Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Log On Games GOTY 2023!
69 Plays11 months ago
Follow us everywhere here: https://linktr.ee/logongames Use code logongames at zencastr.com/pricing for 30% off your paid subscription for a month! It's time to start your podcast the easy way!
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Humor
00:00:13
Speaker
what's up everybody welcome to the log on games podcast also i didn't check my mic is it is it coming through here i can hear you it piqued when you yelled what's up everybody it always yells it always peaks my own see if i can turn this down
00:00:30
Speaker
Anyways, welcome to the Log on Games podcast, everybody. We're professional podcasters. We do this for a living and we get paid. Not true. By who?
Game of the Year Episode Introduction
00:00:40
Speaker
Um, this is our official game of the year episode. I was doing the tallies while I was waiting to pick up my wife from work. Wow. So I have the numbers. You're the only one who knows. I'm the only one who knows. Oh boy. And it is close. Um, I will tell you, uh, how exactly how close when we get to it here in about two seconds. Um, so let's blow through the interest. We're going to do our game of the years. Um,
Podcast Format and Social Media
00:01:09
Speaker
and then we're also going to do like,
00:01:10
Speaker
our favorites list. And if we have any shout outs games that, you know, didn't make it or games that we thought were good this year that deserved a little time in the sun. I agree on this episode with me today. We have at X user X Matt at ruffle on my waffles Carlos and at brown berserker Andrew.
00:01:40
Speaker
Okay. Okay. Okay. We're blowing through the intro today. We didn't get to the leads. Look at your sound away from you playing that is just a solid way. It's not even a way.
00:01:57
Speaker
Oh my God. My wife is going to hate
Podcast Availability and Sponsorship
00:02:00
Speaker
you when she listens. Audio listeners, I'm sorry. We have a metering system, so it may may or not. Wow. It sounds normal. Yeah, it sounds normal. Sure it does. I mean, it doesn't now, but it will.
00:02:13
Speaker
So for the record, Matt, a thick boy is is your brother, not me, with the kazoo kazoo. Oh, fair. Yeah. If your kazoo was as loud as. I'm a little. That'd be a kazoo to your brother's a little thick today. OK. OK. Well, like I said,
00:02:41
Speaker
We want to get to the meat of it because this could be a long one. No one really knows, but we also started late. So I'm trying not to, because Andrew has the street corners to work tonight. So welcome everybody to the log on games podcast. This is a weekly show in which our hosts discuss a variety of gaming news topics from new games, big announcements and more.
00:03:01
Speaker
New episodes upload every Friday on Anywhere's that you want to stream a podcast at. You can watch us at youtube.com slash at log on games. If you're watching us over on YouTube, go hit that subscribe button. If you are not, you can follow us at log on games pretty much anywhere. The link tree in our bio, it'll point you to our YouTube channel. Please go over there and give us a subscription.
00:03:25
Speaker
That's not a question. It's free subscription. It's free. I know it sounds like it's not free, but it is free. Um, if you really want to pay for a subscription, uh, just shoot us a message and I'll, and I'll send you my, uh, cash app, Venmo PayPal, Zelle. Only fans.
Discussing Game of the Year List Format
00:03:43
Speaker
Only fans. We'll start a Patreon and all the money will go towards Andrew. So he doesn't have to work street corners anymore.
00:03:55
Speaker
We are brought to you by zencaster.com slash pricing. That is where we record all of our podcasts at. We're doing it right now. We are so inside of Zencaster guys. Oh my gosh. We are right now. You can film audio. You can film video. You can film up to 4K. You can edit everything. You can do all the production side in here. You can upload it here and it'll shoot it out to all the places like Spotify, Apple Music, et cetera.
00:04:20
Speaker
Um, it does everything and it's all browser based and makes life really easier because it records locally So if there's an internet hiccup or
Top 5 Games of the Year Discussion Begins
00:04:28
Speaker
anything, it uh, it really doesn't matter that much or like even when we did our game awards Uh reactions to the game awards when we watched the whole show Matthew's file was like
00:04:41
Speaker
It just said unknown. When I downloaded it, it said it was like super small and it was not because it's like a three hour show and I was like, oh, this is not good. I was like, all right, we'll see what happens and download it. Perfect. It was just perfect. And I was like, thank you, Zincaster. Yeah, you can go to Zincaster.com slash pricing and use our code log on games to get 30% off your first month of any Zincaster pay plan. So do that. Nice and real.
00:05:10
Speaker
All right. So you guys can tell me if you want to do this differently. How do you guys normally do it?
00:05:19
Speaker
I don't, to tell you the truth, last year was the first year we did it and I don't remember. I remember. I eat from the tip and then go towards the crust. Yeah. I was going to do the large game, like our, our game awards or our, our top five list of all of us accumulated and then do that and we can talk about that. And then after that we can go into.
00:05:41
Speaker
our favorites and stuff like that. Cause I think like for my list, for example, it's pretty much all of my favorites except for one. So if we were to do that first, you would kind of know what's going to happen, I think. Although most of my games are left off the list. I think if we, if the way we did it last year is if I don't remember if we did three or five last year, I think we did five last year too. Um, basically we all went around and gave our fives and then all went around and gave our fours and then went that way. And that way you kind of hold the suspense till the end.
00:06:12
Speaker
OK, OK, so this is going off the official list because I think before we started the podcast, I think I told you I have a personal list, but then I have a.
00:06:25
Speaker
community or what impacted the game industry in 2023. I have two lists. I combined into one list. Okay. I did too. I combined into one. And so there are things that definitely are lower than they would if it was my personal list. Yeah, I can just run off on my one list though. My official games list. I have three lists. Wow. What? Okay. I have my favorites. I have what I think is the most deserving. And then I have the one where I merged the two.
00:06:54
Speaker
the one that I used. Okay. Yeah. And I think that's kind of the way we should go is that kind of like idea of somewhere in between, right? It's our list. We're not supposed to copy the world. Our list comrade. There's a personal bias that's supposed to be involved, but also objectively
00:07:15
Speaker
You know, if if a Call of Duty game was one of the best games of the year, I would you have to say that to a degree, even if you don't play it. Right. So that kind of thing. OK, well, no Call of Duty on my list. You're making me want to switch stuff. But this but but also like for me, my number six that just missed my list is probably my personal second favorite game of the year. OK, we're doing top five, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, five.
00:07:45
Speaker
Yeah, I had like a couple of shout outs I wanted to mention, like we mentioned some of those which we won't we'll call out later. So. In the all of our combined list together. We have a tie for number five, OK, at five points, OK, we have a tie for number four at six points. Number three has seven points.
00:08:12
Speaker
Number two has 11 and number one has 12. So, it's spicy. Last year, I think it was like Elden Ring above and beyond. Yeah, I'm not sure where we're going this year, honestly. It's a little spicy. It's a little spicy. I'm saying the tiebreaker is broken by the game that gets the highest vote.
00:08:38
Speaker
Most often, like if someone I just combined for the ties, I just combined them. So like five is going to just have two. Four is going to have two. Oh, we have three, two and one. Well, the tech there's no time for number one. So I think we shouldn't forges have to then. And that's five games. It should. But I say you do it that way. You know, it's too late. What are you going to talk about? Yeah, I'll stick to what I sent you. But if you want to talk about personals, I can dip into that. Mm hmm. OK.
00:09:08
Speaker
So do we want to just do the list now or do we want to go through everybody's? I say we go through what was submitted. No, yeah, you don't want to. Yeah, you don't hear this till the end. Yeah, do the so our submitted list are as follows. I'll start. And then we'll go. We'll go around. Carlos, Andrew and Matthew access the way I have it on my screen. And that's what matters in life. You know, I agree. My number five was the one that I couldn't leave off. And you all might be mad at me for this.
00:09:37
Speaker
But the rest of my list is my favorites. And then I was like, I can't not have this game on. So I have Baldur's Gate at number five for me. Okay. Because I had to have, I didn't play it, but I have to give it the respect. You know what I mean? I did the same thing last year. I didn't play Elden Ring, but I was like, it needs to be on the list at least. Yeah. Can I go next?
In-depth Game Analysis and Rankings
00:10:02
Speaker
Sure. My number five is Baldur's gate. And so that's the only reason I wanted to go next. Um, and the reason being, I have played it a whole, maybe four hours now at this point. So I got a $50 steam card for Christmas and it's on sale for like 53 bucks on steam. So boom. Yeah. And so far has not grabbed me at all, but also I've watched, I've watched the beginning of the game too. And it didn't grab me either. It was just one of those like,
00:10:32
Speaker
There's been so much good said about it. It's it's worth the shot. You know what I mean? And so I I plan on trying to get into it, get farther. I talked to our friend Colby actually yesterday. And I think for me personally, the best way for me to go through that is to do it like co-op or with a couple of people.
00:10:52
Speaker
And so it may go that route in the future. But I was thinking it's too. It had too big of an impact on the industry for me to leave it off the list, even though so far I don't think it's a top two, three, four. I mean, get on you for like, you know, at least giving it a go. You know, I know we've talked about previous episodes and like, you know, like it's not something that's kind of a preference, but I mean, you still, you know, just about.
00:11:22
Speaker
unless the thing about it is it should be a game that I like based off the mechanics and the shooting for like that should be a game that I like. And so when I watched the song, I don't know, maybe, maybe it was just.
00:11:36
Speaker
I didn't pay too much attention to it until after all the hype. And so my expectations were crazy high for the beginning of the game or something. I don't know. That's fair. And so, you know, hopefully you get, you get invested in a character and get, you know, 10, 20, 30 hours into it and I'll be in. So we'll see.
00:11:53
Speaker
Last night I was making my list. We were watching YouTube and it was Elijah Wood and... Oh yeah, I saw some of that. Samwise Genji. Yeah, some of the Lord of the Rings cast people that did like a little video with the studio playing the game. And after their video Emily was like, I want to play this game. And I was like, okay, I need to add it to my list because that's impossible.
00:12:16
Speaker
Um, Andrew, you're number five. All right. My number five is Alan week two. So for the record, my list only has one game of actually played, but I actually want to play all of these games. And out of the five games, this is the order I put them in.
00:12:33
Speaker
So the reason I put Alan Wake 2 was because of all the discussions of Alan Wake 2 and the creative things it does and the memorable moments and all that and as a fan of like the Resident Evil series and especially like RE4, I had heard that Alan Wake 2
00:12:48
Speaker
dips more into like Resident Evil than it did in the first game. So I like you guys said, you know, this is a list that like we're putting together ourselves. And I felt it needed to go somewhere on this list, but it's not enough for me to put it any higher. But this is this is me, you know, giving it its due. So number five. Was it the dancing number at the game awards that really won you over?
00:13:15
Speaker
no it's the it's the it's the survival horror dual gameplay uh elements that everything about it sounds cool and i still haven't played it but it's enough to make me want to play it the gameplay is very resident evil like from trying to get
00:13:33
Speaker
the things that you want in your pack, you know, and then like at some point you're like, OK, well, I have to choose between a grenade and more ammo, handgun ammo now. You know what I mean? So you're like, dang it. What's funny is I had no interest in the first game, but all the talk of this game makes me want to play this game. Yeah, right. Yeah.
00:13:53
Speaker
Carlos, your number five. Well, my number five, I became a man in that moment. I channeled my inner ass to cross on that one. Nice. Pretty good. I appreciate that.
00:14:10
Speaker
My number five, I went a very different route. I chose this game because I think just for the genre of gaming, it certainly gotten a lot of attention that I've just been seeing. I put Street Fighter six. Okay. Okay.
00:14:29
Speaker
I just I thought you know where where it stands this year compared to I guess anything else in this genre like it it's all people really talk about um and uh and yeah I think it's it's nice to see a game a fighting game get a lot of praise because they are kind of
00:14:50
Speaker
Sometimes I view them similar to like certain like sports like Madden titles or something like if he's going to re-release like every year. But yeah, I don't know. I think this one kind of stood out.
00:15:06
Speaker
Yeah. Everybody from like the fighting game community is like, this should be a game of the year. Like they're, it's that good or whatever to them. So, and it got, it was at what, like a 92 on Metacritic last time we checked, which fighting games is like, don't do that anymore. So, uh, not even dragon ball fighters. That's fighting game of the decade. Something. Um, let's be honest. It really should be the street fighter mobile game. There should be a pair I'm loving that. Wow.
00:15:35
Speaker
He's the, this is like the number one fan of that game in the world. It's phenomenal. I'm not the number one fan because the amount of money they charge you to do anything on that game is astronomical. So I don't do, I don't do that. And I know there are some people out there that do that because I played against them. So I'm not, I'm not the number one fan, but it's a great game. My number four was Hogwarts, the legacy.
00:16:05
Speaker
because it's really, really good. And on a normal year, it probably would win game of the year. Be honest with you. What is a normal year? Like last year, when like, um, what was the last year? Was Elden Ring not last year or was it the year before that? Elden Ring was last year, but like for the rest of like the nominees, it was like, uh,
00:16:30
Speaker
the cat game or whatever that one was called. I'm going to be honest or straight. I'm going to be honest. Stuff like that. I totally, I forget about the game again. And I felt like that one should have been on my list for sure. But damn. That's not my personal. That's not my personal. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good, it's a good game. So just so I don't even have to mention my favorites.
00:16:55
Speaker
Everything on my list from here on out is the same as my favorites list I put Baldur's Gate is number five on my favorites. I put spider-man 2 is number five So I had to knock out spider-man 2 for Baldur's Gate. That's how much. Okay Now the spider-man 2 wasn't isn't a good game but
00:17:14
Speaker
Spider-man we all know it was a bit of me like when a new Pokemon game comes out, you know, yeah, you know you're getting But yeah, I put Hogwarts legacy is my number four loved it Me and Emily were matching our Ravenclaw sweater. She wore a Hogwarts sweater the day after Christmas for Hogwarts other Christmas. Yeah Hufflepuff. Sorry. Yeah, so we As we
00:17:40
Speaker
through the holiday season, because I guess what? The first Harry Potter is a Christmas movie, technically. Yeah. Right. But that whole series makes me want to watch them in the winter specifically. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. For sure. Interesting. Cool. But we have it on some other people's lists. So I may talk about it more then. But, Matthew, you're number four. My number four, you just mentioned I put Spitterman two.
00:18:08
Speaker
Spider-Man 2 that's just like Yeah, it's just I mean I think the only knock that people have on that game is just the non spider-man missions that you do Other than that, it's just kind of like
00:18:24
Speaker
not not even just more of Spider-Man, but it's like a better version of what the previous one was, which was already phenomenal and was up for game of the year. So just to let me just if you want a Spider-Man game. Like superhero game, good superhero games have not.
00:18:44
Speaker
always been easy to come by, like the Arkham series was great. Um, the old Spider-Man games, not great. And they, I mean, next year's game of the year, Suicide Squad, you know, a hundred percent, a hundred percent by waiting on Wolverine. Um,
00:18:59
Speaker
But some people aren't writing anymore, but that's true. I think I think superhero games are just done best when you do them. Like the single player epic story like they like they've done with Spider-Man is it's phenomenal. Great game. All right. Let me pop in at two quick questions. Who's beaten all three of them? Is it just you, Andrew? Have you been all three? Yes. Oh, you're talking. Yeah. The first one, Miles. And yes, I heard on a podcast, somebody said that Spider-Man two has the weakest story out of the three.
00:19:27
Speaker
That's not true. OK. OK. I just want to know. So every game that's come out, I've liked better than the last one. OK. Yeah. So I liked Miles more than the first Spider-Man and I like Spider-Man 2 more than both of those. OK. I was curious. The gameplay of Spider-Man 2 for me is what makes it like number five on my favorites list. The story is is fine and there's definitely parts of the story that you're like, whoa, but like it's Venom.
00:19:56
Speaker
And so we saw from the trailers from the Game Awards last year, what was it? The Summer Game Fest stuff this year, whatever. We saw Spider-Man, Venom, big long trailer where he's like, we have Angry Peter and he's like, oh, I'm going to get him. Because I'm 19 inches. I have 19 inches of Venom in me and I'm now I'm mad.
00:20:18
Speaker
And I remember being like I hope it's not that for a good portion of the game and it was in the game for sure It wasn't I don't want to spoil it if you hadn't played it But just whole angry Peter. I was like, all right, we get it. Like I've seen this a thousand million times I heard miles carries that game He carries I mean he's he was my favorite you can when you can switch back between the two I just prefer miles game. Yeah, it's not
00:20:46
Speaker
Uh, not that Peter's bad and then, but half of Pete, the game, your venom and it as Peter. So, you know, like have that skill tree going on. Um, but then yeah, all, some people like the story missions that aren't Spider-Man stuff.
00:21:02
Speaker
Hated him in the last game and I watched the interview with him when he was like, well we wanted we didn't want to get rid of them But we wanted to make them like like we want to make the Mary J stuff We wanted to make her feel like her own superhero and I was like, I'm sorry. I didn't realize this was Mary Jane, too And also she doesn't have a super she's not a superhero and it's not just her there's a business with with with other people and
00:21:28
Speaker
that are the same way. Like there's a whole mission where you're riding a bike for like 45 minutes, it seems like. Why am I doing this? Please stop. I didn't get a boy in his blob. No, the paper game where you chunking papers, like what is happening? Paper boy. Like all those really irked me, but it is what it is. I was like, I turned into a speed run gamer when those missions came during those missions. Yeah.
00:21:57
Speaker
um all right andrew you're number four all right so two hours ago i actually messaged andrew and i said i want to switch my three and four so my new number four is resident evil four all right so i've played the original i haven't played the remake but
00:22:16
Speaker
I felt that that game because of how monumental the original was and somehow they took that game based on what I've heard. They've taken that game and then like plus tend it somehow. It was deserving to be on the wrist, the wrist, the list in some way, shape or form. So I had to put it on here. And yes, I do still want to play it and I will eventually. I played it.
00:22:43
Speaker
And it's really good. It didn't make my list, but it's just one of those years where it's just, it is really, really good. Part of my top three favorite games of all time is just Resident Evil 4 in general. There's like 19 versions of it now, but yeah. I mean, they did everything that you would want them to do to modernize it. Even like to like a little side quest and little collectibles here and there and stuff like that.
00:23:12
Speaker
Gameplay feels fantastic. The story is still great. And a little wacky, you know what I mean? A little wacky. A good kind of wacky. What's funny is the wacky side is always what turned me off about it, to be honest. It's still a little wacky. It's not, I wouldn't say it. The whole castle stuff, all that stuff that was like... I mean, you can still suit people. Just weird. You can still kick them across the freaking map. The reason, if I had to give it a knock, it would be they did too good of a job.
00:23:42
Speaker
Wow. Okay. Like the first times you played Resident Evil 4, you're like, wow, this is really good. And that's what this felt like. It felt like I hadn't played Resident Evil 4 in a long, long time.
00:23:54
Speaker
And like it was as good as I remember it being, even though it was a remake. So it kind of felt like, oh, yeah, I've played this before. Yeah. Yeah. Even though it's like completely redone. That's what always makes like these discussions hard, because when people are like, I mean, it is a good game and it is a good remake, but it's something we've already seen before. So it's like, is it is it worthy enough to be on a list of like modern day games? Yeah, I mean, I would I wanted
00:24:23
Speaker
Final Fantasy 16 to be the game of the awards nominated and like nominee. But I wasn't one of these people that are mad that Resident Evil 4 was on there. Like, yeah, it's definitely way it's a remake. Like, it's a brand new game for the most part. So. Yeah. Yeah. Here's a random question. If this was Resident Evil 8 or 9 or whatever, 8's the next one, right? 9? Yeah, 9. Yeah, 8 was the. Yeah, got it. If this was Resident Evil 9 and it had never come out as 4.
00:24:53
Speaker
It was just this game. So you don't play it and think, oh, it's really making you think, oh, this is a new Resident Evil game. Does it go higher on your list? Yes. I think it probably stays the same just because in this, in this year that of craziness probably stays the same for me.
00:25:09
Speaker
I think for me, I haven't tried that VR mode yet. You know, maybe that's a game changer. If I try the VR mode one day, we'll have to come back to this podcast and redo the whole thing. Take the video down. That's very uploaded. Carlos, you're number four. My number four is I put Alan Wake to for my number four. I
00:25:35
Speaker
I really I started like looking more into some of the after the game awards like looking into a lot of the games. I played some of the first Alan Wake. I've got like some like the random DLC.
00:25:49
Speaker
But it does have that really good, like, I don't know, American horror, I guess, style that that works really well and has a good cinematic feel to it. I love a game that kind of like I I don't have to be
00:26:13
Speaker
too involved, but I like letting the story kind of play itself out and being entertained. And so I thought it did a really, really good job of giving that feel. Yeah. And it's also like, it has... It's got FMV and everything.
00:26:33
Speaker
If you haven't played the past games, one of the characters is completely oblivious to what's going on as well. So you can kind of just learn as she learns and then it ends up making sense. Which is really cool. It's a really cool way of introducing the game without just throwing you in there. And then there's a massive musical number that repeats the whole story for you again, just so you get it for sure.
00:27:06
Speaker
Um. It. I will say this. OK, I don't like to to me was a better Resident Evil game than Resident Evil 4 was. Ooh, if that makes sense. That's blasphemous. It's just I can't remember. So, Matthew, have you played that? I was like, you know, I've watched. We're splitting hairs here, though. Yeah, I didn't. That's a bold statement. It's like one to 10 out of 10 and ones and nine point five out of 10. You know, it's like it's not that much better.
00:27:35
Speaker
But I, I did not like the first Alan wake. And so this one didn't intrigue me at all. I have watched a little bit just to see what it's about. And I, I, I still very different than the first completely, completely different game. So Andrew, is your sway because, uh, Alan wake is completely brand new from front to back and had more surprises versus something that's vintage and it was never changed. It had those beat for those, those part points in the game.
00:28:05
Speaker
there's more than one part of the game that's like a holy crap moment. Yeah, the musical part of it is that we're just like, it's got that it factor, you know, you're like, oh, you thought you knew what this game was. Now you don't know what just happened. And then you're like, that won't happen again. And then it happens again. And it keeps happening. You're like, you think you had the game figured out where you're like, oh, this is just like a little game, whatever. And then things happen. You're like, holy crap, this is
Final Game Rankings and Reflections
00:28:30
Speaker
insanity.
00:28:31
Speaker
Again, I have not played, but I have watched probably most of that game, if not all of it. Now, at this point, I hate the musical part of it. I hate it so much. Everyone listening knows you hate fun. We get it. Well, I hate. Let me tell you this. I hate musicals in general. I hate it when you ask somebody a question and they don't either. I don't like it. I'm going to tie my shoe, but they have to sing it to you instead. I loathe that. I cannot stand it. So it was not for me for sure. Don't watch Bollywood.
00:29:00
Speaker
Deal. We're at number three right now, right? Yeah. My number three is Alan Wake 2. Well done. I feel a little bit like a hypocrite though because my three, two, and one all kind of have technical problems to an extent. Like even when I played Alan Wake 2, I played on Xbox, the audio was just like,
00:29:27
Speaker
a half second off the entire time. In some scenes it was really, really bad. And I looked it up and they were like, yeah, it's just, if you play on an Xbox and you're trying to, like, you're just going to have this problem. I tried it on Dolby. I tried it on Dolby Atmos. I tried it on, uh, the regular standard stereo, which is what it's like. Yeah. You just need to put it on standard stereo until they fix it. And I was like, I played the game late too.
00:29:52
Speaker
You know, now that you say that Andrew does look like when you talk, your audio is delayed by like a second. Maybe my whole life delayed by a second. Apparently, as you say, supposedly the first two chapters are like that for everybody, like PC, PlayStation and Xbox. But then the rest of the game on Xbox for some reason is still
00:30:18
Speaker
Like that so that was really really annoying um, otherwise it may be higher but the rest the game in and of itself was just like Do you know of a patch that's come out yet? Maybe I have no idea It was just it was one of these uh, it was a refreshing game I should say like we've talked about music and stuff off the podcast. It's like for me I love it when an album is
00:30:44
Speaker
like gives you palette cleansers, I should say. You get like the first two or three songs of the album, you know, like, all right, we know what this is. And then song four is like something completely different. And then song seven is something completely different again. And you're like, it keeps me interested. That's what Ellen Lake was.
00:31:01
Speaker
Like you'll have a chapter that's like, this is to keep you invested in the game. This is something different. So you're not doing the same thing over and over and over. Like Resident Evil four, you're playing the same thing for 15 hours. I can get that. Yeah. Um, so I made it nice, but that's Matthew, your number three, my number three is a little game that I think I've missed it before. I think we'd have gotten a lot more hype towards gaming your stuff here to come out later. I have Diablo four.
00:31:31
Speaker
Oh, the devil. The fourth one. The fourth devil. The fourth one. The devil.
00:31:40
Speaker
Uh, no, I think game, as a matter of fact, uh, again, talking to a friend yesterday, um, I saw, I think it was Greg Miller from kind of funny that tweeted like a week ago or something, like played Diablo four for the first time in a long time over the weekend. And I think I'm hooked again. It was just kind of like that. Uh, and I can totally see myself going back and getting hooked again, especially with like the new seasons and stuff. If they come out with a season, you know, but.
00:32:08
Speaker
It suffers from the same thing that many of those live service games come on. Like you just need tons of content to keep people engaged continuously. So I can see myself going back to it and even going back to it soon. So I would go back to play a different class to go through the other classes.
00:32:24
Speaker
Yeah, I honestly think that the biggest thing that would do it was I think like if they would double their classes, like the number, like have like 10 classes you could choose from. I mean, I think I think, yeah, 100 percent. I think games of that style should have basically I think you should have Warlock Hunter Titan double the class options as you allow players in your party.
00:32:49
Speaker
I like their MMOs that do that. And I like that. It's really cool. Yeah. I just like being able to run across people that you go, Oh, you're way unique because there's, you know, we're not all choosing from the same five options or whatever. So, yeah, I was talking to a friend of ours this past week because on like your PlayStation wrapped or whatever, we both had it on there. And he was like, I didn't realize how about this much. And I was like, we played it a lot. Like the campaign, the campaign in and of itself is long.
00:33:19
Speaker
And then whatever, I think it was at world tier four or five, whatever. Like when the game launched the highest, you could get to like, I remember I grinded for a lot. Yeah. But grinding too. Yeah.
00:33:33
Speaker
It's, Destiny is the reason it didn't make my list because Destiny's ruined me, you know? Where it's just like, the seasonal model I'm not a fan of because I can't take the character that I just spent like 100 hours on and keep playing it, which upsets me. But then it, but it became like, like in Destiny it's a first person shooter, so it's different. Like there's things happening all over the place. And Diablo is like, okay, I have my two builds. I walk into a room, I'm going to press the same six buttons.
00:34:03
Speaker
And then I'm going to, as soon as like that one ability refreshes, it started again and I just clear out everything. I did that for hours and I was like, okay, I've done it. And like Carlos said, like I would, if I was going to do it again, I would do an all completely different class and you could go that way and get like a whole lot more life out of the game and stuff.
00:34:22
Speaker
But that first season for me, like just killed it. And it's very possible that like a year from now we go back. Absolutely. It's a completely different game, which is, I mean, to be fair, is what happened with Destiny 2, which the game came out and was like, all right, we did it.
00:34:37
Speaker
But if you came back two years later, it was like a completely different monster. So yeah.
Emotional Game Experiences
00:34:43
Speaker
And it did the one thing that I think a live service game has to do in order to have a hot villain, you know, heck yeah. It has to do for me to jump in at the beginning and you have, like you mentioned a minute ago, you have to have a long campaign.
00:34:59
Speaker
like i do not want to play your eight to ten hour campaign and have to wait for more content like that campaign took a hot minute to do everything and there's a ton of side missions and it was it really was a ton of content for a game yeah if it's not long don't put it in front of me that's he said it not me that's what my wife says
00:35:20
Speaker
But now that you mentioned it, though, like I now thinking about it, I didn't finish all the side quests. So there is a lot more for a lot back and doing the same as a ton. I started at first was I in the area was clearing out as many side quests as I could. But as a map guy and just a big map to it. Yeah, each map. Yeah, I completed the map.
00:35:39
Speaker
Yeah. Like after a while, I'm like, Oh, I don't know if I can finish all these. Like, you know, it's playing through, but yeah, there's a lot to do in the game. I did. I did the exact same thing. I was like, let's clear everything out. And then the more you play, you're like.
00:35:51
Speaker
OK, let's just beat the story and then we'll come back. We'll come back and then I don't know. Almost max level and only half the maps cleared. We should probably. I can't remember if I said this to Carlos, but when I first started playing it, I said I wanted to do like every side quest per region before moving to another one. Oh, that didn't that didn't happen. No, that didn't. Andrew. You're number three.
00:36:17
Speaker
Alright, so another game that I haven't played that I really want to play and proof that I want to play it. It was because on Black Friday I bought Spider-Man Remastered and Miles Morales. So my number three is Spider-Man 2. I would say this game I had the most FOMO out of any game that released this year.
00:36:35
Speaker
because people are talking about how cool this side quest was or this side quest was or something crazy happened in the story and the set pieces are like uncharted on crack. And I'm like, oh my God, I want to experience this, but I haven't beaten the other two. So I once again, I felt it. I feel like if I did play it, it would be deserving to be this high on the list. So even though I haven't played it, I think it was fitting that I put it here. So.
00:37:05
Speaker
Flip Flap. Obviously, there's pretty much any costume from any Spider-Man ever is pretty much in one or all of these games. Which ones you want? Well, I also heard that there were ones that people loved in the first game that aren't in this game and people were disappointed about that. That's what I've heard.
00:37:31
Speaker
You may have heard wrong. I want to say like literally everything's into maybe they're not unlocked at the beginning or something. OK, so the thing. So because I haven't played any of them, the one I want the most is the Spider-Verse one because like the frame rates different on the character, whereas the rest of the game is like 60 plus frames. So you can look cool. You can also turn that off because that's that's what I did. I used the Miles Spider-Verse one for about half of the game, but I just turned off the frame rate thing after a while.
00:37:59
Speaker
Well, it's funny you said that because I was going to be like, who would be so lame to do that? But then you just. It's also they also have the noir Spider-Man. Oh, it does the same thing, man. So I use that one for a little bit, too. But the spider pig.
00:38:15
Speaker
I don't think Spider-Pig's in there. That would be hilarious. As an old school Spider-Man comic book reader, I want to see the iron suit, which is like it's like the silver and black. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Because I used to have the comic book when that first appeared. So the way the suits are in the second game is like you have the iron suit in its normal color way. But usually all the suits also have three other.
00:38:38
Speaker
That's what I've heard. That's what I've heard. So it can get it can get spicy. Nice spicy. Still want to play. Carlos, you're number three. My number three, I went with tears. Okay. Don't let it trick up. I went with three. Bro, you heard me.
00:39:00
Speaker
I went with tears of the kingdom. Yes. Okay. Like you can talk about Resident Evil four, right? Okay. And it is a remake and it's made lists. Okay. This game. Yes, it is like breath of the wild. I'm about to buy it.
00:39:19
Speaker
They have expanded the map. They gave it to entirely new layers and the building mechanic for that game, like ridiculous, ridiculous. The things that you can do in that game, you know, it's it's a brilliant feat of game development for me.
00:39:41
Speaker
When you give players the creativity, almost like, you know, here's our engine. Here's assets that just they all do something unique, but we're going to scatter them and you do something with them like they all have unique properties and they can work together somehow. But we're just going to let you figure that out.
00:40:02
Speaker
And, you know, they would have never have thought, you know, players would come up with the things they came up with. So to me, that was a really big part of what made the game really interesting. But also, yeah, just being able to add like a whole sky part to it, an underground part. Like now you have a reason to build something that like can fly way up in the sky. I cannot explain how excited I am. And this. This could be end up disappointing me. Let's just say how it is. It's Nintendo.
00:40:32
Speaker
for a new Switch or a Switch 2 so I can play Tears of the Kingdom and Pokemon Scarlet and Violet at like, you know, a solid 30 frames, 40 frames, you know, 120 frames. Like, I'm really excited because I sold my Switch because I just never touched it.
00:40:50
Speaker
So there is a back catalog for me. That's basically right now just Pokemon Scarlet and Violet, which is the reason I sold the switch because I hate like it ran so terribly. I was like, I heard Grace to Pokemon fans everywhere, even though the game is apparently freaking amazing. But I'm really excited for a new switch and hopefully to play Tears of the Kingdom at like a solid frame rate. I'm really I hope that I hope if nothing else, they're like,
00:41:18
Speaker
And we're boosting the frame rates to all of our old games when you play it on here. I'm like, have you heard the rumors that the two is like running at like what we're running at at PS5 and like Xbox Series X? Like, it's crazy if that's true. It should. It should be the case. It has to catch up. We're years later. Yeah. I mean, like that. Well, they've always been behind, right? It's I don't expect them to ever match. I don't think the Steam Deck like the Steam Deck.
00:41:47
Speaker
can run Elden Ring at 40 frames. So it's like a solid 40 frames. So, I mean, if it's anything close to what just the Steam Deck is now, I'm going to be your happy person. Right. And just performance wise. They are always behind, but they're also selling their consoles for cheaper than everybody else. So that's why that's true too. Like they do that on purpose.
Conclusion and Reflections on Gaming in 2023
00:42:10
Speaker
Where are we at now? Number twos? Number doses.
00:42:14
Speaker
Yep. My number two. Final Fantasy 16 for the PlayStation five. Wow. I am I'm not close to beating the game, but I am maybe 12 ish 13 ish hours in and I'm so just in dude. I'm just so in her story. I heard if you be lying, it's like what 30 hours or something like that. It's short. My plan.
00:42:42
Speaker
is to pretty much just do the story unless I feel underpowered at some point or there's like something specific I want to go after. Then I'll like kind of divvy into a side missions. I did one side mission just to be like, all right. Cause at the beginning there, there, or you get to the side mission partners. Like if you see the green triangle, that means you just had mission. I was like, let me try one real quick. And I did it. And I was like, I didn't need to do that. I didn't even get medicine for this. Yeah.
00:43:10
Speaker
We did retry, go to side mission. And I was like, all right, sick. I got medicine for some guy and I was like, I didn't need to do that. I didn't need to do that at all. But I am. I'm glad I waited so late or I say glad. It's cool that I'm playing it now with the expansions that came out. That's like before the final battle. So I'll get to play that when I get to that point, too. But again, the knock on this is like
00:43:39
Speaker
I'm playing on performance mode, and when you're in battle, it's a solid 60 frames. Anytime you're battling anything, it's a solid 60 frames. Just straight nuttin'. If you're not battling them, boy, does it dip all the time. All the time. It's like, if there was ever a game that was like a reason for a PS5 Pro, it's this one.
00:43:59
Speaker
Cause you'll, I mean, when I say it dips, it dips to like half, like 30 frames. And some of these times you're walking around. But this is, it's a giant beefy. I mean, you can tell like the game is out and it's playable and it's great, but you can tell like they're like, listen, it's kind of like starfield where it's like, listen, this game's too big. Like we're just not going to be able to hit the performance that we want to hit.
00:44:24
Speaker
but we have to get this game out. What are they called? What are they, idols in that game? The summons? What are they called? Dominance.
00:44:33
Speaker
the summons that you're, the big boy, big monster? Okay, well anyway. The big boys are dominance, but some can also do, you just have to destroy themselves. I've heard all the budget went into those battles. That's what I heard. They're awesome, dude. Yeah, I heard the soundtrack and the mechanics in those fights are like ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. The first, this is kind of weird, but the first opening of this game, like the opening of this game
00:45:01
Speaker
reminded me of the first Spider-Verse film. Like the whole scene when we have the scene, the poster scene when he's upside down, the glass and everything. Yeah. The same feelings I got from like that whole scene I got from the first part of this game where it's just like, it's like magical almost. Yeah. I can't wait to play the rest of this game.
00:45:20
Speaker
I can't wait to see DC. So many cutscenes. One day, maybe. The reason people hated this game, I thought, is the reason I loved the game. It's way more streamlined. It's not as RPG. Just cutscenes out the butthole. Sometimes you'll do one small fight, and then there'll be a 10-minute cutscene, and then you'll do one small fight, and then a five-minute cutscene. Now, I'm just like, I don't care. I like it. Let me do the fighting and then we watch the movie.
00:45:47
Speaker
I'm here for the sacks, so we'll see. Oh, so many sacks. Yeah, I am surprised. I'm not surprised. Oh, my gosh. I'm not surprised. It's on your list. I am surprised. It's number two. It's real good. Yeah. And like I said, the battles when it is 60 frames like. It's gorgeous, like the enemies and the dominant article, the lighting. Oh, my gosh. The lighting. You had me a lighting. The lighting, dude, the particles like.
00:46:15
Speaker
I'm a sucker for the good lighting. Matthew, you're number two. My number two has already been mentioned once. It is Zelda, tears of the kingdom. We're tearing the kingdoms. Yeah, I think this is objectively the best, the most well made game of the year. We'll say it that way. I.
00:46:42
Speaker
all the things that Carlos said about the different feats and what they've done with the building and adding the different layers. Like if that game was on PC, it would be like, man, this is a really good game. And they made it work on the Switch.
00:46:55
Speaker
And it's, well, barely or not, they made it work. And it is, it is a engineering feat to make it work on the switch. And it's just, I don't know, even though I kind of prefer, I prefer the single player story mode linear kind of thing to the open world. It's just so like what they've done, even if it's not exactly for me is just so impressive to me.
00:47:25
Speaker
it's funny because like I know I'm gonna love the game but like all the built when you say building and engineering and stuff like that it's just those are all turn offs for me for games but the first game was if you would explain that game to me before we played it it would have been turn off for me as well but man if it wasn't like one of the best games I've ever played so I'm excited to love a game that I think I won't like
00:47:50
Speaker
I'm excited to love what I think I wouldn't like again. For the second time. Yeah. Tears of my kingdoms. Wow. Andrew. Sup.
00:48:04
Speaker
What my number two is? So just following my my typical list so far, I have not played this game, but I know for a fact if I play this game like it, I'm going deep dive and baby deep going deep. I'm going to take that die and I'm going to roll it in my 20 sun. My number two is Baldur's Gate. My like, OK, so like once again, FOMO again, like
00:48:34
Speaker
This to me is the same impact as Elden Ring when it came out. This got people playing a type of genre that they were not playing before. And the idea that...
00:48:47
Speaker
You can do just about anything, taking the D and D aspects. And like, if you're smart and you're clever, you can get around stuff. So once again, I felt it was deserving to be on my list, even though I haven't played it. But, uh, based on all the praise and everything, my number two is a Baldur's gate.
00:49:10
Speaker
Baldur's fault. How many people can you do multiplayer in Baldur's Gate? You could do four, but there are Nexus mods that allow you to do it for 16. Oh, I said eight, 16. Wow. I would not recommend that. Currently not cross play, but they have said cross play is coming. Okay. Okay, cool. It's a smart company.
00:49:31
Speaker
Um, yeah, when cross play happens, maybe we'll still have to get on there. You know what I mean? Like Matt, Matthew called me before Christmas and we've had this conversation with two of my friends on PlayStation.
00:49:43
Speaker
When the Baldur's Gate 3 hype was happening, we're all down to play it. It's not necessarily our game, but we've all like dabbled in D&D here and there. So we're like, cool, let's play it. And we've all kind of agreed that like at some point it's either going to come to Game Pass or it's going to be on sale for like $30 or something. And there's going to be a slow time where there's not a lot of games and then we're just going to freaking Baldur's Gate. 18 inches of Baldur's Gate at that point.
00:50:07
Speaker
18 inches. Spider-Man's got 19. I'm waiting for the switch to before I play baller's gate to me. There you go. Cloud edition. Dude, you have a steam deck. You have a steam deck. Everyone runs so well with steam deck. Listen to Carlos here, because he's said it multiple times to me. He's like, Baldur's Gate is a steam deck game. But I don't have the OLED steam deck, you know? He don't. Oh, my God.
00:50:37
Speaker
I'm waiting for it to come to Mediquest 3, dude. Andrew, do you have a solid, Andrew? Do you have an SSD in your... What word did he say? Solid. Oh, gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha.
00:50:55
Speaker
For people listening that don't know this, there's two andrews in here. My wife refers to one as solid andrew, the other is liquid andrew. Respect. So brown berserker is solid andrew because she just knows him personally.
00:51:08
Speaker
Solid. Solid. Yeah. I'm Liquid Andrew because I'm always wet. Listen, if we need, if we got to get more viewers, guys,
00:51:28
Speaker
Uh, go off the rails. I've lost my train. That's the, yeah, that's the, you had a question for, for driving you right there. Oh yeah. Do you have an SSD in your stream deck? Like, did you upgrade your SSD or are you still using a 64 gig? He's not nerdy like you, man. He's like me.
00:51:57
Speaker
You probably want to put if you're gonna play Baldur's Gate you I don't know if you want to play that on that look I Might be seeing you this year. So we'll figure that out. Okay
00:52:09
Speaker
I had the little MiU Mini Plus with all my emulated games from PS1 before and I have a 256 in it. So you can do it for the Steam Deck, I believe. And they're like, they go on sale a lot now, especially Black Friday. Well, the thing is, for the Steam Deck, the specific size of the NVMe they have is not a very common one. So it was really only made for like laptops, like specific laptop companies bought them.
00:52:36
Speaker
when a steam deck came out, everybody sort of buying those and it caused like a kind of shortage. So you might be able to find them, but they won't be. I see. I'm trying to help you, man. Well, actually, actually, and the TV and the laptops.
00:52:59
Speaker
The moral of the story is play Baldur's Gate on a console. Play Baldur's Gate. Play Baldur's Gate. I don't even know who we're on or what number we're on. I think we're still on two. Are we at Carlos now? Yep. Where am I? Carlos number two. Yeah. My number two, as much as it shocked me, as it will shock anybody, is I went with Resident Evil 4.
00:53:22
Speaker
Oh, pretty much for the reason why it has been discussed already. And just again, after game awards doing the thing is, it's like if a game has continued to get the amount of recognition that it has this year, even though it is just remake, then I think that really does say something, especially when games are
00:53:47
Speaker
coming out with remake versions that, you know, either something is lost that the players enjoyed about the game or, you know, it's just a graphical overhaul, which there's nothing wrong with that. People like seeing their favorite games with modern graphics. But yeah, no, to take a game and put a lot of
00:54:09
Speaker
stuff into it that kind of makes it stand apart. I thought that was, I think it takes a lot to just remake a game and people thinking it's cheap to just make a remake a game and have it do as well as it did. I would love, and maybe there'll be a documentary about this one day on YouTube or something. Somebody in Capcom made a decision after Resident Evil 6 and it was the right decision.
00:54:37
Speaker
through the remakes and then seven and eight, like, dude, they've done nothing but hit with Resident Evil since six was. So I'm one of the five people on the earth that enjoyed six. No, I still say, I still say six is a good game. It's just not anywhere near the other ones. I like the mini campaigns all connecting. I thought I liked, I liked Leon's campaign. It was fine.
00:55:02
Speaker
And then Chris's was like Godzilla the movie for some reason. You're like, this is not Resident Evil anymore. That's for another day. Were we on number ones now? Number one. Hey, who's your who's your UNO? My number one game, my personal favorite game of 2023.
00:55:24
Speaker
Remnant back up like. Oh, OK, baby. I was wondering why that hasn't yet said in the game yet. I'm not a killer. I did not think the killer would be on your list. The desk. When I it's an it's just an Andrew game. It's just a me game. And it's and it's this day. It's solid. It sounds like a me game. It's like I own it, but I haven't played it yet. Hey, I've been waiting. I've been waiting. I know. I know.
00:55:53
Speaker
I think, again, that's just a culmination of what happened this year with Lightfall coming out and being like, everything was good but the story, you know? And then all the Destiny stuff was kind of like pooping around and then Diablo happened. I was like, great, but then the content afterwards, it's like whatever. And then Remnant 2 hit and it was just like every twist and turn and like new boss battle or new mechanic or new puzzle that we would come across, I'd be like,
00:56:21
Speaker
freaking, why isn't this destiny? Like why didn't destiny do this? And I just kept playing and it just got so deep into me. That's exciting. I feel like then like we, we got to set something up then. It's like, and if you want to grind, you can grind. Cause I did like a lot of us, like me and Matthew and friends, we played the game. I had two other friends, uh, by the game. So we were all kind of just like playing with each other, like going through the campaign and everything.
00:56:51
Speaker
And then after the fact is like, right. Grind in time. Have you played the first one? Yes. So how how is it in comparison to the first one as far as like the gameplay? I heard it destroys the first one. Well, I wouldn't say it's definitely not on this level, but like how Baldur's Gate two. Yeah. To three was like it's it's a small studio. So it's like they made a great game, but there's a lot of technical problems and you know, it is
00:57:21
Speaker
It's not fully like the idea is definitely there. And then Remnant 2 is like, all right, we have the idea and we've learned through Remnant 1 and all the DLCs, which are also great. And now we can kind of come out like full force. Now, I think we had said, mentioned this before, but you don't have to play the first one to understand what's going on in a second. No, no, no. Sweet. It's similar. It's similar to Destiny, where it's like there is a story. And if you want to go on YouTube and watch the three hour
00:57:53
Speaker
Recap of the story you can or if you want to buy the 300 page $300 book that they're about to come out with Gee, that's you. Wait, hold on. What the destiny book? That's like something supposed to come out. It's like 300 bucks It's like the whole lore book thing. I did not know about that. Don't tell him that
00:58:09
Speaker
I'm not. Are you kidding me? No, no, the issue is that that's a problem because the thing is, is like we can't get a new player experience to work so bad that we're going to just instead charge some three hundred dollars for a book that just I might be speaking a little bit out of my reaction, but someone look it up. No, I'm just going to say this. I'm just going to buy the book and not play the game.
00:58:35
Speaker
Oh, there you go. And you'll never think about the game. And that's such that's such an issue. Like, I don't I never heard of this for for people who actually really want to experience what happened in destiny. You can't experience it. So you just have to read it and.
00:58:50
Speaker
The grim wars somewhere, you know, find it and send it after the podcast. The grim wars are interesting. They're cool. Just like collectible thing, additional more stuff. But at the end of the day, there was release alongside the games. This is just here's everything condensed or not. Hopefully not condensed with the charging. But no. Yeah, I feel like you need to fix your new player experience. This was not the answer.
00:59:16
Speaker
Yeah, so like Remnant 2 is a similar way. There is a story. There's going to be a lot of people that, and Diablo 4 to a certain extent too, there's a lot of people that are going to play that just don't care about the story, you know? And they're still going to love the game because it's like a looter shooter.
00:59:35
Speaker
Destiny like mixed with Dark Souls kind of vibes and all that kind of stuff and But it's multiplayer like it's just so fun. It was just really it's a really really fun game and then all the grinding I did afterwards to get the All the archetypes and to get the mega archetype would you have to do a lot of crap for? No, the the secret one the community unlocked. Is that your time? Yeah. Yeah, so fun super and it's also very player friendly like
01:00:06
Speaker
that secret archetype, you know, I was texting everybody's like, okay, I did all the work if you want to sign on because I'm about to get it and it grabs it for everybody. Oh, nice. Oh, wow. Awesome. So it's like you have you have friends that would play more and stuff like that, but they don't want to do all the grindy stuff, but they want to get the things like
01:00:23
Speaker
You happen to be on the other side, the map on accident, like you get separated, someone picks up a ring, it gives it everybody, you know, kind of thing. A lot of player friendly things. It's like, let's not make the game not fun, you know? No, you can't pick it up. So you have to, now you have to backtrack and walk all the way. We don't want any of that.
01:00:40
Speaker
It's a great game. I don't think you don't share ammo, I think, but everything you don't share ammo. Yeah, that's good. It's big. But my so to me, Remnant was really good. I super enjoyed it. Eight out of 10. But my issue with it over like.
01:00:56
Speaker
The reason Diablo is really high on my list that Remnant's not is I played Remnant 2 for a few hours single player and I'm just not interested in playing that game single player. It's phenomenal with a group. I mean, really, really good with a group. Whereas Diablo, I played a ton. I played half the game single player and it was great. Yeah, I played through the campaign single player. Yeah, I did the whole campaign. So Andrew, so... You played a lot of Remnant single player. Okay, that's not supposed to be asked. You did, that's true. For you, did you enjoy the single player experience for Remnant 2?
01:01:24
Speaker
I would say I didn't play the campaign single player. I did all the grinding single player. So I don't know. Okay. Like there's a lot of stuff that's like you have to have an item and then you have to either reset your adventure or go to a certain place at a certain time of day or there's, there's like the campaign and an adventure mode where it's like, you can go and like reset
01:01:48
Speaker
all the levels you've done without resetting your campaign. And a lot of it's procedurally generated. So like, you're not always going to get the same bosses, you're not always gonna get the same layout, all this kind of stuff. So sometimes you have to like do that multiple times to like get the actual spot that this item that you have is going to open the door to do to get a thing or whatever. Like I was just
01:02:09
Speaker
into all that. I was looking up all the videos, all the guides, trying to get all the cool stuff. The season of Destiny is eight months, so that's plenty of time to be able to play other stuff. So, yeah, I think we should squad up. Matthew, you're number one.
01:02:28
Speaker
My number one is a game about an IP that I don't care anything about. And that game is Hogwarts Legacy, is my number one. Wow. GG. I think. I think.
01:02:43
Speaker
And I think it would have gotten significantly more recognition in game of the year type things, if not for the other baggage that comes along with it to end other people's minds. But it's about to be the first time in, I think, 15 years that Call of Duty or a Rockstar game did not lead the year in sales. It's about to be Hogwarts Legacy. He just pulled a branch out.
01:03:07
Speaker
No, you got to bring that's a chopstick, bro. It's just it's a game that.
01:03:15
Speaker
Um, did the best job of sucking me into the world of that game of any game that came. I can respect that because that's what you want out of a very hard game. You want, you, you're going to Hogwarts. You want to experience like the sheer size of the school, uh, and everything around it. It's more than just the schools. So I thought that would, they did an excellent job at that. Like
01:03:39
Speaker
Andrew's doing what I did a lot in Hogwarts Legacy, which is just pet the cat, you know? Which I will say, petting the cats when I did to go pet the cats. Like, the cat models, I think, were a little... They were a little strange. Strange looking. But... It doesn't matter. They purred. You can pet them. Exactly. I'm not saying it was an... It's just an observation. I'm just... That's all. They're crossbreeding with wiener dogs. And there's just, honestly, there's no...
01:04:05
Speaker
Nothing about that game that I would particularly change. Like I just enjoyed all of it. I enjoyed how large of a game it was.
01:04:15
Speaker
It's what I want. It's what my dream of a Pokemon game is. Sure. I could see that. Hogwarts, like I said, was just Pokemon themed. And it's interesting. You never hear from me again. It's interesting because Hogwarts Legacy had nothing to do with, like, Harry Potter as far as they care. You're not playing Harry Potter. You're not experiencing what you already saw in the movies or books. Wait, I wasn't? I guess you made your guy named him Harry Potter. I don't know. I guess you could do that.
01:04:44
Speaker
For me, personally, grossest spiders I've ever encountered in any video game I've ever played. They were nasty. Yeah. Have you played grounded?
01:04:54
Speaker
No, but that looks cartoony in comparison, but well, they're terrifying, though. They're terrifying when they're when they're like, you know, from your perspective, like, you know, 12 times taller than you. You're like, this is a problem. See, it bothers me more when they're smaller versus big. OK, fair enough. Yeah, fair enough. He does. Oh, yeah.
01:05:16
Speaker
If I saw one the size of a car IRL it wouldn't bother me as much as one the size of a dinner would in real life It would kidding me. I could punch in the face. What did get out of here? You serious? You saw a spider the size of the dinner plate would bother me more. I'm sure
01:05:35
Speaker
Like, well, I was gonna say what he mentioned, though, about it not being Harry Potter story. That was the right call. Because again, people like me and Andrew probably would not have played the game.
01:05:48
Speaker
if it were based on Harry Potter story, because we just don't have any connection to that. But we always thought the world of Harry Potter was cool. Yeah, my Harry signed and a lot. There you go. You do that, too. And then also, I also I'm a sucker for whatever reason. I really enjoy games that do the school thing. Like the Persona series does it. The Last Fire Emblem game. I agree. Like I like that kind of stuff. Right. I think it's fun. And it's just it was so well done. So that's my.
01:06:16
Speaker
I agree angry is good. Did not think that would be my game of the year coming into this year either, which is another. You know, another like such a large game vaulted up my list. I was surprised at how much I liked it. Andrew, you're number one. All right. My number one is a game, but it's not a video game. It is villainous. My number one is actually.
01:06:44
Speaker
God hand baby tears of the kingdom
01:06:47
Speaker
OK, so listen, listen, listen, they, you know, Breath of the Wild came out and it was just like one of the best games ever made. Period. I'm like, how do you top this? How do you top this? And I know people are like, oh, they just took the same world and they made like an up and a down and ha ha ha. No. So like for me, when when everything leading up to Tears of the Kingdom, I was that person. I was like, OK, if we're just using the same map, like how refreshing can this be?
01:07:17
Speaker
The fact they have like, you know, like the sky stuff and then all the stuff below. And then like Carlos is saying, the technical aspect of it, the God hand and all the building. I mean, they made, in my opinion, they made Breath of Wild like irrelevant. Like, I don't know why I would even go back to play that game. It almost became a number two game. It's like, it's like infinitely better. And now I'm just kind of like, how do you top that?
01:07:41
Speaker
So yeah, number one is tiers of the game. It's like infinity war in game where you're like, wow, that was really good. There's no way they're going to be able to pull off another one. And they didn't top it by my opinion. And that's why I didn't make my most.
01:08:00
Speaker
That's why I put remnant two over. Yeah, I mean, I mean, there's nothing more I can say about it because everyone knows and everyone has said the same thing. It's just it's incredible. Is it like the first one where you can go fight? The boss, if you really wanted to. Have you seen people do that? And is it craziness? Five thousand? There's definitely, you know, it's funny is like I actually haven't gone on YouTube and watch videos of people doing it. But like, yeah, there's got to be an esoteric out there somewhere who who does Zelda. Yeah. Yeah. 100 percent. Yeah.
01:08:30
Speaker
Carlos, your number one game's sad.
01:08:34
Speaker
My number one game is Baldur's Gate 3. Hey, Garrett. I thought it would be. Of course. Very predictable. Yes, I am a D&D nerd. I love D&D a lot. But as an RPG game, I have not played anything that made me think about in terms of our RPG that that makes me think about like
01:09:02
Speaker
just getting lost in the world since like Morrowind Morrowind was the last game that I think it was interesting. It was one of the last big RPGs for me. And
01:09:19
Speaker
There's so much that you can do in Baldur's Gate. The world is very much alive. And the storytelling is ridiculous. And also looking at it from just a technical perspective on developing something where your choices matter so much.
01:09:41
Speaker
that I couldn't even imagine how a decision tree spans throughout the rest of the game when there's a game that has 17,000 endings. How do you account for every single thing? So to me, that for a storytelling perspective,
01:09:59
Speaker
is very difficult. So there's that. Yeah. The D&D integration, I think, is a really cool way to introduce people to a franchise that they would be too intimidated to play because I know people who want to play D&D.
01:10:15
Speaker
who are too shy to play or think that, you know, it's too many numbers because you're you are like modifiers and stuff. The Baldur's Gate kind of does a lot of that for you. So it does all that background. You're learning a little bit about how to talk about me.
01:10:31
Speaker
Yeah, how to play D&D. But yeah, an amazing story. Everything. I'm the kind of person when you give me a game that's that open and there's everything you can look through every building you go inside. That's the reason why I'm like at the end of the game, but I'm just still I look at everything and.
01:10:50
Speaker
There's always a bunch of side quests. There's always just cool little Easter eggs or callbacks or something else earlier in the game. You just got to know what to go look for. So I think to meticulously place all that stuff, too, is is impressive. But yeah, so that's my my. I heard if you're into mating and kicking animals, that's that's a game for you. But you have the choice to. What about kicking mates? Possibly kicking your friends. I haven't I haven't got that decision yet.
01:11:20
Speaker
Well, that brings us to our combined game of the year list, which if you're really good at math and you've been keeping track, maybe you already know. But I'm going to go through it here right now to end out the show. We had a tie for number five. Spider-Man 2 and Remnant 2 both had five points, so. OK.
01:11:43
Speaker
Also, the way we did this, obviously, number one is five points and it goes down, number five is one point, so. I don't know what he just said. Number four. I have a chirp. We have another tie. Alan Wake two and Resident Evil four, both at six points. Number three at seven points, we have Hogwarts Legacy.
Game of the Year Announcement
01:12:08
Speaker
Oh, Revalio.
01:12:11
Speaker
I love you. Love you all. Number two had eleven points. Number one had twelve. Number two, we have Baldur's Gate three. Oh snap. Which means number one, Zelda Tears of the Kingdom takes it for the logon games game of the year. Hey, you got my body.
01:12:38
Speaker
This way, I accept and I'm shocked that. I thought we would have it, be honest with you, but I yeah, I did a lot of that. We had Hogwarts at number three. I am shocked for Hogwarts and happy Hogwarts is there. I'm happy. I wish I remember that game would have been on my list for sure. Where would it where would you have put it?
01:13:02
Speaker
So here's what I would have done. The analysis retroactively think if I would have swapped, I would have put Baldur's Gate, Tears of the Kingdom, Hogwarts Legacy, Alan Wake 2, no Resident Evil 4, then L.O.E. 2 Street Fighter, actually probably got knocked off.
01:13:19
Speaker
It's still, so that would be three points. Yeah. So it would have still, it would have been 10 points, but it would still be third on our list. Yeah. So our top three at that point would have been 12 points, 11 points, 10 points. What's funny is one in three matches my personal list. So my personal list is number one, Zelda number two, Diablo four, three Hogwarts.
01:13:40
Speaker
And then four is Hi-Fi Rush, and then five is Lightfall. Even with the ties. Wow. Really? I guess that's all I played this year. No Final Fantasy 16. And I only remnant two because of the time, and because I had it number one otherwise.
01:13:59
Speaker
But there you have it. Congratulations, Nintendo. Carlos is actually going to fly our physical award to you and he's going to pay from the flights and everything to Nintendo of Japan and hand it to... I've been to the HQ.
01:14:17
Speaker
I have a picture right at the front gate right before the security the security guard next time you go next time you go to Japan even if it's like five years from now we'll print out 2023 game of the year here I will take a picture of you holding it I'll 3d I'll 3d print that would be pretty sick right fly over to them mm-hmm
01:14:40
Speaker
You're also in driving distance of the Nintendo Store and...
01:14:46
Speaker
New York City. Yes. So maybe you just give it to one of their employees. Oh, dude, that would be such a funny video. I'm like, I make a podcast, you guys what? They're like, who are you? I'm like, here. Quiet, I'm giving you an award. Here. I made it with my left hand. I actually ranked my top 11.
01:15:12
Speaker
So if there's any final thoughts or gives it any shout outs really quickly, go for it. Yeah, that's what I was. Good. It's kind of what. So 11 Street Fighter, six, 10 Super Mario Brothers wonder. Whatever this nine is Metro Prime Octopath Travelers, eight. Sea of Stars is six and Resident Evil. Just missed my list. Nice T.J. Eric G's respect.
01:15:38
Speaker
I would have given a shout out to, I would have given a shout out to Diablo 4 just because there was nothing bad about the game and that's the saddest part about it. Base game. The base game itself was just fantastic. Really good.
01:15:55
Speaker
Yeah, well, they came out with a Diablo that I mean, it's just better than all the other Diablo's. Like it's a better game. If the if the first season was in the first person perspective, I think I would have liked it more. What? That is not the take. I thought you're going. That's what they that's what they do for seasons for season one. It's different perspectives. Yeah. Season two is 2D platformer, 2D.
01:16:24
Speaker
No, but would that not just pull you in to play it right?
Unmentioned Games and Future Speculations
01:16:28
Speaker
I mean Turn base RPG season 3 season 3 is VR pull me in rhythm game season 4 let's go Wow, they give you 3d goggles 4d They give you a fan season 5 you can only play on meta quest 3. Yeah
01:16:48
Speaker
So those are my shout outs in my title, but I also did write down just as a non shout out, almost the fact that nobody mentioned Starfield the entire episode. Is it bad that I I'm happy for that? No, I feel like why do I want shame to come to Bethesda? Because why does your game have loading?
01:17:13
Speaker
I've played it. I mean a chunk of Starfield at this point at this point. It's not a bad game. It's just not It just has low special. It's not special. It's just another game No, man, it's I did a better fine. Yeah, I think so. Sorry Xbox next year. They'll have hellblade which
01:17:33
Speaker
if I expect it to be on my top five list next year. So it's not. I'm expecting a first party Microsoft game to be on top five. I've got no hope for Microsoft after Redfall and Starfield. No hope and infinite and hail infinite. Wait till Starfall and Redfield. It'll be great.
01:17:52
Speaker
That's pretty good action. What was really funny is I saw two different articles on Redfall recently. One was like, it's coming back, went back to Redfall and it surprised me. And then the other one was like, went back to Redfall and it's still like utter garbage or whatever. I was like, really? You won't know how Microsoft can convert me personally. Like I'll drop PC, I'll drop Sony, I'll drop Nintendo.
01:18:20
Speaker
If they buy and bring it back from the ashes anthem, that's how you'll win me. They did. It was called Avengers and you didn't play it. That's true. That was I mean, it was a multi console thing. You could you could be Iron Man, which was oh, are those servers dead? I still can't play that now. Probably. Yeah. I think maybe you can still play the campaign. I don't think the servers are dead. Oh, it was free on PlayStation, right? I just think they're done making content.
01:18:49
Speaker
No, I think I think they turned off the service. Oh, I couldn't imagine still running. All right. Well, we want to thank everybody for listening next week, which will be January the fifth.
Teaser for Next Week's Episode
01:19:07
Speaker
We are going to go over our 2023 predictions. They are something, let me tell you. And see where we were right, see where we were wrong, see who was really right and see who is really, really wrong. And then we are going to give our 2024 predictions. So I will shoot those questions to everyone here. So you have time to think about them and answer them.
01:19:36
Speaker
Um, that's gonna do it for us here. We will be with you again in 2020.