Video Gamers Podcast - Golden Buzzer Games - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: August 29, 2022

Gaming hosts Paul, Michael and Josh are taking care of gaming business and going back to the leaderboard to mix things up a bit. Each gets a golden buzzer this time to use on a favorite game. Things get a bit crazy, and we chat a lot of gaming hits (and losers) in this awesome episode.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: 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.com. Pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew, pew. Hey guys, Michael here. Let me take a break from gaming real fast and tell you about MultiplayerSquad.com. The Multiplayer Gaming Podcast is an independent podcast, which means we depend on listener support

to do what we do every single week. So if you're really enjoying what you're hearing and the content we're putting out, consider supporting the show. We also give you extra perks like bonus episodes, which are really cool. It's really just a bunch of fun banter and all kinds of cool stuff. And we talk about random things. So if you want to support the show, head over to MultiplayerSquad.com and get started right now. All right, on to the show. Hello, fellow video game enthusiasts. This is the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast, where three dads get together to casually discuss gaming topics. Today is a bonus round episode. We are going to be looking over and revising some of our leaderboard rankings, which we will explain here in just a moment.

Please make sure to rate our show five stars and leave a written review if your podcast app allows. Also, please consider supporting us on Patreon. We are almost entirely funded by our listeners, and supporters get access to bonus Squadcast episodes, which I really do think might be our best shows that we record. To take a look at support options, you can visit MultiplayerSquad.com. I am your host, Paul, and I am joined today by two of the best in the biz. Coming up first, I was going to roast him, but apparently it's not good for the environment to burn trash. It's Josh. Best intro ever, Paul! I love a good burn, man, and that was a good one.

You know, normally the intros, I try to tie it into what we're talking about. But we're doing a leaderboard review. I don't know. I was like, you know what? I'm just going to bring back the roasts. That's what we're doing. I appreciate it. I always try to stay silent during your introduction. He introduces you, man.

I couldn't help it. I was laughing so hard. You're confusing everybody. That was the best intro. Oh, goodness. And joining and joining us man the real heroes are the people who live with him it's michael oh that was okay yeah yeah i like this side of that yeah me too like so this is a new side he's he's ready he's brought the he took the gloves off he's ready to fight for his spot on these rankings. And Josh, we're ready to just shut him down. So let's roll with it. I was going to say, I don't know that I should antagonize my co-workers when I'm going to need

you on my side here in a couple minutes. Too late. Too late. It's already been happened. Yeah, it's already happened. The laughs are more important. All right. So before we jump into the leaderboard review, Josh, I think you've got a couple of reviews to read. Oh, I do. Everybody out there, you guys and making, you guys and gals, I should say, are making me so happy right now because the reviews have just been rolling in, man. I love it. So keep them coming. If you haven't reviewed the show yet, please leave us a review. If you're

on Spotify, rate us five stars on that. If you're on Apple, leave us a written review. All of them help the show, and there's a good chance we're going to read them. So we've got a lot more than just these two that have come in, but I'm going to read these two because I like them both. So all right, this first one comes in from 0137, fairly local, 6392. Yeah, I remember that guy. Change your username. And it's titled Familiar in the Most Wonderful Way. And it says, Hi, this is my first ever podcast that I like. I never actually or I ever actually listened to.

I've always been told by my best friend and older brother to give them a go. And I always hit him with the good old, yeah, I'll get to it. I never actually did. But recently, I've been struggling heavily mentally and my anxiety has been skyrocketing. No fun at all. So I made the executive decision to search Red Dead Redemption 2 on the podcast app to see what pops up. Man, am I glad that I did. Hearing some dudes talk about games I love and find comfort in feels so nice.

It's such a delight, especially when I share the same sentiments as them and critiques too. Even hearing new perspectives from their personal experiences with games is so interesting. I love hearing what everyone has to say. Some of the things that I hold dear to my heart are the conversations I have with my best friend about our favorite games that last ages, and listening to this podcast feels just like that. It's familiar. It's comforting. It's funny. It's really been a great help with distracting me from my anxiety, and it's been keeping me entertained at work. Thank you for the hard work and effort you guys clearly put into making this happen. I'm sure I'm not alone when I say this podcast has left a huge impact on me already.

It's literally only been three days. That's one hell of a speed run. Oh, what a fantastic review. That's awesome. I will say this, man. Everybody out there knows, I get my morning coffee, I sit at my desk, I pull up reviews to see what we have. And I saw this one and this just warmed my heart, man. It really did is it's stuff like this that really makes what we do enjoyable and like makes us feel like we're doing more than just talking into the void. So thank you for that review. That's awesome.

Yeah, no, that's awesome. Thank you. Also, probably our longest review ever. But if you write a really good one, you know what I mean? I'm going to read. Right. We'll read a book to you. Write a review. We'll read it. If it's a book, to read it. We'll read a book to you. Write a review.

We'll read it. If it's a book, that's fine. It might be a podcast worth of just one review reading, but we'll do it for you. All right. And then this next one comes in from Mama Tacos, and it is titled Great Podcast. And it says, it's a great podcast on video games, not a video game podcast. The hosts are funny, play off each other well, and it's very enjoyable listening experience.

Although I don't always agree with the hot takes, they are still interesting. 10 out of 10. Here's a spicy take. Call of Duty was never good. Oh, that's a good one. It's not a bad hot take. It's not a bad hot take.

Shots fired, though. Wow. For somebody that didn't play any of the Call of Duties until Cold War, which wasn't the best Call of Duty, you know. I was a big fan of Modern Warfare, and I did like the original Call of Duty 2. I didn't mind the old World War 2 Call of Duties, but yeah, I don't know that they were fantastic. So I kind of agree with that hot take. Yeah, I played the one with keifer sutherland doing the narrative for about 20 minutes and then i was just done with it

because i got enough keifer sutherland that was it that's that's the extent of call of duty completely and i know josh and i were primarily battlefield guys at least until 2042 oh boy it's 2020 i'm calling duty now boy yeah i think we all are now all right well let's jump Oh, boy. It's 2022. I'm Call of Duty now, boys. Yeah. I think we all are now. All right. Well, let's jump into this leaderboard review. Michael, you want to tell the people what these are in case they haven't heard this format show before?

Absolutely. Let me start off by saying, guys, we are absolute consummate professionals on this show. And professionals sometimes like to make a little bit of a list you know to keep things in order and make sure we're not dropping the ball on certain things so what we do and you'll hear this every time we do a deep dive is we go over to multiplayerpodcast.com or multiplayerpodcast.com see i dropped it twice there two different pronunciations because it's important that y'all can spell things so we go over there and we keep a list of all the games we've done a deep dive on and then sometimes every once in a while in fact maybe even often like every episode that we do a

deep dive we look through and we're like huh this doesn't make a lot of sense why is this game here in this spot and this other game is down here at this spot when the other game was better than the other game? And I know there's a lot of other games spinning here, but you get what I'm saying. Anyways, the point of this show right now is to basically go through and see if we made a mistake. And I know that I said that we're absolute professionals here. Mistakes have been made, and we're going to talk about it today i never admitted to any mistakes i just did it for you i was gonna say uh i i thought we were just blaming this on paul okay so this is a paul point the figure at paul guys here we go sure yeah so for the for the leaderboard rankings we always make them as a

consensus pick as a three man group. And I think probably the biggest culprit where we get ratings wrong is recency bias. Yes. Like sometimes we're still riding that high. And then all of a sudden, six months later, it's like, you know, maybe that game wasn't quite as good as we rated it. So every once in a while, we just got to review it. We are going to bring up games that we want to nominate to maybe move. And some games we might look to bump up the list. Others might be to bump them back down.

But we're going to make sure that that leaderboard review list is accurate. And I think the most important part about this episode is listeners. As you listen to us move games around, you need to yell in your car while you're driving. No, don't move that game down. Or yes, that game needs to go higher because, well, it's going to happen regardless. But it's obviously more fun if you participate. I'm glad you brought up the recency bias thing because I was looking through our leaderboard today. And like you said, every time we rank a game, number one, we have to all agree where we're going to put it. And that doesn't always happen. But the main thing I saw

on this was like, man, I remember loving that game, but now that game is good, but I don't love it. So why is it ranked where it's ranked? The other issue is that sometimes we will vastly disagree. And so what happens there is we wind up splitting the difference sometimes or negotiating with each other to figure out where to put a game. And so that can sometimes make a great game lower down on the list or a bad game higher up on the list. Because if one of us loves it, that's going to sway those rankings a little bit. But we're doing something a little special this episode. Oh, it's spicy. It's's hot this was your idea josh tell the people yeah all right so i thought it would be really neat if we could individually have like

a golden buzzer my family loves watching america's got talent so you know they use the golden buzzer where one of the judges can say hey i love this act i don't care what you guys think i'm putting this act through and so we're stealing that right we? We're saying, hey, I want a golden buzzer. I want to be able to say, I love this game. Paul hates it. Michael hates it. But I love it. And I don't like where it's ranked on the leader board. And so I want to be able to move this game up on that leader board. Now, we are professionals like Michael claimed. And so what we did is we said, hey, we're going to limit that because otherwise we'd all just bump our games up to the same spot. And then that wouldn't make a lot of sense. So to keep this on track, we're going to say that if you use your golden buzzer,

you can move a game up 10 spots and the other hosts get no say in that whatsoever. And so that's the limit, but we cannot move a game within the top 15 either. So if I like the game that's at number 20, I can't say, well, I'm moving it up 10 spots and now it's in our top 10. So it's got to be outside the top 15. Cannot move more than 10 spots. But that's the way the golden buzzer is going to work. And we each get one of them if we want it. And the caveat being that like a normal show, we can still talk about games in the talk 15, but it'll be a consensus if we move right. Those exactly.

All right. Now, Josh, do you and I just want to make a pact right now that we each bump down elite dangerous 10 spots each and pull it down into the seventies? I, I actually have something about elite dangerous on my list, Paul.

So let's just save that for later oh watch me spike it right back at you bump it down i bump it right back up double cold another time oh it'd be so great if we just wasted all three right buzzers on elite dangerous it just goes down 10 yeah yeah okay well greatest game ever made and it's just it's sitting down there so low at 54. Oh, yeah. So as we nominate a certain game, I think we should say where the game is currently listed and maybe give two games above and below. That way people kind of know what we're looking at. And we have a list. How many games are we up to, guys? 78, I believe? Oh, a lot. Yeah. Yeah, 78 games. Yeah, quite a few here. So, you know, I don't think we need to read through all 78 games on the leaderboard.

But just to give you a little bit of an idea. Number one, Red Dead Redemption 2. Number four, Disco Elysium. Number 14, Elden Ring. Number 22, Destiny 2. Number 35, Stardew Valley. 45, A Way Out. 51, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands 59 phasmophobia 66 valorant

oh josh and i turned hard on valor we did i know you skipped 54 very important to mention that 54 elite dangerous oh yeah 75 halo reach the og halo that josh and I loved to troll back in the day, and Dead Last at 78, Battlefield 2042, which I do not believe we will be bumping up today, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. So, before I was on the show, you know, because I've been here for, what, six months, something like

that, what was it like when you guys had, like, five games on the leaderboard? It was probably a lot easier of a conversation when you played a game to rank a game, right? Oh, yeah. It was a lot easier when the list was short the longer it gets the harder it is it does but at the same time you you start to get these groupings of games where when you look you go yeah this game's somewhere in that group for me so it is a little bit harder but at the same time it gives you it gives you at least a board to throw that dart at yeah and i think it helps there's such a

diverse list but like for instance when we did broforce we all love broforce we all married it but it was so hard to rank it because you've got all these like epic rpgs or great multiplayer games in there and you're like broforce is just a four and a half five hour just smash fest it's great it's super fun you're just blowing up bricks and stuff but it was hard to rank so i just wanted to ask that question as far as like does it make it easier harder when there's so many games in the list the other thing i'll say is that the leaderboard is a hundred percent nonsensical i mean to try to mash up games like broforce with divinity original sin with halo with overcooked 2 with fall guys you know what I mean? That's the point. I've seen people look at our list and go like, you guys are dumb. And then it's like, yeah, exactly. That's the

point of it. So trying to mash all of these different games and genres together is part of the fun of the leaderboard and making us compare these types of games with each other. Yes. And I think the measure that we tend to have is, like in the example of Broforce, if I can only have one experience, would I rather experience a great five-hour campaign of Broforce with maybe a little bit of custom content through the Steam Workshop? Or would I rather get, you know, 100 hours out of something like Divinity Original Sin 2? So a game might have really high highs, but it could still be rated low because it's a shorter game or whatever might be the case. So let's just start throwing

out some games and taking a look here. Josh, I'm going to nominate you to go first. What game do you want to bring up? I'm going to start high on the list, actually, because a lot of people would say, well, they're not going to touch any of the games that are ranked pretty high. But I have not played Hearthstone in probably four or five months. And while I think Hearthstone is a great game, I'm in hindsight, I'm looking at it. I think maybe we had some recency bias because we were all playing Battlegrounds and that kind of thing. Hearthstone is fine, but is it really a top 12 game on our leaderboard? Because here's my reasoning for moving it down a little. And I'm not saying we have to move it a ton, but if you don't spend a ton of money on card packs, you're not going to

compete in basic Hearthstone. Duels is fine, but gets old really quick. They have the Mercenaries mode, which completely flopped in my opinion. The only thing about Hearthstone that is fun is the Battlegrounds. And while Battlegrounds is great, it's just one little slice of the Hearthstone pie. And I feel like we have to rate everything all together in that regard. And so I think Hearthstone needs to be bumped down a little bit, just because I don't think it's as well-rounded of a game as we all thought it might have been at the time that we rated it. Now, the difficulty with lowering Hearthstone is that for me, it is the... You know how when you're young, you'll always see in movies and stuff where they say, hey, if we're both 30 and neither of us are married,

then we'll get together. That's me in Hearthstone. If I'm not playing a game in three months, you know what I'm going back to? It's a lot of Overwatch in Hearthstone for me. So for Hearthstone, I am not playing it right now, but I have no doubt I will be sometime within the next six months.

So I feel like it's a really dependable game to fall back on. It is, but when you play it, what are you going to play? Oh, 100% Battlegrounds. Yeah, exactly. You're not playing any of the other stuff. And that's kind of my point. But that's how good Battlegrounds is. I mean, Battlegrounds is great, but also Battlegrounds does get a little repetitive, man.

Like, I was playing a lot of Battlegrounds with you guys, but you guys, but you can only be the Quillboar so many times. You can only try to run that Murloc build so many times. It's just like I was looking at it and I went, man, we have that game ranked so high. And while it is a lot of fun, I just don't know that it belongs where it's at. So that's my nomination. If you guys are saying, hey, I don't think i want to move it you know this is a democracy i i feel like this is going to be a funny response for me because i feel like you're working so hard uh if you want to drop it one i am fine with that i do want to drop it one no because i want divinity original sin to be higher like how did we put

hearthstone above divinity original sin too i i was it's funny because i was going to vote a little bit harder because i have not played hearthstone i don't play a lot of card games um but a little secret for you guys little little thing here hold on i had i i like i am absolutely set in my indifference but i got this letter hold on let me open it up is it from blizzard official it says dear michael if you do not vote with josh i will take all of your pizza signed josh's beard oh i really like hey i'm not responsible for that man no it's a separate entity okay i was gonna say yeah. But the letter says that. And so I'm going to have to say, yeah, we got to move it down one. I would actually like my preference on this is I would like to move it to 15. I think that Elden Ring is better. I think Divinity Original Sin 2 is

better than Hearthstone. I agree with everything you say. Give me my pizza. Hearthstone is a game that you're going to be able to play so much longer than those other games including Elden Ring which is incredibly long Hearthstone is one of those games that it is not hard to all of a sudden realize you've put in 700 hours into Hearthstone I think more people would play Elden Ring than Hearthstone because you either love card games or you don't like them at all like Michael's never played Hearthstone he's played elden ring yeah hearthstone's free and it's a lot longer it's is only battlegrounds and i like it longer than elden ring it's the longest game ever made it's just it's because it's multiplayer it never technically yeah it's like overwatch yeah it never ends i'm going back to it's just battlegrounds at this

point yeah that's how good you're saying battlegrounds is better than elden ring and well you said i could move it under divinity yeah i'm cool i'm cool dropping it one i would really struggle having hearthstone below elden ring personally which one will probably win game of the year which one never did yeah exactly oh michael i like this side of you man boom dropped it sorry i really like my pizza i'm really gonna fight for you so what what exactly are we arguing for what place do you want it michael uh he wants it at 15 i would my preference would be 15 but i can't just bully paul into 15 so if you guys put this below elden ring you're gonna have to make it up on the back end for me

somewhere later in the show i mean i can do that i have another letter sitting here so i'm ready at hearthstone at 15 this is a sad day so it will be below elden ring wouldn't it be 14 below war zone you want to blow it swap no it'd be 14 yeah i guess you put yeah okay put it be 14? And below Warzone. You want it below Warzone? No, it would swap. So it'd be 14. Yeah, I guess you put... Yeah, okay, put it at 14. Bump Elden Ring and Divinity up. Gotcha. So we'll just drop it two spots.

Yeah, so good. Divinity, 12. Elden Ring, 13. Hearthstone, 14. And Caldary Warzone stays at number 15. Sounds good. Maybe secure to the top 15, but probably not. Let me tell you why later.

Oh, I thought Michael was nominating something there. So, all right. So I'm sorry, Paul, but I'll, I'll make it up to you later.

Sure. You know, I love me some hearthstone. That's a hard one, especially since Michael hasn't played, but, uh, that's cool.

It's still top 15. I mean, we're not saying hearthstone's not a fun game. I'm just saying when I looked at it, I kind of went, man, that game just... I don't play it anymore, and I don't miss it that much. And I know I'll go back to it. I'm just like you. I'll get bored.

I'll have some free game time. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. It'll come around like the flu. Yeah. Oh. All right. Michael, what do you want to nominate what

do you want to make i want to make a real tiny move i'm only asking for one spot here i just want one little little pity spot not a big deal see i'll just say no no just one spot i don't know what game i want to swap number four and number three i want to move disco elysium up one spot into the holy triumvirate of the top three because that game has stuck with me harry and kim kirizawa have just been stuck in my heart for the last two months since i played that game i can't wait to play the game i love overwatch don't get me wrong. I love Overwatch. Overwatch is a fine top five game, but Disco Elysium did something that really no game has done for me. It just made me really care. It didn't make me cry, but it came close a couple times. But you know what? We did that review on that episode. We did that deep dive.

All three of us really kind of did different things with that church cathedral dance club thing that was a lot of fun i love there's so many different branches that you can take without playing a game that really relies on showing you hey you made this choice because we've seen that with other games you know we've seen it with um detroit become a human where it goes and it makes you know that you made a choice no this game doesn't make you know that you made a choice. No, this game doesn't make you know that you made a choice. You just make those choices. But what I love about it is those choices might make it the most purely perfect RPG ever made. It's the fact that you, if you mess up,

you have another chance to solve that. If you mess up that other chance, you have another chance to get your mission done. And I think it is perhaps one of the finest, if not the finest rpg ever made and i believe that qualifies it for the top three i think the biggest issue is that you're arguing to put it above probably the most influential multiplayer game of the last seven years and basically has created esports as we know it today and is probably my second most played game ever you know other than ever quest

in rocket league you know what i mean so it's i'm with you michael what's odd is my like the whole time you were talking my brain was like literally like a pendulum going yeah no yeah no i i i think disco elysium is the filet mignon of a video game whereas overwatch is the cheeseburger you know what i mean and while oh and while i while filet mignon is infinitely better i'm gonna eat cheeseburgers a heck of a lot more than i'm gonna eat filet mignon and so that's a pretty good analogy you know what i mean and so overwatch is the cheeseburgers for me and i'm not arguing that disco elysium isn't an actual better crafted video game but i have a hard time saying man overwatch i it's just hard to displace it for me overwatch has some pretty nasty negatives though I don't know what they are, but they exist.

I was waiting. I was like, other than people being toxic? The toxic community, the loot boxes. Hey, listen, I might die on this hill, and this game might not get moved. But I felt like if I did not say this, in fact, I actually went to the episode saying they're not going to buy this. I'm going to have to really try and sell it, but I have to bring it up. Here's my question for Josh. All right. Have you seen the movie eternal sunshine of the spotless

mind i i where they erase long ago yes yes all right so if you were going to be forced to lose all of your memories and all of your time with overwatch or lose all of your time and experience with disco elysium which would you rather lose and which would you rather hang on to i'd rather hang on to all the time I spent in Overwatch. I would too, because we had so many friend moments in that game. I mean, there was probably a year or so where we had six people playing Overwatch almost every single night. Yeah.

So I'm with you, man. As much as I get what Michael is saying, and I do... Like I said, there's part of my brain that agrees with you 100%. I think it's just the, what Overwatch was back in the day, what it did for gaming, you know, what it did for shooters. Like the hero shooter thing,

you know, I don't know. I have a tough time with it. So I'm going to say no as my opinion. And I think Paul's with me on this one. I'm with you. We can just put Tetris at number one because all that it did for gaming right it basically made the game boy possible like let's put tetris number one guys yeah i never had one right no i i gotta say though like because i i said it when

we reviewed it i think disco elysium belonged number one in my personal list of all these games and it just doesn't hurt to try fair just know that my golden buzz is going to come out later i know i can't touch disco elysium again but i aim to i aim to hurt i aim to maim all right paul what do you got uh i think we have a game that is rated too high because of recency bias okay now it's a game that's still in development and it still could rise again in the future. So half the list. I think Halo Infinite at number 10 is just way too high. I was looking at that, Paul.

It's too high. I was looking at that too earlier and I went, do we have that too high? We were having an absolute blast with it. I kind of shut my own brain down on that one because I went, well, the campaign is really good. So if you take the campaign and the multiplayer, like, doesn't it make a great game? But I'm with you. I don't know that it's a top 10 game. Forge could maybe bring it back to be at that level. I do not miss Halo Infinite right now at all. I don't need absolutely zero desire to play it.

I know we still have friends. We have good friends that play it and still hop in it from time to time. And I'm with you. I'm like, I don't really want to hop in and play Halo Infinite right now. So where would you move it though? That's the question. How far down?

You could talk me into anything 11 to 20. And I think it would be fair. If I said right now, Paul, would you rather hop back into risk of rain 2 or halo infinite which one would you pick i would say risk of rain 2 but that might be only one or two nights yeah i don't know that i'm gonna want to play it much more beyond that i think i'm with you man michael you never played halo infinite did you uh no it seems magical in my mind though but not as magical as number 10.

The campaign is great. The multiplayer was real fun when you had like 11 or 12 friends on for a big team battle, but I feel like there's something that just didn't catch on on that. So I'm with you, Paul. Do I have to, when I'm playing that game,

shoot a gun and look down a reticle or a reticle? Yeah. It's not aim down sights, though. Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it is just all hit fire. it's yeah like that's true yeah it is move it down move it's a shooter where do you want to put it paul uh let's i would definitely drop it below elden ring i would drop it below hearthstone considering i had hearthstone at 12 shoot so is hearthstone going back up to where it was when we started today not quite not quite i think i would put this one below gta online and above terraria i think that's where i

would put it okay with that all right michael for you michael michael's never played it so i i yeah sure okay sounds great yep okay i think that's fair i think that's a fair move i think so too yeah and the fact that we still don't have co-op campaign the fact that we still don't have forge it's kind of wild i've just lost forge might change that and honestly we once forge comes out we may need to revisit it because it might bump it right back up into a top 10 game at that point i'm kind of excited to see Outriders back in the top 10. I tried to play Outriders again, and that's a hard game to go back to.

Like, I loved Outriders when we were in it, but I did actually try to go back to it, and I was completely lost at that point. Yeah, it takes a little while to get back used to the thick of things and figuring out your rotations and all that. Oh, my builds, my rotations, all that stuff, man. it just didn't go well all right is it back to me back to you josh paul hit that buzzer i there is a game on the leaderboard that is an absolute crime to be ranked where it is.

I, the second I came up with this golden buzzer idea and you guys agreed to it, I knew 100% what game I was going to use it on. Can you guess what it is, Paul? Well, I think I know what it is. And I was going to offer a treaty over two games and just bump up both without using the buzzers but if you just want to straight up use the buzzer that's fine wait i i assume we're talking about outer wilds yeah we are talking about outer wilds and so you know what i'm talking about i know you're talking about stardew valley yes because they're i know they're both criminally ranked low they're both ranked so poorly because we both agree you either have it super high or super low and here we have them both kind of middling in the where they at like 35 35 and

42 out of wilds is 42 okay now wait a minute love one and hate the other now wait a minute can i what kind of deal you were you willing to make on this paul because if you want to put your confetti back back into the cannon um i was kind of wondering if we shouldn't just bump both of them up to like they're both the early 20s i was something like in all actuality both of these games are like top 10 top 15 games like in their own right if i ranked stardew valley by myself i would have it top 10 100 yeah outer wilds for me is easily a top 10 game as well but we can't do that because michael would freak out you know wait hold hold on a minute i i got a voice here so hold on so we're just gonna be like michael you know you sit in the middle of this this here discord channel sometimes at least on my screen and i got these heads talking at me and they're talking to each other but they're talking through me i can

see them that the waves are going through me and they're both like you know what paul i know you hate this game but i want to draw a treaty for you and josh is like you know what you know what i i'm a negotiator i'm gonna we're gonna have to go three-way on this then because that means elite dangerous has got to come out 10 spots too because if everybody loves and hates some of these games that everybody gets their way i here's what i'll say about stardew valley and outer wilds we actually that was one of our first double header episodes that we did and paul picked stardew valley for me and i picked outer wilds for paul and we both hated those games. We did double headers. Yeah, we did. Yep.

And a while back because they're both a long time ago. Yeah. So the issue was, is that I never finished Stardew Valley and Paul never finished Outer Wilds. And I don't know what the ending of Stardew Valley is like, if it really matters or not. But Outer Wilds is a finely crafted experience to where you need to you need to kind of see what happens. It's like subnautica.

It's like, if you don't understand the whole story, you don't get the whole thing. And it was just a lot of contention because I don't like Stardew Valley. It's not my kind of game. But also, I get that 98% of people in the world love Stardew Valley. And it's kind of the same with Outer Wilds as well. So I'm kind of willing to say, Paul, I think maybe we both need to put our differences aside and get these games ranked where they probably deserve to be. Either that or we're both going to have to burn

Golden Buzzers for this. So am I standing in between at all of the Golden Buzzer? Well, you can't override a Golden Buzzer, but have you played either one of these, Michael? No, sure don't plan to actually just because i own outer wilds i will say i own outer wilds outer wilds i feel like you would absolutely love i feel like that is right up your alley paul i can understand doesn't like the the time loop nature of it like i get it but it's weird to me because paul loves an amazing story which outer wilds does put together later on yeah i had absolutely zero interest to continue in outer wilds i didn't care about the story yeah i i

played i think roughly half the game which i know it's not even very long but yeah it did not hold my attention really at all so yeah i think we just need to make a decision here what are we going to do because i think our listeners are getting bored. I can hear the snoozing on the other side. I would put both of these games in the teens, in my opinion. In the teens? In the teens. I mean, that's where they belong.

I just looked up Elite Dangerous, and it has like a 76% on Seabass. Yeah, it's because that game sucks. So maybe I don't have a... I was like, no, everybody loves that game. Except for you guys. I'm wrong. So, okay. I'll just drop out of the conversation. You guys just rock it out.

What about right under Terraria, Paul? Bump Risk of Rain down and put Stardew Valley and Outer Wilds right there? Back to back? Yeah. What's the order of the back to back? I'll give you Stardew Valley first. I'll give you Stardew Valley first. Okay. I would keep status quo on where they are right now. Stardew Valley's first, leave it first.

Yeah. This is the perfect example where I would rank Stardew Valley like number nine, and Josh would say like number 60. It would, yeah. And so we just had to stick it in the late 30s. And so now I think we'll just bump it up. We'll bump up Outer Wild wilds as well so these will now be numbers 18 and 19 recognizing amazing games for what they are even if they're not for certain

hosts all right so um i i agree with this if we move um if we move elite dangerous number 52 are you using your golden buzzer no i'm looking'm looking at the math here. And I know two of you guys hated it, and one of us loved it. And I did the math, and I said 78 divided by 3, which is 26, times 2 says 52. So we move it up two spots, and I win, and I get my way. It's two spots? That's what the show's all about. I give Michael a gratuitous two spots.

All right, two spots for Elite Dangerous. Boom. I had to give you four, Michael. I had to give you four, man. You should have shot a little bit higher. No, I had to give it. I had to give it to Michael. I'd have given you four, man. You should have shot a little bit higher, but I take now. I want to make it fair. I'll take my piece of the rake with that tip and I appreciate y'all.

So it's back to you then, Paul, because Michael just moved to lead danger. Or was that part of the three way deal? Yeah. You get off that. You get off that bench right now. I tried. All right. So, Michael, i think you get to nominate the next one here i have an opinion on this one i do i'm just looking through because i lost my train of thought because i think it was about elite dangerous um you know what just just just just

to do it just to do it and get this out of the way smash that golden buzzer all right what are we changing here michael we don't even have to talk about this josh is going to be pissed you'll agree with me completely paul weird west is going from 28 to 18 to 8 oh king that game was awesome wait a minute and i i messed up so bad when i made love to that game when i should have married that game the game's incredible i loved it everything about it's great i was upset about the repetitive nature of some of the side dungeon things but that's because i made the choice to do 36 of them when i didn't have to everything else about the game is great. Golden buzzer that up 10 spots.

Boom, and it's within the rules. There's not a dang thing you can do about it. That's very true. Not a thing we can do. Slight correction because I am trying to, in real time, update our leaderboard. Technically, Weird West went down to 30, so it will now go up to spot 20. I'll take it in the top 20 for now because I know we still got some show left. And I got to move one more game around that i really stand on but that's when it comes back

around to me because i'm really standing on this one you guys look great too so i know golden buzzer yeah paul you loved weird west too didn't you say that's one of your favorite games of the year so far it's my personal number one favorite game i liked it more than elden ring i absolutely did weird west yeah i just i messed up real bad because what brought it down a little bit was I was teetering, and I was like, you know, there was some repetitive stuff in it, and I made love to it when I should have married it. I am rectifying that situation because you know what? Sometimes us professionals, we admit when we're wrong.

I'm not saying that I was wrong. I'm just saying. I was going to say, are you admitting to that? Sometimes professionals admit they're wrong. But we moved it up. We rectified that situation. All right, Paul. Keep us flowing here.

All right, back to me. Let's see here. I had on my list to take care of Stardew Valley. We did that. We got Halo Infinite dropped down a little. I want to bring up No Man's Sky. I think it is now a borderline crime that we have No Man's Sky rated 32. Yes! I think that is way too low.

Paul, we are in sync, baby. How did that happen? I don't know. How have we been such bad custodians of the leaderboard review to let No Man's Sky fall into the 30s? I'm with you, man. It's just because better games kind of came in and knocked it down farther. That's probably true, but No Man's

Sky is by all accounts a phenomenal video game at this point. No Man's Sky or Nier Automata? Oh, No Man's Sky. No Man's Sky. Right. And that's one of those things. Nier Automata, we liked that game. It came in and bumped it down. That's one of those things is near automata we liked that game it came in

and bumped it down that's one of those things that just kind of bumped it down as we went no man's sky or forgotten city no man's sky yeah no man's sky i'd put no man's sky above things destiny 2 and lost ark demio as much as i love i'd put it above that too i i would i would bump it all the way up to 21 i don't know how you guys feel i'm actually okay with that i i had no lie i had no man's guy on my list said needs to move up a lot like legitimately which is even better the fact that paul and i are agreeing on all this stuff scares me a little bit right right michael michael be the voice of reason for me. I don't have any reason to object on this one. I'm with you, Paul.

I mean, I could put it at 20 even. Are we going to? No, we're not going to do that. My gold buzzer that came up there. It stays in the top 20. One below. Okay, okay. That makes sense.

We don't want Michael to quit. I'm out. All right. So no man's sky a respectable 21 that sounds a lot better than 32 i like it all right so that's it for me josh back to you all right i am gonna use no i don't want to use my golden buzzer yet um i like teasing it too in case you guys haven't noticed um paul you remember that game raft that we played a whole bunch of together that was really really fun at the time but wasn't

complete because they were only like done with like the first two thirds but now that game is actually finished and that game is one of the best like two-player co-op experiences that i think you can have if you like survival games. Because if you remember, you start off on the ocean on this little one-by-one raft thing. You're fighting off the stupid shark. You're throwing out your little hook to kind of catch things. And you think that's the game. And then the game takes you into all of these crazy directions where you start finding islands and yachts. And you start kind of putting this world together as you explore. And I just remember thinking, man, that was a really good game.

And to this day, when somebody's like, hey, I need a really fun co-op game to play with somebody, I instantly think of Raft. And I'm not saying the game's not without its flaws, but I feel like being down at 41 for such a finely crafted experience is a little bit criminal. And so I want to nominate that to move it up because that was back in the early access days. The game's finished now. And they have three or four chapters now too, which is crazy. So while we have not finished it, Raft is one of those games that I would go back to in a heartbeat if somebody was like,

let's play Raft together. Here's the funny thing is we've got four co-op games in a row it goes raft keep talking and nobody explodes operation tango and a way out so i think that was almost our thought process is raft is the best of those co-ops and so we kind of kept them together but i am with you that i think raft outpaces those other games by a fair amount that you could leapfrog a couple others. Uh, I think it could very well hop over shovel night, vermin tied to and killing floor too.

I don't know that I would necessarily want to put it any higher, but I think we could definitely bump it up at least a couple slots. So you'd rather play tribes of Midgard over raft. And I know you're not a big tribes fan, absolutely i love i'll take it i'll take it moving it up some is great it's it's a little known game but one of the reasons i bring it up is because for people listening check out raft man that game is that's a game that like if your wife's not a really big gamer that she would probably really enjoy playing with you you know what i mean because the mechanics are simple but it's a very well done game the cooperative nature of it is great and i just i love where they take you in the world because it's not where you think

they're going to take you when you start playing yeah i haven't played raft but i have watched about 20 hours of streaming on it because i used to watch a streamer on twitch and he no longer streams which may be really sad but he played raft for like three days in a row and i was i was enthralled by it and wanted to play it it's like it's a really good it's a very well done game so i'll agree just because i've seen the things you're talking about it's sweet okay yeah it's it's a very like charming quaint game that has a really interesting story yeah it's like a mystery that you're piecing together yep all right so we're gonna leapfrog it and we're gonna put it between far cry 5 and killing floor 2 is that the plan that's good okay number 39 i think that's fair yep all right i think we are

now back to michael i almost used the golden buzzer on this game in a very negative way and then i realized i don't have to do that because y'all are going to agree with me like crazy. This game is coming down, and it's definitely coming down out of the top 30, which currently I believe it still sits in the top 30. And this is one of those recency biased games because I will tell you the first probably 50 or 60 hours of this game. I loved it. It was all about it. And then I started thinking about it more lately, and I realized the end game of this

game was absolutely terrible and if you don't pay tens of thousands of dollars to the company that developed this game you're never gonna get anywhere and it's sad because we called this game the be all say all will it be the end of mmos and i think it might be because it did every sin you can do to an MMO by making it pay to win. That game's Lost Ark. It's coming down, and it's coming way down because the end of that game was terrible, and it was a lot of fun. Don't get me wrong. We played with friends. When I look back on that game, I have the exact opposite of how I feel about Elite Dangerous. Elite Dangerous makes my heart happy, and I smile, And I'm like, I did not waste a moment. I want to play more of that game.

When I look back at Lost Ark, I'm like, I had a lot of fun with friends, but I think I wasted a lot of time. A lot of time on that game. Just to get to the end and say, I stopped playing abruptly one day and I was done with it and I'll never go back because you've got to shell out cash. I think that's totally fair. I think it deserves to get dropped. When we did the deep dive, we had basically just reached end game. It was before we knew how bad it was going to get.

And I kept going for like an extra two months. Yeah, you went definitely longer than me and Josh. But also Amazon just kind of forced them to bungle the release of additional content. So they were kind of putting the release expansion type stuff in light speed mode for no real apparent reason. There were issues with gearing to do the end game. I'm kind of shocked. But according to Steam charts, which I know is not completely accurate, but they're saying that more than 200,000 players are on right now.

So it's still actually pretty darn popular. Is that more or less than World of Warcraft, which has been out for like 20,000 years at this point? I don't know that you can get reliable info on Warcraft, but I'm sure it's more than 200,000. Well, online right now, maybe not. I don't know. I'm with you, Michael. Lost Ark did some things very, very well. When I think of Lost Ark, though, my brain kind of almost defaults to Diablo,

in the sense that the combat in Lost Ark is what really made it stand out to me. Yeah. The story and the mechanics and the MMO functions, not so much. Do you know what I mean? So for an action RPG, i think the game's a lot of fun for an mmo i don't think it's so much fun and and i'm with you and that they really really messed up the end game in that man it's a crime what they did with that um so i'm with you but where where do you want to move it down because i do think lost ark has some redeeming qualities for people the fact that it's free and you can just play it like an action RPG is great. And then quit. Right. Now, if you're playing it as an MMO and you say, well, man, I want end game content, which I know I did want.

Like that was the thing is I raced through all of the story and all that stuff because I wanted to see what rating in the end game was. And I got a of it which was nice but we were done with it right about the time that you we were hitting that paywall and so i could i could catch a glimpse of it and see what was coming but i didn't have to go through that and like the massive frustrations like you had yeah so my issue with the end game was i hit that paywall pretty hard and i gotta be honest i've been watching a little bit of breaking bad lately probably because these two clowns got really into it there's an episode where walt goes out with the dodge challenger and he goes nuts yeah and then he high centers it and he puts a piece of paper in the gas tank he lights it on fire and he blows up the car that's exactly what i did to lost ark

i had a blast for a short amount of time i was doing wheelies and donuts and then i hit that paywall i high centered the car and i said forget this game um i would say let's just put it down somewhere around 30 because there's a lot of redeeming qualities like you said it's really a good action rpg but as far as the forcing you to play with other players on an mmo like front like being an mmo it didn't feel like an mmo it feels like an action rpg in fact you don't even have to i don't think you guys even noticed that there was the the abyssal raids or whatever it is where you fight the one monster for like 20 minutes you can go solo it if you want to because it scales so if you don't have all four people it's 25 is hard if you go by yourself you don't have to play with a

group and i think that's kind of a sin so i want to bring it out at least 30 i'm good with that i think that's a fair spot for it i was gonna ask would you rather play lost ark or v rising oh that's a bad question i really did not love v rising i liked v rising so i think i'd rather play v rising i feel like they're kind of close they are very close to each other to be honest and v rising we currently have at 34 so michael was kind of initially thinking maybe at least down to 30 i was kind of thinking maybe even as low as 35 to put it below v rising and broforce and deep rock galactic but keeping it above among us i think that's the perfect spot you think that's a good spot okay there you go is that the first one that all three of us just kind of agreed immediately?

I think so. And I feel bad dropping it because I had a lot of fun. But for an MMO, you want that staying power. You want to be able to go back to it and play it. I will never play that game again. I won't either. I won't either. It breaks my heart because I really wanted to.

I'm ready for that next MMO. I would go back and that guild wars 2 instead give me ashes of creation that's the next mmo i've got my eyes set on hot take i don't think it's ever gonna go anywhere you think it's gonna be like star citizen where it just never actually gets finished yes my son asked me the other day like what's going on with ashes of creation i'm like oh my goodness like i i kind of forgot yeah that it's out there until it got brought up, but yeah, I don't know, man.

I think the MMO formula might be gone. That's my guess for ashes of creation. 2025. Yeah. You might be right. If not, then I think you're right. And that it's just going to be that game that never finishes being

developed. And they just keep working people in by selling high end stuff and the promise of a great game. It very well might. right paul all right we'll lock that one in all right we're up to me we're to you you know what i don't think michael's played it i know josh doesn't like it i'm just gonna use that golden buzzer let's hit it now i know which one this is all right what do you think it is go ahead and move rim world up paul yeah rim world i believe if i'm remembering right it's like the third highest rated game

on steam and we've got it all the way freaking down at number but where is it it's like 47 all right that is criminally low rimworld is one of my all-time favorite games we're gonna go ahead and bump that one up a full 10 and i am going to put it now at between hollow knight and tribes of midgard so rimworld will now be rated number, which I think at least we're moving in the right direction. Well, we can't argue because it's a gold buzzer. Nobody argues. I knew what it was for Paul right away. That's been the

one that's probably bothered me the most, even a little more than Stardew Valley because it was so low. I'll tell you what the issue with RimWorld was is that I don't think I got it. That's a game that we were playing on single speed, and I think that's a game that you need to play on like four X speed because it doesn't change the game, but your progression moves a lot faster that way. So I feel like when, when I was playing it and we were playing it together, we were playing it in like slow motion.

And I think that's why a lot of it just didn't click for me, but I can see why people love that game so much. So, you you know this is where i do uh miss todd a little bit because the main reason that we rated it low because todd and i absolutely loved rimworld but that's when we were rating all games based on the multiplayer experience yeah and rimworld does not play very well multiplayer you have to run mods to do it that way it plays far better as a single player single player. This game is way higher, but at least I can bump it up 10 spots here for 37.

Yeah, I should have tried to use the golden buzzer to remove all of Todd's previous influence and insert my own feelings. And by the way, I did think about using my golden buzzer on the second leaderboard that people don't know about if they don't scroll down far enough. What second it says that waffles is over. It says that waffles are over

pancakes and that is a sin. But since I can't move in the top 10 and really moving number two to number one, putting pancakes above waffles where it belongs, would have been not allowed. I added that second leaderboard a long time ago and this is what happens when you guys don't have

the password to update the website. That's my golden buzzer. Because both of us know. Both of us know. Yeah, he's like developer rights. All right. I just schooled you. Let's speed this up a little bit here,

because there's a couple other games that I want to talk about. I know I've teased this a lot, but Paul, hit that buzzer for sure this time. All right. The reason that I'm picking this game is because I got to move a couple of the other games up and down like I wanted to, but this game stands out to me. My brain keeps remembering this game, and that tells me something. Anytime that I start to remember a game more and more fondly, the longer I've gone without playing it. 12 minutes? No. Oh, man.

I thought you were going to nail it, Paul. And then I was like, my brain literally just hit the brakes. It was like, ah! Like, no! Not 12 minutes. You hated that game so much. Oh, I really did. Because I was so amped for that game.

But I'm picking Hollow Knight. Hollow Knight is a masterpiece of a crafted game. And I'll be honest, I'm okay with Metroidvanias. They're not my favorite genre. But the longer I go without playing Hollow Knight, the more I remember the music, the more I remember the atmosphere, the more I remember just the feeling of that game. I see why people put Hollow Knight in the... I mean, I think it's, again, one of those most highly rated games ever made. It's incredible.

And so I'm using my golden buzzer on it. I'm going to bump it all the way up to 26 because Hollow Knight stands out to me. I would actually go back and play Hollow Knight. That is the biggest compliment that I can give to a game that I have played once and then not played because my brain does not work that way. And Hollow Knight, I actually would be tempted to reinstall and try to play. I'm super pumped for Silksong when it comes out. And that just keeps pointing me towards this game is ranked too low for me. I will never play it again, but you would have had to use the Golden Buzzer to get it that high. Oh, I know.

Having it jump Resident Evil Village is the one that's hard for me to swallow. I don't think many people would argue, though. People that have played Hollow Knight generally love Hollow Knight. For me, Castlevania Symphony of the Night has just ruined all Metroidvanias. Yeah, but see, that's you. All other Metroidvanias are just so much worse. But I have not played a Metroidvania that I enjoyed other than Hollow Knight in decades,

to be honest, because I don't remember playing Castlevania. You know what I mean? I like the Symphony of the Night. I don't know that I actually ever played it. I played the old, old school Castlevania when the series first came out. So for me, Hollow Knight was that like,

oh my goodness, look how good this genre can be at that point. And I loved it. Yeah, I really enjoyed that game. All right, well, fair enough. We will lock it in. Hollow Knight now being number 26. Yeah.

I think that was the last game that you guys did before i came on the show aside from god of war but i was kind of on the show i just kind of wasn't yeah yeah you came on for one episode and then you were missing and then we brought you back but everyone's like he got fired after one episode what happened i happened oh good old hollow knight all right well you know we are starting to run a little short on time here, but Michael, we are back to you. I propose to move up Elite Dangerous as far as I can get it to go up. You already moved it up, too.

It is number 52 now. All right, Paul, you're up. I know. I legitimately, like, looking at the list, I'm satisfied. So I actually can pass the baton over to Paul. I literally just wanted to bring up Elite Danger dangerous again because it's criminally low. And that's all I have to say about that. Paul, what's your day?

So out of all the games I jotted down as being out of place, I only have one that I think is far too low. I don't know that I'm going to get anywhere with Josh on this, but maybe Michael played it back in the day. Left 4 Dead 2. Again, one maybe Michael played it back in the day. Left 4 Dead 2. Again, one of the highest rated games of all time. And the mods are so good for it. I could not get Josh and Todd to play some of the downloaded stuff I did. There are like full-blown Star Wars mods to play Left 4 Dead 2.

I still think it plays great today. 71 is so low. We have it in the bottom seven of all time. It's, you know, I'll tell you why. Because that game, what that game created a genre, basically, you know what I mean? That has been copied many, many Vermintide. What's the Bloodborne? Not Bloodborne, Back 4borne. Back for Blood. Back for Blood. Right. There's been so many games

that have copied the Left 4 Dead genre. It was absolutely game-changing, ha, as far as what it did for a genre. The problem is that it does not hold up, man. So it's like, are we giving it credit for being great once upon

a time? Because nowadays, it's like are we giving it credit for being great once upon a time because nowadays nowadays it's just not good but if you mod it paul is saying it is good yeah but i mean if i if i asked you to play escape from tarkov you're more likely to say yes to that i am actually i probably am to be honest i really not have a lot of left for dead dude i liked left for dead i actually considered saving my golden buzzer for left for dead but then i'm like oh like 70s into the 60s who cares about that i'm not gonna waste well michael's on your side so i i just don't like the game but if you and michael want to move it up a couple i i will defer to your collective agreement i thought it was fun i really did um and i i had a lot i had a lot more fun with that

game than i had with a lot of the games that are down here like i look at it sitting below sea of thieves and i really oh actually it's just above but still i think i think this separation between those two games is a lot more than it should be but that's me also not liking sea of thieves and i thought the left for dead had some left for dead two had some fun moments of it and i mean i did play it like a decade ago so mine's a nostalgia review but i'm fine with moving it up maybe just a couple spots uh i don't feel that strongly i do think it's a good game but i don't know we don't need to quibble over one or two spots i don't really care about that um i do have hey before before you go in here it's real fast i'm just wondering since i since i i renounced my time back to the group

why is pub g solo because it sucks now cheaters yeah okay oh that's right it was amazing back in the day amazing back in the dude like three four years ago if you'd said what's the number one game we we all would have picked pub g we would have been like greatest game ever like honestly we played that game so much but it just slowly started to decline it never got unbuggy hackers started just infiltrating it it really became just a frustrating experience after a while and they never did anything with it and it just slow

I think we've moved pub G down probably that in the cycle I think two games that we've just consistently bumped down lower and lower and lower sank like a stone yeah all right I just that was the only battle I ever played and I was like this game's a lot of fun I actually liked it, not liking shooters.

And I'm like, why is it so low? But that totally makes sense that it's an absolute trash heap. Now go ahead. Josh, I'm pretty happy with the leaderboard. But for my last ditch effort, I want to do a two for one. And I want to bump Rainbow Six Siege and Black Ops Cold War down below Resident Evil Village and Deep Rock Galactic. Approved. What is happening?

Rainbow Six Siege, I feel like it technically runs so well, and it does what it wants to do perfectly. It's just not my cup of tea. And I feel like early on I gave it more credit on its technical merits when it really comes down to brass tacks that game is so sweaty i don't find

it to be fun it's like valorant to me that's why dude i run great the same thing is like we have these sweaty games so low on our list and yet we have rainbow six siege so high on our list okay so for the sake of discussion guys i know that we've covered obviously for the listeners what a metroidvania was on previous episodes we've covered what the other one was for let's just get to what i'm saying uh what is a sweaty game? What does that mean? It's where you're trying so hard that you're sweating because you're putting your all into it. You're full focus, your full effort, all of your energy. You're literally sweating because the game is difficult

and you care so much to win. There's no chill. There's no chill at all. I completely agree. And I would murder games like that. I do not like games like that. Well, that's why we put Valorant and Tarkov so low because there's no chill in those games.

It is full on, like, just 100% effort to even make the game really work. And it's just, that's not fun for a lot of things. And it's just, that's why we call them sweaty. Thank you for covering that for the listeners, of course. It's another thing too. It's kind of an insult where if you're just getting wrecked by somebody,

it's kind of like your one defense where you're just, oh, you're so sweaty, man. Yeah. Right. So if you're perspiring more than if you're playing Dance Dance Revolution, which, by the way, that's the biggest criminal act, because that game's not on our list. That's not true.

But that makes sense. Okay, cool. Those were the last two for me. So, dude, I'm happy with the leaderboard. Anybody else got something that's bugging them at this point? Oh, sure. We could be really dangerous at about 50 spots. Other than that?

Yeah. Other than that, I'm happy. I'm feeling pretty good. I think one of our biggest issues was the 20s. The 20s, I'm looking at the list now, and 1 through 20, to me, is perfect now. Yeah. I feel like anything in the top 24 are absolutely dynamite games that I would recommend to anybody. After that, I think it's still really good games.

It comes down a little bit more to personal preference. But I feel like we've got a really, really solid top 24 in particular. And yes, I'm leaving Destiny 2 on the outside of that. No, I was going to say, we can fix that right now by just swapping Destiny 2 and the Forgotten City. Then we have a solid top 25. I would do that. The top 25 is solid, and that sounds better. You want to do it?

I would rather have Forgotten City above Hollow Knight. So yeah, just swap those two. Oh, wait. I forgot where Hollow Knight is now. That's what Michael was saying. No. I was looking at the old, un wait. I forgot where Hollow Knight is now. That's what Michael was saying. No. I was looking at the old un-updated list with Destiny 2 right there. Yeah, me too.

I'm a jerk. I'm going to scratch that. Not moving into Hollow Knight. So you want to keep Destiny 2 above Hollow Knight and Forgotten City? No, Destiny 2 needs to be below both of them. Then just, yeah. Drop Destiny 2 below.

Yeah, so Hollow Knight rounds out the top 25 and we have a solid top 25 the beauty of this so everybody that's still listening the three of you out there um yeah the reason that we do this from time to time is because now when we rank games when we as we play these new deep dives there's always been that game or two that really throws things off where it's like man i would rank would rank it here, but no man's sky is there. And I'm having a hard time saying that this game's better than no man's sky, but no man's sky was at 30. And so we have to clean up the leaderboard from time to time so

that as we play these new games and rank them, we actually have a much better base to rank off of, I guess. Yeah. And we would do this without telling you, but obviously, like I said earlier, we're consummate professionals and we would never this without telling you, but obviously, like I said earlier, we're consummate professionals and we would never do something behind your back just in case you want to go back and listen to the 197 episodes we've done before this and go back and make sure they

were keeping us honest. Lots of episodes, guys. Just keep... We got more. Wait, what episode are we on, by the way? I'd have to look it up. It's a lot. Because we need to have a celebration when we hit a big milestone, don't we? We do. But the problem is, it depends on if you count the Quick Take episodes now or not. Because those are technically episodes that we've done, but have not been completely released yet.

It gets really fuzzy. Nobody knows. That's the answer. I believe we have done 282 episodes. That's the official number. Wow. All right. official number. Wow. All right. So another couple hundred will be close to 500.

That'll be a first milestone with our party. Very nice. All right. Well, I think this wraps up our show for today. So please return and join us on Thursday when we break down recent gaming news. And then a week from today, we will be doing a deep dive on fallout new vegas which was chosen by legendary patreon supporter glapsadir can't wait for that episode it's gonna be great and as a reminder please consider supporting us on patreon that's at multiplayer squad.com

and come say hello on socials you can find us on instagram and twitter at multiplayer pod and we just want to thank everybody for listening to this very long leaderboard review. I think we've covered everything. We good to close the show out, boys? I feel so much better about the leaderboard now. I'm just going to stare at it lovingly for a little while. Yeah. I might print it off tonight and use that sheet of paper as like a little tiny blanket

or like a bib blanket while I eat my dinner. So disrespecting the leaderboard by dribbling on it. I got you. I got you. Loving it. paper as like a little tiny blanket or like a bib blanket while I eat my dinner. So just disrespecting the leaderboard by dribbling on it. I got you. I got you. Loving it. I'll only dribble on the games that are between number one and 51 above. I won't even talk about it. Anyways, thanks everyone for listening to

our absolute professionalism. Cheers all. Happy gaming, everybody. See you, everybody. happy gaming everybody see you everybody