Video Gamers Podcast - Mid-Year Video Game Awards - Gaming Podcast

Episode Date: July 4, 2022

Gaming hosts Michael, Josh and Paul are back with another incredible episode from your favorite gaming podcast. In this awesome episode, we take a look at 2022 and give out our personal game awards. Has 2022 been good for gaming? Which games will and categories do we have? Check out this awesome episode to see! Thanks to Manscaped.com for sponsoring today’s episode. Head over to Manscaped.com to check out their awesome lineup of high quality men’s care products. Make sure to use code: Multiplayer at checkout for 20% off your ENTIRE order and FREE shipping! Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad   Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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skincare, and more to keep you clean, trim, and feeling fresh. Get 20% off and free shipping with code multiplayer at manscaped.com. That's 20% off with free shipping at manscaped.com. Use code multiplayer at checkout. Unlock your confidence and always use the right tools for the job with Manscaped. Hello fellow gamers, welcome to the Multiplayer Gaming Podcast. We are three dads who are lifelong gamers and today we have a very special episode because we have officially reached the midway point of 2022. We figured, why not throw out some Mid-Year Gaming Awards? Some of those awards are going to be categories you might be able to guess. Others will be a little bit funnier and a little bit more out in left field. Should be an absolute blast. But before we start that, please take a second to rate our show five stars and leave a written review if your podcast app allows. Also, if you enjoy the show and want extra episodes plus early access to all of our shows

and you can get a shout out on the show, go sign up and check us out on Patreon, which you can see at MultiplayerSquad.com. I am your host, or in this case, the Master of Ceremonies, and my name is Paul. I'm joined here by my two co-presenters. I'm not going to lie, guys, this is kind of hard to think of an introduction here. Do I go with a famous comedy duo like Tina Fey and Amy Poehler? Do I go for a light roast with James Franco and Anne and anne hathaway uh let's see coming up first he's very funny and he's always entertaining this isn't exactly a great analogy but let's make him our chris rock of the evening it's michael yeah i picked a good one for me i love it i am funny

and entertaining laugh it laugh at my humor i'm also really smart devilishly good looking and yeah and and that's it yeah that's it i have no tattoos uh i enjoy long walks on the beach uh picking my own boogers and wiping on other people's upholstery and watching film oh boy okay and then you guys probably know where this is going on the other side of the ring this will be his last appearance at the Mid-Year Awards because he's going to get suspended for 10 years. Everybody seems to have his wife's name in their mouth. He's our Will Smith of the evening.

It's Josh. Keep my Steam library out your mouth. Oh, very nice. Paul, when you started talking about duos, I was like, he's got to go with Chris Rock and Will Smith, right? Yeah, of course. I had to, yeah. And it's a timely reference, you know, with the Academy Awards. Had to roll with it.

All right, so before we start handing out our mid-year awards to all of these different games, we do have a little bit of housekeeping to do. You guys heard me in the intro. If you sign up on Patreon, you get a shout out on the show and we owe a very big shout out to our new Rare supporter, Lyric on Wii, who has consistently been one of our most active Discord members.

We couldn't be happier. Thank you so much for supporting us on Patreon and this is your grand shout out on the show. Woohoo! Heck yeah, Lyric! Thanks! Thank you for supporting the show. And we get to shout you out, and I love it. Now, I can't give Lyric on Wii too big of a head, but I actually know him in real life. And he's a super cool dude. He is a very, very cool member of our gaming community. We're very glad to have him with us. It helps that he's also a really cool

human being as well in real life, too. So thank you, Lyric Onwee, for finally not being cheap anymore and helping to support the show. There you go. That's a really nice backhanded compliment. Right? It's a compliment sandwich, man. He went there. All right. And then, Josh, you've got to review someone left for the show do have a review i'm gonna just read this because i know we're gonna wind up going long man so this one comes in from nathan eicher and it's titled this podcast awesome i've been listening to this podcast for months now and it's still as new and fresh as when i first started listening the days the gents release episodes are the highlight of my week.

10 out of 10 listening experience. Pancakes versus waffles, 75%, 25%. Toward which side? Pancakes. It's respectively, so yeah, it starts with pancakes. He's saying nobody hates waffles, but pancakes are better, which we all know. We all agree

everybody knows that all right moving on uh all right so we are very excited to talk about these mid-year awards to give the people a little bit of a taste of what they can expect for the rest of the show josh i thought that maybe you could just explain a little bit about how we came up with these categories and if you want maybe give them one or two teasers of something they can look forward to. Okay, so we decided that it would be very cool to do like a mid-year award. And we, as we always do, we put some criteria on this. And the criteria is that this has to be a game that released in 2022. Now, it can be a new port if it was not available before on console. Let's say it was a PC game and it got ported to console. That qualifies and vice versa. So if it's only on console and it was an exclusive and now you can play it on PC, we will

allow that because it technically released on that platform in 2022. But the criteria is that all of these games had to have released since January 1st of 2022. So yes, this will limit the field. We get that, hey, there's going to be some overlap because some games stand out amongst others. But that's basically the criteria we went with. And then we tried to come up with a absolute overabundance of categories because some of us are over preppers. And so some of, some of the categories are, you know,

your traditional like game of the year so far. But then some of the other ones are a little bit funnier, like maybe worst money grab and the smoke show award. That's a smoke show award. paul yeah what's what's the smoke show award michael uh the smoke show award is it's basically just lost dark that's it all of lost dark it means that man you put me on the spot real good there didn't he family friendly uh it just means you're devilish you basically uh tom cruise wait that's not sure i don't know yeah he's he's beautiful yeah maybe like 1992 tom cruise oh now tom cruise man come on that guy yeah he was a dapper fellow in maverick yeah he was that that

rugged role fits him as well yeah smoke show most attractive gaming character i mean maybe not the most pc award but we're just trying to have a little bit of fun here all right we also make love to video games so yeah this is in line with make love mary or murder all right so you know to kind of remind you guys of what's happened so far in 2022 it's actually been a pretty eventful year. And so I've got just a couple of highlights that I thought I would mention here at the top. We have seen a ton of acquisitions between gaming companies. January alone, we saw Take-Two acquiring Zynga for $13 billion, Microsoft acquiring Activision Blizzard for $69 billion, Sony acquiring Bungie for $3.6 billion, and even surprisingly, the New York Times decided to jump into gaming, and they acquired Wordle for an

undisclosed seven-figure sum in the millions. That was just January alone. February was an eventful month. Michael officially joined the show as a host, and we also saw the Steam Deck released. This summer, we saw E3 was canceled, but we saw a whole bunch of other game reveal type events pop up. And then, of course, we saw a ton of video game releases. Some of the top-selling ones include the likes of Elden Ring, Horizon Forbidden West, Lost Ark, Gran Turismo 7, Kirby and the Forgotten Land. We also had some famous games that were ported, like Josh was mentioning. We had God of War finally arrive on PC. Deep Rock Galactic was

ported to console. We also got some lesser-known titles that we did deep dives on, like Weird West. So a couple other notable releases that I thought I would just mention that may or may not come up in the rest of the show. We also had releases for The Quarry, Diablo Immortal, Evil Dead, Tiny Tina's Wonderlands, Ghostwire Tokyo, Roguebook, Sifu, Rainbow Six Extraction, and of course, a lot of others. So last question I wanted to throw you guys before we jump into the awards. How do you feel so far about the 2022 releases? I feel about a 5 out of 10, to be honest.

Yeah, kind of mediocre. This has not been the best year for video games. Now, that's not to say that there haven't been some phenomenal video games. But overall, I feel like this has been a fairly lackluster year. We've seen a lot of delays. I think 2023 is going to be phenomenal, to be honest with you, because I think we're going to see all of those games that got delayed release in 2023. But I'm very just... I don't want to say meh, because like I said, there's been some really fun, enjoyable games. But I would man, because like I said, there's been some really fun, enjoyable games, but I would rate 2022 as like a five out of 10.

Yeah. I'm going to rate it as the star Wars sequels from the 2010s. Like basically it's like, it's like, you know, it's still video games. It's still star Wars, but it's,

it's just not as good as it could have been. So it's the same thing. It's not a man, but it's like a, all right, it's been all right. You know know i feel like a lot of these smaller titles have actually blown away and there hasn't been a lot of big things that came out really like when we're still talking about the game of the year being a game that came out in february and it's probably the only contender with elden ring you know what i mean overall not saying that's my game of the

year but for overall game of the year like that's all we got and i think that's just that's that's my game of the year but for overall game of the year like that's all we got and i think that's just that's that's 2022 yeah i feel like there's a lot of good games but it's kind of like a lot of b to b plus games it's a little light on the 10 out of 10 consensus everybody loves it kind of games a lot of highly playable stuff i was actually surprised at how many games i've enjoyed so far i thought it was a really down year until i actually surprised at how many games I've enjoyed so far. I thought it was a really down year until I actually looked at the list. I was like, you know what? It's actually not bad. It's just nothing is really standing out other than Elden Ring kind of being the consensus best release so far. All right, so let's just go ahead and jump into the awards.

We are not deciding these as a consensus group. We're all going to give our individual awards here for each category. I don't know. Maybe we just throw out whatever award you guys want to talk about next, and then we can kind of go over it. Michael, I'll toss it to you first. Is there an award here that you want to start out with? Yeah, and I should probably preface by saying we should do the Game of the year last so far our favorite game of the years because you know it's like

it's like the oscars the best picture goes last emmy's best show uh let's start off with the best voice acting performance oh okay let's talk that out real fast uh and so uh you want me to go ahead and just give mine here yeah oh yeah go for it dude yeah so it's funny we actually saw uh we actually saw this this particular voice actress uh yes actress uh do two phenomenal voice acting jobs in this particular year we saw her uh do the voice of aloy from horizon forbidden west and she also did tiny tina it's ashley birch uh i just thought the tiny tina was hilarious, phenomenal, just really well done. In fact, that whole game is full of... It was hard to pick

because the whole game is full of incredible voice actor performance. But Ashley Birch as Tiny Tina was just absolutely phenomenal. And I loved it. And there's nothing really else I can say about that. She's funny. She's confident. She's hilarious. That's it. That is exactly who I had as my nomination as well. Tiny Tina was hilarious. That's it. That is exactly who I had as my nomination as well. Tiny Tina was hilarious.

Just what a talented person. Aloy, I know she's done a lot of other stuff too, but these are the two that really stood out to me. This one I thought was going to be difficult and then was not because I think she's phenomenal. So for me, it was Ashley Burch as well. Yeah, I thought she did a fantastic job. I went in a little bit of a different direction, only because Tiny Tina, you could maybe argue, is just a little too over the top. You can definitely feel the acting, less so with Aloy. But this might surprise you guys, but I want to give it to Brenda Song from The Quarry. She is the one who voiced Caitlin, the Asian female character. Oh, yeah, you're right. I thought she was fantastic in The Quarry.

It feels so effortless. She just felt like a normal person. Some of the other characters in The Quarry I thought did really good, but you could kind of tell that they're acting. For her, just anytime she talked, it just seemed like a normal person talking in a game, pulling off that young adult, very brash and harsh exterior, but a little bit of a softie, a little bit once you get to know her on the inside. So I felt like I had to throw her a bone here. So Brenda's song was my pick. You know, that's a really good point, too, to say that, because in video games, oftentimes you can see it.

You know what I mean? Like, look at, like, what was it? The original Resident Evil. Like, oh, umbrella. You know, like, it's just like it's over. It's like so hard to time. And you're right. She was effortless.

It was it seemed like it was like a real person. Yeah. I was going to say she was one of the more believable characters. Like you, I think you kind of touched on it more natural. Like I, I feel like that's somebody that I could have known at some point, whereas some of the other characters were a little either over top or

overacted or just over overdone a little bit, I guess. Sure. All right, Josh, what you got for our next award? Oh, let's just keep the,

uh, we'll save some of the better ones for last. Let's do the funniest game moment. Oh, I wonder if Josh and I are going to have the same for this. I thought we might. I'll be curious to see. So for me, I had a hard time on this one, and I just kind of simplified it because there are a lot of funny moments in this game and we talked about a few of them when we did a deep dive on it but there was one where i was really just chuckling to myself and it kind of was the first one that came to mind and that is from tiny tina's wonderlands because it is a hilarious game and it is the sequence of when you go to the ocean you are going to hop on your boat.

You have to go through this scene with a bard that is just absolutely bananas. You think you're finally going to get on your boat and sail across the ocean when lo and behold, missile silos open up. Missiles fly out. They crash into the ocean. They blow up the entire ocean. And then it is thus dubbed the notion. I believe you blow up the freaking ocean. I think it's what the quest tells you to do. Yes.

And this is after the whole sequence with the bard and having to play a lot of different instruments and things like that. So for me, that was one of those moments where I literally LOL and just thought this game is insane. There are a lot of those moments in the game, but that was one that really stood out to me as far as that actually made me laugh. Was that yours, Paul?

No, but mine is from Tiny Tina's. I had a different quest line, and I'll try to keep this relatively quick. This is the goblin one, right? It is, yeah. See, I almost picked that one, but I thought you'd pick that one. I did. There's a side quest called A Farmer's Ardor. And it's so funny because you end up driving all these goblins out of a farm. And then the farmer is upset and says, why did you drive off all these goblins?

I actually have been trying to bring them here. And long story short, you find out that the poor farmer has actually been falling for a rich neighbor who is an alchemist. And so you try to play matchmaker between the two, but the alchemist says that they aren't interested in the farmer until pigs fly, water flows backwards, or a polka-dotted poetry-reading goblin recites a love poem. And so you tell the farmer that this is what the alchemist said. And the farmer takes this way too literally. They take this to mean, okay, we got to go find a goblin that's going to match all this criteria. And so you have to find the right dyes to dye this goblin polka-dotted. In order to draw the goblins out, you have to find the smelliest, dankiest underwear in the

whole kingdom. And it's just this hilarious string of side quests. And you end up creating this goblin who does recite love poetry. And you go get the alchemist and bring them out. The alchemist says, wow, they went through all this trouble. Yeah, you want to go out on a date and do you remember what the farmer says the farmer says no i'm now betrothed to the goblin so just in like the three minutes you were gone the farmer ends up falling for the goblin that you created and now they are betrothed moving forward so that that had to be my pick from tiny tina well tiny tina is going to round it all three on this one, because mine is Tork's song to raise the balsagna and Tiny Tina's as well.

And to add to what Josh says at the end when he caps it off with, I cast magic missile. And it's like, wait, what? And then at the very end of that, the explosion happens. But what about the whales? I care about nature. And it just cracked me up. And the song and the entire part of the quest is you're just beating on these drums and hitting these cymbals and stuff. And it literally, like Josh, just made me LOL.

Oh, it's too funny. I had a feeling we'd all pick something from Tiny Tina's. It was just such a funny game in general. There weren't many other funny games this year. No, there were some funny moments in the quarry just between a couple of the characters, but nothing that would make you laugh as much as Santino's. Yep. Yeah, Elden Ring didn't bring a whole lot of chuckles. Let's just say that.

Oh, come on. Oh, tears. You can cry and laugh, can't you? Right? That might be the only, yeah. All right, next category here. Let's go with best villain slash best boss fight i thought this would be a fun category to talk about all right paul well you name the category what you got all right uh

this has to be an elden ring boss in my opinion if we're talking about bosses this is the game that brought the best bosses i had trouble narrowing it down to one i thought you know a lot of people who played elden ring didn't get terribly far in the game i better pick one of the early bosses i gotta go with godric the grafted this was such a fun boss yep yep so basically kind of like long story short he's got a lot of long and slow attacks to try to fake you out to make the dodging really difficult he sends out shock waves that you have to jump over it's like a really interactive fight that i loved but the

best part is halfway through the fight when you get him to about half health in the second phase he literally rips his arm off and attaches a dragon head and the dragon head has fire attacks that he starts flaming across the battlefield while you're still fighting him. I mean, what a cool idea for a boss. I mean, he's literally Godric the Grafted. He's got all these things grafted to his body. What cooler thing to graft than a dragon head? Very good choice. I'm with you, Paul, on your thinking in a lot of ways on this. The boss fights in Elden Ring are absolutely grade A. I'm with you in that some of the later game bosses, I don't know if it's just that you're used to it by then, or you get in that grind and

you're kind of chugging through it. But the one that stood out for me was early in the game. In fact, it was right before Godric the Grafted. And it's Margit the Fel. Nice. Because I think I died to Margit the Fel more times than just about any other boss. I don't know if I tried taking him on before I was strong enough or what. But that was the proverbial wall that I slammed my head against for quite a while. And I know for a lot of people like Michael that did a lot of exploring and stuff that Margit the Fel was probably their first introduction into

what is this stupid game? Why is this boss so hard? So while maybe not the coolest looking boss, it's the one that stands out in my mind the most. So that's my nomination is Margit the Fel from Elden Ring. I like it. it yeah so i didn't go with a boss fight uh mostly because i didn't really fight a lot of the bosses in helden ring i ran around a whole bunch and uh you know i fought some of the bosses that weren't required as much um and snuck around but i actually i promised this entire show will not be from tiny tina's i had best villain i did dragon lord from tiny tina's because will arnett just did such a great job voicing him. He was so much fun.

The fact that there was that breaking the fourth wall, not breaking the fourth wall, but the fact that they talk about being on a board game and stuff, it was just really clever. And I really thought that it was a breath of fresh air to have a villain be like Dragon Lord was. And it was just really fun. You didn't hate him.

And that's my villain. Yeah, Will Arnett was so funny in that game. I love Wanda Sykes and Andy Samberg and Will Arnett. I thought Will Arnett was probably the funniest out of the bunch. He was just, anytime he talked, there was something very funny and very interesting going on. I really did love Dragonlord. All all right i think we're back to michael to pick our next category here oh let's go with um studio that earns your trust oh this is a good one yeah i actually had to think about this one too because a lot of times it's either like you either like a studio or they've broken your trust already cd project red um you know or something like that studio that lost your trust right yeah so this one was actually

a little tough for me and i this one i'm curious to see who michael says but i actually had to do a little bit of thinking on this one who'd you who'd you pick michael it's clearly blizzard right definitely how did you know gosh guys let me say my own picks. Come on. I actually went with Guerrilla Games because they've really only made two games. There's kind of a third one out there, but they made Horizon Zero Dawn and Horizon Forbidden West. What I like about Guerrilla Games is they do exactly what they said they're going to do. When they started back in the day and they made Horizon Zero Dawn, they made it.

They said, we're going to have a very limited HUD. We're going to try and make the game look natural. We're going to have the they started back in the day and they made Horizon Zero Dawn they made it they said we're going to have a very limited HUD we're going to try and make the game look natural we're going to have the combat be fun they did all the things they wanted to do and they doubled down with Horizon Forbidden West because it's I mean I'm five hours into the game I literally got my PS5 yesterday thank you Hutenberg for

the help there but I got it yesterday and I like I you know how I've been just waiting to play Horizon Forbidden West because my PS4 pro wouldn't play it i'm five hours into forbidden west love it so far absolutely love it but i'm like you know what like they're two games in really as a as a developer but they do what they said they're gonna do they have two slam dunk games and i think that i'm just i am excited for whatever they branch out to next because i really kind of am like hey i'm sold on these guys it's a real small group of like 30 people that's the whole company from what i understand and i just think that they're they're doing right so far

oh very nice i like that pick what would you have for this one josh all right so this one we said studio that's earned your trust so that that's not necessarily a publisher, not necessarily a developer. And my pick on this one is one that probably nobody has heard of. And that is a studio called Jetpack Interactive. Now, let me tell you a story about Jetpack Interactive, ladies and gentlemen. Porting a game to PC when it is designed for a console can go south very, very quickly. We see it with the game that we just reviewed near Automata, right? A lot of the negative reviews on that were how janky the PC port was. We've seen it with the original Horizon,

right? Forbidden Dawn. It was a bad PC port at first. Now they fixed it. Kudos to them because it's very smooth now. But taking a beloved game and porting it to PC and not having it suck is very difficult. And one thing to me that stands out almost more than anything else with the God of War port to PC was how absolutely incredible the PC port was. I said this in the deep dive. You can go back and listen to it if you haven't heard it already. It's a great episode. But I said this is perhaps the best port I have ever seen in my life for a game that has been ported to PC. It is absolutely flawless. And because of that, if Jetpack Interactive ports any other game, I will 100% trust that studio to do it the right way because they did an absolutely phenomenal job with God of War. You know, especially as we see more and more console games ported to PC, in particular Sony, we've really seen how that can go wrong so fast, like you had mentioned even just like controller schemes and button schemes i i don't

understand why konami games will have you like press j to accept you know your your new settings or whatever even the quarry which clearly is more of a console game had some really weird buttons where if you could not press escape to exit the settings menu you had to hit backspace yeah and it's like have these people never touched a pc like do they not know what these games normally there's some buttons you should never screw with like escape to exit the menu right sprint should be your shift button you know jumps always spacebar those sorts of things yeah yeah i don't know why but a lot of studios just get that stuff wrong and yeah graphically there's there's issues i don't know what it is but yeah jetpack really

knocked that one out of the ballpark you do have to give them credit for that all right the studio that i chose that earned my trust is wolf eye studios weird west there we go they did weird west weird west going to pop up a couple times here, but they are still a very new studio. They were started in 2019. It was started by two guys that had worked for Arcane Studios. So those are the people who did Dishonored, Deathloop, Prey, all those games. A lot of pedigree. And Weird West is the very first game that they put out as a studio. And I know that I have said that Weird West almost feels like it was tailor-made for my gaming interests, but everything that they built into that game is just exactly

what I loved. The ability to make choices, to see how that would affect the world the fact that you do play as five protagonists and all of them were fascinating and to see how all of them come together in the end i really felt like that game was incredibly smoothly made i had no technical issues with weird west i really loved everything that they made and so i feel like as time goes on as they get even more experience and get more people hired i really am very curious to see what they're able to come out with next if they really stick with the action rpg genre in particular we're really talking my language so wolf i i poked around their website i don't really see anything as far as what they're going to be

working on next so i'm not too sure what's on the horizon but after weird west they've definitely earned my trust i know what's on horizon it's forbidden west that's what's on the horizon bad joke wow fair enough fair enough why did i do that oh we can edit that out right no cut it in it stays in stone now all right so after studio that's earned our trust i think we're back to you josh you want to pick our next award we gotta do it boys we're going with the smoke show award um i thought initially i was like man this is gonna be tough but then i were then the the recesses of my brain opened up and i went oh how could i forget about you my lovely wonderful beatrice from lost ark beatrice is the angelic lady that you see in the beginning that you hand the arcs into. There is something so wonderful about Beatrice that is just amazing.

And I apologize to Beatrice that it took me a minute to think about my choice, but that is hands down my nominee for the Smoke Show Award for 2022. All right. I don't know if I should say anything in response to that. Yeah, right? I kind of forgot who you were talking about, but I do have it pulled up on Google Image. Tell me I'm wrong. And let's just say that we had some conversations off mic about Nier, and I was kind of poking fun at the anime style faces and

bodies and this is this is a little more in line with that coming from you know south korea okay but 2b is not a real person she's an android beatrice is a real person paul okay all right very nice so so smoke show award winner one, Beatrice from Lost Ark. Smoke Show. Michael, what did you come up with for this one? Any character from Lost Ark? No. Man, I actually picked Caitlyn from The Quarry. Oh, did you?

Dude, she's good with a gun. She's awesome. She's smart. She's tough. She always has a tough head on. I mean, she wears those little pants. No, I liked her a lot. I thought she was awesome.

And the way she talks out of the side of her mouth sometimes, she's just adorable. It's just a smoke show. And she's good with a gun. That's very funny. I actually considered putting her in the list here, and I thought you guys would call me crazy. But I'm with you, Michael.

I think that's a very good pick. I feel like in the quarry the the pretty one is supposed to be emma wasn't that her name she's she's annoying man her yeah animations were sometimes kind of goofy i don't know about you guys with her mouth sometimes twice as long as it should be yeah especially in the cell phone scene when she's like walking around doing the selfie it's off like the podcast or the uh the vlog or whatever yeah it was weird and it's funny because i was excited about halston sage because she's in season one of the orville and i was like heck yeah man i'm gonna see her in something else because i've only ever seen in the orville and then when i saw her character i

was like is that halston say oh god no oh no she has a very good scene in neighbors and i'll just leave it at that nice uh my pick for this one for smoke show you know uh i i tried to stay away from games that have already been out for years and then got ported i kind of felt like okay i understand that it's eligible i tried to only pick brand new stuff but for this one i i went ahead with freya from god of war oh nice yeah i mean look maybe i don't know maybe this is like too revealing or whatever but you know she's got like the smoky eyes i like brunettes you know my wife's a brunette um she's very like this very kind loving mother figure and she's got a little bit of a dark vendetta kind of side that comes out on occasion. I'm not necessarily against it. I mean, what can I say? I really like her character. I thought she

was smart, funny, strong, a little crazy. And I went ahead and I picked Freya. That is a very respectable choice, Paul. I like that choice. Thank you. All right. So we are now about halfway through the show. We're going to take a very short break here and we are going to hear from one of our sponsors. Support for today's show is brought to you by Manscaped. Manscaping isn't just for life's special occasions. It's a requirement for optimal health, superior hygiene, and healthy self-esteem.

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All right. Let's talk about favorite protagonists because this one can go in a lot of different ways. And I have a feeling we all probably picked different people. We did. I would like to say, in all honesty for this category, that I spent about 30 minutes looking up the best or my favorite antagonist. Oh, no. And then I went, protagonist! Oh, yeah! Nice. So, yeah. So, I had to just be honest with with the listeners there i completely goofed on this one at first it's been about 30 minutes and then was like i was like well why did we do our best

villain if we have like antagonist too protagonist is good guy antagonist bad guy mine was easy i spent no time on this one it was a slam dunk for me instant pick all right well who'd you pick paul well i was gonna say this is kind of a funny category because a lot of the best games this year had had protagonists that either had no personality where you really don't get to know them we were kind of joking about like the tarnished in elden ring that's clearly not a character you're gonna nominate as the best protagonist I mean they don't talk they don't really do anything other than fight and kill everything that they see uh for this one I went with another element from Weird West there are five protagonists that you could pick from I went with the pig man i did it buddy yeah all right like baby also not winning

the smoke show award unfortunately oh no no if there was an ugliest character award that one's going to the big man so i am going to share some major spoilers from weird west i mean the game's been out a while if you wanted to play it you probably already did but you play as five different protagonists and in the beginning of the game you play as Jane Bell. She's this bounty hunter, totally normal story, just trying to get her husband back who's been kidnapped. Then you've kind of finished up her story. And then this game takes this really hard right turn out of nowhere, where all of a sudden your character awakens as a pig man. You find out that there are characters that basically, I think if I remember right, their brains are put into a pod and they surround it with different pig parts that they stitch together.

So you kind of almost look like Patchwork, if you're familiar with World of Warcraft or Hearthstone. Yep, 100%. Super ugly, and your character has no memory of anything before the transformation and right off the bat i was like i don't want to play as this dude like he's weird and super creepy and i don't know what's going on he's running around with a cleaver like i i and i really liked jane i kind of wanted to keep going with her story but then like as i was playing as the pig man and i know that this is going to be different for everybody because you can make all these different choices

i made my pig man this really honorable outstanding citizen who always did the right thing he was super kind he's saving people he never stole anything and so i was playing him as this like really nice honorable guy. And over the course of the playthrough as the pig man in chapter two, you find out that this woman named Cecilia betrayed you and turned you into the woman who has been creating the pig men using dark magic. So you finally track her down at the end of the chapter, and you have the choice to either be mad and attack Cecilia for betraying you, or you can actually have a conversation with her. And of course, being a good playthrough, I started talking to her, and she's like,

get out of here, pig man. Who are you? I didn't even know that you things could talk. And then very quickly, she realizes that she knows you and that you guys have this history. And you find out that this was your wife that you had been incredibly abusive to. I went back and I rewatched the scene. She says, my bones have not healed right. I cannot walk straight because of you. And as soon as I read that, like, I'm even getting chills just thinking about it, but it was such a crazy reveal that here I was this really nice person, and it turns out that I was actually this really deplorable brothel owner that abused women and abused my wife and all these things that happened. And so I apologized for that. And I

asked her for forgiveness. And Cecilia says, no. She says, get the F off my property. And then the chapter just ends. But you get a little bit of a reputation bump because you did the right thing. And so she says, I hope that you've truly learned how to treat people now. So it was like, like it was a lot of times you see the stories where there's like redemption, but it's because the character learned from their mistake or you see the good character go bad, like in breaking bad. But here with the pig man,

it was just like really somber and really surprising. And it really just stuck with me. So sorry to go on a little bit of a long monologue there, but I thought that was such a cool story arc. I had to include the pig man. Yeah. I really liked stuck with me. So sorry to go on a little bit of a long monologue there, but I thought that was such a cool story arc. I had to include the pig man. Yeah, I really liked that one too. He was really good. Yeah, that's why I was kind of cheering

when you said the pig man too. Out of the five, he ended up being like my favorite protagonist out of the bunch and I couldn't stand him in the beginning. Well, I like it when you later on, you come back across him and he's like, hey, I'm living the straight and narrow. I learned, you know, from when you were me, I i guess you know yeah sorry about the spoiler there but yeah yeah so i'll make

mine quick because i'm pretty i have a sneaking feeling that michael might have the same person but i'm gonna say aloy from the horizon series she's a phenomenal character i love the fact that they introduce her from early childhood, through all the trials and tribulations that she goes through, her challenges, being an outcast. You really, really bond with that character. And I think it's what makes the Horizon game so incredible. Michael, did you pick somebody different? No, 100%. It's Aloy. And for the same things that you said like i love her story great minds by the way um but uh i just i love the story behind her like hey you shut your face face shitter um only one of us is under 40 that's right oh man it hurts it hurts no but she's sorry go ahead go ahead but she's she's great like i love her

story i love her personality she's caring she's honest but she's also tough uh she wears animal skins she can shoot a bow she takes down mechanized dinosaurs essentially like and and just i feel like when you follow her like you just really get a sense of her character and who she is all the way through and then of course her backstory which i won't really spoil for people that haven't played the games, but she's got a great backstory. And I can't wait to finish playing Horizon Forbidden West because I'm really loving Aloy. Love me some Aloy. Now, I didn't play Horizon Forbidden West. I played a little bit of Horizon Zero Dawn and just kind of fizzled.

Is there like a big time jump between the games or is it like a direct sequel uh it's funny she definitely ages a little bit like she looks about 10 years older i i didn't catch if there's an actual time jump but i think it's about 10 years later like she when when horizon forbidden west starts like it's really cool i'll say this one thing because one of the things i've always loved about uh zero dawn is the tutorial you're a little Aloy. You're a little girl. And then it does that montage where she jumps across the tree and she's an adult now and you know that the tutorial is over. In the second game, the tutorial, she's talking about things she's seen and she's got a whole collection of focuses now because in the one, she's only found the one focus. That's the thing that makes her see

different things around the world. Well, you have a buddy that meets up with you and you're teaching him how to use his focus and you're teaching him how to use a bow and arrow. And it's like, what a cool way to do tutorial again. But what you gather from that tutorial phase, it seems like some time has gone by probably about 10 years, maybe five years, but they did age the character a little bit.

Like she's a little more wrinkly. Hmm. One of these days, maybe I'll finally finish the first and pick up the second because it's incredible i just haven't played it very much it's only it took me 103 hours to finish 100 completion every achievement i just want you to know that that whole time i was singing the circle of life in my head great song love it i love the lion king this is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships,

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I picked the last one, right? So yeah, Michael, what do you want to do for the next award? That wasn't a pick. I just wanted to sing Lion King because now it's stuck in my head too. Let's do most fun weapon. Ooh, okay. All right.

I cheated on mine, completely cheated because I couldn't think of one and then I instantly thought of one, which is all. I thought any weapon from Elden Ring was the most fun weapon. And the reason why I say that is because I love the way the physics in the game worked. When you used any weapon, it felt real. And I was like, that was so

much fun to me to take a sword and clang it against armor or hit a shield. When you hit a shield, you knew you hit a shield. You felt it, even though you're not feeling it. There's no haptic feedback on my controller from my computer. But i felt like it was so fun to use the weapons in elden ring because they just they the sound just everything about him felt so real and that's why i say most fun like it wasn't the coolest the most incredible like big boom stick or something like that but it was just really fun to use those weapons all right that's a good pick i liked swapping the weapons in and out early on in elden ring it was always neat to just see like okay normally i would never play with like a halberd but how does it play in this game and

what if i do my jump attacks and there's definitely something to be said for weapons that give you a little bit more range as opposed to like those daggers i they weren't always the best weapons but i think my favorite weapons in elden ring were always the daggers that would cause bleed damage so even like being able to swap out all that kind of stuff elden ring i think has a slew of weapons that you could nominate here uh what'd you have for this one josh i have i'm just gonna be quick on this one because i have made my love of these weapons known multiple times um and it's the it's the blades of chaos from god of war nice yeah um i we have a a listener in a a real life friend of mine um that just bought a hand forged leviathan axe um that i that i had linked to him and then he bought it for his birthday and then posted photos and made

me extremely jealous. I think the Leviathan X is super cool. The Blades of Chaos, I have looked. I cannot find somebody that hand forges those. So if you're a blacksmith and want to make me a set, reach out to me. But for me, Blades of Chaos, hands down. I just love those weapons. I love what they represented in God of War. I love that whole sequence. So yeah, they're just awesome. You'd have to be an incredible blacksmith to make those. Like, incredible. You know, the detail.

Yeah, that's probably why they're not out there. Right? Well, I know that we've already joked about this, but I feel like there's also some innate liability issues if you sell super sharp blades at the end of chains that you wildly swing around your body. I got this, Paul. I believe that Josh was just going to spin in circles with them. I would. I would just whirlwind.

You got to keep that centripetal force and just have the blades as far away from you as possible, because otherwise you're going to cut a limb off. Oh, how funny. Yeah, blades of chaos of chaos i think are probably the right answer i wrote down two just in case someone else said blades that way i would just bring something different to the table so i'll go ahead and say the revolver from weird west nice once you put lightning rounds into it oh yeah all right those are fun who doesn't love chain lightning in games like if i can play diablo as a sorceress with you always unlock chain lightning first chain lightning is always my favorite ability in games and weird west lets you do it with a gun so you can shoot a mob of people with lightning bullets and it will spread to other people around them and especially if they're standing in water it'll spread even further so yeah i thought that the revolver with lightning rounds in weird west was a really fun pick so i

wanted to give them a little bit of a shout out there as well honorable mention would be kicking barrels on people and blowing them up in Weird West. Oh, that was fun. Yeah, that's that's always fun. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Josh, what do you want to do for our next category? All right. I see we're starting to get closer to our time frame on this episode. So I'm going to start digging into some of the more popular categories.

I'm going to say most promising game reveal. So I like going to start digging into some of the more popular categories. I'm going to say most promising game reveal. So I like this one. This is a game that's obviously not out yet, and it doesn't necessarily have to come out in 2022. But it is going to be a game that was revealed in 2022. And I actually have two, and I'm very torn on these two. The first one is Starfield uh i think i'm i'm excited for starfield i get that they're already catching some flack for the inability to fly directly from space to planets and hey your character doesn't talk you know hey they're

using the same facial animations as before blah blah blah i don't care about none of that stuff this game hopefully is going to be amazing i'm super hungry for that formula of skyrim or fallout i've got faith that bethesda is going to make a great game is it going to be janky yes it is is it going to have bugs yes it is i don't care is it going to be fun yes it is it's exactly right like if it's a bethesda game i know what i'm getting and i'm gonna be you know it's it's kind of like, that's okay, man. I'll take it. Just give it to me. So for me, the reveal of Starfield is what has me hyped.

Wait, don't do the second one yet. I'm not because I feel like one of you is going to say it. So if you don't, I'll come back to it. But go ahead, Michael. You're picking mine, absolutely, because you're so excited for Evil West. I am, yes! Oh, man. I don't know if that game was revealed this year,

but I found out about it last week, and I'm like, I cannot wait to play that game. Oh, my goodness. Like, oh, I just, I literally have been, like, stalking the developer on Twitter. Like, I'm just like, why are they putting anything else out? And they're putting anything else out on Twitter. Tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet, tweet.

I love it. Evil West looks incredible. I can't wait to play God of War meets Red Dead Redemption 2 or whatever we're doing there. Just want to play it. Yep. What a good pick. Yeah, I can't wait for Evil West also. The one that I had, I think, well, that's right.

Josh said that was already the second one you were thinking of. I still got to give a shout out to the Callisto Protocol. Yes. Dude, I almost picked that because I'm very excited for that game. Yeah, I'm very hopeful about Evil West. I am a little bit more confident about the Callisto Protocol. Let's just say that. Everything about the trailers that they have released, I just get more and more excited.

Starfield had some stuff I really liked. It had some stuff that really liked it had some stuff that made me very nervous callisto protocol only keeps growing in my estimation the sound design is fantastic all of the weapons sounded incredible the creepy atmosphere is just you know it very enticing i love games that have that kind of creepy atmosphere the minimal ui i still don't know why people don't go back to that well more often like i know it's kind of a running joke where ubisoft you've got 1900 things on the screen where you've got your compass and you've got your six quests and you've got you know your hp and you've got your d-pad stuff in the bottom left and you know the whole

screen is cluttered callistoisto Protocol, call back to the same mechanic in Dead Space because it's the same game director. Don't even give us any HP meters on the screen. Just give me a character who's got some dots on their neck and that's just the indicator of how much life they have. There is nothing the screen it just lets you be immersed in the action to get creeped out and to engage in the action fighting all of these monsters crystal protocol is my uh most promising reveal there was nothing in the reveal that made me think twice it only made me more excited that one was a close second for me and you didn't even mention how incredible the graphics look oh yeah it looks

great it looks crisp man it looks beautiful yep and don't stand don't stand too close to turbines because monsters will kick you into them and it is gnarly don't stand so don't stand so close to me can we ban michael from singing is that a thing we can do we don't have the right thing is it like 200 rights to REM, Michael? Oh, that's right. Well,

at least I didn't hit any of the notes. So they're not going to, the algorithms aren't going to catch it all. All right. Was that, uh, was that your category, Josh or Michael?

Yep. That was mine. So I think it's back to you, Paul. Back to me. All right, let's go. Worst money grab. Oh, i love this category are we all the

same one josh hates money grabs more than any of us so why don't you go first what do you have for this now i bet you guys thought i was gonna pick diablo immortal right but and you are gonna pick it i am not picking diablo immortal because I said this before when we covered this game. And even though it's been mentioned a couple times on this very episode, I still feel like this was a major money grab because they reused some of the same assets. They didn't change up hardly anything at all except for a few skins and a little bit of plot and voice acting. The worst money grab of 2022, in my opinion, is Tiny Tina's Wonderlands. You mean Borderlands 3.5?

Yes, exactly. We talked about it again in that episode. If you didn't listen to it, go listen to that deep dive. But I definitely complain about this. It's a fun game. But man, were they lazy, lazy, lazy in making this game and basically just cloning whatever the heck they'd done before and not really changing it up very much. Even reusing some of the exact same assets on it. It's one of those things where whether you like the game or not, that doesn't matter. It is an obvious, obvious money grab to me anyway. And so that is hands down my pick.

Nice pick. I like it. Yeah. It's on my list, which is funny because I've got three on here. And I'm like, I know which one I'm picking. It's not that one. But yeah. All right.

Tell us, Michael. Yeah. Which one are you picking? I am scorned by this game. This game. Really dangerous. I put like, oh, you game. This game. Really dangerous. I put like, oh,

you shut your face. You pig man. That didn't come out in 2022. Uh, yeah, my, uh, I'm so mad.

I'm so mad. This game, I probably put 200 hours into, and I was loving it, and it was my favorite thing in the world until I got to the end game, and then it was pay to win, and it's my favorite thing in the world until I got to the end game, and then it was pay to win, and it's Lost Ark. Because at the end of that stupid game that I loved

and spent so much time on, I'm rolling a 3.5% chance of upgrading my weapon if I spend $40 in this stupid game just to get that extra percent chance that I'm going to level up my gear to get to the next tier and get to the next bosses. And I thought it was what, what upset me so much is it's, it's,

it's under a veil. You don't know it's a money grab until you get to the end of the game. And it's like, it's like Paul said, when we did this stupid episode in this stupid game that I love, by the way, but I'm scorned by this. I know,

right? Very conflicted feelings. It hurts because you liked it so much. I liked it so much. I loved it so much and I loved it. I'd still be playing it. I want to log in, but I'm like... But it's like Paul said, just make it hard. Make it so you have to get 400 things to upgrade your weapon,

but make it like that. Don't make it so you have to get 40 things, like a week's worth of gameplay, and then you have to spend money or you have a 1% chance of upgrading your stuff. It's stupid. And thank you, game. I don't even remember the name of the developer because I've wiped it out of my memory, but I'm scorned by you, money grab.

Go away. Very nice. All right. I wasn't sure if one of you were going to pick the same as me, and neither of you did. I was kind of proud of this pick. My worst money grab so far of 2022 is the freaking Overwatch 2 Watchpoint pack. Currently selling for $39.99 on Battle.net. Guys, this is a game.

What is it? It is $40 to get immediately into the beta. That's what they're selling. They are giving you the first battle pass two skins and some in-game virtual currency for a game that will be completely free in just a couple months and what i especially don't like about it is that i think some people are going to pick this up thinking it includes the pve content which it does not this is just solely to get some assets that are cosmetic only for a game that will be free in when does this come out september

october it's one or the other it's only a couple months down the road yeah it's not far away this i'm i'm with you on this one paul $40 yeah it's not like hey $ dollars gets you in and here's the thing that really gets me is we all played the we all got into the initial beta and guess who has not gotten a beta invite because i'm not willing to right because they're trying to sell them yeah it's like dude don't say it's a beta if you're selling access to it at this point it's a free to play game you can't even say hey if you buy this game, you get three days early access or two months early access or whatever. This is just we're going to wait and see how many people

buy the beta and then maybe we'll start giving out some beta keys. It's sleazy in my opinion and I know that we've refused to pick it up. As much as I want to be able to play Overwatch 2, I absolutely refuse to give them $40 for that that especially because it doesn't even come with the game yes exactly so great choice a full game yeah that's a good choice i like that all right uh how many we got

left one two three four i think we've got five left but some of these are a little quicker than others yeah we can do some we're doing great anyways we're having fun yeah yeah absolutely what do you want to do next michael uh i'm gonna go with the best value game oh nice which is the same as my cash grab game it's lost ark because it's free i love it so much but at the same point like i had 200 hours worth of fun in this stupid game. It scorned me for life. It's a good value. It's free. Play it. It's fun.

It really is fun. And then if you just don't want to spend the pay to win stuff, then just stop playing after 200 hours. There you go. Oh, I love it. I was really hoping you were going to say something like that. That's pretty funny, man. Just have the right expectations and don't try to do all the end game level up get all the way there run some of the initial end

game stuff and just quit and it's free and you'll love it you don't even have to pay a dime that's fun it is the way to go um mine is this one was tough for me because i did go that free to play route i started thinking about games like that and Lost Ark definitely did come to mind on that one. But I have to say, I would rather pay money for a game and have it absolutely blow me away and get 100 plus hours of gameplay out of it. And for me, this one is actually easy. It's Elden Ring. I have not finished Elden Ring because we get busy with playing games for the podcast, but I will absolutely go back to that game and sink another 50 hours into it. I know we had one of our legendary supporters.

I won't call him out because sometimes people, but he put 180 hours into Elden Ring and completely 100%ed it, which I thought was an amazing accomplishment, by the way. You know who you are. So kudos to you. Who was that again? Yeah, I'm not going to say it. I thought I'd get you for a minute. But if you can pay $60 and get 180 hours of phenomenal gameplay out of something, that is an absolutely incredible value. And not only that, but you're going to love every minute of throwing your controller at your TV in the process, too. So for me, it's Elden Ring.

Best value, hands down. All right. I was kind of dreading talking about best value game. Cue the eye rolls. Cue the grunts. No, don't do it. I don't care. Send all the hate.

Send all of it to me. Paul at MultiplayerPodcast.com. It's Diablo Immortal. That is the best value game. You're all wrong. You're all wrong. Lowest all-time Metacritic score from users. It's a 0.2 and 99%

of those reviews are people who didn't even play the game. They're just mad about the fact that if you care about PvP and you want to have the absolute best gear that you got to drop, I don't know, whatever number they're up to now, $40 billion just to outfit your character. You can play the entire storyline completely free. You can play it on your PC. It looks good. I mean, it doesn't look great, but it's free. It furthers the Diablo story. I think

it's a blast. I would play it more if I had the time. I don't care what anyone says. I know I'm kind of alone on Paul's Island over here, but it's a free game. I'd rather play Diablo Immortal than Lost Ark. And I loved Lost Ark. It just speaks to how I feel diablo immortal or as everyone keeps calling it diablo immoral because of the whole you know pay for all these items if you can play it completely for free and if you love the storyline it's fantastic so i'm gonna say diablo immortal paul i have a question for you sure is your pick a late april fool's joke you don't have phones you don't have pcs i do love that if we if we post it on social media and said paul says diablo mortal is the best value game sure 2022 get heckled to no end i'm not going

for hot takes or anything i I'm being 100% serious. Don't blast it if you haven't played it, right? If you don't like the business model, then don't pay any money. Play it for free. That is true. Who cares? I have downloaded it, by the way. I have downloaded it.

I downloaded it this week because I do want to play it with my buddy, quite a tool. We talked about it. I just haven't found time to connect with him yet. You're both dead to me. i'm sticking with that pick so anyway i know that that one i'm sure probably riled up some people i'm sure i'll hear about it on discord but that's fine it's free you know if you don't like it don't give them any money that's perfectly fine vote with your wallet like an infected toe just cut it off move on wait what all right who

picked the best value game uh michael oh that was my pick all right all right josh what's our next category oh boy the pickings are getting slim here um i'm going to go with the most overrated game of 2022. So this is a game where it's like, hey, I know a lot of people liked it. It got good critic reviews, but I think this game sucks or it's just drastically overrated. I hate to go digging back into this well once more.

And I really did try to branch out a little bit but i i gotta be i gotta be honest with myself man and once again the most overrated game is tiny tina's wonderland you know i hate i hate to keep going back to that right because but it's just it's true because number one worst money grab to me but it ties hand in hand to this game got good reviews and yeah it's so obvious to me and it's such a rehash to me you can have way more fun picking up borderlands too and what did tiny teen is was 40 bucks if i remember right when we when it came out and we bought it and i remember thinking like i want my, man. This should have been a $15 DLC or something like that. And I hate to beat that horse, but I think Tiny Tina's is drastically overrated. If you had fun with it, I'm super happy for you. But I'm talking about

gaming reviews and critics reviews and things like that. And for me, there's really no contest in that regard. It's Tiny Tina's. It's interesting how many good and bad things came out of that game on this episode. I know. Funniest moment, worst money grab, most overrated. Best voice acting. Great voice acting. And I think that's part of what aggravates me is because they could have made it great. You know what I mean? You could see these glimpses of like, hey, they had Ashley Burch

and the voice acting's phenomenal. And they had hilarious writing. And then they just copy and pasted everything else, man. You know what it is? It's like, you know how sometimes you'll say it's an ugly house, but it has good bones? This is the exact opposite, right? This has no bones,

but a fancy shiny coat of paint on the outside where the voice acting is great and it's funny, but there's zero substance. It's not really worth playing. The foundation is bad, right? Yep, exactly.

So, all right, that's the last time. That is the last time I will mention tiny Tina's wonderlands. Nice. I just want to say that Josh gave the most awards to tiny. Right. They're not all good awards though either so our most awarded game is tiny penis what did you have for this one michael i really didn't have one that i thought was really overrated but i did pick one that i

think you guys overrated and that's v rising so the new the new name of this the most overrated game is the most overrated game that paul and josh liked a lot more than i did and the reason for that is because after 30 hours you're done with the game there's not a dang thing to do and i'm like i it's fun but it's a survival-esque build game action and just like 30 hours and there's nothing to do all right i mean that's fair i think it's a fun 20 game to play but the price is right for the rising is my opinion on that if they try to charge sixty dollars for it that's where i think i would agree with you yeah i did had to have to dig for that though like it's not i really don't think it's that overrated it was fun for 20 bucks and i i did have fun playing it with you guys by

myself i found it important but we talked about that on the episode go back a few months to listen to that one guys yeah for this one this is a game that we are going to be doing a deep dive on that we have not yet recorded or released i'm going with the quarry oh are we giving spoilers i'm giving the quarry wait a minute can i vote for that i didn't know if we could do that because we haven't done the deep dive yet. Did it release in the first half of 2022? It sure did. You know, the Quarry, I think it's a perfectly fine game.

Honestly, I don't know if it's overrated or not, because I can't look at the Steam score. We haven't done the deep dive. It could be 99, it could be 50, and everybody hated it. I don't know. I never listen to other gaming podcasts because I never want it to color what I'm going to say about a game. Out of curiosity, I fired up a podcast and I heard four people give this game great. They gave it their second highest rating, a four out of five. And I was like, really? This game is 60 bucks. It's nine hours. It's nowhere as good as Until Dawn. They've made better games in the past. I think it's perfectly fine. I don't

think it's great. I think it is good-ish. But for a $60 game, I don't know. I did not think it had the level of creativity to rise to where at least what i heard a couple other podcasters say so i'm gonna guess that this one's probably a little bit overrated you're gonna have uh we might have an elite dangerous type moment on this one when we actually break it down oh i know for sure because michael is always late to start playing games and i know he has already played through the quarry multiple times. So we're going to, we're going to have one of those moments.

I think a little bit. Have you played until dawn, Michael? I have not. If you like this game, go, go pick up until dawn on your PS five and enjoy it on there. It came out on PS four as an exclusive.

It's like the quarry, but 10 times better. Is it similar where it's like a movie where you make choices it's exact it's a horror interactive movie multiple protagonists it follows the exact same format of the quarry which is exactly why i think i might like the quarry a little bit less than you because i kind of feel like i've already played the good version of this gotcha this to me is the star wars sequels i've already played the good one and now i'm just getting the same thing but not as good but it does does until dawn have my smoke show award winner caitlin it's got some other smoke show award nominees but yeah i'm gonna i'm gonna go ahead and say the quarry without uh spoiling too much more

since that'll be a deep dive i don't think it's bad i just think it's overrated all right uh we have a couple couple last categories here uh overrated you picked that right josh i picked that one yep all right let's go with game that you've played the most in 2022. Now, this is the one that I didn't know. Does it, does this one still have to be a game released in 2022? No, this is the one where it does not have to be a game that released in 2022. It's just the game you've played the most in 2022. So I could give it to Minesweeper. I'm not going to, but I could if I wanted.

Yes. All right. All right. I'll just go first for this one. It's, it's Overwatch. Yeah. I thought it was going to but i could if i wanted yes all right all right i'll just go first for this one it's it's overwatch yeah i still i still clock 10 hours in overwatch to one hour of anything else it's my go-to if i need a break from work and i've got a 20 minute block of time i'm gonna play a round of overwatch it's still the game I play the most. It's not as good as it used to be. The community is more toxic than ever. Overwatch 2, we all kind of agree it's sort of Overwatch 1.5,

but it is what it is. But I still have to give it to Overwatch. It's still the game I play the most. Nice. It's just so easy to get into a match. The match lengths are perfect. You can play one match or eight matches. It really is. It is also my go-to game, easy to get into a match. The match lengths are perfect. You can play one match or eight matches.

It's, it really is that that is, it is also my go-to game. So that is a close second for me. Um, still my number one is rocket league. I play rocket league every single day. I did take a break from rocket league for about three or four months at some point.

And then I started getting back into it and it sucked me right back in. And I literally play it every single day. So for me, rocket league, hands down, as far as most game time, And then I started getting back into it and it sucked me right back in. And I literally play it every single day. So for me, rocket league, hands down, as far as most game time. What about you,

Michael? Is it lost arc? Yeah, absolutely. As I can't imagine, I played a game more than lost arc because for like two or three months, I played it two or three hours or four hours a night. Like I was playing that game so much that we moved on to the next couple of games.

I was like, okay, I got to find time to play these other games and still manage my lost ark addiction and then the game killed itself for me when i was like money cash grab scoring full map i will say i checked and for a game that released in 2022 lost ark is my most played game for 2022 i have 115 hours in lost ark oh Nice. Oh, wow. That's a good chunk of time. Yep. All right, Michael. What category do you want to hit next? Well, we have two left, and one of them is the last one. Yeah, so I guess I'm going with character that's the best marriage material.

I love this category. This is the very first one I put in our shared doc. I was like, I want to pick a character for this. So, you know, man, it's funny because want to i want to pick a character for this so you know man it's funny because i'm not allowed to pick josh's beard uh because it's not a video game character i i feel like my character in lost ark she she would not be she wouldn't want anything to do with me ironically enough and this is gonna sound really weird and cheesy but it's actually true abigail from the

quarry reminds me of my wife when i started dating her when we were 19 actually i was 23 she was 19 like she had that red hair she kind of dresses a little bit off like yeah my wife doesn't listen to this so it's great because we don't have to we don't have to cover that with her but like she just reminds me so much of like like my wife like she's like 20 at the time that's when we started dating in college and it was just like i just think it's like a whole time like it's my it's my wife she had the same haircut she had like this red in it and she has this fake red dye in her hair so i think abigail from the quarry is like my marriage material but for a stupid reason just that i kind of married her in real life so i guess that works i get it because i couldn't find another

answer she's like the she's like the sweet girl that's like the friend that lives next door kind of thing yeah she's super nice she's sweet you wind up marrying them you don't wind up having a crush on them at first or anything but you do wind up married and then happy because even those caitlin's a smoke show man she scares me like me. Like she scares me. She'd be a little difficult. Yeah. All right. Well, I have a question for you guys on, on mine and that's,

would you like the sponge or the spray? But that's, that's, that's, that's been out for a while. No, but Overwatch 2 came out in 2022. Fair enough.

And that's mercy from Overwatch 1..5 i you know yes this is a little bit of a doctor is it yes but here's why okay number one she's she's a good looker she's a doctor she's foreign and she she takes care of people sure you know and she asks you if you'd like the sponge or the spray and you know the reason i use that voice line is because anytime Paul ever plays Mercy, that is the only thing we hear. You're going to hear it a lot. That's his go-to voice line. I do think marriage material-wise, other than her going off and saving the world, she'd

probably make a good wife. And if I was going to pick anybody from Overwatch, it's Pajamae. Mae? Mae is bae. Pajamae. It's funny because I actually met Amy Pohl in real life. I think that's her name. wife and if i was gonna pick anybody from overwatch it's pajama may may is bay but pajama uh it's funny because i actually met amy pole in real life i think that's her name um and i got a little mercy thing signed little you know eight by ten and she's super adorable in real life too so i'm like adorable little person i know how to pick them yeah but she's a brunette. So very nice. All right. For this one, this is my last award that I'm giving the weird West. No, it's not the big man. I'm giving this to Jane from weird West.

Nice. All right. How can you not pick Jane? She's beautiful. She's loyal. She's strong. She's a famous retired bounty hunter. Like, come on, that's awesome.

She'd be scary she yeah but no she's not she she literally buried her guns underground and she's just been living the family life like she's adaptable she's good with family but she wouldn't come rescue you yes she's gonna she's gonna go liam neeson on everybody from taken if anyone threatens her family uh she stopped at nothing to rescue her husband alonzo we should all be so lucky so i i went ahead with jane bell i love that you said liam neeson from taken when you could say liam neeson from anything post 2010 yes oh man so yeah i had to go with jane there for best marriage material which leaves us with the pinnacle of game awards right

parentheses so far so far award so far uh are we all giving this elden ring because that's what i'm giving it no i'm not you're not no i'm not giving it to elder and that game sucked oh yeah did michael marry it i did marry it i was gonna say and the game that i pick i've been vocal about how i i missed i i made love to it and i want to go back in time and marry it i pick weird west so here's the game of the year i love weird west so much weird west is my favorite game of the year so far but i have to recognize the fact that Elden Ring is, well, it's not favorite. It's game of the year. So it's not our favorite game of the year. I read it as like my favorite game of the year. It's weird. Sure. That's fine. Yeah. You can interpret it that way.

I feel like Elden Ring, but yes, you can. If I'm picking game of the year, what I think will win game of the year, it's absolutely Elden Ring. Yeah, for sure. Elden Ring really shot for the moon, and they landed it. It accomplishes a lot more than Weird West. I think Weird West has a much more fascinating story. I am much more likely to enjoy that style of game that goes deeper into making choices and plot, whereas Elden Ring almost solely focuses on gameplay alone but elden ring really just um it's so much more uh ambitious than weird yeah so i'm giving it to elden ring but in parentheses paul's favorite game was weird west okay so i read it as like my favorite game of the year like

what's your game of the year and i'm like that but yeah if we go game of the year. Like, what's your game of the year? And I'm like that. But yeah, if we go game of the year, hands down, it's Alvin Ring. Or Diablo Immortal. Weird West was fine. Like, it's a fun game. It's so good. What was it? $20? $40?

$40. I think it was $40. And it's worth $40. Like, I'm not... I just don't... I don't know. Different... You know, I just don't get why you guys love it as much as you love it.

Different strokes for different books. Yeah, it really... I guess it is. You know what I mean? But I don't like Dark you guys love it as much as you love it. Different strokes for different books. Yeah, I guess it is. But I don't like Dark Souls. I never did. I get that. I never liked it. That's the thing that I absolutely do understand is there's going to be people out there that go, I hate all this Elden Ring hype.

I don't understand why everybody's talking about this game so much. And so I definitely get that. It is Elden Ring for me. I absolutely love that game. I think it will actually win Game of the Year. God of War, Ragnarok, if it comes out, will be a strong contender. Starfield, maybe, but I'm a little bit more worried about Starfield. And I don't think there's going to be anything else that's going to be in that category.

Normally, they try to nominate five or six games for Game of the Year, and I don't know how you're going to dig into a couple more games. You throw the quarry in there. If the quarry gets nominated for Game of the Year, I am going to be burning down that arena. You know it will, though.

It's overhyped. It takes two, one. Yeah, but that's also a very down year for yeah that's true you never know it's funny too because when i was the only the only one of these categories we picked that i had a hard time with was the most overrated game and so i googled most overrated game of 2022 and half the results i found were elden ring do you know you know what's funny initially for most overrated game i put put Deathloop. Nice. And then I remember it came out last year, and I was like, ah, I gotta think of something else.

Nice. All right, well, I think we've reached the end of our awards show. We handed out, how many awards was that? 14? Something like that. Should have been 27. We should keep going until midnight. I'll just make one up.

We did make a very long list. I think we had like 45 nominees and I just sort of like started grabbing some. And are you guys cool with these 14? And we all agreed. Uh, I can't wait to revisit at the end of the year. I really hope that the second half is stronger than the first half.

I think it will be. I think we've got a lot to look forward to. And I think our end of the year awards will be a lot of fun. Yeah. Callisto protocol, baby. Boom. Maybe that'll be nominated for game of the year.

I could see it. I'm actually excited for fall because there's going to, there's some big game releases coming out. Can it redeem 2022 as a whole? Let's see. I mean, I have a feeling I'm going to move my five out of 10 up a good bit. Yeah.

Better than last year. We're going to have a hard time at the end of the year. Cause there's a lot of games that drop similar times to like us doing our great problem to have i know right holiday season all those games come out at the same time yeah all right well thanks so much to everyone for listening as a reminder if you want to check out our patreon page go to multiplayer squad.com and we would love to have you follow us on socials everywhere at multiplayer pod come join our free Discord server. Link is in the episode description.

And we will have our next episode on Thursday where we cover gaming news, where we talk about This Week in Gaming. And I think that's it here for today. So thanks for joining us for the award show. I had a lot of fun. I think you guys did too. Michael, did you have something else you wanted to say? No, I just love this.

I love this show. It was fun. Best show ever we've done so far guys michael's favorite podcast to record in 2022 so far is multiplayer gaming yeah i will say in parting also thank you to manscaped for partnering with us um they've got some honestly some amazing products the 20 off and free shipping really is a phenomenal deal. So go check it out, manscaped.com, and make sure you use code multiplayer. They've got some legitimately really good stuff we think you guys will love. Yeah. And seriously, seriously go do that.

I got the Lawnmower 2.0, and I use it on my beard. It's a great facial hair trimmer, too. So it's awesome. Don't miss out, guys. The code's only great facial hair trimmer too so like it's it's awesome don't miss out guys the codes only good for so long multiplayer go use it all right well thanks everyone we will see you all on Thursday and until then happy gaming

how do you spell multiplayer everybody MULTIPLAYER multiplayer thank you Paul bye guys bye L-T-I-P-L-A-Y-E-R. Multiplayer. Thank you, Paul. Bye, guys. Bye. Bye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.