Video Gamers Podcast - The Quest for Knowledge - Video Games Podcast

Episode Date: July 10, 2023

Video Games hosts Josh, Paul and Ryan are bringing you a hilarious video games packed episode. This week, you asked the questions, and we answered in a very special Listener Questions episode. We discuss things from video games, to food, to can Paul AND Josh take Ryan in a fight. It’s a can’t miss episode from your favorite video games podcast.  Thanks to our LEGENDARY supporters: Skippy, Kiitaclyzm, Gideon Is Lit, Toro, Scrump, Gaius, Remi, MarbleMadness, Dr. Catatonic, Blackstar (DQ), Glapsuidir, Phelps, Michele B, Redletter, Nevo, Waynerman, TFolls, AceofShame, Jake, RangerMiller, and Ad Connect with the show: Support us on Patreon: patreon.com/multiplayerpodcast Join our Gaming Discord: https://discord.gg/Dsx2rgEEbz Follow us on Instagram: instagram.com/multiplayerpod/ Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/MultiplayerPod Subscribe to us on YouTube: youtube.com/channel/UCU12YOMnAQwqFZEdfXv9c3Q  Visit us on the web: multiplayerpodcast.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

hello fellow gamers of the world and welcome to the multiplayer gaming podcast today is a bonus round of monday and we will be answering some very fun listener submitted questions in this episode i am your host paul and i need to introduce here two of my best friends, and I'm going to hit you guys with some questions right off the bat. First up, we have Josh. What is the very first game you ever remember playing? Oh, that's easy. It was Pong. Oh, Pong. Pong. Also, I'm old. And then joining me and Josh, we have Ryan. Now, Ryan, what console would you say is your all-time favorite?

Ooh, that's a good one. And what's in contention? I assume PS2's in there, maybe Xbox 360? Yeah, for me, it's probably going to be PS2 is my favorite. That load music, the... The Sony song? Yeah, it takes me back instantly. Good answer.

All right, so fellas, we are doing a listener mailbag episode. We actually have not done one of these since October 2022. So it's definitely been a minute. We always love doing these listener submitted question episodes because it's a great way for us to engage with you guys. We always prefer answering questions that you guys are actually asking as opposed to us just making stuff up. And if you want to submit questions for us to answer in pods like this in the future, you can always submit questions on socials everywhere at MultiplayerPod. You can also join our free Discord server. You can just click a link in the episode

description. We post all kinds of updates and answer questions in Discord. And also, if you want to even take the next step up from that, not only can you engage with us on socials and on Discord, you can also sign up and support us on Patreon. If you do sign up, you can pledge starting at five bucks a month, and that's a way to help ensure that our show stays running. You can pledge for just a month, or you can stick around for a year or more. Regardless, we would be eternally grateful. And in return, you'll get two bonus episodes every month, along with ad-free episodes a day early. You can sign up for that at MultiplayerSquad.com. Now, guys, we do have two people that we do need to announce in regards to Patreon.

We had one person sign up for the very first time with Rare status, and their name is Squid. So a very big thank you to Squid. And we also want to thank Grilled Chicken Man for bumping up their support from rare to epic so thank you so much squid and grilled chicken man i'm hungry now kill killer name by the way that's a good name which one squid or grilled chicken man both both but grilled chicken man is that's a good name oh absolutely and we also want to say thank you to our other epic supporters ace of shame i camp and kill you dro's lol hg knight casmon skippy michael the butler yoda ramelia and master wayne oh one and also legendary supporters gaius 214 and red letter 88 all right let's get to our

questions guys historically the way we've always done this is that we just take turns we pick a question that we think would be fun to answer we read it out loud and then all three of us give our answers and then we just keep going round robin style until we run out of room sound good to you guys oh yeah all right so we've got a lot of gaming questions we also have some questions about our podcast a couple questions about food some are about tv and movies we'll try to focus mostly on gaming but we'll also get into some other nonsense as well you like the non-gaming questions the most ryan food food food food all right uh ryan how about we give you the honors you want to pick

the first question oh my goodness okay um i like uh i like jake's question actually uh if you had to play 1v1 in a game if you lose you die what game would you choose? That's a good question. Yeah. Dude, I've waffled on this question because currently I would say Rocket League for me because I feel like I'm better than probably a good percentage of people out there. But then the other night I randomly joined a, and we won the whole stinking tournament. So it was me and two rando dudes. Oh, wow. We won the whole thing.

And guys, I did absolutely nothing. A tournament is like, I don't know, eight matches or plus. You know what I mean? By the time you get to the semis and the finals and all that, I scored zero goals in eight matches of Rocket League. I was a rock around their neck. And I was just like, oh, my goodness. I literally apologized at the end and was just like, I'm really sorry, guys. And it was like, dude, we won the championship.

And I was like, but I did nothing. So I don't know. Like, you know, you hit that slump. You know, back in the day, I'd say Street Fighter i think i'm gonna go with rocket league if my life depended on it i think i could pull that out i think out of like a thousand rocket league players you're probably better than like 940 of them yes you just happen to play the other 60 yeah exactly what about you ryan what's your answer for this um so looking at this uh i put i don't know how this qualifies but i put because i used to as a little kid because i was crazy i would sit and i'd run my own time trials on metal gear solid on the first level the

boat level yeah so i i would say. I would put myself up against anyone. I mean, I'd have to get back into form. It's been a long time. But if I could do that again, I could rip through that first level, all the way through, start to finish, faster than I could even... That's what I would do, for sure.

Okay. I have a very stupid answer for this, but it is going to be 3v3 freestyle basketball. I know that game. There was 20 people that played that game. Very small community. A very janky basketball game where you play 3v3. Really bad mechanics.

You just had to learn the goofy system. And once you figured that out, you could be really good. So I always played as a seven-foot female center. And I had that game on lockdown. I could grab every rebound. I could make every hook shot. If I had to bet my life, that's what I'm going to pick. And there's also a very high percentage

that whoever i'm playing against has never heard of it so i i like my chances oh i'm so dumb i should have picked you you know from first-hand experience paul the uh i think it was nhl 2k 9 or 2k away i found that glitch yeah on the south side of the rink i could just do a little twitch twitch twitch and then boom goal every time that's when you quit you rage quit and you wouldn't play anymore very true yep i thought you might go with nhl i was a little surprised but the metal gear solid was on brand so i get it yeah absolutely all right let's pick our next question here josh your turn all right i hope y'all did a little bit of research on this one, because I actually like this one. Was the year 2000 better than 1990 or 2010 for gaming?

Yes. And so, obviously, I had to look up the games that came out in each of those years. So I'm just going to go ahead and say that even though I'm the elder statesman of gaming amongst this bunch, 1990s out. Some really good games, Secret of Monkey Island, Super Mario World, you know... Dr. Mario. Dr. Mario, yeah, right. So it's like, okay, 1990, as much as I love my older guy games, that one's out of here. It's a bad year for gaming, honestly. It's not even close. But then we get into 2000 versus 2010.

And to give the listeners an idea, because, you know, hey, who knows what games are out? 2010, Mass Effect 2, God of War 3, Halo Reach, Heavy Rain, Alan Wake, Rock Band 3, Super Street Fighter 4, Red Dead Redemption, Super Mario Galaxy 2, Call of Duty Black Ops, Bioshock 2, and then the list goes on and on and on. Civ 5, Fable 3, Battlefield Bad Company 2, and then they just kind of, you know, whatever, right? It's an all-timer year. 2010 is without a doubt the answer. It is a very good year.

And then we have 2000, which is The Sims, Deuce X, Perfect Dark, 2 legend of zelda majora's mask counter strike balder's gate 2 tony hawk's pro skater 2 paper mario command and conquer red alert uh and then again they start to fall off here uh great games at the top agree with you paul i'm going 2000 man yep really both of you is it because just those couple at the top, like Diablo 2 is taking the cake for you? For me, honestly, Deuce X is what did it for me. I don't know. Neither one of you probably ever played the original Deuce X,

but that game... Did you really? Dude, that game is the first game that I can remember that gave you the freedom of choice of how you want to tackle a mission mission. It was, it was so good, dude. It was absolutely legendary. So deus ex and it seals it for me. Diablo two, obviously counter-strike. I played a lot of, um, I did play some perfect dark. I don't like it as much as golden eye, but I mean, it's still, I know, I know, but I didn't play as much perfect dark either so for me

that's why i'm giving it to 2000 that's not to say that 2010 isn't phenomenal but i'm gonna edge it out with 2000 yeah no 2010 is absolutely amazing but i already had all those games listed for 2000 and i put 2000 hands down because i mean sims i i i played so much sims at you know your wife's house uh you know growing up every weekend i was there and we'd all take turns you know setting timers yeah setting timers so nobody gotten mad you know rosebud getting all the money and then stealing i used to steal uh uh my cousin's uh character i'd marry her and then bring her to my house and she gets so mad but and then counter-strike after school i would go to an internet cafe and a like 15 of us would all be there we play counter-strike day defeat all of those games diablo 2 thief 2 uh

you know like you said perfect dark 20 hours pro Hops Pro Skater. All those games. All timers. Bangers. Things that are... Not only nostalgia, but were just so good. So that for me is all time. Definitely 2000s. Killer year. For me, I would way rather take Mass Effect 2, Bioshock 2, God of War 3, Red Dead Redemption 1, Starcraft 2.

Starcraft 2 is good. Fallout New Vegas, Alan Wake, Heavy Rain. Heavy Rain? Yeah. The list goes on and on. I mean, they're great, great years. I'm going to pick 2010, but I understand the 2000 argument. Perfectly valid.

All right. Moving on to our next question here. Let's see. Let's do a non-gaming question let's do uh okay you know what we gotta knock this one out because we started arguing about this almost immediately it's gonna be fun to talk about i know we already answered one question from jake but we got we gotta hit another one here in a fight where it was paul and josh versus ryan who would win and this does require a little bit of context because ryan you do have experience with professional fighting

i have seen videos of you fighting online there are lots of pictures do you want to talk a little bit about your experience here i don't know what you're talking about i've never fought anyone ever i'm a i'm a lover not a fighter sure no i did fight uh i i've i uh been training for quite a while um i did have some fights i fought for m1 global um a lot of uh local and arizona fights for rage in the cage um i did fight charity events um professionally and in different you know they call them smokers when they're unsanctioned events so I have been training martial arts in jiu-jitsu kickboxing American boxing wrestling all that stuff for for quite a while so I am experienced to for a little context for for this argument I guess so what are your guys what are your guys the answer to this let me let me give you my history though I took Ken Po po karate for a year and a half i won a trophy in a tournament in 1981 it was a long time ago sweep the leg wrestling in high school nice i i had a friend that i did

jiu-jitsu with for one day and then I threw up because it was really hard work. Heck yeah. That's the best. Yeah. And, and then also I have old man strength. So I also know you would start the fight by just screaming who doken and just hope that it terrifies Ryan or makes them start laughing.

You can't block pocket sand, Ryan. This is true. Wait, no, we've already proved that. I'd have goggles. Oh, well.

Now, in all honesty for this question, Ryan would smoke either Paul or myself in a 1v1. Absolutely. No question. But a 2v1. Ryan, what are you going to do when Paul and I both come at you at the same time? If you shoot and take me down. I would beat you both up. If you shoot and take me down, then Paul's going to do when Paul and I both come at you at the same time? If you shoot and take me down... I would beat you both up.

If you shoot and take me down, then Paul's going to jump on you, and then he's going to hold you down. Paul can jump on me all he wants. Okay, for people who haven't had that extensive training, multiple people to a trained person is irrelevant. Obviously, it's a danger, and it's something you have to be cognizant of your surroundings and who's coming, where they are.

But I wouldn't use the same techniques that I would use on one person that I would use on two. So it's not going to be, Oh, I'm just going to take you down and submit you. It's going to be, I'm going to take you down and you're going to be out. So it's,

it's, there's a bunch of different ways, but I, I would, I would, this, you know, would – if the 1v1 for your life, I would do the 1v2 for my life on this. Oh, I don't know. A hundred percent. Oh, man. I don't know.

A hundred percent. And you forget. I'm an old man too now. I'm a good wrestler, man. I'm an old man. I'm a good wrestler. That's good. Wrestling is – that's the number one thing I recommend for anyone.

If you want to learn anything is wrestling. All I got to do is tie you up. And then Paul just comes in with the Randy Macho Man elbow. The Hulk Hogan leg drop. Come on. You just say all I have to do is tie you up. How are you going to tie me up? You say it like it's so easy. I'm going to bear hug you, Ryan.

This isn't WWE. okay, Macho Man? Don't you slander, Macho Man. Don't you do it. Here's the thing. If this is some kind of sanctioned fight in the ring, that goes more in Ryan's favor. If there's a referee and we're wearing boxing gloves, if this is like street fight,

no rules. And I can grab, I can grab a two by four and, or like I can throw rocks or go ahead and sand. Like those are extra variables. I think it's very hard. One V two, as long as Josh and I don't take turns,

like in an action movie, running in one at a time, get kicked in the face and get knocked unconscious. If we both sandwich you at the same time, I don't know. I think it's going to be tough. I'm not saying we would win 100%, but you can't say you're going to win

1,000 out of 1,000 matches. That's just not going to happen. I would win 90 out of 100. Guarantee it. Guaranteed? Guaranteed. I would straight kick you and break your sternum.

And then I would go after Josh. Because I would block it. Oh gosh. Dude, I know Wax On, Wax Off. Come on, man. I watched Karate Kid, dude. I watched all those movies. You just got to hold the back button and you block. I've had all my friends do this too. They all talk to me about

how they can fight me and beat me and this and that and then you know they wait till i have a few drinks and they want to wrestle me but i it's it's hard to say without like bragging or trying to like come off as like super cocky but i i honestly i'm telling you guys i would just smash you guys i would utterly destroy you maybe it wouldn't even be fair. I mean, maybe. This can't be tested, but I just know Josh and I. Why can't it be?

Let's do it. Josh and I would time it up, and I think we would just football tackle you. You would have to knock one of us out with your very first punch or kick, and if you do that, then you're going to win. And if you don't, I think we have a very good chance. It's like Hans and Franz, man. We just bounce you between the two of us. Josh is smaller and agile.

I'm bigger and slower. You're going to have to deal with both. Well, America's made for dreamers. You guys are there. All right. So majority wins. Josh and I agree. We have a very good chance.

All right. Wait, wait, wait. Let's test Ryan's confidence. Ryan, what is the largest animal that you think you can take in a fight animal um this is kind of bleeding into another question that was actually asked but go ahead uh as far as animal goes i i please say like i was gonna tell me you can you can know i couldn't i couldn't take a bear i couldn't even take a mountain lion kangaroo? Kangaroos are tough, man.

You ever seen the shredded kangaroos? Those things are scary. Yeah, one kick from a kangaroo will just blow up your spleen, man. It'll mess you up. Like, it'll just blow up your insides. I've seen videos, though. You sock them in the face once, and sometimes they just look dazed, and then they hop off. The guy was defending his dog.

Oh, I love that video, dude. That's so great. I could beat a kangaroo. I think you'd have a good chance against a kangaroo. Kangaroo was the highest I was going to say for you. What about a chimpanzee, Ryan? Oh, man. Those suckers are strong. They'll rip your arm off.

I don't think so. They'll just grab you and just rip you to shreds. I once claimed that I could beat a chimp. And then everybody was like, dude, you're crazy. And then I was like, I was so confident. I was like, dude, I can take a chimp. And then they showed me a picture of a chimp. And I went, oh, I was thinking of a monkey, not a chimp, dude.

And then I was like, chimp would wreck me, man. Yeah, I mean, I work out a lot. I mean, I can deadlift over 400 pounds. I can do all these things. But they're just a whole different level of strong it's it's something completely different so yeah they would just rip my limbs off and then i'd just be okay all right right it might be he's not over he's not overconfident that reminds me in pe just like how overconfident like kids are in their sporting ability i remember our pe coach lining all of us up on the sideline and said, how many of you can run faster than I can throw a football? And every single kid in our

class except me said yes. And I was like, you guys are idiots. This was in like second grade. And our coach said, all right, ready, set, go. And he literally waited until everyone was like 90% of the way to the finish line. And then just chucked the football and it just goes right past all the kids. Yeah. And that was just so funny to me. Just like the sheer confidence, which is like important. I love the confidence.

But yeah, at least Ryan doesn't have, you know, completely crazy confidence. There are people who legitimately think they can like take on Grizzlies and it'll be no problem. Yeah. Those people are dumb. Oh, I was saying saying a bear i didn't say grizzly bear i could kill a grizzly bear no i'm kidding just not not not like black bears yeah that's not not poo bears oh nice all right well coming back around to you r Ryan, what are you going to ask next? Let's do this because I know me and you, Paul, spent a lot of time on this game. This is from Got Ryan VAC Band, which is my little brother who did get me VAC Band. I'm cheating. Why has no game studio or production company ever been able to recreate the magic of WoW's combat? And I'm going to also extend that

to just wow in general okay i do have a question because i've played wow is this a sarcastic question because like wow combat not so great yeah we've covered this before joining wow 10 years after release was not the same as experiencing vanilla wow josh just pretend we're talking about everquest and you can answer the exact same question take it back like it's everquest i i will say this you know all joking aside i miss the days of having like 15 skills on a skill bar where you could activate any one of them that you wanted. And I don't mean this towards like a generation, but gaming, I feel like has gotten so dumbed down now,

right? Like Diablo four, we just covered Diablo four. It's a super fun game. I loved every second that I played Diablo, but one of my biggest like, ah, moments with Diablo was the fact that you only get like four skills other than your two

basic skills that you can put on your hotbar anytime like why dude there's four kills hope it's not not too much i but like give me the 10 or 12 skills and let me decide which skill i want to use at that point oh that messes up balancing and it's like well then don't dumb your game down at that point i want i want i want my wow mods where I've got two action bars on the left and the right and four action bars in the middle. And I literally have 95 buttons that I can click at any moment. And like in WoW, there was like, because I played a healer priest, and you would even have like flash heal rank one through nine and there were times that you were more mana efficient by using down ranked skills and so sometimes you would use like the lower ones or the higher ones you actually had to think your way through the combat i do think

that's a huge part of it josh i think the other reason is that for most people it was either everquest or it was wow that the technology was just there for the first time, especially with high-speed internet, where you have these massive multiplayer gatherings, where before that, yeah, you might play like a 4v4 arena game or even maybe Battlefield, which was a lot bigger. But having this completely built world with hundreds of players, I think it was just such a big step in technology

that you felt it and we just haven't had another jump quite like that since i think that's what it comes down to that that to me is the biggest thing is that is that jump to where you know we played and just trying to get to 60 and in in the combat throughout getting there. It was just something that we had never done before. It was something completely different, so immersive. You can have all your friends play with you, and then you're all just helping each other. And it was just, yeah, it was just something we had never done. I will say on the vein of MMOs,

people have heard me mention Wildstar before, but I felt like Wildstar was one of my favorite MMOs, people have heard me mention Wildstar before, but I felt like Wildstar was one of my favorite MMO combat systems because they gave you the skill bar. It wasn't as many as WoW, but I mean, I feel like you had 10, 12 skills on your skill bar at any given moment. So you had that choice, but then it was much more action oriented to where the bosses would have these big telegraphs with a little safe zone zone in it and they would change them all the time like maybe it was a rolling red bar with like two little safe spots where you had to like stand there or it was like a big circular aoe and you had to run and dodge out of it or something like that wild star to me had the best mmo combat

that i have played in an mmo wows i i pick but it was, I mean, I liked the fact that it was tactical. You had to know which skills to use and when. The only downside I had was I was very late to the game. And at that point, everybody was running DPS meters. And if you didn't click these three skills within 0.08 milliseconds of each other, then you were kicked out of the group because your DPS sucked. And everyone had those on farm status there was no discovery like when you played it back in vanilla whereas a group you were learning fights i think that was a big part of it too there's just no community and gaming quite like that anymore because even the mmos that you can play and if you want to include diablo 4 and that you can there was no you're not meeting new people and raiding over the course of five

years together where these people become close friends of yours. So I don't know what's going to bring that next big step. I think VR comes close to that, where the first time you play some of these VR games, it feels incredible, like Half-Life Alyx. But until we get something, I've said this before, until we can like plug into the matrix i think that's gonna be that next big step where it's like you actually are in it for real as far as you can tell i think that's the next time we're gonna have a jump like when everquest and wow dropped yep all right let's move on to the next question your turn josh oh it's my turn all right here's an easy one um i don't know

if you guys are big fans of this genre or not but what is your favorite roguelike game wait wait who who asked that question oh that is uh sam sam with the question mark i do love the name. Sam question mark. Sam? But yeah, wants to know, favorite roguelike game? Now, I think I am much more of a fan of roguelikes than the both of you are. I really enjoy the genre. So for me, I would put Hades up there for sure. That's kind of the easy choice for a lot of people.

I do like games like Darkest Dungeon. I think that was a really fun game when I got into that one. I was just chatting with a longtime listener, Morgau, about Curse of the Dead Gods, which is kind of like a Hades clone. I do like those games because they have to rely on their gameplay elements, because otherwise they're not fun. If you have a roguelike with crappy gameplay, nobody's going to sit there and play 30 runs of this game. And I do absolutely love progression. And that's the other thing that roguelikes do is if they don't have some sort of permanent progression, then most people aren't

going to just sit there and slam their heads against the keyboard over and over running the exact same thing all the time. So I think Hades nailed it as far as the game that most people would know about. And if I was going to say, I think you should play this game to somebody that never has, that would probably be one of them. Yeah, I would say Hades is a great game. I did not play it nearly as much as you, Josh, but I did enjoy it. I do want to give a special shout out to Returnal, which was one of the first games we bought for our PS5. I think it's a fantastic game that is really under-celebrated for what it is. I don't know if it already came out on PC or if it's coming out later, but I hope that more...

It is out on PC. Okay, yeah, I was going to say... I just never picked it up yeah yeah i i hope more people have found it uh enter the gungeon is also very good but i would i would throw my hat in the ring of risk of rain too that's my second dude yeah it may have to have friends though i like risk of rain with friends is infinitely better than solo whereas you can play hades i mean you can't play with friends on Hades. So it's that toss up of like, if you guys are hopping on, I'll play Risk of Rain 2 over

Hades 10 out of 10 times at that point. But if it's like, hey, what's one game that I'm going to suggest to somebody, then it would be Hades at that point. Yeah. Like when people ask me what my favorite games are, I never think of Risk of Rain. But if we're just talking roguelikes, if I had two friends DM me and say, hey, we're hopping in Risk of Rain 2 tonight. Are you in?

I would say yes every time. Absolutely. And it's the fact that you can do it multiplayer. Hades is great. It's great one player. Most roguelike games are one player. But for me, I love the multiplayer aspect and also shout out to loop hero which is uh a very well-performing game for such a low budget but that one's also

very clever slay the spire the other really big kind of juggernaut well-known roguelike game ryan do you have you played any roguelikes well i'm glad you asked that because i'm sitting here looking in and i pulled up i'm like oh man what rogue games are there and i'm like i i don't think i've played any of these it's an interesting genre honestly i it was a long time before i got into it and then once you get into it it is it opens up like a whole new world of games basically yeah no i i i mean looking at these i actually pulled up a big list you know while you guys were talking and uh rambling on about all the roguelikes but i i um yeah i haven't played any of these but i mean i'm definitely interested to check some out but i have not

got into this genre so i'm gonna have to definitely take a look so i don't have anything to add to that to that question unfortunately well paul suggests Paul suggests Risk of Rain, and I suggest Hades, Ryan. So there you go. Hades it is for me. It's Hades. Hades is great. And specifically Risk of Rain 2. Risk of Rain 1, very different.

2D side-scroller, basically, where Risk of Rain 2 is actually 3D. But those are some great games. All right. It's actually time for our break. So we'll be right back with more multiplayer gaming podcast. Okay. We are back moving on to our next question here. All right.

This one's kind of short and easy. I like this one. This one comes courtesy of Vinit V I N U T. Not too sure how to pronounce it. Have you guys ever played any tactical shooters like Valorant or CS go? If so, did you enjoy it? Now?

I think we've all dabbled in tactical shooters, right? Like what are some of the ones you guys have played the most? Uh, CS go. I played a heck of a lot of that. We did have our Valorant stage for a little while. I would put rainbow six siege in there.

Um, man, I mean, I don't, they're probably not tactical shooters but i mean back in the day quake and unreal tournament were yeah those those were more that's more an arena shooter yeah yeah um yeah i definitely had my time with those i played a lot of csgo um like my issue is yes i, I love those games. In all honesty, like my reflexes are not what they used to be. You know what I mean? And so honestly, like this is a terrible like confession, but like I just generally can't compete in those games anymore. Like I still find them fun, except that I get wrecked over and over and over again at this point to where I just kind of go like, I don't think I'm having fun anymore. Isn't that crazy? Isn't it crazy how you think, I mean, it's just moving a mouse, like a little mouse and a little couple of keys on the keyboard,

and you can just get absolutely destroyed. Paul and I just ran into it the other day when we were playing and we're like, oh man, we haven't played a shooter in a while. And we were just getting wrecked. And you're trying to whip to the head. You're trying to get for headshots. And it's just not there. It's not there anymore. You don't have that same reflex, that same flip, the turns. It's just not.

It's something you have to do over and over and over again. And otherwise, it goes away. And it's crazy how fast it does go away oh yeah it's not like riding a bike you have to like rebuild those muscles i remember getting pretty good at counter-strike back in the day i went through a phase where that's basically all i played for a couple months and got pretty decent i really enjoyed valorant in the very beginning but ultimately it just got too sweaty for me. I've said this a million times. I like playing competitive team-based games online, but I prefer more of like the Overwatch type of game.

When it comes down to just locking down corridors and corners and then just the first head click wins, to me it it's almost just too uh it's just testing your reflex it's not testing your mind so much or strategy it so to me it just becomes too technical for for my personal taste i like playing them i just don't last in them very long because i just i don't want to play it long enough to get good. Yeah, it takes a lot of work. I like, you know, I'll go through spurts where I play a lot of Overwatch too. And it's funny because if I play consistently for a week or so, I start really getting a lot better at like DPS and stuff like that. But yeah, I'm with you, Paul. I just I like the ones where there's more going on than just who can click fastest. Like Overwatch is a good example of that. There's

tactics, there's teamwork, there's situational awareness, you know, that kind of stuff where I can lean into that stuff a lot more than, haha, I click this pixel faster than you. And you know what? Rainbow Six Siege does tactical shooting very well because whereas Valorant gives you like a magical ability, I do like Rainbow Six Siege being rooted in reality where it's like, okay, there is strategy, right? Where are we going to fortify walls? And now using my class, how am I going to use my thermite? Or how am I going to use my false one-way mirror? And you can also do things like hear people and then shoot through the dry wall and try to hit them. So I do feel like there's clever ways to do combat

in rainbow six siege where it is very tactical but there's enough around it that it still feels fun or if you want to go blackbeard and just run around with your extra shield so you can take a shot you know there's other ways to like play around it and i really appreciate it i think that's one of the better ones out there yeah i mean even when i back when i used to play uh destiny a ton i'd go in and i i'd go through crucible and i would wreck i'd do really really well and and we'd kick butt you know me and the my team and then we go and play trials of the cyrus and just get stomped we get walked through swept through and it's just like oh come on you know and and those it's it's you're just like how how are these people so much better

than me at this game but they are right you know they are and so you just have to accept it and so it's it's it's crazy yeah all right ryan you want to pick our next one um let's see here oh let's do a uh let's do a food one okay from from from ace uh let's do uh gordon ramsey or bobby flay this is very easy for me but what what would you guys say i i mean i've watched a lot of kitchen nightmares uh i i'll be honest i have never once in my life tasted anything by Gordon Ramsay or Bobby Flay but just being that I

have seen a lot of Gordon Ramsay I'm going to go with him what about you Ryan it's kind of hard Bobby Flay's got some good stuff out there but knowing how well Gordon knows if something's

raw then I'd have to go with Gordon Ramsay. I mean, Gordon's absolutely the better chef. Like it's kind of like, how do you want to answer this? I think Bobby Flay is a lot of fun to watch. He's got great shows. I went through huge phases. I loved his, I don't remember what it was called.

Like brunch with Bobby was good. Obviously he's an iron chef. You've got beat Bobby Flay. I mean, he's a huge TV presence. I did eat at one of his restaurants. I don't know if it's still there, but it was called Mesa in Las Vegas. Best pork loin I've ever had in my life. It was really, really good i have only eaten at one of gordon's restaurants it's called burger i think it's in planet hollywood in vegas yeah and it was it was actually one of the worst burgers i've ever had in my life oh no it's got all the flames like right when you walk in yes it's got all the flames outside yeah and uh not only was it one of the worst meals we ever had we had to wait so long to get inside that my friends had to pay for an extra day of dog sitting because they were set up in like a pet hotel. So that meal ended up costing my friends like $300 between the food and the dog sitting. And at the exact same time, the Cardinals were playing the Seahawks and the Cardinals got absolutely destroyed.

And we are Arizona people. Cards are my team. So all around, it was a terrible meal. But I'm still going to say Gordon Ramsay. Oh, my goodness. Oh, that's a good question. I like it. All right, Josh, your turn. Oh, my back to me, huh? Okay. Let's go with... I actually like this question here. Oh, here it is. This one comes in from Morgal, and it says,

which of your favorite video game franchises have gone astray, and how would you fix it? And we know exactly what Morgal's talking about. He's referencing Zelda. We know that for sure. Maybe. I mean, maybe. There's been some others in there. That was just a couple days ago.

And I think he asked this question before that. He did, yeah. I'm guessing that Zelda's what inspired the question. How about that? Maybe, that could be. Actually, that's probably very true. This is a good one, man, because there's some really epic franchises out there. I mean, Mass Effect famously did not end very well with Andromeda.

This one might catch people off guard, but I'm going to say Assassin's Creed. Okay. Because for me, I played the first two Assassin's Creed games, and I thought they were absolutely legendary, phenomenal games. And then Ubisoft did what Ubisoft does and began to just regurgitate stuff with just more corn in it. And so it just got to be where it's like, this is just getting gross now. And so we have covered Assassin's Creed Mirage, and we're very excited about that. So what they're doing with Mirage is actually how I would fix the franchise, which makes me very optimistic for it. But that's a franchise where I'm completely out on Assassin's

Creed. I really hope that Mirage works, because if it does, it'll draw me back. Okay. I think that's completely fair. We know how the way Assassin's Creed went was almost like the opposite of what we would have liked. They kept trying to make it bigger and just larger maps and more to do, but I think we all felt like smaller, more contained games actually would have been more interesting. That being said, I did love Black Flag. I loved the naval combat. But other than that, the rest of Assassin's Creed didn't really go the way I would have been more interesting that being said i did love black flag i loved the naval combat but other than that the rest of assassin's creed didn't really go the way i would have liked but it's it's good to see that it seems like they're on the right path now

what about you ryan do you have an answer for this one hopefully because that trailer looked freaking awesome i'm so excited for that game so hopefully they're back on the right track. For me, also to be maybe a little controversial, Call of Duty, man. Like, back in the day... Because they're all the same? Which Call of Duty? Which of the last 10? It's been the same for 10 years.

Call of Duty was so cool back in the day. It was so good. You could get in and you could play these different game features and all this stuff, but it just got it's one of those things where it just got so popular so mainstream i guess and and everyone was on it and they just kept trying to outdo themselves but it's just the same thing it's almost like the the nba nhl uh nfl you know madden games everything is just the same it's just re-released oh new skins new this new that oh little feature here and there but back in the day playing was

when they would re-release it or within when they would release a new one it was something different it was something cool it was something new so to me it's just it's become just kind of a bland every time okay you know you just got to get it's just it's become just kind of a bland every time okay you know you just got to get it if you want to keep playing with everybody other than that it's just the same game yeah i think that's a really good answer and josh and i josh was not a huge call of duty guy but even in the last few entries that we did both purchase it was like why did i drop new money on this i could just play the old one yeah yeah it's just a different backdrop i will say nothing though will ever compare to to playing sticks and stones

on the old i think it was uh black ops 2 or 1 i forget which one it is but i you know being the heel that i am i would run around with a hatchet because the hatchet reset the people's score. And all I did was run around and reset everybody's score. And then it showed you, yeah, it showed you the number, whoever was on your map, it would show you in gold who was leading, who was in first place. I would find them and I would hatchet them and reset them. And they would get so mad and I would get so many private messages. But it was my favorite part of life at that time.

Very nice. Yeah, the first thing that came to mind, funny that we're kind of going with these massive online shooter games. Battlefield is the first thing I thought of. Last couple entries, not good. I did not care for Battlefield 1. I did not care for 2042. I did not care for 2042.

I enjoyed Battlefield 4 a lot. I think you can very easily make an argument that it's the best Battlefield. I know a lot of people think that. I just don't know where they went wrong. I mean, obviously, the whole specialist system, and I know that 2042 has made a lot of changes, and I have not touched it since release. Maybe it plays a lot better now,

but it just felt kind of like similar to Assassin's Creed. Just get back to your good roots. Just give us good guns that feel good, that are well balanced. Give us fun maps with destructible environments. Some of the maps in 2042, I just didn't understand. Like,

why are we playing in a flat desert that just has a couple buildings here a couple buildings there like i don't want to play battlefield that way like give me the good dense maps or you know make them smaller with only the small vehicles to to mix with the ones with the jets and the tanks i don't know why it's so difficult it seems like as long as you have a good map that battlefield plays so much better and i just i i did not like the maps in 2042 at all yeah i was i was blown away as someone who loved battlefield and i know we played a ton of 1942 in battlefield vietnam those are my great memories as a kid like this was just nothing like that it had no feeling of battlefield and i just yeah it was it was not good all right let's move on to our next question here this is one that we've talked

about a little bit but it's been a really long time so most of our listeners probably haven't heard this one comes in from cable what made you want to start slash join the podcast? And what is your favorite part of being involved in it? So Ryan's obviously a little bit newer. Josh, you and I have been here since the beginning. What made us start this podcast? Todd made us start it as a friend. But honestly, it really kind of birthed from the fact that we would play games together and then we would all just kind of stick around in Discord and talk about games. Or, hey, did you see this new game that's coming up? And we'd have these really just good conversations about it. And it was like, you know, we love talking about this.

Why don't we talk about this to other people? And that was really kind of the original idea of starting the podcast. And that's why we do the podcast the way we do. It's friends talking about video games. We're not a news agency. We're not strictly a review channel or something like that. So that's really how we got to start is just saying, look, we're already doing this. How about we just turn on a microphone and actually talk into that while we do it? Yeah. There's also a healthy dose of the fact that we have friends and family who have made a lot of money podcasting over at the Fantasy Footballers. Andy is Josh's brother-in-law. He was the best man at my wedding. He became my best friend in sixth grade. Jason, Andy, and I played a lot of basketball in high school, and I played a lot of WoW with Mike and Andy. So also seeing that we had friends do it very successfully, there was a little bit of, you know what, that sounds like a lot of fun. And maybe it can grow into just a little bit of a side hobby and make some side money. And I don't think you and I have ever been delusional to us thinking it's going to

replace our full-time jobs but there was always a little bit of the hey if this could become like a full-time thing that would really be the ideal scenario uh we're nowhere near that this is very much a side hobby but we really enjoy it so that's kind of how we started uh ryan what what made you want to join the podcast well you know i was i was heavily recruited by quite a bit of different video game podcasters you know it's even we put you through so many interviews it was like seven interviews there was a you know there's a few different interviews um a lot of them i turned them down because they just didn't meet my criteria you know on what i what i wanted to to you know uh add my you know abilities too so i just kind of

uh i went in the slums mainly mainly because i love you guys um but you took your talents to the multiplayer i took my talents to the multiplayer gaming podcast but no i i i mean i i grew up playing games with paul and i love josh we're basically like the same person yeah minus my uh martial arts ability oh so I just I couldn't think of a better thing to do than just play video games and then talk about it with these you know dinguses here so uh I I was super stoked to to hop on board um amazed at the opportunity and it's it's been so much fun since i since i joined up what about the second part what's your guys favorite part about being involved with the pod i will say for me it's the community to be honest like i i have met

so many awesome people simply because they found this podcast and they listened to it and they joined our discord server and it's like i you know if this podcast ever went away which you know i i hope it doesn't but if it did these are people that i would literally stay in touch with or like invite to like our private gaming server to be like i'm glad i met you i want to continue to like know you um and so that to me, is really the coolest thing from the podcast. That's probably a much better answer. I had a much more shallow answer. I was going to say that it's being, quote, forced to play so many games that I would never touch otherwise.

I have always been the kind of person to just buy like three games a year. I'll play them for 500 hours and then get sick of it and then finally buy that next game. Having the podcast where we do have the Patreon support, that does pay for our podcast expenses and it does pay for our games. There's not very much beyond that, but it does fund our gaming habit, which I love. So it gives me an opportunity to play a lot of games and especially a lot of games.

I would have never thought about dropping 20, 30, $70 on. Now, does it always pan out? No, we paid for four spoken. We paid for battlefield 2042 and they would not refund me because if you

play a game 38 hours, they won't give you your money back uh so it doesn't always work out but i love the fact that we get to dabble in these other games and find some real gold mines like weird west right small little indie title i would have never even heard about it but because of the podcast i played it realized this was one of my favorite games last year and it's just this little goofy strange paranormal western game and you know you get to discover stuff like that because of the pod so that's that's really what i love what's your favorite part ryan

yeah i i'm with you on that one i i know i was just talking with my wife uh yesterday about that because she's like would you have bought this game if you weren't doing the podcast and she was talking about final fantasy you know and i'm 40 hours in i said no i wouldn't have but i'm having a lot of fun playing it and then you know what i've got humanity what i've got all these other games no i wouldn't have but i would have been you know diablo 4 and i just played that the rest of the year that's all I would have done you know so so and I honestly I probably wouldn't even built this pc so I probably would be a schlep playing it on the controller on the ps5 so good for you yeah we saved you you know actually to be fair I probably

would have out of respect to Diablo I probably would have built a pc just for that because that was the last time I built a computer but um yeah, it's just you get to play so many different games and you get to see so many different things within that. And so it's been cool. It's been cool to see all the different stuff that I wouldn't normally look at or even even open my eyes to so yeah it's been neat to to play all these other options that i wouldn't i wouldn't touch all right well i think we are back up to you ryan which gonna hit us with next um i'm gonna hit you with uh let's see i think it's ed god ed Ed. Yep. Ed God. Yeah.

Ed God. Ed God the best. Oh, Ed God the best. There we go. What game have you played the most? Oh, okay. Yeah. Good question. What are you guys grinding out?

Mine two are easy, but Paul, I'm going to guess yours is WoW. It has to be WoW. WoW is the real answer. I remember if you did Slash Played, they would tell you your total time. And then once you hit 24 hours, you get days. And then next thing you know, you start doing the math and you're like,

holy crap, I've spent how many thousands of hours in this game and how many thousands of dollars on monthly subscriptions? Yeah, it's got to be Wo wow. That's probably number one. If you take that out of the mix, it's got to either be Overwatch or PUBG. It's going to be something multiplayer where you're constantly getting on. As much as I love the single player games, I probably have 300 hours in Red Dead 2. That's nothing compared to what I've done in PUBG and Overwatch. Those have got to be somewhere around 1,000, I would guess. Jeez.

Yeah. Mine is EverQuest, hands down. I legitimately had a problem with that game. It's just... I loved it. It was the greatest game I'd ever even imagined at the time. But I mean, I was playing that game for six hours a day, literally every single day for like three years. What a life. Yeah, right? I mean, dude, I got some great memories from it, honestly. It's just crazy. But then after that, it's Rocket League for me. And what's crazy is Rocket League has just built up over the years where it's like I've played for 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 10 minutes, 30 minutes kind of thing. But I play it almost daily even to this day.

So it's just totaled up after a while. Yeah. For mine, it's either got to be Skyrim or Destiny. I was looking the other day because I wanted to see what I was doing on Final Fantasy. And I looked at my Destiny hours and it was at 1725. And that's on Destiny 1. That's not including Destiny 2. And I don't know if it carries over from PS4 to PS5.

It may. But I have a lot of hours in Destiny. So it's probably what it was. Me and my friends, we would all get on. We'd raid Tuesdays and Thursdays or whatever. And then we would do a bunch of different stuff throughout the week. On the weeknights, we'd get on almost every night and play for hours. So that was before I had a couple kids and you could just game all day. So those were the days.

No more 18 hours gaming in one day. Yeah, I know, right? Even though we kind of came close playing Ark just over the 4th of July weekend. We played a lot of Ark in a two-day stretch. All right, coming back to you, Josh. This is going to be probably the last question, maybe one more after this.

What you got? All right, well, I'm going to make this a tough one then. This is from The End of Time. And the question is, you have to eliminate either Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, or PC gaming forever. Which do you pick? I thought you said it was going to be hard. This is easy for me.

Nintendo. See ya. I have a feeling we have different answers on this one. Get out say nintendo nintendo for ryan yeah get out of here you're gonna ditch nintendo over xbox yeah in a heartbeat okay it's easily xbox because everything on xbox is on pc and i do pc gaming so to me if you took xbox could not exist does not impact my gaming whatsoever it's exactly because you want to pull that loophole i think you have to go with the history the history of the console though as well including history yeah like you're wiping it out forever yeah xbox easy i was always a playstation guy i always liked playstation more than xbox yeah what do you think my answer on

this one is paul you're gonna say n, but what about your whole childhood? You're going to lose all that? I'm not saying Nintendo. I'm not saying PlayStation? No, it's Xbox for me as well. And I had an Xbox. Nintendo, I don't think we would have gaming today if it wasn't for Nintendo, to be honest. And as much as I'm kind of not in the Nintendo zone right now, I respect the heck out of what Nintendo has done for gamers. And as much as losing Halo and Gears of War and some of that other stuff goes, Xbox, they just haven't done the same thing, man. And there's games on PlayStation, there's better exclusives on PlayStation and stuff like that. This doesn't bring me joy by any means, but if I actually had to cut one of

these out of history and for the like eternity xbox i feel like would have the least impact losing halo really sucks because those are some of my favorite memories yeah but i'm i'm not gonna trade all the hours of playing mario kart and stuff like that like i would still take all of that over uh losing nintendo so i would i would much rather lose xbox see you mario uh and plus ryan already said recently he was more of a sega genesis guy than like a super nintendo guy so yeah heck yeah i was on that se that Sega Genesis train. I took the wrong train, but I was on it. Some double dragon system.

Josh was just too early to Sega. You had to wait for the Genesis. All right. I guess we got time for one more question. I like this one a lot. This one comes in courtesy of noodles. They ask, what are some of your favorite games that you almost never hear anyone else talk about?

For example, a great childhood game of mine was called Metal Arms Glitch in the System. It was a super fun third-person shooter with a lot of great and innovative mechanics that I almost never see in games today, such as being able to assume direct control of almost any enemy in the game. So this almost kind of harkens back to, Josh, when you and I did a pod on forgotten gems. What's some of your favorite games that have kind of been lost over time? I mean, there's a reason that I bring these games up from time to time on this podcast, because it's a huge dose of nostalgia for me. But then it's kind of like, if you play these games, you know, but most people haven't played them.

And for me, it was the old school like Sierra games when we just started getting graphics. We just started getting music. We just started getting like plots and stories and games and stuff like that. And I was a huge fan of almost every game that Sierra put out. My favorite of the series was a series called Heroes Quest because it had combat and it had like mythical creatures in it. And I mean, it was the most mind blowing game that I had ever played. It was the first computer that we had. I mean, it was just, it hit that kind of right time in life too. But yeah, for,

for me, you could just say the Sierra games in general and people that have played them understand. But then if you mentioned them, a lot of people are like, I don't even know what that is. A little bit older. Yeah.

What about you, Ryan? What you got for this? For me, it's actually when I've played back back in the day quite a bit with your wife um silicon valley on n64 going back to nintendo i don't know what this is yeah i know and you don't know what this is so so you so okay so so look it up you were a little microchip and you would cruise through it was almost like a biodome area that had all these different creatures throughout the area and you you would jump in them and you would take over

them as as like the bean and you could go do and finish your objectives throughout the area but it was it was such a cool game and premise especially for the time where we were blown away with it you would you okay I need a sheep for this. And then I need, you know, a frog for that or, you know, whatever it was,

you would go through these different areas or a dog and you'd bring these other animals over. And it was, it was such a cool game. It was something so different and so new. And I, and I haven't, you know,

a lot, a lot, like we said with the, wow, you know, we haven't, we haven't seen something so revolutionary. This was kind of like one of those weird things that was just,

it was so different, and I haven't seen anything like it, but it stuck with me so much. And, you know, maybe it's not a good pick, I don't know, but it was so cool and it was so different that it's something that I always thought I'd love to go back and play, you know, one of those types of games. Wow, yeah, I've literally never heard of this game and i'm looking at gameplay ask nikki about it yeah ask her about it it's got a little bit of i mean i'm literally just watching seconds here but it's got a little

a little banjo kazooie a little ocarina of time a little mario 64 it was right in that it was right in that time and that's that's good dna right there man yeah no it. It was right in that time. That's good DNA right there, man. Yeah. No, it was right in that time. It was right in that era. And it was so cool. You'd walk around and there's a microchip. I'm like, what the heck?

And you jump in. This is the 90s. So it wasn't like it is today. So yeah, it was something that was pretty cool and and uh especially different back then all right well for this one i've got two answers and i'll send you guys some pictures of the cover in case you uh don't remember the titles hunter the reckoning was such a phenomenal four-player co-op game that we played so much on the game cube this was basically a game where you're just running around hunting i believe it's vampires i remember this yeah this is a great game because

there were four different characters you could play and they all had different weapons and they all kind of synergized together so i remember there was like judge he had this like giant crossbow and i think he had like a a sword with a cross at the end and yeah it was actually a pretty hard game it's technically a hack and slash but it was rather difficult as well and i remember playing so much hunter the reckoning kind of imagine sort of a little gauntlet but more difficult and more modern uh hunter the reckoning was fantastic and i'm also gonna say Gladius. Gladius is more my answer because I've never run across anyone who played it. That one was made by

LucasArts, and it was a four-player RPG. And I don't know how many games were made that are like this. It's literally turn-based combat, highly tactical, but you could do it with four people. You played as gladiators. And when you were in the arena, you could like move around. And I remember it being the first game I played where if you had high ground, you had advantage and you were more likely to strike a crit. And the combat wasn't just as simple as pressing swing your sword. You would get little mini games where you'd have to time on a meter. And you got it just right you'd get a crit so gladius was one that was really interesting because ryan you me your other cousin anthony some of our other family members we would have to take turns playing so many games

so being able to play something four player was always really key so gladius and hunter the reckoning both fit that bill for me i have never heard of either one of these games. So I think we nailed this question because nobody's heard of any of these games. And that's crazy because that's how crazy it is, is that I have so many memories playing Gladius. The second Paul said it and described it, it took me back. You can see it. Yeah, I can see it. I can see us running around and each one of us had a different character we had our different roles and we would do that and then you know we just played and and it sucks that that's that's what is so missing in these games nowadays if it's not a

triple a title like you know it's it's hard to get people to play with you it's hard to get these good games that are of quality and back then like they put a lot of effort into that stuff and so like that game man that oh man i'm glad you mentioned that paul because that that unlocks some memories some core memories that i did not remember nice yeah you know today it's almost like there's just too many choices it's the same with like streaming tv shows everyone watches different stuff because there's 7 million options. And with indie studios, there's a ton of great games, but all of us are just playing different stuff.

And sure, for three weeks, we're all playing Diablo 4, and then a couple people drop off, and all of a sudden, we're not playing it anymore. So it's almost like back in the day when you had less options, you were more likely to play the same stuff.

And we don't have that anymore. Yeah. All right. Well, one last question for you guys should we end this episode yes yes yeah i think it's time all right well this was so much fun we do want to say thank you to all of our listeners for tuning into this one as a reminder please remember to go check out our patreon page at multiplayer squad dot com and make sure to return for our episodes that drop on Mondays, Thursdays, and Saturdays. And until next time,

happy gaming. See ya! See ya, everybody!