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00:00:01
S3 Ep261: Starter Games
82 Plays2 years ago
Guess a few games with Dave and Jake, and then stick around as they dig into the games they would suggest to start with for a plethora of genres, including FPS, survival crafting, card-based, MOBA, racing, puzzle, and more!
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Intro:
- Faeria - Aurora
- C418 - Haggstrom
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Transcript
00:00:03
Speaker
so
Introduction and Dinner Chat
00:00:38
Speaker
How's it going everyone? Welcome to another episode of Stumpstone. My name is Jake, and I'm joined by my co-host as always, Dave. How's it going tonight, Dave? It's going good. I just had some stew and taters. How are you? I'm doing pretty well. I haven't had stew and taters. I had McDonald's. I would probably trade that out for stew and taters, to be honest. But it's still pretty good.
Fast Food Chicken Sandwich Wars
00:01:01
Speaker
I think my food has a higher satiation point because it's going to sit in here forever.
00:01:08
Speaker
but also like nuggets I mean nuggets are pretty good I had a deluxe chicken sandwich again a pretty decent offering in the chicken sandwich wars but deluxe is basically like we put some mayo on it in a pickle maybe a piece of lettuce I feel like that should be standard well you would think so but a standard chicken sandwich I'm pretty sure in a lot of these establishments is
00:01:35
Speaker
Chicken and bread. Like, it's not that far away from it at least. I mean, I'll pay an extra dollar for it to be a sandwich. But chicken sandwiches are really the way to go. I've never enjoyed fast food burgers where I'm like, oh, wow. I'm like, eh. Yeah, I can take it or leave it sometimes, but I don't feel as bad after a chicken sandwich compared to some other offerings there. Chicken's a leaner meat, therefore, good choice.
00:02:02
Speaker
It's been a long time since I went to Chick-fil-A because, I mean, it's further away. And then also, they're not open on Sundays. And then also,
00:02:13
Speaker
kind of some miserable policies and stuff. But that's where I remember the chicken sandwich thing started. Because you got just a normal chicken sandwich. It was basically, I think, literally chicken, a pickle, maybe, like a couple pickle slices and bread. And if you wanted to get more than that, you got the deluxe. And I think that's where everyone started as a baseline for the sandwich wars. OK. I never got to try Chick-fil-A's.
00:02:40
Speaker
as it is five months, but also because, and primarily because I think they use peanut oil on theirs. Ah, and that is something that will fuck me up. I thought you were gonna... It will fuck me up, Dad. I thought, I misheard the pluralization on Chick-fil-A's and I thought you were about to say, I've never got to try Chick-fil-A's chicken. I was like, what'd you go there for? Waffle fries and that's it, I guess.
00:03:07
Speaker
I've been in one once and I think I got like fries and like a soft drink. It was like before going to a movie and people stopped there beforehand. So I just got something else that wasn't fried in peanut oil or whatever it was. Which I don't think their drinks are. I hope no, that would be a little bit
Odd Flavored Sodas and Listener Interaction
00:03:26
Speaker
much.
00:03:26
Speaker
Although, I mean, so while we're talking about food, as an aside, Dave got me corn beverages at some point while I'm thinking about oil- The corn soda for Jenny's birthday, yeah. Corn soda. And I think one of them was literally popcorn flavored or something close to it. Oh, but they were different? Different corn flavors?
00:03:50
Speaker
That or they were all popcorn and they might have all been popcorn flavor at least minimum one of them And yeah, I was like it's not bad and she's like this is terrible and I was like it's not great But I'm gonna drink it It's a very odd flavor, but at least that one wouldn't be poison to you as would like peanut oil, basically No, I have to is that it tastes like sweet corn. I
00:04:20
Speaker
Yes, that's that's kind of pleasant. It's probably a bit jarring as like a this is a liquid and it's carbonated. Mm-hmm Yeah, I'm always curious to try those odd flavors of soda we used to have back near When I when I when I had a nearby like men's they had a bunch of kind of exotic beverages there and my exotic beverages I mean like I
00:04:46
Speaker
obviously what you would expect as far as birch beer and things like that. But then they also had like a rose petal soda stuff and it just did not taste good. Roses actually don't taste good. No, they're flowers. You can't eat flowers, but like they don't taste good. I played the Oregon Trail. I know you can eat flowers. You can eat dandelions. You just have to, the petals can be made into a lettuce. Doesn't taste great.
00:05:16
Speaker
I actually don't know what that comment means. They've just asked me guess the game question mark. I was going to say, did you want to do a round of guess the game before we get into everything we have planned for tonight? Sure. Yeah, we could do one. Shout out to a listener who requested we do a bit more guess the game.
00:05:38
Speaker
Which as I told Jake, I appreciate whenever people reach out at the same time, I think you're borderline sociopath because again, this is audio only. I mean, you're going the extra mile on that. I do appreciate it though. Yeah. So if you're searching back into the past or maybe you're saving your guests, the game guesses for us, as of today of recording, we're on Guess the Game 390.
00:06:07
Speaker
and I have that one up right now. So if you guys want to follow along, feel free, guess the dot game, and you can go back at the... Or if you've already completed it, you can listen to this episode and watch how wrong we
Guess the Game: Silent Hill and Sly Cooper
00:06:21
Speaker
are.
00:06:21
Speaker
Yes. Although if you have already completed this and you're able to like immediately identify what we're talking about, you are so much smarter than me. Dave can attest to this. We did guess the game kind of recently with some friends and we were looking at the exact same one that I had already done, I think at some point. And my brain was making the same exact hops to arrive at the destination, like the wrong guesses all the way to it. And I'd already done it.
00:06:49
Speaker
So props props to you how the brain be sometimes. How would you identify this first photo? We have screenshot.
00:07:01
Speaker
All right, so graphically, the era seems to be PS2. I'm kind of looking at a musky cement wall and then I'm not sure if that's supposed to be like a radio box. It's kind of like smattered in blood. It's hard to make out. It seems like there is a box or like something kind of jutting out of the wall, but it's definitely box shaped, right?
00:07:27
Speaker
Yes. Yeah. It looks kind of like a vent to me. Ooh, yeah. Could be that. And it looks it looks rusty. It's either blood or it's rust, which immediately sets off. Well, it's rusty overall. And the bottom, I feel like that's 100 percent blood. Yes. Yeah, it very much very likely is. Do you have an initial guess about what this might be? I'm trying to think of games that involve blood and like I don't I don't play many games, but what would be the one
00:07:57
Speaker
Silent Hill. Yeah, that's that's that's my knee-jerk reaction is always Silent Hill. I might my curiosity here is I do want to try Silent Hill because guess the game doesn't often use sequels, but I there's a chance this is Silent Hill to. Well, you have to be in this with me. Yeah. All right. We'll try Silent Hill. I agree. We can try. OK. Go for Silent Hill.
00:08:31
Speaker
Yeah, I initially, I saw it and I was like, this is probably like Silent Hill 2, but that's just because it's the popular Silent Hill. I don't know how many people actually played Silent Hill 1. I think it's so dumb that I saw blood. I'm like, Silent Hill, maybe? Well, it's blood and rust. Yeah, you got it. Because the klaxon goes off and then the world begins to rust as the fog rolls in and you're transferred to Silent Hill.
00:08:50
Speaker
Thank you everybody for coming to our episode. I fucking kick ass at this game.
00:08:57
Speaker
Traditionally, the open to Silent Hill doesn't have everything covered in blood and rust until the klaxon starts. I suppose it does slightly undermine this if we get it in one, but that's just where we're at.
00:09:16
Speaker
Do you want to try that one quick or do you want to move past and maybe try to add this another week? Sure. We can sabotage our win streak here. You want to go back 1, 2, 3, 89 now? Yeah, sure.
00:09:31
Speaker
Um, so I can jump in to try to describe this. It looks like, please begin PlayStation, right? Like older graphics, not very high def at all. Uh, some metal bar, um, looks like some wooden boxes or something, maybe in the background, repeating, uh, repeating, of course. And then like purple, purple bit. Um.
00:09:55
Speaker
Yeah, it's it's hard to describe because we're definitely seeing it a lot more zoomed in. But the background seems to be something you know, you know, a drum.
00:10:09
Speaker
Yes. I'm visualizing. So you know how like they have like their spokes, like the individual panels that make up the sides of the drum are kind of all like sucked together? That's what the part of the background looks like to me. Oh, I see what you're saying, yeah. If that's circular. Yeah. Also, I feel like I'm looking through a lens or something because I have a bit of like a screen tear effect. You get those VCR lines or something.
00:10:34
Speaker
Yeah, going to be the VCR lines. Also, for whatever reason, this feels like a point and click adventure game to me. Or like some part of the background feels like it's static, whereas some part of the foreground feels a little more interactive, where it needs to be animated. I will say, as far as anything else, I have no idea.
00:10:54
Speaker
Yeah, I don't have heavy confidence in this. I saw like the metal here and my brain was just like, you could try Twisted Metal, but this looks not like that. And yeah, I don't really have more than that to go off of right now. It's definitely old. I feel like Twisted Metal is a throwaway guess, but that's probably mine unless you have some confidence.
00:11:20
Speaker
I really need more information. So we can do Twisted Metal as our throwaway guess. Sure. Which by the way, there's apparently going to be a show for that. So yeah, that's not what I expected to see. Got that to look forward to. So New Information Metacritic Score 88, do you want to describe this one?
00:11:43
Speaker
All right. So this again, definitely feels like PS2 era graphics. There's a bit of light rainfall. It is nighttime. There is a bridge. Some of the trees in the background feel a little more cartoony in design. So I'm getting like platformer vibes. Yeah. Like a 3d platformer type game. This definitely looks like a 3d bridge to me.
00:12:08
Speaker
Yeah. But like between shots, sorry, pictures one and two, I would not have guessed that they're in the same game. Right. It definitely is a platformer, I feel. Yeah. You can have the next guess. My brain is currently in the I'm guessing games I've never played space. It's just like the longest journey is where it's at right now. But I don't think that that's necessarily it.
00:12:38
Speaker
So whatever your guess would be, I think we go for for this one. I want to say Jack and Daxter at the Lost Frontier. Okay. That's very specific. Because it's not what I played. So it's not what I recognize. So like, maybe it's a possibility. Okay. So I want to lock that in for guess too. Lock that in.
00:12:54
Speaker
Okay. Well, new information. Original platform PlayStation 2. That's not new information. I was right the whole time. We have what appears to be a picture and it has security code on it. What was the, if there's a security code and it's on like a Polaroid picture, 314. Sly Cooper. It was another platform or PS2 era. That like hacking and espionage.
00:13:24
Speaker
So there's two slight Cooper options. There's these in times and the Thevius Raccoonus. I'm going to assume my first one has to be the initial foray, Theves in Time. No, the Thevius Raccoonus. Really? Maybe. That seems like such a stupid name for a game, but I guess maybe they got that out of their system in one. I'm going to try it. All right. Lock it in. Dang. I actually thought it was like Cooper that time as well.
00:13:56
Speaker
So the next picture is, again, very much PS2 platformer, a little bit cartoony. Some of it almost seems like it's kind of Disney models, at least just looking at the door frame. That kind of reminds me of Beauty and the Beast a little bit. Again, I'm really just throwing anything out to see if it sticks.
00:14:17
Speaker
I mean, if you said Disney in my brain, it's just immediately is this Kingdom Hearts, just like the first Kingdom Hearts, but it doesn't really look like it to me. And I have no idea why a security card feels off to me. Yes. I don't know how to place that one, but it is also an action and adventure game, which still falls under like platformers for the most part.
00:14:40
Speaker
And it doesn't try the others like Cooper at this point, because I don't know anything else right now. But I'm open to disagreement on that. Yeah, I don't see I mean, I don't have a much better idea. These like grapes in a cart or something like that. It's also in this frame. This is normally where they start to introduce some more information, but I'm just not seeing it. I'll try slight Cooper thieves in time. All right. Incorrect.
00:15:08
Speaker
I should have saved my guess and waited. This one's, this last next picture is like it shows clearly HUD 20 out of 30 and some like green potion heads up display and then there's a character you can see their arm and their leg in the background in the campfire released 2004 this doesn't help me so I have some bad news uh-huh
00:15:34
Speaker
There are, there's also Sly 2, Band of Thieves, Sly 3, Honor Among Thieves. Now, I don't know if these are also Sly Coopers, but I just typed in Sly. That's what came up. But that motherfucker in the background looks like Sly Cooper. So you think it's just a... I think it's still a Sly Cooper game. I just don't know which one. I mean, Sly Spy, again, normally they don't do sequels as much. So I would guess Sly Spy, Secret Agent.
00:16:05
Speaker
I'm gonna lock that one in if that's what you want to know. I'll go with you. Okay. It's definitely a Sly Cooper game. Oh, it's the last one. This looks way more fight. Sucker Punch made this? Oh, no. This is a Sly Cooper game. Is this a Sly Cooper game? Do you play as a hippo in Sly Cooper? That's one of it's like so Sly Cooper has I think like two friends. I think one of them is a hippo. Okay.
00:16:32
Speaker
Well, I don't want to try slide two. It was slide two band of thieves. Oh my gosh. Thank you for your name and convention, guys. Uh-huh. So we actually, so let's, let's go back for a second. We had guests. Literally.
00:16:50
Speaker
what appeared to be a second sly game based off the name convention but yeah they they they clearly screwed us a little bit there okay well i miss lettuce with saying it's normally the first one but
00:17:05
Speaker
I wasn't expecting them to change the whole naming scheme around. Cause I was like, oh, I guess I only made two Sly Cooper games. Right. Yeah. Well, hopefully you guys beat us on that one. That's my stopping point for guess the game. I feel cheated. But hopefully you didn't beat us on the Silent Hill one. It's hard to do when you get it in one.
00:17:30
Speaker
But yeah, let's guess game.
Themes from a Hat: Ideal Starter Games for Non-Gamers
00:17:32
Speaker
Fun time. Always, you know, stay a couple behind so you can catch up when we get there too. But yeah, it's fun time. Would you like to move to the second piece of prepared content? We could even call it for this episode.
00:17:51
Speaker
Yeah, let's do it. So this one is called themes from a hat. And that's as close as I get to who's line but Dave and I prepared some what we consider would you say like ideal starter games for various genres or what was your take on it?
00:18:16
Speaker
So, prompt wise, I was thinking of like, hey, what are good games to start with for somebody who's not really a gamer? If you're going to like try and get somebody who's outside of the space into the space, what would you show them? Right.
00:18:33
Speaker
Obviously, a lot of factors in place for what's fun, what might be mechanically easy, what just might be appealing to them based on their interests. There's a lot of factors, but we just made a list around 30 or so. We're going to go through, literally draw a name from a hat using this website here and we will then talk about each one.
00:19:01
Speaker
And depending on time, we might filter down the list. Yes. I definitely threw a lot of names into the hat as far as games and genres, but we'll see if we have more agreement or disagreement for some of the common points there. What are we starting with? Also, Jake agreed ahead of time that before I would spin the wheel to pick the name from a hat each time, he would say,
00:19:24
Speaker
Spin that wheel spin that wheel. All right, Jake, I will paste it before every single entry. All right, Starcraft two Starcraft two is an RTS made by Blizzard. I know that this is one of your entries. Do you want to talk about why you think it's a good starter game?
00:19:49
Speaker
Yeah, so preface, the RTS genre is kind of already on the sort of hardcore edge of gaming. I mean, it's pretty, there are RTSs on consoles, but like not that many. And usually people are just like, oh my gosh, it's an RTS, that's amazing. It's something like Halo Wars or whatever. And it's like an okay RTS by the standards of PC gamers. So already we're kind of opening with the advanced tier.
00:20:16
Speaker
But I picked Starcraft 2 because I played a lot of different RTS games, including games that have come out since Starcraft. It's been out for a long time. But it's very approachable. It literally has a free starter campaign in Wings of Liberty. So that's a pretty low entry price. And then the campaign is really good gameplay wise. And it's pretty much the center of the universe when it comes to RTS. Everything else just does something a little bit different in some way compared to Starcraft.
00:20:46
Speaker
So that's why I think it's a good starting. I mean, I can't really refute any of those points. People don't often look into or will overlook how a game will kind of teach you its mechanics. But like tutorials, everyone's going to like take for granted like, yeah, I get it. But that's also if you've been playing games for a very long time or playing other games in the space where you're so just
00:21:11
Speaker
It's second nature basically. But no, Starcraft 2 does a really good job of being interesting, being fun. Mechanically, I would say it's not overly challenging, but it builds on itself in the campaign. So if you are somebody new to the RTS space, I think this would be the game.
00:21:30
Speaker
Oh yeah, huge, huge ramp of difficulty too between like playing against players and lower difficulty in the campaign. There's a massive difference in star cry. Yes. That would be my start. So you agree for RTS? No, no disagreement on that one. I don't have a disagreement on that one. I would say for right now and give myself one point.
00:21:56
Speaker
This is the meta game while we're going through this. What else do we have in the hat? Marvel Snap. Okay, I mean you can skip that one. You actually know that one about me. You know that one more than I do. I had to guess what would be the correct game to get people into competitive card games right now. So I would almost hand this one over to you because you're more active in that space.
00:22:26
Speaker
I've only watched some people play it on Discord, but for anybody who is not aware, Marvel Snap is Marvel's take into or I'm going to keep using the word foray into the card gaming space. It's probably my own for gay.
00:22:43
Speaker
I like that. But the whole point of the game is it's supposed to be quick, fun, and shiny. It is, I think, free to play by default. You can level up as you go. The more you level up, the more cards you get and put into your decks, etc., etc., as most card games work.
00:22:59
Speaker
But the whole point of the game is you only have six rounds to play cards. And there are three different zones you can place your cards into. The whole point of the game is to get... You want to win the zones. You win the zones by having more points on your side in a given zone. So if I have 32 on the left and you have 10 on the left, I win that zone. Interesting.
00:23:20
Speaker
But all of these cards will have a special effect and will interact with each other in some way. And some of the zones might have static effects. Like you can't play these certain types of cards or after turn five something happens.
00:23:34
Speaker
So it's fun, cute, and easy, and very easy to get into. Anybody who I've watched play, there wasn't like a, oh, how do you do this? It's very much you do it as the card reads. There obviously gets to be some metagame later on. But if you're just looking for something fun and quick, you can do it. And you can play it on phones, super easy. Most people play it on phone, actually.
00:24:02
Speaker
So I agree with you. I agree with your estimate. Your choice for a card game there. I had some runners up, but I disqualified Hearthstone because they have a lot more mechanics now and then it's kind of aged a bunch. I disqualified Magic because it is the most complicated thing that was ever created.
00:24:24
Speaker
I'm getting eyebrows from Davian. It's the way I always describe magic to people, like remember when I tried to get Jake into magic? I was explaining some of the rules and he's like, so what's that rule you said? I'm like, yeah, unless otherwise stated. Unless otherwise stated. Because there's always like other things that could be at play that could make that thing not true, so.
00:24:46
Speaker
Either way I would describe it is Marvel staff might be your first card game, but magic will be your last card game And there's another one you can disqualify for this for single-player card game, which I think it's related It'll just be weird if it comes up later a freakin love Faria That was that's mine for single-player So the next one we have here is animal crossing
00:25:16
Speaker
Okay. What type of, I guess maybe you don't have to tie a genre to that, but if you had to pick a genre for Animal Crossing, what kind of game do you think it is?
00:25:25
Speaker
I think the Japanese would call it slice of life. But this is also like a farming, chill, a cozy game I've heard it called. But the whole point is you have a village or an island depending on which iteration you're playing and you have these villagers who are animals and have their own personalities and their own houses and you get to kind of
00:25:50
Speaker
Terraform your town a little bit rearrange some things decorate do chores around town Interact with other characters It's just so very laid-back and there's something cathartic about it Now I only played New Horizons on the switch, which is the latest one and I played the first one on Actually, no, I think that game key was a second one
00:26:16
Speaker
Yeah, I think it might have been SNES or something. Animal Crossing has been around for a long time. It was 64. In 60 probably. It's just a very fun and easy game where you don't really need to have a specific goal. Sometimes it's just fun to plant flowers. And then when people visit your town, you're like, don't fucking run through them. But I think very easy to pick up. Yeah.
00:26:38
Speaker
I actually like yours a little bit more than my pick. Because while we're talking about Slice of Life, I want to inject my pick for that was The Sims, specifically 3, because it's kind of the latest one. My wife loves The Sims. I know her friends love The Sims. And even I played The Sims, one of the early games I played to actually get into gaming.
00:27:02
Speaker
But it's actually probably less approachable than Animal Crossing and less addictive, kind of. But they're both very approachable and very addictive games. I would say Sims definitely probably has more mechanics that I haven't played in so long. I don't remember if they teach it to you. But there's a lot of places where you could technically go wrong. In Animal Crossing, there is you can't fail or break anything at all. Yes.
00:27:33
Speaker
And also, Animal Crossing could be a entry ramp into other types of lifetime simulator games, things like Harvest Moon or Stardew Valley or other things that relate to that. If you start playing The Sims, that's where you end. You actually just keep playing The Sims, so it almost isn't a good starter game for that. But if you don't like games at all, I think either of them could be a pretty good start.
00:28:03
Speaker
Yeah. Can you guess the next one? No, there's a lot. Did anybody guess portal? Portal, OK. Ooh, did you put portal for puzzle? Is that your entry for puzzle games? So I don't have these broken up on genre for me. If I force you to say yes or no, portal would not be my favorite puzzle. Yes, it would definitely be under puzzles. OK.
00:28:31
Speaker
It's because it was the first one I really played and kind of got into. Also just the concept of how that worked at all blew my mind. It still kind of does. And it just had a charm to it. Like overall the game was very bleak and simple.
00:28:47
Speaker
And a lot of personality just comes from Gladys. And then as you get to later in the game, you're like, shit's bananas. And it's great. It was such a fun experience that I actually went back and essentially, quote unquote, speed ran the game or from what I considered to be speed ring at the time of just playing through quickly knowing, oh, I know the solutions. But what about you? What would you say in the puzzle space? What do you think is more approachable than portal?
00:29:14
Speaker
I want to note that actual speedruns in Portal look absolutely obscene and it's like the furthest thing from comprehension that the human brain can imagine. They're all like pixel perfect laser shot through walls to skip to the end of the level and there's actual insanity. I like your answer better than mine. For puzzle games I picked Talos Principle because
00:29:37
Speaker
I think it's good to build upon itself and it is a really good game. But man, it's not it's not a good. It's not the easiest game for the portal. Yeah.
00:29:49
Speaker
It's, hmm, and I don't play a lot of puzzle games, but man, I didn't even think about Portal. And it's telling that I've absolutely finished all the content, or I'm pretty sure that there's some optional hard content I think in Portal 2 I might not have finished, but the co-op campaign and single player and all that stuff. And it was freaking great, because it feels like a puzzle adventure game, which usually I cannot trick my brain into thinking that that exists.
00:30:17
Speaker
Um, so your answer is better. Point for me and the imaginary system we've developed. Well, the points are made up. So here's another one. Um, and you might take some, some egress with this, but some Umbridge. Ooh.
00:30:42
Speaker
Professor, no, I don't actually do Harry Potter stuff. Celeste. Okay. Interesting. So Celeste is a platformer, obviously, if you played it. It is very cute and fun. I care about the story so much. Like the whole thing just resonated with me. But also like the platform mechanics kind of very much start out with like, hey, jump, grab onto a wall, you have some stamina, climb up the wall.
00:31:10
Speaker
And then later, as it goes, it keeps adding in these more mechanics. Maybe there's a platform that slides when you touch it. Maybe something only interacts when you do a dash. Maybe you have to do your dash in a specific way. Maybe there's spikes. Maybe you can't touch the ground twice in a certain spot. I think it does a good job of building on it. And I just love it. So a little bit of bias there.
00:31:37
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, it's an excellent game. We did an episode on it. I think you might have fallen into the same type of trap that I did for this one, where I picked a game I really appreciated, but it probably isn't the best starter. I picked Hollow Knight, surprising zero people in the audience.
00:31:55
Speaker
I will say I also threw that into the hat. Because yeah, I do think that's another good example of they don't start you off on 10 by any means. And you can really go at your own pace and you're kind of driven by the fun gameplay and like the good world design. Why would you put Hollow Knight over Celeste specifically? Well, I like the combat aspect of it personally.
00:32:23
Speaker
irrespective of which one is a better starter game. I just freaking love Hollow Knight. It's great. But I do concede that anything that basically could be described as the Dark Souls of genre should not be on this list, essentially. And that's what Hollow Knight is, is the Dark Souls of platforming.
00:32:44
Speaker
I picked it because I was like, this is so good that people that don't even like platformers might enjoy platformers a little bit more after this. But after your mention of Celeste and seeing my own flaws and decision making in your eyes, I'd probably pick something like Mario. Mario 2, whatever one donkey likes. There you go. That's your starter platformer. Super Mario Brothers 2.
00:33:14
Speaker
A lot of contention there. There have been a lot of good platformers over the years. Hey, if we're talking about platform fighters, Super Smash Brothers Ultimate came up as a starter game. Yeah, I'm gonna let you talk to that a little bit. Okay, yeah. So I have two fighters for this, but for platform fighters, I picked Ultimate because it is a massive game. Dave and I have played it for the last,
00:33:42
Speaker
25 years of our lives, give or take. That doesn't necessarily mean much from the perspective of Starter, but it has a campaign, which I completed, World of Light, which starts out pretty simple and kind of like ramps you into more concepts and learning about the game and mechanics and things. And then it's just, it's got that Nintendo polish, right? Like it's got support in ways that other platform fighters tend to not.
00:34:10
Speaker
There's so many different ways to play it, competitively, try hard, casual, all that stuff. Whatever feels good for the way that you want to play the game, you basically can. That's all the criteria I think you need to be the on-ramp. Start with the best. There you go.
00:34:29
Speaker
Yeah, that's true. Anytime we've done land parties and we get a bunch of people on the TV, I'm like, I'm doing one of you on competitive, I'm not doing any of that group shit. But for the people who just want to get in and have a good time and they're drunk, they want to play around and have items on, it's still a blast, right? Yeah. And that's really where it probably shines the most in a group setting.
00:34:53
Speaker
So I will have to agree with you on that. Also, World of Light is a really good way to ramp up and learn some stuff about the characters. A friend of the show, Dimooch, is also playing through that. I haven't harassed him about it a bit. I'm not sure when the last time he played was, but he was kind of touting some of those same things as well. Yeah, it's fun.
00:35:17
Speaker
And yeah, recommend it. That'd be my platform fighter. So it sounds like you're in agreement for platform fighters. What else have we got on the list?
00:35:27
Speaker
I am spinning in the background, I might have to remove one or two as I go. I know, that's fair. Because I'm also kind of deduplicating as we go, it's like my answer for that category would be this. I am making your life a little bit harder. Funnily enough, right after Celeste Hollow Knight came up, so I just smiled and like, ah, yeah, next. Yeah, just remove it, knock it down. Yeah. The next one we have here is Legend of Zelda, Breath of the Wild. This is under the open world category.
00:35:52
Speaker
I think there's going to be contention for this. Dave might contest me. We'll see for open world. Because there are a lot of freaking open world games and the reason I picked Breath of the Wild is because I own but have not played Tears of the Kingdom so I don't know how that measures up.
00:36:13
Speaker
but it's a very slow start. You start on the tutorial plateau, you're learning the mechanics slowly, they're introducing mechanics slowly, but then the game has so much adventure baked into it, you can just figure stuff out. You can think like, does it work this way? And a lot of times it literally will, and the game would have never told you that, it's just your own intuition and smarts. Thinking gamer smarts gets you there.
00:36:38
Speaker
And that's awesome. This is just for you, Jake. Everybody else, please don't listen. Don't listen to this. I posted a video in Discord that is exactly for you. And that's all I'll say. OK. That's fair. All right. Everyone else can tune back in. All right, guys. Yeah. Hold it back in. Hold it back. Yeah. But I don't have a whole ton of confidence in this answer. There's a lot of good open world games out there.
00:37:07
Speaker
But if someone just had never touched a video game before, I think this one could pull them in. So that's the reason I picked it. Well, Jake, I actually don't have a better one than this because my brain is going to like some of the big ones like Horizon Zero. Horizon Zero done. That sounds wrong. Elden Ring, Metal Gear Solid 5. But the issue with a lot of those is
00:37:35
Speaker
Like it helps to have some use to combat and other stuff trying to mess with you. Breath of the Wild does have combat, yes. But it's not the same as Elden Ring or Metal Gear Solid where I think you need to have more so your reflex is on point and things are like more so an Elden Ring out to fuck your day up.
00:38:00
Speaker
It's the Dark Souls of open world games. That's the problem. It goes back to that criteria. Yeah. The other issue is like MGS 5, too much fanservice. Horizon Zero Dawn, not enough fanservice. They just can't get the balance rate.
00:38:16
Speaker
At least they updated Aloy's model because boo boo boo boo boo. I think in general Nintendo's approach to stuff is always going to be the more family friendly and accessible to newer players. There is some fanservice in that game. Shirtless twink. Happy Pride everybody. Yeah, that's something that doesn't have a lot of fanservice in game, but outside?
00:38:42
Speaker
Yes, you do have to watch out for that. The rating is somewhat different. It's not weirdly. They're elves. It's always going to come up.
00:38:52
Speaker
The next one I have here under racing is need for speed. I'm going to let you go before I say I'm going to let you finish before I pull a Kanye West on you. But not that Kanye West where he's anti-Semitic now. Right. Well, that was kind of see that's that's what he's not called Kanye West anymore. Right. It's just I think. Right. I do not know what that person's up to. I think I think he was by you now. So he is the anti-Semitic one. Kanye West. He was fine. There's nothing wrong with that.
00:39:22
Speaker
a little inconsiderate perhaps, but no, I'm just kidding so need for speed I picked this because I don't play a lot of racing games But for my experience the ones that I really enjoyed were this the arcade games not the simulation games Right like I'm comparing this to something like Forza or Gran Turismo Excellent games super great You lose if you hit the wall
00:39:47
Speaker
Yes. Need for speed, hitting the wall might be what you need to do to get a shortcut, right? You don't even know. You're collecting those pink slips on the way down a mountain in Need for Speed carbon or something. It's just like unadulterated arcade fun in a way that is much easier to pick up. So that's the reason I picked it.
00:40:07
Speaker
also not that they would ever listen to podcasts and saw the talking that often but I'd shout out to the one person I've interacted with on this court who works on fours
00:40:24
Speaker
So yeah i would say force is obviously way more intense and closer to realism in their driving i'm actually gonna shoot down need for speed and bring us back again to nintendo this year this is going a game called mario kart.
00:40:41
Speaker
So, again, party game setting, anybody can kind of just pick up and play. Also, there's items. They're fun. They're wacky. How do they work? What do they do? But it also teaches people RNG is a thing that exists in video games, and sometimes it will fuck you over. And I think that's a good thing to learn, where it's like, hey, some of this skill, 100 percent skill, sometimes you just get bad luck, right? And that's part of like the fun aspect of it, like it makes it all even.
00:41:12
Speaker
Yeah, the only counter-contest I would have is I think Mario Kart is actually a high intensity combat racer, like Wipeout. Those are in the same genre for me. Okay. Not really though. Yes. Mario Kart is a really good answer because my mom doesn't really, didn't play that many games, but she put a lot of time into Mario Kart of everything. So, I mean, that's a sign. There you go.
00:41:40
Speaker
It was that in Korean MMOs, so not a bad answer. What is your mom up to? She's either doing Mario Kart or Black Desert Online. I don't fucking know. No, she would have loved it. What else we got? Minecraft. OK.
00:42:01
Speaker
Was it from you or from me? This one's actually mine, my version of it. So what what category do you put Minecraft under? Squints crafting. Okay. But it's I'd say very much it's a sandbox game, right? Yeah. There are technically objectives you can do. But in the early iterations of Minecraft, and this still holds true today, you can really just
00:42:28
Speaker
make something, right? You can just build a house, you can build a little village, you can have a server with your friends as long as you have enough dedicated WAM, right? Yes. Good reference. And like you can explore and do other stuff to like find cool new materials to do stuff. Now, I'm just saying why the game is fun. Yeah.
00:42:48
Speaker
But very much, you don't need to know too much. You just need to know whazz to move around, space to jump, and then turn your mouse to look, or left click to punch trees, right? Yeah. And it starts you off very simple. There's not really an insane difficulty. You learn quickly that nighttime is maybe not the friendliest. So you, out of instinct, will kind of build yourself a little barricade out of dirt and wood, maybe. Maybe you just put yourself in the hole for the first night. Dig three down, one up. There you go.
00:43:16
Speaker
Oh, I usually tunnel into something. Interesting. Dig three units down and place one dirt block above your head and then just stare into the night until the scary sounds go away. Wait for the light to come back. You don't get that. Not if you've literally buried yourself in a hole. Yeah.
00:43:36
Speaker
But like if I wanted to, let's say, show my dad gaming. My dad knows what gaming is, but like he hasn't played games in years and like when he would. He's not, he doesn't have the gamer cred, alright? Tim, if you're listening.
00:43:53
Speaker
But basically, I could see us being like, hey, here's how this works, and we can build something. You can go collect resources, and yada, yada. And I think he'd be entertained enough by that, honestly. And then start to ask questions of, oh, what about this? What happens if we explore here? What does this material do?
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I agree with all of that. Those are all excellent points. And the same reason I think both of the wild got on the list for me. Minecraft is there too. It's just the feeling of going out and exploring is freaking hard to replets. It's hard to beat Minecraft for that, especially if you haven't put in thousands of hours. Like probably we have at this point or at least hundreds. Um, yeah, I would say it's been expanse forever. You want more adventure? It's out there.
00:44:40
Speaker
Yeah. I think one of the draws to kind of get into gaming is that sense of suspension of disbelief, just being a kid again and having that sense of wonder or intrigue of like, oh, what is going to happen next? I want to explore around the corner. I want to see how the plot progresses.
00:44:59
Speaker
stuff like that. Where once you find that hook, whether it's just the majesty of the background, whether it's the lore or whatever it is, once you find that hook, hmm.
00:45:12
Speaker
addicted for life. Yeah, you find out what drives you. And this one has the real world experience just like my mom for Mario Kart, an entire generation was brought into video games because of Minecraft. So that's even somewhat argue even more evidence. It's a great starting game.
00:45:34
Speaker
This next one, I'm going to shoot down. I want to talk about it for a second briefly. Sure. Dota? Dota. You put Dota in. It was under advanced MOBA.
00:45:50
Speaker
I don't think people should even be playing MOBA's to start. Nice game. Let me justify that with the inclusion of the non-advanced MOBA on this list. I put hots on the list. Here's the story for the uninitiated. Also, by the time you listen to this, you might not be able to be initiated because the game is on life support.
00:46:11
Speaker
But it's because like it is a very straightforward MOBA that is straight up missing mechanics that are present in games like League and definitely Dota, which has everything and then more layers of it. But it's on life support. So like if you really enjoyed hots and you were just like, I need more of this stuff, that's where I would kind of start to recommend probably Dota because I can never recommend League. Right. So.
00:46:41
Speaker
It's bad.
Diverse Game Recommendations
00:46:43
Speaker
That was the rationale. But I agree with you. No one should play Dota. I have another one here. I can't shoot it down as much because I could definitely see some points to it. But Subnautica, under the genre of horror game. I thought about this. I was just like, well, I've already got Minecraft for survival crafting.
00:47:09
Speaker
I love Subnautica and I have to get it in the list somehow. It's scary. There you go. Horror game, especially if you suffer from thalassophobia. And if you have thalassophobia and you don't suffer from it, you will when you play Subnautica. So that's the reason I put it on here. It's also, it's not a primary horror game, right? Like if you played Amnesia.
00:47:34
Speaker
Then you're going into it with like, ah, I am going to be jump scared by some things. Some things are going to be. But Subnautica, it just has like some passive scary moments based off of how you choose to engage with the world or where you explore and stuff.
00:47:50
Speaker
But it's not really the drive of the game. So you can kind of acclimate yourself a little bit more to it. At a point, like you start out in a fairly safe area and you don't have to explore too much actually. Yeah. You don't have to explore too much to like get what you need to kind of progress.
00:48:06
Speaker
But as the game advances, you will need to go to places where you're less comfortable or you feel less safe. You won't be like right next to your base or right next to open oxygen. It might be some caverns and others like that definitely ramps up. Yeah, I'd say for a horror first.
00:48:34
Speaker
I don't know if I'd put it as the first one for horror. You going back to Silent Hill? Are you still thinking of that for me? No, actually. And this is only because I have it as a I have a let's play channel that I watch only plays past. We watch a lot of their stuff for a long time, but they have up here. Spooky's jump scare mansion.
00:48:55
Speaker
Okay. All right. That's fair. I actually am. I think that is actually a good thing into like dipping your toes into the water of spooky stuff. That's fair. That's probably a good answer. Yours was not just a legal like red tape exception to get Subnautica on the list. That's an actual answer that matches the genre. So I can, I could concede to that.
00:49:22
Speaker
I'm trying to think through others because I haven't played too many obviously amnesia, but like I wouldn't want to put that on anybody. You know, what's a weird one is like and I don't I don't I don't think it should belongs on this list, but like Doom 3 was actually billed as a horror, right? Because they specifically they're like, oh, you can't use a gun and your flashlight at the same time and there's going to be scary moments stuff like that. And it was a huge misstep for the Doom series, but they tried it, right?
00:49:49
Speaker
I know I've told this story a million times, but I have to tell it again. They had these little spiders that would come out of vents. I remember looking down the hallway and being like, that's a lot of fucking vents.
00:50:04
Speaker
squinted my eyes as much as possible so I have to like really absorb my surroundings and just like booked it down the hallway. Oh, it's a spider boss you say? Yo, I'm out. That was my experience. Yeah, it's fair. It's fair. Yeah, I don't play that many horror games and I'm not gonna suggest the really hardcore things like Outlast or whatever.
00:50:27
Speaker
No, when I keep my penis intact. The next one I have here, I will ask for your advice on which categories can go into but vampire survivors. Well, if you wanted to be very specific, you could have reverse bullet hell, which is I think how they bill it as the genre. I am the bullet hell. But I mean, that's, um,
00:50:56
Speaker
It definitely falls into roguelike, but roguelike is too open of a genre to really cover here. Indie roguelike, bullet hell, something like that.
00:51:07
Speaker
Yeah. So I think this one's good because you don't need to know anything about video games. You know where your character is, you know how to move around with WASD, or you can just click with the mouse and drag. You just know you don't want the enemies to hit you. And you start off with a weapon. You're like, oh, this is how this weapon operates. It only attacks horizontally for the starting character.
00:51:31
Speaker
And then you kill enough dudes, you evade death, and then you get a power-up. Oh, I can get a new level of my current weapon or a new weapon. How does this one work? And it slowly builds on where you find out these are the types of weapons I like and these are the situations where they're useful or you can find combinations that work well together. But really all you have to do is move around. If you can do WASD, great. You're gonna do fine at vampire survivors.
00:52:01
Speaker
And also, as you collect things, it gives you that reward sensation. It's like, it's exciting when you level up. Or you open a chest. Oh, you opened a rare chest? You opened a legendary chest and you get five upgrades? It pops off these particles all over the place.
00:52:20
Speaker
I don't know, that one might actually, as you were describing it, I was also kind of passively thinking like, do I have a better entry for straight up roguelike? And vampire survivors might actually just fit into the roguelike spot, which again is a very wide genre with a ton of different games, but it's incredibly inexpensive. The controls are very simple. It pretty much is an arcade game. It literally is.
00:52:48
Speaker
So yeah, I mean that, that might be the, that might be the pick for arcade or sorry, not arcade, but, uh, roguelike actually, which is going to disappoint a lot of people out there. Cause there's a lot of great roguelike games, but, um, it's not binding of Isaac binding of Isaac is too much for a starter. I think, um, for the sake of time, are you fine if I kind of remove ones that are, yeah, nuke, whatever you want. Okay.
00:53:16
Speaker
Starcraft is on the list, they have nukes, nukes whatever you want, it's right there. So I'm gonna just for the audience's sake, I'm gonna try and remove anything that involves FPS going forward. Sure thing, it just might be kind of mechanically jump if you haven't really been playing games. Could I mention the only one I had that was an FPS? I don't know how many you had on your list. You had more than one. Did I have multiple FPS?
00:53:45
Speaker
I guess technically. If the FPS genre was one, I actually deliberated on that. I think it's Overwatch.
00:53:57
Speaker
Do you wanna, so it was between that and like Call of Duty for me for like the most casual to start playing the game one. But like Overwatch legitimately has pulled in a bunch of people who just do not normally play shooters. And I mean, whatever their current state is, Overwatch 2, I'm not thinking about that in the evaluation. We're just talking about like Overwatch gameplay, very accessible characters, very diverse cast, the most diverse cast that ever exists.
00:54:24
Speaker
to the point that it's just like there's a meme of who's going to become gay this week. And yeah, I don't know. I put a bunch of time into it too. Yeah, exactly. That was my argument for FPS.
00:54:41
Speaker
I mean, I see it. I mean, because a lot of FPSs are going for realism. But Overwatch obviously isn't. And also, if you're like, hey, I want to play this game with my friends, but I really don't like shooting people and having like aiming click heads. Cool. You can play characters, but you don't have to do that. You can basically just play a support. And then. You can play characters you cannot click heads, like right now. Yes.
00:55:08
Speaker
Like there are definitely options for you to try and get into that space and again You would have to be a little bit comfortable with like the Waz space and the mouse But again, that's very much like Minecraft where it's not super difficult to pick up Obviously hard to master but you could easily get into a game with friends. Yeah
00:55:31
Speaker
And it's free, it could combo into Call of Duty if you like the shooty bits. You're like, I spend all my time on Soldier 76 for some reason. Or Battlefield if you like the team role aspects. It's another branching one, I think. What else do we got? What are the, to borrow Macho Man or Randy Savage, we've worked through all this. What's the cream of the crop? What's floated to the top of this list that you're eliminating?
00:56:02
Speaker
You mean, what's just the next one? Yes, what's the next one? Next please. Next slide. It takes two. Okay. So I put this in as like, obviously, one person has to own the game, but anybody else who wants to play with that person does not have to own the game. Right? So maybe co-op, right? This could be your co-op game.
00:56:27
Speaker
Yeah, definitely good for co-op. Like, let's say you're an experienced gamer. I think the perfect thing for this is, like, couples, right? I mean, it's not – the game is kind of about couples anyway, but like – but specifically, you can play as one character and then it has somebody else just hop in. And the thing is, like, you both have to do mechanics together throughout the game. It's not like – I'm going to give my little bro the controller and he'll play, like, the second character. It doesn't fucking matter what they do for the most part. We talked about Sonic 2 recently.
00:56:58
Speaker
Tails but it takes two is It's really good at that co-op portion of kind of balancing responsibilities for that teamwork But also like it jumps around fucking everywhere. I had no idea where the story was going at any point Every level is very unique and fun. I don't really see like a whole overlapping of mechanics where it's like Oh this shit again, usually it's like hey, you're in this area and then like you'd never see that thing again
00:57:27
Speaker
Yeah. It is just so imaginative and fun. There's so many little side games you can play against each other just for bragging rights. And again, you really only have to know basic platforming for the most part. Occasionally you might have to aim and shoot, but a lot of stuff is not time dependent. So I feel like you can pick that part up pretty easily. Yeah, it's an excellent inclusion.
00:57:57
Speaker
It covers a lot of genres, but I think it's definitely, it's in the running for best co-op. We already picked a Portal game, so Portal 2 can't count. And that is the best anti-co-op game. That's the crown I'll give it. Yeah. Takes two, pretty good one.
00:58:17
Speaker
Next one I have here under fighting games is Street Fighter 6, which just came out and I'm using other people's impressions to include it on this list. But I've also seen that it's got like a modern mode for controls rather than doing classic controls where it's like hit all the buttons. You know, like people have that full list of fighting game moves. Street Fighter 6 was like, what if you didn't?
00:58:43
Speaker
What if we just had a mode where people did a little bit less damage but they could just do down B like it's Smash or something like that. And that's the way Charlie Moist Critical was playing it. It looked like he was having a bunch of fun as a grappler. And it's got like a single player thing and everything I've heard is that this is basically the on-ramp to traditional fighting games.
00:59:09
Speaker
That is like the hardest freaking genre to get into so That's the reason I picked it So I will say Again to what you're saying for everything I've seen about it because I'm not picked it up. I watched a friend play on discord the other day That's probably my closest exposure but it really seems like
00:59:31
Speaker
the fighting game scene is finally trying to make things more accessible because Street Fighter 6 is doing this and they apparently did a really good job of it. While Tekken 8 is not out yet, they have also described kind of similar offerings to where they are going to make some stuff more like,
00:59:49
Speaker
I know Tekken has 110 combos per character. We don't expect you to know all that. So here's some stuff you can get into where certain buttons might be mapped like, oh, this is your juggle thing. This is your pop-up. This is your punish. This is your get, whatever it might be. So I think right now,
01:00:08
Speaker
It's probably the best one to get into because I will never say that Soul Calibur is an actual fighter or that the series is good. It's fun to follow and see what bullshit they add, but don't touch Soul Calibur. If they let you use swords, it's not an actual fighting game. Exactly. I was also going to say,
01:00:31
Speaker
I think they go as far as to have like you can have a one button just keep pressing this button to beat the crap out of the opponent option but you can't use that online you can't use that against players and they also did a brilliant thing and that's having the modern modes deal less damage
01:00:50
Speaker
is just like it's it's basically psychological. It's a psychological attack to try hard players. Because if you're going to have a problem with these new players coming in and they're kicking your butt because they just did like a special move, you're like, yeah, but I mean, that special move does 20 percent less damage. Like you can you can get there, but you're better than that, right? Like, you know, the inputs, right? So you should be able to destroy them. It's just it's just brilliant. I love it.
01:01:19
Speaker
You mentioned Tekken. The reason Mortal Kombat isn't on this is because no one's mom will let them play Mortal Kombat, so we can't get that on the list. That's true. And with, you know, they just keep getting more and more brutal as they progress the series. Pretty much. I don't know.
01:01:44
Speaker
Are we at the recap phase? If you had to pick a couple from that, that would be your favorite. For in the running or anything we missed that you're like, this is going to bother me forever that I didn't mention this.
01:01:59
Speaker
I would say one thing that I would maybe throw into the list that we didn't mention. Again, just for like a generic party game. Fall Guys. It's very much a game where you don't have to be good. It's still fun to lose. RNG is also a motherfucker and so are other players. But it's just a fun multiplayer game mode type thing. And when you actually do win, which I've only done exactly once, it feels good.
01:02:28
Speaker
But you don't have to take home the crown to have a good time with friends. Right. Yeah, it's also there's more platforming, Cenk. Yeah, I think...
01:02:41
Speaker
I'm sorry, I was looking at the list here. I think, as soon as you mentioned fog eyes, I thought of Among Us, but I was like, nope, hidden role game immediately out. That disqualifies an entire classification of people who cannot be competitive. I'm going to need you to lie. What? This doesn't be a posture. What does that mean? God damn. So yeah, just fun.
01:03:06
Speaker
Uh, without all of that complication, I think puts fall guys ahead. Um, I kind of, I put MMO on this list, but I don't even think I'm going to mention it to be honest. I'm just going to mention that MMO was on the list. I did not purposefully miss it, but that's like life destroying almost to the extent of Dota.
01:03:33
Speaker
I'm not going to mention MMOs. If I mention MMOs, everyone's brain just went to one if they played it and that's already their answer. It's fine. If you don't have that, just play RuneScape. It's fine.
01:03:48
Speaker
I don't know if I can ever think of somebody playing RuneScape, but I also have not touched him for free. I also have not played that game since I was like 14 so I know a lot of it has changed.
01:04:08
Speaker
I also want to provide just a little bit of context because Dave sent me he's like hey here's the list of remaining games if there's any you wanted to call out but he sent me the wheel so I'm like turning my head to all angles to see what's still on this wheel I have to read the same way for the record it's probably the most how hardest way to do this but I think I think my list is pretty good I'm pretty happy with it
Episode Summary and Reflections
01:04:33
Speaker
I don't think that there's anything, like there's other games that I love. There's other games that I absolutely recommend people should play, but I kind of would just leave it at Minecraft. It's just like if you'd never played a video game, it's such a good start. Yeah. I think anything that kind of gives the player some agency or
01:04:59
Speaker
puts you in like a beautiful setting and lets you kind of just explore or I can't think of another attribute at the moment. Yeah. It's like a beautiful loneliness. That's what Minecraft is to me. Yes. And whereas Animal Crossing is a comfy, not really loneliness.
01:05:23
Speaker
indentured servitude. Yeah, gonna pay off that house one someday. Yeah, I'm sure that there are other things that we did not even touch that would be like, oh, that would actually be really fucking good to just show somebody who's trying to get into gaming.
01:05:42
Speaker
But really, if for some reason you're listening to this and you are not into games, which would be wild, thank you for checking this out all the way to this point. Really just Google something that you like and like games in that space and I'm sure something exists. There's probably like a most approachable one.
01:06:01
Speaker
But I would say this is more so for people who already like games, who maybe have friends, family or loved ones who are kind of outside of it and maybe you want to be able to share that with them. Maybe you want to be able to like show your parents like, hey, check out this cool thing and then have them get into it. Maybe you want to show like a significant other like, hey, this could be a fun activity we could do together.
01:06:23
Speaker
Or maybe you have a cousin you're trying to impress who's like, I play Fortnite and nothing else. I'm like, well, let me actually blow your brain a little bit here. Check out this. I'm like, whoa. I was going to say Eve Online. Maybe you're an Eve Online player and you've just forgotten how to relate to humanity. We can be your on-ramp to that. Let us be your catalyst. Mirror's Edge Catalyst. Didn't make the cut.
01:06:48
Speaker
Yeah. I think from an outside space, there's a lot of, like with anything else, there's some assumptions that are made kind of incorrectly. So in the case of gaming, it's like, oh, games are expensive. Besides Diablo 4, a lot of them really aren't necessarily expensive. A lot of them you can get even for free. Or just for very cheap. Yeah. But
01:07:13
Speaker
At the end of the day, it's what makes you happy. These are just some of the ones that have made us happy over the years and some of the ones that we think are a little bit more accessible for people to check out.
01:07:24
Speaker
And again, Dota does not belong on this list. Does not meet any of the criteria Dave said. Well, appreciate that. Good summary. I agree wholeheartedly. Thank you guys for sticking around to the end of this one. If there's something that we missed, do you think that it's like, my gosh, I can't believe they
01:07:46
Speaker
didn't mention this game and I think it's just the best on-ramp imaginable. You can just send that in, soapstonepodcast at gmail.com, or you could join the discussion on Facebook, which is like the on-ramp to social media platforms for the elderly, I think at this point, at facebook.com slash soapstonepodcast. And as always, we'll see you in the next one. Have a good night.