Video Gamers Podcast - Individual Top 10 Video Games of All Time - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: February 21, 2022

Gaming hosts Paul, Josh and Michael are bringing you an absolutely incredible episode you don’t want to miss. Gaming can resonate with each of us differently and in this episode, we pick the games we feel are in our personal top 10 gaming lists. It’s one you can’t afford to miss as we start off with a very special announcement as well!  Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our 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

Before you jump ahead to the episode, we have a super quick announcement for you all. Spotify has added the ability to rate podcasts on a scale from 1 to 5 stars, and we are asking that all of you take just a few seconds to find us on Spotify and rate us 5 stars. Almost all of our listeners come from the world of Apple, so adding a rating on Spotify is a great way to help the show grow, that way we can continue releasing two episodes every single week. Just make sure that you have the latest version of Spotify, listen to at least 30 seconds of one episode, and then they will allow you to leave a rating. Thank you so much to all of you

for listening and supporting the show. Let's get into this episode. Shazam! 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 there starting at $5 a month. I am your host, Paul, and joining me today, he's definitely in my top 10 podcast co-hosts. It's Josh. Am I in the top 10 podcast co-hosts it's josh uh am i in the top five paul you you are in the top five i'm good i you know i'm not i'm not a hard man to please so 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 and not spoil that? I mean, everyone knows the nasally voice. I have something that I have to say real fast. Which, of course, in my native tongue means I'm so happy to be here. Thank you so much, guys. I'm so gracious to be a part of this family. And holy cow, I did it! I won the show! All those months of Patreon pledges finally paid off for you, Michael. See that? Everyone be an Epic supporter. That's all you gotta do. Oh, man. We are so excited to have you here, Michael. The people demanded that we make you the third co-host, and who are we to say no? 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 10s. 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 Michael. 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 10.

And I'm like, how many times, have I said that for 62 different video games? I probably have because this was hard. Yes. That's the same thing I had as my list started off. I didn't go as crazy as 62. 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 great video game. And 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. I, 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 nine 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 10 list. And meanwhile, mine's just been sitting on my desktop for like the last four days. That doesn't surprise me.

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 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 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 going to say, I'm looking at my list,

and I'm going, ooh, do I have a theme? But it is 100% RPG elements, open world. I do have a lot of 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 um but it is kind of funny that you talk about that josh because a couple that ranked really high on my list was because 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 gotta 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 alltime? 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. 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 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. You 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 IGN list. I'm really scared that my list is going to be trash because two. 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 not being on the, between you guys. So when that list came out, and I was listening to that episode, you know, in the old days in the past, when I wasn't a host on this, this very esteemed show, I was yelling in my car, like, what, 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 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. 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, 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, you know, 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 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. Yeah. 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 it a little bit. A little bit of Inception. Yep. All right. Josh, what you got coming in my head. So essentially, you manipulated my list and influenced it 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 you know if you look up like player counts on fighting games it's like 600 it's ridiculous like they've just they're they're not nearly as popular as they used to be but i was an absolute wizard at Street Fighter 2. And this is back in the days when I would go to the arcade and you would challenge the guy that was at the machine. And winner stays, loser pays, right? 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! What was that? Hadouken! Tatsumatsu seppuken! I love it. 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 love it. Beautiful. 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. All right. Michael, I'm kind of curious to know, were you more of a Mortal Kombat person or a Street

Fighter person? No, Street Fighter 100%. 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 caliber on the dreamcast and i was really good at it again because i got to play maxi and everyone knows the button mash king plays maxi i was i'm terrible at those games maxi's one with the two smaller yeah the two nunchucks yeah and he goes right oh talky is 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 all kind of had our own little niche. Alright, well, my number 10, I'm coming in with Candy Crush. Oh my god. I was like, wait a minute. I know that Paul likes mobile games. I was like, I'm not surprised.

My top 10 are Doodle Jump, Words with Friends. Wordle's making a strong case right now. My top 10 are Doodle Jump, Words with Friends. No, no, no. Wordle's making a strong case right now. 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% in that game. So, and, and, 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 going to say something about this list that that's down at number 10. Right. Yeah. Right. Yeah. And That's going to say something about this list, that that's down at number 10. Right. Yeah. Right. IGN has it at number two of all time, but I have it on my top 10, and I'm guessing neither of you have it at all.

No, 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. Nice. That way I could play it. All right. So, 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 going to give you categories with these moving forward because 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 going to 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.

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 respectful way to where...

Anyway, it doesn't suffer. But yeah, the game rewards that. If you get a double long hit and you use the right ammo and you're not just running out there, you're not killing a squirrel with a.50 caliber or anything like that. The game actually, 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 i don't know where the time went it just passes time so now is this a vr do you have to have the like the laser gun like 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 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 I just love it. 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 the animals don't move if you do it right. I don't have to 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 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 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 everything. And it still sticks out in my mind.

Part of that is that 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 yeah but yeah i just i loved that game so much i i don't know that i could sit down and play like that game today you. I think I'd probably get bored or something like that. But back in the day, it was just phenomenal. I think there's an awful lot to love about it, for sure. I think that's one of those games that every single time... A couple of years ago, that big craze was the mini NES and the mini SNES. And you get it, it has all the games on it. 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 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 I think I'm hesitant to try to recapture that moment. So I'll just keep the great memories because I worry that if I actually tried 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 Tron came out, you start seeing a bunch of CG stuff. It doesn't age well.

I kind of went in circles there, but you understand where I'm going. Yeah, you're 100% right. Already being well-established within the 2D platformer, 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 you know 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. These are, 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 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. Wait, eight times

three is 24, right? Okay, my math is correct. Minus a couple, yeah, yeah. Alright, 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 coming down it's number two state 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 Because when you watch, we just... Oh, that was Josh, actually, who said that. But the whole thing is, 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 makes those games that much more incredible. But Elite Dangerous 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 lie to myself and say, Michael, you're wrong. That game still belongs in the top 10. It will always be there. If I find a game in the future that's higher, 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, 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 did, 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 so hardly still a lot of time only 800 some work to do all right yeah and i was gonna 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. 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. 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 is great, but I still think Ocarina of Time is better. I don't remember all the little ins and outs of it at this point because, 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. Oh, yeah. Can you? I mean, I... Oh, we can't hear it. Oh, you can't hear it?

No. It's too quiet for Discord, but we'll be able to hear it on the episode. Okay. 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 make him can I call him out and make him whistle the dude right now I'll answer any challenge uh Michael out of curiosity are you a fan of Zelda do you have a favorite in the Zelda series uh honestly probably the OG uh it's funny uh my views on Breath of the Wild are kind of hot taking it a bad way I appreciated it

I didn't finish it I liked it I just didn't really get into it and it's probably because I got really tired of having to replace my wooden sword all the time 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 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 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 yeah like link to the past uh legend of zelda 2 on nes like

there's fans of all of them all right so uh 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'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. It's very light in that regard, being such an old game. But there's 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 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. 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 you know which was phenomenal by the way um spiritual successor yeah yeah exactly so it's like i i can see that and i 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 a speed run or if you want to just travel fast, your ability to do a quick withdraw as a defensive move is faster going backward than you can run forward. 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, which is interesting. 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 that I'm wondering how is it not a AAA 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 So I think it's still successful. I think 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. On to you, Josh. Oh, okay.

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 three. Down to 19, guys. We're doing it. Skip my number seven. It's in Josh's top three. So round seven. So basically, we all have a top nine.

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 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 I'm the hero of Kvatch, you know what I mean, or anything like that. But 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, about 20 hours. Well, about 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. 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 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 of weeks. And I'm a little sad about that to be honest,

because that game was great all around. Like I did not have very many faults at all. Yeah. The, it looked great. The comment was great. The story was great. Everything about it was great.

And I cried. I know what 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 like 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 is your father figure, he's not your father. You find out later on he's just your father figure, similar to 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 – and he's teaching all that stuff., 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 Ross to 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, it's like clearly known, okay, I'm out in the open world now.

I'm no longer in the tutorial. It's on. And that's like an hour into the game and it's a great transition. I loved it. Yep. 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 2 or 3, maybe 3 or 4 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 ruining their team, that kind of stuff. But when Overwatch was announced and came out, I don't know. I mean, I know every single person that we knew that was in our extended friend group was playing Overwatch. 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 like...

Actually, it was my buddy, my buddy Steven, who I affectionately 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 him that. But he was like, hey, come heal us. 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 like you don't have to necessarily like 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 or you know play mccree or whatever right yeah if you if you're good at tracking somebody play zarya if you just are if you're good at like awareness and and what's going on on the battlefield play winston or diva or something

like that like i just i love that they had something for everybody like you said you know if you're not good at any of that but you 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. So you can whistle the tune for Overwatch, too, right? 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. Yeah, I think you're probably right. All right coming in number six i know i'm gonna stand 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 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... 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 uh i feel like cyberpunk is one of those games that is becoming the memories are getting fonder you know as time goes on they funny enough huge 43 gigabyte patch announced today as of this recording wow and it's funny because i was chatting with some friends of ours about cyberpunk today and everybody was kind of going you 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 yeah but i i'm totally down i 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 do it yeah and i'm like now i'll come back to this and i never did probably because i'll do my second playthrough on horizon zero dawn or something screaming at and do it justice. I can't do 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 like that.

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 and my laptop couldn't handle it.

That's a rough one on a 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 and i'm like well good i just i had

an extra copy and i haven't played mine yet so that game's wild by the way yeah control it's really out there uh 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 yeah like they are they really are there is a very strong foundation to it they just have to get rid of the skin disease you know that that the game

had when they released ironically when you talk about like 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. Yeah. I love that movie, man. Oh,

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 Josh's top three.

Oh, and my top three. Oh, okay. Okay. I know what that one is. Oh, you know. Is it a third installment? No. Oh, okay.

It's the 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, 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 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 it's 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 appearance on the show when we did the best RPGs of all time. And Josh was like, you got to play, you got to play. And I picked it up and I sat on it for the last three months. And then all of a sudden, I'm looking at it and I'm like, holy cow, on the PlayStation, I can play with my wife. It's a couch co-op. And I'm like, that 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 will 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 gerald says and now we can do it i'm, 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? 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 Dark Souls. 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. 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 placement and who's going to do what where, what abilities are going to combo. 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 a month and a half 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. They're 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 that, they're very similar in the bonds. They 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 too 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 gotta skip this one too guys it's on josh's list wow apparently i've got a great list because people keep saying you know my stuff's on there so it's way better than igns i share 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 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 i love it or they go yeah it's fun for like 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. Oh, okay. 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 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 1,000 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, loud person. I can't think of scoring a goal in Rocket League as no other feeling in a video game. It's just incredible. So for me, I almost put it in my top three, but 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 and 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, what the math on five minutes. Well, that's like 300,

that's like 3,000 matches. The math is hard. That's why I took counting for my math. 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, it is. I agree. But 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. Everyone's still talking about it. 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.

Alright, 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.

And when I started dating Nikki, who eventually became my wife, I would go over to their house and her brother 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. He just sounds kind of gently-

Hey, Roman, let me borrow the cab. Yes. And he just kind of walks around and just kind of roasts everybody like like passive aggressively and it's absolutely hysterical i love everything about gta4 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. Or maybe it was yesterday. I can't remember.

I was real sick this weekend. But I did love... Between GTA 4 and 5, 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 think they're absolutely phenomenal video games. 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 nothing against the game. That's 100% me in that regard.

And I've beat GTA. I've beaten all of them, actually. But 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 aimless 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 gta's and the red deads 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 a personal level. None of us know psychopaths in real life like that. All right. So yeah, I've got GTA 4 at 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. 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 it on my dad's computer. I didn't have a computer. And I don't know if you'd really consider it 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 atris's note and it says catherine my love and you're like like, whoa. And you hear him say it and you're just like, I need to find out what happened. And 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. Oh, it's that, you know, like that, that, that ominous

feeling that it's like, it's, 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. Like this is a whole different level. And I have to, I have to just tap into this more. So it's a bit of a nostalgia pick, but it's my, 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 mist and that's it and i i know that i'm missing out and actually i feel like they just released mist on the oculus or in vr so i might need 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 i legitimately feel like i saw something about missed vr recently um yeah i

missed out on that game um i know that it's insanely well regarded it's a puzzle-based game if i remember right um but yeah i don't know why i just i 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 you just blew my mind josh please play this game please play this 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 if it's your number two i trust you well enough to say, or your number three, I trust you well enough to say he probably knows what he's talking about. 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.

I think Lawhore, Lycos, or Webcrawler did. I do want to see, though, if it does translate, because in VR, 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. And 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. Yeah. Dang it. First day. two weeks because i'll be playing this game and you're fired and i'm fired yeah dang yeah first day this is one of those games that i remember my friend's 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 and missed for five minutes and then my friends and i would be like well well, let's just go play Monkey Island, or we would play something else. So I'm sure Myst 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 smarter than eight or nine-year-old Paul or just a little bit more of an introverted 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 it is not my number one game but coming in at number three for me is the witcher three uh 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. My 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 IGN's, which is weird. 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 sake of just saving some time because we're starting to go long, it's incredible. There's not much to not like about it.

Other than that, some people have had complaints about the movement. It feels a little janky. Some people are like, I don't know what it is, the mechanics in this game. 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 and 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. But I got used to it really fast. I played it on the PS4. 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 Geralt theiven, because they both care. That's true. Oh, yeah. I mean, I love The Witcher. It's a great game. 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 because 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. 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 yeah 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 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 have cried in the Baron quest. I can't remember. Oh, that quest is terrible and sad and great all at the same time. Yeah.

No, but you're right, though. The first, I think it's like it's legitimately 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. 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 to I portal to was like my number 11 and my number eight, my number seven, my number 12 portal was one of the games that I struggled with them or portal to, to 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 three is a great spot for it. 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. 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 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 being a good vr game i could see some of the parts being really nauseating when you do the like fall through the through the ceiling and the floor at the same time just thinking about it oh that's right because a couple weeks ago yeah 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 yeah i don't 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... There's something that makes everything outside of this 30 degree in front of your face blurry. If you turn that off, even I am like, whoa. I'll go stand on top of the Empire State Building and be like, I'm going to fall over.

I have to take this off now. And that's the only one that did it. Anyways, I can see that though. When you're falling through floors and ceilings and you're like, I gotta take a moment to take a deep breath on this one in Portals 3. 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 pretty neat. I would definitely try it out. Portal 2 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. It's approachable. It's really a flawless game. 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 see 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 yeah how dare you all right michael what you got at number two okay so uh you know obviously uh drum rolls please for everybody but uh 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 odd job because odd job is short and that's cheating and it's not allowed. Yep. Golden eye 007 guys. It is incredible. 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 in 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 uh i actually was i i was hoping what's wrong with bald guys i mean moving on um so we're not just um no but but 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. You're like, don't look at my screen. Stop looking at my screen. I remember always thinking I wanted to have like separate TVs, which is now normal. Like now, you know, 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.

But I just the memories of this game are incredible it hasn't aged it hasn't aged very well because you know 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 shooter 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. All the eggs in one basket. Dude, Goldeneye is iconic. 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. There were hundreds of nights where I would be at my buddy's house, 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 a 55-inch TV. 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, half of their face was a pixel, and the pixels were huge. But man, such a great choice dude golden eye the other thing is everybody

talks about the multiplayer in golden eye but golden eye had an absolutely phenomenal single 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 goldeneye is where every house had the one broken 64 controller or the generic one the like the mad cats the knockoff one that nobody wanted to hold yes yeah yes 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, because you could slightly turn right, but not very well.

And you'd always give that to your friends. Oh, man. Now, I do not have GoldenEye in my top 10. Josh, was this one of yours on your list? It was my number seven. So that's the one that I had to skip up because Michael did have it in his top. But great, great pick, dude. Such 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 heck yeah oh a couple of sean beans on my list no spoilers um he was 006 i believe double oh yeah he was double six i think which how many double oh sixes have there been in the history of james bond movies but uh but that

part was so hard and i remember one of my favorite pieces about that game was you had to beat that on a hard mode i think it was to unlock the other James Bonds to play. So you could play like as Roger Moore, 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 GoldenEye 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 a time in life. Nothing beats it. All right, Josh, we are up to your number two. What do you got? In the interest of time, 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. Anyway. Yes, sure. That's just, we'll just fold it anyway you want to. Yeah. Just fold it anyway 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. But you're going to get an incredible deep dive episode next week on God of War,

because Paul and I actually 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 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. 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. I think it's just going to be a love fest. You hate it, right? With God of War. Yeah, it's a terrible game.

Such a good game, man. Absolutely love it. Yeah, like Josh said, we'll save all those details for 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 $300 million to make. 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 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. I absolutely love it. It's funny because that's my number seven on my list. And I didn't want to pick multiple Rockstar games, so I had to decide between the GTA series or Red Dead 1 and 2. I mean, it wasn't really hard because Red Dead 1 is amazing, but Red Dead 2 clearly

takes the cake. It's much better. But I mean, even just the simple things 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, it's 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. So yeah, that's my number two. And so now we are in the final round, guys. We got our number ones. Oh boy. Yeah. So Michael, you get to go

first, buddy. What you got coming in number one? It sounds like such a simple phrase, doesn'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. And 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.

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 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 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 what is what i think it means but um 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 yeah 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.

Oh, he used to, yeah. But he's there to guide you in the beginning. Yeah, no, oh, Sir Patrick Stewart's in there. 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 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. There was no IMDb when it came. I don't think IMDb was out yet. It's Captain Picard. Yeah, I'm like, is that Patrick Stewart? That's Captain Picard. It's just the game blew my mind.

I loved it from the very beginning. And I don't know 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 morrowind and prior to that dagger fall you know if we're going way way back you Morrowind and prior to that, Daggerfall, if we're going way, way back. They're incredible games. I really struggled with putting –

because I like Skyrim a little bit better than Oblivion, but 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 uh definitely

mod it because they're you know there's a big project in skyrim going on right now it's called skyblivion and 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 you probably have not played this game unless you're at least 34 34 ish somewhere around there yeah so i'm gonna try not to monologue or gush too much because i could legitimately talk about this game for i i feel like weeks but it is to me the it is the game that i have the most play time in it is the game that i have the most play time in. It is the game that I have the most fondest memories of. It is the game that I have not ever read. 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. And I will say this. I will say this. I don't know that EverQuest 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 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 i accused everquest or world of warcraft of being everquest light when we did the rpg 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 partner. It was not a good friend. It was not your pal. If you died, 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. Dragon's like, go stomp that. 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 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. I remember the date because there was a lot of talk of 9-11 at the time. It was right after that. And so I'll never 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 con Connie and Grumpy because that was his character names. And then Matt was Sefexis, was his character's name. He was a paladin. Like in Cashin, all these guys, we just know them by their 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. You play a female character, so your name's Connie. Right. Yep. your character name yeah you play a female character so your name's 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 light but everything that you're describing is awful and you guys admit that those things were terrible right at the way 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, oh, hey guys, wipe the raid. You would never wipe a raid in EverQuest. Because you're like, no, no, no, no, no, no. We have to win.

The statue of Ryozek 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 going to 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 every day of the week that's what i'm saying like i'm not that's like i don't i couldn't handle that now you know but man back in the day the stories that you would get i think you have some stockholm syndrome yeah maybe maybe just really tried not to die. I had to be true to myself, man. I was like, this has got to be my number one. Yeah.

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 arc, since there hasn't been like a really great MMO in a while with you. Like I, I do hope for that and lost art could be that to be honest i think for a lot of people blown away better 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 improvements for WoW. I never played EverQuest, but 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.

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 like three mass effect games three dragon age games and a bunch of gta games i wanted 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 Mass Effect stand out compared to

other series is that normally with new installments, game developers do not want 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 1 might be my favorite story, but it's the worst gameplay. Mass Effect 3 definitely has the worst story, but Mass Effect 2 does both excellently.

So I'm going to pick Mass Effect 2. It's got some of my all-time favorite characters. I love Shepard. I love Morden. And Colonel Sam Shepard, right? Goodness. Michael just recently started playing Mass Effect. I was at his house when he created his character, and he did, in fact.

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 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 ten of all time. Yeah.

Yeah. All right. Well, that's all that 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 MultiplayerPod. And here's what I'm

going to do. I'm going to take these lists and I'm going to put them on there so you guys can vote on who you think had the best list. But I mean, 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. 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 MultiplayerPod, everywhere you follow your socials, and we'll talk to you. Come tell us what your top 10s 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 10s are. It might also give us some ideas of some games that we do do want to pop in and play so uh 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 gonna 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 uh that's it happy gaming everybody we'll see you all on thursday all right we're out of here see you everybody