more of like all of that.

Right. And so I played a game called path of Titans. I tried the initial torchlight. Um, and so then I went into my steam library and I was like, I'm pretty sure I've played this, but am I, you know, am I confusing it with anything? Um, I did play torchlight. I played it for four hours. Um, and so I, you know, I have a little bit of time in it. I'll be honest, I don't remember much about it other than what Ryan said is I've always just considered it a clone of Diablo. My initial thought is I don't think it's on the level of Diablo or it would be more famous,

but I'm kind of going into this blind because I know absolutely nothing about Torchlight 2 and my memories of Torchlight are pretty non-existent. It's almost like my memory of The Witness was very minimal. It's like, I know I played it, something about wires and things lighten up. So you're kind of in that boat a little bit here, which is kind of funny. And then, Josh, I think Nate also gave us a little bit of a write-up about why he chose Torchlight 2.

Do you want to go ahead and let us know? Yeah, and that's one of the things that we do is when I pick the witness for Paul, I always say, hey, this is why I'm picking this game. This is why I'm picking you. Ryan picked Metal Gear Solid V for me and said, you've never played this. We want you to experience it and see what you think and stuff like that. So we do ask people to say, hey, why did you pick this and why did you pick Um, and so Nate did send in this write-up. I'm just going to read it. Um, and it says, I picked this game because it's a better version of my earliest memory of starting to get, starting to get into PC gaming, which was torchlight one. I enjoyed the first game because

it was a great game. And I believe it was one of the few games that would run great on my first computer that I built back in 2007. Torchlight 1 only required Windows XP, an x86 compatible processor, 520 megabytes of memory, and a graphics card that supports 3D graphics with 64 megabytes of memory. It only took up 400 megabytes of hard drive space. So when Torchlight 2 came out later, I believe the only upgrades I did to my computer were the graphics card and memory. I was still able to run Torchlight 2 and it was very cheap.

I don't know how much it was back then, but right now it's only about $20. I figured if I liked the first installment in a series, I will usually get the games that follow. I figured if I liked the first installment in a series, I will usually get the games that follow. I have all three torchlights and I believe I have enjoyed them all in one fashion or another, but I also played Diablo and I enjoy playing those games as well. I picked this game for you to play because it was probably the first one that came to my mind. It's cheap and you can play it offline. I figured it would be a good review

to get the word out about it for budget gamers to get their Diablo fix if they've never bought a Diablo game. It would also be great if your power or internet goes out because it's offline and pretty much any laptop out there can run this game without issues. I picked you because your history with RPGs and Diablo

and I wanted to get your take and recommendations on this for other gamers. Nice. All right. When I read that, I had no idea there was a Torchlight 3 because I knew one and two. Is there really a Torchlight 3?

Yes, it came out in 2020. I had no idea. The funny thing is it's almost exactly the anniversary of when it came out. It released in October 2020. So that one somehow slipped past us. I have always been aware of Torchlight, but I don't know anyone who's played it, or at least no one's told me about it. So I was very curious to find out more about Torchlight.

I do have a description of the game here from wikipedia that i'll read for you guys the description from steam wasn't helpful it was like the follow-up to torchlight one it's like okay great thank you uh so here's what wikipedia had to say torchlight two is an action role-playing dungeon crawler and takes place in a fantasy world where the character can be any of four classes, each with different skills and abilities. The plot starts with the destruction of the town of Torchlight at the hands of the alchemist from the first game and has the character following the trail of destruction left in the alchemist's wake as he searches for a cure to his illness which has driven him insane.

Like the original Torchlight, Torchlight 2 features randomly generated dungeons for the player to explore and numerous types of monsters to fight for experience and loot. So really, Diablo clone. I mean, that's really all Wikipedia needs to say. You know, it's basically Diablo-like, $20 game. Josh, what's your immediate response knowing that you're going to play this one? I love the Diablo-type games, to be honest with you. So my initial reaction is this should be fun. I could see a lot worse games that somebody could pick for one of us to play. So in this regard, I think that I like this genre of game. I don't think it's going to be as good as Diablo

because it's not as popular as Diablo. So if it's better, shouldn't it be more well-known in that regard? Maybe, maybe not. Yeah, I mean, maybe it's underrated. I mean, it could be. I will say I love the fact that Nate picked a game that can run on laptops.

And not everybody out there has supercomputers and stuff like that. And so I actually really love the angle of saying, hey, here's a game that will be available to just about anybody out there. So I think that's interesting. But yeah, I'm definitely excited to jump into this. My initial thought is if it's a Diablo clone, how good is it going to be? Like, that's my curiosity at this point. So let's talk about that. I was curious to know what Diablo clones have you guys played, if not Torchlight, which

apparently none of us have. What Diablo clones have you played and did you enjoy them? Ryan, you've only played Diablo. Have you ever played like an offshoot of that i i don't think i've played anything else i'm a purist my man someone call that just main lines diablo but uh purist is you know give me that pure diablo that's all i want just the prime evils for ryan no one else that That's it. What about you, Josh? We've played a couple together. Stuff like Lost Ark is definitely a little bit of a Diablo clone. Minecraft Dungeons also comes to mind. Oh, yeah. I forgot about Minecraft Dungeons. Yeah. I mean,

it's a dungeon crawler action loot-based game. I have played path of Titans. I actually played a lot of that. Um, I don't remember a ton about it, but I do remember enjoying that a lot. I, as I said earlier, I don't remember my time with the initial torchlight. I had four hours in that game. Um, I, you know, I've played every Diablo out there. Um, but that's really it, to be honest with you. I can't think of any other games that come to mind, at least. So if I've played any other clones, they didn't stand out to me. Okay. Do you feel like any of those are high enough quality to compete with Diablo? Or do you still feel like Diablo is its own step above? Diablo is definitely at the pinnacle. I do

remember really enjoying Path of Titans. It had a mythological flair to it. It had good gameplay. I do remember playing that game for a while. But other than Diablo, that's really the only one that stands out in my mind. Okay. Yeah, for me,

when I think about hack and slash action RPGs, I've got Diablo 2 at the top of the list but just beneath that that's the 1a the 1b for me is balder's gate dark alliance 1 and 2 that was like a spin-off of balder's gate that was very hack and slash i had an absolute ball playing those back in the day which also had co-op to do the full campaigns doing it split screen on tv that for me was right up there and i guess i don't know if this really qualifies but like the marvel alliance games if you want to consider that sort of like a diablo clone being like a hack and slash i always thought those were really fun i love diablo but i'm not a diablo snob at all i'm very

open to the action rpg genre i'll try any of them and i feel like there's always at least some fun to be had even if it's not quite as good as diablo filth filth you are are we mudblades ryan no would you would you i mean you you can drive your ferrari to work you know or or you can drive your camry they both get you there but what do you want to take you know camry so the camry it gets it won't get damaged i don't have to worry about people what are you talking about you guys are crazy you're talking to the wrong guy i don't like attention being put on myself i would never drive a ferrari anywhere as if there were ever even an option i would ramp a ferrari dude i would like to launch it oh goodness all right well it's about that time guys we're gonna take a short break and we'll be

right back all right continuing our talk about torchlight 2 so i love that the wikipedia really brags about that you can play any of four classes. It did make me chuckle a little. I was like, okay, four classes is good. I don't know that I'd like brag that there's four. So here are the options. We have an engineer, which is a heavy melee fighter, the outlander, a nomad who uses ranged weapons and low magic. I don't really know what that means. And there's the berserker quick attacks and animal themed special powers and the ember mage, a highly trained spell casting class with elemental attacks. So Josh, I was kind of curious to hear, like hearing that, does any one of those classes

sound most interesting? What do you think you're going to pick? I think I've always said I love being in the fray. I want to be right in the thick of things. If the engineer is the heavy melee class, that sounds like the class for me. The only other class, I mean, most people that have been listening for a while know, usually I will go with rogue because I like a lot of mobility

and action of darting around and stuff like that. I don't want to be a mage. I don't want to be an archer. So it want to be like an archer um so it sounds to me like engineer is going to be the class for me on this one oh i thought you might say berserker with the quick attacks because of the whole rogue thing didn't you say pet like pet or something i thought you said animal themed special powers okay maybe berserker maybe berserker then maybe berserker yeah i thought that sounded like a pet class and i do not like pet classes ryan's got the funniest smile on his face i know i can

already tell you're not going to play this game right if you were forced do any of these classes sound interesting to you which one would you pick the engineer the outlander the berserker or the ember mage i'm just thinking per our uh conversation on Discord today about cats with Josh and the pet. I'm just thinking of him as a cat. I'm a tiger, boy. I ain't no rare. No, no, no. No tigers up in here.

You're a cat. You're a cat, man. You're a little feline. Oh, that's so funny. Oh, man. I'm, oh, jeez. That's a hard one to say. You'd go with the mage, wouldn't you?

Yeah. Aren't you like Mr. Sorcerer Sorceress in Diablo? Yeah, I'm more like mage style. I love, I just like seeing that number rise. What's my dps let me just just put as much you know as i can in that on that enemy or that area aoe attack whatever it is that's you know that's kind of my jam i i love to just come in and how much can i do this is my contribution i'm gonna just do nothing but damage so yeah this is sorcerer sorcerer sorceress whatever it is ember

mage ember mage mage me if you if you had a healer ryan could heal himself because i don't i was laughing earlier because i don't know if people realize this but ryan injured himself while we were podcasting right now uh i don't know what you did, Ryan, but you somehow cut your finger while sitting at your desk. Dude, how did you see that? I was going to let it go, but since you called me a cat man, I'm calling you out, Ryan. I am so blown away that you saw that. I have never injured myself podcasting before. Okay, so as an outdoorsman, I keep my knives very sharp in my household.

I was cleaning them earlier this evening, and I nicked my thumb cleaning the knife because I cleaned it with the blade side towards me instead of away. And I nicked my thumb, and I pulled off the Band-Aid thinking it was done bleeding, and it wasn't. Oh. bleeding and it wasn't and so yeah so it's like pouring blood out and i'm like i like picked a little uh napkin out of the trash can next to my desk i thought you injured yourself while i did not i did not injure myself no i'm not i i am uh you know a dingus but not that much of a dingus so so ryan is questionable day to day for our next podcast if people don't realize podcasting is a dangerous uh put me on the injury report man but no i'm good to go right now i can't type maybe but profusely bleeding but man i okay i don't know what what in the uh sequence there

would be for josh to have laser eyes but he's got laser eyes because i don't know how he saw that i'm impressed i did not notice at all so josh is a little more observant perception it's my i have like an 18 in perception guys my dnd nerds will get that so oh nice all right so moving on i have a couple of fun facts to read about torchlight 2 so i did a little bit of research that way we could you know share a little bit here one of the main criticisms of torchlight 1 is that it had no multiplayer at all and so that was added for the second game um josh i was going to say maybe me or ryan would join you although i later also read that the servers no longer work for multiplayer.

So maybe you can only play single player at this point. I don't know. We'll have to test it out. Also, I read that Runic Games, the developer, they wanted to develop an MMO after Torchlight 1. It went through a few iterations. Ultimately, it got scrapped and they just did traditional sequels for 2 and 3. Also, I know I was kind of joking about Torchlight being an underrated gem. It actually sold quite well.

Torchlight 2 sold 3 million copies. So this is no slouch. This is a pretty successful franchise. The first one sold over 2 million copies. So lots of people seem to love it also what's kind of interesting is before runic games even existed there was another developer that was called flagship studios they were working on a game called hellgate london which ryan you might find this interesting i've heard of that they said it was basically destiny but they tried

making it five years too early so what's funny is that sank the studio so the 14 people who worked in the seattle office said let's go make our own studio and they bought the same office the same furnitures and the same computers and then started runic games to make torchlight which is such a funny origin story to just have the same group of people just buy the old company's stuff yeah i thought that was really cool uh and then lastly i did not realize this because i'm such a diablo fan i did not realize that there was such a big story about torchlight 2 versus diablo 3 because they came out so close to each other game informer actually said that they preferred torchlight 2 over diablo 3 okay well they said that this gets me a little bit that that cuts me going too because

i was not the biggest fan of of diablo 3 so yeah game informer said they're both great but they said by a slim margin they prefer torchlight ign also gave it a very positive review and said quote it does not do anything radically new but it does everything incredibly well so there's a couple of sources that might might get me interested here paul yeah i played a lot of diablo 3 um that's where i went the uh i think it was called the hunter maybe it was the ranged class in that one um and so if people are saying and i enjoyed it i mean i'm not a diablo diablo snob diablo snob like ryan um so i enjoyed diablo 3 uh i 3. I don't think it's the best Diablo, but I did have a good time with that. So if these are comparable games, then I think I am going to enjoy my time

with this. Well, on top of that, I pulled a couple community reviews. I did pull one negative and a couple positive. This game sounds like it's got some weird stuff because I don't even know what this review means, but it sounded really interesting. So I had to read it. One person left a review after playing 56 hours and they said, oh, this is a different review first. They said, imagine Diablo. Now stop it.

Torchlight 2 is way better. Okay. And that's a common review. I saw that a lot. All right. This is the crazy review that i had to read because i just want to know what it means first two hours gone fishing got shark and sewer gave it to my panda it transformed to cockroach now my panda is ugly as me i and my panda became best friends forever friend zone by, 11 out of 10 would go fishing

again. Mr. Madison, what you just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points and may God have mercy on your soul. I don't know what any of that means,

but it sounds funny, so I had to read it. That makes zero sense to me. So if you have an opportunity to go fishing. But now I'm also curious. Well, wait a minute. If this game has fishing, Paul, we know how you feel about fishing. He's got two thumbs and loves fishing and games.

Yeah, that might get me in on just that. All right. And then last thing to read here. This is a positive review that somebody just that. All right. And then last thing to read here. This is a positive review that somebody just left in September 2023. So even though the game's 10 years old, this is a recent review. They said 10 years later, this is still one of the best action RPGs around, especially the sound effects. They are better in this than any other action RPG game Game flow and moment-to-moment gameplay are also top-notch.

This game is still easily playable in 2023. Well, I hope so, because I'm going to be playing it in 2023. We all are. Hopefully it's playable. I don't know that that's like a resounding, you know, positive thing to say that it's playable, but I guess that's still good news. Well, you know I love good audio, Paul. You I like, I do like good sound design in a game. I do think you always buy fancy sound cards, which I always laugh at. Well, I have better

sound than you, Paul. So you keep laughing. Um, but so I will, I will have to actually pay attention to that as well. Um, it's going to be hard to beat. See's here's the risk you run when you pick a clone of another game is that regardless of how impartial i try to be my brain is going to compare this game to diablo and being that diablo 4 just came out it's going to be difficult to take this when did you say this game was made 2016 oh no it's older than that i think it's 2012 is it really torchlight i can double check yeah okay but i mean okay so you know this is this is going to be the tough part for me is just played diablo 4 a couple months ago playing a clone of diablo from 2012 it's going to be very difficult in my mind to not compare them.

And that's not necessarily a fair comparison at that point when they're 11 years apart. So orange juice is delicious, but if you drink it right after brushing your teeth, context matters. Exactly. It really does matter. And I can try to be impartial and I will, I'll like, you know, I'll try to judge the game on its merits alone, but it's also going to, I mean, I know myself, I'm going to compare this to Diablo because it's, you know,

it's the closest thing. And so I'm very curious. The reviews get me hyped. The, what you have said gets me hyped, but how is it going to compare to Diablo? Well, I think not only that, I want to know how does this compare to Diablo and Path of Exile? Because you've got Diablo with the prestige and the history and the higher price tag,

and then you have Path of Exile, which is free and a lot of people love. Torchlight kind of comes in in the middle. So I'm kind of curious to know, like what's their niche. What do they offer that we don't get from the others? And that's what I'm very curious about. By the way, Google did confirm torchlight two came out in September, 2012,

2012. So 11 years old. Yeah. Well, that's about right. When, uh, what was the Diablo three came out,

right? Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Mm hmm. All right. So in closing out the show,

just a couple last things here. We always like to guess the user score. I think this is especially funny because none of us have played torchlight. We're all just going off of gut instinct and what we have heard. I wrote down that my guess was 85%. My thought is, I think people probably like Diablo more. Diablo would be somewhere in the 90s. I mean, I know Diablo 3 had issues, but I'm just saying in general,

people love Diablo. So 85 was my guess. What do you guys think? Ryan? 82. Okay, going lower. Going lower. Joshosh go 83 go 83 no i'm not going i'm not going 83 i'm gonna go 84 okay i did not think i would win this guys this game is pretty beloved. The actual user score on Steam is 93%. 93? Yo.

So guys, 3 million sales, 93% rating on Steam. I think Nate might be onto something here. All right. Okay. No, I'm super excited. I know this is Josh's game, but I'm a super, super big Diablo guy. And if this is like that Diablo esque Diablo light, you know,

whatever you want to call it. Um, I'm stoked to try it out. I'm super excited. Ryan, do you think Josh is going to beat this game? No, a hundred percent.

I do wonder how long this game is. It doesn't matter. I won't beat it. No matter. It's like 20 hours, like four hours long. It could be five hours. You guys know i'm gonna get

to 15 hours in and then yeah i'm gonna just be like what's that over there guys i used to joke that the only deep dive that we've done that josh finished was ibn ab because that was like a three and a half hour that is that is true it's i even add that to my list, Paul. Thank you. I love when you tried arguing that you beat Forspoken because you took the cheap ending where you went back to New York. The credits rolled, Paul. No, no, no. I will argue this till the end of my days.

If a game's credits roll, you beat that game. That was my favorite argument. You're like, no, no, technically, I beat Forspoken. I I beat Forspoken. I did beat Forspoken. I love it. So funny.

All right. Yes, you did get the credits. I will concede that to you. All right. Last question for you, Josh. Taking a look at your leaderboard, which we now have 103 games on, kind of just, you know, based off everything you've heard today, where do you think this game is going to land? Oh, man. I mean, I just placed the witness. What did i put the witness at like in the 40s 35 35 okay i mean i enjoy this kind of game i love mindless games sometimes um again it's

gonna be hard to not compare it to diablo i'm going to guess late forties, which is, I know a lot, again, remind people that when you've played over a hundred games, if you, you know, 50 means this is a, this is a decent game. I mean, this is, you know, a game that is a fun game to play. Um, I don't know that it's going to like rock my world or make me go, wow, this game really does something cool and unique and amazing. I'm going to, I'm going to say late forties, mid somewhere around there. So good to maybe even very good, but certainly not great. Is that kind of what you're thinking?

Probably. Yeah. That's my guess at this point. Um, yeah. In part due to age. Cause the game's over a decade old i think it's honestly going to be partly due to age and it's going to regardless of how i try to approach this it's going to be how does this compare to diablo and where do i rank like diablo 4 you know because

that's the most recent game i've played kind of thing. So it's going to be hard. Like I said, I'll try to keep it fair, but it's just a natural thing to do that. So yeah, I think that's right in that range. That's hard because one, it's a clone. Two, it's older. So you're trying to like kind of – you don't want to take that too much into account when you play it. I mean, a fun game is a fun game. You can play anything, and it's old or it's not. If it's fun, it's fun.

But graphics or playability and stuff like that sometimes comes into play. I know for me, I know my list is nowhere near as long as your guys, but I'm probably, I anticipate it being somewhere in the mid 20s. I'm a sucker for those Diablo style games. How many are on your list currently, Ryan? Because that's going to give some context. He's got 32.

32. Okay, so bottom third is what you're thinking. Yeah, bottom third. Yeah, I'd say mid to mid to low 20s um okay probably in there i got halo infinite arc uh it matters because if ryan's has 20 games and he's like i think it's gonna be in the 20s yeah yeah top 20 doesn't mean quite so much and this isn't for all the listeners out there this isn't all the games i've ever played it's just what these guys have played and what we played together and stuff like that.

Just deep dives on the pod. Deep dives, stuff like that. So I have played maybe one or two games before. Yeah. I was going to say Ryan's only played Metal Gear Solid and Diablo, and that's it. He's never played any other franchise. That's all you need, baby. There you go.

I will say I already picked up torchlight too. I might've played for about 30 minutes just to get a sense of the game. I will say that even though the game, tell me something, Paul, the spoils, give me anything. Give me,

give me a crumb. I will say the animation style, despite being old, it reminds me a little bit of like blizzard games. It looks a little bit like warcraft 3 slash world of warcraft and so i think that kind of fantasy animation doesn't age terribly poorly so i don't think the graphics will necessarily be a hindrance i'll be honest i find world of warcraft's graphics to be charming like they're not good but they're not bad they don't age they're not distracting to

me in any regard like if it looked like that i don't think i would boot this game up and be like oh this looks like garbage yeah no a few years ago i hopped on a vanilla wow and i played all the old uh you know dungeons and everything and i'm like oh man this i just had a blast and it's it's graphics that are what 15 plus years old like and it made no difference at all all it did was bring nostalgia and love and enjoyment so you know sometimes graphics aren't always everything yeah i will say in a weird way even though i never played torchlight it did feel a little bit nostalgic because of the animation style which kind of surprised me it felt familiar even though I never played torchlight, it did feel a little bit nostalgic because of the animation style, which kind of surprised me.

It felt familiar, even though I never played it. All right. Well, that basically wraps everything up here for this hijack a host episode. We want to say one more time. Thank you so much to Nate. We really appreciate you going legendary and picking this game along with the

incredible care package you sent. We really do appreciate you along with all of our listeners. We want to say thank you to everyone out there for listening and supporting the show. Please make sure to check out all of our episodes, but make sure to come back two Mondays from now. That way you can hear Josh's thoughts on Torchlight 2. I know that I hope to get at least a couple hours in there as well, and then you can hear all of our thoughts on that.

And until next time, happy gaming. See ya. All right. See everybody.