Giant Bombcast Giant Bomb's Game of the Year 2015: Day Four (Premium)

Day four is upon us for Giant Bombs, a Game of the Year twenty
fifteen. I'm Brand Shoemaker, Dan Records here, Jeff Dursins here, Austin
Walker's here, Alex and Barrow's ere I, any Carvel's here, dwal Driker
is here. It's a nice little circle you did. I did all that
in one breath, thanks, proud circular breathing. Yes, like Yanni inward
inward, Yes, I try to live as much of my life as like
Yanni as possible. A good way to Yanni like solution. Yes. I
don't think I've heard the name Yanni in about a decade. It's been a
nice poul. That's good stuff. Man. We've gone through a lot of
categories already, but it's not even close to over yet. Today we've got
some stuff on the docket, including best Style please stop, Worst Game of
the Year, and Best Story. It's a good run of categories. Best
Style it's not exactly it's kind of a counterpart to best looking game. I
think style encomass is more than just certain, right yeah yeah, also counterpart
to like best music. It's a it's when it all comes together. Yeah,
I feel like it's sort of the the evolution of the you know,
Soldier Boy award versus the what is frog fractions too or And there's a little
bit of both of those in there. There's also some best Graphics Artistic.
Yeah, there's a lot of awards. A ship that like bold us over
you know in a way it just like it you could made you pay attention
to it. Yeah, like typically an audio visual thing, but not necessarily
just that it's like, hey, this thing was fucking well. Yea again,
this feels real good when you do this thing. It's what cool is?
Yeah? Cool game of the year. Yeah, so the winners are
the ones that could cut that, aren't That's true? Yeah, games you
don't play. Yep, all right, let's go through this. The games
that are potentially too cool for this category include Spalltoon, Invisible Inc, Tormentum,
Laura Croft, Go Undertail, Yoshi's Wooly World, Grow Home, Rebel
Galaxy Galaxy that was weird. Those are different games. Blues and Bullets.
I never heard of that one. Grow homes On here again, I just
fix that are Mellow, Apotheon, Axiom Verge, Massive, Chalice, Dropsy,
Uber Mosh, Blood Born, and Ronan. It's a lot. It's
a lot of games it is. I would like to add and take off
Ru's Awakening because I couldn't. I didn't play it. Yeah, it looked
a lot like uh, I guess it looked kind of like what you guys
described Tormentum is looking like. It's like really sort of what were the scary
books in like the eighties? Oh yeah, the one with that horrible cover.
Yeah, it's like black and white scary stories to tell them the dark.
Yes, it looks like. Man, did you guys know that they've
reissued that book a year or two ago with completely different illustrations. They have
got rid of all that stuff. They screw them up, so they put
in super generic, boring. Most memorable part I've been I've been meaning to
track down an original copy of that because those illustrations are fucking terrified. They
scarred me as a child. Oh yeah, I just looked him up.
It's good, okay. Finer one is something that has haunted me my entire
life, The one of the Spot. Yeah. I read that book over
and over as a kid. Maybe Our Awakening isn't quite this, but it
also reminds me of the I think it's the second level on Earth from Jim
where you're in Hell some more? Yeah, what's the cat? Is it
Hell? The cat? Is that the name of the cat? I don't
know anyway, cool looking art style. I didn't play it, so it's
too cool for this cat. Yeah. I didn't see a whole lot of
it, just the Kiosk packs. Fair enough. Okay, let's talk about
blues and bullets for a second, because I don't think anyone else knows what
this is. I've never heard of that game, so that sounds like a
good place to start. It is this episodic game. Uh. It is
a noir style alternate history mystery where you play as a I guess a retired
Elliott Ness uh in a post campone world where he is, you know,
sort of been in prison and as out and kind of doing his his stuff,
and it's all like, if I remember correctly, it has a very
like sort of black and white kind of red accents. Yeah, I'm looking
at it. Is it very much looks like sin City. Yes, there's
a lot of sin City in there, but it's sin City as as portrayed
by someone who only had the basic idea of what Sin City was like.
They saw the movie poster. I wish I was them. Yeah. Uh,
and it's you know, it's one of those games that is like so
dripping with style. It's almost trying a little too hard. But they're doing
a little bit of the splinter Cell displayed. Yes, yes, they yeah,
definitely, that's cool. But they do pretty well. They do.
It's it's it's done in such a way that it's very striking in a in
a good way. Is this game good matters in this category? But like
I just I'm surprised I've never heard of it, Like no, but also
al Capone owns a hotel that is a Zeppelin so wow. Yeah, like
so you go to a Zeppelin hotel and you have conversations with him, and
I mean it's it's an episodic thing. There's only one episode out. Uh,
it's really interesting. Uh. And it's the style that stands out about
that game, like it is the it is the visuals, it is the
weird alternate history stuff. I don't know, like this is the only like
when we when I was going through this category, it was actually this was
the first thing I thought of. Huh, yeah, it's like a good
place for this to be. What was that other one was White Night.
Yeah, White Knight. I didn't like White Knight as much. Yeah,
it was also a very like that was just pure black. I know better
than the Google that term fair enough? Should we cut the action verge?
I mean it's it looks great actually though, Yeah, I actually thought this
might be the place for it. The shit is not just metro. Yeah.
Yeah, like the video of the processing effects on it and that stuff
is awesome. They're weird kind of organics in that game. I actually don't
like the style of that. What do you mean, like the some of
the creatures and stuff like that you find later on, and just like the
the big fast travel thing is like a cool idea that looks kind of gross,
and it's like, yeah, yeah, it's like some of that stuff.
I just didn't especially love the look of even like the main character.
So I'd say there's some elements of the style. Well the main character.
When you you know, put that like trench code thing on the weird doctor
thing, oh yeah, and then yeah you get the weird yeah you once
you get the word tentacles and stuff like that. Yeah, something else that
stood out that this is super random. But the I think it's the second
boss in that game, like the scale of it when they play around with
it's like where you're a tiny Yeah, there's some really neat things about the
presentation that came there is it's it's some of that stuff feels technical in nature,
and and yeah, I guess like the style of like the glitch stuff,
are you like the hidden worlds and it's all kind of like a different
filter, like almost on a different TV. But also I kind of more
mean, like you know that you're like hacking creatures and then it looks like
the looks like they're the raw corrupted. Yeah, you know, like that's
a like stylistically awesome. Yeah, but then just some of the core designs
of some of the larger creatures. I think it's kind of but all right,
get no butt games on this on this list. I don't think Massive
Chalice needs to be on here. I like that game and think that there
is more style there than most people do. I think, I like really
do like the low poly, like flat faced stuff. I really like the
banners and like the people calling out their like their house slogan. The graphic.
The graphic design in that game is really good. I really like it.
I didn't like it at all. I thought it all looked like Placeholder,
uh and that that so that was like my least favorite part of that
game. Like, I think the gameplay is what what hooked me into that.
The style of it never did anything for me. Actually, now that
I look about the characters look like toeball characters now that I'm looking at screenshots
again, and then like they get relic weapons that you can pass down through
the ages and like they look cool. You get a right like a battering
ram that has a rams head on it, like a big fist. One
of the classes in that game is the caber Jack and they all just fight
with telephone polls yes effectively think another one. And the Alchemists have claws that
they can like hit you with or throw granite aid flasks with. It's good,
there's a good I don't know, there's good stuff. I mean there's
a lot of good game and the style is not what what does it for
me? Yeah, I think a Potheon has like a unique style that you
don't see a lot of, But I actually don't think they execute it on
it as well as I would have liked, you think. I think it
just looks like a like what they're going for, a clay pot come to
life. I think it looks I think it looks pretty good. I think
that's about the way it moves. That just the animation is super weird.
Yeah, I think it's almost like, I don't know, if they were
going for like a Harry How's An esque like stop motion look, but I
think it is sort of odd. It feels deliberate, but I don't necessarily
think it's good. I mean, it's the art style that game kind of
hangs everything on, and it is striking and distinctive. But I don't know.
I think I think Galaxy is a very strong contender in this In this
category, I feel like it's maybe one of the best. That is.
Yeah, that is and again it is the paw screen, but it is
also the way those missiles moves. Animation, it's just like the seventeen bit
logo at the begin ding Thetakawa like the perfect the credit. Every season is
amazing. Every episode has a procedurally generated episode title plus a procedurally generated writer.
Yes, that game's got style. Yeah, I think that's the nail
the aesthetic they're going for. Yeah, I think Invisible Ink is great.
And Clay's art is as always fantastic, and there's a really good cinematics in
that. Well, it's got so much style I does. I just don't
know if it's gonna hang here. The opening sequence of that game so good
sets up that style so well too. All right, if you think like
I'll listen, I'm really like it's on my personal list. I'm just trying
to you know, I'm trying to be be communal here. It's really good.
Yeah, Actually, the best thing, there's like so many good animations
about that that are just like an agent backs up against the wall and then
like peaks around the corner. That stuff is really good. Pinning down soldiers
is really good. Yeah, Yeah, that games good style. Ubermash is
a game where you've got a sword and you have to slice and reflect bullets,
and you got a bassline and you have a bassline and that's about it,
and it's super fast and it just goes ubermash when you start each level.
But then when you play it, it's not so great. It doesn't
sound very stylish to me, you know, it's super stylish. Isn't there
a weird text scrawl or like the guy announced its like or whatever. It
was like Welcome to the Planet where nobody survives supermash, But we can cut
it. I just want to call it out for saying, hey, you
guys nailed that style, but it wasn't very much fun to play. M
that matters. But I mean, if you want to cut it, because
like, it's one of those things I kept trying to come back to you
because I like the tone and style of it, but then it kind of
falls apart and you just can't get into it. It's it's not gonna hang.
Like the best stylish games, that style drags you through almost right,
and there's a there's a gameplay that compliments it so that you're you're feeling real
cool. The bullets in that game look good, really crazy. It's just
damn hard. Roanan though. Yeah, Ronan's got style. It does have
style, and that style is an insurance commercial. The animation, You're not
wrong. That might be the sickest. You think that's a bad thing.
No hesitation, Why is that? Why is that a bad thing? It's
fluid, but it definitely Yeah, it does seem like a low rent issue
insurance commercial. As wise, I thought when you're when you're jumping up and
moving around all that animation. It's fluid. It totally works. Yeah,
like the animation and everything, like, yeah, it's totally compass. It
looks a lot like Gunpoint. It looks a lot like gun Point. Yeah.
I love the game a lot, basically do. And yeah, it's
like music and everything. Yeah, that's that's all good too. But there
was something about like the visual presentation of that that just kind of rubbed you
the wrong way. Yeah, okay, I'm gonna say not a hero here,
something that would be worth considering for this category, but it I don't
know that it actually makes it was that good? Should I play that?
It's fun? Okay, yeah, it is the Ali Ali team. It's
it's yeah, like I've after a few levels and I ended up playing a
lot more of that, but like it's like this sort of thing where two
levels in you kind of have seen the thing and it's like, all right,
well now it's like do I really want to like embrace these mechanics and
master them? And the answer for me was like not especially. Okay.
I ended up going deeper with it because I thought Bunny Lord was an interesting
character, and I thought you unlock more characters and there's there's Rick Ross in
this game. I don't know that guy's that's that's Rick Ross. I put
up a screenshot or a video trailer of this game, and Rick Ross is
in this It's not actually pixel pixel Rick Ross. Pixel Ross maybe is in
this game. If you, I mean, if you rep the pixel respect
the pixel pixel Ross. How about a Yoshi made of wool that can dress
up like a shot guy. Fuck that I can get behind that, Like
the I would give I would give this this game more credibility in this category.
Is the best looking. Yeah, they really nailed what they were going
for there. I feel like that this is something that they've done before.
Kirby was just an outline. He's not wrong, it's check it out.
We took like one of our existing game templates and threw materials into it.
Like that doesn't nothing about that says it's not even it's not even new materials.
If you look at that Kirby game, like the yarn looks similar.
Yeah, like this this is this is They go a lot further with it
in this for sure, a lot further. And it looks amazing and I
love it. I love the cohesive style of it. And actually he does
a lot of favors for it over at Kurby to it. Yeah, oh
yeah, like they they're all in this style. Every single thing, like
the sign post is a piece of felt with a pin stuck through it.
Yeah, like like big banners you have to climb across, or just big
scarves and stuff like that. Yeah, all looks great. I think it's
in the conversation. Let's talk about Bloodborne for a second. Yeah. I
almost feel like this category or should be called like most coherent aesthetic in that
one for that one. But one of the things you said earlier on about
that game is that unlike the Souls games, it is it's not just that
it's coherent, it's that it's also kind of samey it is. But I
don't I don't think that that's super relevant here, Okay, I think like
it it is top to bottom. They nail that Victorian like stonework look,
and like the all the top hats and trench coats and they're like the retracting
side thing, and like the weapon fun that the design of the weapons is
like like the mechanical weapons and the ways the same when I turned my cane
into a wid it is the coolest cool right, like the just the weapon
animation, the transform anima. I really like the weapons. I like the
whole Like top hat it. I'm not saying if you put top hats in
your game, and if you put top hats in your anything, I will
like it less. Okay. And it's actually a problem I have with a
sassind screen syne. Well, it's just like like watching you like your guy
wearing time, Like, oh, fuck that guy. What if I reminded
you that all the enemies are wearing top hats and then you kill them?
Yeah, there you go. Top hat On top of that, though,
the the way they lean into their cosmic horror stuff in that game is also
like a crazy pivot, like it's it's all it's all werewolves in London for
the first half of that game, and then the second half is yeah,
but it's like it's like pure lovecraft for the second half. You know,
it's like it's a really unexpected twist, or they kind of build toward it.
I guess you see little hints of it here and there, but like
the esthetic changes in a certain way and the way that that stuff is tied
into insight, which lines up with that lovecrafty and horror stuff that the more
insight you get, the more that you can see beyond the veil. You
see like the big cosmic carror, lovecrafting and monsters on the side of walls.
Right, Like I I appreciated what that game was doing already. But
then there's this I've talked about it before. There's this eleven minute video on
YouTube that is just like a really exhaustive like like, look at all the
ways that this game references is like Lovecraft and other like classic horror, and
it's super smart. Like it made me appreciate that game on an entirely other
level. I've never especially appreciated the Lovecraft aesthetic. Oh I'm not saying like
I don't like, I don't worship, Like in fact, I'm not even
familiar enough with it to like have connected to this game conscious. Once I
saw it all spelled out like that, Like if anything, it made me
admire like the work that went into it, the work, the work that
the designers did. Like yes, like like insight in particular, like like
when they explain how that mechanic relates to like becoming more aware of like the
awful knowledge of the Great Ones or whatever they're like like that stuff, that
stuff seems super cool. But there's a lot of attention to detail in the
design of this game that I didn't necessarily pick up on the first time.
That's fair. Drops, He's cool. I don't know if it if it's
gonna hang. I wanted to call it out because I mean, that is
what that game has. Like, that game is like two steps away from
like being just worker and parasite style like animated bleakness and it. But also
it's kind of charming in this really grotesque way. It's it's unnerving. It
is unnerving, and it's unsettling. Drops. He just wants a hug.
Oh this is that game. Yeah, it's a game where just a horror
show wants to hug everything. Oh god, yeah, this is horrible.
He's in a really good way, and there's good music. It just talking
about cohesive. Even the still screenshots are fucking creepy. Yep, he just
drops, he have drops he well they don't they don't call it out specifically,
but he's got big he looks like he's holding water. Yeah, ok
yeah, okay, uh, but yeah, I don't necessarily hangs with here,
but it's it is It is one of the most distinctive looking games I
saw all year. Uh, and I don't know, there's a real charm
to the progression of that game. Uh so I think we can pull our
mellow. I think it has lots of style, but actually, as someone
who put it in like a couple dozen hours into it, that style ends
up kind of getting overwhelmed by some of the clunkiness of playing it, Like
the map stuff could be, could be more communicative, but the style gets
in the way of that sometimes. That also has a great intro, incredible
where the frog is wiping the blood off. Is it the frog, the
frogs rabbit, rabbit who's just like with the sword. Yeah, the rabbit
cleans its sword off of all this blood and then like turns and their bandits
and like they grab her frog fread it looks like slippy toad and it's just
like, nope, cut it's really it's real good. But but a movie
of the year. Oh yeah, it's like my star Fox fan, Yes,
I can go, we can cut it. Tormentum speaking of unnerving,
Uh, that's the one that's uh stretched out skin over trains and oh that
trains. That sentence just fucking creeped me out right because check out that flesh
tra check out this flesh tracks. Yeah, it's got a look that's uh
that won't quit. Fuck that man, that's gross. It's like bad.
No, it's an adventure game. Okay, it means it's good, which
means it's great, but it's not means it doesn't have to be good.
It's a game. What do you want? Uh? No, it's not
terrible. Click on this art. It's ah. It kind of reminds me
of some like Beaksinski stuff too, like not just the hr Geeger, but
like there's just I don't know, there's a lot of really just nasty surrealist
undertones that stuff that I love. But I understand if people maybe want to
ask this because it is somewhat derivative of other other stuff. And the art
work is it's mostly set pieces, right, They're they're kind of flat.
Yeah, they're they're they're flat, like sparsely animated set pieces. So it's
it's almost like storybook. That's a hell of a story. Bright. Yeah
it's the worst storybook. It's engaging though, Yeah, it's it's a it's
an okay, game. I know pixel art doesn't get a lot of play
these days. They're still room for it. All right, Well, let's
talk about a game called Super Mario Make. Yes, it's a good looking
game. Yeah, what a great look. I might actually say that the
the things that they have wrapped around that, the new things they have done
and going back and doing like Super Mario one versions of the Ghost House that
is pretty cool. And like the under music they lay in the editor that
fits with the melody of the music you'd be hearing if you were playing.
Is fucking stylish as fuck. You can tap the m and it says a
super Warrio Maker. That's true. You can you can do that. That's
the thing you can do. I'm just glad to see so many Mario paint
references. Yes, yeah, log icon, the rocket, yeah, fly
swatter game. Okay, that's that's all. I okay, that's all I
had. Okay, here here is my knock against Super Mario two. There's
no I mean, Mario Maker, there's no Super Mario two tile set.
I agree with that, Like, I understand mechanically why there can't be,
But every time I see them in the list down the side, there's just
a big gaping hole there. When does that there's nothing stopping them from dropping
a king work or something or you know, some of that other stuff.
And when you get the reds, what if they had adapted that tile set
to the mechanics no game, No, that wouldn't feel or the other way.
Or what if they just put Phanto in it? No, that's he
doesn't belong he No, No, it's like one three and world. There's
no Phantom in anything. I think Fantos should be in. No, No,
he's not part of that. There's no Ghost House and Super Mario Brothers.
I mean, the ghost House are a classic part of Maria World.
So you gotta go back and Fantom I think is a is a classic part
of Super Mario Brothers too. So you can go in and there were keys
there, but that's cool. Yeah, but you just get the key and
you go put it on a door. That's it. But if you take
the key, there's a there's a cost, there's a price. Why he
just pick up a key and put its game design? Yeah, No,
it's with the prices. If you get the key, there's someone who wants
that key back. I got keys in my pocket. No one ever comes
after me. Fanto will find you d Fanto knows you has have keys in
your pocket. What look behind you? If you talk the key, you
have to go home with Fanto. That's right, Phantoms will show up.
That's how key parties work. Yes, you should be very afraid of moving
down to the to a lower floor in the building. Right, you can
come downstairs. Phantom doesn't want to come upstairs. Fantom go where he goes,
wherever Fantom wants. That's true. In the building you get, the
more likely are to find an evil soun. Yeah, so it's Platoon then
yeah, uh yeah, was just cool, Like that's just the entire presentation.
Yeah, the fashion stuff, the weapon designs, the map designs,
just the cohesive aesthetic of that game. Yeah. Also, I feel like
it is bordering on the nineties and a certain level of red. I'm not
saying problem without being annoying. And I think that's really hard to do.
It is, and I think they do it. I think they do it
right. It's ernest. Yeah, I think that stays on the list.
About talking to Rebel Galaxy, Vinny, it's is there a cohesive style to
that game game or is it really just the music, the ships and the
attitude and everything it's like it's like you're just Jimmy Rayner flying through space sold
and the whole time on it. Yeah, I'm there. Uh. The
ship designs are awesome. It's a great looking game. Yeah. The and
you got to buy multiple ships and then the put weapons on different hard points
on the ships, and the ships get big, like you get to like
giant ships and other ships are little next to you. Yeah. You have
to like build an engine and all this other stuff, strap different strap engines
into it and stuff you upgrade the engine. Could you make a ship out
of engines? No, that's wrong. Would you say this is more like
action oriented than Oh yeah, it's black Flag combat but in space? Oh
is that how it plays? Yeah? You can though it's a first person
mode for your turrets if you want to shoot down the fighters. But uh,
you spin the side of the ship around to do your your your what
would broadside? Yeah? And you can spect different Like Vinny ship was like
this like up close brawler with like shotgun ram and he could get it was
mine. I was like this long distance sniper vessel. I put like short
burst super fast, but run out of fuel energy or engines on the back,
so ram into guys and then put like shotgun broadsides on in. Austin
was kind of is this in like full three D space or like on a
plane on a plane, so you stay on a plane, but obviously the
ship is fully three enemies can like it's almost as if there are waves around
you. The enemies can like fly up and down and around your ship like
the fighter jets can. The other big vessels are also on your plane.
Okay, pull into like this, yeah, and come to different space stations.
This. Yeah, it's very It's got some damn style to it.
It sounds like that this might be the category for this game. Yeah.
Yeah, it looks like Homeworld, but it does not play like Homeworld all
right. It plays like I wished, like the thirteen year old Austin wished
Homeworld home, so we too, So like I was confused, what do
people think about Galaxy Rebel Galaxy? I like that list, let's play.
Yeah, I'm playing come into Does it factor into style how a game plays?
Sure? I can, Yeah, Like for Galaxy, I think it
totally does. Like getting good at Galaxy makes that game super stylish, So
something like like super hot is that what you're talking about? Drew where the
way you play kind of plays into the style. Is that this year?
Yeah, no, no, okay, I think it helps to put into
the theme, I guess. Yeah, like in the case of like Rebel
Galaxy, you know, because it's more action oriented, a little faster paced,
and you know, it's got the awesome soundtrack as well, you know,
which kind of is not a reverence, but you know a typical of
other games in that genre. So yeah, like, yeah, like Rebel
Galaxy, everything just comes together. The field make you feel like with the
style and the universe, it's very immersive. And I think also Galaxy has
that same vibe where like you can have the art style, but then you
could really mess that up. Yeah, I think it with the momentum and
the way the thing plays and transforming from ship to a robot and keeping momentum,
it's feels cool. If anybody wants to hear about last year's best style
winners were, it was jazz punk, Yeah, Louf Rousers and fract osc
Yep. Yeah, there's a good fucking style jazz list for sure. Uh
yeah, I think I think those three are strong. I'm just curious,
are we comfortable dropping blood Born and we haven't talked about Undertail at all,
which I mean we have talked a lot about him Tail. I think it
stylish. I don't think it hangs here. Yeah, okay, I really
like the look of Laura Croft Go too Man, and it is it is
It is just the hit Man go with an anime way further with it.
Yeah, hit mean was his board game, Lara, Well there's almost like
low poly which yeah, yeah, they have that flash shaded look to him.
But they uh, they create were a world in this in the way
that they didn't in Hit Man. Like him, it was literally a board
game. This is like like somebody dropped a board game in the actual jungle,
if that makes sense. And the snakes it's good too. Also,
Uh, the character animation is crazy, Like they did different animations for the
same action. So every once in a while she'll just do some crazy like
like cartwheeled type like like she'll there, she kills enemies in different ways,
she navigates the terrain in different ways, like randomly, so like there's just
a lot of character to it. It moves, yeah, and cool stuff
like seeing parts of the level like way way in the background and then all
of a sudden you're there, it's like, oh, I saw this place
back. Then you get like some some of the level intros. The camera
starts like way out and kind of moves through a bunch of foreground stuff to
kind of zoom in on the board, like it seems like silhouettes of like
giant like the snake thing in the foreground, and then it shows up in
the level top notch well, and you just have cutting some stuff. It
sounds like undertails going. Yeah, you guys don't seem like I think blues
and bullets goes. I think drops he goes. I don't think grow home
hangs here. I like it looks great, let's talk about it real fast.
At least characters awesome. It's distinctive. Yeah, I mean like like
broadly, like like we've said, it looks like a kind of a first
gin like PS one kind of game or whatever. But I love the drunken
robot. Yeah, he seems wasted all the time. Yeah, the way
he just stumbles over himself constantly. It's a cool character. Yeah, like
getting to the top and then jumping down. Yeah, just flying like starting
literally in space and just flying all the way down. Oh man man.
But it probably doesn't hang on this list. Yeah, I think not.
And then yeah, for me, I do think Invisible Ink has a lot
of style, but I think it executes on a known style in a way.
It's like whereas whereas like I guess that sort does a Galaxy, but
like I just have seen other games do Invisible Ink style stuff where I haven't
seen them do. Yeah, Like typically if people are going for what Galaxy
is going for, they fuck it up all over the all the time.
And I believe me. Yeah, yeah, I'm willing to let go of
Wuly World. I love it. I love it to death. But there
are stronger games on the list, and and I as as much as I
think what they have done is separate from what Kirby was there, it's similar
enough to where I don't think it beats some of these other ones as much
as I like it. That is, you know, a valid point if
this has been the first one was that with that, then NHD for the
first time, like that would look awesome. They would not be back on
my coal mining ass. I just yeah, I feel like the like you
know, materials like check it out. We try to put some real world
materials into this game. You haven't seen it. Like it's actually like pushing
me away from uh unraveled Yeah with Yarnie. Yeah, like like even though
that's not out yet, you know, it's like like that, like I
just look gonna go yep. Oh that's a shame. No, yeah,
I know, I know it's a shame, but I just it's does the
same thing that this does. I'm just like, okay, yeah, no,
you did that thing cool even executed really well. I don't know that
I'm interested in that anymore. Okay, So yeoh, she can go.
So that leaves us with five. Yeah, it's Platoon, Lacroft, Go,
Rebel, Galaxy, Galaxy, and blood Born. We should separate those
two. We should not. This is a running bit and we're going with
it. I don't. I don't know that blood Born stays on this list.
I would like to hear an argument for that, but I don't.
It's got a hell of a look to it, man, and it everything
about that game. I mean, granted I didn't play nearly as much as
I think a lot of people here did, but everything I played in it
and everything I watched other people play was just dripping with dread. Maybe I
just made my character look shitty? Well you did? I remember that?
Yeah? Like I still have that's still my character because I'm not gonna start
over sure, And like that character looks like garbage. And I was looking
at it and go like, man, this fucking game looks like shit,
Like no, maybe that's just my fault. Isn't your face like blue yep?
Like neon orange hair? Yeah, something like that. You made this
bid the swords snaps into a hammer, like comes a hammer? Yeah,
Like that's that's Yeah, weapons like lend a style to that that. Like
it's like you almost want to carve the category up and go best weapons or
fucking best portion of style. But like when you take Blood Born as a
whole, I don't know that the whole of it maintains what the weapons have.
Like the weapons on its own are probably better than a lot of the
other things on this list. Yeah, but when you take all of blood
Born, I don't know that it's there anymore. A lot of the monsters
in that game are just so magnificently to the monster design, especially like in
that DLC, that first Boston, that New Deal second Shit, man,
there's some creepy fucking boss designs in that game, so it's a real cohesive
art style for sure. Well what do you what do you have for this
list? Then what do you what do you think would oh me, yeah,
oh geez uh, I don't know what off about Rebel Galaxy to say
that that one should go. Yeah, Like I can't necessarily say not.
I can't. I guess I can't tell because that looks like every other space.
That's kind of the thing if you're saying that, like I need to
play it and like understand the game, play it and it's time to go.
It's got a mean look. That is the way the music comes in,
Like I know that, you know, goes a long way in terms
of the style for a motherfucking space cowboy man. And this is where we
can and should reward it for its custom soundtracks with cues, because that does
allow you to like, man, you want to Yeah, this style could
be even more my style. Wait, do you mean you can set a
queue point? You can say like whenever I go into like travel mode,
hit this different set of pull from this different place, when I go into
combat, when station it's it's what you want custom soundtracks, that's good Like
that way when you go in the space bar you music set for only in
that that's good. Wow, it's really okay, Yeah, all right,
I can see that for me. Out of these file like this seems like
there's a strong argument for each of these games, so at that point,
everybody wins. At that point, I would I would say that Splatoon leasts
appeal, least appeals to my own personal taste, right, okay, Like
I am totally under totally understand why it's successful at what it does, but
it's just not for me. Well, I think there are a few more
can feel of it. There are a few here that have like the whole
package as far as presentation goes, and it sounds like again, like Drew
said, with the screenshots Rebel Galaxy, it just looks like a space game.
Like I get that sounds cool with the custom soundtracks and stuff. But
if I look at Splatoon, Laracroft, and Galaxy, I feel like everything
from sound, visuals and everything is appropriately stylish. That's my list. That's
mine too. Yeah. H not to say I can't be swayed, but
I would go Laracroft, Galaxy, and Blood Born. Personally, I would
go I would go Galaxy, Splatoon, Rebel Galaxy. I think that's where
I'm leaning as well. Send me up. It sounds like Galaxy is a
lock Yeah, across the board. Absolutely. In fact, I think that
I'm like, we're getting ushered into the five best style. I have just
bolted that game's name. I think that is the correctest. That pause screen
feels like it realized that everyone else was just dancing around this ship for the
last two years, like nah, like we're just gonna put this fucking VHS
paw screen it right, But it goes, it goes beyond that. There's
so many there's so many little details in that game. I think Splatoon is
a lock here. Yeah, I really so good. It's it looks so
good. It's it nails everything it tries to do. And I think,
you know, I think the fandom for that game has sprung and especially around
like the fashion and the character designs around that game has sprung up for a
reason. That game it is fresh. Yeah, yeah, that's this.
There's someone on my screen right now using a paint roller to paint the screen,
running next to some kicks. Look at all those kicks. Good kids,
there's a lot of good kicks in that game. Yeah. I think
splatoons a lock For me, I would say I'm leaning Rebel Galaxy, but
I can understand the argument for blood Born, and I might be willing to
let that that go. Yeah, I'm sorry to see, but it seems
like Lara Croft Go will go ye. I did not play any blood Born,
but what I like about Laracroft Go is that it it's style goes a
long way to pulling you in and making you like the tone and like the
pace of that game are helped by its style, and I think that would
also be true for something like blood Born, So I can see why,
uh, blood Born would edge it out just because of the I don't know,
she's your magnitude of the style. Here's my counter argument for why like
larcroft Go there better is that larcroft Go keeps me coming back with its style
because there is that diversity there, Like what's this next area going to look
like? What new like light Trick are they are they going to use to
make me feel like a little scared in a mobile game, like a little
cut off and alienated, whereas like Bloodborne felt really one note to me style
wise, whereas like this the most horrible thing you can imagine over and over
and over again. No, like, because then I'm stuck in it.
I'm trying to grind for blood vials. I'm just in these environments for so
long as they lose their punch. Like, That's why I didn't like that
game as much as I like previous games in that series, like or in
the Soul series. Yeah. Yeah, that's why I kind of wanted to
push Bloodborne out of best Looking because across the board. It's not because there
is a certain lack of environmental variety there, but like, I feel like
style is divorced from that in a way. Yeah, I agree with you
there, and I do think it has I think those weapons are dope.
I really do. The game's got a hell of a lot of atmosphere,
it really does. It's what almost kept me playing that, despite the fact
I was having no fun with it at all. I really want to root
for Rebel Galaxy, and I've not played it though I'm seeing the screenshots,
but the style is way more than just those screenshots and everything is describing to
me it sounds like, Yeah, it's kind of like it's an all encompassing
atmosphere, and they get that when you get beam weapons in that game,
which you don't get for a while because they don't have any good ones,
and like you're just and you can put them on the broadsides too, which
are normally like the you're shooting cannon fire basically right, and it's just like
a stream of plasma beam just like cuts across an enemy ship, like I
can get and like I've played games with plasma beams in them before, obviously,
but most of those are from the perspective of a fighter ship moving around
these capital vessels. To be in charge of a capital vessel that feels like
a boat that feels big and heavy is like I just haven't had that in
an accessible thing before, like Eve does that, but like I don't have
three thousand hours or like spreadsheets. M I feel pretty sold on Rebel Galaxy.
The bartender arguments from Rebel Gaxy sound pretty good. We're like vests with
those like bartender things on their arms, the cuffs and ave all big.
Look at this bartender, it looks like he's he that's a good looking dude.
He's a space bar he's real put together. There's a lot of space
bartenders in that game. And if you pay him the right amount of money.
He can give you a little dirt. Oh yeah, yeah, is
that it's like a space drug. I mean he's just a little that.
Yeah. I think Splatoon, Rebel, Galaxies and Galaxies. He is the
is the list for me. Let's do it. That's my list. Sorry,
blood Barn Strip weapons are real good, fucking real. Sad to see
blood Born and Laura Croft not make it. I feel bad too. I
feel bad too. What just happened? We're still short of category and I
just had an eye idea for a category that's weapons up you want just workshop
it right here? Yeah, came you got blood Borne Weapon of the Year?
Shit, shit, where's my knife? Where's My Only concern is I
didn't use enough of them to say, off the top of my head,
Hey man, huh, we'd have to crowdsource this. We'd have to like,
hang on that stuff is available blood Borne All Weapons videos. There we
go exhaustive research. Some of the stuff in the DALC was real good.
There were good blood Born All Weapons showcase. Well, look, this isn't
something we have to talk about until tomorrow. It's just I just mull that
over. Okay, I'm gonna get this gift of the threaded of the threaded
cane, sketching from one to another. Alright ready, because man, there's
some good weapons cameras. All right, so we have our best style category.
Yeah, alright, fuck, I guess yeah. It false to me
to say the best style has been decided, and Galaxy the Dimensional very deservingly
wins it with Splatoon and Rebel Galaxy following up. That music stuff was awesome.
That's really that is a great idea. That's that's yeah, it's really
really cool. That's good stuff. I should play that game. Oh it
is an Enemy Final Countdown yep, yeah kind of and they fade in and
out we're lockdown or yeah? Is it it's an RPG right? Primarily?
Yeah, it's a space trading Yeah. There was like there are like tiers
of weapons that you upgrade and that like you and then, like like a
good RPG, it kind of splits in terms of like, uh, it's
not just more powerful, it's like do I want to long range stuff?
Short range stuff, and then some modifiers on top of that, okay,
and you can trade the markets if you want from station the station. Is
there any multiplayer? No? Okay? There was in fact a big steam
thread on that, and the devs are like, listen, like we are
modeling all the physics and all of these all of these projectiles. No,
there's two of us, look right. Also, it's pretty chape. I
think it was like twenty bucks. Yeah, I think I just saw that.
All right, next category, please stop no doing these things. Please
stop with at least stop propping up the worst trends for your rigordy record.
Yeah, boy, knock that shit off. Yeah, these this was the
category. Three different categories that merged together over the years to just be like
fucking stop with this shit out. Yes, the Dave Coulier Award or okay,
yeah, the nominees are bad versions of games. Stop. I think
we can get behind that idea. Yes, too much e sports, too
much time between episodes of episodic games, cards or I guess we should say
card packs, and uh, this is FPS games. But I'm gonna say
in multiplayer games. Say how about we say in games? Okay, yes,
games that are not hard games has cards and that's a single player card
packs. Yeah, card packs. I don't think it's just okay, So
then we can't talk about Battlefront or we could expand that to like just blind
boxes of any sort, because they're not all cards. Are they know,
You're right, something like Advanced Warfare had those suppli drops. Yeah, are
they still random? We'll get back to the well, I know things that
aren't carry you know, beta's and sneer quotes. I'm quite sure what that
means. Games created solely for YouTubers to stream, such as horror and simulating
simulators quotes. Simulators also in sneer quotes, so with like physics e type
stuff, right, well and other similar things. Yeah, okay, uh
then last, I'm currently on the list crowdfunded games with ever expanding scopes that
never come out. I can't imagine what that's reference. Hang, guess,
yeah, so that's the beta's, like paid beta's is that I'm not sure
who, I don't know, but I put it on there, Like,
alright, betata actually a beta, it's a demo or a pre order.
Like here's something that's like so late in the cycle that you like you're not
really adjusting anything that is relevant to the player, like, you know,
call it a stress test, call it then call it anything else. Oh
wait, are you talking about like like a soft launch of a game that
just rolls right into actual release or are you talking about like two weeks before.
Publishers are like fake beta, that's actually just a demo, fake beta,
Okay, Like Siege was supposed to have a beta right before it didn't,
but it can't. It was right before it came out, like days
before. Multiple betas over the course that thing. But so that also I
think plays in that is the idea of multiple shape. Yes, I don't
know that. I'd always say that's the Like, I'm with you. The
calling them betas is really dumb, even if they are collecting data. But
like, like the Battlefront beta seemed like a good opportunity for people to see
what Battlefront was, Yeah, a couple of months before it came out,
and like make a decision there. The Street Fight or five really pissed me
off with their their paid beta stuff. So they've got like multiple stages of
beta. Most of them have been barely working, especially the initial ones.
But it's like the only way that you could get into this beta is if
you pre ordered the game. Yeah, that's ridiculous. That was really bad
rename it pre ordered. They should just get I mean, there's nothing wrong
with the word demo and probably need to. You know, it'd be nice
if they just got back into saying like, hey, this is a multipla
timelimited multiplayer demo. But I think when you say demo, you're essentially saying
here is a slight of the product, whereas when you say beta, you're
essentially implying it's not representative. But also you're also implying that the player is
participating in the development process somehow, like, hey, you get to help
us, you know, figure out if this shit is good or not,
which in reality, in most cases, no, they're not. It's just
the demo they're putting out. Maybe they're getting some of that multiplayer data or
whatever, you know, or stress testing servers. I mean, that's valuable.
I would like to use this as my annual platform to say, please
stop not including a save an exit on your game that auto checkpoints. You
like, when I want to end that game and you don't let me save
it, and I have to rely on when the less last auto save or
checkpoint was, which which you don't remember when that was, don't know when
that was. See it's interesting because this year I started seeing a lot more
of games auto saving after every single goddamn act a lot of games do that.
Now, everything you pick up in that game, yes, it's it's
the it's the Dark Souls thing. Yea. Literally every move you make is
yeah, they'll be watching it. Yep, they will. I've never had
that backfire on me though, really like it always seems to work as intended,
you know, it does in fact actually always just save and like I
you know, I think I've been times where I'm like trained to look for
something like that, Now, what is what is it rotating icon or something?
What is it exactly that you want? Like just the save and exit,
like when you're in Metal Gear, right and you have to like be
like, oh I just beat this base, Like when is saved, I
got to go back to the helicopter? What need I would? I would
say they are definitely games where even if you have that option, though it
doesn't really do much because when it because they always there's always the language like
you know, any any unsaven progress will be lost if you quit right now,
Like that's super arbitrary, like always since the last checkpoint, right,
but you don't always know when the last checkpoint was, So even when you
have a save an exit, you still don't always know how much progress you're
losing because you don't know what they consider the cost. Save exit would imply
that you're saving your state right now, but that doesn't. That's, by
by no means always the case. There's a lot of games that treat it
like even if you hit save an exit right now, you're gonna lose everything
since the last time we consider a valid place to to save an exit.
It's not like a saved state when you're right right like like like, oh,
you're halfway through this mission. You're actually gonna lose all of the progress
in this mission even though, but at some point that can be like you
know, whether that's a restriction or not. Sometimes that can even be a
gameplay thing of just like hey, we don't want you to actually like be
a dirt bag and save your way through these encounters like you need to start
from a checkpoint, but we will when you hit save, like, yeah,
I will store your inventory, will you will be stored back? This
is not am I putting too much thought into this, but hey, tell
me when the last time the save was. That's good? I like that,
Okay, yes to that. Yeah, there was a game this year
that had an actual time or on a positive, the witch time from last
save there was still like last vested that a couple of years ago. I
remember, and I love that. Maybe it was that anyway, I remember,
yeah, I remember remember loving it, and that that straight up says
when you pause it, like X number of minutes since the last save,
yeah or whatever. Yeah that lasted the last that I've been remastered, that
you played recently bad versions of games. It's interesting, so let's a great
thing to stop. Hey, it's about time. Yeah, yeah, that's
a little vague here. Yeah, there there are specific examples here. Mortal
Kombat on Supernintendo yep, okay, yes, okay, sure retroactively really just
sure so mad about that. It's been going on a long time and they
keep doing it, please stop pent up. The poster children for this category
to me are Batman, Arkham Night on PC, uh, fall Out four
and just Caused three on consoles, and then you throw Mortal Kombat X on
ye that said, this is a this is a problem since time immemorial.
It's been really bad this year, man. I guess like like fucking basic
parody between the different version, like don't punish people for we're wanting to stick
to their chosen platform. You know, No, that's like, don't make
it such a fucking crapshoot that if you only play games on a PS four
or you only play games on a PC, like you don't know what you're
gonna get, Like, have some fucking standards and deliver like a baseline of
quality. I do feel like this year has seen more talk about do we
need separate review scores for a given game than the last five years, right,
like platform specific views, which which we did ten years ago. That
was all we were doing that non stuff totally, but it kind of went
away. It went away for a little bit, well, you know,
game games even out you know, and there were occasional moments where this would
happen. I think they had a best trend of like hey great ports,
yeah yeah, yeah. And and I think for us, like us having
a five star review system means we feel it a lot less than any outlet
that had like a more refined like if you've got like one hundred point scale
or something like that, then every single version should always be different in some
like even if it's a tenth of point here, like if you're comparing it
to the standards of that platform, like a slightly different thing every single time,
wherea with a five star system it takes like a maybe a much larger
change to to actually impact our score, which yeah, that's only happened with
fall out of this year. And then when our score is impacted, it's
impacted. Yes, yeah, And you know, if I think if we
had covered Batman, that probably would have been a case for that as well,
if we had reviewed Batman rather yeah, but we did just a yeah,
yeah, although you kind of you can't review a game that is not
on sale again there to go back is on you. One. I think
we can pull the crowd fronted games that were expanding scopes and never come out,
which I put on this list because mostly that's me wondering what's up with
Star Citizens. There are some other things there, there really are, but
that's really I want there to be a conversation about what that what we should
expect about those sorts of things like The Stars Is as an example specifically,
is like, hey, the first people who backed that game had a certain
idea about what they were backing, and that turned into something much, much,
much much bigger. Yeah, beyond the scope of what they backed originally.
I think that that's a complicated situation and that has caused that thing to
not come out correct, right, because like the marine module isn't ready,
and like some of those people didn't want the marine module. They wanted like
Wing Commander six. Yeah yeah, and I'm not that's not open and shot.
It's not. To be clear, it complicated. It's complicated, oh
man, scope on a game, like overscoping a game and feature creeping a
game into like insane territory, especially especially when it's been I just I just
pulled up the Kickstarter page for Star Star Citizen. They made just over two
million dollars. That game started as a two million dollar project. And then
look at it now exactly I've stopped the Kickstarter. You might be, I
think you're right, actually, but like Kickstarter really rarely has a cap It
is not like, right, hey, here are the stretch goals, and
then I mean, I think this don't give us any more money because we
were in our scope or a budget. I have to imagine they saw how
well this thing was going to do and decided, you know, why would
we give ten percent of this to kickstarters? Right, And to be clear,
they are at ninety nine million dollars. Yes, I saw the other
day they are on track to hit over a million, one hundred million dollars
by the end of this year, and and that that's yeah. But I
think there's even there's still a larger conversation about crowdfunding that like we we're having
more frequently, but also it still feels like it's in this really wormy territory.
I think, like the launch of stuff like fig only muddies it even
further. Yeah for me. For me, the conversation is not specifically you
know, crowdfunding games that are wildly out of scope. It's just that like
there are all these different little problems happening all around the crowdfunded space. I
mean, start Citizen is just like one of the biggest, most you know,
obvious examples of where this gets weird. Yeah, and like you know,
crowdfunding has become you know, the thing that happened to crowdfunding is the
same thing that happened to MP three dot com right where at some point,
you know, it from indie artists posting their own music to the thing to
them going we did a deal with ice T and M and M, and
guess what's going to dominate our charts for the rest of this site's existence.
Uh and and you know, it just the very nature of it changes where
it's like, you know, when you think about the early days of crowdfunding,
it was like, well, you know, we're a small modern pop
shop. We're gonna make this thing. It's like, we just want to
make strawberry jam that's real good and nail it for you know, twounter bucks.
You know, we want to make this small game and blaa. And
now all of a sudden it's like, hey, do you want to invest
in Fifth Seals next product? And turned out the answer was no, but
they're still making that game anyway. So it's like these big guys that have
like ship proper products now coming into this space and like really kind of taking
it over in a way that you're like, what, you already have all
the connections to make these like that game still getting me like, there the
connections already exist for you to find. Other avenues of source of funding was
Bloodstained, one of those that had a publisher behind it paying for a good
chunk of it. And then oh yeah, totally yeah, you've got you
know, the Shan Moose situation, which you know is what it is.
I mean that was the same thing, right yeah, of like Chin Move
is gonna get way more money dumped into it than what comes in on this
kickstarter. In fact, I would almost say that is a separate bad trend,
uh, lack of transparency. Lack of transparency in like kind of the
way that the crowdfunded projects are also being funded on the back end. It's
a weird thing where like, you know, I haven't followed it closely enough
and I think like the there's been some some stabs at that with like like
well like figs whole thing of like, hey, you can become an investor
in this game, right like that should be the ultimate and transparency at some
point or even doesn't feel that way, even like Indivisible, which they were
like, hey, this is why this costs us much? Right, break
down with these costs are and the responses to that as always are We're like,
oh, why does it cost so much fromid game? Right? Right?
Like because it costs a lot of money, like because it people would
need salaries to feel like I feel like like, yeah, well we have
to eat typically typically, uh, like the developers that are that try to
be the most transparent about that stuff are rewarded for their honesty with a bunch
of bullsh you know, like they they take the most shit over this stuff.
Uh. The two negatives with that are uh, I had two negatives
of mine, now I can only think of one of them. It's been
along second time. Yeah, it really has. Uh. The main thing
with that is that, like it just well it's kind of a two prong
thing. Like it it obfuscating the cost of what these crowdfunding games actually cost.
Like it it's used perspectives, you know, it's used the audience's expectations
for how expensive these things are. And it also does make things way more
difficult for people running crowd funded projects who don't have that publisher money coming in
quietly on the back end, you know, like when Shen Moose says it's
going to get made for a certain right money exactly, like like Bloodstain only
raised like what five million or something, but like who knows how much they're
getting from their publisher. But like if some other game comes along and like
asks for two million or whatever, and people it's people you people can point
to the examples like that and say like, hey, they're able to do
that for that amount of money. Why can't you do this for you know
whatever? Yeah, like not being aware that there's a whole bunch of other
money. It's not not being talking, it's it's a muddy situation where like
the the information isn't always out there, uh, in the way that it
should be. And that's why I like, I, you know, I
continue to have like large problems with the way crowdfunding works. And I look
at you know, I think that there are it's it's valuable. I don't
think it needs to go away. I would not say please stop crowdfunding names.
Uh, but I guess I don't know. So I don't know that
it fits into the category. So I'm not sure what I what right.
I'm not happy. I'm not happy with how crowdfunding is going, but I
can't tell you what needs to change either. We had to please figure the
shit out, yeah, because I mean again, there are games you can
point to, you know, in the crowdfunding process that have done it well
that or are still doing it well. Yeah. And so it's it's not
as simple as saying that crowdfunding is a problem. It's just that there's so
many different weird facets to it that could go wrong, and in case some
cases seem like they are going wrong. Yeah, I think anytime you get
people donating money, you get a lot of armchair CFOs suddenly just like this
is how it should be spent. I put money in. It's like,
why are you on Twitter posting pictures of your cat? You should be working
on my game. Like there's that weird expectation. And then there's also people
who don't have any idea how much thing has cost, yeah, or like
have something in mind that is completely off base and will not be convinced otherwise.
Should we put something about crowdfunding on here? I don't know what the
phrase, I don't know how, I don't, I don't I think it's
right now. It's it's too nebulous a thing. It's not a trend as
so much as it is just like a lot of it's a reality, Like
crowdfunding is not a trend. It's here, it's not going anywhere. Uh
but yes, but they need to please figure that shit out. Yeah,
different categories. Yeah, So for me, the one lock of this category
is the the too the Evolved memorial too much E Sports because that was forced
the sports. There was a time at one point when we were talking about
this that that almost became its own category, right, yeah, so forced
sports. Yeah, this this refers to marketing attempts to shove an esports element
of a game down everyone's throat. Uh, possibly in places where it doesn't
necessarily seem like it belongs. There's that Halo thing with Guardians multiplayer. There
was more like corny looking thing, but like, keep in mind that there
is a long running history of Halo as an sports or thing. Yeah for
me. For me, it's stuff like a one on four multiplayer game.
This like big weird asynchronous thing that like you know, is an evolution of
Left for Dead in a few weird ways to say, like people are gonna
play this for money, Like fucking no, they're not, you dumb ask
like what who the fuck tried that? Like that? You're crazy? Well,
and especially when that becomes the dominating message of how you're trying to get
people to play this game, right yeah, it's like, hey, take
this seriously, to this super seriously. It's like, you know what this
is. No, you would maybe not push that so hard. You might
have found some people that win like oh this is fun and stuck with it
instead of just like, no, keep it seriously and bile the hunters.
Yeah. Yeah, Siege had some of that ship too. I mean,
I know Seege is going to be a competitive multiplayer game in that arena,
but I feel like they also I don't. I mean, I don't know
that there's a community, unless there's like a unless Ubisoft is going to pay
people to play that game win or lose. I don't know that that game
is good enough to attract I think idea behind it. Though. As soon
as you start doing that, you immediately alienate, alienate everyone who doesn't want
to engage in that stuff. Like if you just want to play Evolve,
like you look at that stuff and go like, oh it's that kind of
game. Yeah, totally, yeah it is, Yes, it is.
It can be very intimidating. I actually think Call of Duty does pretty well.
Like so Black Ops three has like all their cod Caster and all their
fucking esports tools set and all this shit in it, and they talk about
it. They put out some stuff kind of talking about what they were gonna
do, but it was never like the fe cool point of like guys,
this is serious, right that shoot these guys for money, Quit your job,
drop out, of school. Let's do this. That's what gets me
even about that Halo presentation was like the fact that there is a Halo esports
scene and that they couldn't put together a presentation about it that had any of
like the grandeur of like watching the International or anything like that. Like,
if there is the scene, you should be able to sell it to me.
Yeah, I okay, yes, I was. I agree with you,
and I agree that it was garbage. At the same time, I
think that's a different Shooters don't work in a spectator, like like that is
the most fucking boring thing in the world. So like, like you know,
I'm sure they got those were probably real like casters or real real commentators
doing real commentary as people who are really in the Halo scene really played whatever
they were highlights thone, it wasn't even casting, you know what, You're
right, highlights from multiple match right that that was superass. That was real
fucking terrible for me. This is the constant man reason of walking around on
E three floors of like, Hey, guys, who wants a T shirt?
Come by, watch what's going on here. At twelve o'clock, We're
gonna have another round of bur with like, you know, four people out
of computer. I don't even remember the names of the games anymore, but
it is like this, two people on stage. You've been there for three
days with headset with Mike's on, trying to rile up a crowd. Let's
hear it for you know nano balls and you know Mickey Mouse. Please nanoballs
CDC. You have to mention legally, you need to mention the name of
my clan. My sponsor really requests, and I think it's important to specify
we're not yelling about esports in general. There are plenty of games that this
is a completely viable thing, and we understand that it's almost sort of evolved
organically over time, but there are a lot of cases where it does feel
like the esports element is being manufactured to try and drum up interest in a
game that might not have it otherwise, and that it comes extremely the opposite's
really cool, like something like Rocket League that didn't really like shove anything down
your throats and then people were like, oh, yeah, let's do They
waited until that game became a phenomenon before they started piling that stuff on,
right, it actually developed an audience and a player base and then that they
managed to turn that into something, and they didn't wait that long though,
it was like two weeks. I think launching your highly questionable multiplayer game with
full spectator tools on day one seems a little presumptuous, right Yeah. I
wonder with the case of Evolve, how much of that was like, we
gotta get this game made. What do we tell them? Tell them?
Who knows if that even came from the developer, could have entirely been the
marketing department, right, uh, pushing that stuff. And I do think
there's a way to communicate. We have to figure out they have to figure
out how to communicate to people that if you like esports, this is the
thing you could get into. But also it isn't the only thing we can
talk about, and we're not going to shove it down your throat, I
think so far, I think Overwatch is doing that pretty well. Blizzard's doing
okay with that with Overwatch, where it's clear that is a game about heroes
who differentiate themselves. But it's not like there are no casters that I've seen
in any of their marketing material, like yelling at me about about that stuff.
I mean, Blizzard, Blizzard more than anybody who is entitled to do
that. Then like they effectively invented esports with Starker asking meanwhile, I feel
like battle Born is doing that, and I in a way this is almost
I mean, it's not specific, but I feel like two K has been
the vanguard of this, this terrible idea, like that there's there's just maybe
there's just someone there who's just like, well, yeah, I need to
get into this. Yeah, we have to have an answer to this.
People keep asking us, what's your esports solution? We just don't have anything.
Yeah, I wonder if that ends up being part of it. I
think the people that are into esports are going to recognize a game that has
esports potential. Yeah. I think it's one of those things where, like,
you know, at least fucking trick me, Like, you know,
let's not pretend that, like you know, that everyone's not out there at
least like considering the possibility of esports or you know, like a that their
competitive game might rise to attract that kind of audience. I mean, and
that's something that does take work and has to be fostered from the studio itself
for it to work. But I think when leading with that when you're marketing
your game, I think is a huge turnoff and is like a chest beating
before your game has even been proven. It's one of evolve is like a
perfect scenario for like what it looks like when that goes all the way wrong
and it's the most hollow thing. Yeah, it's one of the most tragic
things in games. It's like, sell me on your game being fun to
play at all before you go, like and maybe you could compete in it
for money someday, Like like no, like start with, we've made a
good game that you will want to play. Finish with, Well, if
you get really into it, we've got a spectator thing that we're working on.
We've got it, you know, We've we've got these ideas in mind.
I think part of this is just is less about the games themselves and
the features and tool sets that go into the games, and more of this
is about how games are marketed and presented. Yeah. Yeah, And like,
if you're doing competitive multiplayer games, you need to have a base there.
Otherwise there's no game there, there's nothing else. So many games struggle
to even get a base. That's what I'm saying. That's That's why.
It's the idea of like especially something like Evolved that seemed dicey before release,
like the idea that they would go push into that all the way when you're
looking at it going like wait, wait, wait, I don't think I
want to play this period, let alone go the distance in this way,
like like become a professional Evolved player. That's that's real crazy. All right,
I'm starring this item, all right. Card packs and games I think
should be on the list. Yes, it has been a year of those
are okay, there's a lot of them. I don't know if I want
them to stop because I like opening that, dude, I do, I
just don't. I don't want to tell you about as someone who has spent
hundreds of dollars on blind boxes and Doda. I don't know, man,
you're done. I don't know. Well I haven't bought anything, but yeah,
does that count? Like the Doda Chess that's cosmetics? So those are
all cosmetics. I think the thing for me is, like you know,
Halo having these card packs that are then like factored into the game as a
one time use item. That's that's the distinction here, and then attaching money
to it. Because titan Fall had it, Yes, but it was not
a money thing, and it was it was pretty fun, and I was
like fun that you got enough of them to where like worked out and you
were like okay. But also the burn cards in Titanfall were like an extra
layer of bonus on top of that versus like the usage of the cards in
the war Zone in Halo five is it is intrinsic to the gameplay. If
it's like a card you want to you want to drive a war hog,
burn a fucking card. You don't have a card like tough shit. Okay,
So I think I'm not I wasn't understanding what this is because that's why
I don't play a bunch of these games. So this is these are single
use, single use cards that drop out of packs that you can buy for
real money, and they're in some cases they are the only way to get
like a like say a re or a basic functionality, like basic things that
you come to expect from this game are suddenly only there if you have the
cards and you can you can use it up. Yes, it's card to
think of your real adda. So it's like you might have like like this
actually happened I had, like, I only had two shotgun cards for this
entire mode, and I had to decide, like, if I want to
use a shotgun, I only have two cards and I have to burn one
to use One's ridiculous leaves to you not playing the game the way you want
to because you're worried you're not going to get more cards, Yeah, because
at some point you're like, it adds this higher level of strategy that is
totally unwelcome of Like, am I going to win this match? Is me
using the shotgun to turn the tide enough for it to be worth it for
me to use this shotgun? Like Okay, well we're already losing a lot,
so I'm not going to use any cards at all because I waste them
in this Yeah, exactly why would I waste them in this losing effort?
Did I buy enough hot Pockets, family packs and my wreck pack in order
to win this match? And do you usually need to put it in your
load app before you start the match? No, it's every time you spawn
you can use a card. And I think that's a real negative thing to
do to that game, because that mode is there are neat ideas in that
war zone mode. But that sucks everything out of it for me and makes
it something like I don't want to play this mode anymore because of this stuff,
so I haven't played a lot of it. You do earn, you
do, you do yes for free pretty often, you do relatively off,
but they are they are traditionally. You know, you can save up for
the gold packs and use the end game currency to get them. But even
then, even then, when you open a pack, you don't know what
you're gonna get. Sure you might not get any of what you want.
So what I don't know is if it continues to be a problem if you
play a lot like or do you just like after two hours of playing,
do you just have packs at the ready and at all my experience, they
don't drop that fat Yeah. I mean I ended up playing more Zone for
more than two hours and still was left feeling like, well, so I
only got one Banshee the entire time I played Halo five. Uh, you
know every single card pick I got, or for a period just because you
earned currency across Uh. You know, playing Arena mode still earns your currency
that you can use to get the card packs. If the cards can only
be spending war zone mode. Uh, I always saw one of those the
whole time. The one time I spawned it, it was the best time
I had in that mode and was never able to do it again. Imagine
I was shot down immediately. Imagine it was totally has happened to me.
Yeah, like I I've ye, I'm sorry. I like, yeah,
I've totally spawned a I've spawned a ghost before and literally got jacked as soon
as I drove out of the garage and somebody's basically still your card at that
point. Yeah, that sucks. Like setting aside the uh the drop rates,
Like some of this comes down to individual psychology, but like, no
matter how many cards I have, I will never shake the feeling of like
I don't know if I should burn this right now. Yea. So not,
just to kind of clarify this for me, the most experience, or
the biggest touchdown I probably have, is that mass effect multiplayer. It's similar
to that, you know, it's not it's not unlike that, but instead
of just like you know the things that were consumable there were rockets and healing
jail and stuff. What if also like your your powers for sure? Okay,
yeah, it's it's much more like that. Okay, it's it's a
it's a it's one level too deep into the the base gameplay mechanics, right,
because even at the time that like uh Roulette style uh sort of like
hey get the gold, you get one platinum thing and whatever was starting to
get a little like, M, I don't want to see this anym.
Yeah. And then tomb rat has cards as well that are like, it
seems like your burning cards for this kind of side mode. I don't know
that that's necessarily a huge problem, but I like, I definitely like played
a bunch of tomb Raider and then said like, you got a pack of
cards, and I was like, oh, fuck you. But it also
feels like it feels like something they put in there as a result of the
trend, but also maybe didn't actually want to put in there, which is
why it's so off to the side. And you're fairly useful in that game.
They're completely inconsequential, Yeah, right, right, Is there a way
for us to blow this up so that we can also shiit talk Rainbow six
sieges booster stuff. I mean that that's just a bad free to play game
that they're happening to be charging full price for like it's it's you know,
it's got a limited time coin double or equivalent, you know where it's like
by thirty days of double XP and the one that the thing that about it
that ends double renown, Double renowned, the one that the one that kills
me is like if the whole team has it, yes, if everyone on
your team is boosting, you get extra boost. So players can go like,
dude, we're all boosting. Why aren't you boosting the boost Come on,
man, boot Alex, why aren't you boosting? I don't want them
You fucking boost man, Well, we're kicking you out of our fuck come
play. You better be boost You better be fucking boosting. We're finding boosters,
Like Nancy Reagan gets to you, I'm not boosting. Yeah, we
want the Reaganomics skin for this weapon. Also there's a Regan can that be
Please begin at the beginning of the beginning of Nark told me not to boost,
all right, you buy Madden cards are totally different, right, Yeah,
those are player cards, like and that's something they've been doing for years,
is the ultimate teams and burns right like on a play or something.
So there's there are so there is the past card totally. So there are
contracts attached to each player, which eventually you run out of games for those
players, but you are also often getting new players through packs. So it's
just kind of like an ever evolving thing. I mean, I don't love
that mode, but I don't think it applies here. Okay, I just
want to check and then Hearthstone. That's it. Yeah, I mean,
that's now we're at the core of this problem. Car fuck. So all
right, so we flagged forced to sports and the card pack stuff as I
think I think those are those are those are in Actually I actually like the
too much time between episodes of episode of games things like that's just not that
egregious, though I think there are. There are certainly some that have pulled
that. So little game by StarCraft let me let me talk about half Life.
So so let me run down some examples here. Uh you know,
the first time Telltale has not done a long run between episodes was this Minecraft
game, and they've been actually doing those pretty regularly, it seems like.
But Game of Thrones that ran for almost a damn year, uh Tilmen of
Borderlands ran for almost a damn year, and even going further back and that
wolf among us that that series was actually almost ruined by the amount of time
between episodes, because that is that the story they wrote for that game does
not work when you have long breaks in between what's going on in the game.
With Ship bought in it episodic and they have not released another episode yet.
Dreamfall chapters, Yeah, I'm not sure. I haven't checked back in
with it, so that one is true. Do you think some of that
was because of all of the ship that was on their plate they took on
like four or five projects, said, well, they did, but they
also planned poorly for that stuff, and the games did suffer for it.
In the case of like the Fall, which was what thing last year is
right, the other one I was fucking loved, but they still have not
put out another Actually, did they conduct you out? Zero conduct is another
great prime example that which I understand you don't want to rush the art like
they're making something really cool and weird, but at the same time, like
the amount of radio silence between stuff like is vexing. It is similar to
if you were to buy a season pass without knowing any of the content that
is in said season pass or when it's coming Yeah, Like I feel like
there's a transparency that should happen when you are signing up for an episodic thing
of like, here's the schedule we are hoping to stick to. It's not
to say they absolutely need to hit it, because obviously you can enituations change,
you know, things get delayed, that the real world is a scary
place, but it's there's just too much, uh, there's not enough information
in some cases where they're just like we're making five of these, when's then
coming out? And in smaller cases also, I think there are some examples
of games that are putting out an episode saying they're gonna be episodic, but
they're also kind of relying on people to buy that first episode before they can
even go into production. That's what dree You was supposed to be. Yeah
for Samurai, Like remember the the that when we did the Halloween FMV thing,
We we download that one game that had that one uh, that one
episode, and then it's like that thing is like forty minutes long, and
you have no sense of like where that's gonna go, whether they're going to
actually put it put up another one or what. Yeah, totally episode four
of Dream Fall chapter comes out tomorrow. Okay, okay, so that one
actually has thrown some stuff out, yeah okay, but yeah, yeah,
I'm with you. Like for me, King's Quest, like right bought it
is the rest of that we put it out and then it fell off the
map and where's and like I don't know, like there could be technical stuff
there, like maybe Christopher Lloyd or maybe if you were following them on Twitter,
they would have told you, hey, you know there's there's stuff like
that where you know, maybe just their conducts for information are not hitting us.
That would be looks like wait, no, no, never mind,
Okay, I think Brad said something about kings Quest stuff is coming. Yeah
they did, just they did just say something. But that Minecraft stuff is
so shocking that when the second episode just came out, Yeah, it was
I was just goes and goes and goes, And you know, maybe Telltale
is angling towards not doing that anymore, and that would be great if they're
going to actually stick to a harder, more recent sat or at the very
they got through Borderlands, yeah, than a relatively decent clip, didn't they?
I mean it really it seemed like a schedule. It didn't necessarily seem
like it was similarly long to Game of Throne. So I feel like Game
of Thrones maybe had like longer downtime between I just I feel like they just
weren't really set up to do that stuff on a regular schedule, especially when
they were doing multiple series. It is starting to feel a little bit like
like books in a case where you're like starting a series and then like,
shit, I shouldn't have started this because now I got away two years for
the next book to come out, if it ever comes out at all.
Yeah, I think it might tie in a little more with some of that
season pass stuff than it should with You'd never know when that stuff's gonna come
out either. Yeah. I mean they were selling they fall Out season pass
and they had like a you know, hey, we expect all this content
to be out by this end of date, but they never had any details
about what that content would be. I think I don't know that they have
announced any of what the Fallout DLC will be. I don't believe that.
Sorry, I'm sorry, I r into the bathroom where you guys doing the
expensive season passes between episodes. I totally meant to add that to this this
category because this year was rotten with that stuff. But I feel like that
that actually ties into the episodic thing because you're often buying that as a season
as well of just like mystery season pass for a thing doesn't necessarily have a
tight schedule or like like not enough information. I think that's a that's a
broader thing and more exploitative like but I think just as exploitative with episode of
games as it can be with season passes for you know, traditional games,
Like I think that is that is kind of the same issue. I think
in both cases you're putting money up front. Well, some some of the
episodics that if you can just buy on its own, but I guess you
can also buy that if you're not buying a season pass, you just buy
DLC stuff I mean, I guess, and you know you'll get in the
case of something like Telltale, like I think when you buy a season pass
from them, you have a good sense that, yes, they are going
to complete what they are making. The problem for me with their stuff is
that it in some cases the storytelling is actually kind of ruined by the amount
of time that they they wait between stuff Like I lose interest. I lose
momentum on it. Right, This isn't just poor transparency, it's literally in
this case, it ruins the It is negatively impacting. And yes, there
is I think a larger, more seedy thing, especially with you know,
games that I think are just throwing out an episode there and hoping it sticks
so they can keep making it. There are some games that I definitely get
that vibe from. That's not specific, that's not what I think feel about
the telltale stuff, but I think that there is just like a larger issue
about the way episodic stuff is presented and uh and released. Yeah, yeah,
uh. And the last one is this we didn't talk about the games
created solely for for YouTubers to stream, right, Freddy's and stuff like those
like and then it's also all the Five Nights at Freddie's sequels that came as
a result of that. They have They have put out four of those in
the last like ye year, in the last in two years. Yeah,
and then yeah, nine thousand games that have Simulator in the name and use
the simulator font and all that stuff. Like, they're all terrible, make
fun occasionally they have a good gag or something, but yeah, during the
thing we looked at where your kid in bed and the boogeyman comes in and
then you have to look at the window or whatever. Yeah, we didn't
even publish that. It's just a tech demo. Yeah, but it totally
felt like one of those games. Yeah, so are those simulator games?
Have they gone into just marketing to people who are going to stream it like
the farm simulating stuff or no, this is more about It's definitely still some
real earnest stuff going on actually sells. Yeah, it's everything else that makes
you think that it's, oh, it's from the farm simulator people because they
used the same font when it's like I would I would actually kind of put
something like goat Simulator. Yeah, I was, I was gonna say.
I was gonna say goat Simulator was like the one funny instance of a parody
of that stuff, but not anymore. Like I think a lot of people
are trying to ride off that success that was a one and done, like
shower with your Dad simulator like that. That is such a ridiculous thing that
I kind of get what the joke is. But when you start getting into
stuff like cat lateral damage, and you know, I am bread which I
didn't mind. I am bread like, there's kind of a funny physics.
Things lame. It's it's there's no substance behind it. It's like, especially
after thing like Octo Dad, which I thought was just better at being Dad
at least had something to it. You know, there's a story someone was
making a game, Yeah, and it happened to look ridiculous in a way
that might play on video. It sounds almost like almost like the similar argument
for forced esports, where you're like a forced forced stream game, where like,
come on, everybody play this game and have fun watching other people play
crazy how bad it is? Uh? And I think a lot of that
stuff definitely ties into the larger issue of the just sort of wild and wooly
nature of the Steam market place these days, and the amount of bullshit you
can just barf out into that thing, and how easy it is to do
that. This was a Deserter simulator. Yep, oh, I saw you
guys. That's just a great game that was kind of amazing, doesn't one.
Yeah, I don't. I don't know that this category ends up sticking.
Yeah, but like there's some real garbage piles out there for sure.
Yeah, demand better all right, so that that goes, it seems like
we've we've I think the betat thing probably goes too. Yeah yeah, okay,
it sounds like we flushed the crowdfunding stuff. Yeah, because we don't.
We don't have a definition. Yeah, like these these categories, these
are like things that we have some amount of exasperation about. But it's too
hard to narrow down into a sentence. It's too hard to focus the rage.
Well, like I want to call it poor transparency, but that's also
too broad. Yeah, yeah, yeah, So we're deciding between too much
time between episodes of episode of games and bad versions of games. I think
bad versions of games gets its play elsewhere. And also I think I don't
think just cause is bad, not like I don't think you have enough examples.
There's four fucking major I think really quickly, and I think just cause
is not bad enough to belong. I have played like you've got that game
to say that you've got Batman and you've got Fallout, Like those are the
two that I look at and go, yes, like that's enough, that
is more than enough. But like we've already haven hottest mess category for Batman.
Also not the same things. It's like, don't make people play the
fucking guesswork of what game should I have? What version of this should I
buy? I have no idea because one or more of them might be on
fire. But it's not new, like look at the Bayonetta when that came
out on But everything it has been, it's always been a thing. Yeah,
I say again, I think this has been a problem forever, and
I think that, yes, this has maybe been a much more egregious year
than certainly last year was, uh and other other years have been. But
I don't think this is a new trend at all. I cannot believe that
you guys don't care about it. I do care. I absolutely do care.
I'm not saying I don't care. I'm just saying that I don't.
We're not We're not it is on the list. What do you mean this
is making the three? Maybe the name is just wrong, like like I'm
like bad versions of games to call it bad ports of games, you know,
like not knowing which version is going to be garbage arbitrarily, you know.
Yeah, there's something about it that just rings as like has been here
since we've been playing games, and I feel like they're like they're still just
like there are very egregious examples, so you look at and go like,
oh man, this is super fucked up. But like, by and large,
this isn't an actual issue with the vast majority of the major's handful of
games. Like there are people out there for whom these are the only games
they're gonna play all year. But like, also there are people out there
trying to run SLI with just cause that are having the PC version be fucked
up too, you know, like that shouldn't be happening. But that's but
that's not a bad version port of a game like that comes all versions.
But yeah, I just I don't think all of your examples fit into what
you're trying to say here as cleanly as they should. Ever, all four,
all four of these games are tragically broken on one of the platforms.
Combat X had a bad launch, dru is making they shouldn't have shipped it
like that. Yeah, I think we think we had a shipping broke ass
games last year. Man, and I agree, it is. It is.
And again I'm not saying I don't care about it. I'm just saying
that, like, this is not a new problem, and I also would
love this to stop like if you want to say, like stop shipping broke
ass games again, like I'd actually be more for that, because you know,
and then it's like, hey, fucking the Witcher crashed like day one,
like they had a patch at a bunch of times and before they got
there, like you know, games still launch fucked. That's basically what I'm
saying here. The only additional layer is that there's the crapshoot of like,
well, it might be great on its lead platform and unplayable on the other
two or whatever. I mean, it's not that different. I agree with
that sentiment, but I think I think the ultimate sentiment is still the same
as the stop shipping broken ass games sentiment. This year is kind of crazy
because we did have two examples of games that were no longer like the longer
for sale they were so broken again Batman and After a Samurai which just got
pulled Batman which got pulled for a while until they had just put it back
out. So that that is kind of a crazy year. But it does
seem to just happen with broken games a lot, like it's a shitty thing,
you know, Like like I'm with you, Brad, it's infurious.
The PC market is is incredibly viable these days, Like we're two years in
on these new consoles, Like, why the fuck is this still happening with
the frequency that it is. Yeah, if you want to change this,
you know, into something that is larger than this handful of games and say
that games are still shipping in an unacceptable state, I'm right there with it.
That's that's fine. If it's if it's changing the language on this yeah,
because okay with that, I'm with you on the just cast stuff.
Watching it on the PS four, it just seems like something that how'd you
let this out the door? Right? Yeah? Like yes, and and
you know, it's probably not the developer's fault, Like I'm sure if they
had had another X number of months they could have done something about it.
But I mean, I don't necessarily want to remove all blame there obviously there
you know, there may be some there we don't know. Yeah, who
who is? Is that? Right? You're right? That's exactly the thought
that goes through your head when you play something like that is is how did
this get out the door? And that's a really weird one for me because
that's a closed platform, not like the peace see where it's like, well,
I know you're running an SLI, right, everybody's got a different chip
like on the PS four, it's like pop it in right, still PS
four work? Yes? No? If no, keep working. Not say
it doesn't work, but man, it doesn't run like a game you'd expect
to run on a PS four, right, And like you can't even and
this this is a cop out to begin with, but you can't even fall
back on we'll just play it on PC anymore because you don't know if that
version is going to be completely fucked you know, turn ssa oh off,
oh okay, that usually fixes yea, and video hair works. I don't
know, it's just it's it's bad enough for people like us who have every
platform and can choose it to play it on on the on the best version,
or play the best version, but like for people who are only on
one thing, like how shitty is that it's fucked up? Though? I
mean, if you want to get even larger with the conversation, I think
like there are a lot of console versions of games that are fucked up,
Like we're at We're at a stage now where you know, notwithstanding some of
the rough PC launches that have happened this year and we'll continue to happen.
're at a point now where I've I've now feel that all consoles are the
things to play exclusive versions of games on, as opposed to last generation where
it was like I can play everything on this console, but I need to
have the other one because they put out games that are only available there.
Now it's like I'm gonna play everything that's available in multiple places on the PC
because the consoles themselves have proven themselves to be underpowered in a sad way.
No, you're you're totally right about that, but like they should still target
that hardware better than they are totally, Like they should stop overshooting yep on
what they're trying to do. And I you know, I wish I could
say, like why that happens. I wish I had a clear picture of
why it keeps happening, But it doesn't matter, it keeps happening. They
should stop that. What if it didn't happen anymore, then that'd be pretty
cool. Yeah, that would be pretty cool. We get Yeah, we
could put that on this list, but I think it has to be just
continued to be shipping broke ass games. That's fun we're still shipping broke ass
games. Yes, all right, I'm putting that like, congratulations to you
be Soft for making an Assassin's Creed game that didn't actively burn my house down.
Sounds that sounds like all that game were pretty good. I've been playing
on PC. It runs quite well. Yeah, yeah, that's yeah.
That console things bumm me out, thanks Jo. Yeah, it's like the
reality of the situation we're in of like, oh man, like the Gulf
is there again? I think for me, like like you're not wrong,
Like those consoles are weak as hell and it's that's a bummer, but they're
perfectly capable of rendering like like you know, like you look at Halo five,
you look at Broken, you look at there are good looking games on
these platforms. But that's what it is for me. Yeah, it's like
you can make a great game on any piece of hardware if you do it
right. You know. Well. The other thing that PC has is like
you can get in there, fiddle with it and like turn off some options
if you need to maybe run out a lower rezright, monkey around with the
to be like I can play it versus you have to wait for that patch
to come on the console if it ever comes out, if it ever comes
out, if that multiplayer works, okay, well stop shipping broke ass games.
I mean yes, all right, so we're gonna cut the episodic one
from this list. I feel like we set our piece on, well,
Alex has gone? Now where did you go? Next episode of Alex?
I have no idea when that's come on? Yeah, that's yeah? Who
can never say? Right? Could we change the language on that to encompass
both things? Like? How about please stop pre selling I don't know how
would you put that broken ass Beta's mystery as stop pre selling broken promises?
It's like super expensive season passes that you have no idea what you're getting.
Slash, you know, episodic game that don't come out like this. I
don't know. I don't know what the catch all term is. But either
way, I feel like forced sports and the card stuff are stronger than That's
that's fine, I thought. Okay, I thought you guys were pushing for
the episodic stuff harder. That was Alex's dog mostly, what was it?
We're cutting the episodic thing. I can live with it. Okay, okay,
I said my piece of Okay, okay, I thought I thought you
were pretty married to then. I mean, I would put it in the
top three. But if no one else feels as strongly about it, I'm
okay with it. I feel like the three we have are are just yeah,
this feels good as the you know, worst trends. Yep, somebody,
guys, here's you guys talk about the one time these burn cards stuff
affecting the multiplayers that to me is the winners. Yeah, and not just
affecting it again, like in a little way, not just like your shotgun
is better but you don't get one, or just like you know, at
the point where you cross that line into paying real money to be better at
the game or have more options in the game, don't have more fun or
have more fun that per per round. Yeah, is there anything besides Halo
five that does it to the extent that that does there's anything else as egregious
about it? M m hmm. Not to say that if there's not,
it's a reason to invalidate this. Yeah. I actually thought Mass Effect three
was pretty fucked up. I mean mobile games, but yeah, yeah,
yeah, uh the I actually haven't put enough time in Battlefront. Do you
get enough of the charges for your special things. Yeah, get like too
much, and that's something where you don't you there is no means for you
to actually pay real money. They said that they were going to be selling
some fantastic Yeah, they're gonna sell credits. At some point a few months
gear can't. They added a bunch of dlc They add a bunch of paid
options to Fortza. It's one of those things where like you start to wonder
if and this becomes a shadowy conspiracy at some point here you start to wonder
if they are launching, like because it was so widely criticized last time they
put out a four it's a game. This time, did they just go
like, oh, well, we're just not going to launch with it and
then added a month later once everyone who would be angry about that sort of
stuff has looked the other way, so they did. After that specific edition,
they did come up. Dan Greenawall came out and said they balanced the
game entirely around not having those in the game, right, which you know,
like take up the brain of Salt to their to their credit. There's
also an option in that game to just turn off any display whatsoever of up
selling micro transactions. Yeah, uh does Destiny do any paid not cosmetic stuff?
No, No, they just rolled chaise metic stuff in Yeah, metal
gear, is there any weirdness there? You can buy around the paid end
of metal Gear? And there was that paid A two stuff too, that
ship where they did they did in a big event and at the very at
the like a while you go when paid too launch basically like listen, like
we're never gonna do like in game micro transaction stuff where content is going to
be locked behind micro transactions. Uh, and if they're if we were due,
it's cosmetic stuff. It's like the it's new masks and shit like that,
right, And then they did an event where at the start of it
they they basically brought in Doda style like boxes that you could but buy then
you have to buy a key, real money to open those those boxes to
get bonus shit. Weird because very right explicitly moved away from the like treasure
chest slash key model like that was apparently not working for them. And so
the thing that really sounder strike I think might still maybe they don't have it
anymore either, but I yeah, the thing that really sexes so you could
you can basically recover these safes during missions during this event and then buy a
key to open the safe. There were ship in the the they re change
they change the loot drop table so that the rare stuff would be in those
safes more often than than it would be available outside like a normal like end
of mission drop. Uh, and like that's really shitty, Like don't do
that. So there was a huge They had also made some you know which
at some point, you know, you know, the lesson is like don't
actually ever make absolute statements about you know, the future of the game.
But they kind of said, like, we're not going to get into this
macro transaction ship, and then they did. Apparently the guy who the designer
who said that left the company and then they did it's nice, good stuff.
Oh all right. So I think that the card I think the card
pack stuff is the thing that I that, yeah, we should not continue
the mostest I think I can. It leaks into too many other games.
I think the only reason still shipping Broken ass games doesn't win is because it's
still shipping Broken Ass games. I've been here. I still feel more strongly
about that one. But like the card stuff is chilling in a way,
yeah, Like it's really the way it's become pervasive. Absolutely. That stuff
is a sad little category, not cool. It's never been. It's never
been a happy category. Yeah, so the next one's real happy, right?
It was with a fun party, all right? Well that was please
stop real money card packs on one time you items is the shittiest trend of
the year, with forced e sports and still shipping broke ass games following close
behind. But yes, you're right, it's the worst game of the year.
Yeah. I thought in previous years we always did this right before best
game of the year. Yeah, counteracted, I guess we did. Hey,
guess what we're already here, right, this was always a last final
day category. But you more right below changing it up already. I already
said it out loud. Yeah, I can't change it now, keep the
cynical training rolling. So here we are. I guess what our nominees brad
nominees are Ravens cry sky battles, Oh boy, Godzilla? Uh does I
pronounce rodea jeffew asshole? What? I think? It's the sky Soldier for
the US specifically, Okay, okay, the WU version. Uh weird editing
going on in this document right now? Uh? Tony Hawks first Skater five,
Afro Samurai Too don't even say it out and Undertail don't even say that.
Why dude, it's it's there. I don't know. I'm just reading.
The winner of this category is Afro Samurai Too. There's no other way?
Can I read? Can I read? Can I read? Twelve bugs
that happened and most of which I encounter during my few hours of the game,
praying for the quick Look, let me just read these. These are
common bugs in the game. Enemies are invulnerable, Enemies refuse to attack Kuma.
Enemies can't find Kuma. Characters disappear, backgrounds disappear, Audio dips in
and out at random quick time, events fail at random. Camera does not
show where Kuma, the player character is standing. Kuma earned skill points for
standing still. Kuma can't hit enemies, Kuma randomly falls to his death,
and Kuma refuses to move kumas you, Dan, let me tell you about
Sky Battles. Okay. Sky Battles is like a Student and sixty four games?
What did that come out on? Came out on PC? It's on
Steam, Okay, I like the Nintendo sixty four. It is a flight
combat game that is horrendous looking. Oh, it looks great. Just just
about the most dogshit playing thing I've seen come out on any major platform.
Look at that. There's planes and ages, and it feels like it feels
like a cruel joke someone is playing on the world. Is it good enough
to still be available for purchase? Listen, I'm not here to tell you
about the choices that various publishers have even mind continuing to sell it almost makes
it worse. Yeah, okay, because say what you will with like admitting
defeat that they took it down. Yea, yes, okay, okay.
Sky Battles is a remarkable piece of shit. Vinny, you speak speak,
I don't know. Sky This is a tough one because you'd have to call
it a game first, right to be in the worst game. I'm looking
at some footage of it running right here and the fire Cornado kind of like
Cargo the Quest for Gravity. But you're a plane. It's got the level
of weirdness that like, I kind of m hm, yeah, why isn't
the plane moving, Sky Battles, you're a plane that can you can go
straight up in the air and you'll just stand there and stop if you go
vertical. Oh yeah, okay, and then you can check right now,
I'm seeing it's a fictional game, all right, it's a fictional game.
I was playing in a battle with after Samurai where it's all sky battle.
Yeah, it's a ground battle. Yes, all the enemies were invulnerable,
and in the entire skill tree there are maybe like thirty like tips that you
can put skill points into by standing still while enemies went around me. And
also I was not taking any damage. I was randomly getting skill points until
I had way more skill points than the skill tree allowed you to put in
just by standing still. Did you ever have any fun with Aversamur No,
okay, absolutely not. I wonder how that was allowed to exist on the
console where, you know, like it comes out on Steam like a you
know whatever. Steam doesn't give a fuck. While playing through the tutorial,
it completely just like crash. Back to the beginning, like load screen,
back to the title menu. No, no reason. I didn't die or
anything. I was just walking and then I went right back to the title
menu. Dan, let me tell you about Godzilla. Okay. Godzilla should
have been the easiest thing in the world to make enjoyable. It's giant monsters
punching each other who doesn't love that? I feel like you could say that
sentence about every Godzilla game. Yes, this is maybe still somehow the worst
Godzilla game I have ever encountered? Is this one? Is this one based
on the Gareth Edwards movie? It was if it might have been? It
was released in Japan or originally and it just came out here this year and
was on PS three. Uh. Yes, it is the most sluggish,
just unbearably just nothing in that game works right. No, none of the
combat connects well, like you're just you're just let trying to swing your tail
around, trying to punch anything. Nothing lands right. It looks worse than
a normal PS three game does somehow. All the cities look like shit.
Everything in that game just looks and plays like shit. It also came to
PS four. Did it come to vs? Four? Yes? Also after
a Samurai two looks worse than the average PS three game, and it's on
PS four. Let me tell you about sky Battles. Battles on the PC,
very strong platform it is. You can make good games on the too.
Uh how much how much was that for Samurai too? Let's take a
look the sky Battles. Maybe it was seven bucks. I feel like I
looked at bit on Steam. What does it now It's it's like okay,
yep, okay. Well one of the other ones is like two forty nine
that you guys were talking about. Let's see. Yeah, since there's no
Steam page, you can't actually see how much it costs. Good, good,
Let's say it was at least twenty dollars, if not more. That
seems like like for a license game by an actual publisher. That seems like
probably the baseline for something like that. Okay, uh, you guys explained
the Roadea the Sky Soldier on their U. Yeah, and this probably doesn't
stay on here, but this is one of the most bizarre things. So
there's that. I've told the story a few times. The WE version you
can only get when you buy the WU version. That is the original version
of that game that that Eugi Knocka and his team was making. The WU
version is a port of a three DS game that is fucked up. It
is a port of the three D S version of that game, which takes
all the weed gestures out and in some places doesn't actually replace elements of the
level design with anything other than a giant cannon to get you around them,
so you don't have to do the things you would otherwise need to use the
way remote for does it? Does it look like a three DS game?
Blown up to TV's eyes, It looks like trash m it kind of it?
Kind of does? Okay? Yes, looking at the screensh elements of
it absolutely like a three DS game. It is a thing like I think
it belongs in consideration here because it's a thing that clearly it was made under
duress. The creator actually said, don't like version. Well, you said
no because you have to buy that version, said yes, Hugi Naga.
But the second the game here is like Data Sky Soldier is out in the
North America. Now please play the way version. Man, I can't think
of a game in the last five years that's worse than Afro Samurai too.
Not one game, oh brother, I don't think I've seen one. It's
not like Ravens Cry doesn't stay No, I mean that's a hilarious mess.
There's fun to be had, Oh, there's enjoy There's enjoyment to be had
from from watching or taking the controller and loading up Ravens Cry. I would
say none of it is intentional, but there is enjoyment to be derived from
it. Yeah, you huh, we'll get this. Yeah, okay,
a stupid thing. Let's cut Ravens cry. Then all right, we can
also cut could name Steam, which I added a KA, could name Steam
Strike Team Eliminating the Alien Menace. AKA could name Steam Lincoln Versus Aliens in
Japan, which is a great name. But I just remember something else I
hated about it, which is the enemies in that game have idle animations,
and and we'll bounce in and out of your radical while you're ready to shoot,
so you can line up a shot perfectly, and you'll like you're aiming
at like a weird mosquito monster and it's bouncing up and down and you hit
the button and it's like I've lined that shot up perfectly, and they all
miss because there's not they're not physics. It's not tracking the bullets. It's
the projectiles don't exist. It's hit scanning. Yeah, and they're ah,
oh wow. Yeah, it's real bad in a game that's supposed to be
an intelligent design or systems game. And again, it should have been intelligently
designed. Okay, the banana fits in your head. Okay, so we
can cut it. Yeah, it's bad. I appreciate you saying your piece
about that the worst games I've ever reviewed, or Hook Hogan's Main Event and
Ride to Hell retributions, Come on, they are They are both no hope,
way better than Afrosaurtach and both of those. Yes, yeah, but
we all know what the worst game I've ever reviewed is. Uh. I
am not saying that Afro Samurai two does not belong on the top three,
and in fact, it might win. I just want to make sure we're
giving everything is to due consideration here and not bowling over the rest of these
terrible games. If these other games are not just randomly crashing and not not
responding to controls or inputs, and not just losing the soundtrack or going to
cut scenes while you're dying in the background, like, if they're not doing
all that crap frequently, they are not as bad as a present. Just
I am not gonna fight any anything for scot Battles, so it is not
going to get that from me, even if it's fighting for it to win
worst game. But I will say the darkest thing about Sky Battles is that
I think it shipped as intended. I think it plays the way it was
supposed to be the darkest thing for me about sky Battles is it usually when
you and I play a bad game, there's some something in there. You
find a glimmer of hope or at least an idea of something. You say,
games are hard, you know, like that's that's you're sort of you're
refraining when it comes to this stuff. You didn't say that about sky Battles.
You said, I don't understand why this exists. Yeah, And for
you to get that, like just I can't deal with this about something is
rare. It was rare. Yeah, But hey man, that's it.
That's all I'm gonna say about sky Battles. So I don't think Tony Hawk
makes this list, which is surprising to me. Yeah, that is surprising
to me. I actually think, honestly, I would maybe take that over
Rodea and Godzilla, like both those games suck ass, But like, I
think Tony Hawk belongs on the list. How long does it take you to
reload from the pause menu? I want to restart a map too fucking longs
You load back out of the challenge completely back into an open world, and
it might connect you to other players along the way. Then you have to
restart the challenge, and it popular pops up the challenge again, and then
you hit start and then there's a countdown and then like there's I don't think
I could be wrong. I don't think that game crashed on me once while
I was playing it. And can you still skate in space? Yeah?
Like out there's an asteroid level that. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that still
is in there. I don't know. Like hearing like it sounds like Afra,
Samurai too, and sky Battles are on this list no matter what.
I just I would have thought Rodea would have taken it over Godzilla. I
think I think Godzilla I would probably sooner let go of than than Rodea.
Okay, but I still think maybe Tony Hawk beats that. I think there
in competition with each I mean, I think Tony Hawk is a fucking abysmal
game because the expectations I think all show play is because there's a baseline for
what a Tony Hawk game was, even in its lowest points in that series,
and this somehow manages to even scrape below that. Yes, years,
this is the last It is worse than you could have imagined. Like,
even if you had low expectations going in based on kind of the recent history
of the Tony Hawk franchise, this still limbos under that bar by a fair
fucking margin. Yeah, it is a special kind of shit. I think
for me, Rodea it's such a bizarre story. But like, if you
buy that game, there is at least a version of Rodea in there somewhere
that you can play that doesn't suck. The WIU version is awful, Yeah,
but like, at least there's a version of that game you can get
that isn't complete garbage. There is no version of Tony Hawk's pro Skator five
that I would recommend to humans for consumption anyway. Okay, there's no part
of Godzilla i'd recommend to anyone either, But I don't think it's as egregious
as some of this other stuff. So, so Sky Battles after Samurai and
Tony Hawk, is that what we're looking at? I think that's what we're
looking at. Okay. On the by now section of Afro Samurai gay dot
game dot com, it lists volume one is fourteen ninety nine and the trilogy
is thirty four ninety nine. The trilogy, yes, you can pre order
that trilogy. Yeah, which again all the links are broken. All refunds,
yes, so again there is that. But the game, this is
worst game. Yes, this is not marketing refund if they made good on
something. This is the worst game of the year. But you can't play
it. Right after Samurai and now I think we decided that that people had
found a way to know what I'm saying, I'm saying it crashes and the
controls don't work. I mean, you can technically beat like I was able
to progress at times, but you know, most levels and boss fights and
stuff had at least some dumb bullshit that caused me to either have to restart
the game entirely, or you know, die and restart at the checkpoint or
something like. To me, that sounds like Afro a Samurai trying to mercy
kill itself saying, let's just get beautiful to live, Let's just get out
of this. Listen. Sky Battles just revels in its own. Sky Battles
is gonna keep going every like. The thing I will say about sky Battles
is that everything about sky Battles sucks, all of it, Every single aspect
of sky Battles really sucks. That does look really bad. Yeah, it
does. Sky Battles of it, I mean a real brand of fucking hilarious.
But like like it almost seems like that's just something that some kid made
and wait out of Unity assets and put out, you know, like it's
it's you know what he shouldn't have. It looks like it runs way better
than af same right. Frame rate is pretty impressive. It's all right,
yeah, yeah, because it's rendering dog shit. That plane did a barrel
roll and I thought it was nice. It's true. The physics are I
have no doubt where you pointed up and directly straight up and just stop moving
completely. I thought was a unique innovation for the flight genre. Like I
said, I'm not going to defend anything about sky Battles or try to make
the sky. I look at this out of the corner of my eye.
Part of it looks appealing, and I think that's that's the scary part about
good frame rates is that they make anything look good. I do want to
play sky Battles more than I want to play after using Okay, well guess
what, you can only play one of them anyway. I have no doubt
a s I'll take aver sameerak. I just wanted to make sure we actually
worked this through right, just both through it. But yeah, that's fine,
okay, Like I did, like I have a I have a threshold.
Some games I won't even quick look or take a look at me,
like that's a scam. This was enough of a game to be like it
passed that initial test. Yeah, you were like, let's let's get into
this. But that's almost someone tried. I think I think someone here,
So yeah, you're right, best game, trash fire, all of it.
Yeah, all right, aft Aff Samurai Too has been folded in this.
Doesn't the game have a subtitle chapter one? Not even volume one?
The first one wasn't terrible, right, No, no it was not.
It's fine for a license, you know, pretty simple third person action game.
Yeah, Afrosamurai Too is the worst game of twenty fifteen. Yea,
it is. Sky Battles is also pretty bad. Tony Hawks per Skator five
also a pretty bad. I guess when the maker of the game is like,
yep, it was, yeah, yes, yep. Don't think they
don't think there will be a lot of like wounded egos. I was gonna
say that that actually happens more than you think. It just doesn't happen publicly
like this, like, oh yep, no, that game was bad,
but I'm telling you at this bar and not not pulling the game on the
internet. Yeah. All right, Well that brings us to our last category
of day four, which is best story. Let's talk about Afro. Samurai
Too is really like this real metaphysical thing going on where you just like you
transcend the world and you become invincible and just like, all right, it's
it's kind it's a great mechanic where it won't let you die, it'll just
crash the game. It doesn't It doesn't have these objective indicators where it's like,
confront the fact that you are alone in this world and you will die.
It has several objectives on screen that say stuff like that cool, come
to terms with the death of your family, objective, finish the fight again,
press X, just come to terms. All right. Here's what we
have written under best Story, which I hope is a self explanatory. You
would think a book of unwritten tales too. Life is Strange, The Which
or three, Radel Her Story, The Beginner's Guide, Uncanny Valley, Soma,
fall Out four, Sybil Undertail and Dying Light kind of DLC. Let's
let's let's address the kind of there. What's the kind I just wrote that
in do you Want you always just talk about it right now? Yeah,
let's just do it. The main story aligned in that game is not amazing.
It's whatever. It's a video game story. It has its ups and
downs. They do a really cool thing in that game, though, which
is to populate the world with NPCs. They even show up on their mini
map. I think they're little question marks or whatever. All they're therefore,
is to talk to you, and I'd like multiple ones stand out in my
mind to this day, and it's been literally almost a year since that game
came out as having like really touching personal stories about living in a zombie apocalypse
quarantine city and like maybe I've never seen the Walking Dead, so maybe that's
not like a super you're not missing revolutionary thing or something, but like this
season's real good. They Okay, I'll take that. Like they dig into
they dig into like the mundane aspects of daily life in a city that you
can't leave that is overrun by zombies in a really interesting way with a lot
of those characters, Like it's set in like a fictional like Turkish kind of
I don't know if they actually say that's where it is, you know,
but it's it's in that region of the world. And uh, that city
was hosting the Olympics or about to when the the the opbreak happen. And
yeah, so like for one thing, one of your like your she's not
a sidekick, but she's kind of like the strongest female character in the game,
Like you've played a little bit of us, like the Jade at the
beginning, where she's like a pretty major pretty in the settlement. Yes,
but she's also an Olympian, like she was an Olympic athlete and like famous,
and because she's so athletic, has now become like a like the top
runner of your little quarantine group. They're like posters of her right the city,
which right, cool. So you meet you meet, you meet a
girl, like a teenage girl who loses her mind and fangirls the fuck out
when you find out that or when she finds out that you're friends with Jade
or whatever. But over the course of this conversation, like kind of starts
speaking in more and more somber tones and actually starts talking about how like she
and her sister cashed in all of their like college graduation money to come to
the Olympics, and then goes into this like long story about how like they
barely escaped the zombie outbreak and then but her sister actually didn't make it out,
and like is now a zombie you know? Or like you meet a
guy who was part of the hazmat team that came in to try to clean
things up, and you've been seeing the whole the whole game, you've been
seeing these zombies in hazmat suits, and he actually goes starts going to detail
about how like they went house to house looking for every survivor they could try
to get out with like you know, twelve hours left before the quarantine set
in, but it was too late to or like they found out too late
that the hazmat suits they were wearing were not strong enough to like like like
the zombie bites penetrated the suit. So how do you find all this stuff?
Like they're just they're just hanging out, like they're just yeah, okay,
is it through the course of the game or you can info dump just
by talking? Oh, you you just find them randomly as you're going around
like they're you know, they're near they're usually near settlements, but occasionally you'll
just find a guy hanging out on a roof drinking himself. This. Yeah,
this seems like a you know, like a real improvement from like drunk
lady who wants you to go find her one drink. Totally totally. They
don't. They don't even give you quests. They're there for nothing, no
other wise than to just to tell you this, like like what their life
is like now that the city has been quarantined. Like there's a guy,
there's a guy who is a native of the city who complains about the fact
that they found oil there a few years ago. And there's this whole like
like classist aspect to the new money people that have moved into the city.
And he's got like this dark moment of like celebrating the fact that they turned
into zombies just as readily as the poor people do. You know, Like
there's like really interesting like perspectives on life in this zombie quarantine that I really
appreciated. But no, that stuff is in it's not it's not enough to
elevate that game here. But but but it's cool that you call that out
because I never would have had that understanding of what that game was doing otherwise.
Still, like, just getting all those different perspectives on life in that
city, it was was really fascinating. Cool. Uh, just a something
to potentially add here, Austin, how do you feel about read Only Memories?
I wish I'd gotten further into it. I really like what I played,
I really really really do, But I without knowing how that wraps up.
It's hard for you. Hard, Like I got through the first major
act of that game, and maybe the first two acts of that game,
where we're like, there's definitely some big twists and some cool ideas, but
I just had some lingering doubt as to whether it could pull me through all
the way, right, Okay. I just wanted to know, and and
I really like that. It's one of the things I'm gonna get back to
once I'm back home to see if it's gonna make my list, because it's
it's definitely, you know, fighting for that. It's a very small thing.
But I will say that I did appreciate the very much miner plot of
Night in the Woods Lost Constellation. It was a thing that was released actually
at the tail end of last year, but we saw it this year.
Uh. It's just a very little, self contained vignette thing about a person
kind of going on a small quest to kind of, I don't know,
just sort of deal with grief and life and and all that fun stuff.
And it's it's it's short, it's a small thing, but I just really
dug it and I just kind of wanted to call it out here real fast.
What was it called lost Constellation? It's night in the Woods. Yeah,
lost Constellation is the thing. It's called added middle, your solid five
saw, Why did you day? Okajima is the master storyteller of the industry?
Yeah, but you them now forever. But you have to even agree
that this story and this I put it on their disk because it made me
sad that my the series with my favorite story across like all of entertainment,
is not on here. But even I have to admit that week even four,
I like the thing the thing that changes things. Uh huh. I
like that a lot, But everything else, like especially watching Drew play through
it again, it's just like these things after missions where it's like, nah,
yeah, that's probably a cipher thing. We get that truck, you
know, it's there's nothing going on, even when there are cut scenes,
like I take it off. I put it on just because it made me
sad, but let's take it off. I will say one of the things
that makes me happiest about that game is that that there are those credit sequences
that literally tell you who wrote what missions and who designed what missions. Like
that's a tiny thing. I love that this game has that. I would
love that to be I would love to be able to talk about who wrote
my favorite Like I don't know who wrote Nick Valentine's I don't know who did
that. I don't know who wrote the Bloody Bear, and I wish I
could tell you. Yeah, yeah, I did. Like whenever Revolver was
on screen, there's some there's definitely fun moments in that well. I thought
some of his stuff was good, even he though has way less character than
he's had in any of the other games. Yeah, he's such an outlandish,
awesome character, the scheming badass. I think that's why. I think
that's why I liked him in this one, because he was a little more
human. He was characters and and that's that's how much of a quadruple agent
he is. Though he could be a normal dude and tell he just hangs
out with dogs. He's scheming the whole time. You just don't know it
like stuff with it's not it's not how who who's the How's no hue hue?
Yeah, I thought was the interactions they had were intense. I don't
even I don't even buy into the popular kind of fan criticism that it's a
bad Metal Gear game in the sense that there aren't enough cut scenes or whatever,
or like you know that they got rid of the Codex stuff, like
some of that stuff. I felt like it was a good evolution of the
series. I but they they bungle what they do have. You know,
there are some like okay things like ELI is pretty cool, but they don't
really do much of them. It's just the it's that last like third of
the game, like they just don't stick the landing at all. They don't
even like, don't even fucking come close the end. Is there really good?
Three was the end? The end of that game is fucking awful.
I will say. I'll say this vaguely so Drew doesn't Nefleeb that scene near
the end where you're interacting with your soldiers in a certain way, ah,
I thought that. I thought that was a pretty powerful crazy that was a
good mission, and I thought they were going to pull it out there.
Yeah, you thought I was gonna like it. I was like, Okay,
if this is the you know, this is how it's gonna go from
here on, because you can tell we're going at the mission screen, like,
you know, it's probably not gonna last much longer. Yeah, yeah,
I thought that was because I knew how many missions were left already.
I knew that that was close to the end. But yeah, overall,
though it's not on this list, I took it off myself, and it's
sad. The end of that game is like driving seventy miles an hour and
the running into a brick wall, like, holy shit, man, a
sweet brick wall a wall chocolate and it's awesome. It just all right,
damn. How many of you guys are gonna stick up for a book of
unwritten tales too? I know you all finished talk about it. I'm not
even gonna describe the story. It's it's one of the best. Uh.
Like, the story itself is not necessarily fantastic and probably won't stick around here,
but the it's one of the best modernized classic point and click adventure games
that's come out in the last fifteen years, so Book of Underretten Tails too.
I will just say, if folks out there like point and click adventure
games, you have to go try Book of Unretten Tails. Should I be
playing the first one? Yes, you probably should. Okay, but it's
a big time investment as well. It does play a lot off of it.
It's great. It's a great throwback to a modernized version of that,
but not in the sense of like you know, Telltale games or adventure games.
It's still point and click, but yeah, we can take that off,
but it's a non painful one of those to play. I really like
those games, and they do they have modern conveniences like you know, hit
tab, see what you can click on, and like double click on the
exit. Let's go. I really want to shout out. There's a little
game called three fourths Home that came out this year. I completely forgot about
until I was looking through stuff that I played and reviewed this year. Uh,
just a tiny, little kind of narrative experiment thing that was really really,
really good. You're like driving a car on the phone with your mom
the whole time and you have to control. You have to hold down the
D key like its wa was to control. You have to hold down D
to control the car driving home, while also like picking out answers and stuff
and just holding down that D key to like I'm driving home, I'm driving
home and like realizing like the storm is picking up, and it's just it's
really well written. It's really good writing. It's worth checking out if you're
into those sorts of things. But I'm not going to add it to this
list. Sorry, I missed some part of this discussion because there was a
fire alarm going off in my house. My house is apparently not on fire.
Though. That's good. That's good if you're gonna be sad metal your
solid fib okay, good. I just didn't All I wanted to say was
I heard you guys talking about metal gear over here, and you need to
take it off the list. But not gone. Okay it is. Yes,
it was on for a hot second there, and I like that game
even I agree, but off Yes, Uncanny Valley, Yeah, so Oncanny
Valley. It probably won't make it on here, but it is a it
is a game. I don't know if you guys, have you guys even
seen it. Yeah, I don't even know what it is. Yeah,
I've seen a little bit of it. I know nothing about the story though.
Yeah, it's cool. It's definitely not going to hang around too much.
But it's got one of those ones with like a bunch of multiple endings
in it. Uh. And it's it's kind of just about it's about maybe
mistaking robots. What please stop? What? Uh? It's yeah, who
who's real? Who's human? But then it goes like crazy sick and like
there's a lot of blood and murder and like it's very cool and weird.
Uh and does some good storytelling stuff. And uh, is it the best
story about the nature of consciousness on this list out of like the four or
five elements of it that I think do stand out. Yeah, but but
just by sheer number, I think it might get crowded out. M Okay,
all right, but I'll take it off. It's cool, it's a
it's a it's well done storytelling. Yeah, Okay, what about Cradle?
Uh? I feel like we have to talk about Cradle in conjunction with Soma
And is there anything else? Start with Cradle's start with Yeah, also follow
Jeff Jeff had to step back out, and he will definitely want to be
here for the fallout stuff. So Cradle has one of the most intriguing worlds,
and like the first ten minutes of that game are or maybe the first
hour of that game. Yeah, maybe I'm just like, oh my god,
there's so much here to read about, and it's presented in a way
that is like totally digectic to the world. Whether I'm reading newspaper clippings and
they don't feel they don't really feel like they've been, you know, nicely
set up for you to read exactly. Is it not the computer terminal of
like, hey guys, here's the new gun locker code. Like you you
absorb the story in that game very slowly through osmosis, like to the point
that you almost don't realize you know what's going on until you do. And
that story combines like two pretty pretty, you know, steady, normal sci
fi things in a way that is completely or it felt really new to me,
which is like, there's lots of sci fi stories about like genetic purity,
and there's lots of sci fi stories about being robots, and this was
like a game about both and and it hit both of those in a way
it combined them in a really cool way. Uh yeah, I think more
things per minute that I had never really seen before in terms of things like
that. Like the job that the main character has is that he goes around
the world to collect samples of flowers and test them for basically genetic purity,
because people in the future think that the more genetically pure things are, the
more beautiful they are, because and there's a spoilers series, so there's like
a chechnical aspect of that. In this future, humans have had to put
their consciousness into robots into but just imagine that every robot basically looks the same,
right except for really rich people who can buy augments the robot. So
there's no way now to with your eyeballs to see if somebody's more beautiful or
not. So the only way to check beauty is to be like how pure
is your DNA? And that becomes like a standard. And this is just
kind of a side story thing, kinds of standard for it's it's a it's
a weird tale of like how we need to differentiate ourselves, like the need
to be different to the point where one of the robots or a couple of
them. Uh, you don't meet that many. He's wearing like fake phony
glasses as a robot, just to be like market classes almost to be different.
And that's a that for me was a really interesting part of that whole
storytelling. The thing is sorry, well two questions because I didn't finish it.
Uh, First of all, what's the necessity for becoming robots? There's
a there's a global plague, right, like, like there is some biological
thing that some scientists were working on immortality. They're working on trent like the
singularity. Moving someone's mind into a robotic body. I think that was even
a step. I think I'm Originally they were moving on like mapping the consciousness
kind of thing and then right right, right, But once they did the
move to a robot, that's when there was like part of that process led
to a weird explosion of noxious gas that killed bunch of a bunch of people
basically, And the only way to like push that back was kind of to
harvest another sort of bodily juice. Oh right, that's yes, the way
emotions generate some kind of like substance from some people with pure DNA right right,
It was a bad emotions generate a pink slime that runs underneath the city.
So you're then fashioned into a chicken nugget like shape. Yes, so
it wounded up in this thing in this world where they have to tell all
the people they look call like the uglies for short, but basically people who
have bad DNA, like, hey man, we're gonna kind of have to
put you into cryo sleep because you're killing humanity. Uh. And then it
turns out they put them into cryo sleep. But then it turns out the
rich people basically, oh, the beautiful people burn out and they have to
unfreeze the ugly people because they're It's it's a pretty complicated system that is all
told through these newspaper clippings and articles and journals. And in the end there's
also like time anomaly. There's a bunch of shit going on there that's really
cool. All set in like Mongolia. Yeah, in like the outback of
Mongolia, although there happens to be a theme park right there, right that
that theme park is more than a theme park, really okay, And then
the theme park is basically it was a clinic. It's at a Cura center.
It's a center for treating kids who might have weird stuff going on.
It's a curious it's they hate the human form. They can't stand it's like
a weird thing. It's not it becomes related to the story. But yeah,
they can't send a human form. So in the beginning, they were
using this technology to interact with the robots to be like, Okay, we're
gonna teach you how to interact with humans, and we're gonna try and treat
this because like, for whatever reason, looking at a robot didn't freak these
kids out the way looking at an actual human didn't. Like looking at like
a humanoid figure who was like a cool valkyrie character, they could deal with
that, but looking at actual people they couldn't. And so I was like,
well, we're gonna step them towards being able to be around people normally.
It's very weird and very original. And so there's this thing when you
transfer your consciousness into the robot suit, Uh, you're not supposed to be
able to look at yourself because there's like a dead eye stare, like something
real fucked up happens, like if you're looking at your body, like if
Brad is transferring his consciousness into a robot body, as soon as he transfers,
he's then looking at his body lose life and apparently that like is really
fucked up and like causes spear hit. So they shoot this like mirror up
to so like as soon as you transfer, it's like, well, nope,
don't look, don't look. They can they just face you away from
No, because you have to look how it's transferred. The eyes and that's
why the eyes on the robots are those. They had to make the eyes
look real on the robots because otherwise, like something wouldn't happened. There's a
lot of like crazy stuff and then they don't really stick the landing, and
it's really frustrating. Yeah, I didn't even make it to the end because
like the actual adventure game puzzle solving elements of that game are not that is
definitely flawed, but the ending itself, in the storytelling stuff, this steps
doesn't come together. There's this really sacarin moment that is not only not necessary,
but like it almost undoes the cool shit in the world. That's a
shame. That's a real ship. Yeah, yeah, I was super impressed
at the beginning of the game. I wouldn't say it all falls apart,
but it. Definitely it's not as satisfying as it should be. There's things
about like I think it's strong. I think it's really strong, you know.
I think that it overall, the body of it is better than the
end of it, and I think it still holds together. I just wish
it compared to some of the other stuff here that I've that I've actually played
through, I wish it was a little bit more even for me. It
takes. It is novel in that it is not working within cliches as much
as maybe it sounds. With the trans human stuff like the putting your consciousness.
It is taking. Again, this is a personal thing for me,
a culture I'm not familiar with, and mapping different sci Fi onto that culture,
and that becomes very nique to navigate within that space. And we can
kind of transition right into Soma here if we want to, yeah, because
it's very similar themes. There may even be a shout out to Cradle in
Soma, which is cool. So should we move into Soma? Yeah,
yeah, yeah. We we talked quite a bit about the basics of that
yesterday in the best Moment category, So Soma Soma is h We kind of
set it up already. You're a guy who is getting experimental treatment, trying
to seek experimental treatments to solve his brain problems. And to do that,
they're gonna map his brain, and they're using that map, they're going to
find the most efficient treatment to solve his brain problem. Sits in his chair,
they mapped the brain. He wakes up one hundred of years later in
this underwater based establishment, which pretty much looks like like a spaceship, but
you're underwater. The themes of that game in the storytelling are what is is?
What is life? And what what is consciousness? What it's like?
Because they're so what happens in that game? Austin, you take this one.
I'm exhausted. You kind of don't have to exhaustively run down everything that
happened, but like, like so it's this dude is trying to the whole
story of that game is that given the fact that there are basically no people
left, a scientist decides to put a bunch of scan. You should mention
that a comment has wiped out all life on Earth. That's why there's so
there's almost no people around anymore. Yeah, these people are underwater in this
in this base and I understay what the base is. It's yeah, it's
like a power plan or no, no, no, there's a research state.
It's a research show that that has also h what do they call it?
This the space gun? Space gun? They have a space gun?
Or I guess I should ask do they ever justify why it's on the bottom
of the ocean or was that just a convenient reason for these people too?
I think it's because the space gun needs to be down there they're trying.
It's a it's like a railgun that stuff in this space. So it goes
from the bottom of the sea floor to the top of the ocean, and
it can gain momentum. Oh interesting, okay, yeah, yeah, so
because there are no people left, this one scientist, because one scientist had
been already doing the side project of like, it's cool and we can scan
people's brains, we can put those into like a machine in a computer and
like have like a virtual world for them. That's weird, And then everyone
died and she was like, actually, I can use this to like put
the rest of humanity into space. So there's some semblance of it their consciousness,
right, and so that like humans aren't gone forever. Who knows what
happens in space, but there will be something of us left. I think
the reason to put it in spaces because they can run off of solar energy
for like thousands of years, as opposed to they say like like if if
you can't get it off the sea floor, it's gonna only last for a
couple of decades. Exactly. They know they're all doomed, right exactly.
It's like one last gasp at saving humans, yea. And so those stories
like you going through these different subsectors of this facility, moving across the ocean
floor and trying to get to the space gun. But along the way you
run into a number of situations where like you're just getting a little perspective on
what it means have a consciousness and like what you think you value in life,
Like well, because I'll just interject that, there's one other kind of
big part of this. There's also this AI that was running the facility,
that was there to take care of the facility, which came to kind of
the same conclusion, which was like, fuck, humanities doomed. I've got
an idea too, Let's put humans in the robots. But going about it
in a way without the human kind of and this is the question without a
human guidance of like, well, I'll just put you in this fucking worker
machine and then hook you up to a wall. And your companion puts it
pretty sucinctly that, like the AI's mission was to protect life, but like
the AI's definition of what's worth protecting about life may not be the same as
humans, and it's a way of going about it might actually be just grotesque
and horrible, and like sometimes that's literally like a person in a corner with
a pair of like bio organic or bio mechanically organic lungs above her, like
in tiding into her body. Yeah, there aren't a bunch of dead bodies
lying around in this game. There are a bunch of still living like desiccated
husks, like barely breathing because like the AI has jacked them into stuff like
it's and all the monsters that you're fighting are essentially or not fighting but running
away from are are more or less born out of that, right, But
you don't get a lot of it's not like a lot of like kill me.
Yeah, it's it's kind of like there are a couple of those moments,
but well, the things that The thing that's weird about those moments is
normally games have that moment where it's like, up, do I unplug it?
Or do I not? Here It's like I have to unplug something,
and and the question is like do I unplug it in a way that keeps
this person alive and in pain but at least they're alive because it's cool because
there's only twelve people left, right or do I do I unplug it?
Where like it's just dead. It's just dead and that's it, and like,
yeah, it raises some stuff of like well, who are you decide?
Like there's a there's a couple of robots who come up across that are
just plugged into this thing and they're just they just look like a mess of
robotic parts and they're just like I'm so happy. I'm I'm so and you
can you can from for not really no achievement or I don't think any real
rewarded or not rewarded story. I mean, it's just pull the plug and
be like we're not this is not life. This is I mean there there
are moments like that woven into the actual story objectives, though, like there
there are parts where early on there there are times I can think of one
time in particular, where you need a spare part that comes from robots,
but the only available robots are robots that have like human consciousness is in them.
So there's actually no, you're you're actually actually no, I'm sorry,
there's uh. There are two robots there. One of them is a former
human consciousness and one of them is like a pure like worker bot, I
believe, or you don't know for sure because that model model, that model
can't communicate about where ais come from. Yeah, and that's super complicated,
right, but you have to decide, like, Okay, which one of
these robots am I going to destroy to get the chip out of their heads
that I need because it's effectively going to kill this thing living in the robot.
So, like, I think one of the great story things in here
that this this one does well, Soma does well, is the when you're
doing these scans, like I said, in Cradle, you're watching your body
die kind of thing. And in Soma, you immediately have a copy of
yourself. So as you're getting scanned in you have now two versions of yourself,
right, And so one of the things in Soma is like there becomes
a cult that is like a suicide cult that's like, hey, man,
just after you scan yourself in, kill yourself because like that that's what our
things all about. Don't do it in front of Katie the tech because we
don't freak her out, but like, go back to your room and go
kill yourself. You find you find a log from the guy who started this
concept that has like this religious fervor about it that it's like, yeah,
if you die at the moment your consciousness is scanned in, it'll become you
in there, like you you'll be there, you know, and you'll live
forever in the computer. And the notion of like those copied consciousnesses and like
how they you know, like are are they individuals? Are they the same
individual The way it kind of plays with that stuff again, I think the
one thing it sometimes stumbles with is trying to make the main character deal with
that stuff at the rate that the player does in a way that feels organic.
But the themes behind it and the story behind it and what goes on
in that game is fascinating. Yeah. The thing the themes for me are
it hits the themes in a way that I think a lot of stories don't
necessarily hit the transhumanism singularity stuff. It at once says like, oh,
the reason that people would want to live forever in a computer people, The
reason that people might want to do that is one often pretty noble too.
I think that we were stumbling into because our technology is getting there theoretically,
and three is still a material thing that has a material cost, like we
will not get It's not like, oh, our technology is here today,
there's no problem everyone getting the machine. It's like, no, actually,
that's gonna be a real dirty job and not everyone's gonna have access to it.
Like one of the things that comes up is because there's such a bad
reaction because of the suicide cult, they cut off who gets to go into
the into the arc, and there are people who are still left who are
like, I would love to be in there, but nah, I guess
I don't get I don't because I'm gonna make the cut and and so in
in for best story, one of the one of the great moments in this
uh, there's that mirror part, which I think is the best moment.
But again, this is all spoiler stuff. You have to transfer, for
one reason or another into your robot. We established that, right, you
have to transfer your consciousness into a better robot, right, yeah, so
yes, a robot that can dive deeper into the ocean. So from you
guys sit in the chair and she's like, all right, I'm gonna transfer
you, and I'm gonna take some creative license here to describe what the scene
is for the story stuff. But like you, basically you would sit in
the chair, scan you, and then you'd be like, what happened,
I'm not in the new robot. And then on the other side you'd hear
the person be like we're all set to go. Let's go. And then
you now have two copies of yourself. The one and they use the they
use the metaphor of like a coin flip, right, the guy who now
has to get turned off, that's the losing shot of the coin flip,
and the other one who's like, transfer work, I let's go. So
you keep two versions or do you just walk back and then like stab that
other one and it's like I'm the new one. And that's played with a
lot in in kind of their trickier moments in the of like think about this,
Yeah, I think it's done pretty well. It is. I think
the themes come together in that game. I think they do a really good
job of setting up both the sort of existential horror aspect of it and also
kind of you know, I don't know, I guess like even still propping
up a measure of hope in all of that. You know, like the
arc is is not a solution, it is it is kind of the last
respect, you know, it's the last possibility for humanity to exist in any
form. It's like not as important that it gets out there as the peoples
could have focus on one last thing that they thought could maybe be good.
Yeah, And and I think the way it ties that stuff up at the
end is good. I know some people have said that like that there's two
scenes, there's one right before the credits and one at the end, And
I think there is some merit to the notes that maybe those scenes could have
been flipped. That's such a Yeah, I waste not joking when I said
that, But I do think that like the ending. For me, one
of the problems in the game that I do actually have with the story is
that there's such a big disconnect between what the player knows and understands about the
rules of the world and what the character does, and you can do that
well, you can play that for dramatic irony, where like the players like,
oh my god, what Simon, why don't you think? And I
got that a little bit, but like I wish they would have leaned into
that even more maybe, and maybe I would have left feeling like, oh
what a track. As it is, it's a little bit of too much
of a middle ground. I was gonna say, it seems like he is
coming to the same realizations you are, just too slowly. Exactly. It's
cool though, it is really cool, and then some good storytelling. Gameplaywise,
there's some some real stumbles. Yeah, they're not unbearable, but yeah,
there are some parts. And I think that the amnesia model does not
necessarily benefit the story that game is trying to tell. Yeah, I could
have done without the I mean, if that was not Jermaine to this category
because it's about the story. Sometimes interferes with the story. You're right,
You're absolutely Like a couple of the stealth sequences were so overbel hey, they
were really overbearing, but I was so into absorbing the fiction of the world
and like messing with all the computers and like booting up that guy's consciousness,
like that moment where there's a puzzle where you need a security code and the
only guy who knew it is dead, but you managed to get ahold of
his brain scan, and so you boot him up in a computer and you
literally see a video feed of like what he's seeing, and that consciousness is
becoming active at the moment that it was taken the scan was taken. So
he's waking up in the chair thinking no time has passed whatsoever since his brain
was scanned, but freaking out because there's nobody around him. So you go
after you have to go find other modules to plug into his simulation to like
like bring him down gently and make him think it's the real world, so
he'll give you the code you need, which is like scummy. Yeah.
Yeah. So it's this really unnerving moment of like you keep booting him up
over and over at the exact same moment because he's freaking out, and every
time the first line of dialogue out of his mouth is the same, but
then he starts freaking out in a different way based on what kind of modules
you have loaded, Like it's this really, it's really, it's this weird
ethical question of like, like you are creating and destroying a life every time
you you The thing is. The thing that's so good about this is like
if the arc matters, if the arc really is humans, then it should
fucking matter that we're like resurrecting and killing this guy over and over again.
But if it doesn't matter, then it doesn't matter, and then why are
we doing any of it? And then one of the other great things and
it is like, for you could just erase that entire computer if you want,
yep, like you'd just be like not a race. Ever, this
is fucked up. Everybody gets a raised on this computer and that's that's kind
of great that they allowed you to do that. Yeah, yeah, totally.
And I will say, since we're in story here, the they pepper
that world with what feels like a fixed amount of staff members on that on
that station, whatever it is, because there's a couple of different stations and
I couldn't keep track of them all, but it feels like you could.
I'm surprised, like how many of the names I could tell you right now,
Like oh, Acres is the guy who went crazy and Galusha's eyes.
Yeah, yeah, like Srong is the guy who had the religious idea about
continue. It's like there's fifty eight people and that's just enough where you could
pull out enough of them, so it feels like, oh, yeah,
that's about fifty eight people's worth that you're following through all of this stuff.
Yeah, that's some good stuff there. How much does the game change based
on like you know, yeah, you can erase this whole computer, Like,
is there is there any kind of meaningful difference? I don't think there
are any branching but but I really like that because it doesn't feel like you
can go and then be like what's the best ending? Right, It's just
like like when we were playing it, like Austin I finished up that game,
I was playing on the hotel thing. It's just one of those things
of like, I no, if you're in a robot, that's bad living,
but if you're on the computer, that's all right. It was for
maybe the computer crash lands on a planet where they can take you out of
computer put you in a body. They say explicitly, the life in the
arc will be like you'll feel like a human being, Like it'll be sunny
and nice weather all the time, and like very comfortable, immortal. It
wasn't even stuff that's in the arc. These were just copies that were like,
now here's another copy of this guy's brain scan that you could boot up
and just be like, no, that, I guess I'll leave that one.
You know, I think it's like not There aren't a lot of active
characters or participants in the story, but Chun you're like kind of psychic lady
is fantastic because, like you come across like a psych profile of her at
one point. I don't know if you guys found that that describes her as
like super awkward and like doesn't like to make eye contact and is a loaner
and it doesn't good at holding conversations. And she's the only person in the
game that you talk to that expresses like some affinity for being a computer person,
like you you talk to her, she mentions it towards the end,
but like she's so she is so relaxed. Computer body. Simon is freaking
out about realizing that he's a robot. He's asking her like like don't don't
don't you hate being in that thing? Like how do you like, how
can you stand this? And she's like, oh, it's not so bad,
like like I feel kind of the same, but like more comfortable,
and it's like I'm suspended in air. It's it's fine, you know,
like like for her to be like somebody who was uncomfortable in her human skin
and then to transition cleaning the end of the computer a human skin. The
nature of your robot also becomes a little crazy when you find out how how
you're a robot is put together in a suit. I guess it's not that
relative this conversation, but I don't think it is. But it's gross,
great and good the whole. I think there's there's just so many layers to
that thing, and even where it doesn't work, like there's there's an ambition
there that I appreciate. Yeah, I think I think we like so much
quite a bit. Sorry, that's the entire story of Selma. It's still
it's still very worth playing, like getting your hands on all the computer gear
in that game and like plugging personality modules into things and running simulations. It's
felt like so good. So I think the last game on this list that
has to do with Synthetic Life, Yeah, which I I well, I
mean, you guys can say whatever you want, but I feel like the
story wise, you came out of that review saying you were very disappointed the
story. Yeah, I think that there there are elements of that game that
are well written. I think Nick Valentine is is a really sharp character that
actually is very pivotal because that that game that is another game about, like
is synthetic life life? Right? Uh? Like that is very much the
turning point. And they use it in kind of a and almost like slavery
sense of like are are these you know, these robots property or are they
people? And you have factions that are kind of that have very different takes
on that. And also there's the kind of boogeyman aspect of like, you
know, humans are being replaced with synths, right, and you can't trust
any of them because those go crazy and kill everybody they really like, they
really other the idea of a synth, like from the second you walk into
Diamond City or whatever. And even among the Sins there's some a little bit
of disagreement of like, well, those first generations Sins are basically just robots,
right, not like us, And there are other ones who are like,
no, we have to free all of the synths. Yeah, And
there's a lot of like stuff at the periphery of Fallout four about that topic
that I think is really interesting. But the core story of Fallout four of
my son was taken out of this vault. Let's go find my son?
Yeah, uh no, it sounds like also a wreck on top of that,
like we talked about it yesterday or the day before. But again,
the whole like the potential of the fish out of water stuff with a guy
who actually lived before the bombs and how that's completely not capitalized on it when
when you look at the setting of Fallout for there is a tremendous story to
be told with the characters they have built, and they don't tell it.
I feel like there's lots of good stories, little stories. That's kind of
that's kind of RPGs, right, lots of little things, yets, like
quest lines that are are you know, very easy to appreciate and very rewarding,
set against this main quest line that kind of just fumbles its way towards
the conclusion and eventually have to make some faction choices and you know like it.
It's it's very much one of those games, and there are parts of
it that I like there are characters that I like, and seeing the world
and the way that world works can be very rewarding. It was another game
where like I hacked every computer I could find, I read every terminal I
could find, and and but the reality of it is most of that stuff
was not great. I think the most interesting thing I've seen from the first
thirty or forty hours, it's just those little side stories that you'll read about,
like in the newspaper Ladies House, about that incident of the noodle house,
or the guy's face just started twitching, and that's when people realize,
like, oh shit, sense can look like humans. They could be living
among us right now. Like I thought that was super interesting, And that
wasn't even like you kind of had to pick up that newspaper. It's it's
stuff that like there are other spots where that story gets conveyed even if you
don't know the newspaper, Like if you wander into Diamond City originally one of
the first you go to that that haircutting place when you first walk into left
and if you talk to like the mom like she's berating her son because she's
convinced the girl he's dating is a synth and they start like getting into a
huge argument about that stuff. That's like the thing in Diamond City where the
guy thinks his brother is a saint in the minds of like shooting him or
whatever. Yeah. Yeah, so some of those little side things, he
said, there's a lot of synth paranoia. I mean, you know,
like the faction that is voted to freeing the Sinse is literally called the Railroad.
Yeah, you know, like it's there's no subtle you know, Yeah,
there's nothing subtle about There's one thing I've read about in that game.
I wonder if any of you guys have run into it, Like I don't.
There's not a good term for this, but it would almost be like
a found storytelling kind of thing, or like a mechanical storytelling where apparently since
can infiltrate your settlements. And the example I read about was like somebody said
that they went back to their settlement and found several of their people dead,
and when they went up to loot a bunch of them, one of them,
they looted a bunch of like gears and circuit boards off, and like
it became clear that that person had been replaced by a synth in their settlement
and that synth had gone haywire and killed everybody. That's cool, and that's
super cool. It is, but it sounds like that's pretty sporadic. Yeah,
I haven't seen it happen to me yet. I've been like, I
hope, I kind of hope that happens that that's kind of no super creepy.
I also think there is I do want to clout given how the past
fall Out games have done this, there's a spot where like the bomb fell
nearby, and the closer you get to that ship, there are stories that
you can find some of those some of those side areas where it's like the
final last you know, three hours of this person's life and that stuff is
not SyncE stuff and is also pretty good, but it's it's just not the
bulk of that of that game stuff even before that, Okay, on the
way down that way, Okay, yeah, Yeah, there there's a lot
of stuff where, yeah, you get to like a waste land, in
a wasteland of just like oh out here, there's nothing is fucked the first
time. Some people living out there where like the rads are such that like
they should not be able to make it, but they they're out there and
area is like, so I went down to that. There's an area called
the Glowing Sweet that you hear about early on even just in like loading screens
and stuff. And the first time I went down there was really fantastic because
it was not set to a mission. It was just like I wouldn't pick
a direction and go this is, but that's the game. I pick direction
and pick that way. There's a weird light over there. I'm gonna go
there and I'm gonna sport. Like a really weird structural thing about about Fallout
four, which is there's a map, right, there's a square map of
Boston, and then there is ship off of that map. There's a ship
to the southwest of the map or it's like still on your map screen,
but it's beyond the borders. Really yeah, and that is fucking cool because
you're like these mountains an keep going, I'm not hitting an invisible wall,
like what is there more? And like then you see on your compass that
there's like an icon there, like wait, there's something else to this south
that's weird And you're like janking your way up a mountain while a radiation store
happens. Yeah, And so yeah, I didn't. Yeah, end up
not down Yeah, and like light is coming down from through the weird like
green halo around this whole area, and it's like there's just abandoned factories and
shipped down here, and like it keeps going. Do you not have to
go down there for the Virgil thing? You do? You do? But
you can you can do it in a way. It's kind of like on
route, you know what I mean. Yeah, that's that's how I ended
up doing. Right, But there's up to the west of the map,
and there's up to the south of the map, and there's like gear in
there, and there's definitely at least one other big quest down that might be
the storyline stuff that I haven't done. But yeah, I went into a
facility. I was like, whoa, this is Oh, like this is
a big weird facility. So yeah, I like that stuff, but I
don't know that. Yeah, I feel like the crux of the main storyline
there and the choices you make along the way are not great. Yeah,
And I think the reveal about kind of the main quest that you get let's
say two thirds of the way through the game is you know it is it's
not handled especially well, like when you kind of resolve what you think is
your initial main quest and then you know, from there it kind of sets
out to like, okay, well now it's really about like which faction are
you gonna side with as we wrap things up? Something like they've They've never
by they I mean literally Bethesda has not ever really handled that stuff super well.
I that sounds like the thing that New Vegas did that people liked so
much more in that game. Found My thing with New Vegas is I the
thing I could be wrong. I remember New Vegas like getting me to a
point where it's like I was trying to play all sides and then stumbled into
a point of no return without it being explicit about that, and then I
ended up with the faction that I did not want to side with in the
end game. This game had multi two separate points for me where it was
like you know, hey, you you can't do you know you You're not
gonna be able to do this, And on one time it was a straight
up pop up it was like look, if you get on this vehicle,
this other faction will hate you forever. Wow. And I was like,
Okay, thank you for doing that, because I'm not this is not the
way I want to go with this thing, so I'm going to go do
this other stuff instead. But also you could you could clean both of the
factions like side quest content out completely before you make a choice. Really yeah,
yeah, and then the but the second time it did that, which
it was much closer, much closer to the actual ending for me, uh,
it did it didn't have that pop up, which was a little frustrating.
But at the same time, the quests I had for those two factions
were diametrically opposed in a way that obviously doing one would prevent you from do
the other. So it's still like, at least foreshadowed that I would have
appreciated the pop up there, just to like, because that's that's a thing.
You know, you invest that many hours in a game, you want
to you want to do what you want to do, and yeah, but
you know, I could go into extreme detail about the end of that game,
the nature of that. Yeah, not just this is not I'll tell
you that I don't think this game fits into this category whatsoever. That that's
fair, that sounds that sounds whatsoever. That sounds pretty pretty tepid. So
the other big open world RPG this year it was what you'r three? It
was where are people on that? So I really liked the stuff at the
beginning, and then we've covered the bloody bearing and stuff, which I thought
was awesome yea, And that's when I thought like, man, this is
going to be like a contender for my personal game of the year, Like
I'm invested in the story. Yeah, you know, I was really really
high on the game up through the end of the Bloody Bearing question a little
beyond, and then I just felt like it happened. What's that fucking damn
well? Even leading up to that, it starts doing this thing where every
like main story thing is like, hey, do you see a series come
through heres? Oh? Yeah, I saw I go through that tavern.
Go talk to the bartender lady there, Hey bartender lady, do you see
series? Go talk with the guy at the stables, Hey, stable guy?
Oh, dandy Lion, go talk today? Where's dandy Lion? Like,
oh, talk to the prostitute. It just it did that for hours
and hours and nothing was happening at all, And that's it just made me
completely lose interest in the game. And that's why I will not finish that
game, is it Spunet's wheels? Like people talk about the Mexico section and
Red Dead being this huge lull. I thought that was fine. That was
a billion times better than this huge thing after the bloody baron and like,
I don't even care where it goes afterwards, because it just does nothing for
so long. Not only not only that, but as they have you chasing
her around constantly, and like like, Okay, I appreciate that this big,
gigantic, open world epic RPG was actually about a pretty personal objective,
which is, hey, I want to save my like faux daughter. Basically,
yeah, it's not it's not, Hey, the bad guys are going
to ruin the world If I don't, it doesn't become that. I don't
know. I didn't finish it. Maybe it does, it probably does.
I think it does. Fuck forget that game then, I'm sure it seemed
to have a lot of stuff about those ice vikings or whatever. Yeah,
the wild obviously the wildline, but I was always under the impression that they
only had it out for Gerald and wanted Siri, not like to rule the
world. I have no idea, I don't know, but I mean,
I think the overall goal of evil force such as that is generally some manner
of world domination. Right. It's well, that's fair, Well, we'll
set that part aside. But the it has the classic like urgency versus too
much content problem, you know, like like, well, he's constantly talking
about how the wild Hune is hot on her heels and he's got to find
her as fast as possible, but you won't stop throwing side quests at me,
you know, like I've got eighteen Witcher contracts in my log right now,
and like it always felt like I was like putting off the thing that
mattered to go do the stuff I wanted to do. You know, I
love to get in here. I love the Witcher stuff, but I just
didn't finish it. Yeah. So I mean the thing i'll say here is
again, I don't think anyone here has finished it right now, I really
wish I had so. Well, the thing i'll say, Dan, the
furthest should we just figure out what I and everything? From what I've seen,
I have like four or five main story quests left your further than nine?
Okay, you're way further than nine. Okay. Every time you've said
that on a podcast I've seen comments to the effect of like, oh,
he actually, there's actually way more game than the things. I saw that
too, because I was tweeting about it, and when people started saying that,
it's like, fuck this, because like I kept wanting to give him
more of a chance because of how which I liked the beginning sections, but
it never got better and I don't give a shit where it goes. And
the thing I'll say, at least from the time I have spent with it,
it is less. I mean, yes, the bloody barren stuff was
fantastic, and the stuff of the crones and all that other weird shit is
great, but for me that that game is and it's I guess, sort
of the same thing with Fallout. It's the smaller moments. It's the moments
where you're just talking to random NPC's and you're engaging in these conversations with these
fairly distinct and like specific characters. They don't just feel like, you know,
carbon copies of each other. H And it feels like the even just
solving some weird woman's problem where she can't get into her house and there's like
a dead guy in there, like all that stuff has such like a nice
feel to it, like like a I don't know, it is realistic in
a way that that isn't despite being ridiculous high fantasy or some lady things that
like her husband left her and then you find out it's like, oh no,
he's just a werewolf that lives in the woods. Now, yeah,
okay, that's cool. I think they do an amazing job in that game
of world design and service of little bits of story here and there. You
know. It's like like when you find uh, like like every single like
overturned wagon or you know, whatever like little chotchkey that they've put in the
world and make it look more detailed, also has some kind of like little
story justifications here. You know. It's like you find you find like a
merchant manifest attached to that and then realize like, oh, this guy's goods
got jacked when he was like attacked by you know, highwayman or whatever,
and then you follow that off to a little quest or something like. Yeah,
like I think that stuff, you know, is probably the best of
any game, you know, especially this year, if they do that way
better than the Bethesda games do. I think. Yeah, from from what
I saw, there's this moment where you're you're going to find this character and
you find out, Oh, she's at this house in this little city,
and you go in, you open the door, and the guy's like,
oh, you're looking for her, Like, I'll bear back, I'll get
her. And then you like go up to a table and there's a cat
on the table, and like, Garrol and that cat just look at each
other and it's just like and then they don't say anything, and they never
explain what the fuck that meant. And I love it. It's just an
amazing little moment Carol and that cat like they knew something I don't know.
Like that that is what that game is to me. It's just as a
long series of amazing little moments, you know, with and sometimes that's peppered
into the main plot, and sometimes it doesn't seem like it is at all.
But I love that stuff and I love discovering that. I thought the
I've mentioned a podcast or two ago, but the Godling Johnny, that you
restore his voice like I loved. I loved when he couldn't speak because he
had to communicate in, you know, other ways, and then once he
got his voice back, just like the the weird like crass ship that came
tumbling out of his mouth constantly like it was so awesome, but that's all
kind of like, well, same bloody baron area and everything is yes,
yes, all that stuff in that first twenty thirty hours of the game is
so good. And then like I don't know why all of us hit a
point, hit different points. Probably something came out where we all burned out
on that. It was MGS coming out, It really was. And and
for me it was the same roun I have with the games of this size
generally, which is that his second I lose momentum the second I just don't
play it for a week. It's it's so hard to go back. I
kept trying to go back. I tried several times to go back because of
how much I liked it, and Nope, I just can't get back into
that. I'll say, there's more to it than just putting it down and
coming back to you. There. There are elements of extreme repetition in that
game, Like I don't know how any more Noon Wraiths, so I could
go vanquished, sure, I just never wanted to do that type of quest
again. You know, It's like the monster battles are definitely not It's it's
high point. Like the monster designs are great. Yeah, some of the
backstories for that stuff is great, but like the actual going and fighting the
random monsters, there's there's just a lack of variety to to some of that
stuff. Yeah, I wish i'd finished it. I heard the pretty people
say that delC sorceresses masqueraded as cats in that universe. I believe it.
And you know, he's he's way into You might have imagine it at the
eye to see if you know what's her name, the Kira something, Oh
it's Kira, I forget all. Yeah, like that tower on that aisle,
and there is there's like more great quest content around that random ass island
in the middle of this lake that has nothing to do with the main story
than in some entire games. Like I couldn't like at that point in the
game, I was so into that stuff. So do you think that that
that keeps on this list? It sounds like that, like the the main
plot is maybe not enough to keep anyone. I'm going if the story,
if the main story wasn't good enough to none of us finished it, But
how good it can it be? But well, okay, I think that's
unfair because it's not the story that's keeping us from playing it. There are
other aspects of that game that I think are keeping playing and also just the
sheer fucking size of it. I think probably it was Dante. I mean,
you mean SOD five is you want to play in that game for the
story? You might have been whatever, hoping if we were playing it for
the story, but in the yeah, I don't think was actually playing that
games of the story. Those games have a completely different like gameplay loop and
like yeah, yeah, I will say about Metal Gear that, like,
you know, in its defense, like I wanted to see that through like
every step of the way, like even even going in knowing actually how that
game ended, right uh, or or or having a having had it described
to me, I still wanted to see all of that for myself. I
think for me, metal Gear just it was I think that I was like
they executed it. It fed me easier. Like Metal Gear was just like
mission, let's go mission, let's go the dole out rewards and like nuggets
of story more more free home. Yeah, it's just the way they do
it. And the witcher a the combat, uh was just a little more
challenging, and then like the going do the metal gear stuff and then going
around searching for missions and stuff just took more time. I just think if
Witcher had one of the three best stories of the year, one of the
eight people of this table would have beat it. I moved while when this
game came out, and like didn't have a computer set up well like for
that month, really and that that I would have finished this game. I
think it's not I did not stop playing the games. I didn't think the
story was good, So I don't think that means that I should stay on
here. I just want to say that out loud. The a plot of
trying to track down Siri and deal with the wild hunt wasn't like an incredibly
engaging but it was fine. But all those little side stories were so good.
I absolutely wanted to keep going with it. But my loss of momentum
in this game is much more about gameplay than it is. Like I wanted
to keep absorbing that world and story, but like the combat never changes,
it's super boring, like they don't doll out better gear, and the way
their ability system works is also really like slow. Before you could actually engage
with it. It's very slow, it's very limited, like like the the
inventory is always like it never stops being clumsy to deal with, Like it
was just the tedium of dealing with the mechanical aspects of that game overwhelmed my
desire to keep seeing the story. Their ability system. Boy, yeah,
I did not enjoy that. Yeah, like you start the game with five
spells and like you end the game with those same time. The way they
get the slots you can abilities into that stuff was way too limited, Like
like I didn't. I didn't want to play the game much sooner than I
didn't want to keep seeing what it had to offer yet where like I'm thinking
now, like maybe come January, I put that game on easy mode and
I just like moved through it to see that the stuff I tried to do
that I went down to the like just the story mode or whatever when I
decided that I just need to see it through. And even then, all
right, well, so what do you think, Jason, You really like,
I think it belongs on there. And I realized that the main storyline
is slow, but it has produced some of the most memorable like you know,
storyline moments, great characters, great story segments for sure. And yeah,
just when Brad brought up you know that that island as well? It
immediately listening back to me, it's like, oh god, a lot of
really cool shit happened there. But did we give the game it's due with
this the attention we've played paid to, you know, the Bloody Baron stuff
like you know, like like, has it been recognized for the things that
that you actually like about? Which or three? Quite possible. Let's see,
we'll see it's all because it's already bloody Bearon has taken best character and
and it was in and it's the best looking game. Gosh. Yeah,
uh, let's let's leave it on here for now. I'd like to assess
some of these other ones out to see what's her story. Yeah, let's
talk about it. Yeah, yeah, this is an interesting one. I
was really surprised by that game. Yeah. I didn't know anything beyond FMV
going in. Uh, and that was that was that was really cool for
like the two hours I played it. Yeah. Yeah, did you finish
it or did you didn't? Were you satisfied? I wasn't satisfied. I
want to go back. Okay, there's not that much more. Yeah,
it's it's the kind you can probably see all of it in about three three
and a half so because it's like two hundred and seventy clips, Yeah,
something like that. Yeah, I don't I don't have a grasp of really
what's going on, but like there are some I can't say the reveal because
like there are different reveals for everybody. So, like if you haven't played
it or know nothing about it, you're you're looking at a fake OS uh,
and there's a database program in front of you, and you can type
in it's it's a video database. So it's just a bunch of clips,
like two second to one minute long clips or maybe more I don't know,
uh, And you can search for clips like that by just typing in,
typing in keywords. They're basically transcribed. Yeah, they're all transcribed. So,
oh, you want to find all the clips where she says the word
uh blue, you just type in blue and then all come up and you
could do like blue and guitar and get the stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
So that's it. That's the gameplay, and you are started with a few
random, seemingly random clips that you can then just watch her testimony. She's
talking to the police in an interview, and you never see the questions.
It's just like, here are the clips of all the answers of the question,
which I think is actually like a really bad way to archive video,
Like seriously, what who the fuck shot this stuff? But like, yeah,
you're kind of seeing just her answers to unseen questions, right, and
then gleaning like you the player are gleaning information from her, and like this
is this is a game where I did not expect to take notes, but
then as soon as my notebook came out, I was like, oh yeah,
I'm like I felt like a detective. It was awesome because like you're
listening to her talk and you write down things that she says a lot like
she said the word mirror, a bunch of yeah, okay, what she's
got a fascinating mirrors mirrors goes on my notebook, and then a few more
things like oh she mentioned this guy, this, this address, you know
type those in It just felt like I was living out some law and order
type question. Yeah, and you go aft to mirror and you start of
saying like, oh, this opened up this entirely different thing that I'd like,
oh man, this story now has even more depth. Like the thing
it actually reminded me the most of uh is one side of of homicide Life
on the Street, because that was that show had a whole segment that was
just about interrogation. Yeah, and so you don't see the interrogation happening,
but you are trying to pull the answers that were already gotten. I mean,
because this you know that you're you're you're watching this after the facts.
We should know for people who don't know this or who haven't played this,
that you're limited. You only pull up five video clips at a time,
so so you can't just use like the word of the and then watching everything.
Yeah, oh yeah, good point, And I think what's there There
is a pretty easy way to actually watch all of the clips in chronological order
in that game, once you know it, or once you mean once you
know to go like it as a user tagging thing, right, you tag
videos with whatever you want, and they are all tagged with something by default.
So you search I can just say, you just search that word,
which is the word blank. It will return every video in the game.
It'll show you which ones are unwatched, and as you click on them,
you remove the word blank. From the user tagging yeah so yeah, yeah
it is used outsmarting this this clunky ass database thing. Like it didn't feel
like I was cheating. It was just like, oh, I've like the
look this, this totally works. That's kind of cool. But you know,
but I had already done a bunch of natural searches and actually discovered,
like stumbled into the true nature of a lot of things about that game way
earlier than I think probably most people did. I think that's why I really
like that stuff is it doesn't it's like an adventure game that you can figure
out in two minutes if and it makes you feel like yeah, man,
I got it. Yeah, and you're like or like, it doesn't there's
no end game. So it's like I'm satisfied. I guess it's the best
way to put it. But like you don't have to go through the most
of like yeah, use the blender on the thing or whatever. It's like,
no, you're all idiots, like this is how it is, like
just search for this word or you're like I'm gonna dig in here. I
wanna you know, do all this other stuff. And that's good for me.
That's a great integration of interactive storytelling, and it's one of those things
I think is impossible in actual adventure games who have cruffed, Right, the
unnecessary stuff is here, and it's here for a reason. It's like it
is cruff because there's lots of lots of answers that she gives that are not
about what she did right, but but to juice point, like sometimes that's
when you hear like man, she uses mirrors, She talks about mirrors,
She talks about dolls a lot, she talks about fairy tales a lot,
and this random anecdote she's saying. And now that I know that that's like
a thing, she says, I can look for that thing. Yeah,
there's a psychoanalysis thing happening here for real. Yeah. So the thing I
will say about this, I agree with everything that's been said so far.
I do like that game a lot, and there's a strong possibility to make
my personal top ten. I wonder if maybe the actual appeal here is less
the story and more the experiment and how it is structured for the player.
I think that's certainly part of it, Like the actual So the actual facts
of this case are a little ridiculous, are a lot ridiculous yeah. Uh,
and like it goes places. Yeah, but by the time it gets
to that place, you're like, what, I think it's ridiculous. Okay,
I mean I guess whatever. Not in the catalog of crime fiction.
I think this is okay, yeah, like this is a crime, this
is a procedural. So this is something that yeah, if this fell out
of a Lawn Order episode, you know, you would go, well,
all right, yeah, sure, yeah, crazy weird. Though there's lots
of debate about the nature of even this shit, like sure, yeah,
so I don't want to just get into that here, but man, but
I feel like, you know, like when I uncovered the true nature of
it and you know, watched a lot more, uh, it's somebody was
like, oh, okay, well that's like I think I wish that this
was maybe a more interesting thing. And part of that is probably because I
figured out kind of a major thing about it in the first five minutes,
right yeah, and then from there I was like, okay, well,
which, okay, all right, what a what am I really looking at
in these clips? And that's the fascinating thing is that they, you know,
Sam Barlow, essentially let's loose the story in that regard, Like he
dumps all the pieces out in front of you. This is a jigsaw puzzle
that you are assembling, and the possibility is there that you will get the
pieces that show the important part of the picture right away, and that could
happen. I don't want to discount that as being part of, like part
of best story, Like that would kind of to me be like saying that,
like we shouldn't we should if Memento was in this category, we shouldn't
be able to take into account the fact that it's presented to us backwards.
Well, No, I think what I'm saying is that the structure of it
is kind of the gameplay, and I think that is interesting and it is
worth discussing. But I don't necessarily know that it makes it a best story.
I think it's it's it's one of the things where like, if it
didn't have the structure that it had, we probably wouldn't be talking about at
all. But if we were just evaluating it on the merit of that story,
those things that happened, you'd go like, all right, cool,
whatever, You're totally right. But I don't think that that the structure being
part of that means that that means we shouldn't consider it for sure. No,
No, it's totally worth considering. I just but I think it has
a knock against it, that is, and I think that is the one
against the thing that things could have been better, and you know, and
by design, I feel like it does have to be a little on the
edge or outlandish to have enough like digging involved to be like, oh yeah,
there are parts of that that, like, you know, if it
didn't have like, you know, whatever twist or you know, whatever you're
kind of uncovering along the way, it would be a even more straightforward thing
should be like, Okay, well I watched all these interviews and all right,
thank you for the story. At least there's something about it that you
are kind of figuring out along the way. Yeah, but again, there
I just stumbled into the things of like, oh I noticed this thing,
and now I know the true nature of this thing, and okay, all
right, this is exactly what this is. And there are some points where
like, I think that's it's a pretty amazing job, even consider it's a
monologue most of the time of the acting. But there are some clips you're
like, hmm, maybe pull another take on that one. Yeah, but
overall for somebody just kind of almost feeling I could stand up one person play.
Yeah, that's just hard and it's done well. Yeah, So where
do you guys land on that is that? I think I think it stays
for now. I don't necessarily know that it makes it top three, but
I think we keep it in consideration. Yeah, we'll see. There's another
game that I think has a similar thing of just like, oh, a
lot of this is in the structure and presentation, which is sibil. In
fact, in some ways it's the opposite, which is that like, no,
I know what this game is about from the jump. It's in all
the marketing for the game, like there's no hidden information besides how things play
out specifically. But the way that that game tells that story through a combination
of FMB sequences, dialogue sequences, uh, blog posts like you know,
I AM stuff is really evocative and really new and fresh. And I think
we'll actually see a ton of this in the next two or three years.
Like I think two years from now we will be sick of games that have
I AM clients and shit like that in it stop. But we're not there
yet. Well, I think. I think. The thing about Sybil,
especially compared to really every other game on this list, including her story to
a degree, is that that is the one game on this list that is
an actual personal story. Yeah, to be autobiographical is like as an incredibly
rais grounded in the most reality. It's just a majestic derivative I am clients
game, and I think and and being that highly personal story and and being
told the way that it is, like it's still pretty gripping, like it's
it's it's fascinating, and it would be very easy. Listen, if I
made a version of this about my life, I would look real, I
would look sterling, like, I would look like the best person. Everyone
in my life was an asshole like Sybil doesn't do that, you know,
Nina Freeman didn't didn't do that in this game. And there's still some complexity
around some of the characters, even though like I don't like these characters,
but like good, like I don't like them because teens and young adults are
kind of bad sometimes, like capturing you know, an experience that specific is
a hard thing to hard enough thing to do in regular fiction to actually be
able to tell that in an interactive way that doesn't just feel like, you
know, you're not doing anything. Uh, that's fucking hard. And I
think that what she pulled out there is is pretty incredible. And I think
the story is is absolutely compelling, and I think that it's you know it
it it does more than what it needs to do. I honestly, I
think that's on here. I think that's on here. I'm willing to cut
the Beginner's Guide because there isn't because like, this is what we talked about
with character too, is like, this is a game in which this is
a monologue. This is that game is a monologue with some props. Yeah,
and I still think it's a game. That's not me saying it's not
a game. Not that dude. But but I but I don't think the
story is good in the way that these other games are. I think it's
it's really well written. If this was best writing, I would I would
almost. It was a very interesting thing, and by the end of it,
I was like, oh that's I'm I'm glad to have seen this,
and and that's really cool that we're out of place where this can happen and
this type of thing can exist in a video game format, but like this
feels like the prototype of something like someone will do something with this structure later
and you will go like, man, they took the Beginner's Guide to the
place where it needed to go, Like I almost thought the Magic Circle would
do that. Yeah, but it didn't seem like it's the Magic Circle.
Just I that's a case where like I think a lot of the writing,
a lot of the dialogue writing specifically, is just so clunky and like performed
poorly that like that just it gets weighed down by that sort of stuff.
And there are really cool ideas in the Magic Circle that again, like I
feel like it just doesn't it doesn't get drawn out the way you wanted to.
Stepping you through the different versions of the game. Yeah, it was
amazing. Yeah, there are great moments in game. But by the end
of that quickly like we did together. Yeah, like I did not want
to hear any more of those characters. Yes, unfortunately. Yes, I'm
glad the guy in the Beginner's Guy got worked out what he needed to work
out. Yeah, totally, I think he did well. I think that's
that's the which guy you know who's who isn't like that's the that's the actual
designer of the Beginner's Guide, using his name as the character that is talking
to you in the Beginner's Guide. Is like, like, I I wish
that that hadn't. I feel like that gets in the way, Yeah,
you know, in a sense of just like it makes it a little more
difficult to interpret, right, Yes, and and you know maybe that's part
of the intent and stuff like that. But at the same time, I
feel like something that was a little more removed from that and a little bit
cleaner I think would have worked better at conveying those ideas. I'm assuming the
Beginner's Guide is significantly less droll than Stanley Parable. Absolutely, yeah, yeah,
it takes itself pretty seriously. Just Cradles stay on here because it's still
on the list. I like we maybe, well I have more specific question,
and I maybe it's shitty to frame it this way, but like,
should we decide between Cradle and Soma. No, they're so similar, I
don't think so, like they can needs to do their own thing that that
one hasn't the other. I'm just asking because I felt like Cradle had more
people had more issues with it than That's that's true. Yeah, I think
if you're deciding to bet Cradle and some of the other stuff. Okay,
yeah, I mean I would say, like it's not a rule, but
I would certainly lean toward not having two games to tackle the exact same issue
on here. I think they do the same themes like this stuff for me,
Like I an not saying Cradle news to stand here, but it's that's
not the thing for for Cradle. It's not that like what's a human uh
for Cradle. Okay, I guess it's using similar like blocks, but it's
building Okay, Okay, sure, yes, but again, like I had
the best world, man, if we had a best world, it would
it would maybe win. Uh but yeah, my if I if we want
to pull Cradle off on okay with that, but not it's not because it's
also we have Soma. It's yeah, I think it doesn't stick the landing.
Yeah, and it's just it's it's better as like a setting piece than
as a story. Yeah, we can take credible off, but it's it's
an amazing a bit of storytelling as well. Yeah, especially that opening.
So there's leads those with two we haven't talked about it all yet, which
life is strange and undertail, which those are going to be some conversations.
Yeah. So the problem with life is strange, I imagine for all of
us is that we have not finished any Yeah. Correct. I will say
though the difference between Life is Strange and The Witcher three, which it's a
shame. I really wish I had finished The Witcher three. There was nothing
in the Witcher three. The barren stuff was good, there was a great
moment and I really enjoyed it. But the stuff I've played in life is
strange up to now is something really great. Is makes me want to keep
it on this list, Like we're just saying you feel stronger about life is
strange. I suspect The Witch or three for me will go places where I
could come back in twenty sixteen and be like, man, that really had
some great story stuff. Hasn't really had it yet for me, okay,
but I think life is strained so far for me has had that up until
the end of the third episode where we are and I don't know if it's
it's my favorite story stuff of the year, but it's it's really dense with
it and it is delivering in a way I just didn't expect it. I
mean, it makes sense that, like the games we're talking about for best
story are games in which the story is like more or less the whole reason
you're there. You know, like mechanically, these aren't always let's not to
say they don't have mechanics, so mechanically, it's not necessarily you know,
the deepest interactive game thing. It's more just like, you know, the
this is a means to convey this story. Yeah, this is one of
the main propellants of this game. Is the story, not this crazy mechanic
active reload. It's not like, Hey, isn't it cool that I can
take over people's minds or wingsuit I named all my horse's roach just like yeah,
like that's that's yeah. Yeah. So the one thing I will say
about life is strange from what I've seen so far, there's maybe the only
against it, maybe that's not enough to knock it off of here, is
that outside of Max and Chloe and a like a couple of other characters,
there are a lot of one dimensional characters in that game. Uh, most
of the adult figures don't really have very much going on outside of like some
very specific personality. Did you necessarily say though, that like as a teenager,
it's very easy to see adults as one dimensional figures, especially in a
school like setting. It but I think the ways in which they are somewhat
one dimensional are cartoonish. I that the principle for I think the principle,
well, the principles maybe the worst defender in the alcoholic princes. And I
keep waiting, for instance, to for the step dad to turn into something
a little bit more than just he has PTSD and he is paranoid, and
that hasn't happened yet, and maybe it does later, I don't know,
but like, I feel like that the dimensionality of that care has not really
happened yet. It feels like a lot of people are just villains. I
mean, I take that Nathan kid or the Prescott. Yeah, dude,
that kid, he's a bit of a cartoon. I mean, he's a
sociopath, but like he's also like the loudest, most ridiculous version of a
sociopath. I would say, like when I was in high school, many
adults and many of the other people I went to high school with seemed like
pure villains. And I guess my problem with that is that there are characters
who do feel like they have more going on under the hood than that.
Victoria is is someone who I keep getting the impression that she has some other
shit going on because of the way she ends up talking in private to other
characters, and that is a really cool divide, Like how she is an
email is different most of the time than how she is like person a person.
Again, it's not something that I think necessarily drops it off this list.
It's just something it's a concern I've had as time has gone on,
Like, there are a lot of good characters in that game, and there
are a lot of good interactions between those characters, but they're also some real
one note, at least for thus far representations in that game as well.
Yeah, that's my feeling on it. Yeah, sure, I think the
Dad is a little the step that's a little more fleshed out, the principle.
I feel like they haven't worked on as much. But he's not in
the story as much either. No, he's not. He's a little he's
a little purple. The other characters that are are pretty good, Yeah,
and the personal stories they're telling the main story, I have no idea what
the fuck's happening. Yeah, we don't know yet. From like Donnie Darko,
fucking tornado coming right. There are whales, yea beach whales. But
the investment that they and the consequence they build in those personal stories is really
well done. You know. I will go the bigger story where it's like
the supernatural stuff. I'm not like super super into, but the bigger story
of like Arcadia Bay isn't a fucking place. A combination of political corruption and
and like economic downfall has has put everybody in that town in a place,
and it's made that like it's filled with a lot of little, tiny side
characters who are just like really memorable, like this dude who is like,
man, we used to be able to be fisherman in this town and like
we can't anymore. That hits like, yeah, the little the little pieces
of you know, small town sort of you know, kind of wistful remembering
of what the town was like before you know, money came in and started
kind of fucking everything up. That stuff's good. I think that those are
the moments that have kind of resonated with me most beyond just the core Max
and Chloe storyline. Yep. Yeah, Like I couldn't sit here and tell
you what the story really is I could tell you what the characters stories are,
like, I like, there's Yeah, it's a lot of really good
character work, and that for me is the investment in playing that game and
the story sort of. I only played a part of the first episode.
Story seems to be Max the character figuring out what's going on and then trying
to manage the rest of her life. Yeah, which is with these other
people. Yeah. And I think the foreshadowing there between the weird supernatural stuff
and her time travel powers. I mean, it's pretty obvious there's some connection
there, but you know it wouldn't it be great though? If there just
wasn't that that'd be really something. Also, she has time travel powers?
Is she is? She? Uh? She kind of weaving her way through
a series of vignettes because like the way you guys described episodes two and three
earlier, it sounded like they were about two very different storylines. I mean
the things there is there is there a through line from like the viral video
to the other friend with the car accident or is it like is it like
last where you have one character centric episode a few different she is she just
floating through other people's stories? It kind of there's a few different things going
on. Uh, there's there's the stuff involved. So there's a missing girl
who is is extremely close with Chloe, and that's how you like, her
best friend is missing and she was a student at the school, and that's
kind of like I guess the a plot is trying to figure out what happened
to this this this Rachel girl who who Chloe is desperate to find, uh
and weirdly enough, no one in town seems terribly interested in trying to find
But then there's the supernatural stuff, which is mostly in the background right now,
Like it's just kind of they're sort of like foreshadowing Menace but has not
really done anything. And then there's the other little stories going on, like
her interactions with you know, Victoria, who's sort of the queen mean girl.
There's the religious girl and like everything she's been going, that's the viral
video on. Yeah, there's Chloe's in debt to this like drug dealer,
Yeah, who lives in an RV so you're like dealing with him in times.
But it sounds like it sounds like the stories of these peripheral characters don't
necessarily interlock, not all of them not in a like not in an unrealistic
way, right, Like it's not like you know. The way it does
interlock is like you're hanging out with Chloe and then Kate calls you and you're
like, well, who do I who attention do I give? I think
they weave in even more so, like so Nathan Prescott, who's who's this
is kind of like rich kid whose dad is donating a bunch of money,
is in the Vortex Club, which is where Kate, the religious girl,
had that incident. So he's throwing the parties there. Who's he's aligned with
Victoria who's also in this club, and Rachel may have been involved in way.
Yeah, Chloe, Chloe who's in debt to this drug dealer, is
also Nathan, who's the rich kid is dealing drugs from that drug dealer,
and they haven't interact. So it does all in a very kind of click.
It's it's small town drama writ large. So to vindicate Kate, who's
the religious girl who's gonna jump off the roof, you kind of have to
implicate Nathan. And implicating Nathan also affects Chloe because they have beef, which
also implicates the principle because he gets money from Nathan, which just yeah,
it's a whole mess. There's a gun floating around somewhere. Who's that guns
h. I don't know what impact this will have on this discussion, but
I just kind of read the plot details to the episodes you have not played,
and I don't think this game ends in I don't feel like the next
two episodes are going to make good on anything you're talking about. Okay,
that's fair, that's uh. I'll leave at that. I guess. I
don't. I don't know, Like that's that's a weird thing to kind of
bring up up because like I believe that you read that and say that,
And also I can't discount all the people who I suspect it'll be worth seeing
through, right, Yeah, Like I said, like I having only played
up to the episode, but like the things you are talking about as like
things you like about this game, I am looking at where some of that
goes and going, oh, yeah, I'll be curious to see where it
goes. I can't. I can't say for certain it's all gonna pay off,
but this stuff so far has been engaged, Like if the game if
episode four or five never came out, it would still be in like some
really good storytelling, yeah yeah, and character worth yeah, I mean I
want to play more of it. I started on it and got through some
shock of it, and it was like, this is like a really enjoyable
mechanic and a really interesting way to kind of tell these stories and stuff.
But I think one of the biggest problems I did have it with it is
it it's a slow burn like h and it always sounds like when anybody's recommending,
which a lot of people recommend this game, yeah, the next episode
it's always the best episode. Yeah. So whether you're on episode four,
on episode one, did anyone did anyone after episode three say episode four is
the best one? Yeah? Yeah? Every interesting? Okay, all right,
so that's that's kind of a weird thing. Okay, but again,
like that so far has actually been true. It's actually episode yeah, I
mean so, And that also could be self fulfilling because as each episode goes
by, your more invested in, they've got to ratchet it up, you
know, all right, we do have it. It is kind of a
sticky wicket though, like you guys not having played it, you know,
of course it's it's it's a tough one to solve here. And last,
but not but not least for me at least is undertail on this list,
which which has like for me, it's like the story, Yeah, I
like the story goes. I see it as a series of like interesting and
funny characters and wacky, silly things that happened, and yeah, there's some
basic, you know, story stuff that's kind of interesting going through, like
some main characters. But overall I didn't take any fucking meaning out of Undertailers.
Seems like the subversion of like how to tell a story and how to
tell that kind of story and the fourth wall stuff and everything is what I
really liked. It wasn't the main narrative or anything I think there's. Yeah,
this one's a really tough one. So on its face, some of
the story stuff can be taken as just goofy and nonsensical, and you have
to dig a lot deeper to find you almost have to read like the supplementals
to to get some really good narrative out of there. You mean like some
you mean like the dark shit, which I think makes the story way more
interesting. But you're saying the stuff that makes the story more interesting is kind
of buried. Yeah, oh yes, it's very very much so and intentionally
so. Uh. And so after you beat the game, there are multiple
endings to the game, and you get more story as you see these endings.
But also there's ship hidden in the fucking code. And I don't give
a fuck about like I wouldn't put this on this list for that stuff.
We think I think it, h I think it adds some of it adds
something to the story. There's there's the kind of multiple ending playing through that
that stuff. I totally yeah, that you get even like when you're starting
new games and all of the stuff that you're talking to between Frisk and Frisk,
is it Frisk Frisk and h the original child that fell down? Like
that's that's that's really cool. I mean yeah, I don't know if it's
going to be the best story, but there's really So you want to talk
about a collection of memorable characters in a game, and I think that definitely
plays into that. I mean, Undertail is probably the best collection of weird
characters outside of something like The Witcher, which just has the most volume of
anything this year. Undertail squeezes a lot in in a short amount of time,
but yeah, I still don't know. And you know, for me,
I think the way that it does subvert that stuff to tell that story
is really good. It's like that's what kept me coming back. And and
you know, to some degree, I don't want to penalize it because it's
goofy, which maybe is weird coming from me, right, But like stuff
like Metatron the game show host, like a comicidal robot guy. Good,
that's a good story. But I think it gets even better when you dig
into the origins of meat and then I think totally and like Metatron Metaton,
Yeah, it's Metaton Medaton, uh you know, you know, can we
spoil Metaton Metaton is a dancing robot man, yeah or yeah? And uh
he the Medathon wasn't always a dancing robot. Medicon used to be Napsta Bluke's
like siblings who was a ghost, and it was like, I don't,
this isn't I don't, this doesn't feel right. So sort of like Catherin
from Soma went out and sought a robot body, and like that intersects with
a person a character who knew how to build robot bodies, partially because they
were doing some dirt they were doing, some like Dark Science, some like
Deep Below the Earth Science. Who is it is like a goofy, fun
character who loves anime ha ha, and like mmmmmmm no, like there's some
bad shit happening there, and so that stuff does work and the real Again
I said this before, but like the reason I give a fuck about who
Meta ton is and like what their history is is because it sets me up
with that like opening jab of it being really goofy and funny and yeah,
yeah, I met. I love the dance, we got the right.
We had the TV ratings one up when during the boss fight, like really
cool. So I do think there's story stuff here just on this the kind
of top level, like not the subtext, not the hidden stuff in up
code. The stuff that's just there if you pay attention is good. It
is good. But then it gets I think, gets great when you when
you add in the kind of filthy dark layer underneath it. Of this was
a fun game, everybody's happy, and then kind of go back in like,
wow, this is one of the darkest undercurrents of any game I may
have ever played. As you're playing as a homicidal maniac. Yeah so so
yeah, I don't know if it's gonna make the cut here, but I
think it belongs in this conversation at the at least. Yeah, And I
think anybody that plays it, if you are done with the game, it's
probably in your best interest to then go seek out supplemental information to flesh.
I think you don't have to, I really do. I think that there's
enough stuff there that when I left it, I was like, yep,
I'm but you already played it twice, right, that's okay if you if
you're kind of like a playthrough through and you're like that, that's totally yes,
maybe check out some of the other stuff that's involved in that game.
So it sounds like, based on some of the strength of the other entries,
like, her story is probably not gonna make this cut. Yeah,
let's let's do a quick audit here. What what can go? So her
story? I think I think her story can go. Okay. That leaves
us with Life of Strange, which or three Soma, Sybil, and Undertail.
I like Soma here. It seems it seems like Soma and Sybil are
Yeah. I like both, Okay, based on these conversations. Okay,
So that leaves a Slot for Life is strange. The Witcher or Undertail two
games I haven't beaten the same here, it's like fucking brutal, Like I
mean, this is what I'll say is that I haven't quite beaten Undertail yet,
but I have read up on on what happens in that game. Uh,
the way that it does mold itself to you know, the way that
you play it, and the way that the narrative sort of plays around with
that I think is extremely cool. Man. There's a thing where you you
know, random battles and j RPG's, you can you can kill enough people
in any given screen that you que a random battle. It goes into that
screen and it says like but nobody came h and do that enough times and
you get put on a different path through that game, the No Mercy end.
Yes, it is impossible to avoid information. This is not this is
not this is not best fandom. Believe me, that is not what we're
doing here at all. So so yeah, again, that story is actually
really cool and dark and terrible. And then the game knows if you get
it. If you beat that game with the No Mercy anywhere you kill everybody
and then load the game you can't get the good ending anymore because there are
characters in that world who know that you already fucking did the bad ending in
time. Yeah, who just know, Like, no, you're that stick
of who just cares about knowing everything about this game. Get of if you're
fucking wiki, be a good dude and stop hurting us. Like that's pretty
good. Yeah, I think, Yeah, I think what it does with
story, I think like it's it's makes a really strong case, probably stronger
than the other two candidates. Well, based on what people have said that
said, I have a hard time peeling Whicher off this list. Yeah,
I kind of the more we've talked about it, the more I'm kind of
with you. Yeah, okay, Like even I'm gonna go back and I'm
gonna keep playing that game. I did start it up again recently and I've
started to pick back up with it. The way that it breaks up the
story for me is that's that's not what it's deterred me about. That's also
true. The writing is really strong and yeah, and I think that that
deserves to be recognized here, even if you know, we admittedly failed to
complete it. I think that what we have all individually seen is so strong
that, I mean, unless unless anyone fervently disagrees with that. But it
feels like very few people disagree that. I mean, if you guys talking
about the Witcher, I think, you know, let's let's like I and
I and most of us saw like several normal length games worth of yeah,
storyline in that game that was excellent, you know, like I could point
to you know, we have pointed to numerous side quest like lengthy side quest
lines that are exceptionally well done. So would you say the Witcher, Soma
Sibyl is this list? I think I'm extremely happy with that. I'm completely
happy with that. Yep, this sounds like Soma. I absolutely cast my
book form I am. I am like, I can't wait for this podcast
to be over so I can go home and finish Soma. You guys have
spoken the most like passionately. Yeah about that made like I wish I had
finished point. I wish I had finished Witcher here because because I yeah,
all of these stories have their flaws in various ways, and and Soma is
no different. But I think, but what are these story based flaws?
It's the main character and the way that he he sort of realizes the world,
and the way that he interacts sometimes with that world feels false to me.
It came off to me as he was kind of in denial about the
what he had become. You know, Yeah, I guess, I guess
I said at times. And I don't think it's like it's it's universal.
He's universally bad or anything, Like I don't think he's a dullert or anything.
He can't figure out what he is, you know, when he holds
his weird roboty hands up in front of it, like he obviously he knows,
but he doesn't want to talk about. For for me, it's more
about continuity and consistency. And I feel like there are moments where his reactions
can be inconsistent. He has seen and what is happening bad I can see,
but I can almost even justify that of like there's some heavy shit.
He's got a process, yeah, and like I don't know how I would
do that even given all of that information from a from a removed point of
view, yeah, like an armchair that shit. But when I'm the one
who has to like process the like wait why am I here? That all
that ask those questions, it just sometimes it's like seven minutes too late.
Yeah, that's why I loved that exchange I mentioned earlier between him and Chun
about like where he's like, he's like, did you don't mind being a
computer program? Because I you know, Also that conversation takes place while you're
literally like fuses out of a puzzle like he they're basically just like hollering over
their shoulders at each other like it's it's great. And I just I just
adore the themes of that game, Like I love the way that it plays
with the notion of consciousness and the way that, you know, the copying
aspects of it, and the way that it just delves into that stuff,
like I don't know, it's it's not It is way headier than what I
thought that game was going to be going in certainly. And also the AI
is called Wow w a woe, So everybody just says we have to destroy
Wow. Everybody has to stop with Wow. Accurate. Yeah, Wow's taken
over. Wow's gone too far? Yeah, which is pretty awesome to just
hear. Yeah, I I think for me, Soma is what takes it
here. Yeah, okay, all right, I had one more moment,
but I think when we can probably yeah, you know, we've we've spoiled
enough here, and I think it's it's not even a spoiler. Yeah,
but well if you want to say it, Wow, the remember the prototype
arc. Yeah, when you find that thing and you have to run a
simul you have to run the simulation on that thing so I can figure out
how the real arc works. Need to manage the memory. Well, yeah,
that's when. Yeah, that's the memory footprint puzzle. But at the
end, like you have the option to shut the simulation off. And I
like stopped for a second thought about it, and I was like, you
know what, I'm gonna leave it running. I'm gonna let that world keep
going. I think I can only reset it. Well, I think by
resetting it to shut it down. Oh no, it's just it. But
like I loved the idea that I was going to leave this world running under
the ocean, and like actually stopped long enough to think about whether I should
terminate it or not. And like world living in it, that world is
just fascinating. It's good. All right, So a lot of dark questions
that like maybe humanity will have to answer Yeah totally sooner than wow, all
right, Brad Right, oh right, I'm the host here. Hold that
ship. Best story is Soma. Congratulations to Frictional Games for making a game
that I got around to playing. The Witcher three and Sybil are your runners
up in the best story category. So walk it back to the beginning of
day four. We had best style. Got that feels like a million hours
ago. I know that was Galaxy the Dimensional spatun Rebel Galaxy following up.
Please stop putting real money card packs and one time use items in your multiplayer
games or just all games. Fuck that. Stop forcing esports and everything.
Also stop shipping broke ass games. Still still still still still uh after Samurai
two is your worst game of the year, followed by Sky Battles and Tony
Hawks Pro Skater five. Those were the categories for day four. We got
one day left, coming down the home stretch. Yeah, we better think
of a fourth category. We've better hurt, We've better hurry because they're tearing
this floor apart. Yea, the sounds of construction construction here at night.
It's been for hours. Also, we have to move everything out of here.
Yeah, very got to get that done too. But yeah, we
better come up with a category for tomorrow. We've got three. I'm looking
at him right now. My house has continued to not burn down. Okay,
yeah, alright, very happy that all these things are good before they
burn us down. Let's end this, Yes, absolutely, yeah, if
you've if you've made it this far, you might as well come back tomorrow
for our final day of categories, including our top ten games of the years.
See you then,