Video Gamers Podcast - Our End of Year Gaming Awards - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: December 11, 2023

Video game hosts Paul, Josh and Ryan are here with one of our favorite episodes. It’s time for us to review this year of video games, and give out OUR style of video game awards! From Game of the Year, to Best Gaming Momemt to the hilarious Smokeshow Award, it’s a great way to look back on gaming in 2023 and chat some of the best and worst games of the year! Thanks to our LEGENDARY Supporters: Redletter, Gaius214, Nate, Kiitaclyzm, YayaArizona and Morgau Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/videogamerspod Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/videogamerspod/  Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/VideoGamersPod  Subscribe to us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q   Visit us on the web: https://videogamerspod.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is an ad from BetterHelp Online Therapy. We always hear about the red flags to avoid in relationships, but it's just as important to focus on the green flags. If you're not quite sure what they look like, therapy can help you identify those qualities so you can embody the green flag energy and find it in others. BetterHelp offers therapy 100% online, and sign-up only takes a few minutes.

Visit BetterHelp.com today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, H-E-L-P.com. Guys, it's here. My favorite episode of the year. Welcome to the Video Gamers Podcast. Today, we are going to be giving out our own personal awards for 2023. We might not be as prestigious as the Golden Joysticks or Dice Awards, but we're glad to have you here. It's going to be an absolute blast. I am your host, Paul. And joining me, he is once again the winner for the award of best long-term host, just like last year because he's been around since the beginning.

It's Josh. I like that that wasn't an age joke too. No, no, no. That's actually just how long I've been here. I am so pumped, dude. I think this is my favorite episode of the entire year. Like legitimately, it's fun to look back. It's fun to kind back it's fun to

kind of just you know get take a take a top-down view of all the games that we've been playing over the year and kind of just look at them from afar and just marvel in them oh absolutely and then joining josh and me he wins the award for best new podcast host in 2023 because he joined us earlier this year in april it's ryan competition was stiff but i i you know put stuck to the grindstone and worked hard and you know really i just want to thank everyone thank thank my family thanks mom love you very nice now i will mention that we are currently recording this ironically in, in the middle of the Game Awards. So I think we've all got it up on our second monitor.

We might actually have a couple live reactions as the awards are going out. They just awarded Cocoon Best Indie Game. So that kind of tells you, you know, where we're at currently in the award show. A little bit of quick housekeeping before we start handing out awards. Every year, we take two weeks off at the end of December just to spend more time with our family. Gives us a chance to recoup from all these games that we're playing. So after today, we will have a new episode on Thursday for This Week in Gaming. And then after that, we'll just have some Holiday Rewind episodes. Those will be our favorite episodes from earlier this year. And then we'll be back with new content in the new year. Also, make sure to follow our podcast

so you don't miss any episodes. Hit us up on socials everywhere at Video Gamers Pod and check out support options over on Patreon. You can see that at MultiplayerSquad.com to get exclusive bonus episodes, all kinds of good stuff like that. All right, so one question for you guys before we start handing out awards. Ref, reflecting back on 2023 as a whole, what is it that primarily stands out? Is it the total

collection of games, a particular title, crazy news stories, hardware releases? What do you remember first? For me, it is just the insane amount of top tier games we got this year. I mean, when I think about the whole year, that is literally the first thing that comes to mind is just, oh my goodness, we had like eight fantastic games this year. Whereas normally, you're hoping for like two and then the rest are mid and they're fun. But it's like you have two that you're talking about. 2023, I feel like I could name eight games off the top of my head that were just absolute bangers. Nice. Yeah.

For me, other than just the amazing year of games that we had, I played so many games this year that I would have never played being on the podcast. So that's definitely one thing that usually I'll stick to a couple that I love and I just grind them out. And so I had so much fun with all the new things that I otherwise would have never touched. Yeah. When I think about this year, it's not just that it's a great year. It's just how many all timers there were. Because there are some years

where you have like a ton of great games but maybe you don't have like generational level games this year there's just so many i mean we've got like six nominees for the game awards any of those six could basically win in any year and you wouldn't be completely shocked this is not like it takes two winning where like what stood out that year were all the delays where we just didn't get a whole lot this year's just been absolutely jam-packed almost every month has like at least a nine out of ten level game if not higher all right so you know what let's go ahead and start giving out some awards last year weirdly josh i don't know why we started with best game of the year we started with it we did oh we're too

generous man yeah so we're gonna delay that one a bit we gotta hold off on the heavy hitters right dessert first look at you yeah so some of these awards are a little bit sillier some of them are a little bit more on the serious side. It's going to be very fun just to reflect on the year and all the games that we've jumped into. All right. Let's start out with most memorable moment. This is one of my favorite awards. Usually this is some kind of, oh, crap kind of moment.

Like, Josh, I know one year I gave it to the baby fetus monster in resident evil village something always stands out above everything else so you know what ryan let's let you go first what was your most memorable moment of this year um there was a few that i had that came to mind immediately i when we played the beta uh for payday 3 and then when it just went haywire and we were running around and scrambling and all those crazy guys came and Josh was like, this guy just beat me up. He's Juno kicking me. What the heck? You know, that one

was great. I loved when we were playing Endless Dungeon, Josh and I, and we kicked Bug Mama's butt with a sliver of health, but that doesn't matter. You know, that came to mind as well, but the one that won for me was i was by myself believe it or not you know i know multiplayers are my favorite but the entangled mission on starfield was one of the coolest

missions i've ever played on a game and it just hit me in the feels man i i loved that mission i i would replay the game just to play that mission again um yeah that's that's my winter for a moment for sure give us like the quick rundown like what what happens during that mission so you you come into this this plant and you're you're trying to navigate through this facility and then long of the short is basically they have these like rifts where you're going to navigate through this facility and then long of the short is basically they have these like rifts where you're going into parallel dimensions sorry spoilers if uh anyone hasn't played the game you're going in between these areas where you're going into two you know i guess universes where where different outcomes happen and it's just there's nothing like you

can you can bounce between to unlock doors or to get to new zones and then bounce back so you're in a different room and you go in and there's different outcomes with depending on what you find it was just such a cool well thought out uh a series of events throughout the whole mission that just really really sat well with me get to live through schrodinger's cat commission basically and you have to choose what reality do you want to be the case and there's also a little bit of like some hidden secrets so there's like some additional things you can do very very cool mission what about you josh what do you have for most memorable um you know i i will say that it did come to mind

with uh ryan and i beating bug mama with literally a half second of life left. No killer killer. Yeah. Oh my goodness, man. You know, there there's, I mean,

you know, remnant to the, like a couple of the boss fights in that game stood out to me, but there are three that really came to mind. The instant that I thought about best moment. And the fact that we, I have three in mind, you know what I mean? It's kind of a testament to how good this year in gaming was. I mentioned

this one when we covered Hogwarts Legacy. It sounds stupid, but I'm telling you, it was the perfect alignment of everything in the right moment in that game. But flying my hippogriff or griffon or whatever it was up over across the lake and then up over hogwarts and just sitting there flying in the air watching the sunset in like you know in that game was just one of those like pristine like zen moments for me um that was one that came to mind another one that i raved about was the diablo 4 i'll call it the end game cinematic, where I just remember watching that and being absolutely blown away. And then literally just going to Discord server and being like, I just watched the greatest thing ever. And then there was another one in Phantom Liberty.

This is a tiny bit of a spoiler. So if you haven't heard it, you can skip ahead like 10 seconds. But at one point, you have to make a choice whether you're going to betray Solomon Reed or Songbird. And that was one of the most tense, incredible moments in a game because right up until I had to click the button and it puts you on like, I mean, it's insane. But you are going to ruin somebody's life and their expectation of you in that game. And so that was another one that came to mind for me. So I'm actually taking... Dude, this sounds so crazy,

but I'm watching the sunset over Hogwarts. I know it sounds crazy, man. I'm telling you, I know people are going to be like, what? You're a wizard, Harry. Just there was something about it, man. I don't know. You guys all know. I love chaos. I love action. And it's very rare that I just chill and stare at my screen for a few minutes, but that's exactly what I did. I literally just sat back in my chair, hands off the mouse and keyboard, and just watched the sunset, man. And it was glorious. Considering you're such a big fan of action games, I will say I would not have guessed that your pick. I like it. It's the

very first thing that comes to, I mean, it's literally the first thing that pops in my head when I think about like most awesome gaming moment. And I don't know why, but it is for me. So one thing I have not talked about yet on the show is the fact that i have been playing a ton of balder's gate three for the last couple of weeks um you can pretend you're surprised josh you already know this i was gonna say are we going with that are we gonna fake surprise i know he did drop this on us not too long ago though we were surprised yeah that episode's not coming out for a while though i know i know that will come out in january we're trying to work a little ahead uh yes so i finally picked up balder's gate 3 i had been putting it off a little bit but i

wanted to experience the game before giving out these awards so i made it into act 3 i have not beaten it i think i might have fizzled at this point i don't know that i'm going to join the club but my most memorable moment comes out of balder's gate three josh i'm very curious to hear if you did this as well i am going with me allowing volo the bard to perform eye surgery on my monk oh my goodness yes dude okay you know what i'm talking about and you got but you get something really cool for it too but that was dude oh my goodness paul go ahead this was to me like the biggest grossest weirdest thing that i saw this year which is saying a lot you know i beat alan wake too that game's got some wild stuff as well but basically for anyone who hasn't played balder's gate 3 you've got these little parasites that crawl behind your eyes they kind of like go into your brain or whatever volo is like a joke of

a of a bard who thinks he knows how to remove this parasite from you i agreed to let him perform surgery of course i saved ahead of time just wanted to see what would happen he literally takes a needle sticks it like behind your eye starts like kind of wiggling it around doing goofy stuff he says it's not big enough swaps it out for a freaking ice pick starts chiseling like through your eye while my guy is like ready to die i am watching this so cringy i i was watching this through a face like if i ate the most sour thing and was watching the most disgusting thing in the world i was just like like looking at it like this while he's chiseling behind my eye and um then he tries to pretend that there's just some cosmetic damage and my guy was blind

so he's like yes you have a little cosmetic damage I'm gonna I'm gonna go ahead and get out of camp but best of luck to you and then he leaves but he does give you a replacement eye that you can pop in its place and it's actually an upgrade which is why it's a great item but yeah dude that is such a good moment Paul I'll honest. I kind of forgot about that one. I don't know if I blocked it out because this scene is hard to watch. It's hilarious, but at the same time, and you have to keep saying,

it's okay, go ahead. It gives you dialogue options and you have to basically say, please just stab me in the eye. And then it does. And it, oh man man it makes you flinch away it is so hard to watch but then you do get a really cool item out of it too so yeah yeah that's that's a great pick that's all wild wild scene all right going on to our next award here this

is one of my favorite ones at least normally this year i had trouble thinking of a winner favorite new character oh favorite new character i got i know mine all right let's do you first josh who do you got i you know there's a lot of of cool fun quirky characters that have come out this year you know um i thought about like boncho from dave the diver like you know That guy's cool and I love sushi. There was Chai from Hi-Fi Rush, who was a cool guy. You could be friends with him. And then there was the guy that I thought was just absolutely perfect in not only the role that he was cast in, but the character that he was cast in as well. And that is Solomon Reed from Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty. Idris Elba, I mean, phenomenal actor. It just, it fits so well in this game.

And for me, just spending that 15 or 20 hours or however long, you know, Phantom Liberty took, every time I was dealing with Solomon Reed, I was like, this is just cool, man. I feel like I'm talking to James Bond or something. Helps when it's voiced by Idris Elba. He's a fantastic actor. What about you, Ryan? Who do you have for this category?

He is great, but I hated him in The Office. Charles Minor? Intentionally. Oh, he's great. You come from steel? You don't come from paper so uh on this uh being my first award show i did i misread this i just thought it said favorite character so okay i'm just gonna roll with it because i don't have anything else and so i'm gonna go with my boy strange old man my sheaf from diablo 4 that dude cracked me up he's like

deckard deckard kane is that you he's like no he's gone that crazy old that drunk old man was cruising around in the middle of the desert and i was just that whole time playing that that series of events through that part of the mission where I was just cracking up at all the lines he was giving. It's just one that stuck with me quite a bit. Yes, Horadrim. Deckard. Deckard Cain. Can it

be you, old friend? It's me, Mishy. No. Deckard is gone. It is! The gods favor our journey, friends! Share a drink with me, Deckard. A toast to another life or death adventure. No, I've had quite enough. It's all yours. Ha! I won't turn down such generosity dude that's a great pick that's totally on topic too because

that guy he's a character from a video game this year so yeah you nailed that yeah he's the one that leads you through the sandstorm right yeah yeah yeah that dude is awesome yeah he's all you're living in this world everybody's dying and trying to get and this guy don't care one whit man he's like just come with me nobody will take it yeah come with me yeah just come on let's go well especially in such a serious game he provided like all the comedy relief which was really needed yeah i loved every second oh yeah it was such a good kind of check out of all the dark and gloomy to a funny just crazy guy yeah for this one i would say that there was no singular standout where i immediately knew who i was going to give this to ultimately i ended up landing on saga anderson from alan wake 2 really really fun protagonist you spend

half your time playing as alan the the other half playing as Saga. And I love the voice act work. I thought she was a really interesting character. And especially as the story gets a little bit crazier and crazier and Saga's story and situation gets sucked in more and more, I found myself caring more and more about her and her family and everything going on. I thought she was a really fun character. I also, and I know this wasn't for everybody, but I loved spending time in her mind place where she just gets to sit down and think through, okay, what have I seen? What's happened? What have we solved? What are we looking to do? And she would just kind of

narrate through the game. Absolutely loved it. and i thought it was also really fun that everyone in her family having a background of um like living in sweden and having like this norse mythology background everyone in her family have names that are like plays on norse gods so they have names like odin and tor and her mother is freya things like that so i thought that was really fun neat so no one's giving this to frey from forespoken no her favorite new character no no no i might have an award for forespoken later on but i think i know which one it'll be all right let's see let's go ahead and move on to the next one here i like this this award a lot, too. This one is what is the best game that you played in 2023, regardless of the release year? So last calendar year, what is the best overall game you played?

This one is an easy one for me. And it is a game from this year, but it's Baldur's Gate 3. Yeah. Yeah. I look at the whole year and it's balder's gate three yeah yeah i look at the whole year and i say what's the best the best game that i played it's balder's gate three okay yeah and that's over like a lot of heavy hitters like we played metal gear solid five we played hogwarts legacy all the all that stuff yeah yeah yeah it's saying too i thought you might be i thought my i thought remnant two might be in the running. Yeah. And I mean, you know, I, the, the point of this category is maybe I went back and I replayed Witcher three this year, you know, or maybe I played something that we didn't talk

about on the podcast, or I just played something that I loved over again and, you know, something like that. So when we talk about the best game you've played this year, I really did try to search and say, what, like, what all have I played? I definitely been going back and dabbling in some, some games and stuff like that, but it's just Baldur's Gate three, man. It just stands out so well. I was so hyped for that game. You know, it was one of those, my expectations were really high and then it crushed those so yeah that's my answer all right what about you ryan best game you played well oh you know my boy arthur morgan yeah it's a hard game to beat man uh i just i i don't know what it is but especially i love pc gaming but man just sitting on the couch

playing a game there's nothing like it. And every once in a while, I just get the itch to play some more Red Dead. So I went through a whole nother, you know, playthrough all the way to the end. I've got, you know, another 80 something hours in the dang game. And I was just playing again, maybe last week. And I was like, I kind of want to start that snow mission again. Maybe I'll do another restart and i've beat the game like four or five times already all the way through with like everything i can do all the bounties all that stuff so yeah there's just there's just

nothing that can beat that game for me it's it's just too dang good you prefer going with a good arthur who makes nicer decisions or do you go full evil arthur no no no all you got to do is you can be as wild and crazy as you want and then near the end you just go through sand and e and you just say howdy to everybody and it just it just bounces you out every three you get a little bonus on your partner yeah hey partner howdy hey how you doing and then but then you try to speed do it and then you accidentally run over someone and then the cops come after you and you gotta run and it's a whole it's a whole to do but yeah there's there's just nothing like that game to me there's this and there's so much you

can do every time you you find something different i even saw i was just reading stuff and uh spoiler uh arthur gets tuberculosis but so if you whistle for your horse early in the game he just whistles later on the game he'll cough when he whistles yeah which is crazy yeah there's so many yeah there's so many little things in the game that that people find after hundreds and hundreds of hours it's so cool you just always find something new i'll sometimes i'll just run through the pathways to see if i'll come upon somebody and and see if i'd find something i haven't seen before so yeah that one always just kind of brings me back the level of detail that game is beyond no other like i remember seeing on reddit just like a week ago someone showed that arthur knocks an item off a table

as he's looting it and normally you would expect the animation to just be the same animation where he would try to grab it off the table but instead he actually bends over and grabs it off the floor and stands up so he was already mid animation knocks it over and still picked it up i mean when josh and i did the deep dive, we talked about it too, but famously, male horse anatomy will get smaller and will retract in the snow and in the cold weather. I was in the pool! I was in the pool!

I was in the pool! Yeah, I was in the pool, exactly. Shrinkage like laundry all right for this one here best game i played initially i thought it was going to be metal gear solid five but then i remembered i went on a little bit of a tear and i played uncharted one two and three back to back to back i gotta give it to uncharted 2 uncharted 2 is so good so freaking good still to this day so good give me uncharted over tomb raider any day and i love both franchises but man i just get so excited about uncharted so i'm gonna give it up to my boy nathan drake there for for the second one i'll have to play that series at some point dude you've got to maybe

when you're gonna you're gonna be forced to josh at some point i don't know maybe 2024 will be my year dude i don't know how i missed it but when uh uncharted 4 came out i had never played the previous ones maybe i was too busy busy playing milgar solid i watched every cut scene all the way through for like a week before uncharted 4 came out and then i got it and played it and then i went back and played all the first three because i knew i wouldn't have time otherwise played all three and then played four it's such a good series it's pretty fascinating storytelling even if you just do the cut scenes like you said yeah yeah exactly all right well with that being said let's go ahead and take a short break and we'll be right back.

All right. Continuing on here in our award show, let's go ahead and give out our award for best indie game. This is a fun category to talk about. I think we have all become far more passionate about indie games lately. I think we've been a little bit disenfranchised by the AAA studios. I think we've kind of had it with the corporate greed and we have really embraced indie games more than we ever have, I would say. And this year brought quite a few good ones. I did not get a chance to try all of them. Cocoon, probably most famously, I would love to check out. I just haven't had time yet. But what do you guys have here for your best indie

game? Dude, I'm with you, Paul. And there's just something about indie games that hit a little different. They're more passionate. But you can feel it when you're playing them. I love a good spectacle. I'm not saying I don't enjoy AAA games because I do. Even as much as we gripe about the developers or the publishers, there's just something about a good indie game that just feels different to you. I actually had three that came to mind on this one. Bopple Battle. I mean, what a surprise. And kudos to the developer because that game is just... I love anything that lets friends come together and laugh. So Bopple Battle came to mind. Dredge, which I just played not that long ago. It is a very memorable game. I don't think it's perfect by any means, but it's a very,

very good indie game. And then one that's just kind of took the world by storm is Lethal Company. Yeah. You know, and I mean, you guys, I just love laughter. And I love silly things happening. And Lethal Company, while they're... I mean, let's be honest, the gameplay portion is not that great. I mean, Bopple Battle, I'd play the game, gameplay over Lethal Company. But still, there's just something about about lethal company. You put people in situations and funny things will happen. So that's my pick for indie game of the year. Okay. And we have all been able to play together. I think lethal company was one of those games

where you, you maybe see video footage and you don't necessarily understand where the fun is. Right. You have to like watch a streamer react while playing or just jump in and play it yourself if you just watched silent footage the game looks horrendous but it does it really just fosters hilarious stories fun memorable events i thought most memorable event there was a chance lethal company might pop up because we had those ones where like i was running to the ship while the giant was chasing after me and you guys were all dead trying to cheer me on from the grave to get onto the ship. We were screaming in the death channel, dude, all of us. And I turned to the

wrong way outside the ship. All you know is you're just running just all by yourself. Yep. So many fun moments though. That's a great one. Lethal Company, I think, kind of holds a special place for us because of those kinds of experiences. Yeah, definitely. I was having a hard time with this because of Lethal Company. There were so many good things we played and did. And then also that I've seen that I didn't even experience with the ladder. Guys were throwing up the ladder.

And squishing their friends and stuff. Or people ring the bell. And it scoops you up. And there's just so many good things. That was one that was really close. But the other one I liked. And Josh you mentioned it. Bopple Battle.

This is my winner as well. I had so much fun with this game. I played it. I play a lot of games with my son. He's seven. We would sit and we would just play. And we'd have like 70 or 80 matches, just me and him. And I'd mess around and do crazy things. I'd do the duplicator and just have like 50 characters on the screen or do just crazy stuff.

And there's just so much you can do in that game. And there's so much fun to be had and it's just one of those where you can just sit laugh with your friends kind of like lethal company and crazy things will happen crazy stories will happen and it was yeah that's that's my winner i 100 agree this might sound kind of wild i just think it's better than smash brothers i think it's better than multiverses i think it's better than every other yeah it just is and it's such a small simple game that just takes such funny ideas about physics in the world everything interacts with everything else so if i have a shrink ray i can shrink another character i can shrink the, I can shrink another character. I can shrink the ground. I can shrink a black hole and make it smaller.

I mean, every single ability interacts with everything else in this game. How many times did one of us chuck a grenade at the other and you shoot it with an arrow midair, and it kind of like spirals and circles in the air? I mean, there were so many moments that we just cackled with putting rockets on platforms and just sending them flying across the screen i mean what did you always yell the the polish hammer yeah if anyone hasn't checked it out i mean they they have not paid us any money but we've been singing this game's praises since before it released when we got to review it it's bopple b-o-p-l

battle it's only on pc but man what a fun game go go play it with your buddies and couch co-op in a play over the internet i mean yeah the co-op portion or the nature of this game is incredible dude or not co-op but competitive the you know the multiplayer yeah oh so much fun what a great game that's that is exactly what you want from an indie game it runs flawlessly it's innovative it's cheap it's 10 bucks like i i would put it in the very short category this year of like a perfect game and here we are spending all this time talking about bopple battle right next to games like balder's gate 3 and alan wake 2 and you know all this other stuff it really just speaks volumes it was great and even uh like i'm in their discord and the developer even he pops in all the time does all these updates

the the community in there is growing like crazy everybody's always getting matches together it's just one of those that i don't think it uh gets the recognition it deserves. I agree. Totally agree. At least we've done our part in trying to spread the word. All right. Next award, Josh, you're going to love it.

I think this is your favorite award. We have dubbed this one, the dog turd award. This is when we get to talk about the worst game or the worst release or maybe the most disappointing game of the year. However, you want to word it. I believe last year we gave this to the Callisto Protocol. And I think Michael gave it to Lost Ark because of how bad it turned in the third act. But what do you guys have as the Dog Turd Award?

Worst game of the year or most disappointing to you? I'm curious what Ryan has to say because I have not heard Ryan say yet, like, I hate that game. You're an optimist when it comes to games, Ryan. And so I want to hear what you say, because it's like, I want to just hear Ryan say, yo, that game sucks. Well, I tried to keep it to games that i've played and i played quite a bit this year more than most years as far as amount of games in a year i'm gonna go with and i know i said i liked it not loved it but i'm gonna go with humanity oh okay i just they're just those those i i i like parts of puzzle games i like part of it but not maybe if we could play it as a group like multiplayer and then somebody messes up and

you're like oh you messed me up on this part of the puzzle and we all fail or something like that that would sit better with me but the music like just kept it it got repetitive. It got, you know, something that was, it was cool at first to me, but it just got super repetitive. The, the puzzles,

if they're too simple, I get bored. If they're too hard, I get annoyed. It's just one of those things that just didn't, it just didn't fit for me. I'm sure a lot of people absolutely love the game. And like I said,

I tried to keep it with what I played this year, but yeah, I get it. I get it, man. I've been playing Talos principle too. And that game is an absolutely phenomenal puzzle game. Yeah. Humanity is a good puzzle game, but a lot of it felt like work to me. And I never got that feeling when I'm playing like Talos principle too, but there's something about humanity where it, it felt like a chore at times well yeah some people like they'll get a 5 000 piece puzzle and they're like like a real life puzzle let's do this let's put this thing together i'm excited i would look at that and just oh my goodness and maybe after i do the borders and then i'd be like i'm bored of this you know well and there's such

different kinds of puzzle games which like when we broke down the witness we talked about how the witness kind of tries to hit a little bit on everything right like here's an audio puzzle and this one's visual with shadows or you know whatever and humanity to me has like a lot of overlap with baba is you it's almost like computer programming puzzles yeah where you're putting like markers on the ground and there's all these different commands that you're doing and you're trying to accomplish the goal through those commands a good way to put it dude yeah it's not for everybody i i liked it quite a bit i personally liked humanity i think we would all

agree the game actually ran rather flawlessly so it's not a technical issue it's rather like a personal let down because it's not not your type of puzzle game right exactly yeah exactly yeah all right what do you have for this one josh i think we can all guess hear it is this the just let me play the game you're darn right it is oh man i i mean just let play. That's all I want to do. I did have a couple that came to mind, like Ryan. I wanted to keep it to one that I've personally had to endure. The other two that came to mind were Redfall and Gollum, but I didn't play either one of those. So I think objectively, you could say, one of those was worse than this game. But dude, for me, Forspoken, here's the issue.

Forspoken looked like it was going to be a great game. In all the trailers that they had, if you remember, we covered this before it ever released. And we were like, dude, this is a high-tech, new IP. This thing could be great. And then we had to freaking play it. Yeah. And I was just frustrated with this game. I was disappointed with it. It was cringy at times. It just really became something that I started to loathe because we saw what could have been

with that game, and it just was not. And it's not like a game where obviously it comes out and it's just terrible from start to finish like Gollum, right? Those people obviously didn't know what they were doing. The people with Forspoken, I feel like they knew what they were doing. They just missed the target by a mile. And so having to sit through that, having to endure that game, it is by far to me the worst game that I've played this year. Well, it was just so puzzling. So many decisions they made, right? The main character was the most annoying character that you were forced to spend time as. It was not fun playing as Frey. You were stuck with pretty repetitive combat, which was also

very rudimentary i mean there were some aspects that i enjoyed i like the idea of playing a game where you amass powers and you unlock that new school of magic like that's a neat idea but for spoken just didn't do it well and maybe the biggest sin of all which still mystifies me beyond belief is that anytime cuff would talk to you in these cut scenes you couldn't walk you couldn't start running towards your next objective you were triggering bad memories paul right i mean this is when you were screaming just let me play the game like you were just stuck there doing nothing listening to cringy dialogue sometimes for like two and a

half three straight minutes like i just want to get back to playing this game. And it was such a letdown overall. And it looked nice. The visuals were great, but everything else just fell so flat. It got in its own way so many times. Like, that was the biggest problem. It just didn't know how to get out of its own way so that you could play the game. Yeah. problem yeah it just didn't know how to get out of its own way so that you could play the game yeah my selection for the dog turd award was a game that had severe technical issues especially on pc it is a game that all three of us played we did a deep dive and i could not look at the birds because the game would crash every time.

Oh, dude. What a letdown. Star Wars Jedi Survivor. I'm sorry. I know there are people out there. If the game played really well and you were able to have a good time, great.

I'm very happy for you. On my PC, everything in this game ran poorly. The graphics looked terrible. It crashed nonstop. I would have to reload over and over and over and just could not play it. You guys always talked so much about what was the first Jedi game called? Fallen Order.

Fallen Order. Yeah. And I never played it. Which is great. I love Fallen Order. Yeah. I played it for like 30 minutes and I refunded it and I just never went back to it.

What? So this time around, I was really excited because I was going to be able to fully invest in the game and it just played so terribly that I can't help but give it the Dog Turd Award. This year had so many bad PC ports that when I initially thought Dog Turd, I was like, what's the game that ran worse for me

on PC? And that was my answer. Well, go ahead. I was just going to say I'm with you. I'm not with you. It's not the worst game that I've played this year, but it massively let me down. It was a game that I was expecting to be a nine out of 10 and wound up being like a five out of 10. The game itself is fine. Like the premise behind it is fine. Like there's some really cool things in that game, but they just whiffed. And you know, maybe it's that passion thing we talked about, right? It's like the first game had passion. The second game had none. I don't know. But yeah, I was massively disappointed in that one. You know who didn't have that many glitches or issues this guy right here because

i played it on playstation i didn't play it on pc so it ran flawlessly for me except for maybe a couple things i know i found a couple glitches like that i could repeat if you were doing something on like little elevators if you did double jump somewhere you know you would glitch out and stuff but yeah no i get what you're saying if you just can't say like josh said earlier let me play the game i just want to play the game yeah so even though it ran perfectly well did you feel like it was better than fallen order or a step back oh no no fallen order was better um yeah it's one of those things like making a sequel of something that's great is always hard to follow that up and make something better.

I don't think it was bad. I think if it ran really good for you, you probably would like it. But I'm a big Origins guy and all how everything starts and how the build up to the whole story is. So that's why I like the first one so much. But yeah, I mean, I don't hate it as much as you guys do because I played it on PlayStation and it ran flawlessly. But yeah, maybe in this upcoming year, I'll finally get around to Fallen Order and get to play the better one. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Let's do one more award. Then we'll take our last break. Let's move on and do favorite new weapon. I like this category. It gives a chance to celebrate some great weaponry i did not pick anything from starfield but i have seen some fantastic weapons on starfield similarly i i did not pick a game or a weapon from tears of the kingdom but i have seen people build

hilarious contraptions like x-wing fighters that shoot down, you know, bombers, all kinds of wild stuff. For this one though, I have two and I'll very quickly talk about the first. Gale's Nethere's Orb from Baldur's Gate 3 is absolutely hysterical. So for anyone who hasn't played Baldur's Gate 3, Gale is a character that has a magic bomb that is inside him that will explode if he is dead for a certain period of time. And you find that out the first time he dies in your party, a little ghost pops out and says, hi, I'm programmed by Gale.

You better follow these directions and revive me or else there will be great harm to everyone. And so eventually you kind of learn all this, but you can manually trigger his bomb during a fight. Yeah. directions and revive me or else there will be great harm to everyone and so you eventually you kind of learn all this but you can manually trigger his bomb during a fight yeah did you ever do this josh absolutely you know i did the second this is why what's this button over here yeah what if i manually trigger it but here's the thing is you don't get to see it it just gives you a game over screen i was so disappointed it was such a cool idea they put it on the the little weapon uh bar but you don't actually get to see it it gives you a cut

scene where he stabs himself with a knife and then it just says game over do you want to reload so because of that i'm going to give it to the latter from lethal company it does not get old of me scrolling through tiktok man that is the best pick dude seeing people tell noobs all right yeah yeah yeah just watch this here's here's the ladder let me pull it out and it just conks them right on the head and they die it's so unexpected and everyone's fallen for it it cracks me up every time that is one shot kill that's one shot kill yeah that's such a good tip man that is that is so good i've got down the rabbit hole of that too and then you just you laugh as hard as they're laughing because it's oh yeah you can imagine it if you've played the game you can imagine doing that just just like you guys got me with the bell you know and

everything so it's just one of those where you can bait your friends in and just smash them. That's so good. Oh, too funny. What about you, Ryan? What do you have for this? Well, knowing how much, again, like a lot of these games, there was a ton of good weapons that I love, especially on Starfield. But what I'm going with is in Spider-Man 2, I loved the, I forget exactly what it's called, but it's the Venom attack. You run through, you can use, once you get your Venom powers and you're the symbiote, you can run through, collect these guys. You shoot up in the air and then you just shoot all your Venom spikes.

You look like this giant spike ball and you just shoot everyone to the side it's it does a crazy amount of damage it was just something that was so cool and I had so much fun using it when I played and every time you're just like whoa you know and you collect all the guys and shoot them off so that's the one for me this is the one game that's

like the big blank spot for me and Josh, where neither of us have played Spider-Man 2. Yeah, I know. I'm going to have to look this up later. It sounds really cool, though. Yeah, uh-huh, uh-huh. Listeners will know.

The smart ones will know. What about you, Josh? What you got? I got two words for you, boys. Humana Cadabra! Oh, gosh. Your wand from Hogwarts Legacy. Okay, listen.

I know that sounds kind of lame because I'm not going to, like, saying the wand is, but dude, I'm not even that big of a Harry Potter fan. I like the movies, but I'm not a fan, you know? Yeah. Running around and just nuking anything in the game. And it did not matter, man. You could do the big trolls.

You could do the little guys. It just, and the, the, the way that the effects on that spell, like just the sound of it, the effects of it, and the instant gratification of something just dying in that game was amazing.

Yes. You could hear it. It was almost like you could hear it kind of go like, almost like the air is pulled out of the room, and then the spell shoots forward. It was so satisfying, especially if you had the ability to link all the enemies. I was just going to say that.

Yeah, you'd kill one, but like five would all die at once. It was so much fun. Yeah, you could like curse them or something, and then chain them all, and then, and then it just, especially when yeah you could like curse them or something and then chain them all and then and then it just especially when you got in like the when you would do those in the

forest the forbidden forest you could do the coliseum thing or whatever and just battle everyone and then if you're able to link everyone up and boom hit them all oh that's a good pick I actually thought about that one too but I had to go with the spider man one but that's a good one that's a great one all right well let's go ahead and take our last break and we'll be right back all right guys

we got four awards left oh boy here okay these these these are some great ones this is the second annual smoke show award uh this this one started because i made a joke when we did a deep dive on lost ark that every character in this game was an absolute smoke show and then it was michael's idea to bring that back and and it was such a funny idea last year we had to bring it back again just a silly award right like what character in a 2023 game is the ultimate smoke show the most attractive character what what do you guys got josh let's let you go first oh oh there's a few that came to mind i mean you know there's a there's a show favorite for ryan and myself marin from jedi survivor you know uh there was Professor Garlic, who has

been named on this show a few times. Well, Ryan already gave her a ring, so she's not available. Yeah, get off my woman, man. And then, oddly enough, there was Lae Zell from Baldur's Gate 3, which I never expected, and don't ask me why. This is a weird

pick, but go ahead. Keep going. I know. I learned something about myself when I played Baldur's Gate 3, apparently. But the winner for me is my beloved Professor Garlic. Who doesn't love an educated woman that is willing to help others and just be an all-around good person? All right, Professor Garlic. All right, I get it, I guess. Ryan, any comments?

Well, I knew he was going to pick that, so I did not pick that. But that's a good choice. I wholeheartedly support that. Thank you. Especially because I already didn't give her a ring, so you're good to go. So who's your selection for this ryan so for me again another blank spot for you guys because you don't know the awesomeness of felicia harding black cat spider-man 2 oh apparently there's oh man woman okay not to be i know paul's trying to take away of the pervs but a woman in black spandex i'm on perf patrol he's on patrol a woman she's got white hair she's in

black spandex she's just traveling through new york city cruising around using portals and stuff there's just nothing like it so yeah it was uh it was a hard pick between uh her and uh professor garlic but i knew josh was gonna take her so thank you i'll let him have this way i let him have this craps yeah oh okay i see the character you're talking about yeah very white hair yeah it's like up she's got the mask on yeah okay i i gotcha is it weird if i select the twins from atomic heart no not at all oh dude they were definitely in contention so the twins from atomic heart i would say i remember watching the previews for atomic heart where we covered that very extensively.

And I remember just joking that I was so wrong where I thought Hogwarts legacy was going to be trash. I thought atomic heart might be the best game of the year. And it was almost like the other way around. But the first time you saw the twins in the trailers was like the meme from community. When the Dean is like, this better not awaken anything

in me and they so intentionally designed the twins to do that in those trailers i feel i feel like it kind of broke the internet for like two days where that's all everyone talked about yeah oh what a good all right paul hey sometimes you're walking by a store and you see a mannequin and you're like dang yeah boy you know these mannequins they got it going on oh all right best school okay i was gonna say i'm trying to keep an eye here on the game awards but it's tough when we're recording did that just say final fantasy 16 was best music and score uh i think that's what i saw good for them and best indie game sea of stars i'm not terribly i thought sea of stars might get it there was yeah i just oh jrpgs i know it's like it's not

for me i it's not my kind of game anymore it used to be but it's not anymore they take too much time yeah i am very happy for final fantasy 16 Not the best game by any means, but really fantastic music. The sound design in that game was really good. Oh, yeah. Music was great. All right. Moving on to our next award here. This is the Most Surprising Game Award.

Now, that could be a good or bad thing. We have the freedom to go either way. Maybe it surprised you for good, surprised you for bad. What are you guys taking here? What you got, Ryan? What surprised you this year well like i had previously mentioned that i played a lot of games that i would not have otherwise played this year because of the podcast and one of those i was forced to play

that thoroughly surprised me and it was thoroughly enjoyable. I'm going with Endless Dungeon. Oh, I thought you were going to say Subnautica. No. I kind of figured he'd say Endless Dungeon. You know how we feel about water games. Endless Dungeon caught Ryan by surprise, and I'd love to see that because that's the reason that we do the Force of Friend and the Hijack a Host. And I'd love seeing it because Ryan found a game that he yeah i i've i've honestly been itching to play again i want to play more i've been super busy with work i haven't had much time to game this last like week or two

but uh yeah i've i've been itching to play more just everything about it i've thoroughly enjoyed um i loved the gameplay especially when we can play together but even playing by yourself is is fun you you just get into a mode and you just start trying to run through those levels you got to watch so many things at once but yeah it totally caught me off guard never thought i'd like that game and i loved it nice i'm really glad you enjoyed that one ryan yeah and josh and i just reinstalled risk of rain too so maybe we can get you to talk about us it's so fun dude we'll do it i know i'm back in it right up your alley um for me i i these i kind of wanted like what were the happy surprises

um there was a few that came to mind hi-fi rush honestly came out of nowhere took the world by storm i jumped on it right away and absolutely fell in love with that game. The Dead Space remake came to mind on this one for me because it was so well done and it captured honestly everything about the original game that it needed to. So I was really pleasantly surprised with that. And then the other one was Dave the Diver because I heard all this hype. I had no interest in this game. And then I finally was like, let me play it. And it wound up really just kind of blowing me away. Dave the Diver is my pick for this one because it was a huge surprise that this game was as good as it was.

And it actually surprised me because I didn't think I would join that crowd of people that thought that. But I did. And Ryan, you really enjoyed Dave the Diver as well, right? Heck yeah, man. I love making sushi. Give me all that fish. Oh, very nice. For me, there were two that came to mind. Under the Waves, I rather enjoyed. I know it's not a game for everybody. A lot of people made fun of it as being like Subnautica, but bad. And admittedly, the gameplay is not that great. But for me, it was the story that I absolutely loved.

But I'm going to give Hogwarts Legacy the win here for me. I was so convinced that leading up to release, I was like, guys, this game is going to be like a three out of ten. It's going to be bad. And I'm the biggest Harry Potter fan here. I love them. And when that game finally came out, I was so delighted about everything in that game. I love the story.

I love the side characters. The combat was surprisingly fun. It wasn't hard, but it was still enjoyable. There was nothing about that game that i found to be boring or unrewarding played all the way through beat it rather quickly i was completely hooked so yeah hogwarts legacy's got to get it for me yeah absolutely great great pick good pick all right we're now on to our two biggest awards here here Here we go. The heavy hitters. First up, let's do,

so the two remaining are best game of the year and personal favorite game of the year. I think it makes more sense to do best game of the year. First, this is more of like objectively. I think this is the best well-made game. It provides the most, maybe you didn't necessarily find it to be the most fun,

but you think it's the best game out of the bunch from 2023. Josh, I think we have a good idea what you're going to pick here based on... I'm picking Baldur's Gate 3. This is no surprise for me. I mean, for Best Game of the Year award, it's Baldur's Gate, hands down, for me. I mean, that's not to slander any of the other amazing games that are out this year, but there is something special about Baldur's Gate 3. I mean, you can see the love that went into this game. It captured everything that I wanted it to be about actually playing like a Dungeons and Dragons rule set, but in the Larian style that I loved with Divinity Original Sin and Original Sin 2. So this game is honestly a darn near perfect game, in my opinion.

Very, very fun. I would agree because secretly, I've been playing it too. I'm not buying that. Nope. I tried. I tried. Nice try, Ryan. Yeah. I i mean it's an absolutely fantastic game very interesting story and especially if you like strategic turn-based combat especially if that

speaks to you no one does that better than larian studios i mean they they are the golden standard for rpgs at this point. Yeah, and I'm not a big turn-based guy, but the way you guys have talked about it and everyone else and the nominees for awards and everything, I may have to check it out just to kind of see. This is one of those games that you are truly missing out on. It's up there with Witcher 3, Red Dead. To me, it's in that pantheon of if you're not

giving this game a shot, you are missing out on an opportunity to experience a truly phenomenal game. I think what really impresses most people is the fact that there are so many things you can try to do in this game, and it all works like you know how in like the grand theft auto games and even in red dead 2 there are just so many little hidden secrets you can find and discover yeah balder's gate 3 is kind of like that like if you take a character that i mean i guess we're kind of like sharing some minor spoilers here about everything but like there's one character that's a vampire. You can select that character, make them bite someone in your own party,

and it will go to a cut scene where they confront each other and talk about it. And like how many people are even going to try that in this game? I don't know, but they've gone through and thought through all of that. I would say if you do a playthrough of this game, you're probably seeing 20% of what the game has to offer.

I was going to say, maybe less. Yeah. Yeah. Like you could replay it, make all different decisions and you're going to see completely different cut scenes, make totally different choices.

Yes. The base game is still going to be the same. You got to remove these parasites. We got to go figure out what's going on, but there's so much around it that they have programmed and thought of that make it very special. Yeah. Chisel out my eyeballs,

baby. Yep. What about you, Ryan? Best game of the year. Well, uh, it was a hard one knowing how this year was,

but I just think being, uh, the fan boy that I am. And I think that might give you guys a clue uh i'm gonna have to go with starfield i just i i still with the amount of hours i have in that game and i know i keep saying this whenever we talk about it i just feel like i've done nothing i yeah i beat the campaign yeah i got through this mission but there's so much more to do i have a ton of friends that play and they send me stuff all the time that i haven't even come

close to doing and i want to try it but i have to get in there and there's so many more steps before i get to that point with the base building and the ship building and it's just there's so much in these bethesda games that you can do and and discover and traverse through um it's just I just I I have I loved what I've played and I just want to play more so that's why I'm gonna have to give it to to Starfield I am gonna back you up on this one Ryan I know that Starfield has taken its licks from the community and i have a little bit of a theory here i think if starfield came out and it wasn't made by bethesda then i think it probably would have had a little bit of a warmer response i think this year has also really spoiled us as gamers

oh yeah like there are people that i literally have read where they say starfield is trash and i'm like can you imagine if you played Starfield a few years ago? I think people would have had a little bit of a warmer response. Maybe it's not to the same level as Skyrim for some people or the Fallout games. I think there's a lot to like here. I think there are a lot of other games that are far better. I mean, would I have nominated it for Game of the Year if I were the Game Awards maybe at the sixth spot but probably not but i still enjoyed my time in that game and the weapon variety a lot of people didn't like swapping out weapons and testing them but i still get things on my tiktok feed about very unique rare weapons that people

find in that game that are pretty fun to watch. Yeah. So I feel like this one, I think expectations were just too high. It was never going to meet them. I hope through patches and modding, maybe a year or two down the road, some people will start to dabble back in. I feel like it's been a little bit over-criticized in my opinion. Yeah. I mean, I'm not as big on Starfield as you two are, but I have to give the game its due. It's an incredible video game. This is one where expectations can kind of hurt things because I don't know what I was expecting with Starfield,

but what I got wasn't quite it. But it doesn't mean that it wasn't a great video game at the same time. I can appreciate the tech, the vastness, the amount of choice and stuff that they put into it. There's a missing something and I don't know what it is, right? I don't feel this quite the same way. But I mean, one of the most highly regarded games of the year, other than the naysers you know which i think they're they're a loud bunch and to be fair we all loved the first few hours like the initial discovery in the game was a lot of fun and then for some people it was like oh that's it and that didn't work for them and then there were other people that were like oh that actually is enough for me and i'm gonna keep playing it i feel like i'm trying to make excuses for you, Ryan.

No, I don't think it needs excuses. Yeah, I've heard that from a ton of people, dude. A ton. Yeah, some people just love it, and others don't. Yeah, no, for sure. And I would agree. I mean, for me, Skyrim was better. It's one of my favorite games of all time. But I just love going to this this area and you can go and

you're walking through just some little shack and you can explore through and see what's in there and then you just go talk to random people and get the dialogue and there's just so much you can do and i see what you're saying josh where there is a little something missing and i felt that too but i'm hoping that you know the more i play i might i may find parts of that and um and get a little more kind of delve into the the deeper parts of the game but as always with the bethesda game modders will make it 10 times better i have no which unfortunately i know we we we kind of rag on all these big developers and stuff, but with Bethesda, they know all the modders are going to come in. They're going to clean up all the cobwebs and make it better for them so they don't have to deal with it pre-release.

But I'll take it. They just need to stop replying to people's reviews online. Just let the game stand. Don't go in there and start being defensive because that's only going to backfire. We all know that, right? All right. My pick for best game of the year, I'm going to go with Alan Wake 2. So Baldur's Gate 3, this is not speaking negatively about that game at all. I totally understand why so many people want to give it to that. When I'm thinking game of the year, I want to give it to a game that does something I have never seen before, something I've never experienced before.

As much as I love Baldur's Gate 3, in many ways, it feels almost identical to when I played Divinity Original Sin 2, which came out, I believe, 2018, maybe even 2017. And so when playing Baldur's Gate 3, it was like, oh yeah, I loved these aspects of DOS 2. That's all great. Love it. But for me, Alan Wake 2 was the truly revolutionary game this year. It has very inventive storytelling I have never seen in another game. And that has very clever ways of working itself into the gameplay. Ryan and I loved the entangled mission from Starfield where you have two realities that you hop back and forth. What's so ironic is that just a couple months later, here comes Alan Wake 2 that does the exact same thing, but gives you four and sometimes even more timelines that you have to swap in and out of. So as Alan is walking around,

maybe he's in like a, and I know Josh experienced a little bit of this cause he, he played through the beginning parts of Alan wake to maybe got like a third of the way through or something. Three or four minutes, three or four minutes. But there are times when Alan is like, Oh,

this subway is broken down. I need some inspiration. Well, what if I wrote this into the story? Well, now the subway is up and running. And so there are times where he does things like that, where later in the game, there's a whole setting in a hotel. And there are times when the cult has committed the murder. And this is when

they're planning the murder. And you keep going back and forth between these timelines, putting all the pieces together. And I felt just like so much adrenaline as those storylines were pulling back together. I have not played a game or felt that way. I felt like this game told a story in a way I've never seen in anything else. And it didn't hurt that the graphics were the best I've seen this year. The graphics are,

they had the best graphics of 2023. Yeah. I haven't played it yet. I haven't been fortunate enough to get my own copy like josh did uh yeah but but i i did watch like the intro video and in some gameplay of it and it just blew me away it looked beautiful um i'm definitely gonna have to probably pick it up after josh finishes with his copy yeah i was going to say, I am about a third of the way, would be my guess, into this game. And I understand this pick, Paul. I do find parts of the game a little slow, but I think that's okay. It's just my flavor is a

little bit faster paced. But I can attest to that the story is incredible, the voice acting is incredible, the graphics are incredible. You can tell what this game is, and it is a game of the year contender for sure. And the musical number is the funniest meta joke I have ever seen in a video game. If you don't know what I'm talking about, just go bring it up on YouTube. It's absolutely hysterical. This game really shocked me i thought i was going to like it i would not have picked it up if it didn't get nominated for game of the year uh like with so many publications and i'm so glad i did because i loved it to me it feels very similar to resident evil but like a step above it's like a perfect version of a Resident Evil game for me.

All right, moving on to our last category, guys. Oh, it's the last one. Personal favorite game of the year. What game spoke to you the most? Maybe it's the game you spent the most time in. Maybe it just had the highest highs. This game just clicked with you on every level. What are you guys giving it to here?

Josh, is this another Baldur's Gate 3? It is not. This is our personal favorite game of the year. I was so hyped for this game. I mean, if I was shouting from the rooftops about a specific game in 2023, what game would come to mind for you guys? Gosh, I still hear the echoes, Remnant 2, Remnant 2. I mean, exactly. And you know what, dude? Remnant 2 is everything that I was hoping it would be, and then some. I've played this game through once already, and I'm still trying to get friends to play

it with me. Yes, you are. I got our buddy Andy to do it and he's been playing it. My nephew's been playing it with me a little bit, but it's like, I wish we could play more. But there is something about Remnant 2 that just feels right as a video game. The action, the polish, the grandeur of it, the boss fights in that game are incredible. I love the difficulty level. For me as a gamer, Remnant 2 checks all the boxes, and it does it in just such a good way. And so that's my personal game of the year pick, because I've loved every second that I've played this game. It's everything I wanted it to be. And I mean, what can I complain about at that point? I will say I have been one that has been recruited over and over and over.

Josh has heavily tried to recruit me to play this game. I did watch some gameplay, buddy. I don't know if I told you that, but I think it looks pretty good. It looks very exciting. And I think I'm going to get in with you guys ASAP. I will play. I'll play it again. And the podcast will pay for it, right?

Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah? Really? I keep forgetting about that. Yeah, I like it. Remnant 2 had to come up somewhere for you, Josh. I knew it was just a matter of time. Saved it for last.

There you go. Ryan, how about you buddy favorite game well the best games you play are the games you play with family and so what i played with my family which is the one i played with my son spider-man 2 spider-man 2 i on brand i was it's just spider-man was always one of my favorite superheroes growing up there was parts of this game that just absolutely blew me away um from dialogue to cut scenes and cinematics to just like there's there's a new thing in this where you have these like web wings and you can just fly around new york city and it's so much fun i had so many times where you can get these super slingshots and you can just fly around the city and you can hit like air drafts and and i would

purposely look out for missions to do that um there's a scene where we can give away spoilers right yeah yeah especially spider-man so so oh i don't know but you guys haven't played but you you guys won't play you guys we're almost an hour i'll forget about it by the time i play it so so a couple other characters they get hit by the symbiote and then uh you know peter parker's yelling at him so mj gets a hit by the symbiote and it makes her crazy and all her insecurities and all the issues happen and they're having just this pleading battle as a couple and they're just it there's so many cool things about it throughout the game there's so much depth to it that I, I, at least I thought, and then you can always go on and just do whatever missions you, there's a crime over here.

There's a crime over there. And you could, there's just so many parts of the game where if you just want to play the missions, you can do it. If you just want to go and roam around the city, you can do that too. So to me,

like playing that and then playing it with my son was just, it was awesome. It was awesome. It was the best part of the year for me as far as video games go. So yeah, Spider-Man 2 is the one. That's awesome. I can perfectly picture how your son must act while you're playing Spider-Man 2. I can picture it in my head. I can tell he absolutely loves it.

So it's a good pick. I can appreciate it. My personal favorite game of the year. I kind of feel like this was like Josh with Remnant 2. He had to bring it up. The game that I by far had the most fun playing and also was the most fun game to follow on social media, Legend of Zelda Tears of the Kingdom,

unquestionably for me. You guys both really praised Ultra Hand this game did not click with you guys quite as much as with me you guys didn't say it was a bad game but you guys did not love it I think that's fair to say right yeah oh yeah love to me this this game had the best gameplay of the year for me Alan Wake 2 had the best storytelling Zelda had the best gameplay that's why I gave me, Alan Wake 2 had the best storytelling. Zelda had the best gameplay. That's why I gave it to these two games. The whole way that Ultra Hand worked, its sheer simplicity but innovation

was unlike anything else I saw this year. I hope games copy it. Oh, yeah. Sometimes I'll make fun of games like, oh, you're just ripping off that mechanic from another game. I hope games do that with Ultra Hand. Give us cool tools within the game and give us a few things to play with and we'll figure out the rest it's like a sandbox with infinite potential if you just give us the right tools to build

and next thing you know you'll have the world's biggest sandcastle uh so i i had to give it here on my personal leaderboard it's number two it's only behind red dead redemption 2 that means i even have it above things like cyberpunk uh disco elysium you know all that stuff so yeah tears of the kingdom we had to give zelda some love somewhere in this episode yeah it it deserves it i mean deservedly so it's just i it is a fantastic game like i actually can still say I loved my time with it. It's just missing a little. It checks four out of the five boxes that I want.

But you got to give it its due. Is that fifth box talking? Yes. And story. Clearly story takes a backseat. Three out of five boxes in but yeah i know i i totally understand i i once i kind of figured out you know how to play the game and what makes it fun i did enjoy it and i thoroughly enjoyed it and i understand why

you liked it like ultra hand is awesome i you said, I hope all these developers and all these people copy this to the 9, you know, and do all kinds of things like this. Because it was so much fun, not only building all these things, but watching online how people, what they built. So much fun. I can't tell you how many hours I spent just watching people build stuff on Zelda, a game that I didn't even really like that much. But that feature was so innovative and so unique and so amazing that it just made that game for me. So, no, I totally get it. Yeah, and it's the kind of game that you aren't just heading to the objective and trying to beat the game as fast as you can, right? This is the kind of game that is, it's almost like parkour.

Parkour! Parkour! Parkour! Right? Like, I could just run from here down a path and get there, or here are some Zonai devices, and I'm going to create the world's funniest way to get there. And so it's a little bit of the game is what you make of it. And for some people it works.

I know not, not for everybody, but for me, it was the most fun of the year. So that's my personal favorite game of 2023. Any closing thoughts, any, anything else to share with the people before we close this one out?

Your picks were horrible and mine were the best. Apparently Josh and I need to play Spider-Man 2 according to Ryan. That's what he has me hyped for this. And I feel like I'd like Spider-Man already. I just need to play them. And then I'm going to be like, okay, yes, this is fantastic.

So I would 100% let you have my playstation but also uh i don't know whenever this oh so it'll be one day from when this episode releases god of war ragnarok uh dlc comes out for free yeah so you're gonna have to wait a little while that's fine so you wait a while then you can play both sweet deal and and i'm going to be a little quiet because uh my family's around but word has it santa might be swinging by with spider-man 2 so might be able to get some time soon so there's a little bit of like that's a little bit of why i haven't touched you paul you're gonna love just flying through the city i swear man of course i will it's the best way to traverse.

Yeah, I don't even swing anymore. I'm just like, let me launch through. Oh, yeah, I'm sure. They're always fun. All right. Well, I think that's everything here. Here's to 2023. Guys, we were very spoiled.

I don't know if you've looked at games for release in 2024. It's a little bit slim pickings, at least as of right now. I mean, I'm not really looking forward to like skull and bones, which is coming out in February, stuff like that. I think it might be a little bit of a rough year, but hopefully we'll get some gems along the way.

Things like Dave, the diver under the waves. Yeah. Bop. That's the beauty of it. There's always those games that come out that nobody was expecting that wind up being great. Yeah.

All right. Well, make sure to swing by our Patreon support page. You can get there through MultiplayerSquad.com. Signing up is as cheap as five bucks a month and you'll get bonus episodes. And then we will be back on Thursday for our last new episode of the year. By the way, the Game Awards right now is performing the musical number that I was

referencing earlier. They're performing it live. Is that what they're doing? Yeah. This is cracking me up that they're yeah. With the actual motion capture actor as well. All right. So then after this Thursday,

we'll have our rewind episodes and then we hope everyone will have a fantastic Christmas and holiday season. And until next time, happy gaming. See ya! All right. See ya, everybody. you