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The 2024 Game Lounge Review! image

The 2024 Game Lounge Review!

S8 E24 · Tony's Game Lounge
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58 Plays6 months ago

The Season Finale and end of the 2024 Gaming Season is here! Tony recaps all the top stories of 2024, The Game Awards announcements and Winners, Reveals the final results of the Season Poll and cracks some jokes with the boys Myst, ActualTrash P.H.D (Zach), and NinjaFrog!

Follow Tony: https://www.twitch.tv/tonysgamelounge

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TonysGameLounge

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Follow Ninjafrog: https://x.com/frog4884 / https://www.twitch.tv/ninjafrog4884

Follow Zach: https://www.youtube.com/@ActualTrashPhD

Follow Myst: https://www.twitch.tv/themyst3rious11

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Join the Official Tony's Game Lounge Discord: https://discord.gg/xXyvjaCsXp


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Transcript

Introduction and Announcement

00:00:00
Speaker
Disclaimer, all views expressed on this podcast represent the host and his guest and not the companies or agencies they are associated with.
00:00:10
Speaker
Welcome to Tony's Game Lounge, a biweekly podcast that covers everything in the world of video games, TCG, tabletop and more. Here's your host, Tony Fourteen. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to a to the season. Welcome to the season finale.
00:00:26
Speaker
of Tony's Game Lounge Season 8 of the 2024 season. I'm your host as always, Tony14. And joining us this week for our year and recap Game Awards special, all of that stuff, we have three special guests. ah First off, returning um from earlier this season and also last year's year in review episode, Ninja Frog. Yeah, what's up, what's up?
00:00:51
Speaker
Second returning for the first time since like the second season of the podcast It's our boy the trash that actual trash PhD also known as our boy Zach They finally let me out of the basement. It's kind of nice to see the light again. And ah you've heard him on the podcast many times this season, but making his first appearance as a proper guest on the podcast. It's our apex reporter, the mysterious 11, AKA missed. Yo, good to be here. Nice to make it live. Welcome, everybody. Welcome, welcome, welcome. ah Twenty twenty four is almost done.
00:01:34
Speaker
Yeah, it sure is. Oh my gosh. Yeah. The days are the 14th. Yeah. Uh, now before we get into everything else missed, it is your first proper appearance on the show.

Gaming Passions and Opinions

00:01:48
Speaker
So that means you get to partake in loading screen, which is where you give us your favorite video game, video game character and video game soundtrack.
00:01:58
Speaker
this is a tough one um but thinking about this favorite game ah keep coming back to spiral which which spiral the first spiral the original trilogy okay okay our ris rage and then a big fan of ripos's rage really cool great games some of the first games i ever fully completed and the reignit triloggy that came out more recently um really like what fired my heart for a hundred percenting games and i've been doing that ever since. So it's such a good game. I can i could play that game 1,000 times a year and never get bored of it. Nice. Nice. Character. I'm going to go with the normal Star Wars. and I'm going to say Cal Kestis from the Fallen Order series. so Solid choice. Very solid choice. I think he's really cool. Great character development. I love the Order 66 vibes. So yeah. Original soundtrack. If we're going gaming, I'm going to say Halo.
00:02:56
Speaker
iconic classic very iconic if I go a little bit away from the video game realm how to train your dragon soundtrack in the best of the world I have it on repeat more often than not that's so good i Still have not watched how to train your dragon um my Tony you have to youny Tony they're not gonna give you an option. They're gonna hold you at gunpoint and make watch it look I have a lot of guns pointing on my head around you even Ryan Mac Ryan Mac is holding a gun to my head at this moment still telling me to watch Lord of the Rings you haven't seen oh
00:03:32
Speaker
wow let's move on to it made italy ah It's been a hot minute since I've watched Lord of the Rings because the last time I did, I watched the first trilogy in one sitting and it was all the director's cuts. So that was 12 hours of me just sitting on a couch.
00:03:51
Speaker
That's a grind. I'm watching through them right now with my wife, and ah she's not a big into that kind of genre, but she loves them. So let's go. Nice. Moving on to hot takes. Missed and Zach, because you guys have it ah given your hot takes on this podcast yet, it's time for you to give us your hottest take in video games.
00:04:15
Speaker
OK. I got something preparing for this. OK. Missed, you guys went right away. Go for it. platform exclusives shouldn't exist. Is that really a hot take though? I don't know, but I was looking at the game awards and a PlayStation exclusive one game of the year. And I just, boil that's fair. yeah we got in there yet What game continue listening to the podcast? the tease look We saved it. We saved it. with the game of the I disagree find out after a word from our sponsors it us we don't have any yeah not anymore like my sponsor when I was sponsored for that brief time they went under
00:05:02
Speaker
ah that' yeah remember like years were like or was it good enough for life that was like money It was around the time of like the roast of Tony last year that I was it was like I got sponsored it's like damn looks like all those jokes went out the window rip And then I think it was like maybe like two or three weeks later. the They went under Rip yeah but Not gonna name names obviously cuz uh, I mean you could go back and listen to those episodes. It's true. I
00:05:34
Speaker
Okay, Zach, what about you? What's your hot take? ah So I feel like mine's a pretty well-known fact for me. Oh, yeah, I'm a fan of Final Fantasy. It's my favorite if or one of my favorite franchises and video games. Final Fantasy 7 is dog shit. I'm gonna just put that out there. This game sucks.
00:05:58
Speaker
That's my heart. All of them. Every rendition of seven is bad. The best game for seven is a fucking third person shooter called dirge of server. And that game's dog shit. Of course it was dirge of server us. It's always dirge of server us.
00:06:23
Speaker
Well, thank you for those hot takes, gents. I'm sure we'll be talking but more about both of those hot takes when we talk about the Game Awards a bit later, because both of those things were at the Game Awards. Can't wait for the clip of that, by the way. Great way to get people to react.
00:06:39
Speaker
Great way to farm engagement with Final Fantasy 7 bad. oh Anyways, we do not have a headline of the week because of just how loaded this week's show is.

Major Gaming News Recap

00:06:54
Speaker
So we're going to kick it right off and head right into the week in review.
00:06:59
Speaker
recapping the major stories of video games and the world of tabletop. Looking over recent releases and reports from the Game Lounge crew, it's the Week in Review. And to start it off, some of the weeks some of the last two weeks, major game releases that we had that were not at the Game Awards because obviously it's too late it was too late. Fantasian, Neo Dimension came out, finally out of Apple Arcade exclusivity.
00:07:23
Speaker
Infinity Nicky dropped Marvel Rivals Indiana Jones in the Great Circle, which I have a feeling we'll see at next year's Game Awards Barretail 2 and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers Rita's rewind Trying to think Fantasia. Is that the one made by mist Walker? Um Mist walk. Yeah, like the company mist Walker Also knows the company that here of Nobu Sakaguchi. Yes. Yes, it is I'm like, I believe it. I'm like, yeah, it was it was Sakaguchi and Uematsu. So I'm going to probably play that in the new year. That's fair. Because it looks cool. I like the the fact that you can save random encounters for later by just storing them in a pocket dimension. So, yeah, you know, I don't really want to do this fight anymore. Yeah. Yeah. Put in the bag here. Get into the jar.
00:08:24
Speaker
for later. No. Tony, we don't put things in jars anymore. I put pickles in jars.
00:08:37
Speaker
Tony, we don't want to know what you're doing with pickles, man. Is it worse to know what I do with pickles or to know what our boy gang good is doing with feet?
00:08:49
Speaker
Shout out to Cancun. Shout out to Cancun and his crippling foot addiction. um Moving on to our video game news. ah Starting off, Player Unknown, the creator of Player Unknown's Battlegrounds, has revealed that he... ah three new games that he and his studio are working on.
00:09:10
Speaker
First, there was a surprise drop of Preface, Undiscovered World. This is a free tech demo that dynamically generates a massive Earth-scale a world for players to experience. ah This is going to lead into Prolog, go way back, which the gameplay data from Preface will help refine the billions of future worlds of Prolog, the developer says, in the Studios End Goal project after that, which is simply known as Artemis.
00:09:38
Speaker
So they're working on something. Maybe it'll be a worldwide battle royale. Who knows? I hope so. Then I can hide in like a random tree it's in Switzerland somewhere. No one will ever find me. The Swiss trees. No one will ever think to look there. Man sits in chair for eight hours and battle royale match that last 10 hours.
00:10:02
Speaker
I mean, that's that's most battle royales anyway. fact who ah In Infinity Nicky news, shortly after the game launched, hackers took down the developer Infold Games' is officially official website for Infinity Nicky to display a message encouraging suicide and pointing players toward Genshin Impact along with a QR code that led to a Discord server.
00:10:31
Speaker
I'm sorry. its Yeah. Yeah. That, that, that, that this is why I don't play gotcha games anymore except for Pokemon because nobody in Pokemon tells you to go kill yourself. Well, someone one doesn't remember lavender town. Okay. Well, that's, that's completely different. That was the game developer, not another player.
00:11:01
Speaker
Someone doesn't remember all the creepypasta fan games. I wasn't really like, I never paid attention to them. The spooky spaghettis. All the spooky spaghettis. I never paid attention to them though. They were all really bad. Oh yeah, no, of course they were. When you look back at creepypastas now, it's like, man. They're so fun. Their fun cringe wild shit is like, damn, I can't believe we actually did that shit back in the day.
00:11:28
Speaker
Right. And now it's all skimming the Ohio toilets. I'm sorry. What the fuck did you say? to world we live in What a world. What a world. What a world. Bellantro is finally getting real merch in the form of real of real playing cards. Fangamer is now accepting pre-orders for the new $16 premium deck of 52 playing cards.
00:11:52
Speaker
that were made in collaboration with local Funk, the game's creator. The deck will launch sometime in March 2025. And speaking of Bellatro, it got a its Friends of Jimbo expansion 3 which is adding a whole bunch of more card designs from Divinity, Original Sin 2, Don't Starve, Enter the Gungeon, Cult of the Lamb, 1000X Resist, Potion Craft, Shovel Knight, and Warframe, and also, to top off, Bellatro, Bellatro Collectibles were added to Cyberpunk 2077, and I am not kidding.
00:12:31
Speaker
but And also, to promote the new ah Friends of Jimbo 3-pack, they got Ben Starr dressed up as Jimbo the Joker. Wow. Balachro is like the podium of what an indie company can do, and I love it. It's a single guy. Balachro was made by a single man, just like Minecraft.
00:12:53
Speaker
Well, you know, I hope in his future he finds it misses so he can stop being a single man. yes i yeah so know And now after the podcast, people are going to Google, is local funk married?
00:13:09
Speaker
Because I know it is kind of sick that he's getting like a deck of cards for his game. It makes sense, but that's always cool to see people. It's not even a bad place either. Yeah, like that's it's a reasonable price to like for like a game deck of cards. I think that's a reasonable price. Yeah, I think they might be a little more expensive than like the chocobo playing cards you can get from Square Enix. But.
00:13:34
Speaker
Nah, I just think getting actual like physical cards is always a good idea. It's always a tangible thing people can show support with. Definitely. Very much. Definitely. Ubisoft is back in the news because they're killing another game. X Defiant is getting shut down. ah The shooter that they came out came out earlier this year with that made strives because it felt like early cod. Well, it's getting shut down in the new year. The studio is set to lose 277 employees once the game and servers close.
00:14:11
Speaker
Maybe if they made a game that doesn't suck, you would have to terminate it. Yeah, I think we just go isn't X defined and I actually really enjoyed it. I heard a lot of like good things from X to find like i it was like because it was all like skill based matchmaking matchmaking to write. I love that phrase, skill based matchmaking. Call of Duty players get so mad when they hear that.
00:14:39
Speaker
They know it's funny. It is. It really is. So you know what? We call that in the fighting game industry. Get good. We we just call that how fucking matchmaking should work. True. Oh, my God. So true. Who would have guessed if you pit someone against someone of equal skill, they have more fun than if they just get fucking mauled by a guy leagues above them. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.
00:15:08
Speaker
ah Sweet Bandits, the developer of the vintage spycraft extraction shooter Deceive Inc. has closed. but The the whole studio has closed down. um Servers for the game, I believe, are still up, but don't know how long they're going to stay up for. um Which is a shame. I have Deceive Inc. I got it for free on Epic a while, I think this year.
00:15:33
Speaker
So, shame to see that, but I never played the actual game. But, still a shame to see that happen. Yeah. Uh, Tor and Banner, and in more, uh, closures and stuff, uh, Tor and Banner Studios, best known as the developer of the Chivalry games, also made the very difficult decision to undergo a restructure and reduce some of our, some of their talented workforce, quote, unquote.
00:15:58
Speaker
ah see CEO Steve Pigott, and I kid you not, that is the man's name, but said in a message posted to LinkedIn. um that's what that's That was the message he said. Pigott didn't say how many people were let go, but senior 3D artist Andrew wadddding Waddingham said many employees were put out of work, while character artist Matthias Paiva described it as a massive layoff.
00:16:21
Speaker
Torin Banner's website says it had more than 150 employees prior to the layoffs. So what they're at now is who knows. But don't expect chivalry free anytime soon. Jeez, that's a lot of loss.
00:16:35
Speaker
of In some updates and stuff, Astrobot had a free holiday level update dropped for free. It was great. It was Christmas themed. They added Spider-Man and Miles Morales, along with a bunch of other, five other PlayStation of characters. ah the As we were going, I was fully expecting you to just be like, in other news, Astrobot developers all gone.
00:17:01
Speaker
Yeah, no, no. Demoscopy is fine. They are a OK. All of them fired. Good. Yeah. um Also, the Sonic X Shadow

Legal Challenges in Gaming

00:17:11
Speaker
movie pack DLC um released for Sonic for the Sonic X Shadow generations, giving us the Tokyo Shibuya level um where Shadow runs through Shibuya. That dropped during the events of the game awards.
00:17:28
Speaker
ah And yeah, that was, it was, it was all right. You know what, it was short. It was, it was, it was cool, but like, you know, it was just all right. In my opinion, it was just all right.
00:17:43
Speaker
Powell World had an update which addresses the lawsuit going on with Nintendo. According to the latest patch notes in the game that went live on November 29th, monsters in Powell World will no longer be called to battle by aiming and throwing the palispheres that contain them, but instead will simply appear alongside the player when summoned.
00:18:05
Speaker
so i mean That's one way to fix it. It is. But i here's why I'm just going to say this. I feel like Powell World is dead. Like, I feel like the game is just kind of dead now. Yeah. Like when you get past the when you get past the the gimmick of, oh, haha, I'm shooting the Pokemon. Haha. I'm making the work case by slaves. Haha. It's just a boring, generic survival crafting game.
00:18:32
Speaker
And that's what we're all about here.
00:18:38
Speaker
Yeah, I guess. um In one of the weirder stories that happened, a Funko, like Funko, the company Funko, AI bot accidentally took down the entirety of itch.io because one of the pages looks like the Funko Fusion website.
00:18:56
Speaker
hu Now it did get restored um and Funko did reach out to say sorry a but uh, holy shit because that actually happened She's actually funny It kind of is funny, but it's like holy shit um Train your AI better Funko. Geez. This is why no one likes Funko fusion a eyes hard
00:19:25
Speaker
ah how did word all oh And lastly in the gaming news world ultimate chicken horse is getting a sequel. Yes.
00:19:40
Speaker
Ultimate Sheep Raccoon will turn the popular build-a-course game to a build-a-bike course well you're where you will race to from one end to the other on bikes and still create pick up obstacles and try to make the course harder to screw your friends over but still get to the end yourself. Is set to come out in the new year.
00:20:00
Speaker
final exactly the same game, but we're on bikes now. Yes, it's now okay with that, honestly. Yeah, honestly, this is going to be great. I think that we'll definitely pick it up and maybe make that a stream game on launch because.
00:20:15
Speaker
that Ultimate Chicken Horse is a lot of fun and it's nice to it's cool to see them making a new one. and it's the The fact that they're just calling it Ultimate Sheeper Coon, it's it' great. I love it. Love it so much. um In the world of live service games with Final Fantasy XIV starting off, the Chaotic Alliance raid, by the time you're listening to this,
00:20:39
Speaker
ah whether because obviously we're not doing another episode until in the new year the chaotic alliance raid will be out with the cloud of darkness chaotic um so you'll be able to participate in that uh current events the starlight festival is on now for christmas events and there is a twitch event going on as well where if you gift three subs to ah a affiliate or partner playing Final Fantasy 14, you will get a code for a purple snowman mount. And also the Final Fantasy 14 mobile game was announced and we got a first look at the gameplay as well. That still baffles me.

Mobile Gaming Developments

00:21:26
Speaker
14 mobile. I never thought I'd see the day.
00:21:35
Speaker
And it looks like it's going to be it's just going to be a realm reborn stuff for the start of this, but how it will actually function and not make our phones burn to a crisp. We will see another time. You have to get a gamer phone. Yeah, this is legit like this is this is going to be the mobile game that requires you to get a gamer phone. logit Your phone has to have a very high GPU. Yeah, off the line GPU.
00:22:04
Speaker
I can't wait to attach a battery pack to it so it doesn't die in 30 minutes. And then you got attach a fan to the battery pack so it doesn't over. No, but Tony, you see, this is a secret tech. So if you get the battery pack and you let it catch on fire, you now have a fireball to throw at people. Oh, I don't know if that's.
00:22:29
Speaker
I don't know if I see what you're doing. You're just a free in game item. No, I mean, yes, technically. Yes. Well, yes, it would be except you've lost all your progress and have to start over after using it once. This is what's going to get me in the final 14. You see, you see, you see, Ninja Frog, it's actually a fireball that costs the exact amount of your phone because you're you're losing. You're losing the phone to that fireball as well.
00:22:57
Speaker
ah God damn it, is it worth it? I don't know if it is. I don't know about that. I can pretend to throw a Hadouken. Wow, incredible. In the world of TCGs with Pokémon, Phrismatic Evolution releases January 17th, and in the world of TCG Pocket, the second set, ah the Jungle set, is out now, or out to tomorrow if you're listening to this on the Monday, but it's out now. ah You go finally get new cards. Yay, cards in pocket. Whoa.
00:23:37
Speaker
ah In Yu-Gi-Oh! New's Supreme Darkness releases on January 23rd, and we finally got a list of all the games that are in the Yu-Gi-Oh! Early Days Collection, ah which comes out on February 27th, 2025. The games in the collection consist of Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 2 Dark Duel Stories, Yu-Gi-Oh! Monster Capsule, Yu-Gi-Oh! Dark Duel Stories, which is different from Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monster 2 Dark Duel Stories.
00:24:06
Speaker
Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 4 Battle of the Great Jewelists Yu-Gi-Oh! Dungeon Dice Monsters Yu-Gi-Oh! The Eternal Duelist Soul Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters 6 Expert 2 but that had a star of a size so the name is set to change most likely Yu-Gi-Oh! The Sacred Cards Yu-Gi-Oh! Re-Chef of Destruction Yu-Gi-Oh! Stairway to the Destined Duel Yu-Gi-Oh! World Championship Tournament 2004 Yu-Gi-Oh! Destiny Board Traveler and Yu-Gi-Oh! Day of the Duelist World Championship Tournament 2005 Okay, so I have some gripes with this. Yes, what are your gripes, Zach? They excluded forbidden memories. What if forbidden memories come out? It's, I'm pretty sure, the earliest video game. Actually, oh. So the early days collection neglects one of, if not its first video game. Damn.
00:24:58
Speaker
So that's my gripe. Okay. Admittedly, forbidden memories is kind of shit, but like still it's the principle of the matter. Yeah. Uh, no false spoke kingdom in here either. Uh, zero out of 10.
00:25:16
Speaker
It's like when people complained about the Castlevania collection that recently came out because it didn't have symphony of the night. Oh, OK. That one made sense because that was the D.S. collection. And last night, oh yeah, near the night isn't the D.S. game. Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense, actually. Yeah. and Imagine a gathering in a strategy. Masters releases January 20. Oh, go back to the stride, baby.
00:25:45
Speaker
Very excited, Zach is. um yeah That's a that's a big set. You should know that set too, Tony. I should. Yeah. So Innistrad's the plane we were on when we both the first or when you first started, at least remember your duel. Oh, blessed and first. Yeah. The Geist of Saint Draft. That's a character in Innistrad. Oh, Oh, neat. Yeah. Maybe I'll look into that more now.
00:26:13
Speaker
ah In Disney Lorkana news, Azureite Sea is out now, and we got the name of the next two expansions coming to Lorkana. Arcasia's Island releases in March of 2025, and Reign of Jafar is set to release sometime in quarter two of 2025. Okay, has anyone here actually played Lorkana? Aside from you know. It's actually good. I only discovered it last week. I don't know what this is. Yeah, I didn't even know it existed. It's actually a pretty fun game.
00:26:43
Speaker
I want there to be, is there like ah an online version of it yet? No. Yeah. i'll like I feel like once an online version gets made of in some capacity, then I'll probably check it out ah to see if I'll actually want to physically collect the cards or not. Fair.
00:27:03
Speaker
Cause you know, money. Money. What's that? I play magic, the gathering. I don't have that. True. Well, that's it for the news in this past week. And now it's time for 2024 stand out stories from the game lounge. I went through all 20 ah two As the first two episodes of Season 8 were ah in 2023, I went through the 22 other episodes, to or the 21 other episodes to find the best stories from the year. And here is what happened in 2024.
00:27:44
Speaker
First off, obviously guys, just the biggest elephant in the room. The sheer number of layoffs throughout the entire gaming industry that happened. It is an absolute shame that it had to all happen in this year with how many and how it affected the gaming industry.
00:28:02
Speaker
Uh, even as I was getting this started, uh, it wasn't in the news recently off brand games, uh, cut their entire events side of their company and 15 more people were laid off. And it's just is.
00:28:19
Speaker
Well, it is like a great time for video games because of the content we are getting is a shit time for developers. And if you have the resources to help out gaming developers and help them get back on their feet and stay in this industry that they are passionate about and love and are working hard to bring us the best that they can, please do that.
00:28:40
Speaker
i I want to do my part, um but all my part is is just having a microphone saying, hey, big video game companies, stop it. Stop it. Stop it. Get some help. And that's yourself a chicken nugget. I don't know about that last part, but yeah. um So.

Investments and Industry Impact

00:29:04
Speaker
To all the game developers out there that are lost their job this year, just know that the Game Lounge stands behind you and we hope to see you guys do great things with your future. Except for you, Gary.
00:29:19
Speaker
You know who you are, Gary. Sam. Well, ah moving on. Disney made the $1.5 billion dollar investment into Epic Games.
00:29:34
Speaker
And while it did get approved, ah the big plan with this is still a couple of years out. So you're saying Disney owns Fortnite? Not entirely, but like not yet, at least. Because you know, that's 100% why they did it. Yeah, they're most likely going to acquire. They don't care about the rest of the fucking things Epic has made.
00:29:59
Speaker
They just were there for a fortnight. Yeah. So who knows if they'll actually be like, yeah, now, Fortnite is owned by Disney now and you can't do anything about it. Everything is PG-13 and all the guns have turned into laser blasters. pewpew Pew, pew, pew.
00:30:17
Speaker
I can't wait for all of the crossover costumes to just be Disney. I can't wait for it. I mean, it's slowly starting to have dance taunt one or whatever the fuck it is. It's slowly starting to happen. We we got Star Wars, we've got Marvel, we got the Incredibles, um a couple other Disney properties, too. But it's like, yeah, it's slowly starting to happen. I can't wait to see all of everyone's favorite Disney characters to show up and just like dance on each other.
00:30:47
Speaker
Hell yeah. Do Fortnite dances on each other? Yeah. Gary Bowser was released from prison and is now paying Nintendo for the rest of his life. Fuck.
00:31:02
Speaker
gary I'm sorry, Gary. But you still know what you did. I mean, yeah, he was selling illegal switches. and Illegal, modest switches. That's why he got caught.
00:31:16
Speaker
You pay a penalty for your crimes. That's unfortunate. Yeah. um Xbox put four exclusives onto PlayStation for the first time ever. And that was a big news. Sea of Thieves and Hi-Fi Rush being two of the bigger ones that moved over. Mother 3 was released in on the Nintendo Switch online service in Japan only.
00:31:37
Speaker
Oh, of course, because we'll never get that game in English. Yeah. The fan patch is good, though. If you're going to play it, use the fan patch.
00:31:47
Speaker
No. Pokemon announced Pokemon Legends ZA and didn't give a release date. And we actually still don't know the release date for it, ah which is crazy. This is, I think, the longest we've gone without a release date for a Pokemon game that we've known about. So this is kind of nutty ah but kind of cool at the same time.
00:32:09
Speaker
Nintendo also sued Yuzu, a Nintendo Switch emulator, which saw its discontinuation alongside the Citra 3DS emulator, which was also owned by Yuzu. Wow, who would have guessed they got sued for making emulator of the current console? Yeah, never do. Yeah, it's the one thing I'm like, look, if you're gonna do emulation, do it for everything past. Never current.
00:32:34
Speaker
Oh, God, does that mean they may end up coming after Dolphin? No, because Dolphin's past. I don't know. I feel like 3D X is still kind of old, though. Yeah, but the game keeps so much older. Yeah, but like Citro is only shut down because of you, because they were owned by Yuzu. That's the only reason Citro got shut down. Yeah. If it wasn't for if they weren't associated with Yuzu, we would still have the Citra emulator.
00:33:03
Speaker
If they do go after Dolphin, I won't be able to play Castlevania Judgment on my PC. Oh no, the horror. Oh no, I won't be able to play Pokemon XD Game of Darkness anymore! Or nor! Just play it on its original hardware, Lomath. I mean, I do have it on the original hardware, but like, I don't have a cash card for my GameCube. Fair enough. Yeah, I do have the original won game. ah Final Fantasy composer Nobuo Uemasu did officially retire this year.
00:33:32
Speaker
Yeah, I'm not that surprised. and I haven't been going for a long time. ah So he officially retired. And I believe he did. He did say that he would work on games that like really piqued his interest. But other than that, he's retiring. It's crazy though, because this is a man who before becoming a composer had literally no musical training. and Really? Wow. He went into Dancing Mad, which is arguably the greatest video game boss fight song, not knowing how to compose things. ah That's nutty. How did he get into that spot then?
00:34:07
Speaker
Hey man, it was just a different time. It was. It was such a different time back then. So that's proof. If you're passionate enough about it, you can do it. This man made the best fucking boss song ever and no experience prior. Wow.
00:34:24
Speaker
we We respect you a lot, Nobuo Uematsu. Thank you for your service in the composing edition. The man made the soundtrack to most of my childhood. ah Rooster Teeth was shut down by Warner Brothers after 21 years. Good! You said good.
00:34:49
Speaker
See, I knew this would be the point of contention. Fight, fight, fight. No, don't don't don't fight. Not here. After the podcast. 1v1 me and, uh, I don't know, girl fight. Damn. Among Us. Remember Among Us? They announced their TV show this year and they're cast for it. It didn't come out. It's not out yet though, but they announced all this. There's Pratt. No. It has Elijah Wood.
00:35:18
Speaker
Oh, even better. I can't wait to hear Frodo go. Sayan sus.
00:35:26
Speaker
Shigeru Miyamoto announced that that a new Mario movie is coming out in 2026. Oh, I hope that one has Chris Pratt. Embracer Group sold Gearbox to take two for $460 million dollars and Borderlands 4 was announced to be in development. More on Borderlands 4 later.

Console Era Endings

00:35:46
Speaker
um Also in Borderlands, the Borderlands movie was released and it flopped. Who would have guessed a video game movie did poorly? I mean, video game movies have actually been on the up. They've been doing a lot better now. Yeah. There was, you have to remember the Dark Days. Yes. There was the exception of like Mortal Kombat and that was it. Most video game movies were dog shit. Yeah. Tekken almost had a Waffle House collaboration. ah Bless Harada.
00:36:14
Speaker
Yeah, bless her off for actually calling Waffle House after that whole thing went viral. He was just like, what's a Waffle House? Yeah, it was. It was. Nintendo's Wii U and 3DS online services officially shut down. That's a shame because now we can't play like, what one was it, Mario Kart? There's a Mario Kart on DS. Mario Kart 7. Mario Kart 7. That one was actually really good.
00:36:43
Speaker
It was like the one that i I missed it entirely. Like I played DS, Wii 8, but I never played Mario Kart 7. It's online was really good. So that that's a bit of a bummer. Yeah, it was pretty good. The Fallout TV series dropped ah and got got raving reviews. it's This in turn did a couple of things. It delayed the big Fallout 4 mod, Fallout 1-DIN, as next-gen versions of Fallout 4 were released and caused issues for that mod. And it also caused a spike in Fallout 76 for a player.
00:37:17
Speaker
I need to ask because you said reception was good. Was that critical reception or fan reception? I think both. Yeah. OK, because yeah it was. I was i watching anything bad about it. Really? I was watching a movie on Prime. It was called slacks with two exes. Killer pants. But that got raving reviews critically. So when people say something got good reviews critically, it's like, OK, so that means nothing to me anymore. Fair enough.
00:37:50
Speaker
Very fair. Keanu Reeves was revealed to be Shadow the Hedgehog in the Sonic 3 movie? Huh. You know, I don't think he's edgy enough for the role. No, I think it'll be good.
00:38:05
Speaker
Helldivers released as a top game of the year, but then PlayStation made the other versions of the game that worked on PlayStation 5 require a PlayStation Network account, which killed the game instantly. However, it did undo this, but I wasn't sure if the player base really recovered from it.
00:38:23
Speaker
It's pretty consistent. It's not as big as it was initially, but it's got a very steady player base right now. I mean, no game is ever really as big as it was initially with the exception of Final Fantasy 14, of course, because when that game released initially, that game was. Yeah, true. But I don't know how I feel about the Helldivers thing. I guess my PlayStation would do it, but at the same time.
00:38:53
Speaker
Uh, to reference relevancy, if we're going off of a Steam card, so I know it's not always the most accurate, but it's still got, right now, it's got 130,000 people. But it's not bad. That's pretty good. That's all right. That's pretty good. Uh, Seven Days to Die finally left early access after 12 years and released officially, and also relaunched itself onto consoles as well under, uh, with a new partner for the console versions of the game.
00:39:23
Speaker
I wonder where I've heard that video game. I wonder. oh Twitch streamer blurbs created a very cool mod for his Skyrim to let his chat make dialogue for all the characters, which sounds horrible. Oh, no, it was absolutely funny. um Yeah, it's going to be funny, but half of the fucking NPC dialogue is going to be like a lamb out you bad.
00:39:54
Speaker
Yeah, know it was. It was great. um If you look up any of the TikToks or his YouTube shorts for it, it was it's absolutely hilar hilarious ah with how he did it. Microsoft released the source code for MS-DOS 4.0 in partnership with IBM. Yo, DOS. Yeah. Fuck yeah. I had to learn DOS so I could play Doom.
00:40:16
Speaker
Wow Because legitimately the first time I played doom was on a DOS computer Damn Wow, you know not wow not to make you guys feel young or anything ah Gary's mod removed 20 years worth of Nintendo related items from a steam workshop following a takedown request Damn Yeah. ah Nintendo also said that the successors of the Nintendo Switch will be announced by the end of the fiscal year, which means we have, I think, three or four months left before we will hear what the Switch 2 actually is.
00:41:00
Speaker
I can't wait for the Nintendo NDA to come out.
00:41:08
Speaker
The Last of Us 2 began and finished production in the city of Vancouver. Nifty. The Kingdom Hearts games were released on Steam.
00:41:20
Speaker
And IKEA hired people in the UK to work at its Roblox location for 13 pounds and 15 cents an hour and even served virtual meatballs. I'm sorry. What? Yeah, this was more a like career fair thing that IKEA put on and they put it on in Roblox as well. And they actually hired people to work at their Roblox location. Imagine if you will.
00:41:47
Speaker
You can put that on the resume. People will be like, oh, you worked with Ikea. Where is that fucking Roblox? Yeah. You got to pay to sit behind my computer screen for eight hours and click on virtual meatballs. Yeah. well You want to do that? No.
00:42:07
Speaker
Betray Pride 4 was announced and is releasing next year. Yes! After all this time. I've been waiting so fucking long. Sims 4 added polyamory. Understandable. The world's first Dragon Ball themed amusement park is being developed in Saudi Arabia.
00:42:29
Speaker
what it's not a while. Okay. Yeah. It's not a may he call. That's like, it's not their national everything. Yeah. It's a, it's being developed in Saudi Arabia. I mean, maybe it'll get a Mexico location when it's done.
00:42:46
Speaker
be Be like Disney. I mean, maybe it would make more sense there than fucking Saudi Arabia, I think. But, okay. SAG Astra's video game voice actors are on strike because a new labor contract, ah specifically with Activision Blindlight, Disney, EA, Epic, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac, Lava Productions, Take-Two, VoiceWorks Productions, and Warner Brothers.
00:43:11
Speaker
ah Their goal is to have protections over the use of AI, as of course, voice acting and AI are having a lot of things regarding those two things. And so those are the current companies that SAG Astro is still on strike with. So if you don't hear your favorite voice actors in those games, that's why. Understandable. The Xbox 360 officially shut down services. That one's also really sad. Yeah.
00:43:40
Speaker
ah Tango game works the developers of hi-fi rush and the evil within games was shut down But then it got saved and purchased and they're back and alive Which is nice to see the Nintendo Museum officially opened in Kyoto
00:43:58
Speaker
Concord really big controllers they do they have really big controllers Concord happened. I'm sorry. I blinked what the fucks a Concord Exactly. Yeah, that's uh, yeah, that's how you can sum up the entirety of Concord what it was like a week Maybe that it was active like two weeks two three weeks. I think There's a few weeks yeah Had a couple weeks, because some people were still able to get the Platinum trophy in it by jumping off of the stage. GameStop opened GameStop Retro Stores, which I believe are only in the U.S. at the time being. Wow. And I hope they stay in the U.S. um The PS5 Pro released for 952 Canadian dollars. So like about a buck 50 American.
00:44:47
Speaker
ah Yeah. Tony Hawk announced that he and Activision are working on something. think died so yeah but They're working on something. That's exciting. I hope they make another skateboard. i like the Like the skateboard controller that was in that one Tony Hawk game? No, I just mean a skateboard. Oh, okay. That'd be cool too.
00:45:12
Speaker
Like just an actual fucking skateboard. That's it. That's why they're cooking up. Yeah, it's a skateboard. Nintendo sued Pal World on a patent infringement. I feel like we've discussed this already. Yes. Devil May Cry's anime was teased with Nero's va voice actor, Johnny Young Bosch, being Dante's new voice actor in this upcoming series. It it makes me upset solely because Ruben Langdon is Dante.
00:45:42
Speaker
Like, it's hard to recast that kind of voice. It's like the same thing when they recast Ken for Street Fighter VI. Who was it before and who is it now? It was also Reuben Langdon. Oh. But because he had some ah spicy takes during the COVID times. Oh, right. He kind of got blacklisted from the voice acting thing.
00:46:10
Speaker
Right. i I don't remember his current voice actor's name. He does an OK job, but you can tell very much that it's not Ken.

Voice Acting and Anime

00:46:21
Speaker
OK, that's how I feel about Johnny Young Bosch being Dante, because when I hear Johnny Young Bosch, I don't I don't hear Dante. I hear like you, Narukami.
00:46:34
Speaker
But I mean, that's still, I i kind of find it that it's like, I say it's kind of a nice evolution because he was Nero as well. So it's like, it's a nice evolution up, I think. But who's the new Nero? I don't know if Nero's even going to be in it. Is it going to be Johnny Young Bosch still? I mean, it's not a Nero looking at each other. He's having conversations with himself. i think that I think that would work. I think it's fine.
00:47:01
Speaker
I just feel like you can't change Dante's voice, man. I mean, you can't I can say you you can't change Virgil's voice. I can tell you that much. It's funny. His voice actor was sick when he recorded Virgil. Really? Yeah. So he had a cold. So anytime he goes to voice Virgil essentially has to try and replicate what his cold sounded like.
00:47:22
Speaker
Wow, that's crazy. that's You know what we can also say, Delame cry now, both of the, if Virgil, it is the same voice actor for Virgil in the series. yeah Both of them, their main actors were started off in Power were in power Rangers. It's true. That's amazing. Yeah. Liget Park's Heavy as the Crown was used as the main song for League of Legends Worlds 2024.
00:47:50
Speaker
um We also saw the return of Linkin Park with brand new singer Emily Armstrong. Tim Walls, the vice president candidate for the Democrats, was modded into Crazy Taxi. Interesting. Because he grew he in a speech he said that he loved the Sega Dreamcast. I i respect it. It's a good console.
00:48:13
Speaker
Ryujin was a good console. Yeah. The Ryujin, another switch emulator was shut down after being contacted by Nintendo. Yeah. Ubisoft was taken to court over the licensing of games and ownership of games. Interesting. Nintendo released the Alarmo. The fucking what? The alarm clock.
00:48:38
Speaker
The whomst. It's the alarm clock that if you snooze it, it'll play different music from ah different themes. um Like breath if it you pick the Breath of the Wild one, if you keep snoozing it, it'll ah play the Guardian theme to make you get up faster. That's stupid.
00:49:00
Speaker
It's also like 200 bucks or something. That's really stupid. This is actually live reaction. First time I've heard of this. And it also uses motion sensing to sense your movements in your sleep. That's it's only a hundred. Only a hundred. OK, so um that's OK. That's still stupid. They've told you they've already bought it to play Doom.
00:49:27
Speaker
Well, that's not surprising. like a know like At this point, i'm I feel like if I found a bag of just like liquids, I could probably play Doom on it at this point. know Fair enough. Alien Isolation 2 was announced to be in development. Well, it's not really much of an isolation if there's a sequel.
00:49:54
Speaker
Okay, yeah, I mean, I guess you're right, but... Okay, Arma 4 was announced at the end of a orchestral concert. Wow, that... Interesting, okay. it It was for the developers of Arma and, like, all those games. It was like a massive, like, so anniversary concert. That's awesome, but, like...
00:50:21
Speaker
Completely out of left field. Who was expecting Arma 4 to ever come out? That too. Masahiro Sakurai announced that he's been working on a brand new game since 2022. He announced this at the end of his YouTube series that he put ah just wrapped up this year. Neat. Nintendo revealed Donkey Kong Land at Universal Studios Japan.
00:50:44
Speaker
And the game throw barrels when I'm there and the game web fishing receives complaints from anti LGBTQ plus allies about there being a title for all of them, but no straight title. So in tightness, the developer added a straight title in and made it worth 9,999 coins instead of 75 coins. Like all the rest of the titles, huh?
00:51:13
Speaker
And that is your 2024 year in review. Any final thoughts on any of those stories, everybody?
00:51:25
Speaker
ah ah Doss is cool. ah i missed did yourro get your final thoughts I'm really excited to hear about Pokemon. z a I'm really excited. I know I don't sound very excited, but I'm excited. Dude, I can't wait. Dude, I am so hyped for this video game. It's true. Missed, what about you? Any foul comments? I don't think I have anything. I think there's some pretty cool highlights. I like Keanu Reeves. I like the Fallout stuff. Super sad about the layoffs. I'm really curious about this Disney investment into Epic and what's actually going to come out of it.
00:52:08
Speaker
Yeah, Fortnite. Woo! All right. Well, with that, it's time for us to quickly go over all the games that will be on your radar from December 16th to the end of the month, the 31st. Here's what's coming out for the rest of 2024.

Game Releases and Awards

00:52:25
Speaker
From AAA titles, indie hits, hidden gems, and hot pieces of garbage, here are the games coming out that should be on your radar.
00:52:33
Speaker
And I'm going to tell you this, there there's legit not much. like what i There's four games coming out between now and the end of the year that are on like the game lists that I look at to get everything. On the 17th, Attack on Titan VR Unbreakable comes out on the Quest. And Flint, Treasure of Oblivion comes out on the PlayStation 5, Series X, and PC.
00:52:55
Speaker
And on the 19th, global companions comes to the PC and alien rogue incursion comes to the PS VR to PC VR and quest three. And that's it. There's an alien VR game. Yeah. Huh? Yeah. I mean, there's a VR game of like a lot of things now. So like I'm sure I know of the spice and wolf one. There's a spice and wolf VR game.
00:53:19
Speaker
Yeah, so what you're doing is you pat hollows head and that's about it. Oh, okay. Good to know. Well, with that, it's time for us to now dive into this week in the game lounge where we will cover everything that happened at the Game Awards. Conversations of past and future games, the state of the gaming industry, how big decisions affect gamers and anything else that's important to us. Here's what's going down this week in the game lounge.
00:53:48
Speaker
So much happened. Yeah, so much happened. A lot of stuff happened. A lot of announcements, some really cool stuff, some alright stuff, and everything in between. So to kick it off, we'll start with the opening. We're going to start off with all of the announcements first and get into the awards second. Starting off, we have the opening act, the pre-show to the game awards. And the first announcement that they made of the night was Ninja Gaiden Ragebound coming out summer 2025.
00:54:17
Speaker
So how does everyone else feel about that? Out of curiosity. So I've never played a Ninja Gaiden game. But surprising. yeahs the Yeah. ah But you know what? It's exciting to see a new entry in the series after a long time. Yeah, it's kind of how I felt. I was like, OK, yeah, I've never played it, but it looks like it's fine, I guess. I don't know.
00:54:45
Speaker
the I think I was jamming to the music, but the trailer itself looks like a welding, I guess, but I don't really know that you got it very well. So.
00:54:58
Speaker
ah This is probably the announcement that I was most excited about, honestly. So for you, so for you, the game awards peaked right at the start of that. It just went downhill from there. Essentially, there were only three announcements that this entire thing had that I can say I was genuinely Like, okay, I'm okay with this. Okay. I think I could probably predict what the other two are. Ninja Gaiden was probably the peak one for me. Okay. That's awesome. Okay. Then we got our second trailer, One Move Away. This is set for 2025. Basically, if you have OCD and love packing cars, do I have a game for you, apparently?
00:55:39
Speaker
Let's go. yeah But one move away is a game about moving. So you're packing your car with all the boxes and everything else. And your goal is to Tetris at all and make it all fit. I think this game will have VR compatibility.
00:55:55
Speaker
as well, but you'll be able to play it without VR. Tony, this feels like a game you'll play a lot. I feel like I'm definitely going to pick it up. I'm definitely going to play the 100 percent a game. You're going to be playing a lot. I don't know why, but I have that feeling. No, this game when I saw this game, I'm like, I'll probably pick that up and play it, play through it. This is definitely some kind is kind of kind of a little shick about, you know, I got that OCD ism.
00:56:23
Speaker
You know, got an OCD in you. like I got OCD. Slay the Spire 2 then got its first trailer for an early access release of 2025. The diver in the jungle was shown off and that's coming out late 2025. I don't know if this is going to be an expansion or if this is actually a sequel. They didn't actually really specify that. Yeah, I was curious. It's like, what's what's going on with it?
00:56:51
Speaker
Yeah, so, we but more Day of the Diver though, which honestly can't complain. I've heard nothing but great things about that game, and I'm definitely gonna play it next year for sure. Because I need games to play. My goal next year is to not spend a lot of money on games.
00:57:07
Speaker
My goal is to play as famous last words. Famous last famous last words. Exactly. Because who knows what a single GameCube game mission failed. OK, well, excluding my retro game collection, I'm talking about modern games. I'm going to try to spend as little as I can. Oh, GameCube is retro now, but it hurts me. Yeah.
00:57:30
Speaker
ah um Then we got a game thick as thieves which is from thief and dais X developer. Oh God, it's Warren something Or inspector. Yes war inspector um So this is Warren Spector's new game thick as thieves. This is basically what if we made thief a PvP multiplayer game?
00:57:54
Speaker
OK, so I'm cautiously optimistic. I'm going to have zero confidence in this. Yeah. To be quite real with you. So here's the thing. If this was thief. Like thief to. Sure, I'd be all on board, but I know this is going to be more like thief. Or why otherwise? Well, yeah, 2014, otherwise known as the teeth tannic.
00:58:25
Speaker
So with that as my soul, like expectation, another teeth tannic, but this time it's PVP. yeah like Yeah, expectations are under the dirt. I like the concept, though. Like PVP thiefing game. Yes, I dig the concept. Yeah, I know. I'm more of a PVE co-op. Like Styx is a fantastic stealth game.
00:58:55
Speaker
Sticks. Yeah. You get to play as like a goblin who is also a thief. Goblin. But it's actually really fun. And one of them, I think the second game in the series has co-op mode. Oh. And that is really cool. But PvP, it's going to be like someone does all the work and near the end, someone just gets shanked.
00:59:22
Speaker
I mean, yeah, I guess you do have that issue to go go through with this. But I mean, I still I still like I want to give this novel. Yeah. Like my expectations are below dirt. Fair enough. You know what? Let's see if they could do it. And if they can do it, great. If they can't, someone else could try.
00:59:44
Speaker
Maybe stick, please. Uh, maybe stick. Who knows? Maybe. Uh, then we've got probably one of the most surprising trailers, uh, of the whole show. A shadow labyrinth. This is Pac-Man's, uh, new direction of games. I guess a dark horror. mehoy vania I mean, stranger things have happened. True. I don't think dark horror Pac-Man though was on my list. Okay. But hear me out. This isn't even the first time.
01:00:11
Speaker
A game that you could play on Atari got a Metroidvania sequel. What was the other time? Thanks for asking. So there's a game called Yars Revenge. Oh, right. And then a sequel came out 40 fucking years later. It's the first time this game's had a sequel. It's had a bunch of reboots. Yeah. Yars Rising is the stealth Metroidvania.
01:00:42
Speaker
Damn. Then we got a trailer for Steel Paws. This is a new mobile game from Yu Suzuki who took his money in red when he made Shenmue 3. Yeah. It looks, it doesn't look good. This doesn't look good at all. I'm gonna say it right now. This was like the first trailer. I'm like, damn, this looks ass.
01:01:06
Speaker
Well, yeah, and it wasn't like a gameplay. It's just like they showed the animation. It just looks bad. It looks bad. I'm like, what the fuck is this? And it's a mobile game. So like mobile games are also easy to cloud on as well. But this is just very much a I don't know why. Why are they? Yeah. um We then got a new gameplay trailer for Tales of the Shire, which comes out March 25th. We've known about this game for a while. It's the new cozy Lord of the Rings game where you play as a hobbit and you give yourself. Was it three breakfasts or whatever?
01:01:41
Speaker
So yeah, I think it'll be It'll have its ill have its they still have yeah fan base. It's a cozy it's a cozy game. The cozy Switch gamers are going to eat it up. um We then got a trailer for a stall craft X operations, which was forgettable.
01:02:00
Speaker
ah Yeah, new em that one yeah that was it was a forgettable trailer and then midnight murder club Which is getting a cross-platform beta out now early access comes next year And I think this is gonna be a fun game um where it looks like you're on teams of two Everybody has a gun and a flashlight and you're in a dark mansion Your goal is to be the last team standing and I think that is great. This looks absolutely fun and chaotic Will it take over apex?
01:02:30
Speaker
They beat this you expect midnight murder club to have an eSports. You're our apex reporter You know eSports. Are we gonna see a midnight murder club eSports league? No pressure, but if you're wrong, we're gonna laugh at you. good I Don't see there being Any sport, but I do see it Doing fairly well in in the community circles and fun game nights. Yeah, I yeah Yeah, definitely. I think this will be a great game to play with the crew here. um Then we got a trailer for Kyora or Kyora or however you want to Kyora, however you want to pronounce it. um This is from the developers of Corekeeper. So I can't really say much because I've never played Corekeeper or any of their other games. But looks well the we made at the Game Awards is like, is this Terraria? Because that's what it kind of feels like with the trailer for it. Yeah.
01:03:27
Speaker
Then we got a trailer for rematch or as I am now calling it fifu because this is from the fifu devs So instead of calling it FIFA, we're calling it fifu Such a good nickname. It's such a good nickname for this. This is a stage. It's a soccer game If the joke if you didn't get the joke before this is a soccer game where you get to do some trick shots and stuff and like Rocket League Uh, is entirely in like a dome or like a walled bay. All the edges are walls. So that means you can kick it off the walls to do trick shots and shit. And it's not like proper soccer. It's more like a Rocket League soccer with humans. Someone made a comment about this game that was essentially that it's like, wow, I don't think I've ever seen Rocket League, but with people. Yeah, it's like a son. That that's just fucking suck.
01:04:25
Speaker
Yes, it it is. Well, it is just soccer. It's like it's i i' I've I've I've seen it more of like it's rock league like because of the walls that they have. Yeah. And that's really the reason why. But when I saw that comment initially, I'm like, wow. Yeah. Wow. I can't believe you brought it that bad. ah So I think that how this game will succeed the most if it comes if it's free to play. ah Yeah, because I don't or like dirt cheap.
01:04:55
Speaker
$50 on launch. Oh, I don't know about that. um It's going to really have a free version. I think this game might do pretty well. It looks really cool. I definitely want to check it out. And then we got our last trailer for the opening opening show.

Game Trailers and Reactions

01:05:11
Speaker
So last two, which comes to the early access in 2025, it's a very Baldur's Gate feel. ah But then I was watching Crystal's Crystal's stream. um Turns out the first game wasn't very good.
01:05:26
Speaker
So like if they decide to make it to a world three. Yeah. Oh, be wary with Solasta is all I'll say, I guess. And then we get into the main show where the first day they showed off Witcher four.
01:05:44
Speaker
Really cool trailer. Very cool trailer. I still need to play Witcher three. I'm going to be. I've never played. I think the Witcher games are so boring. Interesting.
01:05:56
Speaker
Like this trailer makes me hype. I want to play the game after watching the trailer. There are trailers. I've always been good. I feel the gameplay loop in Witcher and a lot of the kind of open world games like it. It's just not very good.
01:06:13
Speaker
fair. No, it's very fair. Like I i i still find I haven't played. I don't think I played like many open world games this year. ah But like if the gameplay loop isn't like phenomenal, I i definitely understand like that sentiment towards games like it.
01:06:31
Speaker
I don't think I ever had that problem because I feel like I just liked the game overall when it came to like, okay, I knew where I was going, the side quests and story was good. The game Pay Loop came into play sometimes, okay, but then I would be going back into story or going to learning a new mechanic or something like that. It was a stronger story to keep you in that. Strong overall game. That's what games like this really need is just a really strong story.
01:06:58
Speaker
Um, the thing I wanted to bring up my brother brought up was that this is another game that the initially the developers didn't want to make another game. And so like.
01:07:10
Speaker
they've probably kind of been encouraged into pushing it into like making one because it's going to probably sell. and So I'm yeah kind of like, I mean, that's like Baldur's Gate, and the blaring studios, they've said that kind of back and forth about Baldur's Gate making another one. So it's like, I'm kind of cautiously optimistic, like I don't want to force developers, they don't want to make the game. So I don't know. the Here's the other thing, though, that you got to think about which are for this game is probably realistically somewhere between three to six years out still true because this is CD projects. We are talking about and I think they do not want to another cyberpunk incident. No.
01:07:54
Speaker
But no this is of all the games that were announced. This is probably the longest one of the longer waits that we'll see for it. ah After that, we then got Elden Ring Night Rain. And I'm going to say this, I said this to Nick Rule, and I'm going to say it again. This feels like the most cash grabby game that FromSoft has ever made.
01:08:23
Speaker
Look, all I'm saying is if it's sold copies, am I right, fellas? I mean, yes. But the reason I say that is this feels... I don't know. I feel like they kind of just slapped to the Elden Ring name and world onto this just to sell it. I don't think this game is going to do good. I genuinely think that Elden Ring Nyrane is going to be considered the worst Souls game that FromSoft will have made.
01:08:53
Speaker
I don't know. I feel like in a weird way, this might end up being one of the highest selling ones, but possibly because people have this weird itch to play a souls game and multiplayer. Yes. And and while they do, I, while I feel like that'll be the case of like, definitely it'll make those sales. I'm not saying it won't. I feel like, I don't know, a part of, a part of me looking at this game just, it doesn't look I mean, look like like i don't I'm not into Souls games, never got never got into them. I gave them a i shot, couldn't get into them, but it's just something about this one just feels like off and I don't know what it is.
01:09:35
Speaker
See, I'm like on the I mean, that's totally fair. I think I was kind of blinded because I think I just want more. You're like, oh, my God, more souls. I want more PvE multiplayer games. It doesn't have to be souls. And I'm not even really big into souls that much. But like, I don't know. I think a lot of.
01:09:55
Speaker
multiplayer PV are lacking and I would love to see more. So I'm yeah excited to see if this does well. The only time you ever really see PV nowadays is um MMOs. Yeah, it's kind of crazy. ah But yeah, that's that rain that comes up next year. So that's three years of eldering for you, folks. um I don't think you'll get nominated for like a game of the year, though, realistically.
01:10:22
Speaker
Then we got Final Fantasy VII Rebirth coming to PC on January 23rd. Oh boy. More Final Fantasy VII. It's his favorite, guys. My excitement is through the roof. Yeah, it's his favorite game. I cannot wait to play as Cloud Strife once again.
01:10:43
Speaker
Then we got this game called Catley. Don't play it. It's AI crypto bullshit. Actually, don't play the game. Don't play Catley. I love AI crypto bullshit. Turns out people did a dive when they saw that trailer. Yeah, it's a lot of it's AI-generated art. A lot of it's crypto scam and shit. It's like, don't play that. That's not surprising. Thankfully, they didn't put a release date on it. So the game is most likely going to get canned before it sees the light of day.
01:11:13
Speaker
Um, then, uh, another game that's probably like, like five to 10 years out, uh, a new untitled project from team Ico.
01:11:26
Speaker
You know, the guys who brought us Ico, Shadow of the Colossus and the Last Guardian. Yeah. ah They're making a new game. Yes. and Is this a game that I'm going to be excited about? Yay or nay? I honestly, I don't even know. All we all the trailer was was a guy getting into a giant robot. The head um fly taking the head off of this giant robot to fly to avoid what California almost had happened to them a couple of weeks ago. Understandable. Yeah.
01:11:59
Speaker
ah Then we got an orchestral performance from ah for the Civ VII main theme, which drops February 11th. It was a really cool performance. Civ has good music. It does. I made the comment of Civ music doesn't seem to get like a lot of recognition for how good it is. It's good. Civ is one of my favorite franchises right now. I'm looking forward to it the most this year.
01:12:24
Speaker
so And then with a with a left sucker punch or two um We got a trailer from obsidian for outer worlds to which coming at which is coming out next year Which means obsidian has two games coming out next year now with with outer worlds to and about so if you want the people that brought you Fallout New Vegas and Also worked a bit of see it worked on oblivion a bit, right? I Or am I smoking weed?
01:12:59
Speaker
I can't remember if they did or not, but it's like, I think they did a bit of working on it. I'm pretty sure they did. Yeah. So if you want another Oblivion with a Vowd, that's coming out. If you want more Outer Worlds, that's coming out too. A quick search by Google AI and City Entertainment did not work on Oh, did they not? Oh, damn. Maybe I think it was like some of the devs they that were worked on it, went to Obsidian. I think that was it then.
01:13:31
Speaker
Regardless, anyway, great games coming from them coming out next year. ah Then out comes Joseph Ferris. Everybody's favorite. Fuck the Oscars, man. He said that he come in they were about to fuck shit up with their new trailer for a split fiction. And the trailer looks great. ah You get it has a glizzy level.
01:13:52
Speaker
And ah I think that that's great. ah and mean Everything about this game looks incredible. um And he did say that it's coming out March 6th, even though on the posters that the Splash posters in the back after this year was done, it just said coming soon. Joseph Ferris said March 6th.
01:14:13
Speaker
Yeah, that was funny. So he might have linked his own game. I don't know if it was a digital or not, but I am just telling you guys is coming out March six. So like it doesn't come out. If it doesn't come out, then I guess we're just sad. Yeah. We then got another trailer for Fagpunk, which releases March six. We got a trailer for Killing Floor three coming out next year.
01:14:41
Speaker
A trailer for a game called Steel Hunters, which has a play test going on right now. um This is a new giant mech game from Wargaming. We then got a trailer for Black Frost, The Long Dark 2. And then we got Borderlands 4's official reveal trailer.
01:15:03
Speaker
And it looks... like Borderlands. I mean, I'm not saying it was a bad trailer. and It wasn't much to go on. See, okay. This is what my say. I had a conversation with my brother because I didn't feel very.
01:15:17
Speaker
interested I was intrigued it was like I really into Borderlands I had to grow up playing it with him that was my split screen game that I played with him on like a really old TV yeah and we could barely see anything like awesome yeah I love Borderlands 2 so Borderlands 3 was crappy story gameplay was ah fun but the it's like the best the best gameplay of the series but the worst story Yeah, so what he mentioned was this seemed to be possibly the war arc that they were hinting at when pre-sequel finished. So pre-sequel had a little teaser at the end with the these, like, Iridian ah enemies um that kind of protect the vaults. And they were hinting at a war. And these had, what, two different
01:16:06
Speaker
um races that we haven't really, stood like something controlling. Yeah, the trailer started with somebody putting one of those psycho masks on the band. Yeah. On the psychos. So I wonder if they're just going a different direction and heard that three stories sucked. Please don't do that again. And they're going a different direction. It just wanted to give us like this is a solid foundation of like simple. It's war. okay That's it. That's all we needed to start with. and And I don't know. I'm feeling
01:16:37
Speaker
optimistic about this one more confidently. I'll definitely once I see more gameplay of it, that'll that'll be my big deciding point is obviously they'll have a big gameplay trailer where they'll show off the main four of all hunters for the game. Then we've got Tekken 8 releasing the final character for year one's DLC character packs and it's Clive Rossfield from Final Fantasy 16. So excited. So hype. I might end the hundred dollars to get Tekken 8 now. Geez.
01:17:17
Speaker
Now as a big Final Fantasy fan, you think I'd be excited about this. I couldn't care less. But you have you played 16 yet, Zach? No, admittedly, because I still have to buy it. Yeah.
01:17:34
Speaker
But like. Even looking at the trailer for him, he didn't. Give me Tekken vibes. Did Noctis give you Tekken vibes? Yes, actually, because of how Noctis worked in Seven, he very much fits in Tekken. OK. And they very much faithfully created Fifteen's mechanics in his moveset in Tekken.
01:18:01
Speaker
So Noctis, I was actually kind of hype about, I don't generally care for 15 that much. And I think Noctis is one of the weakest characters as a protagonist, but God damn it, he was cool and Tekken. Okay. Whereas I look at Clive, it's like, sure. I almost feel about Clive, how I felt about Negan. Oh yeah. I forgot they put Negan in seven. Right. It's like, okay, sure. I guess.
01:18:31
Speaker
I'll have to wait and see more actual gameplay of them to the side. But like at this point in time, I was like, yeah, sure. I guess if you're listening to the podcast on Monday, Clive Ross field is out right now.
01:18:45
Speaker
Uh, then we got trailer for split gate two and that could break both of those coming out of 2025 We knew about both of these it's whatever at this point to me, uh, then out comes rgg with two back-to-back trailers the first one Revealing the brand new virtual fighter game Uh, and then they had a whole 30 minute, uh direct, uh on the 13th uh to talk more about virtual fighter, uh Virtual Fighter V's current edition um with the 2.0 update and ah more stuff about 6, which is what I'm assuming we're calling the Virtual Fighter, Virtual Fighter VI. And then they also revealed Project Century, which is a not taking place in 1915. Looks like a bit like Yakuza, but it might be something entirely different. um But it looks really fucking cool and very bloody.
01:19:40
Speaker
Uh, and violent, I'm excited. So we've been sitting on virtual fighter five since 2006.
01:19:52
Speaker
So this is, uh, that means what night? Almost, uh, we've been sitting on this for like almost 20 years. That's crazy. Now the question.
01:20:08
Speaker
Do you think I, an old man who enjoys fighting games would be excited about Virtua Fighter? Yes. It's fine. Okay. Like Virtua Fighter is cool, but I don't know where it would lie in the market right now solely because Tekken has kind of taken the place Virtua Fighter once had.
01:20:38
Speaker
fair. So I mean, again, we haven't seen much of the new version fighter anyways. So it's more of a wait and see the game right now. But it's one of those things where it's will it be able to compare to Tekken? Only time will tell. You can now you can look back. We've been sitting on virtual fighter five for like 20 years. It didn't do that great. Oh, OK.
01:21:08
Speaker
Compared to like Tekken Tag, Tekken Tag 2. Yeah, yeah. Very fair, fair. Back to the trailers, we got a new Turok game in the worst Turok origins. I mistakenly mistook the game for Ark because the bald guy provided me a mid-diesel. And I'm like, oh, is that mid-diesel? And then Turok appears, and I'm like, oh, shit, it's Turok, wait.
01:21:34
Speaker
That's a feel-bad moment. That is a feel-bad moment. But new Turok, Turok Origins coming. Don't know when. They didn't reveal a date for that one. ah Then Helldivers 2 announced the Omens of Tyranny update, which is out now. We got a new trailer for Warframe 1999. That's out now. We got a trailer for Power World Fae Break, the next expansion. No one cares about it, but it comes out December 23rd. And then...
01:22:01
Speaker
Onimusha, Way of the Sword, coming out in 2026. And this is what I'm predicting is the second game Zack was excited for. You would be correct. We haven't had a good Onimusha game since 2004. Jesus. There have been some mistakes. Yeah, so Onimusha is a classic PS2 game. Oddly enough, it's life started as Resident Evil 4. Wait, what?
01:22:27
Speaker
Yeah, so there's two franchises, both made by Capcom, that were beloved at when they were coming out. At one point in time, Resident Evil 4, they were thinking of making a game based in feudal Japan, where you would play as the character Semenosuke. That later would become Onimusha. The other game, as a lot of people should know, especially gamers. And if you don't know this, I'm going to laugh at you.
01:22:57
Speaker
ah The other game was also horror themed. And that franchise would later become Devil May Cry. Yes, I knew the Devil May Cry one because when you look at the first Devil May Cry, it feels more like a Resident Evil game with Dante in it. Yes. But a lot of people don't know about the Onimusha thing. Yeah, I didn't. I had no clue about that Onimusha thing. That's cool. Onimusha had its life there, but It was a very kind of respected franchise. It was a unique idea. It worked very good games. And then the third one came out and people say that's the best one. It's not. The second one's better. But after the third one, every time they tried to make an Onimusha game, it just didn't hit. OK, the one to play is our boy, Sam and Osuke. Oh, but the new one of a pro tag.
01:23:56
Speaker
for one game, yes, and then they just kind of dropped the series for a while. Oh, damn. And then when we got the remake in number one, people were hype. I can tell you I was hyped. That game's great. I love I love Onimusha one. But yeah, when they announced this, I legitimately said to myself, holy shit, they're making another Onimusha game and it actually looks good. Oh, so yeah, this is game two. OK.
01:24:27
Speaker
OK, all right. ah I'll see if you can figure out the third one. I mean, I can take a guess. ah We then got a trailer for the first Berserker Kazan. That game drops March 27, 2025. This is set in the DNF universe. The Dungeon and Fighter ah series. Yes. um Which I mean, the trailer looks the tailer trailer looks gruesome, but like not a single bit of it was gameplay. So it's like you can't really fucking tell really what the game is gonna be like, but cool trailer, very cool trailer. And then immediately after that, DNF is like, oh, hey, here's another game that we're working on called Arad. And it's the most animation I have ever fucking seen. And it's like, oh yeah, same universe, the darkest shit you're ever gonna see and get shit impact.
01:25:25
Speaker
yeah Yeah, pretty much.

Trailer Critiques and Anticipations

01:25:29
Speaker
it It was probably the it was probably the both the funniest jump of things that we saw the entire awards show. It's funny because i I genuinely really enjoy Dungeon Fighter. Yeah. Kind of forgot both of these happened.
01:25:45
Speaker
Yes, we think I do. My most sweet people should play it. We got a new trailer for Dying Light the Beast, which comes out summer 2025. A trailer, official trailer for Hunt Showdown 1896, Post Malone's Murder Circus, which that event is out now. It runs until January something. So if you want to go kill some clowns with Post Malone or kill clowns and Post Malone, you can go do that now.
01:26:15
Speaker
I want to play magic with them. I mean, you could do that, too. It's it's funny. It's like the two things that Post Malone is like, like, because the reason this collab is happening is because Post Malone is a huge fan of HUD's HUD showdown, which I only learned because of my boy Preston. Shout out to Preston for that tidbit there.
01:26:37
Speaker
um We then got probably the the worst trailer of the entire night squid games unleashed 17th on Netflix games only I Don't care the Netflix games only is just so funny, bro. I Can't wait to play my next flicks a video game with my TV remote. Yeah um Except Netflix games is only on mobile devices Damn it. It's only on mobile devices. Yes, you have to download the Netflix app to play Netflix games. That's insane. That game looked like it was ready to play on PC or something. Play on mobile. yeah
01:27:16
Speaker
yeah We then got a brand new game from the creators of Overcooked called stage fright and this looks cool like a cool concept where the get the screen is split in half and each half Interacts with each other and your goal is to I guess escape the monsters that are chasing you so really cool concept ah for that ah You know, it's going to be crazy, chaotic fun because it's overcooked. Yeah. Then we got Game of Thrones Kings Road, a trailer for an actual Game of Thrones action game.
01:27:52
Speaker
Took him long enough, geez. Yeah, honestly, yeah. ah I feel a bit different about this because I never got into Game of Thrones, so I'm just like, yes, whatever. We then got a trailer for Double Dragon Revive, which comes out October 23rd, 2025. This was the game with the latest release dates that was confirmed.
01:28:14
Speaker
um You are a bit of a Double Dragon fan, Zach, correct? I do enjoy Double Dragon. It is a fun beat-em-up. What are your thoughts on Revive? Again, this is something I completely forgot happened. but Oh, okay. So when I think of Double Dragon nowadays, I'm thinking River City Girls, because that's part of the same franchise. ahha Like those are literally same characters in the universe. Oh, oh actually? Shit. Yeah, so the main characters of River City Girls
01:28:45
Speaker
are like they're part of River City Ransom. And in those games, the people from Double Dragon are essentially the people who teach you abilities. Oh, that's like you buy items from them. Gotcha. Unfortunately, they don't call them Bimmy. OK, well, that's cool.
01:29:06
Speaker
ah So yeah, that comes out October 23rd, 2025. Then we got Solo Leveling Arise coming out on mobile devices but based off the popular anime Solo Leveling. So if you like- The fuck is an anime? I don't know, it's some show from Japan. Oh, actually, sorry, this one's Korean. This one's the one of the Korean based ones.
01:29:28
Speaker
The fuck is Korea? ah It's a country that led to martial law not that long ago for a brief moment. You damn right. ah We then got a small teaser for a racing game called Screamer coming out 2026. Then the Last of Us 2 remastered for the PC release coming April 3rd, 2025.
01:29:53
Speaker
When did that come out? The Last of Us 2? Yeah. like Are we at a point where it needs a remaster? Well, its it's it's coming to the PC, and they're calling the PC version Last of Us 2 remastered. Came out in 2020, so four years. It does not need a remaster. What the fuck? yeah like Five years? That'll be coming out?
01:30:15
Speaker
OK, no, you're right. Five years. You're right. You're right. Yeah. You're right. You're right. It won't fully be five years at June 19th. It's April 3rd coming out, so it won't fully be. It definitely sounds nicer when they say remastered, because it makes people. When I think of remaster, I'm yeah thinking like, you know, Final Fantasy eight when they remastered eight. That took like 20 years for them to do because they lost the source code.
01:30:44
Speaker
Oh, actually. sosh really Yeah. So they accidentally just got rid of it. ah Oh, so they essentially had to remake eight. Wow. For the remastered. I think they did a decent job with it. That's cool. Nice. We then got gameplay for Den of Wolves. This is the new game from the payday devs, aka the real payday three. ah Looks great. Looks good. ah Can't wait to see more.
01:31:11
Speaker
I just hope it doesn't turn out like Payday 3. Yeah, save. Pretty much. ah We then got a brief 3.0 trailer for Honkai Star Rail, which comes out January. Cool. Boy. And then a 10 second teaser ah for Sonic Racing Cross Worlds, where Shadow gets in his car and goes vroom. I hope I get to hear, live and learn.
01:31:35
Speaker
That'd be cool. Honestly, this game has a pretty a low bar to beat considering the last racing team Sonic stock Racing um was just okay. So they could definitely do better with this one when we get more details for it.
01:31:52
Speaker
Uh, we then got a trailer for mafia, the old country coming out summer, 20, 25, a trailer for a game called dispatch, which is from telltale games starring Aaron Paul, Laura Bailey, Jack septic guy, moist, critical, a lot of Pierce and, uh, Travis will help will Willingham, and a couple more voice actors. Uh, it looks really cool and very funny and, uh, excited to see more for from that one. Yeah. And then.
01:32:23
Speaker
They bring out a big ass drum. but but but but but but And all the background as the orchestra is playing, we're seeing this trailer cup and we're like, well, what is this? And then a fire dog, Amaterasu emerges running through the field. ad And an Okami sequel is in development from Capcom and Hideki Kamiya.
01:32:52
Speaker
And this is what I predicted Zach's third game. He was excited for. You're fucking right. It is dude. I'm going to be real with you. I own Okami on pretty much everything you can own it on. Wow. Holy shit. I own Okami as well. Actually, yes, I fucking love Okami. Like honestly, one of the most underrated series.
01:33:19
Speaker
So the fact that we're getting a proper sequel on a console. Years after the fact, and the fact that's being made by Clover Studio again. My hopes are high. Yeah, I bet they would be. So you're telling me I should play a comic. Though I will say this, if you do have like, if you get eye strains real easy, probably don't.

Game Awards Highlights

01:33:45
Speaker
Because although its art style is beautiful, that game can give you a headache real fucking quick. Good to know. I fucking love Okami. Phenomenal game. But yeah, if you look at that game for too long, it will hurt your head.
01:34:02
Speaker
Good to know. Okay. We then got the last two trailers. The first was for Crimson Desert, which is coming out late next year. I believe this was shown off last year as well, if I'm remembering correctly. And the thing about Crimson Desert was it looks like medieval fantasy Breath of the Wild. And it's just like, okay. And then the last trailer showing off of a brand new IP from Naughty Dog called Intergalactic. And it looks all right.
01:34:37
Speaker
But again, it was just more of a reveal, no gameplay, so we don't really know what the game is going to be like, but I think we can trust the story process because this is not a dog.
01:34:48
Speaker
But why did they need a Porsche? Yeah, I found something else. the brand placements. Absolutely hilarious money. Ridiculous. Yeah. i But I think the dollars, please. I think because of those, I think it's like they're kind of telling us, like, what if we as humans were to be space traveling now? What would it look like? And absolutely that is what it would fucking look like. Porsche spaceships.
01:35:16
Speaker
Adidas shoes. That is what it would be. Let's not lie to ourselves. That is how it would fucking go. Yeah. So honestly, I'm absolutely fine with it. um Overall, I think this was a solid year of announcements from the game awards. Yeah, Okami was pretty cool. yeah I am most excited for Project Century um for all the things that were announced. That is probably like the thing I am most excited for and cannot wait to hear new things about. um I think for Zach, it's Okami. I'm not sure, honestly, it's Okami or Onimusha because
01:35:54
Speaker
I fucking love Oni Moosh. It's one of the the best survival horror franchises. Okay. I would say it's better than Resident Evil. Damn. Come at me, RE fans. Oh, the survival horror? I thought it was like, it just looked like it was a... Well, it's like a weird blend of survival horror and action. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. What about you, Ninja Frog? What was your highlight of announcements?
01:36:19
Speaker
oh gosh that's hard Because there's a lot of like, well, I'm cautiously optimistic. well which like like almost all like whichitcher porto optimis like Like I came into the game awards this year with no expectations whatsoever, which is I think the best way to go into the game awards because you never know what we're going to get. I think going with no expectations made the game awards that much better for me this year.
01:36:46
Speaker
Yeah. Um, I think if I were to pick something, it probably would be Borderlands just because it's just nostalgic. And it's another game I can play with a lot of people. All right. Fair enough. I wonder you missed. Um, yeah. Borderlands is definitely up there for me. The trailer really got me hyped. I like the. Yeah, I think we're all hyper squid games unleashed. Um, also Civ seven. Yeah. Yeah.
01:37:16
Speaker
The one trailer thing, it showed like ah a boat on a river going through the land and I literally can't get that image out of my mind and I'm so hyped that boats can go on rivers now. got and That's that's all I care about is that can go on rivers. So that's like an actual problem with Civ. You can't put.
01:37:35
Speaker
like boats on small rivers water rivers are on their own tile they're they're a modifier and so yeah oh so excited so the fact that you can put a boat on a river in a sieve game is actually huge oh shit it's like massive probably that opens up they change so much possibilities Damn, okay. ah Before we get into the awards themselves, ah there were two musical performances that we will quickly talk about and also a guest of two very famous muppets. Starting off with the music performances, 21 Pilots performed and Snoop Dogg also performed.
01:38:15
Speaker
What'd you guys think of those? if yeah for those who For the ones who watched the performances? I'm gonna be real with you. I didn't watch them. When you say 21 pilots and Snoop Dogg, I don't care. Snoop is fun.
01:38:31
Speaker
Yeah. I i was expecting him to go on with how he phrased that. um yeah no stoop The Snoop Dogg performance was, I think, really cool. ah He did it was a debuted a new song off of his brand new album that just came out, ah Missionary with Dr. Dre. That is what the album's called, um which I think is just a great title name because Snoop Dogg and Dre are back together, but also they're just doing some Missionary together. You know what?
01:38:59
Speaker
Love is love, that's all I'm gonna say. um But this new performance was great. Played this new song and then played some gin and juice. And then 21 Pilots, legit. The more I watched it, like I went back to watch it again. the live They are so much better live than all of their stuff on the radio. I'm gonna fucking say that. I'm gonna be real with you, they're a band I kind of forget exists.
01:39:24
Speaker
know That's how I feel, but I did enjoy the performance, for sure. Yeah. And then lastly, Stadler and Waldorf, they were there making jokes. That was the actual hype thing. Yeah, the highlight of the show. The self-awareness during the entire show was awesome.
01:39:44
Speaker
It was actually really great. The self-awareness was great. It's nice of them. The Muppets are just great. But Skylar and Waldorf made it. I think the best joke of the night was, oh, look, it's Dale Kojima. He's friends with Jeff. Yeah, you think Kojima knows that? yeah That was the best joke of the night by far.
01:40:11
Speaker
And I love that. No, it was it was great. And I want them to bring them up. It's back every year now. Because every time they brought the puppets to the Game Awards, it was always something great. Like ah one of my highlights of the Game Awards overall is when they had Dr. Honeydew and Beaker there. And they put Beaker into Untitled Goose Game. And then when Beaker came out, they also had a goose puppet that also escaped. And it was just great. And I loved that so much. Yeah.
01:40:41
Speaker
um But definitely stellar and walls are for definitely like the big highlight of the show and now We get into the winners of the game awards Year 10 and we're doing this in order So we're starting off with the games that with the awards that were presented ah In the opening show starting with best fighting game the first award of the night and it went to Tekken 8. Who the fucking guest? Yeah, honestly. I think a lot of people because of recency bias, where were there was probably a small group that were probably like, oh, it's going to be Dragon Ball. Fucking no. No, it was definitely going to be Tekken 8. And Harada came and accepted the award and he said, don't ask me for shit ever again.
01:41:30
Speaker
I respect them. My favorite Harada moment. So someone on Twitter once tweeted that I'm about a character in Tekken 7 named Lucky Chloe. And the the person said, can you please delete Lucky Chloe from the game? She's the worst fucking thing to fight against. he His response was him holding a picture. or like It was a picture of him holding a gun. He said, I'll delete you.
01:41:52
Speaker
but Wow. Like Harada is a fucking blessing. He he honestly is broadly is. He genuinely is. We then got best VR AR game, which went to Batman Arkham Shadow, which with the games that were on there, it's like, yeah, that's the only one makes sense. People want to be Batman. That yeah gives them the chance to be Batman. There you go. Life dream done.
01:42:20
Speaker
um Then we got best esports game presented by Old Spice because let's be real, those esports gamers are stinky and which went to League of Legends. Who'd have thought? Best esports player went to Faker. Who saw that one coming? ah Literally everybody. Fucking Hoompst. The guy in the thumbnail for Lincoln Park's Heavy is the crown. Hoompst. And the best esports team went to T1.
01:42:51
Speaker
Can't be real with you, I don't care about the esports. Yeah, legit, I'm going to say this. Of all the Game Awards that they have, I think the esports categories are the ones that people care about the least. Well, it's too subjective. It's very, yeah, it's very subjective. Like, esports should be much bigger than they are, but they aren't.
01:43:11
Speaker
Unlike the FGC, let's go! We then got our Games for Impacts, um which went to Nether, which is good for them. but ah Great job. ah Innovation and accessibility went to Prince of Persia, the Lost Crown. I don't like it.
01:43:31
Speaker
What does that even mean? Innovation and accessibility? What is that? it's a very They you mean like the accessibility options. like What game had like the most?
01:43:44
Speaker
Yeah, I think I think the light thing it pass like like in past years um with Forza Horizon 5 won it because it won that because of the amount of stuff they did for like deaf people and colorblind people and like just like accessible for like those with those kind of differences. Does that mean Prince of Persia has colorblind mode? I mean, I would assume it does, yes. Most likely. Well, I mean, it doesn't help it from being a bad game anyways. Damn. Geez.
01:44:12
Speaker
I mean, za when this game came out, Zach was very vocal about him. It's a very different game to the Prince of Persia games. Very different to the others. it is The original trilogy is some of the finest gaming you can have on PS2. And GameCube. I don't care about the GameCube version.
01:44:36
Speaker
but I watched one of the they get bit best SA2 speedrunners. They did like a speedrun thing on speedrun.com for like a bunch of money. And he did that. I watched that a lot. And that was all I had. of I didn't get the game, so i I thought it was fun watching it. So I have assumed it was a good game. but I think it's very subjective. Yeah. yeah um Then we got Best Family Game, which went to Astrobot, which also cock-blocked Nintendo's chance of winning an award for the night, because that's shit, Nintendo. i just I just want to get my point out again, like I did when we were watching it. i just if If it's going to be called Family Game,
01:45:23
Speaker
Bro, it better have multiplayer in it. If it doesn't have multiplayer, then shouldn't be freaking nominated. I understand. I understand. Like, OK, when you're playing a game that's family oriented, like you could play with your family like watching it at the same time. But like you're not. It's not the same thing. Yeah, it's not the same. It's fast controller. Yeah. I'm here as a proud. I think it's like Lego Star Wars with my dad growing up and then just falling off the edge, bro. It's not the same.
01:45:52
Speaker
I'm here as a proud papa watching my little child play their video game. That's a pretty family game if you ask me. Yeah, but wouldn't you want to play it with them? don't they no to play game and it something i would add another bond like on my child I would make them never play video games again. Just add another Astro bar. That sounds like a skillish so easy skill for a six year old. like Child can't keep up. Humble boy yourself, boys. Yeah. I'm going to sit there and beat them with that BA jam over and over again.
01:46:27
Speaker
I definitely understand where you're coming from, from that ninja frog. I absolutely understand where you're coming from for that. And I absolutely, i I do, when you put it in that perspective, I agree with you. It should really be ah like able to be played with multiple people at the same time and not just a single player game.
01:46:46
Speaker
um We then get into the main show and best performance was presented by Troy Baker and Todd Howard. And man, that Todd Howard looked short to this game awards with all the tall people they paired him with. And then to help present the award, out comes Mr. Indiana Jones himself Harrison Ford. I love that guy. He's great.
01:47:08
Speaker
Yeah. okay And they announced Best Performance, which goes to Melina Jurgens for Senua Saga Hellblade 2. She has won that award both times for the first and second Hellblade. She does good. Geez. So, you know what? Good for her. Great for her, actually. Because I did not know that she won the one it the first time. I completely forgot about that. So, great for her. Good job, Melina. Best action game went to Blacksmith Wukong.
01:47:39
Speaker
And then in place of the, what was it? Like the future something showcased that they would showcase game devs. They replaced that you with with the Game Awards game changer, which went to Amir Setvat, ah which Amir has been doing things within the gaming industry to help those who have lost their jobs within the gaming industry because of all the layoffs to help them get back on their feet with more jobs by getting some spreadsheets going, LinkedIn stuff going, and to help them get back in into a career in the gaming industry. um And a lot of discourse was discussed online after this, that while this wasn't like a bad choice, this was a very safe choice.
01:48:30
Speaker
to make for an award like this. yeah And ah again, it gets, when I read all this stuff, it got very just fucking political. And honestly, I'm just gonna say, just keep politics out of gaming. It makes the gamer gaming, the gamer community just look worse and worse. yeah And that's really all I'm gonna get into on that because honestly, I just don't fucking care anymore.
01:48:58
Speaker
Uh, so yeah, uh, congrats to Amir and, to and, to all the other people who are also helping with getting devs jobs again. Cause it's not just him. There are others doing it, but he is, he is just one of many that are helping do it. Uh, most anticipated game was GTA six. No shit. The prize of the century GTA.
01:49:28
Speaker
Yeah, no one wonder how many people who are that one actually interested in it that are watching the game words in the first place. true i say that like you shouldn It's ah not a game to be excited for. I'm sure it's going to be a good game. I just ah it thought it was just like, yeah, most likely best multiplayer game went to hell divers to not surprised there.
01:49:52
Speaker
No. Best community support went to Baldur's Gate 3. Again, no surprise there. Larian has been doing a fantastic job ah with their community support. ah ah So, yeah, congrats to them again. Best art direction went to Metaphorifantazio. Best game direction went to Astrobot. Best debut indie went to Balochro. That's surprising.
01:50:19
Speaker
was my Best action adventure went to Astrobot. Best article um action adventure then yeah but RPG? went to Metaphor, Rifantazio. Who would have thought? Content creator of the year was between Queso and Pecora, and it went to Queso. Damn, it would have been so funny had the VTuber won. It would have been funny because that would have been does two years in a row that a VTuber won.
01:50:51
Speaker
Would it? Yeah, Iron Mouse won last year. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. ah The best sports racing game was to EA Sports FC 25, because they can't call it FIFA anymore. Yeah, it's football club. Get rolled. Get rolled. Why can't they call it FIFA? Because they lost the rights to FIFA. Yeah, they lost the licensing. Oh, yeah. That happened this year as well. They lost the licensing to FIFA.
01:51:21
Speaker
Or it happened last year, I can't remember, but they lost it, so they have to call it Football Club now. ah Best Sim strategy game went to Frostpunk 2. And then we get to best ongoing game. And I have a gripe with this. I'm not saying Helldivers doesn't deserve it. I just think Helldivers shouldn't have been nominated because Helldivers is not an ongoing game. It came out this year. I don't understand why it was nominated.
01:51:46
Speaker
for this kind of ongoing. No, like I even looked into this. I'm like, Oh, was there an early access period for this game last year? And that's why there wasn't. Like to this is like what, this is like the only one that's like, like I'm not mad at one because it beat out Fortnite, which is very fucking funny. Cause even though I will say Fortnite probably did deserve the award with how much they did with this year with like all of the changes and updates and things that they made the game into. Yeah.
01:52:23
Speaker
I still find it funny that it didn't get it and they gave it to hell divers too, which is not an ongoing game. I mean, that makes, I understand what you're saying, but yeah. Totally. Just because final fantasy 14 lost. No, I here's it. I know I, final fantasy 14 was not going to win it this year. I, I with how dodge fail was receptive. I knew that F 14 wasn't going to win either for ongoing game or for community support. Yeah.
01:52:54
Speaker
so So yeah, I mean, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. So I don't know. It's hard to gauge like it unless it's like a game that just like continuously always like a live service that just always being supported. Like, I don't know. Like they like next year, if Yoshi P and business ah creative business suite three can get and get their shit together with like giving us fantastic, pogoristic content. I think FFXIV might have a chance for best ongoing game next year, but it all comes down to like how it how what the content is. It depends, yeah, because people forget Stormblood was panned when it originally came out as just a core patch. But with the post-patch story, people fucking love Stormblood now.
01:53:44
Speaker
Yeah, and I feel like we might be seeing the same thing happen with Dawn Trail. I hope so. Yeah. Best adaptation went to Ella Purnell um because she was going to win it either way. ah Specifically, it was Fallout over Arkane. Ah, neat. Best score in music went to Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth. Who the fucking guest? Final Fantasy has good music! So you beat Final Fantasy VII, but you like the music still. Well, I mean, it's the most blanket compliment I can give to every Final Fantasy game is, the music's good. Like, Final Fantasy XIII is dog shit, but the music's good. Yeah. I guess we're on the same page. Can agree. I've platinumed, uh, theater rhythm. Final bar line. Legit, Final Fantasy XIII has one of the best battle themes in the franchise.
01:54:43
Speaker
Like, it's a very well-composed song. Game still sucks. Lemal.
01:54:52
Speaker
ah Best indie game went to Bellatro. Best mobile game went to Bellatro. Beating up the fucking gacha games. That's amazing. Shit, gotcha. Best audio design went to Senua Saga Hellblade 2. And then we get to Player's Voice, the only category that is 100% voted on by the fans.
01:55:12
Speaker
And it was Blacksmith Wukong, Wuthering Waves, Genshin Impact, Zendless Zone Zero, and Elden Ring, Shadow of the Air Tree, up for this award. So, odds are you think a a fucking gacha game is gonna win it? Nope! Blacksmith Wukong beats them all!
01:55:29
Speaker
let's go from what i hear Wukong is actually a really good game. i've I've heard great things about it. The only thing that negative I heard about it is mostly because of it being the being a Chinese developer, is that when the game came out, they said, hey, guys, please don't criticize the Chinese government when you're streaming this game.
01:55:53
Speaker
It's like, please don't talk. Yeah, yeah please i like talk smack about our government. they Yeah, it was it was im like. wo Interesting. Yeah. they it It was like, yeah, there it was like, I don't think it was just, like I think it was more like just China in general. We love China stuff, which is like, but other than that though, the game has been fantastic and they did a really great job with it. Uh, best narrative. What's the metaphor? Rifant Tazio and the prized game of the year. What's the Astro bot?
01:56:29
Speaker
I'm not surprised. and I'm not surprised. I mean, i here's the thing. I was very, I would have been happy with any of the five of the six nominees winning. The only one I would have not wanted to see win was Shadow of the Air Tree DLC because it did not deserve to be nominated for Game of the Year.
01:56:46
Speaker
It's a DLC that requires you to have prerequisites done in the base game of Elden Ring. If it stood alone as an extension that did not require anything, I think I would have had a different perspective on that because it's it's that it can be more looks like as a standalone thing a little bit more. Fair.
01:57:09
Speaker
But because you require prerequisites for it, no, it does not deserve to be there. um Your big winner of the night was Ashtabot with taking it home four awards. Metaphor took home three, Bellacho took home three, Hellblade took home two, Helldivers took home two, and so did Blacksmith Wukong.
01:57:28
Speaker
Isn't it funny that the two games that have the word hell in their name that are also sequels to things both got to? Yeah, it is kind of funny, actually, when you look at it that way. um And every game that was up for Game of the Year won at least one award, except for Elden Ring. Elden Ring got snubbed entirely. And I know that the fucking Soulsborne boys are salty and I'm drinking their tears like soup. I mean,
01:57:58
Speaker
Well, you all mentioned that last night. I honestly wouldn't be surprised if they put it. There's like a marketing pitch because they are aware about it in it with the Muppets. Yeah, right. They're making fun of it the whole time. Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I forgot. I made the comment when I was streaming, co-streaming it is like I feel like they only made the Shadow of the Air Tree DLC and came to your nomination.
01:58:24
Speaker
to bring a talking point controversy to the awards. And it was a a marketing ploy. And I still genuinely do believe that. it might have This whole thing, it might have just been a marketing ploy just to get more people to tune in to the Game Awards. Probably, honestly. Well, it's a scummy move because I think that Game of the Year nominees should be like the best that 2024 has to offer. And not like, ah oh, hey, let's do something funny. He he he. And Jeff Keeley and Hideo Kojima are eagerly scheming in the background there, you know? Yeah. Because I wouldn't put it past them to do that. But yeah, overall, I would I gave the award show in a rank um this year. How would you guys rank the Game Awards 2024?
01:59:25
Speaker
Um, B, B plus probably. That's solid. That's solid. Yeah. This is what I like you. Yeah. I say I burned a, I wasn't able to watch them live. Unfortunately, cause I was at a work commitment, but going through this and listening to it and like, you know, I went and looked up a lot of the stuff just cause I was really curious and kind of like I said, Tony, like I went to, it was no expectations because I forgot this was happening until like the day it was happening.
01:59:52
Speaker
I'm really happy with what was announced. There's very little I saw that made me sad. Like, Astrobot, I did watch the trailer for Astrobot finally just to see what it was actually about. And it looked like it was a really fun game. If I had a PlayStation, I probably would have bought it. Exactly, yeah. That's kind of how I felt. I'm not spending, you know, $950 on a PlayStation 5 Pro to play a PlayStation, one PlayStation game. Still.
02:00:17
Speaker
Um, again, I don't like exclusives, but, uh, yeah, yeah. E plus. Well, all right. Exactly. What about you? Uh, solid dog out of 10. Nice. What kind of dog? You know exactly what kind of dog is the one that has control over the celestial dog out of 10. Of course. Yes. Of course. A dog specifically so ro like I said,
02:00:45
Speaker
There were only three things that I genuinely like cared, got announced. And two of them were Capcom. Yeah. So Capcom out of 10. Capcom, you killed it this year, man. Honestly, Capcom had a killer year this year and they're going into 2025 strong with the new Monster Hunter. Right. But seeing a new Ninja Gaiden game, especially a 2D one, that's sick, especially since it's being made by the people who made Blasphemous.
02:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, that's how many how many yeah games do you usually get excited for for the fast game awards? Fucking. not ah Yeah, I was going to say, this is like a record high. This is a record high that will probably never be beaten. So legitimately I think when they announced Metroid Prime for the year, they did. That was the only game that I would say I was more excited about than anything this year because I fucking love Metroid Prime.
02:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, I need to play it so bad. They're all I'm kind of I'm kind of waiting for them to make like a one. I'm assuming they're remastered two and three. I'm just going to wait for them. Yeah, I feel like that's definitely going to happen with a remastered. I feel like we'll just release a remastered trilogy pack so that way we can play all three. That's what I'm waiting for. No one. Everyone's luck. There will be two, three in Federation Force. I feel like I feel like I might pair Federation Force with Metroid Prime Hunters. Maybe.
02:02:09
Speaker
It makes sense. All right. Any final thoughts about the game awards before we move on to the bonus level, everybody? Capcom.
02:02:19
Speaker
That's my thought. All right. One extra thought I had was there was just no beat to the show that were just really good production. The one thing I wanted to bring up was the best narrative. Well, fuck, yeah. I mean, Sam Lake. That was awesome. Fuck yeah. I forgot about Sam. Yeah, the Sam Lake presenting best narrative and it's him. The screen goes black and white and it's him presenting with his inner dialogue. That was fantastic.
02:02:47
Speaker
fantastic That was great. That was such a great thing. It's such a sad like thing to do. Uh, honestly, the Game Awards, like the real stuff, like people are like, oh, Hideo Kojima's like debate Gracie Giver. No. Hideo Kojima plugged his own podcast on the Game Awards or on one of those shows once. No. Sam Lake and Joseph Ferris are the real MVPs of the Game Awards. Let's be fucking real here. Those two are goats in the gaming industry. The real MVPs of the fucking Game Awards are the fucking Muppets.
02:03:23
Speaker
That too, that too. True. That's the best one part. The one my heart. Rest in peace, Jim Hansen. Gone but never forgotten. Well, with that, it's time for us to now dive in to the final bonus level of the season.

Gaming History and Comparisons

02:03:44
Speaker
Crazy lists, great deals, and recapping gaming history. It's all here in the bonus level. And to kick it off, we've got this week in gaming history, December 6th. Well, this the rest of the month in gaming history, which not much happened. um The 16th to 31st, here's what happened in the past. Major event-wise, on the December 23rd from 1982, Victor Alley scores a world record of the Missile Command arcade game. That's just crazy.
02:04:17
Speaker
Have you guys ever played Missile Command? No. No. I know, but you're all literal children. Jesus. Wait, play Atari's Missile Command at AARP. Dude, it's actually a sick game. Missile Command's really fun, but that that score's absurd. Yeah. Like, it's insane how high that is. However, fun fact, the Street Fighter movie came out the exact same day.
02:04:44
Speaker
It did. In 1994, the T-Fighter film opened in theaters in the United States, and in which I have to double check. It's a shitty movie. Was that a Tuesday? I don't believe it was. December 23rd,
02:04:57
Speaker
nineteen 1994. If it was a Tuesday, that'd be even better. ah I don't think it was. It was day of the week. It was a Friday. Damn.
02:05:12
Speaker
But like, that movie is so bad. Like, I don't know who thought casting Jean-Claude Van Damme to be the American patriot guile was a good idea considering Van Damme is very much Belgian.
02:05:31
Speaker
But sure, why not? It's fun. The video game based off, it's really bad too, but it's fun. Nice. On December 27th, 2010, Sega shut down servers for the Japanese version of Fantasy Star Online Blue Burst. That one's sad. PSO1's good. And for game birthdays. There's two Final Fantasy games that came out in December. Yep. And one of them is my favorite Final Fantasy game. December 18th, Final Fantasy X turns 23.
02:06:10
Speaker
Yep. And on December 24th, Tetris Worlds turns 23 as well. And on December 31st, Final Fantasy IV turns 29. It is going to be 30 next year, Zach. Yeah, I'm aware. It's as old as I am.
02:06:34
Speaker
No, that is my favorite Final Fantasy game though. Nice. So yeah, I knew about four. Nice. and ah but The only reason I remember 10 is because of the North American version came out before the European version, but the European version has more content. So when the European one got released to North America, it was called final fantasy 10 international. And that's when we got the dark a ons. That's also when we got the fight against penance.
02:07:05
Speaker
hu Interesting. And the very international version is what would become Final Fantasy 10, 10, two remasters version of 10. Gotcha. So it's no too long. Didn't read version of that. Just play. Just play the remaster. Play the remaster. Don't play the original. Got it.
02:07:27
Speaker
ah Before we get into the top five because top five is a big one this time around. We're going to dive into head to head where we're going to where we are with the twenty twenty four video games versus twenty twenty three in video games. Which one wins boys?
02:07:44
Speaker
This year's over this year in gaming or last year in gaming, which was like the highlights of last year. ah I was going to say, what came out last year? Tears of the kingdom. Yeah, tears of the kingdom. That's a good one. Street fighters fireer six Fighter Street Fighter 6. Pikmin 4. Let's see here. Dawn Trail. ah Yeah, I guess Dawn Trail did launch. No, Dawn Trail launched this year. Oh, did it? Yeah.
02:08:14
Speaker
ah penny very let's Alan Wake Baldur's Gate 3, Monster Hunter Rise, Sunbreak. um definitely to twenty three Yeah, Alan Wake 2, Spider-Man 2. Oh God, those two, oh my gosh. Thorfield technically came out too. Diablo 4, Mario Wonder, Resident Evil 4 remake.
02:08:40
Speaker
Yeah, it was a year for now kind like three futures rewritten future redeemed. I mean Slay the princess ghost tricks Phantom Detective re-release Yeah, you know what honestly I think 2023 I'd have to go 2023 as well. I think it was just more stacked. It was more stacked So not saying 2024 wasn't but like 2023 had some knock out of the park home runs Yeah, I'm like 24 still had good games, but I mean, I think it just shows by the the things that were at the left, like the fact that even if it was used for a marketing move, the fact that it ended up being used and we didn't have another like big game that they wanted to put for game of the year is kind of shows it in my opinion.
02:09:34
Speaker
Maybe I'm missing something because I didn't play many new games this year. um But I think that's kind of shows it because I mean, Ash Robot, I'm sure is a great game, but I wouldn't usually think a random like ah new 3D platform. and not Very fair. very fair um This year in video games, I was playing bad Castlevania games in Xenosaga.
02:09:59
Speaker
Nice. So it's, you know, saga. Yeah. Wow. So like, I have no idea what came out. I know yours came out. Yeah. Yars rising six soundtrack games. kind of Grand blue, the grand, the grand blue had a grandpa popped off this grand blue had a decent year. Yeah. Relink's a fantastic game, but
02:10:28
Speaker
Like, yeah. Legit this year and last year, both of them, I don't know what game. yeah ah We're yeah now going to go into to Tony's game poll.

Community Polls and Favorites

02:10:41
Speaker
So I calculated the votes of what I asked every guest this season. If there was a world that you would add to Kingdom Hearts 4 that has not been added into the series yet, what world would it be? We had a three way tie for first place.
02:10:56
Speaker
And those three were Emperor's New Groove, Moana, and Inside Out. What? So, Ninja Frog, you have technically voted in this already. So therefore, yeah, you did, because you were odd earlier this season as well. So, you do not get to vote here. Back in this, between the three that I have here as the top one, as the top choices,
02:11:23
Speaker
If you could add one of those three worlds into Kingdom Hearts, what world would you add?
02:11:31
Speaker
all the leather cra It's gotta be in person to agree for me. Yeah. I'm a big fan of the Hunchback and Notre Dame. That's already in Kingdom Hearts. That was a dream job distance. Nobody fucking played Dream Drop this distance. I played Dream Drop this distance. No one cared about it. I mean, true. No one cared about it. ah yeah Well, they cared about it. It never happened. It's fine. No, no, it did. ah like Okay. Well, it never happened. It did happen in a dream, yes, but it was important. It literally never happened. It was the last game that a lettered e-boy voiced in. Damn shame. Damn.
02:12:11
Speaker
ah So, to be real with this, out of the three options you've given me, I don't really care about Moana. Like, it was fine. I think Inside Out's the stupidest fucking premise for a film. And ah Emperor's New Groove is a part of my childhood. So, yeah, probably probably the Emperor's New Groove because the other two are so whatever to me.
02:12:41
Speaker
If you had to pick any Disney IP to be in Kingdom Hearts, what would it have been? Any Disney IP. Yeah. Same with you, Miss. If it wasn't between those three... Do they have Star Wars in Kingdom Hearts? They don't have Star Wars. I did allow Star Wars as someone did vote for Star Wars earlier this season. So if you said Star Wars, I would have counted that, which means Star Wars would have gotten two votes in the end. Yeah.
02:13:07
Speaker
I don't know anything but can come hearts personally. But yeah, Star Wars is my favorite IP. So like, fair enough. And Zach, what about you? If it wasn't between those three, what would it you actually put in? I'm trying to think what would be good.
02:13:21
Speaker
And while Zach's thinking, I'll read you guys the upcoming deals of the week. Epic's free games are currently ongoing. ah The Lord of the Rings game return to Moira is currently free um until the 19th, I think. And then we're getting a new free game. And hopefully after that, we're getting a free game a day. um it's ah So that's what that is. And then check out whatever Steam PlayStation Xbox or boxing Dale sales winter sales that are still ongoing because you know, they're coming soon Okay, so I'm gonna hit you with what I think would be neat, but I know no one else would have fucking said Monkey Island. Oh Yeah, that is a Disney property. Holy shit Disney owns Lucas films. How they do oh that's you know what? That's a solid one.
02:14:14
Speaker
Monkey Island's cool, man. All right. It Oh wouldn't happen because we have pirates in there. Yeah. So like the pirate thing's already covered. But I like Monkey Island. All right. Well, that means the final result and the winner of Tony's game poll, the first season that has been around is the Emperor's New Groove. Congratulations, Kuzco and Kronk. We now deserved it. Yeah. And now we jump is a top five.
02:14:45
Speaker
Which is a big one. Top five games of 2024 in your guys' opinion. What were your top five games that you played in 2024? The games did it. Now, to be clear, the games do not have the gaves do not have to have been released in 2024 for you guys.
02:15:05
Speaker
Because yeah I know unlike me who has played 150 games this year yeah with 50 of the almost 50 of those games being released this year. gee ah You guys can get away with have a ninja frog also not have played many games this year at all. um What were your top five games that you played this year?
02:15:31
Speaker
Who would like to start? I can start. All right. There's some games that were new to me this year that I played. So Hollow Knight was a top game for me this year. I was introduced to it for the first time. And my friend actually admitted that although he loves the game, he only wanted me to play it so I could also be sad that the sequel is not out yet. That is hilarious. He wanted me to play the game. He's like, it's good, but I want you to be sad with me.
02:16:01
Speaker
I also got back into Hades this year and I put a hundred hours into Hades. It was, it was great. Um, so I've been really excited for Hades two, which just, you know, early access this year. So I haven't played any of it yet, but I'm really excited for it. Play it now. Play it now. Play it now. Play Hades two now. I know you're addicted to it. You're telling me. I am. I'll talk about later. Um, I'll diverse two is a big one for me. I think it's a really cool gimmick.
02:16:28
Speaker
And it's a lot of fun to just mess around with a few friends and fight for democracy. Yeah, democracy. The Middle Earth series is also really cool. I started playing Shadow of Mordor again this just recently, and it's it's fun. There's stealth, there's action, it's a cool story, and I want them to make another one. And then I would also say Rocket League is a big game for me this year.
02:16:55
Speaker
I played it a lot before, but really got into it and really got into the esports of it. And like, they have like 100,000 people for their regional tournaments watching. It's so fun and super hype. I don't know if I have anything else that I really played a lot this year. Marvel Rivals just came out. Marvel Rivals and Overwatch. I've had a lot of Overwatch.
02:17:22
Speaker
I've played a lot of Marvel Rivals since it's been out. I think I like Marvel Rivals better. Good. um is It is a lot of fun. I think what they are doing with it is really cool, and I know there's definitely a lot of comparisons between the two, but something I don't even think it's the Marvel characters that really gets me to it. I like the gameplay and how fast-paced and shook the whole environment. I think it's really cool. All right. I suppose it'd be my top games of the year.
02:17:50
Speaker
Thank you, Mist. Who would like to go next?
02:17:56
Speaker
I'm nominating the other person. All right, Ninja Frog is up there. Okay, um I think I'll have to put Baldur's Gate as my top playing, as I've been kind of talking about like multiplayer games that they, my brothers got it for me for Christmas last year, like right at the end of the year. And we've been playing a playthrough of it together and we used to play like um smell Super Smash Bros. Melee together, like my oldest brother's like 10 years older than me. And so like it's harder to find time to actually play those. So we've been like occasionally playing that on the weekends and just like the biggest like laughs I've had, um some of the biggest laughs I've had this year have been playing that with them. So that's been a blast for me. Let's see here, what else did I note? Holdover 2 is definitely a big one for me.
02:18:46
Speaker
um That's and another game that I've been trying not to spend too much money because I'm kind of in debt for school. um And another friend just kind of bought it for me. And so I've been playing it with a bunch of friends. that was I was grateful for that. And ah that was, yeah, it's been a really good blast. I love that the the loop of the game. um And I just think it's an interesting concept, a little bit kind of a little more realistic but than not. So it's it's great. It's fun. And just really, I love the comedy of it. It's awesome.
02:19:17
Speaker
um Paper Mario Thousand Year Door remake. That hit me. That's my first game that I ever owned. So like that hits home for me. like Really nostalgic. So loved it and hit what I needed. I wish they could have not done 30 FPS. But I think that was it. It bothered me more than I thought it was going to. But it's whatever. um But yeah, it still still hit just the same.
02:19:44
Speaker
um Or in the Will the Wisp was another game I played this year, i not coming out this year, but I had just a black backlog that I still need to get through. um I don't know if I have a fifth one. I guess, like I could say, Overwatch and Marvel Rivals, I guess. um I play them a lot, but I don't know if I would usually put them on my top five.
02:20:06
Speaker
um I played Marwile as some. um My frustration is I can't play it because my computer won't run it well. They updated it and now I can't run it because I get into a match and it stays 99% and I won't get into the match to pick a character until it's been like like almost the end of the match so I have lost kind of my interest in it I was starting to enjoy it a bit and then that happened and I'm like I'm I just went back to Overwatch and I kind of lost interest so I don't know that that's kind of a computer diff I guess but if Overwatch can run on my computer even though it's 60 FPS locked and still kind of frame like some but I can playable
02:20:50
Speaker
then that game should be able to play. So anyway, that's a little of like rant. um But yeah, that's my. Sounds like a hardware issue, honestly. Yeah, I mean, sure, it probably is. All right, Zach. OK, so ah I need to ask. Do I have to have played the game for the first time this year?
02:21:19
Speaker
No, no, you get it. No, because I'm an old man. I play a lot of the same games over and over again. ah So. Yars Rising is fine, but it's OST slaps, so I'll put it there just because I vibe to the OST a lot. Right.
02:21:40
Speaker
ah
02:21:43
Speaker
Red Ninja End of Honor.
02:21:48
Speaker
Which is a game I know none of you have heard of. Nope. It's an old PS2 stealth game where he plays a Kunoichi. Okay. It's actually cool. It's clunky, but it's fun. Xenosaga. I've been playing Xenosaga. It's good. Yeah. Every 2D Castlevania game.
02:22:16
Speaker
because I've played the shit out of all of them. My favorite ones, obviously, Rondo of Blood. That's the best Castlevania game. Fight me, people who like Symphony of the Night.
02:22:29
Speaker
ah For a game that did come out this year, Relink, like the Granblue game, really good. It's like a faster pace monster hunter almost. So it's really fun.
02:22:44
Speaker
Uh, Dan, I think that's enough. I'm not sure every Castlevania, every Castlevania, every Castlevania game makes this, uh, yeah, that that packs ah your list up very well. They're all good except for Simon's quest. Don't play that one. Good to know. Uh, as for me, well, I've played too many games this year.
02:23:14
Speaker
At this exact moment, I have played 155 games um with the goal to be 156 because 49 of those games came out in 2024 and I want to have an even 50 games that came out in 2024. So I will not be ranking my top five games as of yet, as I still have one game to play for my list. ah But You'll be able to find out what my top five games are live on stream at twitch dot.tv slash 20 game very soon. um Just you i you should go follow the Twitch channel to be notified when I go live and when I'll make sure the tier three sub you don't have to do that. that
02:23:58
Speaker
ah But you check that out and there will be a YouTube video coming out in early January ah or by the end of January, at least ah to regarding that as well for y'all to watch. ah With that, that is going to do it for season eight here in the game lounge. Thank you all for coming on today. Yeah, I was surprised you invited me. I feel like every time this happens, bad things happen.
02:24:28
Speaker
but So, i you know, that's why you're willing to be put back in the basement. I do not put him in the basement. It is supposed to do it. We know it's OK. But the the don't do not encourage.
02:24:48
Speaker
Where let's start starting with this and going down the list. ah Where can we find you guys on the Internet? Yeah, for sure. Um, Twitch, Twitter, YouTube, the mysterious 11, you'll find me somewhere in there. My logo is just the number 11. Um, I don't really use any other medias that much. I'm trying to get into streaming more, but, uh, I'm married and don't have a lot of time, but, uh, yeah, if you're interested on there. All right. Ninja frog.
02:25:20
Speaker
Uh, yeah, uh, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch, Twitch,
02:25:42
Speaker
thats so so what is it forty four eighty eight forty eight eighty four
02:25:49
Speaker
And Twitch, I asked And the trash man so you can find me in Tony's basement most of the time I don't even have a basement anymore. Oh But it was basement my head. I don't know. It ain't mine. Well, that's a problem for sure. Oh shit in Tony's future basement.
02:26:15
Speaker
Uh, so online, you can find me on YouTube, actual trash, PhD, uh, Twitch, same thing. You'll never see me streaming because I don't. ah You could also find him behind your, uh, local practitioner. He has a PhD in trash. Yeah. If you need someone to tell you if it's garbage or not, that that's what my doctorates in.
02:26:41
Speaker
I will tell you if it's trash, you can pay me several thousand dollars to do that for you. Uh, you can find me, thousands you can find me on Tony's discord or I will make fun of you. like No questions asked.
02:27:02
Speaker
All right. Yeah, that's about it. I'm good to know, Zach. Great to know. And of course, you can find me at Tony's Game Lounge everywhere else. ah Twitch, Twitter, Blue Sky, Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. um Be sure to follow me there to find out what I'm doing.
02:27:17
Speaker
New YouTube video soon, and we are currently in Seven Days to Die December for the rest of this month of December. And then come the new year, we'll be playing Ace of Turning Investigations 1 and 2 and Pokémon XD, Gale of Darkness side by side. So look forward to all of that. I'd like to thank Mist, Ninja Frog, and the Trash Man for coming out today. And I'd also like to thank by a long list of guests and other team members, ah starting with the guests that came on this year um in order for season. Does that mean Ninja Frog's getting a shout out twice? Possibly. Dude. Nice.
02:27:55
Speaker
Of course, since we kicked off, I'd like to thank Hex Speed Runs, ZinnSpanish, MatoyaSR, RedPandaGamer, RPG, again,
02:28:20
Speaker
i Mr. Stu, Benjamin Lee, Emerald, and Don Asar, DTrader1, DJ OrangeMan, and MinnoTories are all appearing as guests on the podcast this season. I'd also like to thank ah my reporters, my Hoyle reporter, again, Sunnello Fellow, my esports reporter, again, SirWigglesTheGreat, and my Apex reporter, Mist. Thank you all again. I'd also like to thank Jon Flatters, TheVoice,
02:28:50
Speaker
of the podcast that you hear every week alongside mine at the beginning and in in between every segment. I'd like to thank you all for for listening to this podcast, supporting this podcast, and liking and sharing the podcast, which you should do right now on whatever platform you are listening to this to. And we will be back in the new year sometime between February and March with new episodes and season nine, and also potentially a new editor down the line. Thank you everyone for listening to the podcast, except for you, Stuart.
02:29:32
Speaker
oh We'll see you guys in the new year, next time here in the Game Lounge. Bye! Goodbye! a Please don't put me back in there. Thanks for listening to this week's episode of Tony's Game Lounge. New episodes release every two weeks. Make sure to follow, like and share the podcast on your streaming service and follow us on Instagram, YouTube, Twitch and X.