Noclip's Games of 2025 - Episode 1: Picking Our Top Ten | Noclip Crewcast

Thank you.

Hello, friends, and welcome to episode 261 of the Noclip podcast.

It's game of the year week here on Noclip.

Over on Noclip 2, we've been posting videos of our own personal favorite games of 2025.

There we go.

Got the first one right.

Let's see if I manage to do it for the rest of these pods.

And because we were late to the party on this and that was down to me, apologies.

I know the guys talked about it and I was on Twitter about it.

I had to head home a little bit early because of a family issue, I guess.

Issue?

Somebody died.

Is that an issue?

I don't know.

It's a family issue event.

Let's call it um uh, and it really just threw everything whack on my end.

So uh, massive thanks to jeremy, jesse and frank for uh pulling it together in december and i'm delighted to be back.

But because we're late to the party on this game of the year stuff, we're just going to get them out.

So the next three days, you're just gonna we're gonna force feed you game of the year content and you better open your mouth and be ready to ingest all of these amazing video games we're going to talk about over the next three podcasts.

So whatever, actually no, whatever.

First of all, shout out to all of our incredible battle pass holders uh, we've also lost a few.

This is like the in memoriam section of the uh of the oscars, which does mean that we have openings for the first time in a while.

So if you ever wanted your name uh, read out, jump on over to uh patreoncom, slash noclip and grab yourself a battle pass.

Who knows what other random things you might get.

One time, we sent out blu-rays to people.

That's probably not gonna happen every month, though.

I'll be honest.

Um uh, actually no, before the battle pass jesse, i forgot how to host.

I've not done it in so long you've, you're.

You're the one wearing the cap.

You don't need a cap.

You've got great hair.

You don't need to thank you for now.

I just entered my 30s, so who knows how much longer i'll have this.

Well, let me tell you what my birthday was this week.

Motherfucker, What did you turn 40?

I did.

Whoa, congrats.

Yeah, I'm officially old.

You're officially old.

It's happened.

You guys will always be young.

You're like the younger siblings to the older washed up.

Yeah, but you're the younger sibling too.

That's why you got your Xbox controller cake.

Did it taste good?

Did it taste like layoffs?

What did it taste like?

Did it taste like?

Corporate consolidation and closing some of my favorite studios.

Was the recipe put together by Copilot?

I don't understand.

That's good shit.

I missed you guys.

Yeah, I did.

My brother and sister, we had a nice birthday celebration in Ireland.

Had a few of them, actually, with my mates and stuff.

It was good fun.

But yes, they brought out the cake at the end of the meal and it was in fact a classic cake like birthday cake, ass birthday cake like vanilla birthday cake flavor, but in the form of an Xbox controller which we devoured afterwards.

Was it an Xbox 360 controller?

Was it an Xbox One?

Was it a Duke?

I know it was, it was, I think it was a modern.

I remember there being like this select button.

What is that weird boxes button?

We never fixed options.

There was an option button.

Um my uh, my nephew called dibs on the, on the analog sticks.

He wanted to eat those.

Um, my daughter got the D pad.

She was like, what's a D pad.

I'm like, okay, now we're talking, let's talk about directional pads.

Um, yeah, it was, uh, it got devoured.

My, my, my brother-in-law was like, are you sure this is appropriate?

Cause, and my sister was like, absolutely.

I thought, I can't believe you guys didn't boycott the cake.

That's unbelievable.

I should have, I should have abstained like a, Like a vegetarian or something.

You're canceled.

I know.

I'm going to be hearing this from Chet Falsack over the next couple of days or something.

Welcome back.

I know.

Frank Kelly, what would be the most delicious Xbox pads you would eat?

One with, like, Kasumi on it from Dead or Alive.

They did original Xbox action figures of Dead or Alive characters wearing like Xbox latex leather pads.

They had like booth babes in real life and then they had figures of the characters wearing the booth babe outfits that they used to promote the game from Tokyo Game Show.

Wow.

Different times.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was on the bat.

Yeah.

Well, it's not different times because they still have booth babes at Tokyo Game Show.

Do they really?

Yes.

That's why I want to go.

Yeah.

September.

Please.

Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah, all of frank's favorite things.

People don't talk about japan's game industry properly.

It's, it's so good, it's so good it's, you know, we don't have e3 anymore it's, it's yeah.

Maybe they should hire people who talk, who are trained to talk about the games then, but not models, i don't know, you know that might, maybe that'll help.

I don't know, who knows.

Jeremy jane, if you're the model for any game, what would it be?

Oh, that's a great question.

I would dress up.

I'm sure i would dress up like um, like a small american boy to tout earthbound.

Oh, i would wear my little cap, my little, my little stripy shirt and uh extra extra read, all about it.

Japanese, good video game, selling newspapers and killing rats with baseball bats beautiful, i love it.

That's a great answer.

I look forward to your halloween costume later this year.

Uh, jesse grasha is on a luigi cuff, Mario's on the other side, but I like the Luigi side.

Are you sending a political message with that?

I don't know what you could be implying by saying that.

Tastes good, though.

You know who is sending a political message?

All of our Battle Pass holders who support the party, the video game documentary party of Noclip.

Shout out to Little Toast, Lovepreet, Yacht, Dwayne the Rock Lobster, Anthony Thomas, Nico Passateri, It's-a-me, Ferrario.

You should get a mug with the two of them on it.

Senator Armstrong Redredge, Harry Flanagan, Joosh Arno, Matt Pearson, Mark Ross, Quote Tucker Morgan, David McGarry Goddison, Sven Hooster, Pez bone mold.

Welcome, bone mold.

Although I really want to say bone mold.

There's something very evocative about moldy bones, especially if they're still inside.

That's pretty fucked up.

That's how I want to go.

My only regret is having bone mold.

I lost it.

John Akers.

Sorry, John Akers.

Ewan Nate.

Tim Robinson.

Forrest Pruitt.

Dark Insanities.

Jonathan Kremen.

Eric Hamilton Schneider.

Christophe Attui.

Enochs.

Grizzly Mug.

Another option for a mug there, Jesse?

Cameron Laird.

Wow.

First of the year.

You know, you got to put in the work.

Zachary Snader.

Alex Goucher.

George Sakotis.

Jacob, god serve entheogen, who has actually changed their name on patreon to entheogen.

So now i won't.

There's no, there's no way we'll get it wrong this time.

James, med and ricin.

Thank you all so much for your incredible support and for the in memoriam section.

Some of the patron this is not a name in shame.

I want to make that clear.

Some of these people have been with us for a long time, so I wanted to make sure we give them the dues.

Thank you so much for the incredible support.

Some of our Battle Pass holders who have exactly the same throat for the video.

People will salute you all.

Jesse's going to hold a salute.

That's even better.

For the whole podcast, too.

It's crazy.

Massive thanks to all these folks for all the support they've given us.

Corey, Tiny Tal, James Brown, and I'm afraid to say it.

Tohir Tilyaev.

I will not be able to say their name anymore on the pod.

Massive thanks to all of you.

Many of you have been patrons in the Battle Pass for a long time.

It is a significant amount of money.

And obviously we want to make sure people are taking care of themselves and doing their January budgets.

So I just wanted to make a shout out and say thank you so much to those folks for the incredible work.

They have allowed us the incredible work they have funded.

Let's give myself a pat on the back there.

Give us all a pat on the back.

But we're not here to pat ourselves on the back.

We're here to pat the backs of Video Juegos that came out in 2025.

And let me tell you, folks, there's quite a lot of them here on our list.

We're going to do, it looks like three podcasts.

Today is going to be figuring out our top 10, and the next two podcasts are going to be similar to what we did in the past, where we gave awards to those two.

Well, in the past, we gave awards to the top 10.

What we're doing this year is we are giving awards like categories.

We're going to have categories and we are going to give awards to games within those categories.

Some of those games might be in the top 10 and some of them.

I assume a lot of them won't be.

We're going to be having categories that are sort of a bit traditional perhaps, and then other ones that are going to be a bit untraditional and essentially trying to reward games for things that maybe don't make the cut for a top 10 thing.

Games that are shorter, a lot of those we play on Noclip 2.

Games that are a bit more avant-garde or artistic, that perhaps um, do something special, that that isn't something that maybe uh, all four of us are going to be into, that type of thing um yeah, and we think it's a good way of honoring those games uh, in a way that also allows them to stick it on their steam pages or whatever, if they want to, which is always fun.

So yes, that's what it's all about marketing okay, so let's fucking dive into this pool, this soup, if you will uh, of video game, a melange for our french listeners.

Uh of uh, of video games.

I'm gonna, i'm gonna throw it open.

I'm just gonna, i'm gonna, i'm gonna, i'm gonna put the, the scum, the scrum ball in the middle of the room at the scum ball.

Yeah, ours is a scum ball.

Yeah, we use a system called scum.

We don't use scrum.

It's two m's pioneered by lucas um, So I'm going to throw it in the air.

Who wants to catch it and talk about a game they liked?

Maybe a game for the top 10.

Oh, it's so tough because it's like, do you pick a heavy hitter right off the bat or do you warm it up a little bit?

You know.

Yeah, I know.

What do you feel like?

Jeremy looks like he's throwing himself forward.

So we'll go first.

That means you have to do it.

I caught the scum ball.

You did.

In his mouth, too.

It's weird.

It tastes terrible.

All right.

Let's start.

I want to start with a complicated one.

Okay.

I want to get real warm, real fast here.

This is not my game of the year, but it is on my game of the year list.

I want to talk about Elden Ring Night Rain.

Okay, okay.

It's a weird fucking game.

I am from soft shill.

I am sad that I don't have a Switch 2.

I don't want a single Switch 2 game except for Duskbloods.

I've played every game they've ever made with the exception of, like I think, Kingsfield three and four and all of armored gore.

And I've never played Cookies and Cream either.

I'm sorry.

I will someday.

I just heard I've never heard of that until now.

From Soft, who makes Dark Souls, also made a game about cute little animals named Cookies and Cream.

And I'm pretty damn sure.

Anyway, Night Rain is, if you took it like I am such a Souls fanboy that any Souls game, any modulation, any change you make, any pivot in the series and the franchise and the genre that you make, that From Soft is behind I would play.

Night Rain to me was the first one where I was like, fuck this.

I don't want this.

I know some people might want this.

I don't.

This is like some like Zoomer working it for himself was like, what if it was like, what if Fortnite was Dark Souls?

And Miyazaki was like, I don't fucking care, man.

Like, let's do it.

That was my perception and my cynical perception going into it.

But I still wanted to play it because my dream has always been to have a.

You know, like Elden Ring, seamless co-op is fucking incredible.

Um it, it is a completely different game than playing elden ring.

Uh, playing a souls game with other people has always been sort of a, you know, it's part of the experience that it is not seamless co-op about, like you know, bringing summons in and sometimes they're your friends and sometimes it's like some guy named rick who has the craziest sword you've ever seen.

Uh, but i something about night rain being this like doing away with the, the atmosphere and the pretense of like a contiguous world and like it has.

It has narrative to it.

But there there is something very sort of immersion breaking and atmosphere breaking when it's like oh young young tarnished, are you?

Oh, are you ready to queue up now?

And it's like, come on man, like this isn't fucking dark souls, this is like some multiplayer slop.

Uh, i fucking loved night rain.

I played it.

It was one of the games i played the most this year.

I adored it in spite of my sort of like going into it skeptically, primed and ready to dislike it, primed and ready to say that from soft fell off.

Uh, it, it won me over.

Uh, it is a, is a fun, frenetic, fast paced distillation of what souls games are about.

And even, sorry you did jump in because i'm curious did you play it with anyone else or like what what what is it about it that like that is different i guess i've not played it at all so like what what is it about it that that is like sort of gameplay wise feels uh felt really interesting you know not just an extension of elden ring i did play it solo and i did play it with friends both of them were great experiences and when i say solo i mean like queuing with um with with strangers uh i i did not play you can play this game solo and they added like a duos mode which i've also not played um so basically the the short pitch of night rain is you there's a hub world you can sort of like pick from a set of like pre-cast characters that are sort of different character archetypes heroes and hero it's a hero shooter um and they all have different abilities different loadouts things like that you can sort of customize them a little bit with like relics you get they're mostly sort of stat modifications rather than like so you're not getting like a new set of uh armor that you're permanently holding on to um and then sort of like uh sort of melding a bit of extraction shooter and a bit of battle royale and a bit of all these sort of like other popular multiplayer genres you uh you where's like where we drop in boys yeah it's it's round base you drop in there's a circle closing very familiar tropes you go around you defeat bosses you pick up new uh gear from them and there's sort of a three day system where circle closes fight a big boss circle opens run around fighting smaller bosses getting stuff circle closes big boss and then day three is like final boss um there are multiple sort of final bosses that you can you pre-select when you start around and uh and that's kind of the structure of it um and if you have a good run it can go pretty smoothly it's still it's a it's a relatively difficult game which is fun to play with like i think it's best with a dedicated group of people if you have two friends who are really into souls games or now one because of duos um this is like it is shockingly fun to have the sort of you know, like E3 Call of Duty presentation experience where you're like, he's on my six.

But for Dark Souls, it is shockingly coherent and fun.

And yeah, it's just a goddamn good time.

Nice.

Is this, has anyone else played it?

Yeah, I played a little bit of it and we did that video for Noclip two.

Now yes uh yeah crew, when we did i don't know, it was in that weird interim.

Um yeah, i really, really liked what i played of it.

I think my thing is i just didn't like elden ring very much personally.

I i didn't like the.

I'm not a huge on the souls combat, but i did like the multiplayer parts of Night Rain.

Like I thought it worked really well.

The way that you can interact with other players in ways that, like I haven't really done any multiplayer for any of the Souls games.

So the way that you do it in Night Rain, of like you can queue up your big special attacks that are sort of they have cooldowns right, like that feels really good when you line those up and sort of take down a boss way faster than you normally be able to alone, or even like When when somebody can lead you along and show you the route to take or what items they pick up.

It's in a way that I feel like most other multiplayer games like that, like extraction shooters, like our graders, or something they can capture, but they don't do it in a in a world that I feel is as visually interesting or willing to be as like dynamic in its height.

Like Elden Ring Night Rain is all over the place with how up and down you're going all the time.

The verticality is ridiculous.

So, seeing big cliffs that you can just sort of jump off of, and you have someone who, like Jeremy, can just be like hey, come over here, jump off this hill.

And if we go in this building, this church has this item.

And like that is a really fun experience.

It made me want to go back.

I didn't do it, but it made me want to go back and play multiplayer Elden Ring, which maybe is its greatest strength, is that it makes you want to play a game.

That would probably be better if I liked it more.

That's right.

It is funny how so much of what you're mentioning is triggering our greater stuff in my head.

But then that might also be just because I've only been playing a couple of weeks.

Yeah, exactly.

That's awesome.

Do you think this is so is this a top 10?

Is it a maybe?

What do you what do you what are your feelings?

This is for me.

This is in my personal top 10.

Am I going to like fight tooth and nail for this to be in the team top 10, or we'll have to see.

We'll have to see how crowded it gets.

I like i.

This game is not on here because i'm like wow, it's actually pretty good.

This game is on here because it is one of the games that i played the most hours of this year, that i enjoyed the most, that i had one probably my favorite multiplayer experience of this year.

That's very excellent.

Okay, i like it.

I'll stick it in the maybe section.

For now we're gonna on the dock.

I've got like top 10 maybe, maybe not, and not

So it's in level two, let's say.

And we'll see because honestly, it's funny like watching your Game of the Year videos I there are some years where I feel like we're going to be fighting tooth and nail for the top 10.

I'm not quite sure about this year because like I have like two games that I put in the top 10.

You know what I mean?

Like there's lots of games that I liked, but there's other ones that I'm not sure.

So I think there's going to be a few in here that we maybe get consensus on.

That will push them in maybe.

But I think most of the discussion is going to be between the maybe in the top 10.

So we'll we'll we'll see how this goes.

OK, cool.

Let's keep going because we got a lot of games to talk about here.

Um, I will go next if that's all right.

And I'll go with one that I think is my favorite game of the year, I think.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it is the seance of Blake Manor.

Um, I talked a bunch about this on the podcast already.

Um, since then, I think some of you have played it, so I don't want to go on too much.

From my own perspective,

Um, suffice it to say that i, from a purely gameplay perspective, i love that.

I love this thing.

I could not put it down.

The writing was fantastic.

The art style was way more gripping than i thought it would be like i really settled into it.

I love the character designs um, and i loved the uh, the.

The way they handled puzzles was so interesting with the, you know the, the conversation stuff filling in um, Which reminded me a lot of the.

What are those puzzle games Jesse, you got me into?

The Golden Idol games, right?

Yeah, yeah.

Reminded me of those.

The research, all that sort of stuff.

And then yeah, just like I learned, I felt like I learned loads about.

I felt like I went through like Jeremy's first, like 101 religion class or something in college.

Like I got like a little bit of insight into all of these different aspects of religion and faith and mysticism that existed in the in the late 20th century.

Or is that right?

No, 19, 19, 20th century, right?

No, 19th century, this was.

This game takes place the late 1800s, early.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah yeah, yeah.

So 19th century yeah um, and obviously then there is another element to this.

For me personally uh, this is the best game that has ever been about ireland it is, you know, i was in tears at the end.

It touched upon stories that i was told as a child.

It touched upon so much of current day irishness and and how we look at ourselves in terms of where we came from and the people and and how religion has been worn into the fabric of irish society in different ways over the years the good, the bad and the ugly.

Um, lots of like very specific historical references, lots of use of the irish language that i found really compelling.

Um, And uh yeah, just as a as a piece of art from Ireland, I think it is significant and deserves a lot of praise for that as well.

Um, Jeremy, you play, you hadn't played it and you did for game of the year, right?

Uh, I, yeah, I, I played it shortly after you talked about it.

I think it was on vacation when you talked about it on the podcast.

Um, and it was sort of, it had been on my list.

It was a game I was interested in, uh, for obvious reasons.

It's about like, Oh, I like mysteries.

I like, like inference games.

I like the occult.

Uh, I like history.

It's, it's sort of casts a wide net on interests of mine.

Um, i i loved this game.

I played the whole thing in a few days.

Uh it i, i basically i think i missed one thing.

At the end it gives you sort of a score and i think i only missed like one mystery was unsolved or something.

So i was very meticulous about this shit.

Uh like, a little i got a little ocd about it, because when you're early in the game it's kind of like oh, i can go like, explore freely, and there's like a time mechanic, and then, as time goes on, it's like okay, where the fuck is this guy like, is he in the fucking parlor?

Because like, i don't know how long he's gonna, he might die.

Like, he might be in his room for the next six hours and i won't see him.

Um, so it was, as the mystery tightened, this became a slightly more stressful experience, which is fine, like that.

That's sort of part of, you know, an esoteric murder mystery is that like the, the twisting of the knife a little bit as it progresses.

Um but uh, but yeah, especially in the early phase of this game, the feeling of just like of openness, of possibility, of of freedom um, to just kind of interact with this like interactive story mystery world, uh was like it felt like interactive fiction, felt like the, the phrase that kept ringing in my head.

Um, it felt like I was in a sort of like early 1900s mystery, like Gothic horror novel or something.

Um, and, yeah, I don't know.

You know, what it actually made me think is I've always thought that uh, a haunting of Hill house video game would be fucking fantastic, based on the novel.

Uh, and I feel like this is the closest they've ever come to just like a bunch of weird, quirky characters from all over the world gathered together for, like a sort of supernatural event.

And you're just sort of poking and prodding and keeping a low profile.

Um, I also like that it didn't do – I was a little worried that it would be like Imsim stealth, that it would be like – Yes, yes.

Right?

Like you go into someone's room and then they come in and you're like crouched behind the dresser for 20 minutes.

Like I was a little worried it was going to be like that.

But instead it does this very sort of clever – like hourly phase mechanic, where people will change positions.

So if you're in someone's room and the hour changes, they might walk in on you.

But basically, if you go in there and no one's in there, you're safe as long as the clock doesn't turn to the next hour.

So it walks a fine line between.

You have the freedom to explore, but there is sort of like a persistent pressure, a time pressure and a pressure to, like you know, when you're examining the room, there's like a time cost for things.

So it's like if there are 20 things in this room and you have 15 minutes remaining in the hour, then it's like I don't know when the next time I'll get in this room is.

I really need to think about, you know, are the other shoes important?

Do I need to look at all the shoes?

Exactly.

How many coverage should I open here and which one's going to have the diary that has the exact them admitting to a crime?

I like.

I also like respect.

Respect that like they they were, they played loose with that trope like they were kind of.

You know every, everyone in this game writes down all of their sins and their diary.

It's like it's pretty funny, so it gets away with it.

Um, i would put this in the top 10, would anyone had?

Does anyone have any strong feelings about that?

I will say this isn't a lock, i'm just saying for now this would be in a top 10 for me Of those of you who've played it.

Does that feel like where it should go for now?

Yeah, it's a great game.

Definitely.

All right, we'll stick it in for now.

The Seance of Blake Manor.

Frank Howley, let's come to you.

What do you want to throw in here?

Which game either spoke to you a lot or is one that you just want to chat about a little bit?

Yeah, I'll mention my actual favorite 2025 new game. you know not port not remaster not ongoing is death stranding 2 um yeah primarily because like it coming out presented the urgency to finish death stranding 1 and death stranding 1 was a game that like when it came out like everyone was playing it everyone was chewing on it and like everyone was like is this fun is this weird like and there's a wide spectrum of opinions and like i like um i put maybe 50 hours into it and then i stalled on it and then never finished it because i got too close to home with quarantine what we're going through so when death stranding 2 came out like i ignored all the trailers of all the like because i didn't finish one so i didn't like care i want any context um i love that you think watching trailers for that game is going to give you any insight into no yeah because it's like like i was at the uh i don't know what you call it like the summer games fest thing and like kojima came out and showed like a 10 minute trailer of uh neil vaughn or whatever that character's name is like his backstory like it doesn't matter but um like that didn't sell me on the game but like Death Stranding 2 coming out everyone being excited for it's like let me finish Death Stranding 1 and then in me rushing through Death Stranding 1 like the game clicked I was like oh I really like this again five years later like I feel like a different person so I feel like the game spoke to me today as opposed to when I was younger it didn't um So I finished Death Stranding 1, went on a long hike, just like in the game.

And then it came back down and started Death Stranding 2.

So carrying that like that's my favorite thing to do is like when you're catching up on media and you don't have to wait years between things.

So I finished Death Stranding 1, clicked download, went on a hike, came back, started 2 and then started playing that.

And then like same thing, maybe after like 30 hours, stalled on a bit and then didn't finish it till the our end of the year wrap up, but like collectively yeah, just the joy of Death Stranding.

Like it's such a weird, bizarre adventure.

And like yeah, the cut scenes are always like crazy, like like the actions.

Like Death Stranding 2, way more than Death Stranding 1, has way more emphasis on the action.

Um, like the gunplay is incredible.

You're fighting giant kaijus that are emerging out of like tar pits, like it's.

It's so ridiculous, but it's awesome.

And then there's robots with swords.

There's a guy with a guitar gun that like.

It's so like.

There's so much ridiculous mech shit in this one that wasn't in the first one.

So it's like way, way, way, way more cool.

But then like the subversion of Death Stranding 2 is like the joy of it are the quiet moments.

It really is like tinkering with your loadout before you set up, like putting ladders down, engaging with the ridiculous physics system again going on the long coastal drives, like delivering items there's like like bats and all these crazy things just keep happening.

But it was yeah, i think like 50 to 60 hours, but the entire time it was like such a fun experience and then you're always shocked by these ridiculous, like cinematic set pieces.

So yeah, I really loved it.

I don't know how long it will be until we get like another Kojima Productions game.

But yeah, it grabbed me.

I really liked it.

And it was cool to come back to a series that I dismissed like years ago and then finally really clicked and appreciated it.

And then, yeah, I played both games in Japanese audio.

Nice.

So that was good, too, just hearing.

How is Norman Reedus' Japanese?

It's good.

Yeah, it's good.

I'm trying to think like the one thing that's a bummer is like you don't get Australian accents on everybody.

Oh, yeah.

Because the game takes place in Australia.

But when you're playing Japanese dub, it's just you don't get like an Australian-Japanese accent.

Japanese guy.

But, yeah.

Which there are a lot of, so they should, you know, they should have mined that one.

Yeah, it's only like six hours.

If you're in Australia, it's so much closer to Japan.

But yeah, so I really like Death Stranding 2.

This, I think, would be in the top 10.

There's not many games I would vouch for collectively, but Death Stranding 2, I really liked it.

It is also technically for a year at least one of the only PS5 exclusives that you have to get a PS5 for until you wait for PC. but um yeah so i really like this nice yeah i i also stalled on it after right when i got to australia which was silly because i basically the opening of the game is just like an extended tutorial essentially to get you back into it um and then a couple of friends of mine said that they were like people i respect were saying oh it's actually it's actually very different and good once you get into it um so i pushed through and yeah it's a different flavor i think It's it's more of the same in some ways and that the vibe and the you know, I kind of played Death Stranding one to see the weird cut scenes like, you know, that was like the.

The carrot on the stick for me was like how and I don't I didn't like this.

I thought the story was bad, but it's it's I think I said on my review, it's like a Lars von Trier movie where I'm like, once it's over, I don't know if that was good, but it was definitely interesting.

So, yeah, I it felt like a sequel in that they solved a lot of the problems. cul-de-sacs that were maybe or like boring parts or pacing the combat stuff is way better and actually i think it took me a while to realize that i should be engaging with that stuff more because in the first game i was so you kind of have to be combat averse it's kind of how that game plays out um yeah it's a it's it's a it's a super game i need to play more of it i i'm i'm not even a probably a maybe i'm a third of the way through i suspect based on the first game um but yeah i can see it being a contender for for the in the top 10 yeah that's that seems fair to me uh what about the j crew have you guys touched on this one at all not a second of it still on the first one i didn't play milk you're solid i don't know who hit it oh shit have you not played milk you're solid i've never played one of them do you like those style of games at all like are they interesting to you like stealth games or third person i guess yeah stealth military uh narrative that type of thing like a devil may cry would you play or like absolutely okay see this is the thing we're just going to steal all giant bombs content ideas but i would that metal gear garage metal garage solid metal garage solid yeah that we should that i would love to watch you go through the metal gear games because sorry they are stealing your bit exactly yeah insert blinking white guy meme now i'm sure he won't care he doesn't know but i have a drawer of blinking white guy car fresheners no what fragrance are they smell like yeah peaches god i couldn't even tell you i think there's multiple flavors i bought it from some it it popped up on like a on like a meme store or something.

I don't know how the fuck, like on Instagram or something.

And I like never buy any of this shit.

But I was like yes, I am buying these and I'm buying a lot of them so I can give them to people.

Um, but I haven't told Drew.

So if he's listening, I don't think he listens to this podcast.

So don't tell him.

Um, but they also threw in a bunch of that like Greek smile guy face.

You know that guy, that like the like old man who does like you know that guy.

They just threw in a bunch of those yeah, as well.

So i got like six of those as well.

So i i feel like if i saw the image i would know you're talking about, but greek smile guy face does not bring up recognizable.

I don't think he's greek, he's just he evokes a sense of grecian, grecian smile.

Yeah he's, it's like it's.

I think it's like a shutterstock like guy who just they did a bunch of pictures of and he just has a very weird smile.

Try uncomfortable old man meme.

Try that.

Yeah oh okay, that might be.

Let's see.

Yeah okay no, i know this guy.

You know that guy.

Yeah, i got a couple of him.

I'm thinking we take some of the images from greek smile guy face results though, and we start a new meme because there's some good stuff here, there's some raw materials here.

Okay, we're going to crack open the Greek smile guy.

We're going to make a meme.

We're going to generate a meme.

Then we can sell air fresheners off the back of it.

Perfect.

Love it.

You know Danny's 40 because he's saying stuff like, we're going to generate a meme.

We're going to generate a meme, okay?

Could you show me how to log on and generate a meme?

But that's literally what they say in Metal Gear Solid 2.

Oh, all right.

That's true.

It's perfect.

We'll do it.

Okay, that's round two.

We'll stick it in the top ten.

Thanks very much, Frank.

Jesse Gracia, your turn.

Sure, let me get excited about Absalom real quick.

Okay.

Because Absalom goes crazy.

Did anyone else get a chance to get in there and punch some people, throw some swords?

I played a good chunk of it.

I enjoyed it a lot.

I felt like I was sorely missing a co-op partner for it.

That is fair.

If only you knew someone who played 100 hours of it.

Nice.

I would love for you to be my Sherpa in Absalom.

I have also played maybe five six, seven hours of it.

Six, seven hours of it okay, all right, i wanted to be, i want to be young, it's over okay, give it up.

Um yeah, it's 67.

Then you are to say it's six, seven.

True, he's not even wrong.

Don't say that.

That actually made me uncomfortable.

Um god oh, so okay, absalom is a really, really good video game.

I think it is probably the thing I spent the most time dedicated playing this year, other than maybe like Ark Raiders or something.

I played Absalom, basically that was the only thing I played for like two weeks straight.

I played it for hours every night.

It is a 2D beat them up, side scrolling game where you are playing as a cast of characters in this sort of fantasy land has this beautiful art style.

It's done by the team.

Oh, God.

But the art is done by an animation studio outside of the games industry.

I think this might be their first game, maybe their second.

It's terrific.

It's amazing how good it looks like in the cut scenes.

Clearly they are flexing their animation muscles, but all of the character art looks fantastic.

And for a beat-em-up game, which the genre is so reliant on, being able to read small interactions in what is essentially a mess of visuals and this is the messiest and not not to be derogatory, but it is like the messy messiest busy, very busy, but you know visually, if you look at a screenshot of late game, you might as well not be looking at anything.

It's just a bunch of particle effects and like visuals and stuff.

It looks amazing.

It plays really well.

It's roguelike structure.

I think builds on something that the beat them up genre.

Uh, I'm surprised there isn't more of basically,

Because this structure of having it be repeating you going through these different levels, like everything, is set up in a sort of forked map setup where like, oh okay, you go through, you do a couple levels, do some combat, get some pickups, find new items that enhance your build.

Maybe you get like fire and now your weapons do fire, or you get water and, like you, put enemies in bubbles if you do certain combos.

So there's stuff there to build out your builds, but because of the way it's structured, you're always going through the same areas over and over again, much like a beat-em-up.

And that works, because every time you come back now, you have new information about how the boss works.

You have an easier time getting through the earlier bits of the content.

And it does have the sort of Metro.

I was gonna say Metroidvania, the sort of meta progression system that a lot of rogue lights use.

Where you get like now, you do a little bit more damage.

You have more continues, more health, all that sort of stuff.

But I don't I never found it to be repetitive in like a monotonous sort of way, because they always introduce new story beats or new conflicts.

They change up the mini bosses.

Things show up earlier in the game that you're not used to.

Like there's quests that you'll maybe learn about in a later area, that requires you to go to an area earlier in the game.

So you can't even finish the quest until after you've won or lost anything.

Your run so I had so much fun playing it completely solo.

I never played with another person.

I went online for like two seconds to get the achievement and then went offline immediately.

I just loved to me beat-em-ups.

I do not like this genre.

I think maybe the the greatest compliment I can offer to Absalom is that it took a genre that I kind of Hated a little bit for the most part.

I did not like beat-em-ups.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I

It made me like them so much.

I went back and played Streets of Rage with my buddy.

And it turns out the problem I had and I think we talked about this when I talked about Absalom for the first time is I was playing them alone, treating them like fighting games, instead of just playing them with a friend and drinking some beers.

That's the way to play that genre.

And I had a lot more fun with it.

So it has introduced me to a genre that I did not enjoy.

And for that reason I'm in.

Don't call me Kevin O'Leary, actually I wouldn't do that.

I want to quickly sort of echo that because I'm in a similar spot where I grew up in the era of like Streets, of Rage Shinobi, like Final Fight, like a lot of these games, and when I played them in the arcades it was fun because it was like a quick little experience and you try to get as far as you can, usually with like my brother or a friend or something like that, and But I always struggled at home to be interested in these games.

It was the art and I wanted to see what was cool about the next area.

And like you said, this genre mashup is the most like, oh, why didn't we think of that before?

Genre mashup, I've seen in a long time where it just completely works.

Like it's Hades meets.

A beat-em-up game is the most you know sort of stripped down version you can say.

But there's even some like sort of thematic and uh um, aesthetic stuff that felt a bit hades to me as well and like talking to people and things like that um, but uh yeah, that's not derogatory, that's like uh, it's a great inspiration and yeah, i like the.

The, the pathing, the splitting paths, reminded me of my time with eugenics last year, where you, you had some agency over where you're going to go next and stuff um, which is kind of less so the case in Hades too, I feel like, because you're kind of definitely going into those biomes.

You can sort of deviate a little bit, but you're not choosing a proper path like in Absalom.

Yeah, it's another game I need to play more of, but the sentiments that you have about it hit me on the heart big time as well.

Yeah, it's a genre that I feel like it has so much to it and I want to go back and play the rest of them.

But every time somebody tells me, oh, beat-em-ups are like – I played Street Fighter VI a bunch.

Someone was like, oh, you should go play Final Fight.

That's what the old – uh, street fighter games were like, if they were beat-em-ups.

And i went and i was like no, it's not, it doesn't feel like that.

Every time they're like, it feels great, it's really flashy and fun and punchy and i'm like yeah yeah, like like sort of, but it's not.

You're not giving me what i want.

Absalom is giving me what i want.

It feels fast.

It feels like there's so many more options in combat.

You have like dodges, but they there's so much quality of life to those little things, even like the dodge that you do, If you time it properly.

You do a dodge to get out of the way of an attack and then immediately dodge back to get back into combat.

So you're not just being moved out of the way to avoid damage.

You get to go right back into battle.

Like it's not one of those things where you're just making a choice in combat and slowing yourself down.

Everything, every single thing you do in the game is momentum focused if you want it to be.

Or you can go slower.

You can play around traps like every style of play you want to have in Absalom can work and can be augmented the further you get into the game.

I absolutely love that in roguelikes and I think they nailed it here and gave you a really fun system.

Even from the start, the combat in Absalom, with no other upgrades, feels better than like 90 of the beat-em-ups that I've played so far.

Nice.

Jeremy, did you say you played it?

Yeah, I played a few hours of it.

I really, really enjoyed it.

I sort of felt like, like you said, this is a genre for me that mostly my experience was Playing Super Nintendo as a kid with my brother, going to the movies like two hours early and just playing arcade games in the lobby of the movie theater.

And for me, beat-em-ups are a very sort of social experience.

So I have a good friend who I co-op games with that I don't know if owns this.

Jesse, I would also love to play it with you if you're not sick of it after 100 hours.

I'll play it for 100 more cool.

Well, you might have to because uh yeah no i, i love these games.

I just to me it felt like i was like i want to, i want to.

I had an experience with it.

I was like this is obviously brilliant and i want to sort of reserve the remainder of this to experience with a friend, because that feels like the optimal experience for me.

Uh jesse, where do you feel this goes?

Is it in your top 10?

Is it maybe my top 10?

Personally, it's like probably number five on my personal list.

It's great.

Okay, so we don't have too many people playing it.

I'll put it in for now in the top 10 section.

Eventually we'll be pushing some stuff out, I guess.

Yeah, this one to me feels like a victim of I just need to play more of it.

But everything you're saying, it solved the problem I think that I have with beat-em-ups that a lot of people have, which is that eventually you lose and you feel bad.

And the thing about the roguelike structure is that they've sort of hacked that in our brains.

That like, you know, at least you leave with something or, you know, dying is part of the process.

Sometimes the Skinner box is fun.

Exactly.

There you go.

We're all just pigeons.

Yum, yum, yum.

I'm going to go through some of mine that I think aren't going to get into the top 10.

Just to kind of move it along a little bit, if that's all right.

I'm just going to rattle through like three or four of these probably.

I absolutely adore sol sesto.

I've never played anything like it before.

The art style is i.

I am so happy i live in a world in which this art style was made.

It is so unique and weird and childlike and like myth, like i don't know.

The word gnostic comes to mind, but i don't think that's like the right word, but it's like, it's like uh, it's like ancient and forbidden is the way this game looks.

It's like i'm not meant to be part, i'm not from this culture, i'm not meant to be in this place and time, and it just sets you in this like yeah, i think the art style of this game is a big part of it.

And then yeah, essentially the game is i don't even know what you call this genre.

It's like a, it's like a, a puzzle game, roguelike thing um, but it's just so weird and like the things you're being asked to do, like you're using you're you're, you're essentially trying to kill rows of these baddies and but, like from a, you know each, each layer in the cave that you go down to just, it has increasingly esoteric, weird shit going on.

Um, and i just, i'm just, i just think it's a wonderful piece of work.

I don't think it's going to make the top 10 um, Has anyone else played much of it or anything?

Oh, yeah, it's great.

They got a bunch of updates coming out over the last little while.

I think 1.0 is supposed to happen this year.

Oh, cool.

Visually, you're totally right.

It feels like playing something that's like in a Mesopotamian cave that no one was ever supposed to find.

Or like the licensed game version of an Edgar Rice Burroughs book I never read.

Like it's such a weird visual style.

The upgrades you get are teeth that go into a mouth in the game's UI.

Everything has a disgusting hand that reaches out to you.

When you go to die – well, you don't do it on purpose.

But, like when you make a choice and you die, the screen is filled with this like – something awful forums face.

That just fills up the screen.

It is such a unique, bizarre art style, both in, yeah.

And the scratchy childlike look of it.

And then also where it's pulling from.

I think Sol Sesto just on this visuals alone is, is one of the coolest looking games of this year.

I agree.

I'll put it in maybe not for now because I don't think it makes the cut.

I think.

Similarly, there's two games in here that I have that I played some of, but I really didn't play enough of.

And I really enjoyed them, but I don't think they're making the top 10.

The first is Schedule One.

The second is Abiotic Factor.

I think there's a world in which I play Abiotic Factor with somebody and I have, like this amazing half-life, you know online experience with them.

Um i, from my initial playing with it solo, i don't think it works.

I think this is a game.

Some games work really well solo and some, you know, i can happily play arc raiders and solo and i'm fine with it, but there are some games that i think require a co-op a little bit more, and when i watch videos of people playing abiotic factor um, i'm more excited than when i play it on my own.

So i feel like this is a game I'm going to try and put some more time into this year.

And then schedule one, I had a great fun with it.

Um, it's such a weird little game.

It's, it's a funny, like I grew up playing, you know, we play games like drug wars or like, you know, these types of counter cultural, you know, bad games or whatever, you know, I enjoyed postal too, back in the day, games that are sort of like, um, uh, you know, anti-social, I guess is probably what I'd say actually anti-social games.

And yeah, it's a fun way of doing it with, like this weird sort of South Park-esque art style which I think leans into it very funnily.

And I had fun with it, but I wouldn't necessarily put it.

I wouldn't put it in the top 10 for me personally.

That's fair.

The electric weed didn't work for you?

The fact that you can breed the weed, it would make all these incredibly stupid strains.

I also want to mention I met the developer for it in Australia and he's like a 21-year-old dude and he did it all himself.

And he made one quadrillion dollars.

Good for him.

He made an insane amount of money, I'm sure, and he was talking.

He's very sweet and humble and kind. just a normal guy.

And I was, he was one of these people I met.

I was happy I'd met him because I you know you worry about people.

When they have like, a really big success or they earn a, you obviously not worry too much about them, but you worry that it'll send them in a direction that might be, you know, challenging down the road or whatever.

But he seemed really level-headed He seemed like he had his feet under his legs.

And he was like asking some of the other developers about.

You know, I kind of want to hire another engineer like a second person to help on the game.

And he's like, but I like, he didn't know how to do it because he's like super young.

So I thought that was pretty cool.

That's awesome.

Fair play to that guy.

And he also had to like deal with a bunch of weird political stuff around that game in Australia and globally.

Just with regard to a game about weed um uh, i also believe that he has never smoked weed i.

I asked him and he said he's never, which doesn't know anything about drugs.

Someone who has done some drugs, it does feel.

I mean, that's part of the charm though yes, that it's like this cartoon version of drugs and sale of drugs.

Yes i yeah, that's actually now that you say that that actually makes a lot of sense.

Um, And then I want to stick in.

I'll stick another one in here as one that I haven't played enough of, but maybe one of you has.

But I think it's fantastic is Mars First Logistics.

You did something to me, Daniel.

I don't know.

Am I allowed to say that?

I don't know why you would present to me this video game.

I spent 30... My Steam has the wrong hours because I keep playing in offline mode.

I have 30 hours in this game now.

Wow.

I can't stop playing it.

I have finished the first five contracts.

I spend forever... Jeez, you're just like mastering these things, are you?

I love...

So, OK, Mars First Logistics is a game about building a Mars rover and doing some logistics on Mars.

You're essentially ordered to deliver products from one location to the next.

And they're usually like wacky, simple things that you wouldn't expect to see on Mars.

Like one of them is deliver a pizza, like a pizza in a box.

One of them's deliver a donut, like a big donut.

Like what?

When you deliver oranges to one spot, they build a tower on Mars.

Like it doesn't make any sense, but it's so much fun to build this Lego Mindstorms little rover.

Basically, you have a total free form control to build your own Lego.

Basically, it's Lego.

It's like Mobius Lego.

Yeah.

Oh, like the art style.

Yeah.

I was like Mobius, like the strip, like I said, infinitely.

Um, yeah, yeah.

It's got that Mobius sort of art style, bright colors.

It's like a very good looking video game, very straightforward and cartoony.

Um, the colors are all like, it's, it's, it's just a really great palette to it.

It looks fantastic.

Uh, the music's really great.

The sound effects are all really good.

It has this tactility to the building that both feels and sounds amazing.

When you snap little pieces on as you're going, like every little individual piece, you want to put a block there.

You want to like add a 90 degree turn to add an item onto it.

Like everything there.

Yeah, exactly like all the great noises you would expect from that, it feels, sounds and plays so good and introduces like my favorite thing about any problem solving or puzzle game, where they'll show you how to do something simple and then show you how to do that a simple thing with like one little layer of extra challenge on it that somehow go like seems simple but then takes you an hour to figure it out.

Uh, early on in the game.

I talk about this in my game of the year video.

Early in the game in Mars, first logistics, there's a quest where you've got to like deliver a box from one point to the other.

Simple enough.

It's a box.

And then there's another one where you got to take the box and put it on a shelf.

Yes.

Yeah.

I think that's the first one, isn't it?

It's like the second little side contract you get, I think.

That should not be a challenge, right?

That should be a fairly easy thing to do.

That took me an hour to figure out how to do.

And I was doing it with pieces I didn't have yet, things I didn't understand.

But it was so much fun to waste all that time trying to see and fiddle with fiddling with like pivots and and rotors and like how do i spin this and get it to go where i want it to go it's just such a fun little engineer brained video game i absolutely adore mars first logistics excellent yeah i i think what one of the things that i like because it sits somewhere between like sort of ratchet and clank nuts and bolts and then like yeah Oh yeah, of course, Banjo Mentions.

Click here, bingo card.

That's nuts and bolts, right?

It's not Ratchet and Clank?

Is it Ratchet and Clank?

Am I losing my mind?

Oh, did I say Ratchet and Clank?

Sorry, I meant Banjo.

No, no, no, you're right.

Sorry, Banjo.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, the 360 game.

Kind of between that and then like more complicated physics-y games. you know, builder games.

It's not quite there, but what I love about it is that you can like you can basically edit your rover kind of like on the fly, and it's so snappy.

Like, you can go in, just change some stuff, and then pop back out.

Like they do a really good job of just like letting you do the thing because it.

I think this game's art style also is in its favor, because I don't.

I think it is more accessible than most or like a lot of buildery type games.

Absolutely.

And I, yeah, I, I have enjoyed this and I, I, I can't play those really difficult ones.

They, you know, they're, they're a little bit too much for me.

But this yeah, I think this is.

It's so fun and playful and yeah, it's.

It kind of feels like like they wanted to make a game and they had an image in their head and they nailed it.

Like it doesn't feel like there's any fat on this thing or, or that it has any loose ends.

And even just like physics and art style are so good that even just watching the rover bounce along the the dirt and like leave its little tracks and like all that stuff is just like so satisfying.

Yeah, pulling the camera back and watching the clouds of like mobius smoke come off of the back of the rover is just such a like bizarrely nice experience.

You could just take screenshots in this game and sell a million sci-fi novels.

It looks awesome and i think that actually helps people.

I think this year I've realized and this is something I'll talk about during my chat about our creators that my wife is playing Fortnite upstairs.

My nephew was playing it over Christmas.

Frank's nodding.

He's like, yeah, another one.

We got her.

Ladies and gentlemen, we got her.

My nephew was playing in Dublin, and she was like, oh, I might give this a go.

I've never played it before.

The aesthetic of Fortnite turns me off so much that I just can't play it.

The aesthetic of PUBG... for whatever reason, I felt really comfortable in.

And I played a lot of time in it.

And I feel the same way about Ark Raiders.

And I feel like Mars vs Logistics is another game where, outside of the art style just looking good, it's not a style over substance thing.

I think it really matters for that type of game to get you to be comfortable there so that you tinker away with it.

I think if it didn't have that harsh that the art style gives it, I would find the process of doing all that building.

Like and, like you said, the popping and the thing and all that, all of it sort of like settles you in and invites you.

It's like a warm feeling that I think was missing from some of those more semi games.

Um that, I think, works in its favor.

Yeah.

So lighthearted.

It makes it almost, it makes you want to fail.

Cause like you kind of want to watch over.

You're like, oh, it's, that was cute.

That little idiot flipped over.

It's not my fault.

It's the Rover's fault.

That's a great way of putting it.

Yeah, it is.

It's so like fun and not self-serious that you kind of, yeah, failing is kind of hilarious.

Where do you think it goes then?

Because you're hotter on it than I realized.

I mean honestly, I was like I think in the video I made a joke about like nobody's going to want to play these games on the team.

But I mean, hey, I would love for this to be in the top 10.

I love this game.

I'd put it in maybe.

I would put it in maybe.

Stick it in maybe?

Okay, we'll stick it in maybe for now.

We'll see how we're feeling about it.

And Jeremy Jane, do you have a few you can go through?

Yeah.

Let's see.

All right.

I'd like to talk about one that I think is really good, but probably not top 10.

No, I'm not a human.

Oh, yes.

Really, really enjoyed this game.

This is a. like social deduction sort of, uh, I don't even know what genre wise.

I guess it doesn't really matter.

It's, it's reductive to call it anything.

It's, it is its own thing.

It's a COVID like.

Yeah, it is a COVID like.

Uh, this is a game where this is very like Eastern European game, where you're in your weird little sort of like apartment house, tiny little house and uh, an apocalyptic event happens where um, basically like imposters posing as humans pop up and start killing people and the world descends into sort of like a, an apocalyptic scenario.

The government is rounding people up in suits and um, and basically a bunch of people come to your door and they're all these sort of like it's, you know, like like a terrifying eastern european version of the cast of guess who the board game show up at your door And they're like hey I, you know, I'm my, my roommate.

He turned into one of those things and I had to get the fuck out of there.

Can I stay with you for a while?

Now you would think.

Why didn't you just turn away everyone?

Easy game.

But there is a weirdo fucking monster man who shows up.

If you look up the game, he's the weird ribcage-y looking guy.

He looks like a dude who works a really white-collar job at an office.

But then you're in the office gym and he takes his shirt off and you're like why is this guy built like a fucking, like a barrel, just a weird looking dude who could probably kill you with his hands?

And he shows up and he's like, hey, are you alone in there?

And if you are alone in there, I can't remember.

It's been a while since I played this.

I can't remember if it's the first time or if it takes two times.

But regardless, if you were alone in the house. there's a risk the run ends and this is a game where you cannot save freely there's a the save system much like kingdom come deliverance 2 uh you need a a beverage to save in this game it's kombucha so um which i also love that you drink beer to make the time pass amen brother yeah it's it's fucking great it's a kill your remaining energy and go to bed go to bed yeah So, yeah, it's just it's a really interesting game that I think the thing that I the reason it's sort of like a game of the year candidate for me is it has this like. atmosphere and tone that is very very unique it's it is a it's a combinatory recipe of all of these different factors it's the weird like theremin music that's always playing that's like it's not like it's not it's not horror movie music it sounds like something that would be playing in like um like in like your your eastern european grandmother's parlor while she serves you tea or something like it's like it's weirdly upbeat uh and and the characters that show up are like They're not all just bleak and depressing.

You would think oh, this game is going to be so bleak and depressing, but it has little pockets of humor and quirkiness and weirdness.

There's one dude who shows up that I love, who's just like a he.

He says bro, in like every sentence and he's talking about, like grind set and, you know, making money.

Yes oh yeah, yeah.

He's like how are we gonna make money off this, bro?

We gotta fucking well, the fucking make hay while the sun's shining bro, um.

And then there's some like really sad ones where, like you know, and the way they depict these people as basically like they're just like sort of pngs that sit in your in the various rooms that you enter, and they're like haunting looking and like you know, like a girl, like a father who's like turns up with his daughter but then, like you, you put someone else in the house and then you go asleep and then they are both murdered in the night and you don't know which of your people did it, like it's.

Or you get the daughter comes and then the daughter ends up.

I shot one of the little girls, thinking that she was one of the things.

Does it tell you?

There is a confirmation if you kill someone who is Yeah, and she wasn't.

And then the dad turned up two days later.

Oh, no.

Yeah, it was awful.

It's horrible.

It is a feel-bad game in many ways.

In a fun way.

It is an enjoyable experience, but it is torturous that if you, if you're not sure like you can check people's like teeth and their eyes and their ears, you you watch the news and you learn all these characteristics of like the um, the monster people that i think they're like the outsiders or the others or something like that, which is very coveted, isn't it?

Because it's like remember, in those early days where we're like wash your groceries and fucking don't do this, and like your face he's sweating yeah yeah, yeah.

I remember going to the grocery store with like three bandanas tied around my face which probably did nothing because they're just like cloth, Like I probably sucked as much COVID in as I could on that grocery trip.

Don't buy those masks.

Buy these ones.

Remember, like, we all learned what an N95 was.

Oh, yeah, yeah.

We were saying a lot of words that nobody remembers what it meant at that time.

Yeah, to that point, I think it was the World Health Organization.

Some large like global organization just literally did an update the other day, like a week or two ago.

That was like hey, by the way, like surgical masks, they're probably not effective.

Like if you're masking, you need an N95.

And I'm like, what year is it?

Excuse me, what the fuck?

This long?

So yeah, I mean, that to me is sort of the feeling of this game is like you don't really know in the midst of a crisis, you don't know if the information you're getting is useful, if it's real, if it's verified.

And so even when you check someone and they're like, armpits are all fucked up and moldy and their teeth are yellow and rotten it's like am i gonna shoot a nun in the face because she has bad teeth you know and then and they'll say like i've never been i've always had bad teeth you know like they'll plead their case or some of them will be really weird like there's like a religious sect i kept inviting in there was like seven of them or something and then one of them and then they started dying and i'm like i don't know which of these like mormons is the killer you know what i mean or whatever like it was yeah it was awesome yeah it's a really good game i it's it is cusp for me i there are other games that will fight much harder for to be in the top 10 i would say this is right on the verge let's stick it in the maybes yeah yeah yeah i think you'd like it too you got any more you can you can get through here um a couple of months maybe ones that you don't feel as passionate about well i mean they're all game of the year stuff so yeah i this is one i feel very conflicted about um look outside i think is one of the best games this year far and away uh i i wish it clicked more with me i felt like the way people were talking about it to me felt like i understood where all the passion was coming from um i i experienced the artistry in this game i thought it was like unbelievably weird and esoteric it is a sort of like hardcore old school rpg uh with limited saving where again another apocalypse game i wonder why there's so many of these the last few years um uh where you go out from there's basically if you look outside you turn into a horrible monster um which is the joke of the title if you open if you do the thing the title tells you to do you die instantly don't shit your pants yeah well exactly uh and then you venture out from your apartment and you're sort of like wandering around the apartment building and uh it's very like open-ended and free form and i love so much about it um but i something about it just like it wasn't hitting for me as hard as it did for other people uh and i felt very conflicted about it because i i could recognize the brilliance of this game while also recognizing that personally for some reason it just wasn't landing as hard for me as it should have um but i wanted to make mention of it because it has one of the best soundtracks of the year has some of the best art of the year uh it does like cosmic horror without doing tropey cosmic horror it's not like lovecraft bullshit um And I think it's brilliant.

I think everyone should try this game just because it didn't click for me.

I think I will give it another try at some point as well.

Cool.

Awesome.

Thank you.

That's a good one.

Frank, let's bounce over to you.

Sorry, I stuck it in maybe not for now, but we'll see how we're feeling about it.

Frank, you got any more you can get through here.

Yeah um, like a dragon pirates, yakuza in hawaii is this year's or sorry, 2025's yakuza game.

Um yeah, i loved it, but it's essentially just an.

It's an expansion to infinite wealth infinite wealth that basically gathers most of the characters in yakuza universe um, except majima, but then majima gets his own story here and it does tie back into the core story stuff.

Um yeah, i loved it.

I platinum it in a month.

It has everything you like about yakuza games and sega stuff like it's.

It's just incredible.

The entire time playing it to.

You know, like with all these games we unlock different soundtracks the entire time playing it.

I also had like outrun soundtrack playing.

So just old school sega chiptune music.

So it's super, super delightful um, but yeah, it has the weird like footnote of just like phenomenal game.

But it is like an expansion, like essentially uh, you know uh, it's way more than dlc because it's like a 40, 50 hour game and it is a standalone thing.

But it's not like here's the brand new yakuza game.

That's what infinite wealth was.

So i loved it.

It's definitely like my top like two or three games of the year, but it's not like a team top 10.

But I loved pirates, Yakuza.

So gameplay wise, Frank, what's, um, is this like the turn-based you said it was turn-based, right?

Yeah.

It's so this one, so infinite wealth was turn-based.

This one is, okay.

Yeah.

And like they, they lean into it even more.

Like it's almost way more devil may cry because you can like juggle characters.

You have like pirate, I don't know why a pirate has a hook.

You have like hooks.

Yeah.

I don't know why he has a hook.

There's a whole guy.

Well, that's more like, he can like, he can like throw like boats. i guess that's an anchor i don't know yeah yeah that makes sense too yeah so it's you could it's it's it's crazy like chain combat stuff which is really in like three different fighting styles and stuff like that so um yeah so it's it's uh it's it's like the most hack and slash jacuzzi has ever been and uh so yeah it was just it was it which was a nice change of pace from infinite wealth and uh like a dragon back to back doing the turn base which was really awesome but like after cumulatively like 140 hours of doing that like it was like oh cool back to just mashing square so um yeah cool yeah i wish i need to play it but i still need to finish infinite wealth i think jeremy's in the same boat aren't you haven't played infinite wealth yet i'm still on like a dragon man it's gonna take this might be a persona 5 situation love it love it um yeah cool game great great to see them making that stuff and i love it from a game development perspective that they're able to utilize all the work on the first game to sort of make something interesting while using at least some of the work that they had done before i think that's that's cool because it gives fans uh some more stuff to play uh um and allows the developers maybe to fuck around a bit more with uh with some new ideas so yeah i like the way they make games like that it's pretty cool and it shows just how fast they are getting stuff out as well it's pretty remarkable um anymore for you frank any you want to stick another one in here yeah uh so donkey kong bonanza um that was like this year 2025 so switch 2 came out and like there was mario kart which was good i don't know i think there was a new pokemon game but donkey kong bonanza was like the truly only like i don't know system seller or game that was like oh this is really marvelous and really unique for a a platformer um yeah like i always say i'm always like a little dismissive of nintendo only because i spent the first like 10 years of my life playing everything nintendo and by the time i like so it's like i've already like i don't know why i have this weird thing with it but so i i don't stay close to nintendo these days but i'm always curious when they make something awesome and uh yeah dog ham bonanza what i really liked about it is like just in terms of a game to like zone out and relax again, much like Death Stranding 2, the fun of Donkey Kong Bonanza is you can literally destroy the entire level.

And as you're doing it, you're getting progression.

You're finding bananas.

You're finding little like coins that you can then use to buy bananas to level up, which makes you destroy the environment even faster.

So you can ignore like the golden path, and just destroy shit and unlock, find secrets and things like that.

It's kind of like Mario Odyssey where, every corner is a little thing to unlock or collect.

And I haven't even, yeah.

Do you know what it reminded me of?

And as an Xbox fan, you'll probably appreciate this.

It kind of reminded me of crackdown.

Yes.

Yep.

It's just like, it's a game where you like you, you it's, it's a lot of it is about exploration and, and getting to places and leveling up and then having, increased ability to go places and see more of the world you know it yeah it felt a bit like that kind of throwback in that way i also think the redesign of dk is very good i like the the character model for him yeah it's super expressive like the graph like again it's it's it's wild to have uh like switch to in 4k because like nintendo's always been like a generation behind with like their graphics and stuff or not always but in the last few uh consoles Um, so yeah, it's, it's super pretty, super fun, super relaxing.

It's such a, such a big, deep, there's so much like things to unlock that I haven't even beaten it.

I'm like saving that for like plane rides and stuff like that.

Um but um yeah, I thought it was really novel and fun and uh, yeah it.

I was like blown away by it.

So, like it's like on my video, is like number two or three, so i i think it's worthy of being in the top 10, but also it's it's nintendo, so i don't have to fight for nintendo, i don't care that much, but like, but yeah.

So i thought donkey kong bonanza was really fantastic.

Am i the only other one who's played, or have you, jesse?

Have you played it?

Well, jeremy would love to play it if you had a thousand dollars.

Um i, i played uh yeah, a good little bit of it.

It uh probably the first, like two or three levels, I don't know how they describe it.

You know what I mean?

I think I'm the same as you then.

Yeah, not too far into it, but I was really enjoying it.

It's a great like five minute pickup and sort of you can accomplish a couple things sort of game.

Nintendo used to be pretty good at that.

And then Breath of the Wild, everything is just Breath of the Wild. uh it's a big you know you gotta spend five minutes walking between stuff here it's just like here you go you're donkey kong man you want to get to the other side of that wall like frank said fuck it just punch your way through it i love playing wreck it ralph it was a great game um it's like i think god you're right it's basically what it is yeah yeah a little girl on his back and everything um it's i really really like the combat the punching i like how free form it feels also like that was the thing that i found myself being really surprised by um again like Nintendo has done games where you sort of are allowed to do whatever you want.

Literally, Tears of the Kingdom was like, just make whatever you want.

I don't care.

You make the game.

You do it.

But here it's like, okay, how do you want to solve this problem?

You have an enemy in front of you.

You can throw a rock at it.

Maybe you want to do something else.

Maybe you want to punch it.

Maybe you want to knock the thing that it's on down.

Using Red Faction Guerrilla no pun intended to make like an nintendo style collection game works really really well um, and i'd love to see them continue to build on.

I know they did dlc pretty quickly uh, and i want to go back and finish it because i was actually really enjoying just that beginning part.

I hear it gets a lot better near the end um, but even just the beginning couple of levels i was, i was shocked how much i liked it.

It's really really charming.

Yeah, i really enjoyed what i played as well i.

It's not quite top 10 for me personally, like it wouldn't probably be near the top 10 for me, but it's not.

It's just because i probably haven't played enough of it, i think um uh, but it was definitely it was.

It was better than i expected.

It was like people were hot on it and i'm not a huge intent.

I go in with a degree of um uncertainty with most nintendo games, like tears of the kingdom.

I didn't like i you know there's plenty of them that i sort of bounce off of um, but dk was the one i had the most fun with for the past couple of years, for sure.

So yeah uh, we sticking in.

Maybe for now seems like it could be a top 10 contender.

We get some consensus on it.

Um okay, let's.

Uh, i'll do another one.

Okay, let me do the other one.

Let's jump into it.

Let's talk about our craters.

Brother, I have 150 hours in this game.

Yeah.

I was in Ireland with my MacBook and I did the Jeremy Jane.

Yes.

Did you stream it?

I streamed it.

Yes.

That's how you know the fucking sickness is in you.

Yes.

This is like Jeremy and was it Baldur's Gate?

Divinity Original Sin.

I played like 145 hours of it on GeForce Now.

Now imagine you're playing an online game.

Yeah, that's crazy.

Over GeForce Now on a MacBook which doesn't have an Ethernet port, and I don't have the cable to do the thing.

So I was just on my siblings and parents' Internet as close to the router as I could playing geforce, now arc raiders over the break.

I think i played 50 hours while i was in ireland um, mostly at night time whenever i went to sleep and i could just be on my own and veg.

Um it uh yeah this i, this is my.

So, like the sands of lake manor is my favorite game of 2026, arc raiders is one of my top 10 games ever.

I absolutely, absolutely.

It feels like a game I'm going to be playing for years and I like caveat caveat caveat, chill zone.

We obviously did a documentary on this.

I didn't know this game was going to be what it was when we were doing it.

Um, I just want money.

I just want Frank didn't know Frank, you know, Frank knows that when we played it, even it wasn't, it wasn't this, you know, when we played it, Adam bark um back uh, two years ago.

Now technically um uh yeah i, i guess like what to say about this game.

It's basically multiplayer, emergent gameplay.

Like every single time i go into this world, i don't know what's going to happen.

Um the.

It starts with the arcs themselves, the machines, the fact that they are all physically based um, and have you know very readable ways in which they operate, but then they combination of like, where you find them, what weapon you have, how many of them there are.

Some of them are able to call in support.

Some of them are, you know, big beasts that multiple people are trying to take down.

There are tricks to killing those.

And the game just like doesn't tell you anything.

It's like the most figure it out ass game I have ever played.

There's no numbers on anything.

If you shoot something you don't know like, the way it communicates to you is visually and with sound.

And I think that's the reason, the main reason why I find this thing so compelling, because you are just watching and deducing and trying to like strategically figure out what to do based on what you see and hear.

Um, the ui is not like your friend in this, it's off to the side.

You know.

You hit a, an arc, you you know by the noise it made or the hit of the bullet whether or not you took off one of its rotors.

Um, you can tell if you've been spotted, what level of what, how you've been spotted.

You're raiding in one of the rooms and you can hear people opening containers.

You can hear what they've picked up, some of the times because they have special sounds from when you, when you pick them up.

Um, the social aspect of it i found to be fascinating.

I am in the the the good boy pen.

Um my, my games.

You hardly ever shoot people like once every fucking 25 games.

Maybe i'd somebody fires a gun at me.

And then I try my best not to run away screaming.

Um, I fucking absolutely assassinated a guy yesterday cause he he was, I guess he was trying to jump me.

But then we got he at the extract and then he got confused and shot another guy.

And, uh, And then I just turned the corner with my sniper and shot him right in the fucking head.

And he went down and I was like, why'd you do that?

Cause I was, I wanted to res the other guy.

And he was like, it was a duel, man.

It was a duel.

What are you doing?

It was a duel.

I was like, what the fuck do you mean?

It was a duel.

He was like, come on, man.

It was a duel.

And I was like, well, fucking, you know, pray to your God.

Bang, bang, bang.

All like the fucking, the amount of like stories that I walk upstairs and tell my wife, like you're not going to believe what just happened.

Like yesterday, I was looking for this frequency modulation boxes so I could get for my you know, the thing they've put in to make players wipe themselves right, expedition thing um, and i couldn't find one forever, but i kept.

Everyone keeps spawning into the same map to try and get them in stelemontis, because there's just like two areas where you can get these things And always they're all gone by the time you get there.

And I went and I found not that, but another one, another item that I needed.

And I waited around because I felt bad that I found these items that people need for the, for the mission, to see if somebody would need it.

So I just waited.

And then another guy came and I told him and he was like, oh, I'll just back you up.

So we just hung out there for like 15 minutes waiting for someone to take this item.

And nobody did.

But at one stage, a guy came over and he was like, which items is it?

And I was like, oh, it's the iron sputter.

And he was like, do you have the other one?

And I was like, oh, the frequency box.

No.

And he was like, oh, I found one earlier.

Here they go.

So it's like you get in these like amazing, like social moments that I've never experienced in any game, like because of the PvE PvP, VE nature of it.

There's a guy walking around the spaceport just playing a fucking guitar, you know, just like jamming it.

And then you take out your flute and the songs synchronize.

So you're playing the same thing and then people come up and start dancing and they synchronize.

Like the level of detail that's in this game blows me away.

And then I think I mentioned it earlier from a purely aesthetic standpoint, I just love the world.

I love this type of hard sci-fi aesthetic.

It's kind of Tales by the Loop-ish.

It's kind of interestingly tech military.

I love the design of the arcs.

And yeah, I'm rinsing everything.

Like I've already completed all the quests the second time.

I've almost done my whole second caravan.

I am going up in the trials.

The trials are like another progression layer that you can do.

That unlocks extra stuff and like.

One of the thing was like collect as many fucking plants as you can in a map and you have to.

You can only do it.

It's only one round.

So i went into like a freezing cold level because you get double xp and just went around the outside of the map collecting as many fucking whatever they're called the fucking plants they use for, for for making sterilized bandages, and i just, like you, just end up playing the game in the weirdest way or like throw it.

That was throwing snowballs at bastions was one, like, cause they added snowballs.

So I got into.

I spent one map just going cause I thought the I didn't know this snowballs respond that those snowball points.

So I walked around the map for 25 minutes, collecting as many snowballs as I could.

And then I came in the next map with like, fucking 30 snowballs i love that you can bring them back but i found that so funny i thought they would have melted yeah you can be just i have i have one in my raider cache for like weeks now so like you know i got that back in ireland um and yeah i found a spot on the roof with the bastion it just was like fucking peppering with snowballs and then people start shooting it and i was like no don't shoot it i need to hit this thing with as many snowballs as possible um yeah it's a good time yesterday i went into a map uh with a bunch of wolf packs to destroy a bastion and then i uh invited want any of the stuff i just wanted to have a good time uh so i set off a bunch of fireworks around it and played my guitar on top of the bastion while everyone else looted it it was a good time perfect uh yeah so our greatest it's it's I love it.

It might be my favorite multiplayer game ever.

I think about Counter-Strike and Quake 3 and how important those games were to me.

And PUBG in recent years was definitely the one that I was into the most.

But this just hits me right where I like it.

And yeah, I'm besotted with it.

It's a fun thing.

Yeah, I won't go on forever, because you've already basically explained what you've already gone on forever about our creators.

But the game is still very good.

I've been playing it a lot.

I think I have like 110 hours.

It's fantastic.

One thing that I found very strange, I went to my friend's house for Christmas.

I entered the room and the two guys who are usually there my friend's boyfriend and his brother technically were like Don't shoot.

Don't shoot.

I didn't know they were playing arc Raiders.

That's crazy.

They just did that at me.

And I was like, Hey Raider.

And it was like, we were emoting at each other in real life.

And they were telling me their stories of playing the game.

They were like, do you have any goop?

They were fucking, they're quoting, quoting content creators about this.

This has burned peanuts on everyone's peanuts.

They – this game has escaped mainstream.

Like I don't know how an extraction shooter has gone from this like very niche, very like high-level thing that only a specific number of people end up liking into this success that has escaped mainstream, like video game enthusiast spaces and has just gone to like guys who only buy fifa and call of duty are buying arc raiders and playing it and talking about 12 million content.

That's like that's not what you would assume an extraction shooter would have.

I bet sony is like marathon must sell 100 million copies.

Now, i mean it's it's, it's us right.

Um yeah, i was just.

That was so strange to me.

And also they said they watched a documentary on the game.

No way, i was like oh, is that the one with the irish guy at the start?

We uh, you know he worked.

I was like the guy that i worked for he, he made that.

And they were like no dude, we were watching one with like the people who made the game.

And i was like yeah, there's an irish guy named daniel dwyer at the start and they're like oh whoa, that's your boy.

And then it was like a totally different situation.

They thought you were just like.

I was like yeah, my youtuber friend read a wikipedia page and we called it a documentary.

It's like no, it's the real deal, That's wild.

Yeah, one and a half million views on that series so far.

One of my cousins was watching one of his streamers and they started watching the doc during the stream.

He was like, what the fuck?

Is that you?

Yeah, I don't think he knew exactly what I did for work because there's like 40 cousins or whatever.

Yeah, I need to also mention the voices.

We've talked about it before on the podcast.

I can't because I've played through it a second time now.

And I don't know whether or not they have patched some of them or whether or not.

I am now just noticing the difference between the generated ones and the red ones, because there are definitely red ones in there.

Like, I think all of Lance is not generated.

Like, so maybe not all, but like, which is weird because he's the robot man.

You'd think he'd be the one that was going to be generated.

It would make sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, but I'm not sure about that.

I've heard people also... I have not used this.

Do you know about the voice changing tech they have?

Yeah, those guys the ones I was talking about earlier, my buddies.

They use it all the time, but only for proximity chat.

So they'll be in party chat with their normal voices and then they'll be talking and the game will.

It's not one to one, but like pretty quickly, it'll probably maybe like half a second delay.

We'll process what you've said in your own voice.

Turn it into I'm assuming turn it into text and then modulate it to sound like one of the six or seven voices in the game.

Right.

So he'll be like hold on.

But I'm going to yell at this guy and I'll be like hey, what's going on bro?

What are you doing over there?

Like, that's so funny.

Unnecessary thing.

But I guess box thing.

Yeah.

I've I've heard some people like women, for instance, or like, yeah. you know or yeah like i've i've read a read a post from a trans person who also said that their voice they feel like they get targeted more if they speak with their real voice so they use this thing um so that was that's a different yeah i guess it's an ability feature to solve a problem that probably shouldn't be a problem but yeah well that's yeah exactly a hundred percent and i and i just realized i said that after talking about the voice quest stuff i'm not trying to say i'm not trying to forgive one thing for another thing but i i do think that they're it's it's interesting how this tech and then you can talk about the ml that they use for the the leaper for instance which is i think works because that like the leapers kind of stupid and is the funny thing I think about that tech is that like the leaper can get anywhere and that's cool, but it's not like a smart robot in the game.

You know what I mean?

Like I guess some of them are and some of them aren't like the drones are, I feel like they're pretty smart.

They're able to like flank you and do shit.

Um, but the leaper just like will fruitlessly try and get into the extract over and, over and over again.

You know.

So it's.

I think they've had some successes in using some of this new tech, and some failures on it, for sure.

Yeah, and I totally accept that people with the voice stuff, even if those are the actors that they're working with, they feel weird about it.

It'll be interesting to see what happens over the next year when presumably they're adding new.

There was a leak about some Swamp, I think, thing coming in March which

Which would be connected to that quest line that they go about the barrel and the dam.

You know what I mean?

So presumably they're going to keep extending the world in that way.

So it'll be interesting to see how they do that, whether or not they change any of their processes with regards to the voice and the quest and everything.

Can I recommend an article that I read over the holidays that is relevant to this?

So the like the machine learning stuff is obviously a separate conversation from like generative AI.

And it's you know it's tough to talk about because all these things do sort of get like lumped together.

Just because it's all AI, brother.

It's just it's all AI.

We had AI since old video games, bro.

There was AI in Pac-Man, dude.

And you go to CES, man, they're making AI paper now.

So there was a fantastic article.

I think it was Edmund Tran who did it.

Oh, really?

It was definitely This Week in Video Games.

I can't remember if this specific one was him and his name is not at the top of the article, but maybe it's at the bottom.

But This Week in Video Games has a fantastic fucking article called How the Cost and Effort of Human Voice Actors Compares to Generative AI.

Oh, that's cool.

On thisweekinvideogamescom.

Um, highly recommend it.

I i'll send you guys a link so we can stuff it in the uh, the description here.

But um, it is interviews with.

They've done a couple articles like this.

Uh, this one specifically is interviews with.

Is troy baker in this one voice actors?

Uh, i saw a quote from him flying around last week about this, but i couldn't.

I i didn't know what it was from, so i didn't read it because i didn't.

I wanted the wider context of it.

Yeah, I'm not sure.

Maybe not.

Sarah Elmala is in this and a few other voice actors.

But basically it's just sort of talking about, because a lot of the conversations around this are people who are video games enthusiasts or people who make video games, people who come from different angles.

But I feel like talking directly to voice actors is sort of a critical perspective that I have not seen a sufficient amount of, given that they are.

You know the people most impacted by this and the people who can speak most acutely, to like the validity of the claims whether, like oh, it's a cost saving measure.

It's a time saving measure.

It's like a pipeline issue.

And it's very interesting to hear people who've done dozens and dozens of games be like oh yeah no, a single video, like doing an entire video game voice act.

That is like four hours of work at most.

Yeah well, right for sure obviously, this is, your mileage may vary, also the type of game varies and stuff.

But like, having hard, fast data about specific instances i think is very interesting.

Um, and them talking about, like you know, is there validity to the fact that like oh, we have to do like all these individualized lines?

They have to be like specific, they have to be context aware, things like that.

Um, obviously that changes it slightly, but to hear voice actors address those specific things, i think is really uh, interesting and relevant.

That's cool.

Thanks for sharing it.

Yeah, i'm interested to read that they also.

Obviously, everyone in this conversation has their own bias and perspective and obviously, if you're somebody working within that field who wants to do that type of work, i you know it makes sense that they, they speak their, their truth.

Um, yeah, I'd love to read that.

I was, I was um, I was thinking about this recently with a lot of the uh, golden globe interviews that were going on and some of the actors were talking about working with different directors.

I think I was watching, uh, was something about one battle after another.

And they were talking about that.

Uh, Paul Thomas Anderson does allow for a bit of um you know what's the word like uh, like ad-libbing, that type of thing.

And then you've got the sort of the the the, you know anchorman, sort of uh level of of ad-libbing that goes on right where they basically, you know, record a couple of clean versions and then spend 50 minutes ad-libbing.

And then then you have the uh, i don't know who'd be a director that doesn't uh allow people to to ad lib, like David Fincher maybe, or something, who's just like no, we're going to do it on the book and we're going to do it 70 times until you get it right.

Um, and I was, I was thinking about that with regards to some of the games of this conversation.

Um, that's not again.

I'm not a forgiveness of it, but like You can imagine how much more damaging it would be in a game like Hades, for instance, if you added like that game just does not work if you use generative stuff.

Yeah, no, it needs that humanity in it.

Speaking from like a creative standpoint not, I think the moral argument is obviously trumps all of this and and is ultimately, you know, the more important thing.

But yeah, from a purely creative perspective, it's yeah, it's annoying that we have to think about any of this shit.

But we do.

We have to think about it.

We have to consider it.

So fuck it.

Where do we think our creators goes?

I mean, for me, it's top 10.

You can't put it on the list, Danny.

You're in the documentary for the game.

I mean you can have your own, like it's I.

You know, I'm not going to tell you to not do it but, like I, to me it's just like I don't know if the head of IGN was making the top 10 list.

It was like I did the documentary for the game that this is on.

I would just, that would just be weird to me.

That's just a personal thing.

It's not, I'm not telling you to have my, to agree with me necessarily.

But yeah, I don't, I would say with the way that I've handled myself and, and the business we've done over the past, you know, not business, but the, the work that I've done over the past 15 years, I've always been pretty dogmatic about church and state um but i don't i mean we can not put it on if it makes people feel i just don't necessarily think i'm not uncomfortable either way it doesn't matter eclipse top 10 carries much weight other than it's like house cleaning for us but um it is also a massively popular game um that i mean outside of my perspective does anyone else feel like they like this game sorry i love it I did not like it, but I feel like this is not the place for me to list all of my grievances.

I feel like this is the place to celebrate games, and I think we specifically have made a choice as a team to not do a.

Let's debate what games deserve this type of show.

It didn't work for me.

I did not like it.

I understand why other people would like it.

It felt like the things that I could see as potentially appealing felt to me like lesser versions of other games that I have played.

Um, but I just, again, I mean, it's like, it's a, you can't account for taste.

It just didn't work for me.

I could see why it would work for other people.

It's like me and night rain.

It's like, there's just, we have, yeah.

Different.

Frank, what's your perspective?

I mean you also worked on the production.

I mean it's your favorite game of the year.

It should be on the list, like my favorite game is Death Stranding.

So I like I yeah, I don't know I mean about about, how do you feel about our creators?

Oh, I had to play like the opening tutorial six times, so I'm never doing that again.

I fucking hate tutorials.

That's it.

You can skip it now.

Oh okay oh yeah well yeah yeah, so like um, the game itself?

Yeah, I don't like extraction shooters.

I don't like playing multiplayer games by myself traditionally.

Um, i like the aesthetic, the sci-fi world of it, but yeah, i hate.

I hate feeling like penalized for losing.

I know that there's like the?

Um safe pockets or whatever, but yeah, i only play the game, like you know, in the beta.

I didn't play the retail release of it but um okay well yeah, maybe that's probably not well.

I guess the beta was public, but yeah yeah, but then we had access to other weird versions of it earlier on.

Um, What do you think?

We can admit it.

I don't mind admitting it, but like, I mean Jesse, you played 110 hours so it sounds like, even if you take me out of the conversation, it's probably in the maybes, at least you know i, i think i, i think it would be silly for us to omit it from the top 10, given the strength of passion for it on the team.

I think at most we could put a uh a little, a little flag next to it.

Yeah like, and it links to the documentary.

It says, by the way, like shill zone, this is a shill zone special.

Okay, i appreciate it.

I feel like that's more honest than like removing it from the list entirely or something.

So the other thing that i've been sort of like um thinking about with this is like there's a world in which i don't talk about games that we cover at all on here or on twitter or anything, but to me that seems more duplicitous, kind of like.

Like i'm happy to like not talk about a game that I don't like.

You know, regardless of, I don't spend time talking about games I don't like, right.

Like I don't, none of us do really.

I don't like dunk on games that I didn't enjoy.

Maybe there was a series I really enjoyed and I'm disappointed by it or something like that.

So yeah, I felt similarly about this, where I was like, like I love, I've recorded like clips of this game.

I've had loads of fun.

Like, you know, I'm not, I'm not hired by anyone.

I haven't been since fucking what like eight months ago or something.

Uh, so like, there's no, you know, contracts were signed two years ago.

There's no like um, there's no reason for me to be doing any of that, and i don't have i don't think a social media presence that would even, you know, put it much in my favor regardless um but uh yeah, but i, i felt that way too.

Where it's like, i'd rather just like express how I feel about this and people can take it or leave it.

Um then, then sort of construct a version of myself online that is I don't know anyway, that's.

That's more of a me issue than it is uh, yours or no clips or anything.

But um, I will say that, having known Danny the longest of anyone in this call, uh that you are a person who really values integrity and makes a concerted effort to separate these things.

I remember when we were working at GameSpot at E3 I uh got a destiny shader and sold it on eBay on the show floor.

And you were like, that's kind of fucked up, man.

You were like, you should not be doing that.

And I was like, well, I really needed $200.

So I, that was, and I look and you know, I, that fair, Thank you.

That's kind of you to say that.

I also do.

You know, I took the step over into doing white label work.

No, yeah, I understand.

I just mean that like I used to not take swag bags back then.

I used to donate all the swag bags.

I still don't really I don't look them out or anything.

But like at E3 in particular, I wouldn't take any swag home.

We'd give it we'd do a giveaway or something.

I'd hand it over.

I, i just want to be the character witness that, like it would be.

I lose nothing by saying i don't think we should put our creators on the list.

I think that it's not, i don't know.

I i don't see it as a like, i don't think you stand to gain anything by like putting it on there.

Like i don't think you're like hey, embark.

By the way, like if another game comes out, it might be on the next year's top.

Yeah, the finals too.

Let's fucking do it.

God, i fucking hope not.

Um yeah, i wonder if that game's in Okay, who should we?

Jesse sorry, I believe you're next.

Sure.

Let me yap about Clear Obscure Expedition 33.

Well, we're talking about AI generated games.

Let's talk about another one.

Yeah, Clear Obscure.

Expedition 33 is a game that I saw a trailer for two-ish years ago or something right.

The first trailer for it was just a teaser where they were like, this is what it looks like.

Here's the gameplay.

Here's the voices.

I hope you like it.

And I loved it.

And I thought right away, I was like, finally, they made a panic at the disco JRPG.

I love this so much.

It's great.

They're appealing exclusively to me.

This is this game is just fantastic.

I think this is probably one of my favorite modern RPGs, maybe in a really long time.

It's a turn based RPG in the style of like. maybe like Final Fantasy 13 onwards Square Enix.

It's like visually a lot more high definition that you would expect from that era.

It almost feels like a PS3 game that never came out.

They got a remaster for some strange reason.

Visually a lot of bloom, a lot of particle effects, very French, aggressively so developed by Sandfall Interactive.

Some people who previously were at, like Ubisoft, a lot of developers who have a lot of love for the JRPG genre, wanted to make something that was in their own direction, their own style, their own like love of the genre coming through in what they do with it.

Like the turn-based combat feels both like paper Mario in some ways, with the reactions that you can do in the middle of combat, but also it feels like it's inspired by modern roguelikes and that you can like design your team to play based off the skills that you enjoy more than any of the others that I've that I've played.

Of this like of JRPGs in general, like

You can think, oh, I like this character when they're played as this specific role.

But like if I wait three turns, then this care, like you're thinking so far ahead, more than you do, or more than I do anyway.

And most JRPGs where it's like maybe you got to think of the next two or three turns, blocking packs and stuff.

This is like you're setting up this character to set up this character, to set up this one to do one million damage in a single hit.

So all that stuff, the gameplay alone to me, is like I could just play that and I would have had a good time.

But then outside of that, it has one of my favorite stories of last year.

Like, I think the story that's told within there from the beginning all the way to the end.

I also think the ending is fantastic.

It's just... so specifically told in a way that I love the melodrama.

I love how melodramatic this game is, how self-serious it is to the point of almost being parody.

It even laughs at itself at times though.

Like it's incredibly self-serious.

And then it plays like this funky bass beat that you've never heard in your life in a video game, played over top of a monkey man with a staff who shows up like halfway through the game.

It's awesome.

It's amazing your airship is a guy with a mask on who talks to you in this incredibly funny voice like yeah, it's everything about the game has this style to it that's so singular, like i haven't played anything else that feels exactly like this combination of things.

And then, narratively and like presentation wise, the places that it goes in its story, the ideas of like love and loss and grief, and not just not just representing that on screen, of like look how sad it is to lose people in the hardship you go through, but like what lengths people are willing to go to establish their own grief, and like and not have to deal with it in any meaningful way.

And, like the story of the game just goes in so many interesting directions that I wasn't expecting it to go in by the end.

And the novelty I thought would wear off.

Usually when I play a game like this, I go back to it again and I'm like, Oh, that was kind of dumb.

Once I played it the second time, this one, I did the opening again.

And there are things that I missed the first time around.

Cause like, obviously I was so caught up in it that I was like, Oh my God, that's so meaningful.

Like this character talking about their their difficulties with fertility or like not wanting to have a child.

Cause they're worried about the future.

Yeah.

There's so many things like that that make so much more sense when you're done with it, and why that would come up.

I don't know.

Again, games like this I feel like are so long also.

That's maybe the last point I'll make is like Expedition 33 took the JRPG genre, something that is almost impossible for people to get into if they're not willing to dump like 60 to 100 hours and really not have that much fun for most of the time.

Um, and they, they figured out a way to tell a story in a size, in a package that's like reasonably approachable.

It took me like 40, 45 hours or something which for a jrpg is like might as well be an hour and 30 minutes.

Like forget about it.

That's a tight 90 of the genre.

It's a breezy duration.

That's a nice afternoon for a jrpg.

Now it's great.

I yeah, did any of you guys play it at all?

I know jeremy, you said i'm not touching this.

It's too french and japanese.

No no, that's.

I'm not a Franco phobe.

No, I am interested in this game.

I felt like there were so many games to cover.

There's a lot of games to cover.

I had to make an executive decision to either play expedition 33 a lot or play kingdom come deliverance 2 a lot.

For i'm glad you made the call.

You did because i, because i can cover this, but i don't think anyone else can cover kingdom except for me and you.

So yeah, it felt like i would have i.

It felt like the the choice for the team was to spread out the expertise and also like yeah, i'll play expedition 33 someday, but it felt like it was i didn't want to just play like two, three hours of it.

Yeah that's, that's fair i.

I played i, I think, a third of it so far, like the first two weeks it came out.

So I've not touched it in a good while.

When you're speaking about the person who this is accessible for.

I mean All you guys Jeremy Jesse Frank, you guys have played a lot of Final Fantasy games, a lot of like big RPGs Yakuza, all this sort of stuff.

These are games that I have always tried to get into.

You know, Like a Dragon was the first one of the Yakuza series that I finally felt like cracked the nut for me.

I really don't like the aesthetic of the Final Fantasy stuff and they just seem so long.

But this one totally worked for me just because, as Jesse said...

It's.

You know, the aesthetic worked for me, but also it's not, as there's no grinding really in it.

I think is probably where it comes from.

I think the inciting event and the world is really interesting.

It's like a new trope I hadn't thought about before.

So that was cool.

You don't often get those.

The UI and the sound and like how the camera works in combat is just infinitely.

What's the word you always use, Jeremy?

For like the extra sauce.

Oh, juice.

Oh, this game.

This game is dripping.

It's like it's so it's like viscous.

It's so full of juice.

It's got that riz.

You know what I mean?

I'm trying to be young.

Here we go.

Six, seven.

It's dying, folks.

When they talked about this game being like a sort of Belle Epoque inspired look to it.

I was expecting, like you know, something very traditional, I guess.

It's so not.

It's so like fantastical and, you know, sci-fi-ish in some ways as well.

And the other thing I like about it is that a lot of RPGs I feel like take place in worlds that are like um, safe but have dangerous spots in them and you are maybe a fish out of water or like in final fantasy.

You're like exploring a world right and there's cities and there's valleys and there's places.

Or like yakuza is in a in a city, but like the character probably knows the city and you're just kind of like learning it and stuff.

Expedition 33 you feel like you are constantly walking deeper and deeper into a scary cave, like it is.

It is each new area is is.

You know you're taking your steps lightly.

And there are some safe spots like the house and stuff like that.

But like it feels like you are pushing the boundaries of where you're meant to be.

And I mean, narratively, you also are right.

You're like coming across previous expeditions and stuff.

So.

I thought that was very cool.

It made it it made every it made the world feel intimate and small.

And what I was meant to be doing, very attainable and reachable and not.

There is obviously a grand mission, but it didn't feel like I had, like it wasn't the start of oblivion, where I'm like fuck it.

There's going to be so much to do here.

It felt like what I was meant to be doing was only 20 minutes away.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

And I think that really helped me.

Yeah.

It's, it's a fantastic game.

I think it's like you're.

You're actually touching on something that I thought about with the game for a bit that I haven't really seen brought up much.

It's like, this is maybe the first apocalyptic RPG.

Like it's currently happening.

It's not not the first, but the first, like it's currently, you're not in the aftermath of it trying to, you know, save the universe.

You're not in the lead up to like, it is currently happening.

And your goal is to stop that from happening.

And it's, It's such an interesting the way that they tell the story and the way that it progresses again over time.

And what you learn about it is like, I don't know, the ending of this game.

Like you guys, if you're going to play more than you got to get those places that.

I would just love to know your reaction to what it does.

Like if you if you get mad or not.

Yeah, it's I really, really like it a lot.

I'm glad that you enjoyed what you've played of it so far.

And I really do think you should.

You should see it through to the end, because it is like you said, I don't think it ever stops doing this.

The sort of RPG that's for exactly you.

It's like it's doing all the things that the genre does, I think, well or well enough, but in a package that's not 14 year olds, you know being a little flirty, which is fine.

I love that stuff. it's yeah it's you know young people like me you know like young spry people in the prime of their life yeah exactly 30 year olds just like actually yeah i will say that like in the world of expedition 33 i'm not alive anymore so you know like for a couple years exactly my expedition didn't work out too good for those who come after brother exactly yeah yeah i did world building all that stuff is so good i also want to mention because um It's come up already a little bit.

The voice acting and performance in this game is absolutely stellar.

Yeah.

Really, really good.

And I believe also in French you can play it.

And also that stuff is really good.

Funny enough, you probably should play it in French.

Oh, really?

You should play it in English because the voice actors are really good.

Yeah.

Like Jennifer English, right?

Voices.

Yes.

I can't remember her name.

I don't know any other names.

Yeah.

She's great.

Like Ben Starr is great.

But then there's also like Andy Serkis is in it.

Like Andy Serkis is in Andy Serkis plays. understand to be he always plays the weird guy he is always that's his that's his thing he was a weird guy in heavenly sword that's maybe one of the greatest performances in video games go watch some andy circus and heavenly sword cuts have you played enslaved isn't that the name of that game yeah chelsea loves that game yeah it's just monkey isn't it it's just like yeah he's having a good time yeah everyone's great in that yeah are we sticking in top 10 i'm guessing i'd like it there okay is it time for a break folks who needs to be okay um we will take a quick break folks and we'll be back with more game of the year in just a second hello welcome back to our game of the year podcast we're doing our top 10 as you know was i the only one who went to the bathroom yep yeah i'm just an old man i got that tiny bladder i'm already waking up 15 times in the night it turns out can i tell a story on the air that i just told jesse oh no i wouldn't say this one really please it's not that bad it's just really funny it's fucking funny i'm not embarrassed by it so i'm gonna tell it one time we were recording an episode a long time ago when we didn't have cameras on and it was a very long episode i don't know if it was game of the year or if it was like a rank 100 games but it was like one of those like four hour marathon podcasts and we were at like two and a half hours in and i knew there was not a break coming for at least an hour and a half and i was exploding with piss um And since we had no cameras on, I piss in a bottle under my desk.

And I watched the meter on my mixer to make sure it was not registering any of the sound, because I was afraid that my piss would be recorded.

That's commitments to video game podcasting that you're just not going to get from most people.

It's true.

And also the statute of limitation of shaming me for that has passed.

So it was years ago.

No, it has not.

It's great.

We'll see. the jury's still out on that all right i'm a big i'm a i'm a i support that although also i support you letting me know that you need to go yeah that's true but i've killed the flow listen truckers it's you know a trucker you got to make it on time to that distribution center before the sun sets oh they piss and balls all the time you got it so you see bottles everywhere on the side of the road and it's just i'm just a blue collar podcaster i'm like a trucker okay Exactly.

You got to do it.

You got to let it flow.

We're going to let the video games flow right here.

I'm going to knock off some of mine quick here.

Pig face, pig face.

How do i feel about big face?

Pig face for me is a maybe.

I really like pig face.

I didn't think i would like it as much.

I played it at the demo at the summer.

What do we do, frank?

We were at that place in the mix la, as a part of summer games fest yeah, and i was like ah, it's all right, it's a little throwback thing yada yada, yada.

I i love the loop of this game.

I love uh, going back into levels.

Um, the headshots are just delicious.

It's a good time.

I, I, I'm not going to put in the top 10.

Has anyone else played it?

I would.

Yeah, I played a bunch of it.

I liked it a lot.

It's definitely not top 10 material for me.

Um, but I had fun with it.

I think it's interesting.

I think it's cool tonally and atmospherically and uh, it's gritty and weird and grindhousey and interesting.

It's, I would recommend it to anyone, but I wouldn't say it was a top 10 of the year for me.

Cool.

Yeah.

I would say the same thing.

It'll probably pick up something, uh, somewhere else.

Um, uh, I think as much as, Oh God, I'm as much as I hate it.

I'm not sure.

Baby steps.

I adore.

I think baby steps is fantastic.

I'm not sure if it's going to make the top 10, but it, but I don't, but it might.

It's Jeremy.

You're saying, you're saying nodding your head there.

What do you think?

I think it's cusp for me.

Um, i think the way that it is very rare to me that a game so so cohesively merges its mechanics and its themes uh, like this uh, and also like he like, i think comedy in games is something that is sorely lacking, and usually when comedy happens in games, it's like, um you know, like a, like a Ron Gilbert style point and click.

And it's like, oh, this is like a funny pirate.

He has a funny name and he's saying funny things.

It's very rare that the mechanics of... Don't stop talking shit, all right?

Come on.

No, I meant that.

That was all positive.

I was not.

That was not like a send out that I'm saying that.

It's just funny the way you set it up.

You were like, yeah, like some Ron Gilbert game with the pirate was funny.

Oh, no, no.

I'm saying that the humor in video games is often in.

It's not that it's not legitimate humor.

It's that it is expressed in a way that is like more literary or like spoken i i think fucking jokes yeah jokes, jokes.

It is very rare for me that the mechanics are the expression of the humor and baby steps.

Every time i took a misstep and, just like that fucking caked up 35 year old dude in a onesie, fell on his ass in the mud and then the mud stays on him.

It's like it's so fucking funny and and it's funny in a way that is like It's so sincere.

It's such a it's such a mechanical expression of this idea that like, no matter who you are, no matter how big of a fucking loser you are, all you can do is literally just put one foot in front of the other.

And that is an easy thing to express.

Narratively is a very difficult thing to express mechanically.

And I think that this game is like you know that that is a, that is a level of artistry that I rarely see in games is mechanical expression of profound themes.

Yeah.

It's a cusp for me also, because I didn't finish it.

I bet if I did, I probably would have been over the moon about it, but I don't know.

So I don't want to put it up there for that reason.

But I do know that, playing it in front of my wife someone who got hit by a car when she was very young and had to teach herself how to walk again

Oh, my Was like a very exposing – like she's super open about that and we'll talk about it all the time.

So I don't – it's not like I'm revealing her information here.

But like she was explaining to me while I handed her the controller, because she was like I don't understand why you're playing this.

This looks stupid.

And then she started playing it and was like oh, this is what it was like for me when I was learning how to walk.

She's like, this still is dumb and I don't know why anyone would play this game.

But –

She, she really opened my eyes to like a part of it that I hadn't even considered, of like, not just necessarily the metaphorical sense of like progression, and how everything that you do is always, like Jeremy said, just one foot in front of the other.

Even when you have setbacks, you know that you did it before.

What's stopping you?

But this is literally like. you don't know how to walk.

It's a video game where it's something that we take for granted in every game.

Movement is the thing that you're trying to become used to again.

And for her and other people who live with disabilities it's like it's such a major hurdle to get over and to see that put into a video game maybe not in a literal sense but in at least a mechanical one is like there's really nothing I've played.

Like other than maybe like what to a T that's tried to show off what it's like to live with anything that makes you not, you know, society's version of normal, and how challenging that can be.

That was an amazing, that was such a profound thing for me to see her go through.

So it was awesome.

That that is an incredible perspective that I had not even considered.

But something that it makes me think is that, like there is this parallel between uh, mechanical design that is very frictional, and experiences in real life where you have like, setbacks or injuries or illness.

Like I, I was so sick over the holidays and it was the first time I've been really sick like that in years.

And, uh, And when I got better, I felt like I was on like morphine.

Like I was so euphoric to just feel normal that I was like, I felt like I was like on pills.

It was the weirdest.

It was freaking me out a little bit.

Cause I was like, why am I?

I'm just delighted to to sit up in a chair and not just like lay in my bed eating a hundred calories and sleeping for 48 days.

48 hours, 48 days would be um, but it or.

It's like.

You know, you get like a canker sore and it's like, when the canker sore goes away the the, the neutral the, the negation of, of a negative, of friction, is so delightful.

Uh, and I think that that's like the power of frictional design in games is that like um, you know we'll talk about kingdom come deliverance too in a little bit, but like it's it's games that commit to putting you through the shit a little bit, I think can yield these like really profound experiences, and it risks alienating people.

Cause it's like, this game like sucks to play.

This game is like fucking hard and shitty and I'm bad at it.

Um, but I think that like it challenges us in ways that are that can yield really profound sort of like experiences like that.

Uh, I just want to also mention as well that like, unlike games like getting over it or co-op or, you know, games that have these sort of, uh, you know, frictional control schemes, let's say I felt like I had total control over this guy it was the world that i didn't have control over that like i felt confident in what once i mean at the start you don't at the start you're like how does this game work but like after a couple of hours it's like dance dance revolution or or uh or guitar hero where like suddenly your fingers just do the thing you want the pad to do um and it was never that i'd put my well sometimes you put your foot in the wrong spot but like a lot of the time it was not knowing where I should put my foot or like trying to figure out the balance or where the weight should be or like how wet is that ground or you know like and that was cool because I thought it was going to be more a lot a lot of times in these games where it's like tough controls sometimes you can kind of like fumble your way through it and cross your fingers and i to me this game didn't feel like that it felt like very solid in in what you know how much control you had and also what you were meant to do and i thought that was really cool that's probably why i enjoyed it so much okay we'll put it in the maybes we'll stick it there um Okay, let's go to somewhere else.

Jesse, why don't you pick one?

Yeah, let me go over the alters real quick because I went back to it.

This is the inverse of Expedition 33.

I went back to it and I was like, yeah, all right, I get it.

It was cool the first time around.

It's less cool the second time.

This is a survival crafting management game where you play on a Stanislaw Len.

Is that the author's name of the Invincible?

I think that's right.

A version of that sort of sci-fi world where it's a big...

Dark space where you are playing as – I can't remember the character's name.

It's been months now.

But you're playing as this Polish guy basically, who's on a mission for a mining company looking for a resource called Repidium, or Unobtainium, if you want to be an Avatar fan.

And it's like – weirdly, it's more of a game about managing personalities than it is a game about resource management.

I mean, it is that and it becomes quite stressful near the end of the game, but you're trying to build resources and machinery around this big base that you have.

That's like a giant wheel that you're using to like literally survive and run away from the sun, because the sun will just destroy everything on this planet.

And you have a limited number of days broken up into separate chunks throughout the game.

And it's your goal to overcome these different uh blockers.

Basically, there'll be like narrative bits where oh, you can't get past this because you don't have this tool, so you have to invent it.

But how do you invent it?

You're alone, you're stranded on this eye, on this planet.

Nobody can send you anything.

So the game's resolution and the reason it's called the alters is your character can clone himself and create other versions of himself based on the timeline of his life.

He can look back and find branching points on this visual timeline and say okay, when i was 18 i, my dad, went out to get eggs and I didn't stop him.

And then like, this is the split point.

You could stop them or you could go get the eggs with them.

Um and like that lets you create like a if you, if you go, get the eggs now you're making an engineer, or like you're doing something different based on those splits.

And it's.

It's just cool to see how that plays out and see how all those different characters, versions of the same character, interact with each other.

Like it's funny because they have to do it in a way where it's obvious who you're talking to, but also it is the same person.

So you'll be talking to a character who has the same name as you but has, like rock star hair and glasses, and it's like did that come out of the cloning machine?

Did they?

Did they make those for you?

Are those organic material?

It's like a game about the Gary vault in Fallout 3.

Almost literally.

They just don't just keep saying John Malkovich over and over again.

Yeah, I thought that was a really cool novel way to do it.

The story gets a little like weird sci-fi, like weirder than even the setup of it is.

Okay.

Very esoteric near the end of it.

But overall, I think...

I think it sort of falls apart at the very end.

I wasn't huge on the conclusion ultimately of the story.

And I think the the crafting gameplay part of it.

It's.

It's probably the only version of that that I felt makes sense in the world when you're doing it like when you're mining.

It's all in real time but because the mining speeds up as you're doing it, your time for the day like you start at 8 am and you finish by like six or something.

Yes, that was cool.

It actually speeds up instead of it just being like you drew really fast, because it's a crafting game and it would be boring if you did it in real time.

So I thought that was an interesting way of handling that.

And the resources never feel too hard to get a hold of.

But there is a good amount of challenge.

There's like enemies, in the areas you need to be concerned about, and destroying them also cost resources.

So there's a lot of that management, but again it's more about the personalities and seeing how they interacted with each other.

I love the story there.

I love the way it played out.

And it was sort of like the um.

The one thing I like about David Cage games is like I kind of want to go back and see what it would have been like if I'd made a different choice.

What if this character was here?

Or what if this character wasn't here?

When I got to this point in the story, what would happen?

That's the coolest part of the game.

And it works.

It works really, really well.

I wish there was almost a version of it, where you had unlimited resources and you could just see all of that.

They have been making changes like it's an easier mode now.

I'm one of the updates, but it's not quite what I want, which is basically to just watch people's YouTube playthroughs.

Maybe I should just do that.

Yeah, I really enjoyed this.

It tickled something as well that I think like almost Death Stranding didn't.

Like there's a feeling of exploring that world on foot and the dread of it.

There's so much like dread in that you're not.

You know, I thought that was that was.

Your radiation is really high and you got to like oh, you're going to die.

But you got to go out there because this guy's going to die and everyone's mad at you if you don't get him enough food.

It's made by the same people who.

I don't know if it's exactly the same team, but at least the same studio that did this war of mine.

And you can feel a lot.

Oh, right.

Yeah.

Right.

It feels not too dissimilar.

It's not quite as harrowing, but actually I guess kind of is, but in a different way.

Oppressive.

Yeah.

If I was doing a GameSpot review, my byline would be this world of mine.

Oh, you're so good at that.

Why did you quit?

Oh, right.

They don't pay anything.

Because I started taking Fridays off.

Shout out to Tyroot.

Should we stick it in maybe then?

Is that where it feels for the moment?

If you're feeling positive about it, sure.

I would probably personally put it in.

Maybe not, but you feel good about it, so maybe it's all right.

Yeah, okay.

Let's stick it in maybe for now.

Okay.

Okay, Frank, you got a bunch here.

Let's rattle through some of these ones, maybe ones that you don't feel strongly about, and then land on one you feel strongly about.

All right, WWE 2K25.

I really like this game.

This is the first one that allowed intergender wrestling.

Vince McMahon was removed from WWE.

Since then, all the WWE games became way more experimental and fun and good.

So, yeah, I really like the WWE games.

The gameplay keeps getting faster every single year.

And the reason these are always worth.

If you're a wrestling fan, they're always worth getting, just because the online servers allow people to make their own wrestling games.

So like, as I said, it's the Gary's mod of wrestling.

So every year I get them.

The trick is wait a month.

Once WrestleMania happens, they discount it.

So you can get it like 40 bucks, like clockwork every year.

And it's always a blast to just like Yeah for like in my case, populating the game with like WCW and Joshi wrestling.

I don't touch the WWE mainline roster stuff, although now WWE keeps poaching Joshi talent from around the world.

So now all these stardom wrestlers are appearing authentically in the WWE game.

So it's really funny to follow.

Like as someone who goes to all these indie wrestling shows, wrestlers I'm seeing in person and like the Ukrainian center of LA, are now showing up in my video games.

Is like crazy.

So cool.

So like, so I really like this game and like, yeah, every year they get better and better.

And so like during the 2010s, like WB2K15 or whatever sucked, they were bad.

And then there was one year it was so bad.

They like, like WB had to come in and like quality control.

I'm like, all right, stop making a game for two years.

Yeah.

You got it.

And so ever since they had that like cataclysmic reboot, the games have gotten really good.

Um, so I really like it, but again, it's an annual franchise.

It's not a brand new thing, but I just want to make like no cause.

Like sometimes we'll get comments like doesn't frank know that the wb games suck?

No no no, play the new one, it's good.

I like i don't know like they're good now, so i have to vouch for it.

So i do feel strongly about that.

I i played a bit of this because i wanted to make sure that we had some coverage on this.

Um yeah, it's vast is the thing i would say.

Um, there's so much to do.

The online stuff is crazy.

I had a lot of fun putting uh, different matches together.

Um, i think i was playing some of this with my nephew as well in ireland.

Um, he had it too.

I played it here on my own and I played it against him.

I think I just for me.

These aren't the wrestling games for me, because they're just so much about knowing a million buttons.

And I, you know, it's I don't.

Yeah.

Once I got into it and learned some of the things here and there, it was better.

I will also say that the story mode stuff is like like it's very cheap and cheerful.

You know what I mean?

Like it's sort of. like low quality low production quality i would say which uh was fine i guess but i was you know i made my fucked up wrestler and he looked hilarious so that was pretty good um but uh yeah so it's it's still got its rough edges but then look like you said i know a franchise that has like 80 modes in it what do you what do you expect from these people they're only human So, yeah, so it's yeah, it's it's it's a delightful game.

But yeah, so it's like my top 10.

It's not like a team top 10 game, but I think they're awesome and I'm always excited for more.

And then yeah, Silent Hill F.

I really like, just because like, when this got announced it was like OK yeah like yeah, like you know, like every now and then they'll try to make a new Silent Hill game and they haven't been good.

I think Silent Hill Downpour is like the worst game I've ever actually finished from start to finish.

I hated it, but it was a new Silent Hill at the time so I played it.

Um yeah, i really like sunhill f again.

The main reason i really liked it is like they changed the americana setting and put it in specifically 1960s japan.

So it was like just all the specifics of that was really, really cool.

And then um, the game almost has like again like, i guess, like all sunhills, there's like the real world and then the nightmare world and i thought this game did a cool way of like splitting it up.

I like the ground, like the actual parts were going through the village way more than like the underground hell chambers.

Cause the puzzles got so tedious and like frustrating, but every time you were in the surface area it was.

It was incredible.

But then, but um, and then I like how your character evolves and gets like mutant arms, like crazy stuff, like that.

I thought that was really cool.

The, the, um, you can upgrade your character.

You can equip different like accessories to change your play styles.

There's melee combat, no weapons, but, uh, yeah, I thought it was really cool and weird.

And, um, yeah.

Like even now at conventions you're seeing people cosplay as both the main character and the screwed up, like mannequin girls.

So I like that.

It's adding to the, um, iconography of sign Hill left.

So yeah, again, one of my favorite games, um, Jeremy, do you play some of that?

I did.

I played the entire thing.

Um, I think that the highs were high and I think the lows were very low.

I'm curious Frank, did you?

So there was a when the game first came out.

I played it very shortly after release.

Uh, and there the combat was so sloggy like there was not the like pace of the combat but the amount of combat that there were uh, especially towards the end of the game.

Um, it was like okay, now like run from here to this other location, and it was like run a little bit combat arena, here's like 17 guys and like a mini boss run a little bit.

Here's another combat arena, these like mandatory combat arenas um, and it was like it was awful.

It was fucking, like, terrible.

To the extent that they patched the game and, like, tuned that shit down a lot.

So I have not played... The version of Silent Hill F that is available now, I have not played.

So I am curious.

Do you know if you played it before or after that?

So I know they added like a, a like a, like a simple mode or whatever like, but when i played it i played it on easy switch already reduced the amount of like, so i played it on easy.

It's like this is good, like like some of the fights were not too long um, and then i think i started new game plus on simple.

Everyone dies in like one or two hits.

But yeah, i played it on easy so it wasn't like padded.

But yeah, early on i was like, do i have to fight everything?

And my weapons broke and i was like oh no you you're, you're allowed to like keep running.

I was like oh okay okay, i got it.

But yeah, i played it on easy um, combat difficulty and then puzzle difficulty.

So for me i was like oh, this is a perfect interest.

I think that that i like like hard combat encounters and in fact i thought some of the boss fights were like genuinely interesting.

I thought it was like it was a little weird how much it was like it's kind of like a.

It has a souls like element to it and and not to be.

I hate when everyone is just like everything is souls like, but this literally is like uh like dodge, iframe windows and stuff um uh Yeah, I don't know.

I can totally see why someone would love this game.

I think some of the stuff that it does with the multiple endings that I won't get into is really, really fascinating, because the game changes as you play it, more and more.

And structurally, I think it's fascinating.

I think that the story is really, really good and interesting.

And yeah, i mean i i've only played silent hill one through four.

From what i gather, it seems like this is probably the best silent hill game in a very long time.

Um uh, i have very mixed feelings about it, but i i recognize that there is a lot of greatness in here that was sort of weighted down by a lot of the like heavy focus on combat um, so it's interesting that the difficulty, i think, may have uh, been like the differentiating factor for us between the two.

Yeah, that is fascinating.

Where does it feel like it goes mean, like.

And then the maybes or yeah, it's a maybe, like i don't think it's like a team top 10, but i i, i thought it was like yeah, just the celebration that there's a good new satin hill game is like a miracle in gaming, like that deserve its own award, like and i don't know, that's a notable achievement, so it's it's, it's worth just nominating.

But yeah, i just want to double check.

You've two games here that it looks like jesse put in aren't in this year.

Did you write that or did?

Oh no frank, did you write that?

The the, the dates?

Who did the dates?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, you did.

Sorry.

Jesse, your cursor was beside it on the dock, so I thought it was you.

Sorry.

I'm not a monster.

Yeah, let's not spend time on them if they're not from this year.

Was there anything you quickly wanted to say about either?

Were these games you played this year that came from previous years?

No, I don't have to mention any of those.

Are you sure?

Oh okay okay um, how about here?

Here's an interesting one monster hunter wilds you have here.

I forgot that came out this year, that was february of 2025.

Yeah, it was fantastic.

The only thing was like i was just out of cycle with any of my friends playing it.

So, like the last two monster hunters, those were quarantine games.

So i played like a year's worth of with friends and then this year like oh, none of my friends play, got it, they're like or like like, like we like.

So it's like, oh shit, like I'm still I don't know.

So so it's fantastic.

But then what I really enjoyed is just jumping in and playing with random Japanese players because they're so insanely good.

And it was delightful.

And so, yeah, I thought it was a fantastic game.

It was just weird.

That's like they made the best Monster Hunter ever.

But this was the one where it was like the friends that I had spent the last like six years or so playing the games with

Like I just you know, like one was a girlfriend that like, you know, we didn't play this one. together but um it was like oh shit so really loved it if i had that multiplayer experience i'm sure i'd be buzzing at the same way like people are buzzing about art graders it's fantastic there's never been a better you know time to jump into monster hunter um so yeah so it was just weird it was like the least one the least amount of hours i put into monster hunter but it's definitely the best one um i thought the switch one they did what like three years ago was like phenomenal monster hunter rise i think that one was like so casual friendly this new one i think just like takes that and just makes it even better because they built it from their ground up for next gen um so yeah so i really liked it but yeah i just didn't have that like the multiplayer magic those memories with friends the quarantine like laughs and all that stuff like that, that, that element wasn't there for me this time, but it is a fantastic game.

And so if you're intimidated by monster owners, like it's worth checking out.

And again, like every I feel like all multiplayers games now can solve this where it's like, even if you play single player, like it's easy to jump in, like even like world of Warcraft dungeon fighter.

It's like almost the same system.

You can queue up for mission, see other people on it.

You're immediately playing with people.

So it's fast, it's accessible.

I think they still update it.

Monster Hunter Mania is so big in Japan.

Like it's more popular than like Street Fighter.

Like it's crazy.

So yeah, really awesome game, but I didn't have the multiplayer magic this year.

So it's not like you know I wouldn't nominate in the top 10, but I think it's like definitely has potential of what you play with the right group of friends.

Excellent.

Thanks so much, Jesse.

Let's go over to you.

Pick another one of these guys.

Yeah.

Did anyone get a chance to play keep driving or is it still, am I the only driver out here?

I played a, Bunch of it when it first came out, and I played a little bit more during the break.

All right.

I unfortunately did not.

That's all good.

I feel like, uh, yeah, I'd love to know more thoughts on it.

I think it's just a great game.

Um, yeah, yeah.

Keep driving.

Very, very good.

Like, I guess you could call it like an Oregon trail style.

I, I'm not an Oregon trailer myself.

I don't know much about that.

Um, there were origins of video games, but uh yeah, keep driving.

Is is like a I guess you could say like FTL style adventure RPG sort of game where you are using different uh items that you collect along the way and keeping track of your gas and your own vehicle.

It's a 2d side scrolling game. adventure.

It's like a coming of age story.

You play as a young person out on their own for the first time in a beat up car trying to go to a music festival.

And then along the way you meet hitchhikers and bring them in and they become like it's, they become like party members.

I think the thing that keep driving does really well more than most other games that I've played this year is like systematizing and making narrative beats that line up with their own mechanics, like stuff that's from other games, like team members are hitchhikers.

It takes everything and turns it into a car.

Your armor is, or like your, your, uh, I guess it's like your armor is like the body of your car.

Your energy is literally your own energy.

Like you have to worry about your gas literally your gas as your resource to get between locations and not just like energy right.

Like all that stuff is really cool.

But then also the way you upgrade your cars.

Like you change your tires, you change out engine pieces.

Um, the music also like that is maybe the highest point for me is like the way that this game evokes a sense of wanderlust and like nostalgia, but for something that obviously, I mean, I'm, I'm 30, like I have nostalgia to some extent for road trips, but not like, not like this particular style of it.

It's, it's, I think it's Swedish rock bands.

A lot of the music, a lot of it's original.

Also, like there's a character that you unlock that gives you music.

This, the way the music impacts the story And the feel of the game.

Like as you're driving through these big winding areas and like the views you get in the background, the parallax effect of like all these mountains and these trees and, like that, just the vibes alone.

It's such a vibes game.

It's such a like where am I and what am I doing in this space and how does it make me feel?

Kind of thing.

When you meet someone and like you lose them, but then like you find them again later, like a hitchhiker, maybe you finish their quest and they'll show up again.

That's such a fun feeling.

There's so many things like that.

Or like it's another thing where I think making a game where you can like evoke some sense of what you get to do when you have that freedom for the first time.

Like when you get to go, be your own person and make your own decisions.

That can also mean you're free to do whatever you want and like make smart decisions, but also you're free to do whatever you want.

Maybe now you're gonna do drugs.

Maybe now you're gonna drink and drive like a jackass or you'll like you'll do some cocaine that you found in the woods.

It's that kind of game where you can do the things I just said are actual things you can do in the game and like you get punishments for them or you see interesting things, like it goes in a lot of weird directions.

I wasn't expecting it to.

But also it does the sort of thing that I think the game was almost.

It desperately wants you to feel as though you are free, like in a, in a game sense you can do whatever you want and go wherever you want, but there are risks involved in that.

You have to be considerate of the resources you have money and everything.

I, I loved playing it.

So it's funny.

Cause I hated it at first.

Cause I was mad that it wasn't letting me do like, I was like, why does this end?

Why does this end?

That's so stupid.

Why would I want to do it again?

And then I played it a couple more times and I was like, it ends.

Cause everything ends.

Jackass.

Yeah.

I was going to say this is Jesse having a conversation with God right before he's reincarnated.

Literally.

Why does this end?

Why is it over?

Why does this end?

I don't want to do it again.

It's so stupid.

Wasn't that the thing you liked about David Cage games 20 minutes ago?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They let you like – I almost want to go see what the other thing was.

But the frustration here is like I got to go back and I got to find him again and I got to do everything again.

It's not as fun.

Yeah, cool.

So what do you think?

Is it a top ten do you think?

Is it –

I mean, how did you feel about it?

You're the only other person who gave it a shot.

So here's the thing.

I respect what it does.

I think in the way that it is a vibes game, sometimes they just don't resonate with you as strong.

And I think I tried to get into it a few times because I love a road trip.

But for whatever reason, you know, it just it couldn't.

It never quite grabbed me.

Maybe it would at a different period.

And I see the quality in the game and I love the art style on it.

And you're right.

There are these moments that are that are really exciting, like a road trip where you meet somebody, or something interesting happens, or you get in a crash, or whatever you know, or you you get a ding, or you can overtake somebody, or whatever.

Yeah.

But yeah, I just could never get in the flow state with it.

That was the only thing.

I wanted to like it more than I did, if that makes sense.

That's totally fair.

That's basically where I was, like I said, when I started playing it.

I was like, I don't get it.

I don't really... I like the idea of it, but I don't like where it's going.

And now I do.

But it's one of those things where...

You're totally right.

Maybe because I'm 30 and I just started driving recently, I kind of get that feeling of like oh, this is, this is what it was like.

This is what it would have been like if I started doing it.

I was 20 on my own instead of like just going with buddies or family.

Yeah, I'd be cool with putting it at, not just because you know, it's just you know.

Yeah, I mean, I'm not like super.

I'm fairly passionate about it, but not to the point that I would say you know, we got to bump something down or whatever.

OK, I'm going to knock some of mine down.

It's not.

I forgot about not and I had just bunch of other stuff here that i want to put in.

Not, so i'll, i'll do that.

Um uh jeremy, go ahead.

What you got, what you got.

Oh, can we talk about ooh?

Really quick, let's talk about ooh.

Ooh is like so good.

Ooh is maybe the best game of the year.

Uh, ooh is is just.

It is just a it's it's.

I've said it before and i'll say it again it's just a perfect game.

There's nothing, nothing to change, nothing to add, nothing to take away.

It is like it is.

It is i, i don't know.

It's like this fucking, it's like this zen game design that, just like uh, the developer found this set of mechanics, iterated every conceivable possible like expression of what it could do.

Some of them feel like they were discovered by accident during development.

Some of them feel very intentionally part of the design of these mechanics.

And there's such a limited amount of mechanics and it just feels like it does everything it can do and that it ends.

It is a puzzle platformer.

I guess it's sort of like a Metroidvania, but I don't know.

People might debate whether this really counts.

There's only two power-ups in the whole game, two bombs.

You start with a bomb, you do a bunch of puzzles, you get a second bomb.

The bombs create momentum, and they explode in the order you lay them.

So you lay a bomb, you lay a second bomb.

When you hit detonate, the first bomb explodes.

If you're sitting next to it, it propels you sideways.

If you're sitting on top of it, it propels you... upward etc etc very very simple but but not like in a free-form physics ua it's kind of like in a grid way right like you can't you can't stand slightly on the edge of the bomb and go diagonal or anything like that you know right exactly which is important because uh they're it's that constraint is very essential to the sort of like puzzle design language of this game um For example, like if there's a little slot in the side of the wall, you can't stand below it on a bomb, explode upward, and then like just hold right and slot your way in.

You have to shoot yourself through momentum laterally into it.

So yeah, that constraint is very important.

This is not like a free 360 degree sort of like physics puzzle.

It's not gish.

Yeah, it's definitely not gish.

Very different expression of that sort of game.

But who is just like, I don't know.

I said this in the Game of the Year video.

I did that.

I played Super Metroid for the first time this year almost at the exact same time I was playing Ooo.

And I super Metroid was so ambitious and amazing and like atmospheric and cool and cinematic and like all these things and it's like it's such an achievement.

But the experience I had with who is was so much, so much more to my preference, because it felt like

It wasn't a game where the world was so big that I was like, how far do I need to backtrack?

Do I need to go shoot missiles or shoot my scanner at the wall three hours back?

Am I in the right biome?

Ooo is of a scale and scope that you almost always know what to do, and if you don't know what to do, it is sort of like... you look at the map and into it and it's like even animal well like i think animal well is fucking brilliant but there were moments where i was like a little in over my head even even as someone who played that game start to finish continuously it wasn't like i took breaks from it and forgot stuff i was like marking the map i was in it to win it um and something about ew is just like It's just elegant and seamless and cohesive, and then you beat it, and there's secret stuff I won't even get into that is so fucking hard and so demanding of you that I 100% did this game, and I think it was, I don't know, just one of the best games I've ever played in my life. yeah i haven't completed yet i play which is silly because it's like three hours long or something how long is it it's like you can probably do it in two okay yeah i think i'm like at the end almost i think i got hung up on one i forgot to get back to it yeah you said everything it's it's about as refined a video game as you can get it's it does exactly what it says on the tin and it's every every there's no every solution and every next puzzle feels like a step.

There's no, there's no plateau.

Just feels like it's always doing something different.

Yeah.

And then you feel cool.

Yeah.

When you have to backtrack, it's like you realize.

You know, it's those moments that like uh, like uh.

Oh my God, what's the?

You just said the name of the game, Jeremy.

It's completely right.

Sorry.

Super Metroid?

No, the, the, oh my God, Animal Well.

Oh, what is wrong with me?

We've been talking for two and a half hours and my brain stopped working.

Um yeah, Animal.

Well when, when you go and do something again or you go to an area and you have a new item or a new piece of information that you've learned you, you re-observe the area.

OO is just doing that the whole way through.

You either are learning something new or reexamining a place you've already been and realizing that the world is a different shape from the one that you were in previously.

It's like it's my favorite thing about puzzle games that are in this structure that are more like of a platformer style, or like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes or anything like that, where it's you're moving through an environment and re-examining spaces or blueprints, right.

You see things from a new perspective once you've got new information, things that you could do the whole time.

But you wouldn't know, because you you're observing the world with your own biases and seeing it the way that you you have because of all the games that you've played.

It's like a cumulative knowledge kind of thing.

It's That.

That is what I think makes it work so well is like it forces you to reconsider obvious stuff, because every eureka moment in that game and the two hours it took, I was like oh, obviously it works like that.

I was overthinking it more than anything else.

It was such a cool experience, man especially just cram it all in that tight time window was really impressive.

It's maybe one of the only games that gave me the Metroid-brainy feeling of Outer Wilds.

If you go back and play Outer Wilds.

It's so funny how you can just be like, oh yeah, and you do this, and you do this, and you do this and the game's over.

But when you play it the first time, it's this like this epic odyssey and replaying life, isn't it?

It's like when you're a kid.

You're like what the fuck is going on.

It's like when you go into a classroom again for the first time and you're like this is way smaller than i remember it.

Yeah, it is like that replaying it was so funny because i, when i replayed it for the game of the year playthrough um, i played it in like an hour, just because it's like you just cry, rush it, and that was that was including moments where i saw skips that were available, that i was like i know how to get past this, but i'm not supposed to know how to do that yet.

Um, and yeah, the pureness of the design that you hit the end of a biome and it's just like all right, you don't get a power up, you don't get anything, you just know more.

Now it's very, it's just confident and pure.

All right, sticking in the top 10 and why do another one while you're there?

Yeah, for sure um, i oh.

Let's talk about White Knuckle briefly.

Sure.

It has been a while since I've played this game.

I did revisit it to prepare for Game of the Year.

I got ludicrously obsessed with this game.

I needed to complete it, and it is a hard fucking game.

White Knuckle is a climbing game where one mouse button is one hand, the other mouse button is the other hand and you're moving the mouse and hitting WASD to move.

Have you...

I think it was at our meeting yesterday.

You said you had a problem with your mouse where if you click the middle button, it clicks.

Sometimes it clicks all of the buttons.

Yes.

This could be a hack for White Knuckle now.

Playing on a hard mode.

I did.

They're gonna get kicked out of the white knuckle championship for fucking spoofing.

Uh i, i loved this game so much and i i was so obsessed with it that i have been afraid to revisit it now that they've added more to it, because i just don't know if i can take it.

You know what i mean.

Like i don't, i don't know if my body is capable of enduring that, because the way white knuckle works is you're climbing through these biomes and eventually you hit a point where it's like all right, you found a disc or you can purchase a disc.

You can save here.

And then if you die past that, you revert to the save, but the save goes away.

So it's not necessarily a pure rogue-like.

There are sort of like moments of stop gaps or whatever, but they're very limited.

And this is a very knowledge-gated game as well.

There are points you get to where it's like, oh no, I'm in the dark and I have like a flare gun and something's chasing me and I'm in the elevator shaft and I don't know where to go.

Where do I go?

But the thing is chasing me and should I use the flare to shoot the thing or do I need to see?

And you're like the flashlight.

You have to, like crank the flashlight to see and you're like, and it's just, it's so overwhelming and fun and that when you start to get a handle on those things and get into a state of flow, it feels so fucking good, because it truly is like.

It's like stepping on to it's like your step on the field with a bunch of like NBA players.

They don't play on a field, but you know what I mean?

The court and there you're like, I could never keep up with these guys.

And then you try for 10 hours and you're like, all right, I just fucking like juked Allen Iverson.

Like, that's incredible.

I don't know.

There's there's a feeling of mastery and flow here.

And the novel control scheme really contributes to that.

It is a novel set of motions, of muscle memory, of mechanics that, like it, does not translate previous video game scale.

It feels like you're starting from zero.

And I just had a wonderful experience with this game.

Yeah.

Where does it feel like it goes?

In the maybes?

I, for me, this is... I personally also would put it top 10.

I think White Knuckle is just revelatory.

It's such a good video game.

I loved it.

I think I got scared by how challenging it got later.

I remember doing the quick look with you.

Physically, you couldn't handle it.

You were like, I can't watch you play this game.

It's making me uncomfortable.

I think originally I thought it was because of the height aspect, but I think it is the chase.

You're constantly feel like something is at your heels, whether it's the rising sludge or something you've seen or

Yeah, but I and I what I love about it as a climbing game is that it is like for a game that's like.

It doesn't have that much physics stuff going on in it.

Like, everything is kind of set.

And then you can, like, obviously put bolts in places and do all that.

But it feels super physics-y.

It feels very, like, jumping across.

The high-level stuff does get physics-y too, though.

Oh, it does?

You can boost with certain items and stuff.

And there's, like, rope darts where the ropes are physics-y.

You can like throw a rebar down and, like i've seen speed runners who just grab a bunch of rebar they jump off a gap where it's like it would take you 20 minutes to climb around and then they just like rebar rebar, rebar and they just like triple jump across their rebar jumping Yeah, it's like rocket jumping, rebound jumping.

Sorry, it didn't click for me.

See, the old brain.

The old brain.

Jeremy, you looked at me like I just said a slur.

No, I thought there was more to that sentence.

I thought it was like a pregnant pause.

I was like, yeah, speak on that.

Speak on that.

Fuck, i was gonna say something and now i forgot.

Oh uh, i think it just because like, again we have entered the world of vibes.

Genre is dead.

So much of what video games are about now is how they make you feel.

For a climbing game, i was more of a hypogea person this year.

That was like that was the level i was at.

I was just like chiller, we're chilling, we're chilling, we're chilling.

A similar like, weirdly like a cousin of White Knuckle as well.

They're both very gritty, rusty, climbing-y, platform-y games.

Yeah, Hyper-G will ask you to go like smoke a blunt after Thanksgiving dinner, but White Knuckle will ask you to go like hit a rail, you know.

White Knuckle's doing key bumps in the bathroom.

100%.

Okay, cool.

We'll stick that in the top 10 as well then.

That's awesome.

Let's go, Frank.

What else you got?

Yeah.

Is there any of these that feel like something you're like super, that pops out to you?

That's like the one you couldn't have done without this year.

Or they're all feeling pretty like 80%.

Once Upon a Katamari is fantastic.

This is like the first new Katamari we've had since, like the Vita stand, like spinoff in, like 2014.

Again, not made without Keta Takahashi's approval or consent or whatever you know whatever um, but it's fantastic.

It's a colorful, delightful katamari game.

They added power-ups, which makes it uh, like there's a little bit of like vampire surviviness with it.

Where there's a power-up, you get that's like a magnet that just sucks in everything, but it allows you to like.

It feels like they just made it faster.

The gameplay is even faster and um, you could 100 the entire game in like 15 hours.

So again, i appreciate games that aren't too long or too demanding um, so the soundtrack was also really fantastic.

They got like a bunch of, like you know, hip contemporary artists to collaborate, make stuff.

So, like, I think Chemicals and this game, they did, like, anime theme song music.

Yeah, the soundtrack's fantastic.

Again, the reason I like Katamari, it's so colorful, like, serotonin positive.

Like, I love it.

All the cute chibi art like yeah, it's just, it's like the perfect game to me and there was like no fault with this game.

I loved it and so much so it's like yeah, make a new one.

That just keep churning about, i don't care, i love these games.

So yeah, i thought it was fantastic, again it's, but it's the same thing where it's like it's a sequel, it's it's a, you know also, maybe also like a legacy sequel.

So it's not like this defined 2025 as a brand new game, but like legitimately like one of my favorite games of the year.

But um yeah, so i just want to mention once upon a catamari is fantastic, Excellent.

Any other one in there?

How did you find Ghost of Yotai?

So I played a chunk of that and I have complicated feelings about it.

I don't know why.

I think they nailed the first one so well that in a way, I felt like I was enjoying this.

But I had enjoyed a lot of this before.

Um, i don't think i connected with the character as much.

I think the story and the and the voice work is really good, but i just don't.

I didn't feel as on her side as jinn, like and and the central sort of revelation that's around, that didn't really.

It was interesting, i think, and i had a slow build and maybe i needed to play more of it to connect with it.

I thought the combat was great.

I thought the the, the different stances stuff was fantastic.

The combat in it is is immensely much better.

Um, but it felt a little bit like playing far cry 4 after far cry 3, where i was like, oh yeah yeah, you go to the place to do the thing, you do the stuff to do.

You know what i mean.

Like it didn't have that fresh kind of uh, fresh kind of this to it.

How did you find it?

Yeah i, i think i played maybe like a dozen hours of it.

I know it's a game i'll definitely, like you know, like get hooked into at some point during a lull.

I just wish it was like faster getting in and out of things, because it has the loop of like almost maybe even like Red Dead Redemption 2's pacing where it's like alright, you have to sit down, look at your map, let's go over here, let's ride the fucking horse.

Oh shit, it's a mountain.

Which of the four directions do I have to come across?

I have to grapple, like...

I hit like that kind of thing, like too many times of where the hell is the.

Sorry, I'm getting so coarse.

Where the hell am I finding the entrance?

Jeremy pissed in a bottle.

You're fine.

Yeah, dude, it's all fucking... It's all on the table now, man.

But yeah, so it's like...

I liked it.

Like I didn't mind the friction, like during the Once you're in the bandit camps, like oh man yeah, the like parrying the combat, like even if you get killed you maybe lose like five minutes of It's like not too far back, so I don't mind that.

But like this is the example of like where i like games like ninja guide and more, where it's like great level after level after level i'm i think it's just the open world fatigue hit me, whereas the first one i didn't mind.

I also think the first one was maybe less technically like oh, look at you.

Can you can, i don't know, clap shit together at your?

I hate all that playstation controllers.

There's a lot of that stuff in it.

You can skip a lot of it, but like The fact that it like I wanted a button that says never asked me to make a fucking fire again.

You have to, every time it starts doing, do you want to skip this?

You have to hold the button down.

I'm like, just let, I get it.

I don't want to do this now.

I like, I just want to go into camp, kill a bunch of ninjas, get their loot and move on.

Like, so again like i just needs and i think i can enjoy that more if it's not the end of the year like all right let's try to play every you know yeah so so it's it's totally a cool game i platinum the first one i know this will be a good game to chill out with um again like i will say like the unique things i like the kill bill-esque like revenge plot i playing it with japanese audio having takashi make a mode where it's like even more uh hyper blood gore is fantastic doing it with the other the watsanabe mode which has like the lo-fi hip-hop like soundtrack it's such a cool blend of stuff so it's just a game i have to come to when i'm in the right mood and stuff um yeah so it's good but yeah i wish it was just a little like okay yeah a little more accelerated and faster so again that's why i like i love i didn't beat ninja gaiden 4 i played ninja gaiden 2 black which is like the remaster remake of ninja gaiden 2 and those are awesome awesome it's just um yeah i think it's the open world fatigue it was like all right i get i get it let me just go into the camps and kill people one after another so but maybe i can play that game and um with that approach but yeah some of the open world collectible stuff because i had 100 of the first one it was like oh i kind of don't want to do all of this again but it's good but yeah yeah i feel similar well so we won't make the top 10 uh we'll put it in not for now but um yeah it's quality game it's just i might that i'm open world fatigue is a good way of putting it i think there just wasn't really enough there to keep me, keep me hooked in.

Although I did enjoy playing what I played.

I just kind of had my fill, I think at a certain point.

Um, let's go to, uh, Jesse, pick one of these.

I, I, I put split fiction in with yours.

Did you play it?

Cause I didn't in the end.

You did.

Yeah.

You enjoyed them, right?

Yeah.

Well, so I loved it.

It's maybe a stretch.

I remember those Joseph Farris games.

Yeah.

I love when he says the fuck the Oscars.

It's so funny.

Um, okay.

Here's the thing.

Let me get through this one quickly.

Cause I, I don't think this will end up anywhere near the top 10.

Uh, split fiction is just, it is the first one.

What was the one that they made last that one game of the year?

What was it?

It takes two.

I like that game so much.

I can't remember the name.

It takes three.

It's, it's.

I mean, basically it kind of feels like split fiction, feels like every idea that they had left on the table for it takes two.

They just kind of crammed into one game.

Sometimes that works and it means you could do something weird, like you play as a pig who turns into a sausage and then you roast the sausage.

You know, that's really cute and funny.

That sounds great.

And then sometimes it's just like.

That's gameplay co-op stuff.

That's, that's just like very basic and straightforward.

Like you jump and then the player makes a platform for me to jump onto.

We did this already, you know, like it takes two was great.

You're just doing that again.

But like, it's clearly, this is the stuff that either, either you thought was really good.

And you just didn't have the resources to use.

But now they're like, hey, make another one.

And you're like, all right, sure.

I don't know what the situation may have been in development, but that's kind of what it feels like from my perspective, just from playing it.

I don't think it works narratively either.

I think there were fair complaints with It.

Takes Two, especially when we were having the Game of the Year debate.

I think the very first one that we had.

Um, I think you guys were all pretty harsh on the narrative for or at least somebody was Dennis, I believe was was pretty harsh on it.

Oh, was it Dennis?

Yeah.

He was on the very first game of the year one.

Yeah.

He was like, the story sucks, dude.

And I was like, no, I like it.

But now retrospective was kind of dumb.

This, the story in this is bad.

Like it's so bad.

It's actually distracting how bad it is for a game about two writers who are authors, who have published novels.

The writing in this game is absolutely horrendous.

I've seen clips of it.

Does it have a funny book, at least?

No!

There's no Hakeem!

What's the point?

Oh, he's me!

He's the book!

Hey!

Your stories are as bad as my narrating!

That guy... It takes two.

I was just, like, screaming, just get divorced already, the whole fucking game.

I saw clips of Split Fiction, and I was like, I can't play this.

I feel so bad because I'll probably play it with Chelsea someday, because she bought it and she was like we should play it.

And I was like, I...

I don't want to be that guy who, like I, don't want to hate this game and I don't want to play it with you.

And I neither want to be the person who's like bottling up my hatred, nor do I want to be just spewing critique of it while I play it.

But the clips I've seen of the writing are just like, I don't know.

I don't know, man, what they're thinking over there.

The thing is it's still really fun, like despite the fact that it feels sort of like they're doing the greatest hits of the album that never came out, for it takes two.

Like it's still.

They're the best at making this exact kind of game, this co-op experience that's asynchronous, where one player is doing something that is completely on a different level, visual style at times, like it's.

It's crazy what they do in the sci-fi world and in the fantasy world, the only two settings video games are ever allowed to have, and they go all over the place with it.

Like the side stories are really good, like it's all.

It's all exactly what you would want.

From the follow-up to it takes two which weirdly, is like almost a knock on it, because it's like i kind of wanted you to get a little bit weirder and not more straightforward with it In a world in which, like there are and like this is not a knock on them because they're like a fair play to them.

And I think a lot of these games I've tried to get into or tried to find someone to play them with me and my wife have like, threatened to do this over and, over and over again.

And we haven't, I think the only one we played was the prisoner one.

Yeah.

Get out.

Oh no.

And then back in the day, of course I played brothers or two sons.

Um, in a world in which we are constantly talking about these amazing games and then wondering why they don't sell, the fact that this game is a 50 game that has 20000 steam reviews that are overwhelmingly positive.

These games are so popular.

It's fucking crazy.

If you make a game that's designed to multiplayer and co-op is like the hottest thing right now.

Just make one of those five bucks and people will buy it.

I love my friend slop, but like this, this works because it's so good.

It's just so good, like it's nothing else.

Is this specifically co-op that's designed where both players are doing something different the entire time?

Yeah yeah, it takes two was so mechanically polished that, like i despite the fact that the writing irked me the entire time, i didn't like any of the characters and i didn't care about the world and like other than the fact that it was bad, it was great.

The fact that it sucked no, it didn't suck, it was.

In spite of hating basically everything about it, i had a wonderful time with it.

That's exactly how i feel.

That's how much.

That's a terrible box.

That's amazing.

That's fucking incredible.

That should be one of our categories game i hated.

I hated so much that i liked it, Yeah.

OK.

Yeah.

So split fiction and then and Roger, I want to get through quickly.

Oh, yeah.

You and I sort of talked about this off the pod.

Yeah.

So I want to I think I didn't I did not do a spoiler warning at the start of this podcast.

I probably should have.

But I think we have actually been fairly restricted.

We have not really spoiled anything.

If you want to play on Roger.

There is no way of talking about this game without talking about the biggest spoiler in the game.

I'm sorry.

So like that's that's just going to happen.

So please skip ahead five minutes.

I would also actually put a trigger warning on this one as well, because it deals with a very particular topic.

Mental health issue that sort of and we're now entering spoiler modes affects people of a certain age.

So if that sounds like something you want to get away from, just knock ahead five minutes and yeah, we'll talk about it.

Jesse, yeah, go ahead.

Yeah.

And Roger is like it's a mechanical version of dealing with somebody living with Alzheimer's, where it is like a first person experience to some extent, not like literally the camera, but you are playing and Making actions for a woman who is dealing with living with Alzheimer's and like the mental state that she's in from start to finish.

It opens as if you're playing one game telling you a story.

That is something that is not what's going on.

And from the player's perspective, your lack of understanding is what makes that work.

And then you figure out why you didn't understand what was going on.

And all of a sudden, all the pieces of the puzzle fall into place.

There were moments throughout this game where I found myself performing an action not out of a mechanical desire to advance the story, out of desperation.

And the game reflected that, like it was leading me along this journey to do something, to move the mouse in a certain way, or a button on the screen to do something.

And it was reflecting my own feelings.

Like it's such a good, it did such a good job of directing me to feel a specific way.

And maybe that's again because part of it is like I don't, I don't know anyone who's lived through this.

I don't know how that feels for some people.

So it was a totally novel experience for me.

Um, and seeing how that plays out and like, I had no perspective on it.

I didn't see it coming whatsoever.

And that works for me.

And it made it stick.

I think, more than if I had already known what that experience is like for some people.

But Danny, we spoke about it off the pod and you were saying, like you, you've seen this coming.

Like you, you saw the story coming and it didn't land as well for you.

Well, I, so I think I've, I've time has helped with this.

I think, I think I really this is a piece of art.

This is one of the best games, probably of the year.

I i i wanted to talk to everyone about it before because you had it down on your on your list.

Um, the yeah, i mean, mileage is going to vary on this one.

I have plenty of people in my life who have had alzheimer's, died from it, who have alzheimer's, and we recently had a diagnosis in our not in my immediate family, but someone very close to us is dealing with early onset.

She's about a year and a half into it.

I don't know if it's something that happens a lot back home or something, but some of these people are also over here.

But it is a disease that I have some degree of familiarity with.

The game opens with you playing as a young girl who wakes up in a strange house and there's a strange man on the uh, at the, at the the, the um table or whatever in the living room.

I think it was the third screen of the game.

I went oh, this is an old person who has alzheimer's.

So i, i immediately got it and i think, because i did, i felt like i had to sort of cosplay some of playing this game, because i think i wasn't meant to figure it out, that i think people i think there's probably a big scale.

I think there's people who probably like, have a revelation at the end.

I think there's probably a lot of people who get it in the middle.

You know what i mean?

That was like yeah i, i.

So i think that's probably where you're meant to feel it and there's a sorrow in that, because i do think that, like it's not, I don't think it would be as as fun a game if at the end, it's like would you kindly have Alzheimer's?

You know what I mean?

Like if it was like doing a, we gotcha.

I don't think, exactly.

I don't think it works that.

I think, like the whole, so much of the game is about you feeling like understanding what's going on more than your character does.

And that's like really sad.

Um, so I felt like a little bit annoyed that I just sort of tweaked it early.

Um, but it's fucking really affecting, like it's heartbreaking.

It's really heartbreaking.

It's, it's beautiful as well.

And then it's heartbreaking.

Like it.

It like there's the.

There's a moment in this game, which could easily have been the end of the game, where you have this.

They do this mechanic with the controls where it's all basically about.

Like, the problem with Alzheimer's is that there are two victims.

There's lots of victims, but in most situations with Alzheimer's, the person who has Alzheimer's is the initial victim and their caregiver is the second victim.

And oftentimes the and it's not maybe the case in the in the character you play seems to be quite tormented.

I know lots of most people I know who have had Alzheimer's have sort of not been that tormented like they.

They have maybe gone very quiet in that.

In the other direction it affects people completely differently.

And then, uh which can be the case and then basically the person who's the caregiver has to sort of watch their partner disappear in front of them and then kind of kind of go while still being alive.

Um, and that's really horrible and traumatic and is something that you know, i've seen and we're going to have to deal with again um, over the next couple of years.

And uh, i think the the way the game handles the color first of all, like the color they use to signal who is who and what is what.

And then the way in which your characters like um, there's a whole thing about, like you know, silly things like i think there's a, there's a part where she's cooking and um, the husband has left notes around and or like drawn outlines of where the spoon should go, and she in her head is saying, why does he do these things?

Like what is the?

He's so silly, he's so silly with his notes, you know, and like you don't know that that's so.

And if you know, like if you know what's coming from your perspective I can't even imagine what that feels like.

But I didn't right.

So I was like yeah, it is a quirky relationship thing like that's.

I figured something was going on.

But the way that the story is told non-linearly, I was like oh, maybe this is just like something traumatic happened early in this character's life and you sort of see it play out.

But you realize obviously later that that's not the case.

So Thinking back on that stuff made it hit a lot harder.

But in the moment it's like you're drawing your own conclusions as things are happening, in a way that that is almost unfair by the end, because now every conclusion that you've drawn up till that point crashes in and you're like oh, that's what that was.

I can't believe I thought it was this.

Oh, that I wish I had that experience.

Yeah.

But I love that you have this experience.

That's a totally different one.

Yeah.

I think my experience was probably much. sadder earlier.

Yes.

Which, you know, because it's... Especially with a child.

Like, it's a fucking... She's about the same age as my daughter.

Oh, yeah.

Like, she's scared.

She runs across to the bakery.

But it's weirdly familiar.

You know?

Oh, it's like, It's so.

It's really really saddest game of this year, no question, no question.

And and also has these moments of absolute beauty and and celebration of life.

Yeah, you know, it's like what's this?

And like what you're willing to go through for the people that you love like yeah like, and and and really honest parts like when, when he loses his temper and when he can't deal with it, and oh, it's fucking.

Yeah, it's a real.

You can, you can i don't know who made it you can tell they are very intimately aware of.

Probably, you know, I'm not, you know this.

This, a lot of this, was like ants and things like that.

Right.

Like and for my, one of my best friend's mom um, was diagnosed incredibly young like, like eight years ago now in her in her early fifties um, and is still around.

Um and, but it does.

It is a disease that eventually kills people because it just affects your brain's ability to do anything.

One of my, uh, I know somebody who, um, fell down the stairs.

And uh, the problem was a lot of this stuff like dementia and Alzheimer's is that you often can't relearn things.

So you just don't walk again, because you broke your ankles for a month and then you, you forgot how to do that thing.

You know what I mean?

Like it's, it's bananas.

So yeah.

Um, yeah, I think it's great.

I think for me, it's a top 10.

I don't know about you, Jesse.

I agree.

We'll put it in for now.

Yeah.

And sorry for spoiling that game to everyone else.

Welcome back from spoilers.

We're done.

Welcome back.

No more spoiling.

We're done.

No more spoiling any games.

Frank, there's a couple of good games on here.

Yeah, we should talk about Despilote.

If we're getting games on the top 10.

Oh shit.

Okay.

That wasn't even in here.

Okay.

He's stealing one.

I love it.

Let's go.

I didn't know.

When did you play it?

Uh, over the holiday.

I mean, hell yeah.

I forget.

You stream it.

I feel like I, I feel like, okay.

Well, I have a, I have a friend.

I mean, like, so my stream is like international audiences.

So like, we're always like trying to speak Spanish or Japanese.

So like anytime we find something that's so culturally unique.

Like I have a friend who lives in a Columbia, um, which now thanks to, uh, um, what was it?

Pluribus.

There was a whole episode.

I haven't watched it yet.

I want to watch it.

Don't want yet.

South America is cool.

I want to go.

It seems terrifying, but I want to go.

Um, but that's below it.

It makes it seem so warm and inviting, but I, I just want to, should I take the throne?

Like Jesse, who wants to talk about it?

You picked up the ball.

Yeah.

Yeah, so despilote is incredible because it feels like like the video game, that's most like a documentary.

It is such a genius way of making a game, making a i don't know, like making an art.

It's incredible.

So the context despilote is a hyper specific game that takes place uh, in ecuador, during the 2002 world cup.

Uh, you are 19.

Is it 2002?

Thanks, or it's like to qualifier, so maybe it's earlier.

I thought it was the 19, 98 or whatever.

I'll look it up.

Um, so yeah, it's like you and your classmates everyone loves football and uh, in your, in your classes, you're daydreaming of football.

As soon as the bell rings, you're out, you're out in the field playing football and like it's such an adorable game because it's just like i don't know, maybe a degree is kind of like frog detective to me, like what it scratches this itch, like there's so many cute unique characters and there's like running gags and callbacks throughout the game.

Like one of my favorite details is like there's a couple on a picnic that you encounter a few times and every time you like kick the ball and like break a wine glass and the couple starts arguing like why would you like?

It's so cute.

Yeah, and like again everyone's speaking Spanish and it's just like hola, like it's so like there's even a like an hola button.

It's so cute.

And they're making, like, they're making i forget the specific you know cuisine but it's like they're selling uh you know food on on the vendor carts and stuff like that and there's tvs with football everyone stops to watch your your father who is an actual film like filmmaker has a video store and there's like pulp fiction vhs cassette tapes there's like so much rich texture in this video game uh also the game shows off like the geometric mapping how they like there's an element of the game where it like shows oh yeah we actually went down to ecuador and scanned this game like it's yeah it just it kind of like it's such an engaging piece of media like it's a video game but it feels like a documentary of this kid telling his journey of just being like being in football obsessed ecuador in the 2000s it also reminds him of his family and just like the joy of being a child and playing that experience like i was my mom would take me to russia in the 90s and 2000s and again being in america like we barely care about soccer but now when you're in europe it's like oh shit football's everywhere like i noticed like when we went to embark for uh uh the ark raiders as soon as we got off the plane in like sweden there's like a like a an hd tv ad and they're advertising like football looks the best on our tvs i was like oh damn i'm in europe you're like holy crap um so yeah despilote was fantastic and it reminded it reminded me of also being in russia as a kid and like everyone being obsessed with football i think i was in moscow like during the 2002 world cup so everyone was watching on tv like i think i like so it's kind of funny to see even though i was at a different continent almost having the same identical experience of just being in a different country where everyone's obsessed and talking about football seeing on that tv so it reminded me of like my childhood going to russia and experiencing different culture so um yeah that would have been your favorite world cup ever it was in japan and south korea oh my god yeah This is what I love about despilote.

It doesn't matter who you're talking to.

Once someone has played it immediately, you get flashbacks to what sports is like for people.

Even if you're a sports ball motherfucker like, even if you're like I don't care about what, do they get a goal in hockey or something?

Who cares?

Like you realize that sports is about people.

Like it's about the way that everyone comes together and becomes excited for something collectively.

It's like a sport or an event or anything.

Like even if you, again, don't care about sports, you you realize the human impact.

You get on that bandwagon, you go to, you go to Russia with your mom and you learn about sports again and you see the impact of football or, like you,

I think back to you know, when I was a really little kid, being in the Dominican Republic and like kicking a football around with like the kids there who had nothing to eat.

We'd like bring my mom.

My mom always tell stories about bringing them jars of peanut butter and macaroni and cheese and they'd be Wow for for just to kick a football around with me and like I didn't speak any Spanish, so they would like teach me little thing like hola and you know all that, not nada, and all that like very simple, like Dora the Explorer Spanish, but still that's all I remember anyway, like that's.

This game has this superpower of where, no matter who or what it comes into contact with you, get immediately introspective in this way.

They made a new trailer for it, Panic, I think the publisher, right?

Made a trailer for this game that's six minutes long and it feels like a John Boyes documentary about the-.

Oh, that's crazy really.

Danny, you need to watch that doc.

Okay, I gotta check that out.

If you were in marketing and not in, well, I guess you are in marketing, aren't you?

I was about to say it, but you beat me to it.

That is what you would make.

It's so cool.

It's such a powerful game.

I love it too.

I talked before about the Irish 1994 World Cup and how it basically took over the country.

This was very similar, obviously, for Ecuador.

I really love it.

It's great.

It's been a while since I've played it, so maybe some of my high emotional feeling about it has somewhat dissipated, but love the art style.

The ball control is weirdly good for a weird little first-person indie game.

It should be a multiplayer game.

Maybe make that.

Where's that?

It's Rematch.

We're going to talk about that soon.

It also does this, like there were times when I was playing Despilote where I felt like I was playing a first person like computer RPG, in a weird way.

Like there were moments where I felt like I was playing 2002 Ecuador World Cup, Oblivion or something like.

There is a way in which especially games told in first person can do this thing where they function, sometimes just in pocket.

Sometimes it's not the entirety of the game.

But pockets of games like that can function as almost as like interactive museum exhibits.

And there are moments where Despilote feels like I am, like I'm walking into a museum that has elaborately recreated a specific time and place.

Or like when you go to like like old, like Plymouth Plantation, and there's like the people who are like I'm the blacksmith.

And today I'm like, we're making Johnny cakes today.

And you're like, oh, that's interesting.

This is like how they lived um.

Despilote very effectively translates that experience of like the period costume actors into interactive video game place um and just being able to like walk around there.

The game feels so much larger than it is because of the degree of freedom uh the, the sequence where your mom tells you to wait on a bench for her and you can check your watch and you can just like go off and wander around.

You can kick the ball at bottles and get yelled at and stuff.

You can ruin the picnic.

Like it just, this game feels way bigger than it is.

And I think um the, the extent, the specificity and the texture of life and the, the degree to which these things are realized, is done in a way that is both like it's both minimalist and maximalist.

That I think the uh the, the sort of like um.

3d scan of the area that they translate into this sort of like dot matrix looking dithery thing.

Uh, it is.

It is like a very effective way of creating a world without having to like hand, model and detail a million fucking art assets to like.

Yeah, i wanted to ask you something about that because this is something that i was thinking about.

Um, just as i think frank was talking about the game, was i?

That is a very effective like production and budget solution, but i was thinking about the voice acting.

And obviously the voice acting we, we know we talked about before.

You know he just got his parents, who i think have subsequently broken up or something.

Maybe he got them to like speak, not subsequently, but like years ago.

Actually did i think so.

Am i wrong about that?

That sounds right.

I feel like you've talked about at least.

Yeah,

Maybe it comes up in the game.

I forgot.

It's been so long since I played it, but he got them together to basically like just chat.

Like you were in the car in 2002 and I'll record it.

And it's so naturalistic.

But the other thing is it sounds like it was recorded on like a in, like a place like the game.

Has this rough documentary, like frank said, style to even the recordings and the world, the way the world is done with this, like minimalist dithered, colored world, i think if you, if they had attempted to do stuff with, like you know, recorded audio in boots or this or like a, or like a more realistic attempt to look at the world, it would deny you the ability to imagine the world in your head.

Like it does that thing that old games did, where you you you, you have only a small version of the character and your brain fills in the rest.

And I think that's why it feels big because it allows it, it hands it over to you.

And like, I know lots of games that have done the like lo-fi aesthetic thing.

And it almost always feels like it's probably a shout out to something in the past or a budget thing.

And that's totally fine.

This was the first, this felt like an NYU game because of this.

This was one of the first games I played that felt like, oh, this, they did all of this to trick you into thinking you're in this place, like to really let your brain take over, which I think is such a, daring design concept to basically go like we're gonna let we're gonna we're not gonna do it we're gonna let your brain fill in the blanks like i think that was so cool yeah it's a fantastic game it's a really just like affecting piece of media that is also just kind of like a just a delightful experience um you know art can sometimes be like and roger where it like it takes you through this like harrowing experience it makes you feel deep thing like the type of things where you like you know call your loved ones afterwards and whatever um and despilote does some degree of that but like ultimately i think it's just it's is a real like celebration of of life and of social fabric and connection and shared interest and uh community yeah all right we're sticking the top 10 all four of us enjoyed that one so there we go we can't go anywhere else let's do a couple more games and we'll take another short break um jeremy sorry yeah jeremy you've got a couple of ones here what are you thinking about some of these uh oh boy uh let's talk about consume me okay briefly um i really like to consume me a lot this is a life simulator kind of visual novelty adjacent but more like life sim game you play as a young sort of like um bouncing between like overachiever and underachiever very like high pressure from your parents to achieve but also like sometimes you're fucking up and it is left up to you to adhere to this like very lofty goals for um In part body image like maintaining your diet and exercise routine part of it is grades part of it is like trying to impress a particular guy or maintain a relationship things like this all the pressures that young people go under and and it it's so successfully gamifies the stress of that that it is like. it is it's almost like a horror game for someone who was like uh in a lot of like ap classes as a kid and like you know someone who suffered from a lot of that pressure of people being like we know you're capable of this so like only a's right and it's like oh i guess so like i'm gonna do my best but it's like what the fuck what if i fuck up a little bit what if i get a b is that like yeah i don't know um And I think that somehow, even though that, that pitch sounds like it would be the most stressful game ever.

It is also like, it's just silly and delightful and weird.

There's like, there's different outfits with different modifiers.

One of them is called egg bow and egg bow has like a egg character on it.

And it's just like when I put on egg bow.

I like Not only do my stats change, but in real life I'm like I'm fucking rocking Egbo today.

I can do anything.

There's a real sense of personality that shines through in this.

And yeah, it kind of feels like playing a very personal sort of like slice of life, manga or something a little bit.

Right.

Yeah.

There's an element of that to it, but it's also very systemically, mechanically rich as well.

Yeah, and it's a game that I think the UI design in this game is like second to none.

It is incredible.

You know, there's that juice again.

You know, just everything really pops.

And it has the sort of you know this war of mine feel to it as well where you kind of can't win or cart life right.

Where it's like, you, you kind of can't win it.

You know what I mean?

Like you, you're going to fall.

You're going to fall down somewhere.

You know you're going to try and get all the right, eat the right, all the right food and do the puzzle and and all this.

But like it's it like Balancing a healthy existence, especially as a the characters based on the lead designer.

So a young Asian-American woman is.

You know there's there's so much expected of you and like it's kind of impossible.

And yeah, I'm sort of the like a horrible thing for a adolescent to have to worry about, or a young adult, you know.

Yeah, kind of like we were talking about with Baby Steps.

I think that the mechanics in this game are such a profound expression of the themes that to min-max effectively enough to do well in this game and to live up to the standard that you were supposed to live up to, as this young, overachieving woman is to destroy yourself in the process.

And I think that that is so beautiful that to live a healthy, normal, balanced childhood is like, is almost kind of the fail state for this game yeah um and to destroy yourself in the pursuit of like i have to become like a doctor and i have to have like a boyfriend and i have to be skinny and like to to achieve all of these things is to like drive yourself fucking insane um and i think that that is it is a real tension the game sucks you into that fantasy as well where it's like you want to live up to these things you don't want to max all your stats you don't what are you what are you a loser you're playing a video game dork you're just a bad gamer yeah It's also, it is sort of like an expression of, it's always paired with a Sid Meier quote, but I don't think it's actually a Sid Meier quote.

I think there's two quotes that often are said together, but it's the idea that if you give players the ability to optimize the fun out of a game, they will.

And so the designer's job in some sense is to protect players from themselves.

I think that Consume Me, part of the brilliance of this is that it goes, it cuts sort of the opposite direction where it's like, it invites you to, hyper optimized to such an extent that it's like it shows you the harm of um of of min maxing as like a gameplay style yeah yeah it's funny actually how much of a how much it and i hadn't considered it on baby steps being interesting experiments and being men or women the men version of that is going out into the woods in a onesie and falling on your ass and the woman version is just like learning how to get over your eating disorder exactly yeah men have to go for a walk yeah that's what we do to solve our problems or to take a break in the altars why not or or clone yourselves a bunch or take a break uh between um what game was this monster hunter games is that what it was right yeah you went for a walk in between no no death stranding it was death stranding death stranding oh sorry his own death strand between death strand exactly he did he found he found his own princess beach he pissed at his own bones um that's jeremy sorry actually what no it's it's blood grenades oh it's blood grenades and that's right are there p grenades frank yeah i just piss So when you go to the shower, it collects your piss.

And then when you go to the bathroom, it collects your pee and poop.

And then you use them as grenades to throw.

What if I pee in the shower?

What if I poo in the shower?

Don't do that.

I forget the reason why you pee.

I think you just generally have, like, a bladder meter.

So you have a hydration meter and then, like, a bladder meter.

And you have to piss.

And when you pee, it leaves, like, mushroom.

Like, it grows.

And then you can see other people's, like, piss puddles growing.

See, you guys thought I was gross, but I'm just a Kojima-level genius.

Jesus Christ.

You guys thought I was disgusting, but actually I'm a genius.

You're playing a strand-like, brother.

It's fine.

It's different.

I'm just Norman Reedus, and you guys can handle that.

And if Jesse gets to it, there's a great scene in Metal Gear Solid 2 where Raiden gets pissed on.

Okay, well now I'm in.

This is an eternal thing.

I mean, it's been a long time.

A guard who needs to take a shit.

It seems like a must in every kojima game.

It's him and david cage.

They love when there's a scene where someone takes a piss or takes a shit.

What's that about?

Kojima should make a?

Um, a real uh, quick time event sex scene.

I'd probably.

I'd probably watch probably something it's called snatcher.

So i was nice nice, nice.

You're all great.

Yeah uh, consume me.

Top 10.

What do we think i for now, i I would say it's a strong candidate for me.

It's probably in my top five, so I'll make a case for it.

There you go.

Okay.

Let's put it in there.

Won the IGF as well.

Seamus McNally.

So it's got to, you know, it's going to win the big prize today.

We have to check those lists before we make our own list just to make sure.

And here we don't want to be seen as tasteless, although i think gdc now is washed, is it?

Is that what we're saying?

Yeah, it's washed.

The festival, the festival of gaming.

I got an email today about all the speakers and the first five were ai cut talks.

Oh great, i'm not going to 600.

I'll be right there.

You got it.

I gotta.

Can i say this publicly?

I know for sure.

All right, i'll talk about some other time.

I think they're announcing it soon, but i'll.

I'll be at DICE.

I'll be at DICE doing something.

That'll be fun.

I just went to their website.

It says about 30,000 attendees, but I thought it said minus 30,000 attendees.

I was like, yeah, I bet, fuckers.

That's how much they're down this year.

I think at least 5,000 of those are homeless people in Soma.

They're like feet sellers, I think.

No, I don't know.

I love GDC.

I just wish.

You see feet sellers you know they sell everyone's feet.

Oh man, i was thinking about if i was watching i've been watching too much golden globes and oscars prep shit and people.

You were saying seat fillers.

I was like what the fuck is?

No, i didn't know.

I thought that was like a word that i'd never heard.

You know, feet sellers i thought that was gaelic.

I came back with so many fucking idioms.

Apparently I was.

We had friends over on the weekend and I said like three times I said something and they were like what?

Like, what the fuck does that mean?

Well, one of them was, oh, I gave it full beans.

Nice.

I like that.

Do you know what that is?

No, but I would imagine it means like, give it your best effort.

Yeah.

Give it a full beans.

Exactly.

Yeah.

It's like, yeah.

Yeah.

So, but they're like full.

So apparently I've like re Irish to myself over the past five weeks, apparently.

Um, so yeah, anyway, full beans.

All right.

We'll stick with Sumi in there.

Let's do one more before the break.

Uh, Frank, you have four here.

Do you want to grab one of these and chat about it?

Um yeah, I guess I'll mention.

Um uh, beatmania 33 is the 33rd iteration of beat again annual franchises.

So beatmania is the original ddr.

Um, it started out as like a turntable, like keyboard game and something like ddr.

As a kid it was so intimidating i could never play it.

Even now it's such a hard game it's like.

If you look at to high level beatmania players it's like it's it's so many input commands it's crazy.

Um, but throughout my DDR research I'll play DDR.

I'll get tired and then I'll go like, I'll go like recover stamina at the beat mania machine.

And I've gotten really, I've gotten better at playing.

And um, um so the so.

Every year they just update the software of the cabinets are the same and they send like kids and then they upgrade the hard or whatever, but it's an always online game.

So like every week there's brand new songs.

If you have the bimani card that which is the same thing used for ddr you're unlocking new songs.

And so it's the kind of thing where it's like i wish there was like a home like the, the you know guitar hero and rock band killed like the home peripheral uh market.

But it's like i wish i could play beat the new beat mini at home instead of just arcades.

But like yeah, it's fantastic, again annual iteration, but um oh, my god, beat mania.

So again, this was the year Both DDR and Beatmania I finally fell in love with.

So Beatmania Sparkle Shower.

I don't think any other media outlet is talking about it, but it's such a good game.

It is at round one.

It's in Japan.

There's dedicated floors just for Beatmania.

It's such a cool game.

I wish I could play it 24-7, but I just have to go to the arcades.

Keep your eyes open for Frank's documentary on DDR or his video on DDR.

I don't even know what to call it.

It's fucking great, great stuff.

I can't wait to get that out there.

And then, yeah, it's worth mentioning Battlefield 6.

Again, I always love like Call of Duty and just like the, you know, just the generic military shooters of the year.

They're always fun to play with friends.

It's always fun to see what like the online gamersphere is like what Xbox Live gamer tags are still unbanned and unfiltered in 2025, you know.

I saw Feet Cellar earlier.

You always, it's like, there's something, it's like the juvenile elements.

Like, it's just, it's so fun just playing these games. so call of duty this whatever call of duty 2025 was not good it was like black ops 7 it yeah just immediately like not good but battlefield 6 kind of picked up the slack of like oh this is fantastic i again did play with friends i played single or um solo queuing up with randoms but um always a good time.

It kind of was my podcast game for like two or three months.

Um, yeah, great, great game.

I, and with these games, you always add more maps.

What I really particularly liked about this one is there was the first season, was all Southern California theme.

So the battle royale mode is just Southern California.

They then made isolate a few of those environments as levels.

So it's so funny.

Just like, I mean, it was the same reason.

Like when I, when last of us two came out, like the last chapter is like, it's like Santa Barbara or SoCal.

So it's like, Oh, this just looks like outside my house.

This is awesome.

Um, so yeah, I really like battlefield six, but just, um, yeah, that's it.

Jeremy, did you play, you played a bit of this?

I played a bit of this.

Uh, yeah, I, I think it has feels there's good game feel here.

I think it, uh, battlefield is just, it's not for me anymore.

It's changed sort of like scope and pace and shape.

Um, I think that uh i, i would be, it would.

It's an impossible experiment, but i would be interested to see well, maybe it's not impossible, i think if they slowed down the pace of shmovement and they just literally put karkand from battlefield 2 in this game.

I would be so interested to see if, if i played that and was like this is a good game um yeah, if it was like 16 on 16 infantry, only karkand and there was no shmovement.

You're so unc, I know.

That is probably the unkiest shit I've said on this podcast.

And I said I pissed in a bottle.

They should have a fortunate son in Huey's.

Now, have you ever heard of the Atari system?

Yeah, I don't know.

Not for me.

I get it.

It's just like a shifting of.

You know, there are people who play Call of Duty now and then if they went back and played COD 2, they'd be like what is this?

Grandpa shit.

What is this, a Ken Burns documentary?

Yeah.

Medal of Honor 1.

Call of Duty 1.

Yeah, exactly.

Once again we are like storming the Reichstag and they're like oh, I hope I'm going to get a perk when I get to the top.

When I wave the Russian flag again, I hope I get a fucking set scope.

Medal of Honor.

I hope I get a Snoop Dogg skin once I release all these concentration camp prisoners.

If you're like 18 or 19 and you love Call of Duty...

I feel like medal of honor feels like despilote to you.

You're right.

God.

Yeah, probably.

Shit.

That's why we love it.

That's why we love call of duty.

Cause it's, cause it's just fucking, it's, it's gone full freak mode.

It's like Fox News.

It's untethered now.

They can just say whatever the fuck they want.

That is a good comparison, but not in a good way.

It's a damning but accurate comparison.

A lot of people in the Discord were super excited about Battlefield 6 and really enjoyed it, and I thought that was super awesome.

For me, it was... Weirdly, the problem I had with it was that it was like pacing.

It was so intense all the time.

It's like fucking And I see how Frank with his abilities will be able to sort of, like you know, get in sync with that.

But for me i just, you know, washed up old man o'dwyer over here.

I was just like after like four games i was like i'm fucking wrecked.

I need to put this thing down.

It's like non-stop explosions and fucking shooting people and the time to kill is fast and the respawns are pretty generous this time around and it's just like.

So i i think it works.

I think the gameplay they've decided to choose because there's so many lanes, you can do it with the, with a style of action war game you want to go with.

I think what they picked clearly resonates with people and that's good.

Um, I just personally found it.

Like you know, I'm like I need to.

I need to go pick some fucking candleberries for a while.

Sometimes, you know, I just can't, I can't, I can't deal with that.

I would like to recommend another article.

Uh, what's wrong with AAA games?

The development of the next battlefield has answers.

This is on ours.

Technica.

I will also submit this link for the description.

Um, This is about the making of Battlefield 6 and the loss of identity that this studio has experienced in being owned by American corporate interests.

And now Saudi corporate interests.

Yeah, true.

Regardless though, like sort of like foreign money people telling them what to do with this like genre that they basically invented.

Well, maybe they didn't invent us, but a lot of people who worked at Dice years ago invented us.

But I mean, if you go to work at Dice, it's like you know there is an identity that you are like I'm coming on board because I want to be part of the group that made this or whatever um and so uh, and also the expectation was for it to make like a bajillion dollars and that leads to a certain type of product and, oh yeah, the.

The pacing is directly a downstream effect of needing this game to be like gripping and to not let people go.

The round ends and it's like okay, what's my score?

Oh, we're in the next match already.

Holy shit, i guess i will just play another one interesting.

So a lot of those design decisions feel tied to the finances of it.

To me, Cool.

Thanks, Jesse.

Can you stick that in the description as well?

Appreciate it.

Thanks, Jeremy.

Got some good reading going on here.

Okay.

Well, let's take another quick break and we'll be back with the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7, 8 games we haven't talked about yet.

And then we have to do the awful work of finding out what the top 10 is.

I should say we already have 10 in there.

So no one push anything up there and we can leave and I'll have dinner at a respectable time.

I don't know.

I can see a couple that might make a case.

We'll be back in just a second.

And we're back.

OK, I'm going to do one.

I'm going to throw one in the mix here. which might enter the top 10.

Who knows?

We'll see what Jeremy has to say about this one.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2, the second Kingdom Come Deliverance game.

This is a type of game.

I think that when in the early aughts or maybe in the late 90s when, like fantasy games and open world games were being made, that like I thought we'd get sooner.

Like this is appealing to a type of gamer and a type of game that is like not full sim.

It's like a fantasy game with a story, but with so much reactivity that I think was sort of promised to us in games like Oblivion and and Skyrim, which which ultimately, I think probably due to the constraints of their engine.

And I think you can put Starfield into this as well.

And maybe any.

You know, I think Fallout gets away with it because they changed their um, their look quite a bit, but uh, you know, and different mechanics and stuff.

But Kingdom Come is is is like an evolution of this genre that I think players were screaming out for.

And, uh, the first game I dabbled in and I don't know why, but it just never sunk its teeth into me.

Uh, and so I was a bit anxious about starting to, because it literally starts from the end of one.

Um, but, uh, I still haven't played, you know, past the first few hours in one.

And, uh, I, love felt this is like you know frank was talking about how despalate felt like a like a documentary right like like you felt you're in a place this is the most i felt like i was in like this is like pentiment levels of you know levels of i am here in this place during this time and and i have time traveled and i need to figure out how shit works because i don't know i have to get a job you have to get a job in this game they may they do the whole you know make you the level one player thing in such a funny way at the start of this game and and then you have to go and get a job as either what is it a blacksmith or what else what's the other miller i did the blacksmith so i don't know what the miller is like me too and you're just making swords and it's so elaborate too like that when you talk about frictional game design it's like i the the amount of time it takes to brew a potion or to make a sword is it's so fucking long and it's like i it's it is a bold type of game design decision that is is i think if you were in a room with a sufficient number of people and a sufficient number of those people were like money people this is the type of thing that would never make it past the ideation phase because they'd be like who the fuck is gonna want to do that like who's gonna want to boil the wine and grind the chamomile like what the fuck are you talking about this is like where are you you know we're talking about like video games right like this isn't like old stirbridge village and everyone's in a costume like what are you talking about um and it's it pulls it off so well though it does that's the thing it like it does this thing that um i think sandbox rpgs are specifically capable of that is very rare in other genres i think colony sims can pull this off to some extent uh like especially like rimworld this is an express sort of design intent of it an ambition to be narrative generators um and the types of things that happen emergently and systemically in kingdom come deliverance 2 are are so like funny and weird and like it has this level of emergent social role-playing where I'll just say a thing that is non-spoilery because even though it ties into story.

Yeah, you can, I don't.

I think we're fine with maybe, main quest spoilers, but I think we're fine with spoiler stuff, or you know, just yeah, whatever.

I mean, I don't want to spoil past like the first 10 hours anyway, cause I'm still playing it.

But.

But I was in a new place and talked to someone about doing something and they were like all right well, tomorrow we'll go do it.

We'll ride out at dawn and, And I had gone straight there without doing a lot of side stuff.

And so they were like, all right, well, like you have a horse, right?

And I was like, I don't know.

And they're like, well, lucky for you, we sell horses here.

There's a guy who sells horses.

So go to the horse monger and like find a horse.

And so he's like all right, I'll see you tomorrow.

And i'm fucking broke because i went straight here because, like there's a bunch of other stuff you can do and i think there's sort of an expectation that the player will like wander off and make a little money and do whatever.

I was fucking dirt broke um, and so i went out and the guy was like i tried to haggle for the horse and the guy was like you're the brokest man in medieval europe, like what the fuck are you talking about?

So then i was like, oh okay well, like what's gonna happen if i don't have a horse when we ride out in the morning and time is passing?

So i'm like i'm like out like picking herbs in the field and like shoving them into my like disgusting gambeson that i'm wearing and i'm like trying to sell them to people and i have a sword that i made but no one will buy it because i'm in like the horse town and they're like what would i do with the sword?

I mean, they're like it's so funny and it's like i'm selling, i'm selling all my herbs, but it amounts to like two groschen and i'm like there's no fucking way i'm gonna get a horse and um, and like i i sleep in the wrong bed and someone kicks me out of it and it's i'm just like a piece of shit.

And i think that's one of the funniest things you can be in a game, because it's like anti-power fantasy.

Anti-power fantasy is one of the best narrative generating forces in video games, because power fantasy generates the type of stories that, like Every piece of media for thousands of years have been about, like ancient Babylonian myths are about power fantasy.

It's very rare to be like.

And then I like forgot to put my pants on and everyone yelled at me like that's fucking hilarious and I love that.

And so the next day comes and they're like, all right, let's ride out.

And I don't have a horse and I'm just like a dirty little man.

And so the sequence happens where we're riding off to go and I'm just running behind the two guys on their horses.

And they're trying to have a conversation with me and I'm like out of breath.

Do you reference the fact that you don't have a horse?

They very politely did not.

Oh, that's a shame they didn't.

I know.

I.

That was the only thing that there's, the only missing piece of the puzzle.

If they were like oh, this is going to be fucking weird for you.

But it was it was so funny to me.

I could contextualize it by being like they're being polite, but it was so fucking embarrassing.

But you kind of want to write that.

It's like it's like in movies and stuff.

You sort of like you give over to to the you know the world you, you sort of you suspend your disbelief a little bit.

I told a story about that exact same quest.

You remember what happened to me was I was doing.

I had broken into someone's house two days earlier to steal something.

And I guess something, I forget what happened, but there was a reason why.

Oh yeah.

When I was leaving, the guy woke up and saw me and I just ran out the door and but then we went I, I did this quest with the guys.

I ended up getting a horse.

I think I found my old horse at a at a different stable and shouted at the guy to give it back to me or something.

Um, but I went on the on the ride with them, but we went the right.

The first destination on that ride is to like the, the like garrison of the local village where the all the I don't know what you call them.

The cops of this.

Yeah.

The bailiff.

You go meet the bailiff.

Yeah.

I was wanted.

So they put me in the fucking stockades.

Oh, that's awesome.

And so the whole quest that those guys do, which apparently is like a pretty long thing.

I missed.

I was in the stockades for a day.

That's so good.

That's so funny.

And so I was like, oh fuck, I'm going to have to go back and redo that quest.

No, that all happened.

I went back and they were like, where the fuck did you go?

They were like annoyed at me.

They were like, you abandoned us.

We were like, we needed your help.

We ended up killing this guy because we, you know, we found the, was it the like supplies?

I think it was for the party or something, isn't it?

For the wedding.

It's like a cart from the blacksmith that was intended for your town that went missing.

So they were super pissed at me, but they had lines for it.

It was fucking brilliant.

And like, and you, you're trying to enamor yourself to that guy like the whole time.

And do you remember the, um, have you done the wedding?

No, no, that's like where I am right now.

Absolutely fantastic.

Cinema, absolute cinema.

It is.

The game is like it does things like a mechanic mechanicalizes here's a word um, like drinking in really interesting ways and like there's a bunch of like uh, what would you call them?

Like sort of troubadours i guess that are that are in a this one place and you can do a bunch of jobs for them.

That involves like stealing loots from people i think that's actually what i did with that guy.

Or like You like you try and intimidate somebody but you realize you're wearing like your fancy Dan clothing and they're like shut up.

Or or like you try and flirt with a girl but you forget that you're covered.

Your pants are covered in mud and it doesn't work.

And oh man it's yeah it's, it's such a good.

The social role play in that game is so interesting fun.

Cause like, you're like, I'm going to say the cool line.

And then it like, and the voice acting, the guy, your character, I love his voice.

He's like, he's like common as muck, but he's like trying it on and he's really trying, but he's he's sort of a bit of a doofus sometimes.

And other times he's confident.

Like it's, I love it.

I loved all that stuff.

Yeah, I was shocked how much of the the, the immersion for me was the social role playing stuff, because I imagined this would be way more of like a, you know, like a Morrowind or like Elder Scrolls kind of thing, where it was more about the adventure and the finding a new sword.

And now I'm an axe guy.

And for me, I like the majority of my delight with Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is just the, the reactivity of the world, people being like what do you don't belong here, what are you doing here?

And I'm just like fumbling around like the village idiot.

It's so funny.

And it's like it's funny because it's not supposed to be really funny.

Like I, obviously there is a bit of accounting for people being shitheads and like the game reacts to it.

So it's it's built into it.

But it's like it's funny because it's like the game has this very austere sort of medieval european like this is like history and it's like king wenceslas and these are like real things that happen.

And then i'm just like the guy who is bumbling around and i i laughed so much playing this game and i was not expecting that at all.

Yeah, the um it also has like the sort of consume me level of i can't get all these jobs done, like you're constantly having to like doing a, do your day's work, or or like do something for the king or whatever it is.

And you're like, fuck, I'm going to mess this up like you with the horse.

You're like, shit, they're going to be so disappointed.

Like you're not, like you're not, you're not scared not to do it because, like you, won't get the reward at the end.

It's more like the embarrassment or like fuck.

Maybe I won't unlock that, that quest, if I don't get this done.

And yeah, it's it's Yeah, I get why they don't make these.

There's like I feel like, with making these types of games, there's sort of like they're sort of what's the, what's the word when, when a line goes up at twice the race, they're like like the difficult, like exponential.

Yes, it's exponentially difficult to make complexity in games because the more you add, the more pre-existing complexity there there is right underneath that level of higher complexity, and so it's harder and harder to do, which i think, is that the engine stuff is probably why, maybe you know, bethesda hasn't done much of that and they've stayed pretty similar to their previous games and i have just sort of like bolted on modules of other things that are equally as thinly complex.

Um, but yeah, this game is does so much of that and it's so, it's so cool, it's so.

Yeah, the limited saving stuff, i think is also a great frictional choice, because i think this just as easily could have been a game where your save's coming, every decision um, it adds a real sense of weight, like i'm like afraid to fucking gamble and play dice with people because i don't want to like lose all my money and i, i think you would lose so much of that heft, that like feeling of real stakes, if you could just save scum and stuff.

So i think um, that's one of the most brilliant things in this game is that.

How do you save?

Again, is it bad?

You just sleep in a bed that you own, or you have to drink a potion that is like pretty elaborate to brew um uh, the savior schnapps and the and the and the brewing is very funny.

It's like fun and weird.

And there's like different, like the alchemy, I guess, thing you do is like just it's all, like what you put in, how much you put in when you boil it, when you how big the flask is that it goes in and it's, and then, but you can just find like I've heard so many on the Reddit, there's like so many things of like people finding weird um, you know, like a scrap of paper that just has like this is what the you know this potion, and then you, you like, look at the paper and go okay, i think that's what that is.

And then you find the stuff and then you make it.

Or there's like a, there's like an ancient sword.

You can get in one of the side quests that somebody realized.

If you, if you smash it to pieces and re-smelt it, it'll work.

Oh wow yeah, that's all this yeah, it's.

It's like it's just There's a weird cycle, I feel like in RPGs, where I feel like both of these types of RPGs are being made all the time, but in terms of what's the predominant force, it feels like RPGs vacillate between, like they get very hardcore, and then you, because they're so inaccessible and hardcore, you get like a Diablo that breaks up the thing and makes it accessible to everyone, and then everything emulates Diablo, and then you get like more hardcore RPGs because that's what people are thirsting for.

And it feels like this game, to me, is sort of correcting for the fact that Elder Scrolls, which is sort of the predominant first-person fantasy giant RPG, systemic emergent world sim game, went from Morrowind to Oblivion, which Oblivion is very systems-rich and incredible.

It's a great game, but I think when Oblivion tapped into this, like xbox 360, mass market skyrim went even further in that direction.

Yeah, and further away from this sort of like hardcore daggerfall, sandbox world, sim shit that where they started um and so kingdom, come deliverance, feels like it's delivering on a promise that uh, that hardcore rpg enjoyers wanted back in the day.

Yeah, i totally agree, and i think that's also why people have really warmed to.

It is because i think there was such a long thirst for this one.

I mean, we're talking about it like it's in the top 10.

Does that feel like it's?

I think the only reason you want it in the top 10 is because it has come in the name.

I can't believe it's taken this long to make reference to that.

Wow.

I think it belongs there.

I have played like a dozen hours of it and I feel like I'm barely scratching the surface.

But it feels to me like if I were to trace the trajectory of my enjoyment.

It feels like it's on par for top 10.

I'd be curious... what you feel i have played 30 to 40 hours of it maybe um i've done a lot of side quests because i just enjoy and there's yeah i there's i don't want to get into spoilers the wedding is i think well probably that's the first big great moment in that game like really great like set piece um that it reminds me of something from the Witcher.

Like, like it's that level of like, cause the, the actual quests and the writing is really good.

Like the, the, the, the characters, the world building, it's all very believable.

There's interesting relationships.

People seem authentic.

Um, there is a quest that I did that I want to say is not the main quest, but it's a pretty long one that involves a bunch of um roman, romanian gypsies and i thought i thought they're the way they were portrayed and explained and why the way people treated them back then and largely do still treat romany gypsies this way i learned.

So it reminded me of pentiment, where i learned so much about this culture through this stuff that like and that's come up a few times um, or like, you know women, women who have moved somewhere to find a husband.

There's all these weird little historical social things that I didn't really understand or wanted to learn more about.

That the game delivers on that I think you'll probably really enjoy as a history and a religion buff.

So yeah, I think it's very, very good.

Frank and Jesse, have you played it at all?

I played like four hours of it.

Uh, I wanted to play more, but it's just.

It was a very busy December and it was the last one that I got.

Um, it was, it was really, really good.

I was surprised how many.

I mean, you guys have basically said it all, but I was surprised how many systems there are so early on.

Like I remember how hard I found it to try to feed the dog, like getting into the inventory and finding the way to feed him.

I was like, do I just put food in front of him?

Like that, that is not a complaint.

That is more of a me going like.

It's been a long time since I played a game that's that large, has that much going on and is still that fiddly.

You can't just wear armor.

You have to wear the gambeson or whatever underneath.

You have to wear the cloth underneath that.

You really have to care about all of the parts of this, in a way that most open world games are like nah, just press this button and you're wearing the armor.

This is level 47.

I like that it's so...

But not like a sim level thing.

Like you said, it's it finds that good middle ground.

Just the opening alone.

I was like, this is this is great.

I do feel like I need to play Kingdom Come Deliverance one to understand what's going on.

But from the sounds of it you could still play the game and just be a little confused for a little bit.

And then eventually you're just playing a new story.

I was going to say that is the one thing that I haven't played Kingdom Come Deliverance 1.

I'm familiar enough with sort of like the opening and the premise and stuff of it.

So I recognize that a lot of the stuff happening in 2 early on was like flashback to set up the story.

It feels there is a lot of exposition that has to be dumped in the beginning of this game.

That was the only thing that felt a little clumsy to me, but not in a way where I was like I didn't see an elegant alternative solution other than to just have them say, like fuck, you figure it out.

Like I also think they're doing the thing where you've some players would have made decisions in the last game.

And so they're asking you, like, what did you do next?

And then you are selecting the one that you would have had done in the first one.

You know what I mean?

Like you like you couldn't import your save.

Mass Effect sequence.

100%.

Yeah, I think that opening horse ride, I think was that stuff rather than like a quiz, if that makes sense, about what happened.

Do you know what I mean?

Yeah, I will say as well, I love the UI in this as well.

Great year for interfaces.

Yeah, really cool.

Menu is fantastic. um and and a lot of that stuff like i was when i first opened the menu for the first time i was like oh no i'm playing the wrong game this is like it's fucking there's way too much going on here but you do you do figure it out it's not it's not as crazy and you can hot swap between um outfits which i really like because the outfitting stuff is quite takes a while so you can just like kind of hot swap between three fancy man outfit and you're fucking i'm ready to fight outfit yeah it's cool exactly yeah the last thing i want to say about it is something that you alluded to briefly so i won't go on about it but um the the the writing in this game is really really good because it is it is so it's just like i i find a lot of video games writing to be like overwritten to that they're like trying to do almost like um like theater well you know how in theater you have to like you have to deliver your lines to the back row of you know and it's like if you're sitting front row you're like whoa fucking relax man I find a lot of video games, not the performances, but the writing and sometimes the performances to be a little... melodrama is the wrong word but like overacted overwritten um this is so fucking like grounded and real and the characters are like distinct and recognizable as having unique characteristics but they're not like caricatures of people it's like yeah there's there's this guy and he like wants to fight and he has this accent but you don't walk up to him and you're he's not like a has like a huge giant mustache so you recognize him or whatever it's just like they have tangible personalities that feel grounded.

I'm just shocked by the writing.

Here's Billy the farm boy who, like the dad, has been trying to like get a wife for years, but he like he's an alcoholic and he just can't like put it down.

Or like here's the man whose wife died, you know when he was, you know in those 40s and he's been.

You know he's a hermit now, or like it's like it celebrates people with simple lives in a really interesting way.

And, like a lot of the quests that you run into, the side quests are kind of simple ones like oh, there's wolves attacking my sheep, or you know, somebody's gone missing, you know, and then you find out, you know, maybe that's a murder mystery.

But then the reason why it happened is actually like this just small town thing quarrel that went out of went too crazy like it it it it plays around in like the simple lives of regular people of you know of people working the land which is like 99 percent of these societies right it was like that or you're in the army or you're in royal you're part of the upper upper upper class but that was such a sliver and also how like all of the like the social strata you can understand the economics and social strategies of these towns like really fast and like how much the the war is impacting them as well because they can't like get stuff or like white white people commit crimes you know it's like it's just like it's weirdly like a it's like a sat like a like a sandbox for classic inequality or something as well you know and like you notice it when you go in the the the kitchen of the late of the you know person the peasant in the town and then you're you're walking through the the banquet hall of the of the king you know it's like you just you can feel it you can smell it you know yeah i've just tag on to that briefly this would be the last thing i say sorry yeah i've talked about this for like 20 minutes now sorry it's i think it's it is a profoundly like ambitious and interesting game so it yields interesting discussions but the the thing we when we talked to josh sawyer about pentiment he was saying that um that folk history was like this thing that had a resurgence in the 90s because it was sort of like the lives of common people were not documented as well both because of economic reasons and also it was seen as like it was boring it was uninteresting they no one was like going out or fewer people were going out and writing about the lives of just ordinary people because it was seen as like you take it for granted because it's like yeah you're a sheep farmer what do you do shovel shit that's cool i guess um but but just walking around the world in this game and like just like seeing what's on the stove and shit and like what's hanging around and it's the the ambience of these places it feels very like it's it's it feels like a folk history of a time and place and i can't speak to how you know strictly accurate it is yeah it feels accurate which i think is at least the sort of like that's an achievement of its own whether or not it's like historically accurate as a separate conversation but it feels to me like i'm experiencing this time and place yeah you can tell you're playing a game that the people gave a shit about respecting the history if not you know mirroring it exactly so yeah give it its uh give it its due uh although the guy who runs that studio yeah that is a separate conversation all right um okay we'll stick in top 10 i think it seems like it's cleared the the barrier for the moment let's go down to jeremy you've got a couple here you yeah i can be quick about one of them i formless star i think is such a special game i'm not going to fight tooth and nail for it to be in the top 10 because i think it is it's a difficult game to compare to a lot of these other games i think it is more of sort of like an experience.

I think it captures the feeling of playing an RPG like a larger RPG, but ultimately it is a very simple beautiful, elegant little experience about going around and finding different creatures and experiencing this world.

I am not going to fight tooth and nail for it to be top 10, but I would say that everyone listening to this should go check it out.

It is a little experience you can have in a short amount of time that will stick with you.

And we did an indie rec first.

We did an indie rec early one, right?

Yeah.

It's, it's beautiful.

Amazing character writing.

Amazing art.

Um, also go play, uh, is it Franken?

Jesse, back me up on this.

Franken?

No, not Franken.

Is Franken the, no, no, not Franzen.

That's the scum head dev, uh, Franken by Splendidland.

Same developer, um, as former star.

Franken is fucking brilliant.

Go play Franken.

It's so short and good.

Okay.

Um, so i'm a big frank's, always franken fanboy.

Yeah, that's true.

Uh, and let me, let me rattle off another one here birdcage, i adore.

I think again, it is a, it is a.

It's a difficult game to like.

How do you compare a fucking yeah, really cool, narratively ambitious beautiful, artistic shmup to like kingdom, come deliverance too, it just feels like it's like It's doing a different thing.

Video games is too broad of a label for what these things are.

The categories will hopefully scoop up some of that.

I feel the same way about like Sektori, for instance.

It's like, you know, I'm sure Jesse feels that way too.

Number two, whatever.

Have you put it on yours?

You didn't put it in your... No, because I mean, it's fine. same the same reason as birdcage probably yeah is that your rationale that like a similar thing that it's like yeah like it's a fantastic arcade i think in sectory's case it's probably even more particular that it's such a good arcade shooter and it's trying so specifically to do one thing that it's doing it so well that it's like that's praiseworthy but yeah it's like you know did it make me feel things the way and raw i guess it kind of did but it's such a specific particular feeling of like nostalgia and brain mushiness from just so many colors and particle effects birdcage though has like narrative beats to it that i think land a lot better than the few that uh sectoria is trying to do and like it's not just mechanical significance it's also like what story can you tell in a vertical shooter like what can you pull off that space i the story is it is it is dense and small because this is a short game but it does this like xenogears like union cosmic psychological like the fact that that like union is a word that i'm using to describe a game that takes a few hours to beat and is like a top-down shmup is like i that speaks volumes to me um again i don't know i don't know where it fits i i think it's like cusp top 10 i think if it's in my personal top 10 and so i've again i recommend everyone check it out um it's it's not that much money and it's very fun and i i don't play these type of games and it made me want to play more of them excellent okay so we'll stick it there for now um yeah i feel like some of these last ones they might some of them might come down to uh ones that we get hopefully get to give them their flowers somewhere else um ideally um ideally the ones outside the top 10 i feel like Um, do you want to, let's just finish yours off.

Cause I feel like this is a big one for you.

Yeah.

Angelina, I adore this game.

I had a tragedy occur where I don't know if it was a steam cloud sync issue.

Uh, I lost a lot of progress in this game.

I don't, I I'm almost positive it was not the developer's fault.

I don't know what happened.

Um, I uh played a shit ton of this and then i uninstall it to make room for other games.

Uh, i made sure steam cloud was synced and everything i saw it played a bunch of other games, came back to it and was like all right, this is my victory lap.

I get to come back to this game that i loved and i lost, like i was.

It was like five hours at least of progress, um boy.

So the game does allow for sort of like.

There is some degree of non-linearity, so i have been able to recoup a bit of that progress without just having to do one-to-one the exact same pathing.

Uh, but i, it's very hard for me to replay games.

It's hard for me to recoup the initial spark.

Um, but i do not want that to be.

That does not reflect poorly upon this game.

It is just like an unfortunate circumstance that happened to me.

I think it was probably a steam cloud thing.

Um, that being said so, i i would have finished this game had that not happened.

Is what i'm saying.

I have gotten pretty far into it, probably about halfway, now that I've redone a bunch of it.

And I think it's brilliant.

I think it captures a lot of old like action RPGs and a little bit of like JRPGs and a little bit of like N64 games and Super Nintendo games.

And it does so in a way that is not nostalgia baiting.

It does so in a way that is like a continuous cultural lineage from those games.

And yeah, And like tonally it does things that I've never seen in games, about like weird shit that like evokes like human sexuality and like weird emotions that people have about like the character, the protagonist is religious, and then there's like sequence where you're seeing they're like uh, like a wish fulfillment chamber and part of the wish fulfillment is them like saving other people from like hedonism or false promises of deliverance and it's like that.

That's like heavy shit.

Um, like there's like there's like a fucking bit like a codex entry about martin luther.

This is a daniel dwyer ass game.

Just to be clear, you would love this game dude, it's.

I hear it's also like irish.

It's very irish yes yeah, it's very, very like pagan and irish and about the tension between like sort of paganism and christianity in some ways.

Oh cool okay right, it's not like a historical, it's not like a pentiment about that topic obviously.

It's more sort of capturing that in a fantastical world where angels live among people.

Jesse's like my catholic guilt will will oh, you'll love the yeah yeah, you'll be all over it.

Sing with this okay, And it's got a little bit of that like Majora's Mask darkness.

There's like fucked up shit happening.

But like that contrasting with this sort of like cutesy retro low poly aesthetic is very evocative.

And every time it does something deeper and ambitious, it sideswipes me because I forget that this game goes places like this

It's also just fun as fuck.

And it does like weird game design shit where sometimes there's like a side scroller level and it's funny.

And it's like, I think it's fucking brilliant.

I feel sad.

I i, it's in my top five for sure.

Uh, i think it.

Let me reference the top 10.

Yeah, i mean, i'm trying not to say what they are yet.

Until we get to the end for everyone, i'm not gonna read them off.

I yeah, there's a.

There is a game on here that is a.

That is a me game that i think this would would swap with.

Okay, so we'll stick it in there for now.

Then how about that?

It's really good.

I feel sad that I didn't finish it because of that weird technical snafu.

So I wish I could have spoken from a position of having finished it, but it's just.

I played a thousand hours of video games over the last two months.

I know.

We've spent a lot of time playing games these past couple of months to try and prepare for this.

Awesome.

Thanks, Jeremy.

That is all of your games.

Let's finish Jesse's last one.

Blueprints.

Yeah.

Blue Blueprints.

Blueprints.

Also, I'm repping no caps here.

I think this is also her favorite game of the year or one of them anyway.

Blueprints is is phenomenal.

It's funny because when it came out, I feel like a lot of people bought it hook, line and sinker.

They saw Jason Schreier say it's one of the greatest games of the year.

It got good review scores and they were like, I'll play a puzzle game.

Your fault.

You know what you don't like.

This is awesome.

Blueprints is, I played this game and I finally realized what it's like to be a flat earther.

I've never felt so distinctly turned into a conspiracy theorist in a video game than like I have with Blueprints.

Blueprints is basically a first person roguelike puzzle game, but puzzle feels like the wrong word.

It's.

You're basically building a house where all of the rooms are created when you approach a door and You have to choose one of three things to tell you what's a roguelike, and then you pick what room is gonna be the next one.

And your goal is to get to the end of the house, enter the 46th room, a room that supposedly shouldn't exist.

Doesn't make sense in the physics of the world.

You're trying to get there.

But the process of learning how to get there is like it sounds like that should be simple just make the rooms in the right order, but there's dead ends and there's stuff to learn along the way.

There are items that you need and you can only get those items when you know where they are, or what they are, for that matter.

Um, but it uses information within its world, and this goes to what i was saying about ooh and and uh, animal well, and games like that, where it recontextualizes your whole understanding of the space that you're in constantly.

Things that you don't understand when you enter a room for the first time will be important 40 hours later, or something that you learned you may never see for another 20 or 30 hours.

Now that sounds like hell, but if you can get into the mindset of having fun with that, if you can like become obsessed with it in the right way, feel like you.

Just you want to know what the next bit of it is.

It is so extremely special.

It, nothing else has ever done what, what blueprints has done for me. in any other game.

And I play a lot of stuff like this, right?

I purposely look for games that are trying to do this thing of like.

Like I tried, void stranger and I think it gets.

It's in the same realm.

Um, but blueprints is like, I think I talked about this in my game of the year video.

I was obsessed with scratches in the wallpaper and blueprints.

I was keeping track of it between different rooms and seeing how they order.

And like, maybe there's a pattern to it.

I need it.

It's on that level where like it demands that of you.

I think what I've enjoyed hearing people because I played maybe five hours of it but I clearly it was like my first time playing it.

I played a bunch that evening.

But the thing that I – whenever I hear people talking about it, it sounds like it's the type of game that like, teaches you what it's like to have an obsession or something.

It's like an obsession simulator.

Yeah.

Because people are like, I'm just going to go in.

I'm going to figure it out this time.

I'm going to fucking – I'm going to look at the fucking light bulbs.

I'm going to – you know what I mean?

You're just like, Jesus fucking Christ.

Calm down.

It's like a Stockholm Syndrome game where you're like –

I want so badly to or maybe that's not the right comparison but, like I, just I want so desperately to understand what's going on here, even though I don't.

And every time you get another little nugget of information just like nothing, maybe even something that isn't valuable you feel like you've opened up a whole new possibility space.

Like, oh, this thing from earlier, that's what that was.

Okay.

I'll go try with that.

But you gotta wait for it to show up in the roguelike space.

There's a lot of frustration there.

I think that's going to be a big barrier for anyone and probably most people.

The drop rates on rooms is bad.

It's trash.

What's the loot table on these rooms, dude?

I can't keep track of this.

There's no epic rooms.

It drives me crazy, but also in the same way that, like that's the goal of the game, is to drive you crazy, is to make you feel like – like I read The House That Leaves for the first time before playing this game.

I did not do that on purpose.

I was just, someone recommended me the book.

I saw a review in, in a Indigo, our version of Barnes and Noble.

And I was like, this is awesome.

I need to read this.

And then I did.

And then I played blueprints and I was like, Oh my God, no, they made the Davidson record.

It's real.

I'm living in it.

I'm on Ash tree lane.

Um, and that was like, it's just such a weird experience to, to have those back to back.

But Yeah.

Blueprints is just it's it's there's nothing like it.

There's nothing like it in a way that I don't think you could make anything like it again.

Like you would just have to straight up copy it.

Anything like this is just going to feel worse.

It's like if you make another Obra Dinn, it's like you can't really.

So they can't make another Wolfenstein.

Yeah, they can't make another one.

What are they going to call it?

Doom or the other way around?

No, I guess it was that way around.

Yeah, never mind.

Anyone else played it? similarly to you i played a bunch of it one evening i thought it was interesting but it didn't really land for me but not in a way where i was like i need to go on the internet and tell people they're wrong about blueprints it just it didn't uh didn't click for me But I admire what it was trying to do.

I think Seance of Blake Manor was sort of more of the type of game.

These games feel like cousins.

Yes.

I think I said that in our indie rec.

I think I was like, this is what people wanted Blueprints to be.

Was this the narrative version of a puzzle experiment, where you're like learning about the world and seeing the nooks and crannies and opening doors that don't exist?

That's funny.

And also it is also very funny because, like people, that sounds like a sort of a rote comparison, because these games might have the most similar art style of two games in 2025.

Like they are, it is easy to mistake one from the other if you're looking at screenshots.

Um, but no, it is funny how you know mechanics wise.

It's also you know there is.

There is a weird like yeah, I thought blueprints was going to be more like that, or what was that.

What was the other game, Jesse?

It was last year, I think it came out.

There was another mansion that you go into.

Yeah Yes Lorelei, exactly.

Lorelei was sort of what I was also thinking blueprints might be.

Yeah, I think when people said puzzle game, that was the wrong word to use.

It's why I was hesitant about saying that because it's not really a puzzle game.

Even I thought, like I went into it being like, where are the puzzles, jackass?

There's no, I did some math and I did a like a process of elimination Monty Hall puzzle.

Like I don't, give me something to do.

It's a notepad game, right?

It's 100% a notepad game.

You are going to look like Jim Carrey in the number 23 by the end of this game.

And I swear to God, your room is going to be covered in numbers and shapes.

I played this in.

Did you hear they're making a sequel to that?

Number 23.

What's it called?

Number six, seven.

I was like, yeah, he's going to do a six, seven joke.

That was great.

Well done.

You're so good at this.

I'm so glad you're back.

Thank you.

I have to set up the first line to deliver my punchline.

That's how good I am at jokes.

That's how you know it's a good joke.

I have to say both part of the joke.

Exactly.

Yeah, it's exactly my kind of game.

It's Tunic, right?

Again, same sort of thing where you're writing stuff down.

Once a game escapes the screen and is on a piece of paper, or on my phone or on my iPad, that is when I am in love with it.

And I'll never forget it, because it's literally physically going to stick with me until I throw the notes in the garbage.

So that's big for me.

Jesse is to notepads as Frank is to dance mats.

That's right.

Learning this year.

Sounds like it's contended for top 10, mean i would want it there, i'll.

I would say that no caps is saying that in my brain she's saying so that's the other thing.

I am conscious of her.

I'm like we should make sure that there's some no caps.

Uh, it's not that she's not allowed on the podcast.

She just doesn't really do.

She doesn't want to hang her four guys.

She doesn't want to.

She doesn't do too much live stuff.

She's been testing it out though, so we'll hopefully get around at some stage in the future.

Um Okay, last two for Frank here.

Want to knock these ones out, see how we feel about them?

Oh, yeah.

Rematch is... That was the soccer multiplayer game that came out from the... team that did Sifu.

So it made rematch unique.

It was, it was very like, like rock, you know, rocket league, but very, very physics based.

And yeah, I never really played any soccer or football games.

And it was very funny this year.

We had played two.

Yeah.

Rematch and a despilote.

Yeah.

Rematch to me felt like this was my arc Raiders.

Every time you queue up, You are team with a random teammate.

And within the game you're going to find out if that teammate is on your side or if they're a psychopath who will rage, quit or troll you.

It is like I don't play MOBAs, but I know like League of Legends has the like whatever the worst online community rematch.

It brought me back to like xbox live call of duty days people screaming at each other, people like if someone misses a shot, everyone sarcastically does like good play, good play, good play, like it is.

So playing with my friends like we were screaming, laughing also like you.

I feel like we would end up like playing with a lot of like europeans, like soccer people or football people like So you'd have like little British kids being like oh, pass me the ball.

Like it was like, I'm just like, we were dying, screaming, like playing it.

Like this is like the same joy I had playing Fortnite like five years ago.

So rematch, like the soccer gameplay generally was very funny.

Playing with friends was good.

The only thing that sucked was like They didn't have cross-play at launch, and I think that hurt them.

Because the game was so good.

I only played it because of Game Pass, but it was that hard sell of like ah, this 30 soccer game.

Oh, shit.

It was hard to get a few people in once I had enough friends.

Actually I had friends do the like the 1 game pass that like the first time you set up for game pass, it's a dollar.

So I have like one friend who just makes a new email address and gamer tag.

He doesn't care about achievements.

So like he'll just make a dumb, you know so like.

So, for like a month, two of my friends had game pass and we played it.

And then like five months later, they added cross play.

So I had another friend get on PlayStation, but by the time new friends got on cross play the skill, the skill ceiling was so high that it was like Oh, this is kind of hard.

Like, lost that like um you know there's every time a new multiplayer games game comes out there you're playing with lots of beginners and it's even after a few months everyone either like believes or sticks with it and then you just get crushed and so it was like if you played the finals recently it is like or like it's like rainbow six siege if you haven't played jumped in in a while it's like oh my god people are so good at this i guess counter-strike is a similar problem but yeah yeah so it's like i really liked rematch like like it was such a funny cool game i i'm hoping it has one of those like all multiplayer any game can have a magical resurgence if this gets dumped on playstation plus one day and it's like i'm new friends jump in i'm always happy to play with anyone who wants to play it but yeah i really liked rematch really funny i just wish it was crossplay enabled at launch because the like six month gap like oh man it kind of it kind of like it um almost it's weird to say miss the window but that like magic moment kind of passed but in that magic moment oh my god it was such a fun game so actually maybe maybe maybe my favorite multiplayer like experience of the year i get i didn't i didn't dive into arc raiders battlefield 6 monster i played by myself so rematch was kind of the thing like late night just screaming with friends laughing um yeah so it's uh it was it was a very good time chaotic and fun and then on the single player side Yeah, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black was incredible.

This was dumped like I don't know.

February, like early February April, like early, early enough in the year.

I never played.

Actually, I think I rented Ninja Gaiden 2 on 360 like briefly.

But yeah, so Ninja Gaiden 2 is from the ground up.

I think they remade it in Unreal 5 because I they were making Ninja Gaiden four, also um, which also came out this year, which I didn't beat, but that was also pretty good.

But yeah, Ninja Gaiden two black.

I never played it.

I beat this from start to finish.

What an like if this was a brand new game, not a remaster or remake.

I would say it's one of the best games of the year.

It is so good.

But because it's like this and snake eater, where it's like.

These are both awesome games but the remakes but Still worth highlighting.

I thought Ninja Gaiden 2 Black was so good.

It's always good when you get like a Game Pass game that like proves the value.

I was like, oh, cool.

Hell yeah, this is awesome.

Probably wouldn't have purchased it outside of it.

But yeah, Ninja Gaiden 2 Black was awesome.

So I'm happy I finally played it.

Brilliant.

Yeah, it was good.

I feel like there's games like this, like Monster Hunter WWE, we should have like a best franchise game or something.

You know what I mean?

Because I feel, like the bar for annual games or for like these types of games, like even Katamari, it's like it's hard for them to win game of the year.

But like when they do a really good entry, there should be like some sort of recognition of it.

So maybe we'll add that to the to the list.

You okay, if i, if these aren't making the top 10, what do you think?

Do you?

Are they ones that you're very hard for, or no?

I mean, the only two is like a death stranding.

Maybe donkey kong bonanza.

I feel like i should have at least one game in the top 10.

So i would say death stranding too but yeah, absolutely.

Um, and the last.

Sorry, someone say something.

No no, it's the voice.

Yeah, you're losing it.

Um oh, that's what they said.

The last one i have is dispatch, And this game came out of I don't want to say nowhere, but ad hoc studio, a studio that came out of nowhere and has done insanely well.

Ninety three thousand overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam.

It has clearly hit a nerve or like Kingdom Come, perhaps. made a promise to people uncertain you know that maybe telltale had started back in the day they said an episode every week and they delivered they delivered an important promise so to that end i have only played the first how many episodes are there again five ten is it ten five i think it's five five okay i have played i am in the third one at the moment uh jesse you completed them all you've done it jeremy frank you played it all I'm a cup of tea.

Jesse, I'm interested in what you think you've, you've completed it.

So, um, I was on my list.

It wasn't on yours, I think, but I'm not sure I might've added it first.

I think you added it and I was just like, yeah, you're right.

Sorry.

It is eight.

I don't know why I thought it was five.

It is eight episodes.

So yeah.

Cause I thought I had played more.

I think I'm in the fourth one or something.

Yeah.

I think it was thinking I'm halfway.

Yeah.

Um, yeah, dude, dispatch is really good.

It's, it's phenomenal.

I think anyway.

So, like I think um the reason that it works is telltale games are fun to.

It's just fun to watch things happen.

It's.

It's like making narrative choices and seeing how they play out over time, whether that's a little thing like what, what are you going to do to the fire guy when he comes up?

How was that interaction going to play out?

And then how does that show up later on?

Like I remember when the walking dead came out, the argument was like Oh, when you actually look at it, it's all a funnel, and like none of your choices really matter.

And it's like, it's interesting because you made an impact on the plot in some way.

Like you made small things that you get to remember and reflect on jackass, learn how to have fun.

Um dispatch for me worked in that same way, but like I think the character writing here is so well done.

Like it's.

So I really cared about these characters, even though they're all really characterized in such quick ways.

Like there's a big cast, something like 10 to 12 recurring characters and each of them is so distinct that I really cared what happened to them by the end of the story, I think because of the release structure of it being weekly and like I never forgot who anyone was or what I did with them because it was so quick and I had time to reflect on what they had done.

So the structure of it releasing was really good.

That that worked on making me feel good about the characters.

But then, like Weirdly, I don't like the dispatching, the gameplay part of it, where it's basically like this is the police, where you'll get a command, a call.

And I know it's different for something like some people I've heard have loved it.

I wasn't a huge fan of it, but I think it works at the very least as a system for delivering character without having to have everything be a cut scene.

Yeah yeah, seeing the assholes who.

So yeah, the game is like you are, for reasons that we don't need to get into here.

You're essentially working at a superhero uh, call center where you dispatch superheroes um, that are on your team uh, your team is like the worst superheroes, so it's sort of like the z team.

Yeah so um, and it's mostly because they're all just like sociopaths, it's like they're actually.

It's not that they're weak, you know what i mean.

It's not like that they have bad powers, it's that they're just awful people, which i think is graced, like they're all selfish or weird or whatever.

Like the bat guy yeah, there's this guy who's a bat and he's he's just way into, like he's a, he's a huge fetishist for like ceos, like that's his thing.

He's just loves tech.

I love businesses and corporations.

Of course, he's voiced by oh, my god, what's his name?

Again critical, is that?

Yeah, i think that's yeah yeah yeah moist moist critical right yeah um, he's uh yeah, and and he's obviously like, clearly not as smart as he would like or thinks he is, or whatever.

Um, this is.

There are games we've talked about that have great writing.

This is the best writing i've read all year.

For any, it's uh, you don't think so i, it's the funniest, at least i certainly feel like they have for an ensemble team and i haven't completed it.

That's fair.

I think the conclusion is good, like it never really gets worse.

It's just like the writing of it for me reminds me of like superstore or or saint dennis medical or whatever that hospital, whatever that show is called, Like stuff like that where it's workplace comedy, or like the office even.

I guess, to an extent,

It doesn't quite turn to the camera and literally wink at you, but like it's fairly straightforward.

It's just enough character information for you to care about somebody and their connection to a different character in the cast and watching that develop or get worse over time.

That is all really good.

I think at the high level, the writing's good.

I think the individual lines, some of it is really bad.

There's a joke sequence that happens between the player character, whatever his name is I'm gonna call him Aaron Paul, And uh yeah.

Oh yeah.

It's voiced by Aaron Paul, by the way.

I believe the character's name is Robert Robertson.

I think Robert Robertson.

Yeah.

Dumbest name.

The third.

And they're all, they all take the piss out of you for it.

It's great.

Of course.

But then there's a scene where like, he's arguing with, um, prism, I think is her name.

The, the black character, black female character.

Yeah.

Uh, and he's just like naming blacks, like female singers.

Like the joke is – Oh, he's like calling her like Nina Simone or something like that.

Yeah, like Cardi C or what's going on, you know, Flo Rilla or something.

Like the joke – I'm like that's not funny.

That's just you naming things.

It's stuff like that where, like the general concept of those two bickering and him naming pop stars for whatever reason – on the broad is good, oh yeah, because she's trying to be a pop star, exactly.

But the specifics of it, i was like this is just, this isn't funny, it's stupid, get it over.

Uh, there's a lot of that, there's a lot of like.

If i zoom out, it's great.

If i look at what's actually going on, i didn't like the particular words be like the right, the structure of it.

You know.

Yeah yeah, it could, it could.

This could be a chase thing.

You know what i mean.

Like yeah, exactly like.

And i think, like i'm not good at playing these types of games, i need games where i'm like running around and doing stuff right like i.

But this was able to hold my attention.

I think also like the chapters are put together in a smart way for our sort of brain rotted screen culture, where it's able to like break it up enough, you know.

And I thought there was some moving stuff like him and the...

You know the old guy who works in the archive, like all the back and forth between them and the dog and all that stuff.

I love all that stuff.

I will kill people for beef.

I'll do whatever it takes.

Is that the name of the dog?

Is this beef?

Such a good dog.

I love beef.

Beef is a great name for a dog.

Animal's name.

Animal's named after food is a normal thing.

But beef is a is a chunky little chihuahua.

Is it chihuahua?

I think so.

Yeah.

Everyone in this game is also really weird looking or super hot.

The romance at the core of it.

I don't know how it plays out in the end, but I mean the early flirting in that first episode is like designed to get guys to want to play this or people who are interested in women to want to play this game.

Because like, are you kidding me?

It's like I felt like I was playing one of those fucking games.

I bought off steam and have like invisible on my account.

When i was having chatting to her at the bar i was like, is this what we're doing?

All right, i like it.

I've seen a lot of uh of, especially women game developers, writers especially.

I've seen talk about how dispatch is essentially twilight for men.

Um, i would that totally.

Yes, that totally feels right.

It is like the and you can lose it.

I can tell both the hot women love him right away.

Yeah okay exactly yeah yeah totally yeah yeah, so yeah, i think that's when i started i was like oh, i totally get why people are, why i'm sure a lot of men are playing this game um Uh, and I'm sure a lot of women are playing it as well for um uh, similar reasons and other reasons.

I think like there's a good, yeah, there's the dispatch stuff.

There's a lot of, it's a lot of narrative.

Yeah.

And I think I was prepared to hate the dispatch stuff because I you talked about in the podcast before I played it.

So I think that actually helped me because then I went in and I was like, Oh, this is, this is fine.

It's like a, it's just enough like a, yeah, it's like a timing puzzle kind of thing.

Yeah.

Um, See, I don't know.

I don't know if this is a top 10.

It's the best of what it's doing, but I don't know.

Looking at this top 10, there's some games in here that we feel more passionately about.

I feel like

What do you think?

I agree.

I really like Dispatch.

Don't get me wrong.

I know I'm saying things that sound particularly negative, but it's just to preface the fact that I really, really like it.

But I do think it has some pretty glaring problems, especially with the writing, at least for me.

But, um, I think overall it's, it's still, there's really not, no one's making games like telltale and it's cool to play something like that again and to be sort of in the zeitgeist while it's happening as opposed to coming back to it a year late.

So.

And we haven't even mentioned the fact that this game looks like you're playing a cartoon.

Yeah.

It looks like a high.

Yeah, exactly.

Like a high budget.

It's, it's gorgeous to look at.

There's a lot of sequences near the end of the game where you can see Oh, that's where all the budget went for the last two episodes.

Oh, funny.

It's really good.

It's.

And, And also, like, not just the graphics but the framing of it.

Like I suspect a lot of people who worked on television worked on this game because, like the actual, you know the, you know whatever composition, the color they used, the light, all that stuff.

Yeah, I didn't check the animation studios, but at the end you can see there's a lot of studios involved in the visuals for this.

It looks like it's a lot of studios that are for hire in the animation industry.

So it's funny.

Like i've talked about this, it'll be in the final episode of the disco series.

But like i have talked about whether or not there are some types of games that should be done in the studio format, or like or not the studio format.

But in the hollywood format of you have a small team, like with disco elysium, like you just can't run a studio that has 15 engineers twiddling their thumbs while the writer's figure out the fucking game you know what i mean.

Like it's just, it's a.

This is a disaster waiting to happen, and so this ad hoc studios by their very nature sound like a studio.

That essentially and they're based in la i actually met the guy who runs the studio.

By complete coincidence, we were filming our Hades 2 stuff.

And, uh, his wife, um, is one of the people we were interviewing.

Um uh, I think it's.

I forget.

Actually he might've been there with somebody, but he was there anyway.

And, um, they're, yeah, they're based out in LA and it sounds like the, or it seems to be the way they put that together was that they were, I mean, the voice actors obviously were hired.

The our teams were animation studios were hired i'm sure they had a core team but like having it so that you can like in hollywood small pre-production and then when you go into production that's when you hire all the labor to come in all the union folks and then make the movie and then they all go away again and then you have post-production you know you know after that so Um, which is, I don't know if that's for the workers, but it works for, I mean, it depends on like, for sure.

Yeah.

Like I have plenty of friends who work as grips, best boys, camera ops, all that sort of stuff in LA.

They fucking, that's, that's what they that's they get to take two month holidays well i mean they load up their years i get what you're saying you're right you're it's it's different like if you work yeah if you work as the engineer yes it's probably not as beneficial but if you work in an environment like i'm sure all these people a lot of these people were based in la and that's just how business operates down there right um so no i hear what you're saying it's not ideal for the vast majority of labor probably but but if you can do like four jobs at once exactly yeah and if that's something you want to do which i think is sort of self-selecting at least in those jobs you know maybe not in you know nobody's getting into being a doctor or a game developer ad hoc doctors freelance doc ad doc Okay, let's, yes, we have it there in the maybes.

Okay, so we have a lot of games here.

Nothing is set in stone.

We can chat about all these.

But the current top 10 is a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 is what we have.

So let's see how we feel about these.

The Seance of Blake Manor, Death Stranding 2, Absalom, Ark Raiders with an asterisk because I'm a shill, Claire Obscure Expedition 33.

Ooh.

White Knuckle.

This is a different named game.

And Roger.

It's not White Knuckle and Roger.

Desperate.

Consume Me.

Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

Angeline Era and Blueprints.

What I want to do first is let's look at the maybes and see if anyone feels some way around these, now that we've talked about the top 10.

So the maybes are Dispatch birdcage, donkey kong bananza, mars first logistics, elden ring, night rain.

No, i'm not human.

Pig face, baby steps, the altars, silent hill f and formless star.

Speak now or forever.

Hold your peace.

I mean, there's some great games in here and then i go up to the top you know 10, the top 13 currently, or whatever.

Uh, and it's like like I I know I'm not a human is one of the best games of 2025 in my eyes, but am I going to debate for it over?

Like Ooh, definitely not.

Um, so it is.

Yeah, it's sort of a process of elimination where it's like I, I like night rain, I think is fucking great, but like I think it uh, I think the.

The ways in which it is great are there are games that do things that I think are more impressive and more deserving of celebration.

Hmm.

Maybe we should, this isn't, if you don't speak now, I shouldn't have said that.

If you don't speak now, it's fine.

We're still going to go through the top 10 and sort of weight them a little bit, okay?

But is there any other ones that are standing out to people?

I know Frank mentioned Bonanza as one that he feels strongly about.

Is there any other ones that people feel like?

I have a few in here, but I don't feel particularly like I'm fine with Pig Face Mars First and Dispatch not being in.

Yeah, nothing really jumps out as being like.

I desperately want that up there, at least for me, okay.

So bonanza is the one frank you.

Is that fair to say i don't speak for you?

No yeah, bonanza is like i.

I feel like it's so colorful, unique and i want to see more games like that in the future.

It's also like the only nintendo game we ever have ever vouched for.

A lot of people talk about as well, but i'm like yeah, that's like my second favorite game of the year.

Um, but again, if it's not in the top 10, i don't, it doesn't matter, but i think dk bonanza is so bright and cool.

Okay, we'll stick it.

I'll just stick it there so we can keep an idea on it for the moment.

Okay, so let's weight these ones, okay?

Let's go through them and see if we feel strong, medium, or... Mild, like hot sauce?

Mild.

There we go.

Thank you.

That's a less derogatory one than I was thinking.

Strong, medium.

Well unfortunately, medium and mild both use m, that's true.

Yeah, you could do weak, but then, like no one would pick that hot sauce because it'd be embarrassing.

Strong, medium and flavorful that's what i'm gonna go for.

Okay, f is for flavorful, because it's like it doesn't sound below medium.

That sounds better than medium.

Okay flavorless, maybe we can find it.

We'll assume mild and do a different thing for medium.

Okay,

We could do spicy, hot, and mild.

Which one's the best?

Spicy is the hot.

The hotter the better.

Oh, yeah.

Okay.

We're going by spice.

We're doing Scoville units.

We are.

We're doing the Scoville units.

Great.

Make sure we lie on our hot sauce bottle so it'll be on a review channel later.

Okay.

Okay. let's and this again you know we're just we're just we're just playing folks very scientific don't fuck around just figuring it out and we'll see how we feel about these i kind of feel like we have a good idea of maybe where somebody's gonna land uh okay seance of blake managed manner manager yeah that feels strong i think i would say strong jeremy strong strong frank you've not played all right no but like universally everyone likes it so it's yeah okay That feels strong.

Death Stranding, I would say for me, hot.

Frank?

Frank's strong.

10 out of 10.

Jesse?

You know what?

I would also go hot.

I will never play this game because it'll take me 400 hours to get to it.

But boy oh boy, I bet I would love it.

Yeah, I think that feels, let's go strong slash hot.

That feels like it's probably one of the main ones.

Absalom.

I'm strong on it.

You're strong?

Hmm.

See, it's hard because mild, again, feels like it's mean.

But, like, I don't feel mean.

I love this game.

It's video games.

You can mild it.

It's fine.

I'll do mild just because that's where.

But I've not played enough.

All right.

Has anyone else?

Okay.

Arc Raiders.

That is strong.

Fucking loved it strong.

Still love it strong.

Okay, we'll just leave it as a s.

Then claire obscure, opposition 33, i would say strong, you got it yeah, okay.

I do want to say one thing about claire.

I wish it had a mini map.

That's i just wanted.

That is a very fair complaint.

It gets confusing, especially if you're trying to explore.

It's like getting back.

Oh yeah, it's tough.

That underwater area, i got lost in a lot.

Oh yeah, that was fucked up.

Yeah, that wasn't cool.

Uh oh, that's a strong baby.

Strong, okay.

Yeah, i agree, i think i feel good about that.

Uh, white knuckle, it's a tough one because it is.

It is strong for me, but i think that when push comes to shove I, there will be other ones like I.

Some of the ones I've suggested will probably knock off some of the other ones.

I, you know, I, I don't know if it makes you want to be a little less hesitant.

I also would put this strong.

The final level of white knuckle is one of the most exhilarating things I've done this year or last year.

Like it's amazing.

The feeling of completing white knuckle was was what is a gaming memory that i would tell grandchildren about if i wanted to have children?

Yes, i might have children, just to tell my grandchildren.

Can i tell your grandchildren about white knuckle?

Can i come over on christmas?

Uh, white knuckle yeah, it's strong.

I don't know why i'm downplaying it.

I i don't know if it'll i hear what you're saying, where it's like we have a couple of indie games in here that are hard to Yeah, because then you end up comparing them against each other.

Because what happens is in these situations is that you don't go white knuckle.

You know it's not better like for you.

Like you prefer it to arc raiders right, which is fair.

But it's harder to make that argument right than it is to look at another.

So you end up like negotiating against yourself for something a little bit.

So yeah, it's also just that, like there, i it's.

It's unfair for me to say like every game i've suggested survives on this list if other people don't feel as strong.

So if jesse is also feeling strong, then i feel more confident saying strong.

I just don't want to be the sole voice and be like all my games have to be on the top 10.

Well, how many do you even have?

Is it four?

I think these two.

I mean, Desperate would have been on mine.

I'm glad people vouch for it.

Consume me, Angelina.

Yeah, I mean I guess it's like four that I feel.

If Jesse is also on the white knuckle train, then I feel like it's really just like who is the one I will not allow to fall off of this list.

Um, consume me.

I like probably about the same as white knuckle, but it's kind of a hard one to compare because it's like oh, did you, did you like it better when the red socks had a come from behind win in the alcs?

Or did you like it better when you saw that movie about like the marriage that ended?

You know we're here to hate, to kill ourselves with those stupid, fucking arbitrary decisions.

Or we could just do the thing we did a few years ago just have 11.

Remember we did that?

We were like, fuck it.

Spinal tap approach.

Rules are meant to, exactly, yeah.

We'll come to that.

And Roger.

So, here's the thing.

I'm very strong on this game.

I do feel like oh, I'd really like to have it in here, but I also feel like we can give it its flower somewhere else.

Yeah, I'd be fine.

I was going to say hot.

Like, I love this game, but I, like...

Relative to everything else, hot.

I'm hot on it, for sure.

To me, it deserves a narrative achievement.

You know what I mean?

To me, it's not one of the best games overall, but it is very special and unique.

And I think... yeah so i so i there were a couple of good interactive moments but for the most part i was like this also could have worked if i just watched someone else play it for the most part 100 and there was a couple of times that were a little bit like it was a couple of ones where i got all right get to it i already played florence on my phone move on yeah how many yeah exactly yeah yeah 100 100 it feels very much like is it i think that's it same different people different studio different studio but it's it is very similar yeah i just have to share that as we're as we're comparing all these games i just imagined uh a an arcade with an and roger machine in it and i just had to share that image in my mind of like oh stupid thing i gotta give it another quarter why did i forget that arcade that like and roger we're out of spoilers on i don't want to say anything what's wrong with this stupid kid why doesn't she know anything i'm fucking 12 bucks down in quarters just remember shit all right pissing me off fuck it i'm gonna go unlock the dr dray skin by pouring what i'm bombing afghanistan my light gun's dead you're playing and roger what are you doing and roger got shot okay despilate We love that game, don't we?

Yeah.

Yeah, that's a strong one.

I think all four of us love that game.

That's across the board.

Consume Me.

I feel like this one's close.

This is cusp hot strong for me.

Does anyone else have any feelings?

Did anyone else?

I know other people play it.

Did anyone else complete this game?

No, no, no, no, no, no.

I have not completed it.

I've played maybe a quarter of it.

It sticks the landing so fucking hard that I want to say strong.

It does things at the end that i was like so moved by um, that are like so different and i won't say another word about it.

But it's just like it will.

It takes you by surprise and it's like it does things with it.

Okay, i'm convincing myself.

It's strong.

It does things towards the end that are like holy fuck, like this is why video games exist.

It's strong, damn.

Okay, All right.

Like I won the fucking day four and I was like, this is really good.

I got to go play something else real quick.

The literally the exact same thing happened to me.

I was like, okay, I've gotten a good foundation on this.

It's super strong.

I need to go play more of fucking care expedition.

You know what I mean?

Like that.

Yeah.

That's the, I mean, that's just the nature of game of the year.

I would have loved to have played more of literally every game we've talked about.

And just so people know we do actually like dedicated work hours everyone on the team to go do this stuff.

It's just that there are there were a lot of games that they're not very short like easily, like our documents here has.

This is of the games that we actually added in has 70 something games in it.

And these are only the ones that we thought were good enough to make it in.

So like, a significant amount of fucking playing games has, has, has gone about there.

And then we also doubled up.

Like I played a bunch of fucking WWE too.

I have to stop thinking, sue me so I can, so I can beat up Seamus in a TLC game.

Like that's what we're, that's what we're doing here.

Um, kingdom come deliverance too.

It feels like a strong to me.

I feel it deserves it.

And I know in my heart it deserves it.

But it is a game that takes like 120 hours to beat.

And I feel like I don't want to say that I'm the authority on it, but it feels, I don't know, after the first, like 11 hours or so.

I'm like this is incredible.

I hear what you're saying.

I think it's, it's almost a shame you didn't just get past the wedding.

Cause I feel like that would have really solidified the, the, the good vibe feel.

But, um, yeah, for me, it's super strong.

It's just, it's the like it, it's like.

I think the one thing it's missing not to negotiate against myself is that, like the games like Oblivion and Skyrim and Fallout because they created their own worlds, they have their own identity.

And in a weird way, because this game is so historic that it sort of doesn't have much of its own sauce in there, I think which I think is the thing that like stops the wider public maybe getting into this game that it's not like curious to them, but i think for the people who played it it's like it's it's almost a shame.

This, i mean the game is sold incredibly well but it's almost a shame it's not bigger, like which are three levels.

You know what i mean.

It feels like it deserves that level of um respect or notoriety, but it's almost so slavish to the era that it's it has.

It has sunk into the background a little bit, almost like no clip.

You know where we sort of like we kind of try our brand sort of sits behind the game a little bit.

Like that's what this feels like.

Like what I'm basically saying is I think this game is a lot better than people think.

Yeah.

I agree with that.

I think that I would love to see a lot of people think it's good.

Sorry.

I was laughing because you said that right after being like, it's like no clip.

It's a lot better than people think.

Listen, we do great work that other people find.

You just don't know about it.

I agree.

I would love to see this studio paired up with, you know, like the types of weirdo artists and writers and shit that were doing the concept, art and writing and story and world building for something like Morrowind.

I would love to see like a bizarro psychedelic fantasy world that had imagination behind it, because you're right in all of the like, oh cool.

These people dress like this and these people dress like this.

At the end of the day, it is all like they.

These people wear red tunics and it's like i want, i want like a weird.

We haven't you don't know i'm here green socks.

We don't have a dye for that.

You know it hasn't been invented yet.

Pop up, the green dye was invented.

You know it doesn't do that.

But yeah silly okay, strong.

Uh, angeline era, it's i.

I mean, it's like again, it's so fucking hard to compare because i feel like it um, it has the things in it that are like like artful or artsy or whatever are are so well executed and it balances those so well with, like you, you could not give a shit about uh, the paganism or religion or psychology or any of these things, and you could just play this as like a straight up.

Like you know, you could hand the controller to a child and they would be like this is like fun, I'm having fun.

It is like one of the most fun art games I've ever played or something.

And I think that deserves a huge amount of praise because, as much as I like Analgesic's other work, I think that this is the most fun game they've made.

And I think that that is a perspective that I wish I saw more of.

I feel like sometimes games are like, this is art, so it can't be fun.

And sometimes games are like, this is fun, so it can't be art.

And it's like, this game is like fun art.

And I feel like that is profoundly interesting.

And the last thing I'll say is, it's just like, it's so its own thing.

There's nothing like it.

It's just like, I don't know.

I feel pretty strong about it.

The one knock against it is you're the only one that's played it.

No, no, he's not the only one that's played it.

I played the first probably third of it.

Oh, you did?

Yeah.

What do you, did you like it?

Sorry, I agreed with you earlier.

Yeah, yeah, I think.

Yeah, no, no, no.

I think the way, that's all right.

I think the way that they tell their stories and write even like side characters, like the NPCs in Angelina era, but also in Anodyne and Stephanie and everything they've made, have these little subtle moments where they say something so profound and heartbreaking and then they'll say something that makes you laugh your ass off in the next 30 seconds, like i.

I think i mentioned it on the pod when we talked about it for the first time.

There was like these two characters.

One was talking about marking uh, on the doorway the height of their child as they were growing up and how they were.

Well, not their child, but they were acknowledging the markings of a child growing up and their height changing over time.

And then the character near them was like they found a way to like store the encyclopedia on a stick.

If you shrink all the texts down into that size and like the profundity of those two statements next to each other really affected me.

And then, right after that, there was another character who's like did you know that like, slime is sticky.

Yeah.

Or like you'll break a treasure chest and it'll just be like, Hey, it's okay if you failed today.

Cause like, Everyone fails sometimes.

And that's part of like getting good at stuff.

And you're like, oh my God, like I will be reduced to the verge of tears by just breaking a treasure chest.

And it gives me like one line of dialogue.

And I think that like if push comes to shove, I think Angelina takes the spot from White Knuckle.

And it is not.

It is not because it is better in in any way other than the fact that i think i have a stronger, that i i have a higher value assignment in my brain for my personal tastes on this type of experience.

White knuckle gave me such a like a crazy peak experience of like executing mastery, of like physical, tactile mastery, but ultimately like angelina is a more important type of game to me personally.

Okay, How about Blueprints?

I love Blueprints so much.

I think it is so, so specifically bizarre, but it's also so specifically bizarre for me.

I would be happy for it to be off the top 10.

Although again, we are sacrificing our no caps.

I'm really abusing that coverage.

But no, I do really think Blueprints is like for a very specific kind of person and a very specific kind of play, like there's a lot of people who it's not going to work and it has been the case that they tried to play it and it didn't.

But for me it's like I was able to fall in love with this thing in a way that very few games have successfully done, where I hated playing it for like 80 of the time.

But man, the 20% where it lands, it works so good.

It works so good.

And I hated it because I wanted to understand it better.

It was like, I was in a abusive relationship with a video game.

First time that's ever happened.

Um, It was so uncomfortable and yet enjoyable at the same time.

And, like I, I look back over the photos that I took when we were in the Netherlands for uh, for my honeymoon.

And like it's so funny scrolling through the photos and seeing beautiful and then screenshots of this game and me writing bullshit.

Like my photo gallery is all messed up because it's 50% those two things.

Like I was on the plane playing that game and I feel like someone probably thought I was trying to figure out how to build a bomb.

Like I shouldn't have been doing that on a plane.

It's, it's Blueprints is going to stick in my heart forever, or maybe in the sad, scary parts of my brain.

But also this is such a specifically me game.

So I would I would understand it needing to lose a spot.

So a game that the rest of us like could fit on there.

I mean, you're talking like that, then you're taking Angelina with you.

It sounds like if anyone else dangerous, no, no, no.

Anyone else was positive on blueprints.

I would argue to keep it up there.

I'm also positive on an era, so I think it's OK.

Yeah, I the blueprints I do feel bad because the no because of no cops in particular.

I mean, we could have the no cap like one of the categories could be the no caps.

Yeah.

Game of the year.

Yeah, that is true, that is true.

Okay, we'll put, we'll slide brood plants down a little bit.

So, the only ones that aren't strong, because they all got strong well, they all got strong.

One of them, two of them got caveats for strong strong hot, which was death.

Stranding 2.

There's no fucking way we're taking frank's only big game.

He's got despalati on here as well but, like a lot of these are games that.

So there's that.

An absalom is the other one.

Yeah, that said, jesse just sacrificed blueprints as well.

So i don't, i don't, i don't know a lot of, i don't know where we're on here.

I would not, you know, don't do it for me.

I'm like, i'm happy, like five of mine are on here um, at the very least, or close to it.

Uh, there is an alternative option.

We're down to 11 okay, And one of them already has an asterisk.

Yeah.

We could have our creators in the shill zone.

11th spot.

That's true.

The shill zone is the 11th spot.

I think we did this before we, we did 11 before.

And we also came up with a justification for it.

There was some caveat.

I forget what it was.

So we could do not that it's in order anyway, but we could do, we could have our 11 again. our top 10 plus the shill zone top 10 plus our plus shill zone yeah plus our creators we could do that i mean that feels reasonable to me well you'll be very happy you get to keep that's why i feel so reasonable to me is because it's my preference does white knuckle feel like it's uh it's so fucking great man it's like i mean they're all great that's no i know i know i know it it again it's like i think it deserves to be in the top 10 it's just that the that type of game to me and my personal value structure falls below games that make me think and feel will always take precedent over things that are like expressions of uh of physical mastery yeah yeah yeah but that's just a personal value judgment and it's funny because i think i might do the opposite like i was happy for and roger which was one of the most affecting games i played this year or uh without a dawn um which i really love that yeah um but also without a dawn it's like a 40 minute game so i'm not gonna it's not gonna kick off clear obscure um thank you for fixing that you finally put the coal in after clear obscure yeah it's been annoying you well i don't have to put the fucking umlauts over ooh at this stage or are we cool if you want to look at his ears that's the thing i've literally made him deaf by not honoring the couldn't hear all our praise oh that's sad there you go now it's got now it's got dots on it uh consume me consume me is fucking really really special it's like yeah i don't know i i to me it's it is it's doing something that's so unique it's so in its own lane and uh it's such a like the you can feel how much like time and like personal anecdote like the the developer shared the lead developer shared that like the structure of the game of these like super tightly rigidly structured schedules for every single day are actual that's like what her childhood was like she has notebooks full of rigidly structured every day yeah it's like i didn't even need to know that to know that was true i could feel that this was someone's real lived experience and it's like that's fucking that's like that's profound yeah i think in that way if that's what we're praising despolote for as well i think to argue that consume me could even come off even though it's doing a lot of the same things in the same sort of not the exact same things but like reaching a similar spot of like being a documentary for somebody's life in some regard okay i think i have figured out a moral solution to this problem that will we can all walk away in a minute and feeling happy that also doesn't make me feel like we've necessarily copped out or that I, or that we're relegating our creators, which I also feel a little bit like it either makes it or it doesn't.

I feel like I don't, I, the shill zone, I like the idea of, so we'll keep that.

Right.

So how about this?

Each of these games is like a card, right?

We can only have 10 cards in the, in the, in our hand at any one time.

But because our creators comes with the shill zone and It basically sort of it, doesn't?

It incurs a sort of a not moral debt kind of.

It incurs a certain moral debt, which is that we get to add another game to the top 10.

All right.

This is a top 10.

It's not 11, but there will be 11 games on it but but, but it's because the the arc raiders card, because it's shill zone, that allow.

It's sort of like it's paying back to the gaming community, community self.

A, we already.

Yeah, so what you're saying is you're using, you're using the money from the arc raiders project to purchase an 11th slot in the top 10.

Yeah okay yeah, that's what i'm doing.

That's cool, that's a good cause.

Yeah well, it is because like, there's going to be white knuckle fans who are listening, who are like those motherfuckers, better not take this game out of here.

Their knuckles are bright white as they're gripping their desks, right exactly, and their hands are strong.

You don't want to fuck with these people.

They're terrified.

The howleyites are like they're coming for death stranding frank, stick your fingers, stick your.

I don't know.

Stick your sword.

Get your sword ready.

Get your piss bottles ready.

Okay, how do we all feel about that?

This is the top 10.

I feel like Donkey Kong is a force of nature and he would smash his way into the top ten and not finish it.

Because that's how you accomplish your goals in Donkey Kong.

You don't fucking read.

There's no fucking puzzles.

You put it in Japanese.

You don't understand.

You just fucking mash the X button, and it's the best game ever.

So I think Donkey Kong climbs his way to the top.

Holy shit.

He comes in with the... From the top rope.

I hate him.

From the top fucking rope.

That was like if you were watching the video version.

You saw him come more like rush the camera, like he was running down the ramp from the titantron.

Frank's been setting up a ladder outside of the ring for two minutes.

Shit, shit.

We almost had it.

Numbers are arbitrary, but i think donkey kong's nature is he would he would he would, he would just smash his way up there.

So i think he should still be in there.

If it's top 12, that's fine, but he's done, it's so.

It's like the fucking stone cold music went off.

I heard the the hell in a cell.

Oh, my god, it's how he's coming in with donkey kong.

It's a slobber knocker, it's so.

This is a.

It's a sticky situation for me because i have not and cannot play it.

I would love to play.

It looks wonderful.

Um, i played it.

I wasn't super mad about it, but it was uh, it was pretty cool.

It was pretty.

I liked what it was putting out there.

It was pretty, pretty awesome.

It was pretty good.

It's pretty good.

It's a great game.

It's a pretty game.

It's absolutely give it here.

Maybe every year we just keep adding an extra game to the top.

It's like a little dividend that pays out.

Yeah, exactly.

This is the interest payments on the top 10, which is like Oh, but we always call it a top 10 even though it's got 12.

And then eventually when you're all as old as me, our top 10 will have like fucking 25 games in it.

That'd be great.

Here's the much of a shit after almost five hours of non-stop recording.

How much of a shit does.

If you, if you, you give a shit.

Are you and me asking uh, we can get rid of absalom, it's fine.

It's not the end of the world.

It was my.

It was the most fun i had this year.

Do i think that that trumps some of the other stuff on there?

Not really.

Um, i had more fun with it than i did with donkey kong bonanza, but frank sounds like he had more fun with donkey kong bonanza than i did with uh, Absalom.

Absalom.

Interesting.

We'll, we'll, we'll, we'll put it in the, in the, in no man's land down here.

Sure.

For a second.

The secret 12.

A baker's top 10.

Exactly.

Wouldn't that be 13?

Oh, no, you're right.

Yeah, you're right.

It would be an extra one.

Yeah, i'm just trying to like reverse engineer justifications for this.

Yeah, i mean i've, i don't.

I think it is more important to highlight the best games of the year than it is to adhere to uh, to rigid structure.

That being said, constraint is important, but i think that uh, you know, there's a little spillover.

We'll just have to do a top nine next year.

Are we back to 11?

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

Jesse, I think that was a very graceful... Happy.

Happy to do stuff.

Sacrifice.

And I feel better about this list knowing that we got two Howleys in here.

I agree.

Yeah.

True.

All right.

Top 10.

Top 10 games.

It's 11 games because we have the Shield Zone card sitting in there.

Giving us that buff.

It's like we're playing Inscription or something.

Extra slot for gems.

Exactly, yeah.

Slotted.

Love it.

I love the idea that our creators made way for another game and that game was Donkey Kong Bonanza.

We need to support small developers independently published.

Give them a break.

This is the Noclip2 message.

There wasn't enough Japanese games on the list.

That's true.

Yeah.

About like half of them Japanese.

Death Stranding 2.

Yeah, U. U and Donkey Kong Bonanza.

And Angelina, I think they're based in Tokyo.

Yeah, and Konsumi's in the diaspora, right?

Yeah, yeah.

We're getting there.

All right, that's it, folks.

Let's wrap it up.

Our top 10 games of this year are The Seance of Blake Manor, Death Stranding 2.

Our Creators Claire Obscure, Expedition 33, White Knuckle, Desperate Consumi, Kingdom Come, Deliverance 2, Angeline Era and Donkey Kong Bonanza.

What a wonderful melange of games we ended up with.

All right, now let's rank them.

Oh, my gosh.

No, no, no.

Get me out of here.

My wife's sick upstairs.

I'm not sick, but we're all going to have sore throats after this one.

Get your Lemsip.

Get your milky cream.

Yeah, cream up your throat, boys.

Shout out to all the games we talked about today.

We have plenty more we have not talked about.

And over the next two days we will be recording more podcasts hopefully not as long giving out some category within a certain types of categories that we think are important, that we did have written down somewhere and I lost and now have to rewrite them in the next hour or two and then share them with you guys so we can get that all sorted out.

But yes, we'll be giving more flowers out to more games over the next couple of days and you will be listening to them.

Post haste.

So this went up on Friday.

Tomorrow's podcast will be There'll be another one the day after that.

There'll be another one.

So massive thanks to all of you for listening, to Jesse for producing the whole thing.

Jeremy Frank Jesse, thank you so much for playing all these games, let alone sitting here for five hours with piss breaks, with a piss grenade breaks.

And I'm going to go now before I lose the ability to talk and no clip updates this week.

Our game of the year videos are also up on no clip to go check those out.

We've all done a video with our own personal games of the year.

I think we might be one short by the time this goes live on Friday.

Um, but that will be up, uh, Saturday, I assume.

Um, Game of the Year pods of course.

Episode 3 of the Disco Elysium franchise series has now gone up.

I just announced Disco Elysium 3 by accident there.

Episode 3 of our documentary series is now live.

It focuses on writing and if you're an early access patron, you can also now check out the episode on art, which is a pretty cool.

It's got a lot of alexander rostov, who i think is a mvp noclip interviewee.

I think he's like type top five interviewees one of the coolest humans on the earth.

Amen yeah, that guy is.

Has he's got that riz?

You know what i mean?

That is a swaggerly man he is.

Is that a stevie down song?

Was that swaggerly man?

I'm a swaggerly man.

No, that's.

I don't know who that is.

Patron show is also going off.

I was going to record it today, but I don't think I can speak anymore.

I'll record it tomorrow.

Should be up as well by the time you're listening to this.

So maybe I'll put it up on Sunday.

Keep your eyes peeled.

And, uh, yeah, that's it.

Thanks folks for listening.

We'll be back tomorrow with more game of the year shenanigans.

Let's hope this, Oh my God, we have to wait an extra 12 seconds.

So we breached six hours on this, uh, Riverside recording.

It'd be really tragic if six hours was what it's like.

It's only five hours.

You want to sit here for another hour?

We can do that.

It's only five.

Oh shit.

No.

Should we sit here for five hours?

Yay.

Happy new year.

Once I put this together, it'll be less than five hours.

Doesn't matter.

It felt good for us.

[Noclip Podcast Episode 261: 2025 Game of the Year Deliberations]-[Noclip's Games of 2025 - Episode 1: Picking Our Top Ten]

📋 Summary

Noclip's 2025 Game of the Year: A Collaborative Selection

The Selection Process and Philosophy

Key Highlights and Debates

The Power of Atmosphere and Narrative

Mechanical Mastery and Flow

Narrative Ambition and Human Experience

The Final Top 11

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

[Noclip Podcast Episode 261: 2025 Game of the Year Deliberations]-[Noclip's Games of 2025 - Episode 1: Picking Our Top Ten]

📋 Summary

Noclip's 2025 Game of the Year: A Collaborative Selection

The Selection Process and Philosophy

Key Highlights and Debates

The Power of Atmosphere and Narrative

Mechanical Mastery and Flow

Narrative Ambition and Human Experience

The Final Top 11

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🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript

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