Video Gamers Podcast - Individual Top 10 Games - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: December 29, 2022

Gaming hosts Michael, Josh and Paul may be on a beach in Fiji, or simply taking a holiday break, but we’re bringing you some of our best gaming episodes ever. Our Individual Top 10 Video Game lists of all time. With a special intro by your favorite gaming hosts, we chat what we’d change and what we wouldn’t before diving into this gaming classic. Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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. What's going on fellow gamers? This is Paul here. As always, I'm joined with Michael and Josh. We are currently in the middle

of our Christmas break to spend time with our families and we will be back with fully new episodes starting January 9th. But we have chosen a couple of our favorite episodes to re-release along with these introductions. So this one here is a bonus round episode where all three of us broke down our top 10 favorite games of all time. It is actually the very first episode that Michael recorded with us

after he joined us permanently. He had been a guest host a few times before. And I remember that we loved the idea of doing this with michael for his first episode on because it kind of just lets everyone know what kind of gamer we all are and that's a great introduction here with michael so as you guys uh you know kind of reflect back on this episode i was kind of curious to know if there were maybe any changes to your list that you would make. Initially, Michael submitted a list that just said Myst 10 times. I told him that we needed a little bit more diversity.

But Michael, as you reflect back on this episode, what do you want the people to know? Yeah, there's like 10 re-releases of Myst. So they each counted. True story. Man, this is great to look back because you know we recorded this episode what 10 months ago and this list is still pretty solid for me like i i don't know if i can spoil or not my number one game was oblivion it's still oblivion i think but i'm i think that's just not now like that game is impossible to play now to the level that we played back then because it's very dated and so forth um

i think if i were to take this list and change a few things around though i think that my nostalgia pick of organ trail 1992 as much as it warmed my heart to think of that game and put it on this list would fall off because i would have to make room for discoliseum and i would have to make room for cyberpunk those two games have to be on this list for me they are incredible games i didn't have the opportunity to play them before we deep dove them on the show and so a couple would fall off um ironically enough elite dangerous might go up on this list a little bit i have it at number eight and it's it's so crazy that you know uh halfway through this this year we did a deep dive on this y'all hated it like hate is some people say hate's a strong word like

like you know your kindergarten teachers like hate's too strong a word you can't use that it's like no hate's not strong enough a word for how you guys feel about this game and love is not strong enough a word for how i feel about this game so i think that'd go up a little bit but the rest of the games are pretty solid i think horizon zero dawn will come down just a little bit to make room for probably cyberpunk and um to school ecm and that's really about it like it's it's a good list and i'm happy that i made it i'd like to do this episode again sometime too just to see how it all falls in in place yeah what about you josh how do you feel about your list now looking back at it 10 months later i'm feeling pretty darn good to be honest um i think we actually say in this episode and if we don't

i'm saying it now that you know a top 10 list is probably going to fluctuate anytime you get a list of like hey what's your top this or your top that i feel like it's always going to shift a little bit just kind of you know depending on your mood or what you've played recently and stuff like that i will say that we did this before we did the cyberpunk 2077 deep dive again um because it was it had been two years since the release of cyberpunk 2077 that game would absolutely make my top 10 list at this point oh nice cyberpunk is now it was not back then but now is honestly a marvel to me and how beautiful that game is it's technologically impressive the story is super good it takes so many different elements and just combines them in such a memorable way

so i think it actually would make my top 10 i would probably drop street fighter or super mario 64 off of there um a little bit of nostalgia on some of these older games michael mentioned disco elysium phenomenal game i don't know that it would make my list i think there's a little bit of nostalgia on some of these older games. Michael mentioned Disco Elysium. Phenomenal game. I don't know that it would make my list. I think there's a little bit of recency bias, you know, having played that this year. Um, but otherwise I'm feeling pretty good, man. I'm looking over all these and I'm just kind of checking.

I'm like, yep, yep, yep. But I think Cyberpunk needs to be on there for me. Yeah. I remember I did not have any real strategy when I made my list. I just started listing my favorite games and very quickly realized almost all of them were open world RPGs. I think there's only one or two that are not. And as I look at my list, the only thing that I would change at this point, I would take off Super Mario World. I really wanted a Mario game on my list, and I put it on there.

I realize now, in hindsight, that was a mistake. That game should fall off my list, and The Last of Us Part 1 absolutely needs to be in my top 10. I played it again this year. It was the first time in a while, and the first 20 minutes of The Last of Us are my all-time favorite 20 minutes in a video game. It is indescribable how good the opening of The Last of Us is. So I went through that game with my wife this year. I'd put that in, drop off Super Mario World. Otherwise, I'm still really happy about my list.

Cyberpunk's on there as well, Josh. We got a little bit of overlap there. All three of us, we have The Witcher 3 on there, so you're going to hear us talk a lot about that also. And yeah, I think that's all that we really need here as far as introduction goes. I do have to ask, Michael, before you hit that music, you've played God of War 2018 recently,

and you claimed it was one of the best games you've ever played. Would it make your top 10 list? I think it probably would. Okay, I was just curious because you know again recency bias i get that yeah you just got done playing it but looking at your list you don't have god of war on there anywhere so i was just curious like if you would now put it on your list i think so it's it's tough to say if recency bias has a play in this or not but this this year it's possible that cyberpunk uh disco lesion and god of

war would all like upset my list and my list has a lot of old games on it too which is crazy like there's a lot of really old games golden eye 007 oblivion mist are my top three none of those games look good now you know what i mean oregon trail needs to die of dysentery definitely needs to go yeah and then so when you talked about making your list of just listing a top, you know, like long list all the games, I did that, but I also kind of added in some categories.

I think I talk about it in the show, like this is my nostalgia pick, like I has to be here because of this. I think it'd be hard for God of War 2018 to not make the list. That being said, Ragnarok is probably going to follow up in the top 20,

because that game was amazing um but not nearly as prolific as god of war 2018 gotcha all right well let's go ahead and get this one started hello friends welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are a group of dads who love gaming and we get together and release two episodes every week where we deep dive individual games, or we break down recent gaming news, or we tackle a particular question or subject about gaming. Today we are going to be breaking down our individual top 10 games of all time. Before we get into that, I would like to remind you all to please rate our podcast five

stars on Apple and Spotify. Leave us a written review on Apple and come check out our Patreon page at MultiplayerSquad.com. Our independent podcast is funded entirely by our listeners and you can help support our shows they're starting at five dollars a month i am your host paul and joining me today he's definitely in my top 10 podcast co-hosts it's josh uh am i in the top five paul you are in the top five i'm. All right, I'm good. I'm not a hard man to please. And then we have a very special announcement. We have a third person on the show.

Now, you've heard him before. He was a guest host on previous episodes like Character You'd Most Like to Have a Beer With, best RPG of all time, best game set in space of all time. But what's extra exciting about today is that he is no longer a guest host. He is the permanent co-host of the show. Moving forward. It's Michael. Holy cow. You know how hard it was for me to not say a word during the intro not spoil that

with it i mean everyone knows the nasally voice i have something that i have to say real fast um which of course in my native tongue means i'm so happy to be here thank you so much guys i i'm so gracious to be a part of this family and holy cow i did it i want this show all those all those months of patreon pledges finally paid off for you, Michael. See that? Everyone be an Epic supporter. That's all you got to do. That's not...

Yeah. Oh, man. We are so excited to have you here, Michael. You know, the people demanded that we make you the third co-host. And who are we to say no? You know, we were more than happy to bring you on. People were calling for it. We love having a third person to be able to bounce ideas off of.

And so if this is anyone's first episode, this is kind of a perfect topic because, Michael, now that you're a permanent co-host, we get to hear your individual top 10 games of all time. This is going to let us all know what kind of gamer you are. This is like a true test to see what kind of games you're into. Yeah, it's going to be really interesting because if you've listened to previous episodes, you know that I'm not a big fan of FPS, but I did surprise myself a little bit on this list. So stay tuned, listen to the whole episode,

and maybe you'll see one or two showing up in there a little bit. I also want to know what kind of gamer Michael is to see if we've made the right decision or not. Josh, I'm a bad one. I'm terrible at most games. Hey, anything that makes me look better is fine by me. All of my games are designed for three or four-year-olds. It's just games where you have two buttons, you push them in sequential order, and I do very well. Yay me. There's nothing wrong with that, even if that were the case, even though I know you are joking.

All right. So this is a really exciting bonus round idea. So a couple of weeks ago, Josh and I covered in one of our This Week in Gaming episodes that IGN released their top 100 games of all time. Now, that is the list that they update every couple of years because that is based on their current staff. And we talked a little bit about what games we thought were kind of bananas showing up on that list, talking about what we thought. And one of our listeners submitted questions

came in from Frodo Garfield, who said, hey, I was listening to the IGN top 100 games of all time episode, and I was wondering what are your guys' individual top 10 games? So we all decided to come up with our own top 10. We have not shared very much. The only thing that we have shared with one another are simply our top threes. That way, if we do have any overlap, we will hold off and talk about those games at the end. So basically what we're going to do is we're just going to start going around. We're going to start at our number tens. If anyone has a game that shows up on their list, we'll pipe up and share that. And then we'll talk about the game for a little bit. And we're

just going to whittle it down until we all cover our top three games. Sound good to you guys? You excited for this? I am very excited. This was also, this was super hard. So Frodo Garfield, you gave us a ton of homework, man. I'm the kind of person where I generally wing things. I struggled so hard with this list.

You know, I know Michael really struggled with it also. Michael freely told us who his favorite child was and yet could not make his list of top 10 favorite games. Michael literally told us five seconds before recording that he was scratching his number 10 and replacing it with another game. That's true. So this is very difficult, I think, especially for Mike. It was really hard. I had 62 games that, like, that was my short list. That was the list that I came up with of, like, these are all in my top 10, right? And the funniest thing is, you know when you just, like, nonchalantly talk movies or music and you're like, oh man,

yeah, Shawshank Redemption, definitely my top and I'm like how many times have I said that for 62 different video games I probably have because it this was hard yeah yes that I was that's the same thing I had as my list started off I didn't go as crazy as 62 uh I went like 20 and then I was constantly shuffling games in and out and then there were games where I was like, I absolutely love this game, but is it in my top 10? And then I'd be like, yeah, it is. It's definitely. And then I go, oh, no, it's not really a top 10 of all time game. It's just a really great video game.

Yeah. So I don't know. Did you struggle, Paul? I feel like Paul would just be like, oh, I always know my top 10 games. My short list was 16, and I was pretty easily able to whittle off like three or four of them. I really just struggled a little bit with that like 9 to 12 range. I did keep making fun of you guys because I think you each messaged me five or six times throughout the day saying, I don't know how I'm going to make this top this top 10 list and meanwhile mine's just been sitting on my desktop for like the last four days that doesn't surprise me no mine was like the whole weekend um plus and how did you guys make your list i literally went through my steam library i went through my playstation library i went through

my xbox game pass and then i just thought of everything from before that and just said, this one goes on there. This one goes on there. And that's what 62 was. That is exactly what I did, except I also consulted two or three lists online of like the top 100 games just to make sure there was nothing that I rented or borrowed from a friend and then kind of whittled it all down. Now, I know I don't know about you guys when i looked at my top 10 i definitely saw some patterns and i was like oh okay there's very clearly one type of game that i really like so i don't know if you guys noticed any patterns in yours but seven out of my top 10 are actually open world rpgs so apparently if you have an open world rpg there's

a really good chance it's going to make my list and eight out of my top 10 are also games that really put a premium on making choices so a lot of my games give you the ability to make a choice one way or another and it affects the rest of the game so apparently for me that's exactly what i'm into yeah what about you josh i was gonna say i'm looking at my list and i'm going oh do i have an a theme but it is 100 rpg elements uh open world um i do have a lot of like competitive well not a lot but i do have some competitive nature games on mine. I love competition. I like the ability to trash talk people and stuff like that. So yeah, that's actually almost like a 50-50 split on my list. Interesting.

What about you, Michael? If you look at my list, I have five to eight open world, depending on how you view open world. So you'll see what I'm talking about when I actually go through the list. But it is kind of funny that you talk about that, Josh, because a couple that ranked really high on my list was because of that competitive nature. Actually, one in particular was just so much fun to play with friends and so much fun to just... I'll get to it later. No spoilers, right? We got to listen to the whole thing. But I did learn, though, about myself that I didn't want to play Nostalgia too much on this list because I had a lot of Nostalgia picks that were like, this was my favorite game for so long. And then I realized, hey, if I go back and play that game now,

is it really on the all time? So I was really careful to weed out not having six NES games in my top 10 or anything like that. Right. A little bit of mine's nostalgia. Like I will, I will preface it before we get into it, that I fully admit that a few of these games, if you played them today would not hold up, but for their time, they were one of the best video games of all time. You know what I mean? So that's why it's kind of like on my personal top 10 list, because it's like, I get, I'm not saying this is the top 10 game right now this is just through my vast gaming history what are some of the games that I would put in my top 10 yeah mine's I guess a little bit of both I chose games that I still love to play today and they are like my personal top 10 games that you could still play now.

But that does not mean that there aren't old games. I mean, I've got two games from the 90s that are in my list. So one last question, and then we'll start going through these because we're already very quickly running out of time. How many of your top 10 games coincided with the IGN Top 100? I had eight. And I was a little surprised by that, to be honest. Now, the top 100 on IGN gets the rankings completely wrong, in my opinion. But at least they do a good job of naming a lot of really, really good games. So for me, yeah, I had eight on that list. That kind of coincides with what you and I were saying when we talked about the list where we said, yeah, there's maybe

like five or five to eight games that don't belong on there at all. But for the most part, they got the right games. It almost just seemed kind of randomized in the order. Seven of mine are on the IGN list. Eight of Josh's. Actually, six of my games are in IGN's top 16. Oh, wow. Really? So I actually do coincide quite a bit with the IGN list. Michael, what about you? How many of yours are on the IGN list?

I'm really scared that my list is going to be trash because two of mine are on the list. It's good to have different types of games, you know? I don't think that means it's trash. I mean, I reserve the right to say they're trash later on, but I don't think they mean that they're trash up front. I was very vocal about my number one know, in the old days, in the past, when I wasn't a host on this very esteemed show, I was yelling in my car, like, why is that game not on the list? And my number one is not on the list. And I'm like, but that's dumb. IGN, I apologize if any of the listeners work for IGN.

I respect your list. And everyone's entitled to their opinion, even if it's wrong. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. It's a free country. You are free to be wrong, correct? All right. So let's just start breaking down our top tens.

Michael, since you are the newest guy here on the podcast, let's let you start. I'm also very curious to know what's on your list, what you got coming in at number 10. My number 10 is absolutely a nostalgia pick. And it was the pick that I had to say when I was in, I think, second or third grade, possibly all the way up to fourth or fifth grade. I played this at school on computer time. It was the 1992 version of The Oregon Trail on the Mac. Very nice. I remember playing that game, Ford in the River, a few too many times.

I got a little bit gutsy. And then, you know, Hunt and Bison and Buffalo. And everyone who's played that game in school that's around our age, or maybe a little bit younger or older, just knows, if you got a top 10, Oregon Trail's got a special place in my heart, and it belongs on mine. That game was so great because you could play it at school.

And they encouraged you to. You were learning. I wasn't learning anything. I was learning how not to afford a river. And all your friends would die of dysentery. Now, I literally just made an Oregon Trail joke to you, Michael, only about a week and a half ago because you recently moved back to Arizona.

You do live a pretty far drive away from my home. And I did text you and your wife, and I asked, how many extra pairs of clothing and how many wheel axles do I need to take with me? And are there any rivers that I need to ford? Yep, he did say that. On my way to your house. And actually, the funniest thing is, what got this on my list, that made me think about something, because I'm watching 1883 right now, which is a prequel to or whatever to Yellowstone.

And I'm like, this is like a really rough Oregon Trail. It's the same thing. And you got that in my head. So essentially, you manipulated my list and influenced a little bit. A little bit of Inception. Yep. All right, Josh, what you got coming in at number 10? I talked about loving competitive games. This one, this is a little bit of nostalgia,

but I think this game still holds up to this day. And that is Street Fighter 2. Coming in at number 10, I used to absolutely love fighting games. I have not played them in a long time. I feel like sadly, it's a genre that just is kind of dead. If you look up player counts on fighting games, it's like 600. It's ridiculous. They're not nearly as popular as they used to be. But I was an absolute wizard at Street Fighter II. the days when I would go to the arcade and you would challenge the guy that was at the machine and he winner stays loser pays right like that's the thing so you would go up against some guy that was kicking everybody else's butt you'd put your quarter in and you'd face off against him and if you won then he had to go to the back of the line and the next guy was up and that just kind of face off in the arcades with a crowd of people watching or just at my house when consoles started getting even more popular was absolutely incredible.

I miss those days so much, man. Fighting games, I really wish they were kind of more in the limelight at this point. And there's some great ones out there. That's not to say that they're completely dead. But I have so many fond memories of playing Street Fighter 2, whether it was at the arcade or with a group of buddies at the house. And just getting into that ultra competitive nature, talking trash to your buddy, that kind of stuff. It was phenomenal. Who was your character of choice, Josh? Initially, Ken. Because he was the guy that I was best with, but then I really got into Blanca, and Blanca would throw people off

because nobody really knew how to fight Blanca other than the little where he'd hunch over and do his electricity thing. And everybody knew to expect that, but if you could do a lot of the flips and the rolls and stuff, man, you could really catch people off guard. Josh, I'll give you a Buffalo nickel right now if you can give me a super solid, throaty, gutty Hadouken.

Hadouken! Ah! Hadouken! Tatsumatsu Senpuken! I love it. My favorite character in that game was Guile because I was terrible at it and you can butt mash the best with him. Yeah. I actually

played a lot of Guile myself. Now, Josh, is this your only fighting game on your top 10? It is, yep. Alright. Michael, I'm kind of curious to know, were you more of a Mortal Kombat person or a Street Fighter person? No, Street Fighter. Or Killer Instinct or Primal Rage? What was your fighting game of choice?

The only fighting game that I really played and really loved was Soul Calibur on the Dreamcast, and I was really good at it. Again, because I got to play Maxie, and everyone knows the button mash king plays Maxie. I'm terrible at those games. Maxie's the one with the two smaller swords? Yeah, the two nunchucks.

Oh, okay, that's right. Oh, Taki's the one I'm thinking of. Yeah, yeah. Oh, Taki. Oh, yes, yeah. But no, the only fighting game that I really got into was Soul Calibur. And not Soul Calibur 2 when they got Yoda and stuff.

That was cool, but I couldn't afford it. I was broke. I didn't buy that. Oh, how funny. Yeah, I was definitely more of a Mortal Kombat person. So I guess we all kind of had our own little niche. Yeah. All right.

Well, my number 10, I'm coming in with Candy Crush. Oh, my God. I'm just joking. I was like, wait a minute i know that paul likes mobile games so i was i was like i'm not surprised my top 10 are doodle jump words with friends no no wordle's making a strong case right now draw Draw me Drawful 2 or whatever it is. Oh, yeah. Good old Drawful. Yeah.

My number 10 is Super Mario World. So this is the one that's on the SNES. Good choice. I know that for a lot of people, they tend to have their favorite Mario game. For me, it either comes down to Super Mario World on Super or it's Mario 3 on the NES. Those are my two favorite Marios. I had to go with Super Mario World. I have gone through

it so many times on various Game Boys and on the Switch and everything else. I still love playing it. I love unlocking the top secret area in the ghost house. I still remember where all the secrets are. I love 100%ing

that game. And who doesn't love the Mario Cape where you get to fly for forever by pressing the back button i had to go super mario world it's a good choice isn't it crazy like that's gonna say something about this list that that's down at number 10 right yeah right yeah and i can't have it at number two of all time but i i have it on my top 10 and I'm guessing neither of you have it at all my short list when I got down from 62 to about 15 or 20 had Mario 3

and I had to axe it and I'm like there's no Mario game on my list, spoiler I know but I love your choice too that was a close second for me but I never owned an SNES, I played a Friends and so that's probably why it didn't mean as much to me I never owned one either but that's actually almost what made it more special, so that when I was older, I always bought it on all of my systems. That way I could play it.

All right, no dual answers quite yet. Michael, we're coming back around to you. What you got at number nine? I've got a game that absolutely no one's ever heard of and just to give you a little preface i'm gonna give you categories with these moving forward because um the way that i chose my top 10 i had to kind of i had to kind of do like hey what how am i gonna put these in here i can't i've got to get the 62 down to 10 so this is my best trying to pass time game and it's called the hunter call of the wild it's actually a hunting game um probably the most realistic of the hunting games that are out there. I've heard of this game. I've never played it, but I have heard of it.

I have. And on a few of these, I'm actually going to give you my Steam hours. I've got 323 hours in this game, mostly at work. My boss is actually listening. I'm totally kidding. I was really excited. I texted him and told him I was going to be full-time on the podcast um but um but no it's honestly the thing i like the most about it is that it's it's very realistic as far as like you get a lot more points like if you if you are to shoot an animal and you don't kill it

like humanely and i know the word humanely is really reserved for humans but you understand what i'm saying that you want to kill it in the most um you know respectful way to where you know it anyway it doesn't suffer but yeah the game rewards that like if you get a double long hit and you use the right ammo and you're not just running out there like you're not killing a squirrel with like you know a 50 caliber or anything like that you know like the game actually it's it's really precision it's hard you have to do a lot of waiting but what i like about it is that i will look down and all of a sudden like i've been playing this game for five hours and and I don't know where the time went.

It just passes time so quickly. Now, is this a VR? Do you have to have the laser gun? No. How do you actually go about shooting stuff? It's all mouse and keyboard, and it's all aiming. You can use controller, too. I use mouse and keyboard on mine.

It looks beautiful. It's very realistic looking. It's one of those games where if you're going to walk a mile, it's going to take you as long as it takes a human to walk a mile when you run it's loud and animals run away you've got to sneak everywhere you're going and it's i just love it it's it's so much fun everyone try it michael says he doesn't like first person shooters it's very much not a shooter because because the animals don't move if you do it right i don't have to like chase this guy who's bouncing around with a sword coming after me.

They're not shooting back either. Right, right, right. That's the only shooter I really play is Overwatch. That's because my guy has a big hammer and a shield. How funny. So yeah, Hunter Call of the Wild. I can't say I've played that, but I definitely played a lot of hunting games in arcades growing up. They were always a lot of fun. in arcades growing up nice they were always

a lot of fun yeah all right all right josh what you got at nine you mentioned mario so i hey coming in at my number nine is a mario game and that is super mario 64 to this day one of my favorite mario games ever now it probably doesn't hold up. Those polygon counts are real low. But this was one of the first... It might have been the first 3D Mario game. And part of this is nostalgia for me because I remember my wife and I playing this game together. And we were so engrossed in this game. We played it from start to finish. We collected every star. I think it's one of the few games that we actually did the 100% completion thing on.

But I just remember being so impressed with the fact that you could find all of these hidden areas. You could unlock things. You could do things backwards. You had to go through this one painting backwards to get into it. So there were these little puzzles that were involved. There were the races against the penguins. It just had a little bit of something of like of everything.

And it still sticks out in my mind. Part of that is, is that, you know, again, I got to play it with my wife. She's not much of a gamer, but she does like some games, and she absolutely loved this game. But I think it was pretty groundbreaking at the time as well. Oh, yeah. I mean, absolutely. One of my favorite things is that the levels were so replayable because it would give you a different challenge. And then when you completed it, they would give you the next harder challenge, and you would have to jump back into the picture frame and do it again and i remember that game was actually also kind of smart like i

remember in the first level you would have to race the koopa troopa but if you cheated it wouldn't count as a win and they would tell you like no you cheated you got to do this the real way and i always thought that was really it's it felt very smart for all the way back then. Because you're talking, I don't know, whenever it came out, 1996 or whatever. It's been a minute, that's for sure. But yeah, I just, I loved that game so much. I don't know that I could sit down and play that game today. I think I'd probably get bored or something like that. But back in the day, it was just phenomenal.

I think there was an awful lot to love about it for sure i think that's one of those games that every single time you know a couple years ago that big craze was the mini nes and the mini snes and you get it has all the games on you plug it in for like 200 bucks to your tv and you play it that was one of those games that i was like man if i got this i can play that game on my tv now and i just never i never bought into it but that was one of those games that got me there yeah yeah i i think mario 64 holds up beautifully well you can actually play it for free in browser and it's pretty awesome i mean i have not tried playing it in my i just i think it like i'm hesitant to try to recapture that moment so i'll just keep the i'll keep the great memories because I worry that if I actually try to replay it, I'd kind of go like, oh, this game's not as good as I remember.

No, and I feel like with those games, I feel like that's kind of the time period in gaming where the older classic games have actually aged better. Like Mario 3 and Super Mario World are easier to play now because, you know, it's that 8-bit, 16-bit thing. When games started going 3D, you watch it now and you're like, it just doesn't look good. It's like early CGI. It just takes you out of all of it completely. Whereas the older classics, you're like, okay, I'm watching Claymation. I'm happy with that rancor from Return of the Jedi. But once, you know, Tron came out, you start seeing a bunch of cg stuff it doesn't age well that i kind of went in circles there but you understand where i'm going yeah you're 100 right like already being well established within the 2d platformer that it it's not like realistic graphics either so it still holds up fine you

play a game like celeste which just came out a couple years ago, and it looks exactly like Mario 1 or like one of those early Mario games. Yeah, it still holds up much better than the 3D ones. All right. So my number nine is in one of your guys' top three. So we'll hold off on that, and I'll reveal what that is later when that pops back up. I like that you've done that, actually. That's really cool. That's a good idea. Yeah, because I don't want to burn this one now if it's in Josh's top three, for example,

which this one is. So we'll hold off and we'll talk about it later. I'm just glad it's in your top 10, Paul. That still makes me happy. Exactly. I mean, these are the top of the top, right? I think there's going to be a couple that multiple of us have and this is one that i i know for sure is going to pop up with josh

maybe with michael i don't know if he's played it all right michael coming back to you number eight what you got hey guys you know we've done so well we've only got 24 games left um wait eight times three is 24 right okay my math is minus. Minus a couple, yeah, yeah. All right, so this game is the I tried to make it number one category because I literally put this at number one and was like, stay there, please stay there. Don't come down.

And I'm like, oh, this one beats it. It's coming down, it's number two, stay at number two. And we just talked about this a couple weeks ago. It's Elite Dangerous. I love that game so much. Now that we've talked about it, it's funny because if Lost ark didn't come out last week i have like six friends that were like hey listen to the episode and if you want to just hop

back and elite dangerous let's just give it a run for a couple weeks or a couple months let's just dig right back into it and as paul said just completely crack out on it again for a while because when you watch we just oh that was josh actually he said that but the whole thing is like i love this game so much and I'm surprised it's number eight. It just means that everything above it is so much. It's just it makes those games that much more incredible. So but Elite Dangerous is absolutely belongs in my top 10. It will always be there.

If I find a game in the future that's higher, I'm going to say I'm going to lie to myself and say, Michael, you're wrong. That game still belongs in the top 10. Yeah, you single handedly got everybody hyped up for Elite Dangerous when you talked about it during our Space Games episode. And even me, I went and actually watched videos on it again after that show. And I was like, I got to try this game at some point. Everybody in the Discord server was like, I want to see this Elite Dangerous. I might go pick it up. It's only like $5 now or something. And it was like, yeah now or something, you know?

And it was like, yeah. So they owe you a Christmas card for any recent sales. Sadly, it's the only VR game that made my list because I really played it almost exclusively in VR. And that's one of the things that kind of made me sad was I have a huge VR player. And I actually misspoke on the episode. I thought I had about 2,000 hours in it.

I have 828 hours in this game. So I have a lot of work to do. So hardly any. That's still a lot of time. Only 800. That's it. Some work to do. All right.

Yeah, and I was going to say, Josh and I have not yet played that one. So once we get around to it, we'll have to let you know what we think. Yeah, it'll make your top 10 for sure. That's it. All right, Josh. What you got at eight? This is, you know, people say I'm not like I only like competitive games and stuff like that. But, you know, there was a time when I was super big into Nintendo games.

I mean, Super Mario 64 was my number nine. Coming in at number eight is another Nintendo game. And I will preface this by saying I have not played this game in a long time. But I still... It's probably been 25 years plus since I've played this game. But well, maybe not that long. But it's still in my brain etched as one of the best games that I have played. And that is Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time.

Yes. I can still whistle the tunes to the songs. I still remember some of the quests. Again, another game that my wife and I played together. But Ocarina of Time, to me, is the best Legend of Zelda game that has been made, including Breath of the Wild. Breath of the Wild's great, but I still think Ocarina of Time is better. I just don't remember all the little ins and outs of it at this point.

Like I said, it's been a long time since I've played that game. But when a game reserves that space in my limited brain at this point, I know it's good. And the fact that I can still whistle and hum the tunes from that game... Can you? Oh, yeah. Can you? I mean, I... Oh, we can't hear it. Oh, you can't hear it it's too quiet for discord but

we'll be able to hear it on the episode okay i was i was really questioning there if i should like what are the limits of my new influential power on this podcast as a full-fledged host can i make him can i call him out and make him whistle the tune right now? I'll answer any challenge. Michael, out of curiosity, are you a fan of Zelda? Do you have a favorite in the Zelda series? Honestly, probably the OG. It's funny. My views on Breath of the Wild are kind of hot-taking in a bad way.

I appreciated it. I didn't finish it. I liked it. I just didn't really get into it it's probably because i got really tired of having to replace my wooden sword all the time um but uh yeah but that's one of those games that i really want to go back and pick up i played the original probably as much as i played elite dangerous i probably have like 50 playthroughs on the og back in the day um but i really don't have a favorite except for that one because i really didn't play a lot of them. I did play Ocarina of Time a little bit.

Um, but that's, it's, it's just one of my, one of my games that I just never really got into that family. It's kind of like Mass Effect. I just never broke into the family until recently. Yeah. No Zelda games made my top 10, but my favorite Zelda is the Wind Waker. That that's my personal favorite. What's interesting is you can pull 20 people and you'll get like 10 different answers on their favorite Zelda.

There's a huge link to the past. Legend of Zelda 2 on NES. There's fans of all of them. All right. So my number eight is Castlevania Symphony of the Night. Now, Josh and I talked about this game a little bit on our recent deep dive on Hollow Knight. For my money, it is still to this day the best 2D game ever made. I think it's better than Mario 3, better than Super Mario World. I've got it as the number one Metroidvania

game ever, the number one 2D game ever. I absolutely love everything about it. It's like campy and cheesy in the best possible way. It's the first game I remember playing that had multiple endings. I love everything about Castlevania. I've probably gone through and beaten it, goodness, probably 12 to 15 times, somewhere in that range, playing it on PlayStation back in the day. It's one of my favorites, but I don't know that either of you have played it. I haven in the day it's one of my favorites but i don't know that either of you have played it i haven't and that's one of your choice games you were talking about right where you make different choices and you have different outcomes correct a little bit

yeah like it's it's very light in that regard being such an old game but there's like multiple endings where you think you know the enemy and you can just kill them and the game ends. But if you keep playing, you actually figure out, oh, if I wear these special glasses, now I can see this other thing and now I can go fight the real enemy. So it has a lot of really clever stuff being all the way back in 1997. Do you remember? So because I remember the original Castlevania and I played that a lot. Oh, sure. But how many Castlevanias removed is symphony of the night from like the initial castlevania i have no idea because even on nes alone there were probably three

or four like i remember castlevania 2 simon's quest i think is what the second one was called i don't know how many there were josh but probably quite a few because you're talking nes days in the 80s all the way up to PlayStation in the late 90s. I played the heck out of the original where you had the whip, you know? Oh, yeah. Sure. And so that one, but I kind of lost track of the Castlevania series for a while. And then I did play Bloodstained, which was phenomenal, by the way. Spiritual successor.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So it's like I can see that. And I don't think I ever played Symphony of the Night, but it is widely renowned as the best Metroidvania pretty much ever made. One of the really goofy things about it is if you're doing like a speed run or if you want to just travel fast, your ability to do a quick withdraw as like a defensive move is faster going backward than you can run forwards. So you're constantly turning backward and pressing Y, Y, Y, Y, Y, and your guy just keeps scooting backward and it's faster than running. It's really interesting looking at that game because I had to just look up what the developer was for that publisher was Konami. Oh, Konami. Yeah. And I don't know why I didn't know that everything back then was Konami. But I feel like this is one of those series is

that I'm wondering how is it not a triple A title these days? How has no one brought up back Castlevania and brought it into the modern world? Perhaps even I mean, that would be a good VR game. I think VR like nightmarish looking with lots of twists and a lot of choices to make it could be really interesting or just some triple a title i don't know why well they've also stretched out where it's not just games they have like netflix series on castlevania and stuff like that so i think it's still successful i think they they just have yeah they've spread out more than just games all right michael number seven we're getting through this skip that was easy it's in paul's top three onto you josh oh okay uh skip my number seven because that's in michael's top three down the 19 guys we're doing it skip my number seven it's in josh's top three

so round seven so basically y'all have a top nine in this part. Yeah, that's it, guys. I'll see you later. There is no round seven. So back to me again. Back to Michael for six. All right. Boom. Okay, this is the only game on the entire list where I had to really consider if there was recency bias being involved. And I'm like, no, it's been about three years. I think it's good.

It's Horizon Zero Dawn. I love this game. I love this game. I love everything about it. I called it my open world mini action adventure game because I got 100% completion in 103 hours, which for an open world seems a little short. The main quest line was about 30 hours,

but the world's not that big in comparison with a lot of the open world games. Maybe that's why I liked it so much is that I didn't get lost in spending 400 hours and still trying to ignore the main storyline so i don't get bored once you know i'm the hero of kvatch you know what i mean or anything like that um but uh i love the game i love the combat i love the idea that you have to aim for different parts on these mech dinosaurs in order to take them down and you have to learn how to use different every time you think the combat is at a point where you're like hey this combat's awesome and then you start to

understand the combat more they introduce another element of combat and you're like this just got even harder and more complex and a lot more fun to play and the story was great i did cry and i did a second playthrough i cried even more uh about 20 hours well about eight eight hours in there's something that happens but anyways i won't spoil it but play that game it's awesome the sequel comes out in three days and i will be probably have you seen the reviews that the sequel's getting no i haven't looked at all it's getting like nines and tens across the board okay well the first one was a 10 out of 10 and so i played i played the pc port because i had never played horizon uh zero dawn and i was

always very interested in it and i probably put a solid 30 hours into that game and loved all of it it sadly just succumbed to like my game add where i didn't play it for two weeks and then my brain will just not allow me to like go back to something if i haven't played it for a couple weeks and i'm a little sad about that to honest, because that game was great all around. It did not have very many faults at all. Yeah, it looked great. The combat was great. The story was great.

Everything about it was great. And I cried. I know which part you're talking about, too. And I think I remember saying, I don't know if I was telling Paul or somebody, but I don't think I've ever cared about characters in a video game more than that game makes you care in the first two hours. Oh, yeah. I don't want to go too long on this, but one of my favorite things about this game that really elevates it is when you're going through the tutorial phase of the game, you're playing as Aloy as a little girl. And so you're learning, and Rost, who's your father figure, he's not your father, you find out later on. He's just your father figure, you know, similar to, like, a foster parent or adopted parent.

And he's like, Aloy, here's how you hold a bow. Now, you want to sneak and be quiet and shoot the animals or shoot, you know. And he's teaching all that stuff. And that's your tutorial is Rost, your dad, telling you how to do these things. But then in that moment where it has that montage and then all of a sudden you're an adult, And he's teaching all that stuff. And that's your tutorial is Ross to your dad. It was a really cool tutorial. Yeah. But then in that moment where it has that montage and then all of a sudden you're an adult, it's like clearly known. Okay. I'm out in the open world now.

I'm no longer the tutorial it's on. And that's like, that's like an hour into the game and it's a great transition. I loved it. Yeah. Really smart. All right, Josh. Number six. What you got?

Number six for me is Overwatch. Oh, okay. Overwatch to me is one of those generational type games. It has its good moments and it has its bad moments. It is not a game without flaw by any means, but to this day, it is so much fun to hop into Overwatch with a few friends and play a round or two. I had not played... I think I went two or three, maybe even three or four months without playing a game of Overwatch. And then last week,

I hopped in for just a couple matches. I still got it. I was hooking people into the well in Ilios. I was just doing really, really good. That game has so much to offer in the genre. I love the hero shooter. I love the skills. I love the team-based gameplay. I love the fact that if you're really good, you can carry your team. I love screaming at people because they're really bad and they're they're ruining their team you know that kind of stuff but when overwatch was announced and came out i i don't know i i mean i know every single person that we knew that was in our extended friend group was playing overwatch it's just it's a complete game from start to finish if you like first person shooters which is funny because i don't and i even played with you guys because you're right actually it was my buddy uh my buddy steven who i've

actually called lord nevitz von regob so if i ever talk about lord nevitz von regob it's almost all of his character names that i named that but he was like hey come heal us and i'm like i hate shooters i'm not a shooter player and he's like you don't have to shoot. You can heal. And I'm like, in a shooter? Okay. But like Winston, you don't have to necessarily... I love the fact that they made this game accessible to everybody. And it's like, you don't have to have amazing flick shots. If you do, play Widow or play McCree or whatever, right? If you're good at tracking somebody, play Zarya.

If you're good at awareness and what's going on on the battlefield, play Winston or D.Va or something like that. I love that they had something for everybody. Like you said, if you're not good at any of that, but you're just good at supporting your team, play a healer. And what they did with healers was revolutionary too. I could talk about Overwatch forever, but for me, it's definitely in my top 10 i've played the heck out of that game i don't know i mean i have easily over a thousand hours in it um but so you can whistle the tune for overwatch too right uh no well of course overwatch is our number one game on our leaderboard so i was curious to see if it was going to pop up.

Josh, do you think Overwatch is the game you and I have played together the most? Or do you think it's still PUBG? It's got to be one or the other. It's real close, to be honest with you. I want to say it's probably Overwatch. You played a lot of PUBG without me. Yeah. You know, back when in its mass popularity days,

I would hop on and play PUBG with you guys, but I didn't generally play it solo where I know you played it a lot on your own. So I think Overwatch probably is our most played game together. alone on this one and it's fine it's probably my hottest take of of the episode i've got cyberpunk 2077 i don't care oh screw you all who tried playing on ps4 you know what on pc this game rules all right cyberpunk had my number one favorite storyline probably of the last 10 years i absolutely love it was it was it glitchy sure it definitely was my guy permanently had blood on his hands like like just in the game he had an overlay of blood that was not on his hand it was hovering two inches above his hand he had it at all times i i don't care i would drive with my car. I would see random just artifacts levitating in the air. I don't care. It doesn't matter.

The story was great. Keanu Reeves is awesome. I loved the twist endings. All that stuff's great. I loved running around with the mantis claws, just shredding people with my bare hands. I mean, it's even got a jackie wells was one of my favorite side characters ever in a game it's even got amazing music written for it by run the jewels go look it up it's a song called no safe point it's an amazing song i love everything about

cyberpunk and i'm not ashamed to say it's number six all time for me. I feel like Cyberpunk is one of those games that is becoming the memories are getting fonder, you know, as time goes on. Funny enough, huge 43 gigabyte patch announced today as of this recording. And it's funny because I was chatting with some friends of ours about Cyberpunk today and everybody was kind of going, you know know i really need to i need to play that game i i need to get back into it i didn't finish it i famously never finished it i made it very close to the end but even in my mind it's like well i think it's time to give it another shot it's so good josh i also haven't finished it i am much closer to the beginning than you are

but i i'm totally down. I had some good things about it. Honestly, the reason why I didn't play it is because I was in the middle of a move at the time, and I was trying to play it from my laptop, and my laptop just wouldn't run into it just as I could. Just died to it. Yeah, and I'm like, nah, I'll come back to this, and I never did. Probably because I was doing my second playthrough on Horizon Zero Dawn or something. Screaming at Michael, why do you hate me? Oh, yeah. can play through on horizon zero dawn or something screaming at michael why do you hate me oh yeah control was another game that i've always wanted to play and i was playing it from my laptop my

laptop couldn't handle it i actually that's a rough one on laptop yeah i gifted a copy to a friend of mine and he was like i've never heard of this game i beat it in like 30 hours and it was perhaps my favorite game i've ever played thank you and i'm like well good i just i had an extra copy and i haven't played mine yet. So that game is wild, by the way. Control. It's really out there. Yeah. The last thing I'll say about Cyberpunk, I even love just all the lingo that they come

up with in this game where you've got like Ripper docs and they're like the doctors who install software into your cybernetic implants that you use to then quick hack other people. I thought all that stuff was so neat i i love it i really hope that we get to see more content through dlc slash future installments i really hope this isn't the end of cyberpunk because obviously the reputation uh it could not have been much worse the bones are there honestly like they really are there, honestly. They really are. There is a very strong foundation to it. They just have to get rid of the skin disease that the game had when they released. Ironically, when you talk about those hacker docs in the game, the first thing I thought when I thought of that was Johnny Mnemonic, which ironically is also Keanu Reeves. Another Keanu movie.

I love that movie, man. I don't know if that one's aged terribly well, but I haven't seen it in a long time. Me either. Like 20 years. Yeah. It hasn't aged as well as Keanu has. Everyone knows that. That is very true.

Yes. All right, Michael. We're in our top fives now. What you got? It's getting real. Skip this one. It's a Josh Dupree. Oh, and my top three.

Oh, okay. Okay. I know what that one is. Oh, you one is this one no this is a third installment first and only installment that i still play three days ago oh okay i know all right well this one this is not in any of your top 10 lists but this is I've realized that I like this game even more when I think about it, and I find it to be almost a perfect RPG for me in almost every way. I have hyped this immensely. It is rated very high on our leaderboard. People that have picked this up off of us talking about it or having heard about it have said, hey, this is one of the best RPGs I have ever played.

And that is Divinity Original Sin 2. I just started it. Yep. And you are in for such a ride, man. I get it. I know there's a lot of people out there that are going to say, hey, that's a great game. That's really in your top 10. I love RPGs. And it's rare for me to play an RPG and finish it, much less go back to it a second time and play through it again. And that just kind of tells you what this game offers. It's up there. It's probably in my top three RPGs of all time. And for a genre that I absolutely love, it checks just about every single box for me. I think it's drastically underplayed because it is really, really that good. It's an absolutely fantastic game. My little nitpick with it is I sat on the character creation screen for like a full hour and a half because I did not know what to pick.

And then they hit you where you got to put in all your stats and you choose all these abilities and you can go full custom and make whatever you want. And I spent so much time making my guy and I immediately hated the decision because I chose the undead dude. And you can't walk in front of anybody because they freak out and they yell, evil corpse walking around, die. And everyone just wants to fight you. And you can't heal yourself because any heal ability actually damages you being undead. But what a cool game. It's awesome. This is one of those games that uh that i i'm influenced a lot by you guys just having listened to the show and i've bought more games than i'd like to admit

because i'm like developers love this podcast because just michael butler buys all the games that you guys talk about and so it was that my first ever uh appearance on the show when we did the best rpgs of all time and josh was like you gotta play you gotta play it i picked it up and i sat in it for the last three months and then all of a sudden i'm looking at it i'm like holy cow on the playstation i can play with my wife it's a couch co-op and and i'm like that's amazing and it just instantly elevated into this is the next game i'm playing because my wife and i what we do is we play a lot of rpgs together and what'll happen is i'll control the character and she'll make the decisions. So like with Detroit becoming human, it was actually really hard because all you do is make decisions. I was

literally just walking around moving the stick. But like other games like Witcher 3, she would pick what Geralt says. And now we can do it. I'm like, you say what your characters will say. I'll say what my characters will say. And we're just going to roll with it. And I've had a blast. We played two nights and we're just loving it so far. It's a great game. Yeah. All right. My number five is Dragon Age Origins.

Now, am I the only person with a Dragon Age game in my top 10? You are, but I seriously considered putting Inquisition in my top 10. Yeah. I actually stressed about that a lot. Yeah, I love it so much. And I know Michael hasn't been able to dive into Dragon Age. Dragon Age Origins is a game that is kind of tough to jump into today, because even when Dragon Age Origins came out, the graphics already did not look great.

Kind of reminds me of like Dark Souls, like No one was buying Dark Souls because it looked great. You bought it for the gameplay. And Origins had the amazing story, the amazing gameplay. Depending on what kind of character you chose, you played a completely different opening chapter. And I don't know if there were any other games that did that before Origins. That's the first time I remember seeing it. I feel like a lot of games do that now. But if you picked a dwarf, then if you picked the royal dwarf, you've got a whole storyline where you and your brother are fighting over who's going to become king.

Or if you were a poor mage, then you were in the circle training and learning how to be a mage. And so you got to play these really awesome opening chapters. They're similar to DOS2. There are a million choices you can make all over the course of the game. It really gets into the nitty gritty of the city's politics, the religions people believe, all the different races and how they all interact with one another. I really love Dragon age origins and it also was the one in the series where you often had to pause combat

and it was a little bit more strategic so you would actually have to look at like placement and who's going to do what where what abilities are going to combo uh the only real black mark are the missions in the fade. I think everybody hated those. It's kind of like an underwater level in another game with Dragon Age Origins. It was the fade. But other than that, fantastic game. Also, infamously, you and Josh, as your number fives, picked what went down as one of the top battles in the best RPG of all time episode from months ago. And I hadn't played either.

And it was funny because I still am like, is Paul or Josh going to hate me more for picking their winner first? And I won't say who won because I want you to go back and listen to that episode. It's from like three months ago. It was best RPGs of all time. It was the first time you heard this nasally voice on this very here podcast. But it's funny that you guys both picked them back to back and that was a big decisive battle um phenomenal games both of them

are you can't go wrong with either one to be honest they're very similar in a weird way even though they're very different perspectives and the gameplay is different but other than other than that they're very similar they do have a lot of overlap. I think that's why we like them so much. Yeah. Yeah. If you like one, you'll probably love the other. Right. All right.

So swinging back to Michael, what's your number four? Oh, I've got to skip this one too, guys. It's on Josh's list. Wow. Michael's got a lot of overlap. Apparently, I've got a great list because people keep saying my stuff's on there. It's way better than IGN's. I share two with you, and I share two with ign ign had a hundred not ten so that means your list is approximately

90 better all right josh what you got it for this one's gonna be divisive a little bit because i get it i get that you know not everybody likes this game a lot of people have tried this game and they either go hey hey, I love it, or they go, yeah, it's fun for a couple hours. I see why people like it. But this is the game, other than my number one, that I have the absolute most play time in, and that is Rocket League.

For me, Rocket League is, in my personal top 10 list, it has to be in my top 10. There is no other game that exists that is like Rocket League because it is so easy to just pick up and play. It is so insanely difficult to master. I'm pretty darn good at Rocket League, but there are people that I can look at and I can go, I will never be that good. And it just astounds me that there is that like caliber of player. It is like me and Andy, who has been on the show before, he's like my Rocket League, my main Rocket League buddy. We probably have a thousand hours playing Rocket League together. And we have both said, I cannot think of a video game that is more like a professional sport

than Rocket League is with the various skill levels and how if you just keep playing, you keep getting better. You keep advancing. I love the technical aspect. I love that there's no RNG whatsoever. If you lose, it's simply because the other team beat you. There's just so much about it that jives with me personally through my competitive nature, my desire to want to get better at something, that kind of stuff. My kids, my entire family knows when I play Rocket League because I transform into this screaming, giggling like loud person i can't think of like scoring a goal in rocket league is like no other feeling in a video game i it's just incredible so

for me it's in my i almost put it in my top three but it's it's it's up there for me for sure i'm quite surprised it's not your number one i thought for sure this would be your number one overall do you know how many hours you actually do have in Rocket League? I checked. I have 1,500 in like, I can't remember if it's 26 or 62, but I have a lot of time in Rocket League.

And considering they're five minute matches, that should tell you something. Somebody do the math right now. As you're listening, throw this in Discord right now with the math on five minutes. That's like 300 well that's like 300 that's like 3 000 matches i the math it's a lot that's why i don't it's why i'm counting for my

math um is that the only sports game that has made our list so far if you want to air quotes it as a sports game i do consider it a sports game yeah yeah it is i agree of my i do not i do not have a sports game on my list no and of my 62 uh tiger woods 2006 was my only sports game on there and 2006 because tiger woods players infamously know in 2007 they really screwed up the putting so 2006 was amazing uh everyone's still talking about it yep oh very nice good old rocket league okay somehow I played 300 hours of Rocket League before I got sick of it. I remember those days fondly, Paul. You might remember them more fondly than I do.

All right. My number four. I'm a little bit shocked we haven't had a Grand Theft Auto game, but my number four is Grand Theft Auto 4. That is the Grand Theft Auto that I would also pick. And I'll explain why it didn't make my list when I get to say one of the games that I had to skip. I think it's by far the best GTA game. I have played through all of, well, not, I've never played GTA 1 and 2 because they're so old, but Grand Theft Auto 3 is the game that got me into video games. I did not own any consoles growing up. I would play them at my friends' houses. had GTA 3 and I could not believe that video games could be cinematic, that they could have voice actors that I recognized from movies. I did not know that you could do stuff like that in video games. And that's actually what turned me into a gamer. I loved Vice City. I love all

the GTAs. San Andreas is great, but my favorite is 4. Nico Bellic is one of my all-time favorite protagonists. Everything he says is hilariously funny. Hey, roll line. Let me borrow the cab. Yes. And he just walks around and just roasts everybody passive-aggressively, and it's absolutely hysterical. I love everything about GTA 44 it's also got the best driving because it's a little bit more realistic than the others your cars actually

have a little bit of weight to them i love gta4 i love gta4 and i think that you know it's funny we discussed this a while back that um or maybe it was yesterday i can't remember i was real sick this weekend um but um but you know i i did love like between gta four and five i'm like which one do i like more and i'm like nico bellic is what makes it for me it's nico it's that character yeah yeah the gta games i like them i i think they're absolutely phenomenal video games i this is one of those ones where i went if I was building what I think is a top 10 video game list, I would put those in there. They just, for me, I tend to get a little lost and aimless after a while. And that's not, that's nothing against the game. That's a hundred percent me in that regard. And I've beat GTA. I've

beaten all of them actually, but I just, that's one where it, for whatever reason, there's other games that resonate with me more on a personal level. But if I was taking the personal aspect out of it, I would easily have GTA 4 in a top 10 list. When you said lost in the aim list just now, I literally just thought of, like, Josh, how many times did you just run over people on the street and go pick up the money off the ground and get back in your car and go run into the cops? I've said i generally play a good guy in video games i have a really hard time being a jerk not that game i am lawful good 100 in that game though even stop signs are suggestions oh yeah exactly well that's kind

of like the difference between the gtas and the redads, right? Like, GTA is very heightened. It's all very over the top. You don't feel bad running over 28 people on the side of the street in a giant mob, because that's just the game. So for me, I have no problem going evil in Grand Theft Auto. Red Dead is definitely where you get those more personal

stories. When you play as Trevor in GTA 5, there's nothing there that you're connecting to on an on on a personal level you know none of us know psychopaths in in real life like that all right so yeah i've got gta 4 at uh number four so we're up to our final three and we know that there's quite a bit of overlap here i can't wait to hear what these are uh michael what do you have at number three number three for me is the game that started it all for me i was gifted my first pc game ever and i had to

play on my dad's computer i didn't have a computer and uh it i don't know if you'd really consider open world you could walk around everywhere but uh it was missed it's the game that started all of it and that's my number three it is very old and very dated now literally it was like a 3d game but it was kind of like how you move how how you move in some vr games where you click to go to the next spot um you can't move fluidly there um but the mystery of the game was incredible the allure of the story the loneliness that you felt in that game was almost a positive kind of loneliness where you're like, I am sad because these people are gone and I have to figure out what

happened. The first time that you pick up Atrus's note and it says, Catherine, my love. And you're like, whoa, like what's, and you hear him say it and you're just like,

I, I need to find out what happened. And I'm, it's just, it's this incredible feeling. And then the sound design. The sound design was incredible. And the music with that, oh, just that.

It's almost like what Denis Vanouf uses in his movies now, like Dune and stuff. Like that ominous feeling that it's telling you feel this way through the music that just blew my mind. And that game literally was what made me build my first computer because I'm like, oh, PC gaming is incredible. This is a whole different level, and I have to just tap into this more. So it's a bit of a nostalgia pick, but it was hard to not make it my number one,

but I have a few nostalgia picks over it for the most part. I feel like I've played about 10 minutes of Myst, and that's it. And I know that I'm missing out. And actually, I feel like I've played about 10 minutes of Myst and that's it. And I know that I'm missing out. And actually, I feel like they just released Myst on the Oculus or in VR. I don't see how that'd be possible, but if they did, that'd be amazing. I feel like they did, to be honest with you. You might want to check on that because I legitimately feel like I saw something about Myst VR recently. Yeah, I missed out on that game.

I know that it's insanely well-regarded. It's a puzzle-based game, if I remember right. But, yeah, I don't know why. I never wound up picking it up and playing it. Now you're making me feel like I missed out. Holy sweet. Was I right?

Oh, I was right! I have to go and buy an Oculus Quest 2 right now because it's only on the... Oh, it's on the Rift 2. Gear VR. I'm sorry, guys. I'm riding bicycles right now on the podcast. I have a Rift.

I'm going to have to put it on because I haven't put the Rift on in a long time. I have the old crowdsourcing Rift. So for a long time with crowdfunding or whatever. Yeah, the CV1 or 2 or whatever. You just blew my mind. Josh, please play this game. Please play this game i actually i i will make the agreement that i will because i feel like i've missed out on a piece of gaming history and with yeah right and if it's

your number two i trust you well enough to say hey or your number three i trust you well enough to say he probably knows what he's talking about it's it's a puzzle game for sure if you like puzzle games it is a puzzle game and when i played it google didn't exist so i couldn't look up how to beat the puzzles yeah um i think laho or yako sir like oh sir web web crawler did but i i do want to see though if it does translate because in vr i could see it being a good vr game but i don't know how it would work if you're able to freely move around compared to before. So, you just blew my mind. Thank you for blowing my mind. You're welcome.

I won't be able to make the podcast for the next two weeks because I'll be playing this game. And you're fired. And I'm fired. First day. Myst is one of those games that I remember my friend's parents playing. And I remember, kind of like Josh, I remember my friends' parents playing.

And I remember kind of like Josh, I remember playing a few minutes here or there and just not knowing what to do. Talk about being lost and aimless. I feel like I would just run around in Myst for five minutes and then my friends and I would be like, well, let's just go play Monkey Island or we would play something else. So I'm sure mist is great i feel like at the time i had not played any puzzle games and i felt like it was just one notch ahead of me developmentally you know because i was probably like eight or nine when that game released and i just it did not jive with me but i'm sure i would have liked it if i were just a little bit older i don't know if that makes eight or nine year old version of me like smarter than eight or nine year old paul or just a little bit more of an introverted like loner that just was like,

this is amazing. I'm alone in this video game world. All right. So Michael's got missed at three. Josh, what's your number three coming in at number three. I know this might be surprising to some of the listeners of this show that have been around for a while,

but it is still one of the best video games ever made. But it is not my number one game. But coming in at number three for me is The Witcher 3. Absolutely incredible game, notoriously difficult to get into. Paul, I picked on Paul for trying to play it five different times. Paul finally played it. I'm super glad you did because I know that you enjoyed it an awful lot. Now that came in at number nine for you. Was that the one that was number nine? That is my number seven. Or number seven. And what is it for you, Michael? You're number four.

Number four. So I mean, it tells you something that three different gamers, it's all in our top 10 list. It's at the most top 10 list, to be honest with you, except for IGNs, which is where I think it's like 25 or something. It's number 16. I'm sorry. Yeah. I said 77. There was another game that's in that 77 range that we picked on.

I can't remember which one that was. The Return of Obra Dinn, I think they had at 74, which seemed really wild to me. Yeah. But I mean, what more can i say about the witcher 3 in the in the sake of just saving some time because we're starting to go long it's it's incredible there's not much to not like about it other than that some people have had complaints about the movement that it feels a little janky some people like i don't know what it is the mechanics in this game just i have a hard time with it i agree it could be more fluid but everything else is just incredible in that game i got really used to the movement because

i came off of another skyrim playthrough and then went right into witcher 3 because i was like i need to tap into an open world rpg right now i haven't played it and so i went to it i'm like oh it's kind of clunky and then i just got used to it oh no that's what it was i was playing horizon zero dawn at the same time and zero dawn has incredible movement um but i got used to it really fast i played it on the ps4 um but i absolutely i still love that game it's funny a side note i was watching the end of ted lasso the other day and i'm like roy kent is like a real life or like modern day garrett the ribby because they both care yeah that's true oh yeah i mean i i love the witcher it's a great game my my only complaint is that the second two-thirds of the game are so much better than the

first third that it's almost a little bit of a shame because i think that there are a lot of people that just start playing and it's just like very complicated. You don't even really leave the opening castle for quite some time. And you're like, you're racing with Siri and now you're chasing Siri. Cause she's running away from her lessons. And then there's all these weird dreams and you don't know what's true. And you've been tracking Yennefer down. And it,

it, I always felt like it didn't really grab onto me because I did not play the other witchers. I don't know who Yennefer is. Why do I care that we're chasing after her? I don't know anything about the wild hunt. But if you can get past the first couple of hours when the story starts to make sense, that's when it definitely sucks you in. Paul, I have to call you out.

And it's top tier. I have to call you out for being incorrect. The first third of the game has the Baron, and that's an incredible storyline. But see, that's when the game starts to take off and then it does that's hour nine yeah somewhere around it does it really does and that's the thing is it's like everybody says like you you have to slog until you get to the baron quest and then it's like it's like one of those immediate launch roller coasters right where you're just sitting there going like this sucks. And then all of a sudden it just goes whoosh. And you just hang on for the ride.

I might've cried in the Baron crest. I can't remember. Oh, that quest is terrible and sad and great all at the same time. Yeah, no, but, but you're right though. The first, I think it's like, it's legitimately a six to eight hours. And I, I literally put the game down twice. That's why it took me four years to play it and beat it because I i didn't want to i was like i don't get it like everyone says how good it is and then someone was like just get the first eight hours and you're not gonna put it down

that's exactly what happened yep yeah all right paul all right my number three i am very shocked did not show up for you guys. I've got Portal 2. Portal 2 was like my number 11 and my number 8, my number 7, my number 12. Portal was one of the games that I struggled with, or Portal 2, struggled with the most to say, I feel like this needs to be in my list. And I kept shuffling and kept shuffling. I think it's deservedly, like number number three is a great spot for it. I just, I struggled with that one a lot.

I think that Portal 2 is one of those very few games where I do not have a single note of anything negative. You get to experience Wheatley and GLaDOS. The game is hysterical. It's thrilling. You get really clever puzzles. I love every bit about that game all the way up through the very end. Portal 2, you can also play co-op. And if you play it on PC, you have unlimited levels through the workshop. Portal 2 for me is one of those very rare, absolutely perfect games.

I would not change a thing. And I have been on record many times saying the one sequel i would request more than any other is portal 3 yeah i really wish that we could get more games from valve i know they're making money hand over fist with steam i don't fault them for it but man i would love to see half-life 3 but even more than that i would love to see portal 3 would you do a portal vr game if it was available on the valve index oh uh i would absolutely try it sorry any valve i would try it i could see that i mean a good vr game i could see some of the parts being really nauseating when you do the like through the ceiling and the floor at the same time just thinking about it oh that's right

because a couple weeks ago, you guys were on an episode talking about how you use the point-and-click method to move in VR. That's what Josh does. I use the teleport. I do continuous. I am 100% continuous, but I challenge anyone. My favorite VR game really is not a game.

It's Google Earth VR, and it's 100% free. And if you turn off the like there's something that makes like everything outside of this 30 degree in front of your face like blurry if you turn that off even i am like whoa like i'll go stand on top of the empire state building and be like i'm gonna fall over i have to take this off now and that's the only one that did it but um anyways that i can see that though when you're falling through floors and ceilings and you're like i gotta take a moment take a deep breath on this one in portals three portal i will say i love the idea of having two controllers and each of them being a different portal it would be very easy to keep track of them both because you could just shoot them that

would actually be neat i would definitely try it out portal two is is a perfect game, to be honest. Like you said, I think that's really telling. I can't find any fault with it. And not only that, but if I was going to take my parents who are in their 70s at this point and say, hey, I want you to play a game, Portal 2 would be it because it's so accessible. You know what I mean? It's not difficult. There's not a difficult control scheme. It's very easy not where it's not difficult there's not a difficult control scheme it's very easy it's approachable it's really a flawless game i i it's great i struggled with that one a lot and i think it deserves to be in the number three i feel like that game also more consistently when i pulled top 100 and top 50 lists was at the top

not number one but like in the top third or top you know a little bit ign had it at number three so yeah it definitely shows up at the top yeah plus you get to portal uh put a portal on the moon what's not to love well and you get to troll your friends too because you gotta like they're trusting you and then you get them crushed by a ceiling or something like that as well or shoot them into the lava or something. How dare you? All right, Michael. What you got at number two? Okay.

So, you know, obviously, drum rolls, please, for everybody. But nobody really expected my list to have a video game based on a movie. Which featured a song by Tina Turner. Yeah, it's old, guys. It's an old game, okay? Tina Turner. But this is a game that is really my only first-person shooter, my only FPS game on the whole thing. And it is my favorite FPS

because I've literally never been beaten while I was playing it. And the rules were basically, if you're going to play this game with me, you cannot be Oddjob because Oddjob is short and that's cheating and it's not allowed yep there you go golden i007 guys it is it is incredible classic i mean can you guys remember like the first time you played with friends i was on the swim team and we were traveling down to tucson yeah i was on the swim team for one year by the way there are pictures

on the internet somewhere of me with a buzzed head, like, bicked, completely bald. Oh, wow. I actually was – I was hoping to take time off. Hey, what's wrong with bald guys? I mean, moving on. So we're not just – no, but the fact that we were playing a shooter game, and it was one of the first ones you ever had where you had four people playing on the same TV. And you're like, don't look at my screen. Stop looking at my screen.

I remember always thinking I wanted to have separate TVs, which is now normal. Online co-op is just the norm now. In fact, it's hard to find a couch co-op or a couch shooter where you play together and maybe play against each other. The memories of this

game are incredible. It hasn't aged very well because you have nosy axis you can't look up and down you're just side to side but absolutely a great game one of my all-time favorites fun to shoot with friends and hey a shooter made my list guys so there's hope you just used up all your good shooter skills on that one game is what it is yeah all the eggs in one basket golden eye golden eye is it's iconic it really like for people that played it back in the day there's a reason that this game is on a lot of top 10 lists

it was the pinnacle of multiplayer for a little while like i i can't i can there were hundreds of nights where i would be at my buddy's house, like a bunch of us playing GoldenEye together. What's really funny is you mentioned the four-player split screen. But people nowadays assume like, oh, that's on like a 55-inch TV. Like, no. This was on a 27-inch TV if you were lucky. Curved, not even flat. If you were at your friend's house, more likely it was a 19-inch screen that split four ways.

Oh, yeah. And every character, like half of their face was a pixel. And the pixels were huge. Yeah. Yeah. But, man, such a great choice, dude. GoldenEye. The other thing is everybody talks about the multiplayer in GoldenEye.

But GoldenEye had an absolutely phenomenal single-player campaign, too player campaign too oh good point i remember going through it so many times i because it was basically scene for scene the movie golden eye which i absolutely loved so being able to actually play it inside the game was pretty incredible yeah and uh i don't know about you guys one of my favorite things about golden eye is where every house had the one broken 64 controller. Or the generic one. The mad cats. The knockoff one that nobody wanted to hold. Yeah.

Or if you lost, you'd complain and blame it on the controller. Yes. It's only because I had the mad cats. Yeah, because you could slightly turn right, but not very well. And you'd always give that to your friends. Oh, man. could slightly turn right but not very well and you'd always give that to your friends oh man now uh i do not have golden eye in my top 10 josh is this one of yours it was it was my number seven so that's the one that i had to skip up uh because michael did have it in his top but great great pick dude such a good game i like you said i don't think it would hold up to this

day and age but back then man oh boy was it a good game. Like you said, I don't think it would hold up to this day and age, but back then, man, boy, was it a good time. Yeah. I just remember how hard it was to play. It's funny you mentioned the single-player campaign mode. When you're fighting Alec Trevelyan, yeah, that guy. Sean Bean, heck yeah. Oh, a couple of Sean Beans on my list. No spoilers. He was 006, I believe. Yeah, he was 006, I think. How many 006s have there been in the history of James Bond movies?

But that part was so hard. And I remember one of my favorite pieces about that game was you had to beat that on hard mode, I think it was, to unlock the other James Bonds to play. So you could play as Roger Moore or Timothy Dalton or Pierce Brosnan, Sean Connery. I'm not listing George Lazenby. Just did it. Sorry, guys. But you could do it in multiplayer mode if you did that. And I

remember having to beat that level. It took me a month to beat that level in hard mode. It was so hard. And I should have just done the game cheating like everyone else and just cheated, but I didn't. Oh, goodness. Good pick. Gotta love GoldenEye. Some of my fondest memories is the Golden golden eye and the perfect dark phase where it was like just hanging out as teenagers with friends just playing multiplayer day in and day out what what a time in life yeah nothing beats it all right josh we are up to your number two what do you got in the interest of time i I'm just going to say this game is amazing. It is God of War.

For anybody that wants to know my deepest heart's thoughts. Deepest heart's thoughts? Deepest heart desires? No, no. I don't know where I was going with that. My heart's deepest thoughts. Anyway, yes. Sure.

Just fold it any way you want to. Yeah. Just fold it any way you want to. Yeah, just fold it any way you want to. God of War checks literally every box for me personally for what I would want in a video game. Amazing story, amazing combat, RPG elements, incredible graphics. I mean, we could go on and on. you're going to get an incredible deep dive episode next week on God of War because we, Paul and I actually deep dive to that deep dove that episode before Michael

was with us as a permanent host. So you will get Paul and I deep diving God of War next week on that. So I'll just, I'll just save it for that episode, but it's my number two overall game so if you're listening in chronological order you're not actually listening in chronological order and josh has not actually fired me 27 and a half minutes ago when he said he was they recorded it before uh yeah there's a valid reason that you're not on that next episode i played a

little bit i'm like four hours into it but i definitely don't even understand enough about you know like the story i'm sure is amazing i'm still trying to figure out how to start from the beginning and play it because it's incredible yeah and uh god of war is my number nine i feel like that's a little bit of a spoiler alert for our deep dive but i think you guys know where josh and i both land on god of war um i think it's just gonna be a love fest you hate it right yeah it's terrible game such a good game man absolutely love it yeah like josh said we'll save all those details for uh the deep dive that you'll hear next monday all right so we are up to my number two. My number two is Red Dead Redemption 2. And I have said it would be very hard for me to choose my favorite game between one of the Mass Effects and Red Dead 2.

I love everything that Red Dead 2 does. I think it might be the most ambitious game of all time. I think it costs something along the lines of you know like 300 million dollars to make like it's just wild all the detail that they put into red dead but everything from all the character interactions the voice work arthur morgan one of my all-time favorite characters i mean what's not to love about red dead it it just so clearly accomplishes so much you could play just that one game as a hunting simulator and i feel like you could squeeze 20 hours out of that game or you can play it and not go hunting once there's just so much to do in it i absolutely love red

dead i i think you've both at least played it a little bit but what a fun game i feel like i've got 200 hours in that game and i feel like i'm not even halfway through the main story because i've done so many other things that distract me it's like what josh was talking about earlier with grand theft auto i just start looking around and doing things like running around and there's a bear symbol up there i must have some bear boss to go shoot or something or go find it or you know it i absolutely love it it's it's uh it's funny because that's my number seven on my list and i i didn't want to pick multiple rock star games so i had to decide between like the gta series or red dead one and two i mean i well it wasn't really

hard because red dead one is amazing but red dead two clearly takes the cake it's better it's much better but i mean even just the simple things about like about how Arthur's swagger is when he walks, just the detail of the game that I just absolutely love. It's a great game. You can tell the love that went into Red Dead Redemption 2. It's the way that a game should be developed. And I get that not every developer has $300 million to put into a game. But there's so much attention to detail in Red Dead Redemption 2.

We're playing it. We're going to be deep diving it in a future episode. In my second play, and I'm not that far in it yet, I'm noticing things that I've never noticed before. And it's just mind-blowing, the love that they put into this game and it shows completely. Yeah. One thing that Red Dead kind of ruined other games for me is walking in snow. Like in these games, they tend to like kind of walk around and you might just see like all of a sudden there's like a track behind someone. In Red Dead, you actually see every foot press into the ground. You see what happens with the snow. You can see everywhere that you've walked because it's all there and it slowly changes because it continues

snowing and it'll fill in your footprints i mean all the detail that's put into that game is really just second to none it adds up though you may not even notice it but it's that experience it just heightens everything because of the little details it is a living world and you feel like you are actually living in that world when you're playing i completely agree yeah so yeah that that's my number two and so now we are in the final round guys number one oh boy yeah so michael you get to go first buddy what you got coming in number one uh it sounds like such a simple phrase doesn't't it? Hey! Hey! Hey! Aren't you the one they call the hero of Kvatch? This is definitely your catchphrase.

Oh, man. Catchphrase! Yeah, absolutely. It's Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion. Far and away will probably always be my favorite, number one. I think I've got about 400 hours in this game, which is ironic because back then I thought 400 hours was the most I'd put into any game ever um and now of course i've got 828 hours in elite dangerous and i feel like i'm barely scratching the surface of that game barely scratching the surface with that but

uh but i just everything about it is amazing one of my favorite things it's funny that you talked about it paul just now was the world around it the world building is i i love the fact that an oblivion like everything around you reacts to you and i think that's what separates it from skyrim the world around it, the world building is, I love the fact that in Oblivion, like everything around you reacts to you. And I think that's what separates it from Skyrim. It was really hard to select which Elder Scrolls, because I also thought about Morrowind, because I liked Morrowind, but I just think Oblivion just took the kick. I actually played Morrowind after I played Oblivion. But the fact that you're walking around and you hear someone, you know, like, it's kind of like Lost Ark does the same exact thing where you're walking by and someone's like, Mommy, Mommy, he's the one that was the tournament champion or something like that. And you're like, that's me.

I did that. It makes you feel like you're actually a part of that world. And also there was more than just snow. That's one of my only gripes about Skyrim is that, like, in Olivian, you have Bruma, which has the snow. You've got desert area. You've got trees and forests. It feels like more of, you know, there's a lot more biomes and stuff. I don't know if I use that word biomes correctly right now. I'm not 100% sure if that word is what I think it means.

But love that game. And, yes, for about five years, my friends said that I was not allowed to say that phrase about being the hero of kvatch because i would just i would just say it yep i i was probably playing goldeneye at one point like later on way later and i'd win the tournament just be like the hero of kvatch obviously well and you got some incredible voice acting you know patrick stewart doesn't last very long he's too yeah he's there to guide you in the beginning yeah no oh sir patrick stewart doesn't last very long he's too yeah he's there to guide you in the beginning yeah no oh sir patrick stewart's in there uh like i mentioned earlier sean bean and he lives longer than sir patrick stewart which i think like that's obviously a tip of the hat or something on on sean bean's crown that he outlives patrick stewart in something

but no no absolutely it's one of my first games that i really played that really had that voice acting too that i remember of like is that i didn't there was no imdb when it came i don't think i am the card yeah i'm like is that patrick stewart that's captain card you know and it just the game blew my mind i loved it from the very beginning and i i don't know i you know it's one of those one of those games that i hope someday it's beaten but if it is beaten it's going to be a game that just is the best game ever made period so i struggled man because i absolutely adore the elder scrolls games and like skyrim oblivion and even way back in morrow wind and prior to that dagger fall you know if we're going way way back you know um they're

they're incredible games i really struggled with putting because I like Skyrim a little bit better than Oblivion but I mean they're so close they're practically interchangeable for me but that was another one that it was like this has to be in my top 10 list but then I would find other games and go man I played this game more or

I have fonder memories of this game or something like that but it's like I don't think anybody would ever question Oblivion or Skyrim being on a top 10 list because they're just that incredible. No, I think so. And if anyone who's listening hasn't played it, pick it up, play it. But I would suggest playing it on PC and definitely mod it because there's a big project in Skyrim going on right now. It's called Skyblivion. There's like 300 different mod developers that are actually putting Oblivion in the Skyrim engine, but the game actually

has aged surprisingly poorly considering it's not that old and considering Bethesda puts a lot of money into their games. But I would definitely say mod some of the textures and just make the cosmetics look a little bit better because especially the character noses, I just can't get over it. The noses.

What's up with the noses? Yeah, you gotta love Oblivion. It was always my favorite of the Elder Scrolls games, so I'm totally with you putting it above Skyrim, although they're obviously both great. All right, Josh, we're up to your number one. Oh, this is the moment that people have been waiting for. What game is Josh's number one? I am going to disappoint the younger crowd. You sure are.

You probably have not played this game unless you're at least 34-ish, somewhere around there. Yeah. So I'm going to try not to monologue or gush too much because I could legitimately talk about this game for, I feel like, weeks. But it is, to me, it is the game that I have the most playtime in. It is the game that I have the most fondest memories of. It is the game that I have not ever re... I've been chasing the feeling that this game instilled in me when I was playing it ever since playing it. And I don't know that I'll ever recapture that. But it is a game called EverQuest. People have heard me mention this before. I know,

Michael, I know you're a huge fan of EverQuest. Paul is making a face already because he is like, ah, yeah. It's just, you know, EverQuest was the grandest game that I ever played. Honestly, probably to this day, it's probably still one of the grandest MMOs out there. It is still alive somehow. I don't know that that's a good thing. It's a great thing. I will say this. I will say this. I don't know that EverQuquest has aged very well i'm not

saying that everquest is currently a top 10 video game but for what it was back in the day it was absolutely groundbreaking you could do anything and everything you could live your life in that game which is exactly what i did i mean i feel like I probably have 5,000 hours in EverQuest. The rating was absolutely incredible. The friendships that you would form in that game were... I still remember my guildmates' names that I played that game with. And it's hard to translate. I know a lot of people had World of Warcraft. And if World of Warcraft was your first MMO, that feeling that you got from that is what EverQuest was like for me. And maybe a lot of people with different MMOs.

But I had to look at what game resonates with me the absolute most in my gaming history. And I have to give it to EverQuest, man, because there's no other game that's ever been like that to me. I know that it to EverQuest, man, because there's no other game that's ever been like that to me. I know that I accused EverQuest or World of Warcraft of being EverQuest lite when we did the RPG show back in the day.

Well, it is. That's a fair accusation. Yeah, because EverQuest, it was brutal to you. Like, it was not a good partner. It was not a good friend. It was not your pal. If you died, like, I spent 18 hours on a corpse run one time because if you die, you lose experience.

So I had to get a cleric to resurrect me so i got my experience back i had to have a monk go drag my body from in front of this dragon because they can feign death they drag the body a little bit they pretend they're dead dragon walks away they drag the body some more dragons like go stomp that um i had to get a druid or a wizard to teleport me there and all these people who were doing these services for me and i had to pay them all in-game money but one thing that you hit on though that absolutely makes this like it's my number five on my list and i feel like it's a sin but one thing you mentioned what was the friends and the family and the things you did i literally went on a road trip in 2001 it was october of 2001 i remember the date because there was there was a lot of talk of of 9-11 at the time it was right

after that and so i'll never forget forget the feeling of traveling and the uncertainty in the world. But I had this uncertainty with my friends that I'd never met in real life. We stayed with people in Oregon, Washington, and Boise, Idaho that were only friends in my guild. But you hit it off right away. Did you not? Oh, we were friends for years these complete strangers that you've never met i guarantee you showed up and you guys were like oh my goodness and you're instant friends and that's what these games did man it was hard not

to call like mark it was hard to call him mark i wanted to call him connie and grumpy because that was his character names and then matt was uh suffexus was his character's name. He was a paladin, like, you know, like in cash and like all these guys, it's like, we just know him by the character. I don't know what their names are in real life.

We met him like, Hey, I'm Mark. And I'm like, that's weird. I'm just going to call you your character name. Yeah. If you play a female character,

so your name is Connie. Right. Yep. So I feel like Paul missed out a little bit because, and we troll because it is, you know, world of war, world of Warcraft is EverQuest Lite.

But everything that you're describing is awful. And you guys admit that those things were terrible. It was great at the time. No, it was not. It really wasn't. The way your heart pounded when you were about to die, it gave you a feeling. In World of Warcraft, I'm like, hey, guys, wipe the raid. You would never wipe a raid no request like because

you're like no no no no no we have to win the statue of Ryo's deck is currently the hardest boss in the game and we have to beat him because if we die we might not be able to kill him because we're gonna lose a level and we won't be able to knock him down well here's the thing I know that we look for different things in games but if you die and have to spend 18 hours getting your body back I want nothing to do I don't want anything to do with that now. Give me WoW every day of the week. That's what I'm saying. I couldn't handle that now,

but man, back in the day, the stories that you would get... I think you have some Stockholm Syndrome. Maybe. I had to be true to myself, and I was like, this has got to be my number one. Yeah, the first experience with an MMO really is man. I was like, this has got to be my number one. Yeah. The first experience with an MMO really is incredible.

I wonder if we have a crop of people who are experiencing that right now with Lost Ark, since there hasn't been a really great MMO in a while. I hope so, to be honest with you. I do hope for that. And Lost Ark could be that, to be honest. I think I'm blown away by it. For a lot of people that are that are like 10 yeah people who are like 10 to 16 this very well could be the first mmo that they've played and maybe it'll hold that

special place in their hearts being the first but yeah for you guys it was everquest for me it was world of warcraft i totally get it i really appreciated the quality of life uh improvements for wow i never played everquest but i i totally understand why you would have it on the list all right so i think we are up to our very last final selection here it's my number one it is not on either of your guys lists because your lists are now complete uh for my number one i obviously had to go with the mass Effect series. It was going to come down to whether I was going to pick one or two. I did not want my list to be nothing but three Mass Effect games, three Dragon Age games, and a bunch of GTA games.

Would it have been though? I wanted to have some variety. So I'm going to go with Mass Effect 2. I have said on previous episodes it might just be the best game ever, full stop. I believe I said that when we did our games in Space Draft. But as much as I love Mass Effect 1, I think Mass Effect 1 probably has the best music and I really love the atmosphere. But it really is just like setting up the dominoes of the story what really makes the mass effect stand out compared to other series is that normally with new installments uh game developers do not want to

to alienate new buyers they want the game to be like a fresh reset with a new character that's why when you play dragon age every dragon age has a different main character. It's not continuing a single story. Mass Effect, you are playing the story of Commander Shepard and the Reapers from beginning to end over the course of three games. It's very similar to like Lord of the Rings in that regard. And Mass Effect 2 is the one that just does everything really well i think mass effect one might be my favorite story but it's the worst gameplay mass effect three uh definitely has the worst story but mass effect two does both excellently so i'm gonna pick mass effect two it's got some of my all-time favorite characters i love shepherd i love morden and colonel sam right goodness yeah michael michael just recently started playing mass effect

i was at his house when he created his character and he did it i had him come over because i'm like paul there's a lot of choices come tell me the choices to make please oh goodness all right well i will say that uh taking a look at our top tens here guys there's only one game that all three of us had and that's the witcher 3 which i think really speaks to how fondly people think of that game it seems like if you have finished the witcher 3 it's more than likely going to be in your top 10 of all time yeah yeah all right well that's all we have here for today this was an incredibly long episode i hope that you guys enjoyed it i hope that you feel like you get to know me, Josh, and Michael a little bit better, knowing what our individual top 10s are.

I think one of the really cool things is that Michael is going to be taking over our social media accounts. Absolutely. That's right, Paul. So socials are going to become a huge part of the future. So follow us everywhere you do your socials at multiplayer pod and here's what i'm gonna do i'm gonna take these lists and i'm gonna put them on there so you guys can like vote on who you think had the best list but i mean you know everyone knows it was obviously me just like in the space episode the best space games everybody in the community which is awesome thank you community people because you guys are incredible um but the whole community was like michael's obviously picked the best space games he lost on this show number three on this show probably but number one in our hearts and now you have a chance to actually like totally

engage with us and vote on which one you thought was the best list starting with this list here so again socials at multiplayer pod Everywhere you follow your socials, and we'll talk to you. Come tell us what your top tens are. So feel free to message us on socials. Feel free to come join us on Discord. There's a link in the episode description. We would love to hear from our listeners

what your top tens are. It might also give us some ideas of some games that we do want to pop in and play. So I think that's it for today. I think this might be our longest episode ever. I don't know. I think it might come close to our upcoming God of War episode. I think you guys are getting two very long episodes back to back.

Um, but you know what? The podcast is free. So hopefully you just love having all that extra content. Uh, that's it guys. We're done for today. We're going for today.

We're going to have our next episode on Thursday, which, as always, is This Week in Gaming. Can't wait to get back together with you guys. We'll have Michael for the first time for a Twig episode. Yeah. And that's it. Happy gaming, everybody. We'll see you all on Thursday.

All right, we're out of here. See you, everybody.