Video Gamers Podcast - [Force a Friend] Press X to Jason - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: August 5, 2024

Gaming hosts Paul, Josh and Ryan are here and it’s the return of our Force a Friend episode! After almost a year of waiting, Paul finally has the chance to force Josh or Ryan into playing a video game of his choice. What video game will he pick, which gaming host will he chose and what will the reaction be? All we can say is this game has been a LONG time coming to have a deep dive about, and we can’t wait for the reactions! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Disratory and Ole Jake Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://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

This episode is brought to you by Samsung Galaxy. Ever captured a great night video only for it to be ruined by that one noisy talker? With Audio Erase on the new Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra, you can reduce or remove unwanted noise and relive your favorite moments without the distractions. And that's not all. New Galaxy AI features like NowBrief will give you personalized insights based on your day schedule so that you're prepared no matter what. Buy the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra now at Samsung.com. Hello fellow gamers! Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast, hosted by three gamer dads.

We release episodes on Mondays and Thursdays, and if you sign up to help support the show on Patreon, you even get bonus episodes twice a month, along with a shout-out on the show and other perks. You can take a look at MultiplayerSquad.com. Alright, guys, I think we're gonna have a lot of fun in this episode. Let's get straight to introductions to get started. I am your host, Paul. Joining me, it's been a long while since he's been forced to play a game. I was starting to wonder if he is starting to feel like the redheaded stepchild.

It's Josh. I always feel like the redheaded stepchild, you guys, especially around YouTube clowns. Oh, and you are a middle child i am kind of checks that's true yeah okay wait don't you have don't you have to have hair to be redheaded stepchild no it's a state of being yeah oh that's right all right yeah josh you were last hijacked by legendary supporter phelps to play Deep Rock Galactic Survivor and that was in March. That seems like a long time ago. You have not been

forced in quite a while. I mean, I'm okay if people want to just keep picking Ryan, man. I mean, let's be honest, he does have some catching up to do. Well, that's exactly what I was going to say. I mean, joining Josh and me, he's got a two-game streak going let me i

is it gonna continue is the streak about to be over i guess we'll find out in a little bit it's ryan he's heating up we'll see it's all up to paul which i know he's very very excited about he keeps letting us know it is all up to me i can't wait to talk about it so before we jump into our official pre-dive here j Josh, I think you're going to read a review. Someone left the show. I do have a new review. Listen, if you've been listening to this podcast for a little while, if this is your first

episode and you get to the end and you went, you know what, man, those guys are all right. Think about leaving us a review. It is honestly one of the best ways that you can help other people find this podcast. Um, everybody checks out reviews, uh, and they really, really do help. Plus, honestly, we read every single one and we like the feedback. We love the stories of how people are listening to us on their commutes and just enjoying what we are putting out there. So it really does mean a lot to us. Um, and if you leave a review on Apple, there's a good chance we'll read it on the show. Like this review that comes in from Amory is exists and it's titled, I love the community. And it says, this is not just an amazing podcast, but it has amazing people behind it too.

Paul, Josh, and Ryan all bring a sense of welcome to their discord and new listeners to the podcast. The way they always explain how they do the things they do each episode is very noob friendly yet doesn't annoy veteran listeners. And also I'd love to know your guys favorite card game. Keep up the good work.

Oh, thank you. Amory. So nice. By the way, favorite card game. Can I say Texas Hold'em poker? Does that count? I don't know if they're talking like if you're talking, favorite card game. Can I say Texas Hold'em poker? I was going to say. Does that count? I don't know if they're talking like if you're talking real life card game, then poker for me, for sure. If you're talking like digital card game. Oh, you would say Slay the Spire, I'm guessing.

I mean, it's probably. Well, it was Gwent. Honestly, Gwent is the best card game. I don't mean the one that's built into The Witcher. The actual standalone game that they made after the fact was the best strategic card game that I think I've played. So I'll say that's my favorite. Even though they're not adding new content for it, it does still exist out there.

Nice. What about you, Ryan? Is it Gwent or something else? Yeah, I'd probably say Gwent. I don't really play any kind of just standalone card games, but that. And then if they are talking real life, then yeah, probably poker. Yeah.

If I had to pick something other than poker, I would say Dominion. That's a game I played a lot with the physical box with the cards, but they also have an electronic version. I always preferred that to stuff like Magic the Gathering, because that's where you just spend more money and you have a better deck. I love games when you build decks as you play, and Dominion does that, and I think it does it really well. All right, and we also owe a shout out to a new Patreon supporter. This one's coming in a little bit late. I was out of town, so we do want to apologize. But David Wallace himself, CEO of

Dunder Mifflin, coming in, supporting us on Patreon. Thank you, David. Thank you for your patience, waiting for your shout out. We really do appreciate it. All right. So, Ryan, I'm going to throw this to you for a minute. For our listeners who maybe have not been listening to us very long, why don't you tell them a little bit about our Force a Friend format, which we actually first announced in July 2023, but it's been a while since we've done one of these. It has been a while, and it's been a very long while since you've done one. Yes. But basically, we were thinking of what would be a cool way for us to get – you know, you want someone to play a game. You got a buddy or a friend that, man, you guys should really check out this game or, man, they hate this type of game.

I want to make them play it. We came up with Force a Friend. So what we do is we go through and we take turns and we pick a game for one of us to play. We take two weeks we play it look uh come back with our thoughts on the game review it and let everybody know how we feel and then the next person will pick you know therefore unfortunately for paul it'd been quite some time and i'm sure he has the dates for that yeah but uh but yeah that's that's kind of the bottom line of it um really cool it's been awesome we each got to you know pick some and check out great games that you might not otherwise have played so i'm really excited to see where

this one goes today yeah so we still have some deep dives where all three of us play the game but one of the reasons that we did this was twofold one it gives us a little bit of a break between games because if all of us play all the games, that gets pretty overwhelming. We all have day jobs. We have families. We're all very busy as it is, even before factoring in the pod. And then also, it allows us to keep at least one of us in the dark. So when we record, they kind of are in the headspace of someone who's never played it, and they can ask questions, things like that. All right. So we started this format a little over a year ago, and the history of Force a Friend is very short. So Josh, you got to select first. You made Ryan play Subnautica. You're welcome, Ryan. Thank you very much. It was good.

And if you get selected to be forced, now you get to make the next selection. So then Ryan made Josh play Metal Gear Solid V. You're welcome, Josh. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. forced now you get to make the next selection so then ryan made josh play metal gear solid five you're welcome thank you ryan thank you there it is yes these have worked out pretty well honestly and then josh made me play the witness and that was back yeah it's good i liked it that was in october guys it was 10 months ago we have just had so many games released, and we've had a lot of legendary Hijack-A-Host episodes. So it is finally my turn, and I get to force one of you guys to play a game. This is Paul's first time.

First one. First time in a year to be able to pick either myself or Ryan to force us to play a game. It's been a long time you better it better be good i was gonna say no pressure paul but this has been building up for 10 months now you know how much time i've had to think about this i have had a file called games.doc on my desktop for a full year that has just sat there and i'll toss stuff in it on occasion i'm like oh yeah i'll put that game in there and then you know stuff in it on occasion. I'm like, oh yeah, I'll put

that game in there. And then, you know, at that one point, Josh, you decided to play Celeste, deleted it off of my games doc. You know, I've had it run in for ages. Now I did want to ask you guys, like, and I know that we've only selected three games so far, but what goes into your thought process behind what you're going to pick? Are you thinking like, well, so-and-so has played a lot lately, so maybe I'll go with the other person. us into your thought process behind what you're gonna pick are you thinking like well so and so has played a lot lately so maybe i'll go with the other person are you picking like your all-time favorite games that the others haven't touched or are you just thinking through like what's gonna make for the best episode what's your strategy in this i think for me it's who was

mean to me most recently. You know, so. Yeah, a little bit of revenge. Also, that's why you made me play Subnautica. Yeah, no, I mean, legitimately, like, you know, we've always joked around about making somebody play a terrible game and how that would be funny. And I'm sure at some point that's going to happen just, you know, for the laughs for it. But, like, legitimately, like, you want to pick a game that you think somebody is going to like, or at least that's how I approach it. Ryan, prior to this podcast at least, didn't branch out quite as much in his gaming habits as you and I did, Paul.

So trying to introduce Ryan to something new like Subnautica, which is the game that launched my love of survival crafting games. Like you kind of want to go like, dude, if you just play this, maybe you'll like it. And then maybe you'll discover that you like a whole new genre, right. Or something like that. Paul, you know, you are the smart one of the bunch. And so making you play the witness was like, let's kind of put that to the test a little bit. Like, how do you like puzzles that can get progressively harder, you know, and things like that as well. So I know I approach it in a way that it's like,

I want to see if you guys, like if a game that I love resonates with you guys, because if it does, it gets you excited. Like you want people to like the things that you'd like, you know? And so I think that's how I approach it as far as like, what can i pick that

i think might surprise you with how much you enjoy this game nice yeah it definitely i mean like you said um i definitely stuck to a certain like type of game for a while and i would just kind of get hooked on it and play so having that opportunity to check new new styles of games and new types of games. I mean, now even when we played like Ark and then we went and played Once Human, I'm like, I need to craft. I need to survive. You know, I love it now. So it's really neat to branch out where you otherwise would not have. For me, I just, I do develop a fondness and a love for certain types or certain genres.

So to be able to try to share that with people, like I love, I know Paul does too. We love to cook. We love to smoke meats. I make brisket and other stuff all the time. Most of the time I eat maybe five or 10% of it. And I like to just share the wealth to everybody.

So kind of, that's how I look at it with the games is this is awesome. It means a lot to me i really think you'll enjoy it and i want you to have the same um enjoyment that i had so that's kind of the way i like to look at it that's a very generous way of looking at it unfortunately for you guys today let me just say i am not my coming with the rage, the 10-month rage. He's had, yeah, he's had so much time. I know. I've had a lot of time.

My thought process behind today's selection is not thinking, what's the best game that we haven't done a deep dive? I kind of feel like that's a little bit more what you guys do. For you listeners out there, this one is 100% for you. I literally just thought, what would be the funniest game to talk about? And I'm just thinking, what's best for the show? Does that mean it's a great game or is it a terrible game? How many times have we said, in our opinion, the worst episodes are when we're like, dude, it's like a six out of 10.

How am I supposed to make that entertaining to talk about? It's true. So I am picking something that I think will make for the most fun to discuss on the show. I think it'll have the highest entertainment. It may or may not be the most entertaining to play. And we'll see how it goes. Josh's got a little nervous. Nose goes, Ryan.

Nose goes. I'm kind of antsy and anxious right now. I got real nervous when Evil Paul popped up there. Yeah, he definitely popped up. You guys know I can be a little bit of a wild card with some of this stuff. Paul is the prime star. Yeah, like early on, RimWorld is the one that I kind of strong-armed you and, you know, Josh and original host Todd into playing.

So, all right, let's talk a little bit. You guys know I love giving timestamps, right? Of like when these games released. Oh, yeah. talk a little bit you guys know i love giving time stamps right of like when these games released i have picked a game that first released on the ps3 all right it is a little bit older we've had this trend going for a little while now this game the week that it came out the number one song according to billboard was tiktok by kesha great song by way. And the number one movie at the box office was Shutter Island. So we are talking the year 2010 is when this came out. What? A little older. What? It is a year that gave us a lot of classics. Now, don't Google any of this. All right. I want you

guys, don't look up anything. I don't want any guesses. I will be strategic in what I list here. I'm not going to list all the games from 2010 that were big, but we are talking about the year that brought us Red Dead 1, God of War 3, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Bioshock 2, Starcraft 2. I mean, these are some huge classics. That's a good time in gaming. Yeah. And they're still playable, right? I would say all those games are highly playable. Josh, you're famously a huge football fan. This is the year that your Saints won the Super Bowl. It is.

I know. That was a great time, man. Great year for Josh. Ryan, in case I end up selecting you, you just got done playing the last Hijack a Host, which was Red Faction Guerrilla. That game was from 2009. I'm picking a game that only came out a year later. Does that make you a little bit more nervous, or do you feel like that's not necessarily a problem being that old? This is where I live now. I mean, Toontown was like in, what, 03? Then Red Faction was 09. I

mean, why not? Let's just stay in the zone i'm a retro host now he's like he's like a retro expert he's our 2000s gamer oh man all right well let me share a little bit about the game's reception all right on metacritic it is an 87 from critics okay all right and it is an 8.5 from users so i was i was slightly trolling you just a little this is a very well-received game all right it's sold more than five million copies and the wikipedia page twice says that it is considered one of the best video games of all time so that should set you a little bit more at peace all right now what i'm going to do here is i'm going to be revealing the host before the game and i'll tell you why um but before i do that i do want to share a couple last things. I would say that the thing I enjoy most in games is when choices matter, right?

Not just being able to decide how a quest ends, but I love when games have these vastly branching storylines where if I choose this, maybe that character dies or maybe this town completely changes. And I feel like going into the late 2000s, going into 2010, this for me is like the start of that golden age when choices matter. I think that when we entered 3D gaming, the graphics took up so much space on cartridges and discs that they couldn't do that a whole lot. And then as games got better and media got larger and we had Blu-ray discs on the PS3,

I feel like that's when we got choices mattering much more blown out. So we're talking, this is around the time of Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins. Choices definitely matter in those games. Good time for games, man. Yeah. Totally agree. This is a game where choices absolutely matter. This game has 18 different endings, all right? Oh, wow.

Depending on choices you make and how you perform. If you do really well, maybe certain characters live. If you do poorly, maybe certain characters die. It kind of depends on how you play it. All right, so before we hit our first break, I will share who the host is first. And spoiler alert, it's because one of you has already played this game. And not only that, I played it with you. So I can't choose that person, but I think that me and that host have some very fond memories of this.

And I want to be able to share that with the other. All right. And I don't think this is going to give anything away because let's just say that my wife, Nikki, was a little bit involved in this as well. And how about I just go ahead and share who the host is? I think this is going to be really fun because as I start giving hints, the person who's already played it is going to figure out what it is. And I think it'll be more fun if we play it out that way.

So without any further ado for this deep dive, the person who has to play is. Let's make it three in a row baby it's ryan no wait a minute now my brain is scrambling going like wait look i mean i'm gonna remember the game we played paul oh i'll remember yeah oh i'm i mean i will say this ryan's like i can't believe i got picked again right yeah. Yeah. But he is. There are not many games that Paul and I have played together that I have not had an absolute blast playing either.

So honestly, I don't know that I can think of one where I was like, Ooh, that game is bad. You know? So I don't know what the game is yet, but my memories of playing games with Paul together, none of them are bad. So it's like, I feel like you're in for a good time, Ryan.

Other than maybe battlefield 2042 and maybe hood outlaws and legends those were pretty bad i liked like the you know i mean for a little bit they were fun until their flaws started showing up but we had good times in both of those or at least you shared the misery yeah yeah we we might have screamed a lot about the ridiculous assassinations. That's true. That's true. All right. So yes, Ryan, you are selected for this.

Does it make you feel better that this is a game that I want to play with you? And I, and I, I think we'll be able to play all of it together. Does that help? Yes. No, of course.

You know me, I'm a, I'm a people person. So the, if, if, if we can play together, that's no matter what it is more than likely.

I, you know, I enjoy it, enjoy it. So, so wait, Paul, so just to clarify before we go play together, that's no matter what it is, more than likely I enjoy it. Wait, Paul. So just to clarify before we go to break, we didn't deep dive this game? We did not deep dive this. No. So this is a game that you and I played just for the heck of playing together, but we never did a deep dive on.

We played it before the podcast even started. This goes back a ways. Wow. Now I'm curious. I'm like racking my brain trying to think too. What I want you to do, Josh, this is what I thought would be fun. As I'm giving hints or clues,

or even now, if you have any guesses, just DM them to me in Discord and then I'll just say yes or no. And if it's wrong, I'll say what your guess was. But then once you figure it out i think you're gonna find the rest of the episode pretty funny to talk i am bewildered right now paul no guesses yet no guesses yet no i'm gonna need a clue or two all right this will this will be fun let's go ahead and take our short break and then we'll come back and i'll start giving some clues this is an ad from better help online therapy We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships,

but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online, and sign-up only takes a few minutes. Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10 off your first month that's betterhelp.com all right josh i mentioned that you and i played this

game before we started the podcast now back in the day we used to be under a different name right we were the multiplayer gaming podcast we had a different head host todd and um let's just say that back then we only covered multiplayer games i floated the idea of us covering this two months before the podcast started i said i'm just telling you now i think we need to deep dive this game because it would be fun to talk about, even though it's not actually a multiplayer game. So I floated the idea out there and I have a little bit of some sad news that Todd replied back and said, I tried playing that with my wife, Bonnie. She fell asleep immediately and I got bored after 30 minutes and quit. So this game, I will tell you now, is not for everyone. All right. Previous host Todd did not want to cover this. For those who don't know, Todd's wife is both my sister-in-law and

Ryan's cousin. So we have some family relationships here. But this game was not for previous host Todd, but it is definitely up there for me. I absolutely love this game. All right, let me give you a couple of clues as far as development of the game. So initially, this game was pitched to Microsoft and they rejected it because they said the subject matter was too dark. They said, we don't really want our brand associated with that kind of like storyline and atmosphere.

This is not a feel- good game like Animal Crossing. All right. The game took four years to make. It has a 2000 page long script. All right. So there is some heavy story in this game. They used more than 70 actors and stuntmen on 60 sets that they built, and they shot for 170 days in order to do like motion

capture now keep in mind your average movie like with a relatively like medium-sized budget normally only takes about 100 days so when this game came out it was considered the most ambitious motion capture ever for a video game any Any thoughts or any guesses yet, Josh? I'm trying to think like- Still racking your brain? A game that has motion capture in it. I feel like this would be- Back in 2010.

But don't forget to DM. Yeah, I don't want to say anything yet, but I think I have an idea of at least the genre. Maybe, maybe. Oh, man. So the whole idea of this game was because the guy who ended up directing it and he is also the head writer of it he hated game over messages in games and so he said i want to make a game that no matter what you do it's going to keep continuing you can have main characters die you can have main characters die. You can have side characters die.

You can fail certain objectives. And no matter what, the game is built in so that it can just keep continuing. That was the whole thought process. So this is like one of those games where depending on choices you make, you might only see like 8% of what they actually made for this game. You got to like replay it several times and then you'll see stuff you never saw before.

So yeah, this has four main characters that you can play as. And spoiler alert, all four can die and the game will continue. I'm so bad at these because I get so like analysis paralysis and I'm just like, I don't want to make the wrong decision.

But that's the beauty there's 18 different changes uh josh has guessed is it the wolf among us it is not but that is a very close time frame i don't remember when that game came but i but i i'm i'm feeling like it's that style of game you're not terribly off okay that i will say that okay but now i don't know you're along the right lines. I said I narrowed down the genre. I was right in that regard, at least. Yeah. The game is also intentionally built with very short missions. So it's like small chunks at a time. So when you're swapping between four playable characters, you generally only play

as one for about 15 minutes, and then it'll switch to another character. And it was intentionally designed to be that way to keep your attention. So it's like quickly moving. If there's something you don't like or a character you don't like, you're not staying as them very long. It's going to jump into something else. All right. Let me read you a couple of snippets from reviews. All right, we did this with Red Faction. You know, they were a little maybe overstated things. Here's what a couple of reviews read here. 1up.com said that the game has an emotional subtlety that very few games have succeeded at.

Eurogamer said the writing was full of compassion and bravery. And when you pull the trigger, it really makes you feel something. Oh, no. Game Informer called it a masterpiece, which I loved reading. And Game Spy said it was the most intense emotional experience they have ever had with gaming. Now, here's the one quote

that might throw you off a little bit. Edge said that the game has a gruesome curiosity like that of the saw franchise all right josh you have it josh has guests josh knows the game all right now those quotes probably make more sense now right josh is so excited for ryan to find out i don't like this i don't know like the fly on his face right now ryan you were in for a ride baby do you see why this is the very first thing i thought would force a friend i said we I don't like the smile on his face right now. Oh my goodness, Ryan, you are in for a ride, baby. Do you see why this is the very first thing I thought with Force to Friend? I said, we got to talk about this game.

It's so fun. This is amazing. Ryan, I'm so happy for you right now. Me too. I'm excited. And I'm maybe not even sure he hasn't played. Listeners, I don't want to spoil anything, but this is a game that we have definitely mentioned on this podcast many times.

Yes. Many times. And if the bell is going to go off and our listeners are going to freak out, and then Ryan is going to be like, what? I have no idea. I don't want to spoil nothing, but I'm excited now, dude. Oh, man. How do you feel about the fact that this game is being compared to Saw? And does that surprise you

that I would pick a game compared to Saw? Well, with what you said already about it with the choices and the compelling story and stuff like that, you know, that makes sense. But with Saw, I'm trying to put that together, you know. Those don't usually

mesh too well so um i i didn't i'm never i've never been a big saw fan uh but uh but i'm sure i'm sure it's a great game but i just want to i just want to know and i'm very disappointed that you didn't pick josh and pick forespoken i just want to say that now i i might have floated that as like i was gonna troll and say i'm making Josh play Forspoken again. You built my hopes up in the beginning. You built me up, but you just tore it all away. I'm just going to do the one ending where the game ends early. You only saved like three hours by doing that.

All right. Now, I do want to be fair. I want to talk about some highlights and some low points. So it did win some awards. At E3, it won Game spots best adventure game it was also a finalist for best game excuse me best game overall game spy named it best adventure game and best ps3 game of the year now the people who criticize it tend to focus on one of a couple things controls controls are probably the most uh controversial thing it did rely on some uh like spatial motion controls remember how that was like the new hotness

like around 2009 they do build some of that into the game also we all know what they loved in the late 2000s quick time events so this game does have quick time events and motion controls not everyone loves that also there are some complaints about the voice acting i don't know if josh remembers but there is some broken english and you have american characters that have some very strong accents which is a little bit goofy you're gonna stop smiling i don't like you're gonna fail't like this. You're going to fail these QuickTime events. You're going to be like, QuickTime events are so easy.

And then you're going to fail them and I'm going to laugh at you, Ryan. And that's good. It is good. It is good. You got to fail some QuickTime events in this game. It makes for a better experience. All right.

This is now like major spoiler territory, not spoiler, but like major hints now Ryan may not know it if he doesn't know the tagline the tagline of this game is repeated in the game and it was on all the promo material let me ask you Ryan how far are you prepared to go to save someone you love

oh my gosh that sounds so familiar oh it's familiar does it okay all right oh my gosh we're gonna find out though Ryan we right. Oh my gosh. We're going to find out though, Ryan. We're going to find out how far you're willing to go. Yeah. Now, Ryan, let me tell you something here. This is not a game you're going to be able to play in front of the kids.

All right. Josh can attest to that. Other than Cyberpunk, this might be the most mature game that I can think of. As a warning to people who are listening around small kids, I'm going to throw out some general reasons for why it's rated M, but I'm not going to go into any detail. It covers things like drug and alcohol abuse, parental physical abuse. Also, I'm going to give you a spoiler. A child dies in the first two minutes of this game and it involves kidnapping of children it also has sexual content and nudity so uh this is definitely one just for the adults out there oh some of the

endings you forgot dismemberment dismemberment yeah yeah definitely uh that might be why we have some sock comparisons yeah and also some of the endings can even possibly involve suicide all right so this is not a game for the faint of heart this is a very capital m mature game they are not afraid to quote go there all right let's just say that yeah sounds like it is it fair to say josh this is one of those games that will take you places that you don't necessarily expect you will this is this is a game that when once you play it you will never forget that you played this game hands down that's why the second i've realized what it was i got super excited because i was like oh my goodness

dude like you will remember this game forever i'm trying to even think what i was playing around 2010 but like i want to i want to go Josh. I want to watch Ryan play it. I know, right? That's the thing. We might have to figure this out. We might have to figure out how to do this. We...

When Josh and I played it, we played it with our buddy, Andrew McKinney, and we played all of it at my house. I did not touch the controller. Neither did Andrew. I think you were the only one

who played, right, Josh? Yeah. We were just so excited to watch Josh play. And my hope were the only one who played, right, Josh? We were just so excited to watch Josh play. And my hope is that we can get together. And I just want to watch Ryan play this game. I'll make choices he makes. I want Ryan to fail certain quick times and start yelling and not being able to believe

what's happening on the screen. I think it'll be so much fun. I hope it works out. It's not a terribly long game, but it is about 10 hours. So maybe we can do like three play sessions or something and try to knock it out. Yeah, for sure.

Last thing I'll say here before I reveal the game, a character from this game was drafted in our very first bonus round draft that we ever did. Josh, we did gaming best dad and Josh did not agree with me drafting this character from this game. But you know what? My selection beat Josh's draft pick of a Big Daddy from Bioshock. So this character did make it to the second round. And Ryan, I know you have not heard this clip. You't hear it until later but i did take out a

snippet of josh and i arguing over whether or not that character is a good or bad dad and we're gonna go ahead and play it right here last match around one um ethan from heavy rain versus big daddy from bioshock all right can i can i just disparage paul's pick right away oh yep go for it. Is it going to start with the fact that his first son dies in the opening scene of Heavy Rain? Yes, okay, so it's number one, his first son dies in the opening sequence. Number two, his second son gets kidnapped because he's not paying attention to his son at the park. No, no, he blacks out well okay yeah that's better he blacks

out while his son is at the park why does he black out paul because of the trauma of his first son's death he's been suffering from blackouts but go ahead josh go ahead keep disparaging drug abuse or you know alcoholism or something like that you know, the story is replete with poor choices by Ethan from Heavy Rain. I would not... Funny story, that guy is actually on multiple lists of top 10 worst

dads in video games. He is on lists of top dads. I've seen that too. Do I get to defend Ethan now? Okay, number one. Why is Ethan doing defend Ethan now? Okay. Number one. Go for it. Okay. Why is Ethan doing this?

Because his son has been kidnapped. All right. So Ryan, you can tell us after you hear that clip and play the game. I want to know, is this character a good dad or a bad dad? Because there's no in between. He's either a top five or a bottom five dad. And there's nothing else you can say all right it's reveal time josh do you want to say it or do you want me to say it you want me

to say yeah this is your pick buddy so you have no idea either that i've completely i there's i'm gonna be super surprised so laid on me there's there's a chance hopping in this one ends up cracking my top 10 of all time because it's been a few years since we really we are playing heavy rain do you know what that is ryan i don't even know what heavy rain is i didn't know don't look up a thing don't do not read a single word you gotta go completely blind Completely blind. This is how I went into this game. So to give some context, I remember Paul telling me, Josh, you have to play this game. Why don't you come over? You can spend an afternoon playing it.

I'd love to watch you play it. I came over. I went absolutely blind to this game. And I just kind of like commentated during. And it was like, I understand why this is entertaining to watch somebody else play this because you are going to make so many choices in this game and have zero clue what any of them mean, but you will find out.

And this game will make you squirm, dude. It is going to put you in some really hard choices. It's going to make you do some really hard things. And you're going to sit there and be like, there's no way there's no, Oh, Oh, Oh oh there's a way what the heck am i supposed to do now like is this for real like i can't wait for you to play this dude like it's such a good pick oh that's oh yeah i don't know what it is no reloading old saves i don't know what it is but

for some reason people like do like to watch me play games because i remember remember when we played uh resident evil 4 that was always and then my buddy uh he had me come play one of the resident evils i think it was seven or whatever on vr and they would they were just recording me because i couldn't see anything so yeah we'll definitely get together i'm off tomorrow by the way paul maybe we can link up and play some but we can start tomorrow maybe i'm i am uh i'm concerned but excited because i have no clue what this is it's gonna be an absolute blast so yeah i'm hoping that we'll be able to play all of it together and then this is kind of like a throwback to like our teenage years ryan when we would play these one player games and just pass the controller and watch each other uh i remember manhunt being so much fun to watch you play.

Also, any of these games that are like intense and yeah, kind of wild. All right. So we're going to be playing Heavy Rain. Josh has said it's incredibly memorable. I absolutely love this game. I think we can get together and play it on PS5. And then we're going to be taking two weeks to play the game we're going to come back we'll do a full deep dive josh i hope you're able to sit down with us also but i know

you've at least played so okay oh i want to see either way even if it's just one day that we can do it like i want to see this yeah it'll be like a nice refresher too because it's been almost five years since we we played it together uh so listeners make sure you come back this is one of those ones like for me it's kind of like rim world where it really goes off the rails and it's like is this a real game like am i am i in a fever dream like i don't you know what is going on and it's a little bit like that all right i think that wraps everything up here for this pre-dive please consider supporting the show on patreon we talked about a little bit earlier you get bonus episodes all kinds of perks multiplayer squad.com

is where you can do it you can also help us out by rating us five stars on apple and spotify make sure to join the free discord and hit us up on socials at video gamers pod thank you so much for listening and subscribing to our feed and until next time happy gaming see ya oh ryan oh no watch out for the forecast see everybody